successfully to apply them. If their professor has but _once_ fairly and
undoubtedly succeeded in ascertaining the facts on which the principle
is based, their failure for a thousand times is no proof that the
ascertained principle is really a fallacy. In like manner, any important
principle in education, if once satisfactorily ascertained, is a truth
in the science, and will remain a truth, whoever may believe or deny it.
If it has been proved to produce certain effects in certain given
circumstances, it will in all future times do the same, when the
circumstances are similar. The inability, therefore, of a parent or
teacher, to produce equal effects by its means, may be good enough
proof of his want of skill, but it is no proof of the want of inherent
power in the principle itself. The rings of Saturn which my neighbour's
telescope has clearly brought to view, are not blotted from the heavens
because my pocket glass has failed to detect them.

It has been by attention to these, and similar rules, that all the
secular arts have advanced to their present state; and the art of
teaching must be perfected by similar means. There ought therefore to be
a distinct object in view on the part of the teacher,--a specific end
which he is to endeavour to arrive at in his intercourse with his pupil.
For the attainment of this end, he must employ the best and the surest
means that are in his power; for the same purpose, he ought honestly and
fairly to apply the successive discoveries of science as they occur; and
should never allow himself to abandon an exercise founded upon
ascertained principles, merely because he at first finds difficulty in
putting it in operation.

CHAP. IV.

_On the Establishment of Sound Principles in Education._

The application of the foregoing remarks to our present purpose, is a
matter of great practical importance. It has indeed been owing chiefly
to their having been hitherto overlooked, that education has been left
in the backward state in which we at present find it.

But if, as we have seen, education must bend to the same rigid
discipline to which the other sciences have had to submit,--and if
teaching can be improved only by following the laws which have
determined the success of the other arts--the question naturally
arises, "What is to be done now for education?"--"Where are we to
begin?"--"How are we to proceed?"--"In what manner are the principles of
the science to be investigated