ese causes in detail, it will
suffice here to point out that as the mind of humanity placed in the
midst of phenomena and striving to comprehend them, has, after endless
comparisons, speculations, experiments, and theories, reached its
present knowledge of each subject by a specific route; it may rationally
be inferred that the relationship between mind and phenomena is such as
to prevent this knowledge from being reached by any other route; and
that as each child's mind stands in this same relationship to phenomena,
they can be accessible to it only through the same route. Hence in
deciding upon the right method of education, an inquiry into the method
of civilisation will help to guide us.

5. One of the conclusions to which such an inquiry leads, is, that in
each branch of instruction we should proceed from the empirical to the
rational. During human progress, every science is evolved out of its
corresponding art. It results from the necessity we are under, both
individually and as a race, of reaching the abstract by way of the
concrete, that there must be practice and an accruing experience with
its empirical generalisation, before there can be science. Science is
organised knowledge; and before knowledge can be organised, some of it
must be possessed. Every study, therefore, should have a purely
experimental introduction; and only after an ample fund of observations
has been accumulated, should reasoning begin. As illustrative
applications of this rule, we may instance the modern course of placing
grammar, not before language, but after it; or the ordinary custom of
prefacing perspective by practical drawing. By and by further
applications of it will be indicated.

6. A second corollary from the foregoing general principle, and one
which cannot be too strenuously insisted on, is, that in education the
process of self-development should be encouraged to the uttermost.
Children should be led to make their own investigations, and to draw
their own inferences. They should be _told_ as little as possible, and
induced to _discover_ as much as possible. Humanity has progressed
solely by self-instruction; and that to achieve the best results, each
mind must progress somewhat after the same fashion, is continually
proved by the marked success of self-made men. Those who have been
brought up under the ordinary school-drill, and have carried away with
them the idea that education is practicable only in that style, will
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