expedients devised for its practice; and to
suggest that while the one may be considered as established, the other
is probably nothing but an adumbration of the normal course. Indeed, on
looking at the state of our knowledge, we may be quite sure that is the
case. Before educational methods can be made to harmonise in character
and arrangement with the faculties in their mode and order of unfolding,
it is first needful that we ascertain with some completeness how the
faculties _do_ unfold. At present we have acquired, on this point, only
a few general notions. These general notions must be developed in
detail--must be transformed into a multitude of specific propositions,
before we can be said to possess that _science_ on which the _art_ of
education must be based. And then, when we have definitely made out in
what succession and in what combinations the mental powers become
active, it remains to choose out of the many possible ways of exercising
each of them, that which best conforms to its natural mode of action.
Evidently, therefore, it is not to be supposed that even our most
advanced modes of teaching are the right ones, or nearly the right ones.

Bearing in mind then this distinction between the principle and the
practice of Pestalozzi, and inferring from the grounds assigned that the
last must necessarily be very defective, the reader will rate at its
true worth the dissatisfaction with the system which some have
expressed; and will see that the realisation of the Pestalozzian idea
remains to be achieved. Should he argue, however, from what has just
been said, that no such realisation is at present practicable, and that
all effort ought to be devoted to the preliminary inquiry; we reply,
that though it is not possible for a scheme of culture to be perfected
either in matter or form until a rational psychology has been
established, it is possible, with the aid of certain guiding principles,
to make empirical approximations towards a perfect scheme. To prepare
the way for further research we will now specify these principles. Some
of them have been more or less distinctly implied in the foregoing
pages; but it will be well here to state them all in logical order.

1. That in education we should proceed from the simple to the complex,
is a truth which has always been to some extent acted upon: not
professedly, indeed, nor by any means consistently. The mind develops.
Like all things that develop it progresses from