he mind of
the scholar must both act, and must act together, in intellectual
co-operation and sympathy, if there is to be any true mental growth.
Teaching is not merely hearing lessons. It is not mere talking. It is
something more than mere telling. It is causing a child to know. It is
awakening attention, and then satisfying it. It is an out-and-out live
process. The moment the mind of the teacher or the mind of the scholar
flags, real teaching ceases. This, then, is our third aim. We aim in
this school to accomplish results, not by fanciful theories, but by
_bona fide_ hard work,--by keeping teachers and scholars, while at their
studies, wide awake and full of life; not by exhausting drudgery, nor by
fitful, irregular, spasmodic exertions, but by steady, persevering,
animated, straight-forward work.

4. A fourth aim which we have steadily before us, is to make _thorough_
work of whatever acquisition we attempt. A little knowledge, well
learned and truly digested, and made a part of the pupil's own
intellectual stores, is worth more to him than any amount of facts
loosely and indiscriminately brought together. In intellectual, as in
other tillage, the true secret of thrift is to plough deep, not to skim
over a large surface. The prevailing tendency at this time, in systems
of education, is unduly to multiply studies. So many new sciences are
being brought within the pale of popular knowledge, that it is no longer
possible, in a school like this, to embrace within its course of study
all the subjects which it is practicable and desirable for people
generally to know. Through the whole encyclopaedia of arts and sciences,
there is hardly one which has not its advocates, and which has not
strong claims to recognition. The teacher is simply infatuated who
attempts to embrace them all in his curriculum. He thereby puts himself
under an absolute necessity of being superficial, and he generates in
his scholars pretension and conceit. Old James Ross, the grammarian,
famous as a teacher in Philadelphia more than half a century ago, had on
his sign simply these words, "Greek and Latin taught here." Assuredly I
would not advocate quite so rigid an exclusion as that, nor, if limited
to only two studies, would it be those. But I have often thought Mr.
Ross's advertisement suggestive. Better even that extreme than the
encyclopaedic system which figures so largely on some circulars. Mr. Ross
indeed taught nothing but Latin and Greek.