er there is not something more that he can tell her
about the thing he has got. Probably he does not understand. After
letting him puzzle awhile she tells him; perhaps laughing at him a
little for his failure. A few recurrences of this and he perceives what
is to be done. When next she says she knows something more about the
object than he has told her, his pride is roused; he looks at it
intently; he thinks over all that he has heard; and the problem being
easy, presently finds it out. He is full of glee at his success, and she
sympathises with him. In common with every child, he delights in the
discovery of his powers. He wishes for more victories, and goes in quest
of more things about which to tell her. As his faculties unfold she adds
quality after quality to his list: progressing from hardness and
softness to roughness and smoothness, from colour to polish, from simple
bodies to composite ones--thus constantly complicating the problem as he
gains competence, constantly taxing his attention and memory to a
greater extent, constantly maintaining his interest by supplying him
with new impressions such as his mind can assimilate, and constantly
gratifying him by conquests over such small difficulties as he can
master. In doing this she is manifestly but following out that
spontaneous process which was going on during a still earlier
period--simply aiding self-evolution; and is aiding it in the mode
suggested by the boy's instinctive behaviour to her. Manifestly, too,
the course she is adopting is the one best calculated to establish a
habit of exhaustive observation; which is the professed aim of these
lessons. To _tell_ a child this and to _show_ it the other, is not to
teach it how to observe, but to make it a mere recipient of another's
observations: a proceeding which weakens rather than strengthens its
powers of self-instruction--which deprives it of the pleasures resulting
from successful activity--which presents this all-attractive knowledge
under the aspect of formal tuition--and which thus generates that
indifference and even disgust not unfrequently felt towards these
object-lessons. On the other hand, to pursue the course above described
is simply to guide the intellect to its appropriate food; to join with
the intellectual appetites their natural adjuncts--_amour propre_ and
the desire for sympathy; to induce by the union of all these an
intensity of attention which insures perceptions both vivid and
comple