Mental Discipline in Education. 423 



highest importance. When curiosity is freshest, and the per- 

 ceptions keenest, and memory most impressible, before the 

 maturity of the reflective powers, the opening mind should 

 be led to the art of noticing the aspects, properties, and 

 simple relations of the surrounding objects of Nature. This 

 should be guided into a growing habit, and the young pupil 

 gradually trained to know how to observe, and what to ob- 

 serve among all the objects of its unfolding experience. It 

 should be encouraged to collect many of the little curiosi- 

 ties which awaken its attention, and required carefully to 

 preserve them; but to do all this judiciously is delicate 

 work. The custodian of the child must know something of 

 the objects of Nature, and much of the nature of the young 

 pupil. Above all other things, teachers qualified to do this 

 work are the desperate need of the age. To perfect the 

 object method, and train instructors to its discriminating 

 use, is one of the great functions of Normal Schools, and 

 must become the practical basis of a rational system of 

 education. Let it be remembered that there is nothing 

 forced or artificial here : the scenes of childish pleasure and 

 exuberant activity furnish the objects of thought. In cre- 

 ating an interest in these things a bent is given in the true 

 direction ; the valuable habit of observing and seeking is 

 formed, while the numberless disconnected shreds of knowl- 

 edge are incipient acquisitions, which will grow with time 

 into the ripened forms of science. 



With such a preparation, the transition is natural to the 

 regular study of the sciences, in which the observing and 

 reasoning powers are to be systematically cultivated. For 

 this purpose the first to be taken up are mathematics, phys- 

 ics, or natural philosophy, and chemistry, as they deal with 

 the clearest and simplest conceptions, and depend upon the 

 fewest and most definite conditions. The adaptation of 

 mathematics to cultivate deductive reasoning has been no- 

 ticed. Physics trains equally to accuracy and precision of 



