he lesson, that "we also should be
obliging." But to _apply_ this lesson, the teacher is to suppose a
corresponding case, and to ask the child how it ought to behave on that
occasion. For example, he may ask, "If a companion wanted a sight of
your book, what should you do?" "Lend it to him."--"From what do you get
that lesson?" "From Rebekah being obliging."--"If you saw your companion
drop his ball, or his marble, without perceiving it, what should you
do?" "Pick it up and give it to him."--"How do you know that you ought
to do that?" "From God giving Rebekah as our example, who was obliging."

The field which here opens up for the ingenuity of the teacher for the
moral improvement of the young is almost boundless.

Note T, p. 318.--The method which both Nature and experience have
pointed out, as the best for giving a practical knowledge of the
principles of Natural Philosophy to children, is to state and explain
some general principle, such as, that "Soft and porous bodies are bad
conductors (of heat;") and then set them to think, by asking what
special lessons that general truth teaches them. This leads the pupil to
a train of thought, which will at all events prepare him for the proper
lessons when suggested by the teacher, and which will enable him at once
to perceive why his mother has to make use of a cloth when using the
smoothing iron; why a metal tea-pot must have a wooden handle;--why soft
clothing preserves the heat of his body, and keeps him warm;--and why
the poker by the fire gets heated throughout, while a piece of wood, the
same length and in the same spot, remains comparatively cool.

To teach the phenomena of Nature, out of their mutual relations to the
general principle, would be both laborious and evanescent, because of
the want of the great connecting link, afforded by the analytical method
here supposed. It was by the above means that the children, in the
experiment in Aberdeen, and more especially those in that at Newry,
appeared to the examinators to be inexhaustible; they having, during a
space of time unprecedentedly short, got hold of principles which
enabled them, without any great stretch of memory, and by the
association of ideas, to account for hundreds of familiar objects and
circumstances, the nature and working of which they had never perhaps
thought of before.

The application of the lessons in these exercises is equally necessary,
and equally beneficial. It may be _directly_ fro