ly set out. The previous chapters,
therefore, in so far as they have given a correct exposition of Nature's
modes of teaching, must constitute something like the model upon which
all her future imitators in education will have to work. There may be a
change of _order_, and a change of _names_, but the principles
themselves, in so far as they have been discovered, will for ever remain
unchanged and unchangeable.--It is very different, however, with what is
to _follow_, in which we are to make some attempts at imitation. The
principles which regulate the rapid movements of fish through water is
one thing; and the attempt to imitate these principles by the
ship-builder is quite another thing. The first, when correctly
ascertained, remain the unalterable standard for every future naval
architect; but the attempts at imitation will change and improve, as
long as the minds of men are directed to the perfecting of
ship-building. In like manner, the various facts in the educational
processes of Nature, in so far as they have been correctly ascertained
in the previous part of this Treatise, must form the unalterable basis
for every future improvement in education. These facts, or principles,
will very probably be found to form only a part of her operations;--but
as they do really form _a part_, they will become a nucleus, round which
all the remaining principles when discovered will necessarily
congregate. We shall here therefore endeavour very shortly to
recapitulate the several principles or laws employed by Nature in her
academy, so far as we have been able to detect them; as it must be upon
these that not only we, but all our successors in the improvement of
education, must hereafter proceed.

We have seen in a former chapter, that the educational processes of
Nature divide themselves distinctly into four different kinds. _First_,
the cultivation of the powers of the mind:--_Second_, the acquisition of
knowledge:--_Third_, the uses or application of that knowledge to the
daily varying circumstances of the pupil:--and _Fourth_, the ability to
communicate this knowledge and experience to others.

The _first_ department of Nature's teaching, that of cultivating the
powers of her pupil's mind, we found to depend chiefly, if not entirely,
upon one simple mental operation, that of "reiterating ideas;" and from
numerous examples and experiments it has been shewn, that wherever this
act of the mind takes place, there is, and there