any of these compound concepts before the child is in possession of its
constituent ones, is only less absurd than to present the final concept
of the series before the initial one? In the mastering of every subject
some course of increasingly complex ideas has to be gone through. The
evolution of the corresponding faculties consists in the assimilation of
these; which, in any true sense, is impossible without they are put into
the mind in the normal order. And when this order is not followed, the
result is, that they are received with apathy or disgust; and that
unless the pupil is intelligent enough eventually to fill up the gaps
himself, they lie in his memory as dead facts, capable of being turned
to little or no use.

"But why trouble ourselves about any _curriculum_ at all?" it may be
asked. "If it be true that the mind like the body has a predetermined
course of evolution--if it unfolds spontaneously--if its successive
desires for this or that kind of information arise when these are
severally required for its nutrition--if there thus exists in itself a
prompter to the right species of activity at the right time; why
interfere in any way? Why not leave children _wholly_ to the discipline
of nature?--why not remain quite passive and let them get knowledge as
they best can?--why not be consistent throughout?" This is an
awkward-looking question. Plausibly implying as it does, that a system
of complete _laissez-faire_ is the logical outcome of the doctrines set
forth, it seems to furnish a disproof of them by _reductio ad absurdum_.
In truth, however, they do not, when rightly understood, commit us to
any such untenable position. A glance at the physical analogies will
clearly show this. It is a general law of life that the more complex the
organism to be produced, the longer the period during which it is
dependent on a parent organism for food and protection. The difference
between the minute, rapidly-formed, and self-moving spore of a conferva,
and the slowly-developed seed of a tree, with its multiplied envelopes
and large stock of nutriment laid by to nourish the germ during its
first stages of growth, illustrates this law in its application to the
vegetal world. Among animals we may trace it in a series of contrasts
from the monad whose spontaneously-divided halves are as self-sufficing
the moment after their separation as was the original whole; up to man,
whose offspring not only passes through a protracted ge