ncing never flatters itself of being able to
grasp that which, in the nature of knowledge, must be a consequent
truth, until the antecedent or antecedents german to the question in
hand have first been possessed by it. But in our schools, how vastly
much is _supposed_ to be taught, in which consequents come before
antecedents, or are promiscuously jumbled up with them, or assert
themselves, without so much as the grace to say to antecedents of any
sort, 'By your leave.' Obviously, however, such could not be the
character of so much of our teaching, did not the character of most of
our books for schools exactly correspond with it. And the books do
correspond: they not only give to a faulty teaching its cue, but, now
that the _theory_ of education is being so much discussed, and in good
degree improved, they constitute one of the most influential causes of
the almost hopeless lagging of its practice.

Now, how is it that pupils get on at all with such lessons and such
books? The explanation is a simple one; but the consequences it is
fraught with are not trifling. The simple fact is, pupils are not yet
allowed to _study_ (in the best sense and manner of that process) the
subjects they are prosecuting. When, now, they undertake in earnest to
study, they are but too constantly confused and delayed by the no-method
of the treatises they are being carried through. In a course of earnest
intellectual work, the pupil must too often, with his present aids,
become aware of absence of comprehension; he is ever and anon brought to
stand still and cast about for the unsupplied preliminary facts and
truths, for the unhinted hypotheses and inferences, which his situation
and previous study do not enable him to supply, but which are necessary
to a _comprehension_ of the results set down for him to deal with.
Barren results, _per se_, our learners are now too much required to
ingest; and such they are expected to assimilate into intellectual life
and power! As well feed a boy on bare elements of tissue--carbon,
sulphur, oxygen, and the rest; or, yet more charitably, dissect out from
his allowance of tenderloin, lamb, or fowl, a due supply of ready-made
nerve and muscular fiber, introduce and engraft these upon the nerve and
muscle he has already acquired, and then assure our _protege_, that, as
the upshot of our masterly provision for his needs, we expect him to
become highly athletic and intellectual--that so he is to evolve larger
str