which psychology dictates.

What can be more manifest than the desire of children for intellectual
sympathy? Mark how the infant sitting on your knee thrusts into your
face the toy it holds, that you may look at it. See when it makes a
creak with its wet finger on the table, how it turns and looks at you;
does it again, and again looks at you; thus saying as clearly as it
can--"Hear this new sound." Watch the elder children coming into the
room exclaiming--"Mamma, see what a curious thing;" "Mamma, look at
this;" "Mamma, look at that;" a habit which they would continue did not
the silly mamma tell them not to tease her. Does not the induction lie
on the surface? Is it not clear that we must conform our course to these
intellectual instincts--that we must just systematise the natural
process--that we must listen to all the child has to tell us about each
object, and thence proceed? 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 power of self-instruction.

Object lessons should be arranged to extend to things far wider and
continue to a period far later than now; they should not be limited to
the contents of the house, but should include those of the fields and
hedges, the quarry and the seashore; they should not cease with early
childhood, but should be so kept up during youth as insensibly to merge
into the investigation of the naturalist and the man of science.

We are quite prepared to hear from many that all this is throwing away
time and energy; and that children would be much better occupied in
writing their copies and learning their pence tables, and so fitting
themselves for the business of life. We regret that such crude ideas of
what constitutes education, and such a narrow conception of utility,
should still be prevalent. But this gross utilitarianism which is
content to come into the world and quit it again without knowing what
kind of a world it is, or what it contains, may be met on its own
ground. It will by and by be found that a knowledge of the laws of life
is more important than any other knowledge whatever--that the laws of
life underlie not only all bodily and mental processes, but by
implication all the transactions of the house and the street, all
commerce, all politics, all morals--and that therefore without a
comprehension of them, neither persona