6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



one hand, nor his memory overload it on the other, in accordance with 

 that preposterous doctrine we sometimes hear propounded, which ad- 

 vocates the employment of the youthful memory in laying up stores 

 of unintelligible knowledge, in anticipation of an after-time, when it 

 will become intelligible — as if there could be such a thing as not- 

 understood knowledge, in any other sense than as we speak of undi- 

 gested food — turning to poison in the system. The child is a philoso- 

 pher, a moralist, a poet in little, quite as much as he is an observer or 

 a rememberer, and his whole moral and intellectual growth will be 

 warped and stunted so long as you insist upon looking on him as a 

 mere observing or a mere memorizing machine, a mere receptacle for 

 facts or for words either. 



If I am right in this view of the true character of elementary edu- 

 cation, it follows that the great departments, into which it should from 

 the very first be divided, correspond exactly with the primary divis- 

 ions of knowledge itself, as they will continue for the pupil forever 

 after. Let me, for the purposes of this discussion, make a triple divis- 

 ion of knowledge into physical, ethical, and sesthetical, according as 

 our thought is concerned with the world of matter, the world of mind, 

 and the world of art or beauty. I am concerned here less for strict- 

 ness of philosophical accuracy than for the practical convenience of 

 this division. Now, as, in accordance with our fundamental concep- 

 tion of liberal education, the question as to a choice between these de- 

 partments of liberal learning is a futile one, because all are essential 

 elements in our conception of liberal education — so, if I am right, no 

 conception of elementary education can be a correct one that does not 

 provide for them all from the very beginning. 



I need hardly point out what a change in all our methods this 

 change in our philosophy implies ; for it involves the doctrine that 

 the true place to begin the teaching of all art, all science, all knowl- 

 edge, is the primary school ; and I am not in the least afraid of the 

 seeming paradox. Rather I would earnestly maintain that, unless we 

 treat the child in the primary school as the germ and embryo of all 

 he is destined afterward to become, our education will be doomed to 

 ignominious failure. Whatever, therefore, enters into our conception 

 of liberal education — and we have already seen that nothing less than 

 all extant knowledge should enter into it — that should enter into it 

 from the beginning. Language and literature should be the subjects 

 of elementary teaching ; science should be the subject of elementary 

 teaching ; art should be the subject of elementary teaching. What- 

 ever is to enter into the higher stages of education is to have its seed 

 planted there, or it never will be planted. The true distinction, there- 

 fore, between disciplinary and non-disciplinary, is not a distinction be- 

 tween one set of studies begun early and another set of studies begun 

 late, one set of studies pursued for training, and another set of studies 

 mastered for use : it is a distinction between the earlier and the later 



