LIBERAL EDUCATION. 5 



ment. That we have such a completed practical psychology, or any 

 such logical and symmetrical course or courses of study based upon it, 

 is more than can be asserted, for education, as a science, is still in its 

 infancy ; but we certainly have attained to certain general principles 

 which are fundamental as regards the elementary education of the 

 future ; and the most important of these, which is even now revolu- 

 tionizing all our methods of elementary teaching, is the direct result 

 of the progress of modern physical science. It is, that education be- 

 gins with the concrete, and not with the abstract, and that the right 

 method for the teaching even of language itself is the right training 

 and development of the child's senses. The Latin grammar, there- 

 fore, as the right instrument for training the youthful mind, is fast dis- 

 appearing, along with that birch which was its material symbol and 

 needful complement, and a striking witness to the absurdity of the use 

 we put it to. Mequiescat in pace I The lovers of the noble science 

 of classical philology may well be congratulated on its emancipation 

 from such degrading servitude. 



In place of this rude and crude, and now happily obsolescent the- 

 ory, a deeper philosophy is leading us to inquire into the nature of the 

 undeveloped mind, and the true order of the development of its facul- 

 ties, and is, at the same time, guiding us to the right choice of means 

 for stimulating their natural and healthful growth and unfolding. 

 And here I will say that the answer which psychology gives to these 

 questions seems to me a little in danger of being misinterpreted for 

 the time being by one class of educational reformers. In their re- 

 action against the premature and unnatural stimulus given to the 

 powers of abstraction by the old system, they are in danger of run- 

 ning into the opposite extreme of paying a too exclusive attention 

 to the development of the observing powers in the new — a tendency 

 which the influence of modern physical science on our educational 

 ideas, especially, tends to foster. I doubt whether one extreme 

 will prove any better than the other, for both are equally one-sided. 

 The true lesson we are to learn is, above all things, to have regard to 

 balance and proportion. The youthful mind is not a different thing 

 from the same mind in its maturity. The germs of all faculties exist 

 in it, and their development is in no linear order, but rather like rays 

 diverging from one centre ; and the true conception of the different 

 stages of education is, as being divided by concentric circles, cutting 

 those rays at equal distances from the centre. The child's observing 

 powers should furnish him with intellectual material no faster than his 

 powers of abstraction can work it up into intellectual products, or than 

 the development of his powers of expression can give form to them. 

 On the other hand, his powers of expression should never be developed 

 in empty words, beyond the limits of his acquisition of the ideas words 

 stand for, as is now the case with so much of our word-mongering edu- 

 cation. Again, his imagination should never outrun his reason on the 



