tion--of induction, and of deduction too
(both of a much better quality than most of Mr. Buckle's); of reasoning
from the known to the unknown; of inferring; the nicety of appreciation
of the like and the unlike, the common and the rare, the odd and the
even; the skill of the rough and the smooth--of form, of appearance, of
texture, of weight, of all the minute and deep philosophies of the touch
and of the other senses,--the amount of this sort of objective knowledge
which every child of eight years has acquired--especially if he can play
in the lap of nature and out of doors--and acquired for life, is, if we
could only think of it, marvellous beyond any of our mightiest marches
of intellect. Now, could we only get the knowledge of the school to go
as sweetly and deeply and clearly into the vitals of the mind as this
self-teaching has done, and this is the paradisiac way of it, we should
make the young mind grow as well as learn, and be in understanding a man
as well as in simplicity a child; we should get rid of much of that
dreary, sheer endurance of their school-hours--that stolid lending of
ears that do not hear--that objectless looking without ever once seeing,
and straining their minds without an aim; alternating, it may be, with
some feats of dexterity and effort, like a man trying to lift himself in
his own arms, or take his head in his teeth, exploits as dangerous, as
ungraceful, and as useless, except to glorify the showman and bring
wages in, as the feats of an acrobat.

But you will ask, how is all this to be avoided if everybody must know
how far the sun is from _Georgium Sidus_, and how much of phosphorus is
in our bones, and of ptyalin and flint in human spittle--besides some
10,000 times 10,000 other things which we must be told and try to
remember, and which we cannot prove not to be true, but which I decline
to say we _know_.

But _is_ it necessary that everybody should know everything? Is it not
much more to the purpose for every man, when his turn comes, to be able
to _do_ something; and I say, that other things being equal, a boy who
goes bird-nesting, and makes a collection of eggs, and knows all their
colors and spots, going through the excitements and glories of getting
them, and observing everything with a keenness, an intensity, an
exactness, and a permanency, which only youth and a quick pulse, and
fresh blood and spirits combined, can achieve,--a boy who teaches
himself natural history in th