s and hence all first presentations of a new lesson
or a new object of thought must be in the concrete. The richer and
more varied the concrete data, the more valuable is the mental result
in abstract thought. When an abstract notion is presented to a class
it is of no educational value unless it can be referred back in the
mind of each pupil to some concrete experience in his own past. The
teacher, knowing this, will always aim to interpret general truths,
which are abstract, into terms of experience, which are concrete. When
David wishes to express the thirst of his soul for God he says, "As
the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after
thee, O God." To a people familiar with Palestine and the habits of
the hart this language at once made vividly real, in a concrete image,
the great longing the pure soul has for its Creator.

#66.# All the tentacles of the soul seem to find in the concrete thing
great sources of nourishment. Note the crowds that throng the
zoological gardens, the flower expositions, the picture galleries, the
museums of one sort or another, to see the potency of the concrete as
a great teaching power. Explore a boy's pocket to learn what the
concrete is worth. Why all these "scraps," broken glass, rusty nails,
old knives, buttons, peculiar pebbles, colored strings, parts of a
watch or clock, odd sticks, bits of chewing gum, ends of pencils,
broken buckles, speckled beans, colored papers, bits of fur, and other
things that he treasures? Because in a most potential way they are
nutrition to his yearning soul. One will never fathom the real depths
of the concrete as teaching data until he can appreciate why the son
of a President of the United States gladly traded rare exotic flowers
from the White House conservatory for the discarded paper caps of
common milk bottles.

#67.# The trouble we all experience is to discover just what concrete
thing the general statement figures in the soul of the child. When our
pupils read

"Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,"

what does it mean to them? Instance a poor child whose life is pent
within the narrow walls of a city tenement, one who has never seen the
park, much less the great, grand farms of the country; what can even
this simple language of Whittier's figure to that child? Do you not
see that first of all the needed thing in teaching is to bring new
thoughts into terms of old thoughts, to interpr