13 



Those of you who have seen the child thus in touch 

 with nature, not merely with the framework and skel- 

 eton of nature, have been amazed, as I have been, 

 with the power the children show to think and reason 

 for themselves, and as you have seen the children 

 look up from Madam How to Lady Why (as Kingsley 

 expresses it), have been impressed as I have been, 

 with the truth of the saying, that these things are 

 hidden from the wise and prudent, but revealed unto 

 babes. 



From life and function, the main thought in the 

 earliest years, the child insensibly passes to structure 

 and later to comparison and classification. In placing 

 classification first, as is so often done, the order of na- 

 ture is completely reversed. 



We have chosen our centre, the child. We have 

 glanced at the roads, the senses, through which the 

 child is connected with his world. We have felt of 

 the threads so fine and yet so strong, attention, inter- 

 est, concentration, through which the child and his 

 world are to be kept in touch and the child developed ; 

 we have seen how he lives at first in a world of life, 

 and function, and energy and action, whose borders 

 gradually extend to include structure and classification. 

 It seems scarcely necessary to add that in material as 

 well as in method the child's world must be our world, 

 and we must begin with that which is nearest to the child. 

 You ask what to study. That which is most abundant, 

 most common, most a part of the child's environment. 

 Anywhere and everywhere the child is surrounded by 

 the plant world, the germinating seed, the opening bud, 

 the leaf and flower and fruit. My own experience with 



