almost without an
effort, to the beautiful logic which underlies the science.

How do we learn language in childhood? Is it not solely on authority
and by example? A child who lives in a family where no language is used
but that which is logically and grammatically correct, will learn to
speak with logical and grammatical correctness long before it is able to
give any account of the processes of its own mind in the matter, or
indeed to understand those processes when explained by others. In other
words, practice in language precedes theory. It should do so in other
things. The parent who should take measures to prevent a child from
speaking its mother tongue, except just so far and so fast as it could
understand and explain the subtle logic which underlies all language,
would be quite as wise as the teacher who refuses to let a child become
expert in practical reckoning, until it can understand and explain at
every step the rationale of the process,--who will not suffer a child to
learn the multiplication table until it has mastered the metaphysics of
the science of numbers, and can explain with the formalities of
syllogism exactly how and why seven times nine make sixty-three.

These illustrations have carried me a little, perhaps, from my subject.
But they seemed necessary to show that I am not beating the air. I have
feared lest, in our very best schools, in the rebound from the exploded
errors of the old system, we have unconsciously run into an error in the
opposite extreme.

My positions on the particular point now under consideration may be
summed up briefly, as follows:

1. In developing the faculties, we should follow the order of nature.

2. The faculties of memory and faith should be largely exercised and
cultivated in childhood.

3. While the judgment and the reasoning faculty should be exercised
during every stage of the intellectual development, the appropriate
season for their main development and culture is near the close, rather
than near the beginning, of an educational course.

4. The methods of reasoning used with children should be of a simple
kind, dealing largely in direct intuitions, rather than formal and
syllogistic.

5. It is a mistake to spend a large amount of time and effort in
requiring young children formally to explain the rationale of their
intellectual processes, and especially in requiring them to give such
explanations before they have become by practice thoroughly familiar