Education ai2d Innervation. 59 



connection between intellectual education and innervation, or, 

 to put it a little more popularly, the influence of intellectual 

 training upon the individual through the senses. Of course, 

 as we have seen, all training must afl:ect the individual through 

 the senses, for the senses are the proper portals of knowledge ; 

 they form the connecting link between mind and external 

 influences. In the beginning of my lecture I spoke of the aim 

 of intellectual education as the development and training of 

 those faculties by which man is enabled to derive the utmost 

 advantage from his environment, and to himself become a 

 centre of activity in mental operations, and now what I want 

 to endeavour to show is that the only true method of such 

 training is that which tends to develop all the faculties 

 simultaneously, that which appeals to the intellectual nature 

 through all the channels possible. In short, what I want to 

 enforce is, that we must cultivate in our young people obser- 

 vation, energy, handicraft, ingenuity, so that we may give 

 them a pursuit as well as a study. 



After long ages of blindness, men at least are seeing that the 

 spontaneous activity of the observing faculties in children has a 

 meaning and a use. What was once thought mere purposeless 

 action, or play, or mischief, is now recognised as the process of 

 acquiring knowledge on which all after-knowledge is based. 

 Hence the properly-conceived system of object lessons, for 

 without an accurate acquaintance with the visible and tangible 

 properties of things, our conceptions must be erroneous, our 

 inferences fallacious, and our operations unsuccessful. Now, 

 the cultivation of the habit of exhaustive observation is the real 

 secret of true knowledge. Not telling what this object is, or 

 showing some other, for that is only to teach the result of 

 another's observations, which is a weakening rather than a 

 strengthening process, but encouraging the developing intellect 

 to utilise all the sensory powers. And this development of the 

 power of observation is really a proceeding from the simple to 

 the complex. One impression is formed, and dealt upon, 

 and then another and another, until these are combined and 



