siderable extent before the age of
manhood,--developed by some professions and pursuits much more than by
others,--and in a very large class of mankind, probably the majority,
never developed at all.

This species of attention, which is thus directed inwards, subjective
attention some would call it,--in other words, the reflective
powers,--are, I doubt not, capable of being cultivated much earlier in
life than the age which I have indicated as the normal period of their
development. I am constrained, however, in opposition to many high
authorities in education, to doubt the wisdom of a precocious
cultivation of this part of our intellectual system. In all our plans of
education, we should closely follow nature, who seems to have reserved
the judgment and the reflective powers for the latest, as they certainly
are the most perfect, of her endowments. We, who are teachers, have
chiefly to do with those whose powers are as yet immature, and whose
attention is to be cultivated primarily in its direction to external
objects. Our business, in other words, is to train our pupils first of
all to habits of observation.

In doing this, it is of some practical importance to bear in mind the
well-known difference, in respect to memory, between the objects of
different senses. Whether it be attributed to the different degrees of
perfection with which the qualities of bodies are perceived, or to some
difference in the qualities themselves, or whatever may be the cause,
the fact is established beyond a question, that the knowledge which
comes to us through the medium of the eye is of all kinds of knowledge
the most easily and the most perfectly remembered. We remember, indeed,
the temperature of one day as distinguished from that of another; we
remember the sound of a voice; we can conceive, in its absence, the odor
or the taste of a particular object; but none of these ideas come to us
with that definiteness and perfection which mark our recollections of
what we have seen. It requires, for instance, but ordinary powers of
attention and perception, for a person who has one good look at a house,
to recall distinctly to his mind the ideas of its height, shape, color,
material, the number of stories, the pitch of the roof, the kind of
shutters to the windows, the position of the door, the fashion of
panels, the bell-handle, the plate, even the little canary-bird with its
cage in the windows above, and the roses, geraniums, and what else