SOME THOUGHTS ON THE PRINCIPLES OF INSTRUCTION. 105 
ture delivered before the summer school of chemistry, (1879,) declared that 
‘students coming to the university can neither observe with any accuracy nor 
are they able to draw tolerably correct inferences from what they imperfectly 
observe;”’ that ‘‘the student should be brought into personal and original contact 
with facts, and, by practice, become able to draw correct conclusions from them ; 
for these reasons, I find it necessary to take personal charge of the elementary 
classes, leaving the more advanced ones to the tutors.” The same notes of warn- 
ing and complaint have long been uttered by such educators as Porter, Bain, 
Agassiz, McCosh, Gore, Spencer and others who stand among the best teachers 
of our time, and still we continue in thé grooves deep-worn far back in the Mid- 
dle Ages—grooves so deep that he who attempts a statement of the principles 
which underlie acquisition is charged with being a ‘‘theorist,” and his work is 
denounced as ‘‘ not suited to the wants of the teacher,” or as ‘‘ shooting over our 
heads.” Similar is the history of every move forward. 
From whatever quarter we approach the fundamental principles of the educa- 
ting process, there should be: 
In Childhood.—Perceptive work, with few symbols. 
_ In Youth.—Perceptive work, with many symbols. 
In Manhood.—Symbols, not exclusively. m 
All theories of intellectual and moral discipline, devised by ingenious per- 
sons, disregarding the truth that law reigns among mental phenomena no less than 
among physical ones, muSt pass into forgetfulness, supplanted by one which rests 
upon the unalterable and eternal truth, so unmistakably illustrated in every human 
experience, and so concisely formulated in another century, that all our knowl- 
edge begins with experience. 
It is well known that our educational system fails to cultivate and develop 
practical judgment, and this failure demands an explanation which will stand 
adverse criticism. I believe it a truth that is almost axiomatic, that every prob- 
lem in mental.economy and mental discipline must find its solution, ultimately, 
in the nature of mind itself. Education begins with sensual experiences, but it 
does not end with them. When these experiences have been made the child’s 
possession by an exercise of the senses, then, and then only, should those experi- 
ences receive a name, which name—elasticity, for example—can be made no 
clearer by.reference to a lexicon. Henceforth this word or symbol, whether 
thought, spoken or written, recalls the experience and takes its rightful place in 
the language of the child. Henceforth educational advancement is concerned 
with new experiences and their symbols, together with re-combinations, applica- 
tions ‘and rearrangements of the old ones, and this complex mental activity we 
designate as an enlargement of the boundary of mental vision. Again I assert 
that unless the child experiences, by the sense of sight or touch, the rebound of 
elasticity, as seen in rubber, glass or other substance, this quality of matter can 
never become: a concept of his brain, and, consequently, it must remain as 
unknown to him as if it had no existence whatever. This real and individual] 
