ky by-rules
on the part of the child.

The number of schools in which arithmetic is intelligently and even
practically taught is undoubtedly much larger than it was in the days
of payment by results; but there are still thousands of schools in
which obedience to the rule for its own sake is the basis of all
instruction in arithmetic. Now to live habitually by rule instead of
by thought is necessarily fatal, in every field of action, to the
development of that _sense_ or perceptive faculty, on which right
action ultimately depends. Following his reputed guide blindly,
mechanically, and with whole-hearted devotion, the votary of the rule
never allows his intuition, his faculty of direct perception and
subconscious judgment, to play even for a moment round the matters
on which he is engaged; and the result is that the faculty in
question is not merely prevented from growing, but is at last
actually blighted in the bud. This is but another way of saying what
I have already insisted upon,--that to forbid self-expression on the
part of the child is to starve his perceptive faculties into
non-existence.

There is no folly perpetrated in the elementary school of to-day for
which there are not authoritative precedents to be found in the
conduct of one or other of the two great schools which the God of
Western theology is supposed to have opened for the education of Man.
And it is in that special development of the Legal School which
is known as Pharisaism that we shall look for a precedent for the
conventional teaching of arithmetic in our elementary schools. The
ultra-legalism of the Pharisee in the days of Christ finds its exact
counterpart in the ultra-legalism of the child who has been taught
arithmetic by the methods which the yearly examination fostered, and
which are still widely prevalent. In the one case there was, in the
other case there is, an entire inability on the part of the zealous
votary of the rule to estimate the intrinsic value of the results of
his blind and unintelligent action. The sense of humour, which is a
necessary element in every other healthy sense, and which so often
keeps us from going astray, by suddenly revealing to us the inherent
absurdity of our proposed action, is one of the first faculties to
succumb to the blighting influence of an ultra-legal conception of
life. As an example of the unwavering seriousness of the Pharisee in
the presence of what was intrinsically ridiculous, let us take