INSTINCT. 401 



widest scale by the alternation of diflerent interests and 

 passions as human life goes on. With the child, life is all 

 play and fair3'-tales and learning the external properties of 

 'things;' -with the youth, it is bodily exercises of a more 

 systematic sort, novels of the real world, boon-fellowship 

 and song, friendship and love, nature, travel and adven- 

 ture, science and philosophy ; with the man, ambition and 

 policy, acquisitiveness, responsibility to others, and the 

 selfish zest of the battle of life. If a boy grows up alone 

 at the age of games and sports, and learns neither to play 

 ball, nor row, nor sail, nor ride, nor skate, nor fish, nor 

 shoot, probably he will be sedentary to the end of his days ; 

 and, though the best of opportunities be afforded him for 

 learning these things later, it is a hundred to one but he will 

 pass them by and shrink back from the effort of taking 

 those necessary first steps the prospect of which, at an 

 earlier age, would have filled him with eager delight. The 

 sexual passion expires after a protracted reign ; but it is 

 well known that its peculiar manifestations in a given in- 

 dividual depend almost entirely on the habits he may form 

 during the early period of its activity. Exi30sure to bad 

 company then makes him a loose liver all his days ; 

 chastity kept at first makes the same easy later on. In all 

 pedagogy the great thing is to strike the iron while hot, 

 and to seize the wave of the pupil's interest in each succes- 

 sive subject before its ebb has come, so that knowledge 

 may be got and a habit of skill acquired — a headway of in- 

 terest, in short, secured, on which afterward the individual 

 may float. There is a happy moment for fixing skill in 

 drawing, for making boys collectors in natural history, and 

 presently dissectors and botanists ; then for initiating them 

 into the harmonies of mechanics and the wonders of physi- 

 cal and chemical law. Later, introspective psychology 

 and the metaphysical and religious mysteries take their 

 turn ; and, last of all, the drama of human affairs and 

 worldly wisdom in the widest sense of the term. In each 

 of us a saturation-point is soon reached in all these things ; 

 the impetus of our purely intellectual zeal expires, and un- 

 less the topic be one associated with some urgent personal 

 need that keejDS our wits constantly whetted about it, we 



