who was with her said, "Rectangle." The
woman going on with her work cut off a large corner of the slice of
bread, and the child cried out, "Triangle." She put this bit into the
saucepan, and the child, looking at the piece that was left, called
out more loudly than before, "And now it is a trapezium."

The father, a working man, who was present, was much impressed with
the incident. He went straight to look for the teacher and asked for
an explanation. Much moved, he said, "If I had been educated in that
way I should not be now just an ordinary workman."

It was he who later on arranged for a demonstration to induce all the
workmen of the dwellings to take an interest in the school. They ended
by presenting the teacher with a parchment they had painted
themselves, and on it, between the pictures of little children, they
had introduced every kind of geometrical form.

As regards the touching of objects for the realization of their form,
there is an infinite field of discovery open to the child in his
environment. Children have been seen to stand opposite a beautiful
pillar or a statue and, after having admired it, to close their eyes
in a state of beatitude and pass their hands many times over the
forms. One of our teachers met one day in a church two little brothers
from the school in Via Guisti. They were standing looking at the small
columns supporting the altar. Little by little the elder boy edged
nearer the columns and began to touch them, then, as if he desired his
little brother to share his pleasure, he drew him nearer and, taking
his hand very gently, made him pass it round the smooth and beautiful
shape of the column. But a sacristan came up at that moment and sent
away "those tiresome children who were touching everything."

The great pleasure which the children derive from the recognition of
_objects_ by touching their form corresponds in itself to a sensory
exercise.

Many psychologists have spoken of the _stereognostic_ sense, that is,
the capacity of recognizing forms by the movement of the muscles of
the hand as it follows the outlines of solid objects. This sense does
not consist only of the sense of touch, because the tactile sensation
is only that by which we perceive the differences in quality of
surfaces, rough or smooth. Perception of form comes from the
combination of two sensations, tactile and muscular, muscular
sensations being sensations of movement. What we call in the blind the
_tacti