Adams. — On Early Instruction. 175 



science and art, efficient direction, suitable accommodation, and adequate 

 apparatus for instruction would be required. 



The organisation of the Auckland Institute by its Council would offer 

 the best guarantee for the direction and management of such a school, while 

 the educational collections and library of the Museum, supplemented with 

 apparatus for school classes, would offer exceptional advantages for instruction 

 in the natural resources of this province. I trust that the importance of the 

 subject will sufficiently commend itself to your approval, and that the required 

 accommodation may be provided in connection with the Institute in suitable 

 public buildings. 



I feel convinced that if the experiment were fairly tried in Auckland, the 

 superiority of a system of scientific training would be demonstrated, and the 

 Colonial Government constrained to adapt to the increasing requirements of 

 this colony a system of education which shall enable the next generation to 

 make New Zealand the most prosperous nation in the Southern Hemisphere. 



Art. XX. — Early Instruction. By J. Adams, B.A. 



[Read hefore the Auckland Institute, 2Qth August, 1874.] 



When a traveller wishes to ascend a lofty mountain he employs a guide in 

 order that he may go up by the easiest route, and at the same time obtain 

 during his ascent the best view of the surrounding country j but if the guide, 

 instead of taking the best and easiest route, wished to force our traveller up 

 the steepest side, where all his strength would be required to keep him from 

 rolling to the bottom, and where nothing could be seen during the ascent 

 but the rugged side of the mountain — I think such a guide would not be 

 often employed. 



Now the ascent of a mountain has often been used as a simile for the 

 gradual acquisition of knowledge, in which the difficulties are greater or less 

 according to the guide. 



In real knowledge the conceptions agree exactly with the outer world and 

 human life, just as the picture of the prospect formed on the retina and 

 conveyed to the mind agrees with the outspread country, and as the prospect 

 becomes wider and picture more complete as we ascend the hill, so also the 

 ideas are enlarged and the conceptions made more exact by the acquisition of 

 real knowledge. The learner is ever forming a clearer apprehension of the 

 order of nature and striving onward to the knowledge of the truth. 



It is an encouragement to know that from the moment the child enters 

 this world he begins to acquire knowledge, which day by day and month by 



