h the physical environment, that
acquaintance with the properties of material things, which is really
the foundation of human _consciousness_. To the very last, in most of
us, the conceptions of objects and their properties are limited to the
notion of what we can _do with them_. A 'stick' means something we can
lean upon or strike with; 'fire,' something to cook, or warm ourselves,
or burn things up withal; 'string,' something with which to tie things
together. For most people these objects have no other meaning. In
geometry, the cylinder, circle, sphere, are defined as what you get by
going through certain processes of construction, revolving a
parallelogram upon one of its sides, etc. The more different kinds of
things a child thus gets to know by treating and handling them, the more
confident grows his sense of kinship with the world in which he lives.
An unsympathetic adult will wonder at the fascinated hours which a child
will spend in putting his blocks together and rearranging them. But the
wise education takes the tide at the flood, and from the kindergarten
upward devotes the first years of education to training in construction
and to object-teaching. I need not recapitulate here what I said awhile
back about the superiority of the objective and experimental methods.
They occupy the pupil in a way most congruous with the spontaneous
interests of his age. They absorb him, and leave impressions durable and
profound. Compared with the youth taught by these methods, one brought
up exclusively by books carries through life a certain remoteness from
reality: he stands, as it were, out of the pale, and feels that he
stands so; and often suffers a kind of melancholy from which he might
have been rescued by a more real education.

There are other impulses, such as love of approbation or vanity, shyness
and secretiveness, of which a word might be said; but they are too
familiar to need it. You can easily pursue the subject by your own
reflection. There is one general law, however, that relates to many of
our instinctive tendencies, and that has no little importance in
education; and I must refer to it briefly before I leave the subject. It
has been called the law of transitoriness in instincts. Many of our
impulsive tendencies ripen at a certain period; and, if the appropriate
objects be then and there provided, habits of conduct toward them are
acquired which last. But, if the objects be not forthcoming then, the
impul