Mental Discipline in Education. 415 



suffice. But if in any case manipulations of special delicacy 

 and precision are required, as in learning to draw, a new 

 acquisition must be made. Yet here the same thing occurs. 

 The new acquirement may be utilized in other similar ap- 

 plications ; if the child have first learned to draw, the apti- 

 tude will serve also in learning to write. 



Again, the instrumental performer, by long drill, ac- 

 quires a great number of movements, according to the range 

 of his musical sensibility, so that learning new pieces is 

 but little else than new combinations of old sequences 

 the new acquisition being, in fact, but a new grouping of 

 old acquisitions. So also in the purely intellectual opera- 

 tions. In learning geometry, the mind having grasped the 

 preliminary definitions, axioms, and postulates, uses them 

 over and over in solving the successive problems ; while 

 mathematical genius consists mainly in the ready ability 

 to identify the old elements under the disguises of the 

 new cases. In fixing the conception of a new mineral, plant, 

 or animal, the naturalist recalls the characteristics of known 

 specimens which most nearly resemble them, and super- 

 adds to these the new features. The same thing holds in 

 learning languages. The mastery of Latin reduces the labor 

 of acquiring Italian, French, and Spanish, into which it 

 largely enters ; and we find new words to be easy in pro- 

 portion as they consist of old familiar articulations. In 

 historical studies, revolutions, campaigns, negotiations, and 

 political measures, are repeated by the same nation at suc- 

 cessive epochs, and by one government after another, so 

 that a new history is but a varied reading of old ones; the 

 really new features bearing but a small proportion to those 

 already fixed in the student's mind. The vast mental econ- 

 omy which would arise throughout civilization by the gen- 

 eral adoption of decimal coinage, weights, and measures, is 

 but another illustration of the principle ; a few simple arith- 

 metical acquisitions would serve the requirements of all 



