hem to escape
observation, as if they were mere matters of instinct, and were to be
ranked with the spider's catching its prey, or the sparrow's building
its nest. But the principles which regulate these different operations
are perfectly dissimilar. In the case of the spider and the sparrow
there is no teaching, and, of course, no learning. Their first web, and
their first nest, are as perfect as the last; but in the case of the
infant, with only two or three exceptions, there is nothing that he
does, and nothing that he knows, which he has not really
learned,--acquired by experience under the tuition of Nature, by the
actual use of his own mental and physical powers.

The benefits accruing to education, from successfully imitating Nature
in this department of her process, will be incalculable; not only in
adding to the amount of knowledge communicated, but in the ease and
delight which the young will experience in acquiring it. All must admit
that the pleasure, as well as the rapidity, of the educational process
in the young, continues only during the time that Nature is their
teacher;--and that her operations are generally checked, or neutralized
by the mismanagement of those who supersede her work, and begin to
theorize for themselves. The proof of this is to be found in the fact,
that although a child is much less capable of acquiring knowledge
between one and three years of age, than he is between eight and ten;
yet, generally, the amount of his intellectual attainments by his school
exercises, during the two latter years, bears no proportion to those of
the former, when Nature _alone_ was his teacher. In the one case, too,
his knowledge was acquired without effort or fatigue, and in the
exercise of the most delightful feelings;--in the other, quite the
reverse.

That we shall ever be able to equal Nature in this part of her
educational process, is not to be expected; but that, by following up
the principles which she has developed, and imitating the methods by
which she accomplishes her ends, we shall become more and more
successful, there can be no doubt. The method, therefore, to be adopted
by us is, to examine carefully the principles which she employs with the
young, through the several stages of her process, and then, by adopting
exercises which embody these principles, to proceed in a course similar
to that which she has pointed out.

In prosecuting this plan, then, our object must be, first, to examine