OF EDUCATION 35 



plication all the transactions of the house and street, 

 all commerce, all politics, all morals — and that there- 

 fore without a due acquaintance with them neither 

 personal nor social conduct can be rightly regulated. 

 It will eventually be seen too, that the laws of life are 

 essentially the same throughout the whole organic 

 creation ; and further, that they cannot be properly 

 understood in their complex manifestations until they 

 have been studied in their simpler ones. And when 

 this is seen, it will be also seen that in aiding the 

 child to acquire the out-of-door information for which 

 it shows so great an avidity, and in encouraging the 

 acquisition of such information throughout }'outh, we 

 are simply inducing it to store up the raw material 

 for future organization — the facts that will one day 

 bring home to it with due force these great generali- 

 zations of science by which actions may be rightly 

 guided. ' ' — Herbert Spencer. 



" Infant and primary education I reckon the high- 

 est and most difficult of educational problems. . . . 

 True education is an imitation, not a thwarting of 

 nature. To be successful we must watch and learn 

 how the Divine Goodness teaches the little Adam just 

 entered upon his glorious heritage, we must conform 

 to that method if we would be successful. And we 

 find that God, in the infant's education, is no tyrant 

 exacting of each his portion of loathed labor, but that 

 he educates the expanding mind by freedom, joy and 

 beauty, through nature training eye, and ear, and 

 every sense, by every novelty of form, and sound, 

 and color ; and that we must help and not hinder 



