NATURE'S EDUCATIONAL METHOD. 295 



contact with the realities which environ it, but which are now 

 to be regularly studied. We have here the clear criterion by 

 which educational systems must be judged ; how does the pre- 

 vailing practice answer to the test ? 



V. DEFICIENCY OP EXISTING SCHOOL-METHODS. 



Nothing is more obvious than that the child's entrance 

 upon school-life, instead of being the wise continuation of pro- 

 cesses already begun, is usually an abrupt transition to a new, 

 artificial, and totally different sphere of mental experience. 

 Although, in the previous period, it has learned more than it 

 ever will again in the same time, and learned it according to 

 the fundamental laws of growing intelligence, yet the current 

 notion is, that education "begins with the child's entrance upon 

 school-life. How erroneous this is we have sufficiently seen. 

 That which does begin at this time is not education, but simply 

 the acquirement of new helps to it. The first thing at school 

 is usually the study of words, spelling, reading, and writing 

 that is, to get the use of written language. This is, of course, 

 important and indispensable. To be able to accumulate, com- 

 pare, arrange, and preserve ideas, and put them to their largest 

 uses, it is necessary to mark them. "Words are these marks or 

 signs of ideas, and, as such, have an inestimable value. Words, 

 as the marks of ideas, are the representatives of knowledge, 

 and books which contain them become the invaluable de- 

 positories of the world's accumulating thought. It is ex- 

 actly because of their great importance and their intimate 

 relations to our intellectual life, that we should be always 

 vividly conscious of their exact nature and office. 



But words are not ideas, they are only the symbols of ideas ; 

 language is not knowledge, but the representative of it. Labels 

 have a value of convenience, which depends upon the intrin- 

 sic value of what they point out. Now, there is a constant 

 and insidious tendency in education to invert these relations 

 to exalt the husk above its contents, the tools above their work, 

 the label above its object, words above the things for which 

 they stand. The means of culture thus become the ends of 



