station, and
subsequently long depends on the breast for sustenance; but after that
must have its food artificially administered; must, when it has learned
to feed itself, continue to have bread, clothing, and shelter provided;
and does not acquire the power of complete self-support until a time
varying from fifteen to twenty years after its birth. Now this law
applies to the mind as to the body. For mental pabulum also, every
higher creature, and especially man, is at first dependent on adult aid.
Lacking the ability to move about, the babe is almost as powerless to
get materials on which to exercise its perceptions as it is to get
supplies for its stomach. Unable to prepare its own food, it is in like
manner unable to reduce many kinds of knowledge to a fit form for
assimilation. The language through which all higher truths are to be
gained, it wholly derives from those surrounding it. And we see in such
an example as the Wild Boy of Aveyron, the arrest of development that
results when no help is received from parents and nurses. Thus, in
providing from day to day the right kind of facts, prepared in the right
manner, and giving them in due abundance at appropriate intervals, there
is as much scope for active ministration to a child's mind as to its
body. In either case, it is the chief function of parents to see that
the _conditions_ requisite to growth are maintained. And as, in
supplying aliment, and clothing, and shelter, they may fulfil this
function without at all interfering with the spontaneous development of
the limbs and viscera, either in their order or mode; so, they may
supply sounds for imitation, objects for examination, books for reading,
problems for solution, and, if they use neither direct nor indirect
coercion, may do this without in any way disturbing the normal process
of mental evolution; or rather, may greatly facilitate that process.
Hence the admission of the doctrines enunciated does not, as some might
argue, involve the abandonment of teaching; but leaves ample room for an
active and elaborate course of culture.

* * * * *

Passing from generalities to special considerations, it is to be
remarked that in practice the Pestalozzian system seems scarcely to have
fulfilled the promise of its theory. We hear of children not at all
interested in its lessons,--disgusted with them rather; and, so far as
we can gather, the Pestalozzian school have not turned out any u