, thus converge in showing that the object-lesson and
common-things teaching is but a partial and preliminary resource in the
business of education; that, to avoid working positive harm, it must be
restricted within due limits of age, capacity, and subject; that it is
not, therefore, the real and total present desideratum of our schools;
and that, subsequently to the completion of the more purely sensuous and
percipient phase of the mind, and to the acquirement of the store of
simpler ideas and information, and the degree of capacity, that ought to
be secured during that period--hence, from an age not later than eleven,
or according as circumstances may determine, thirteen years--all the
true and desirable ends of education, whether they be right mental
habits and tastes, discipline and power of the faculties, or a large
information and practical command of the acquisitions made--all these
ends, we say, are thenceforward most certainly secured by the systematic
prosecution, in a proper method, of the usually recognized distinct
branches or departments of scientific knowledge. Let then, 'common
things,' _et id genus omne_, early enough give place to thorough-going
study of the elements of Geometry, of Geography, Arithmetic, Language,
(including Grammar,) of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Botany,
Physiology, and something of their derivations and applications. Thus
shall our schools produce a race not of mere curious _gazers_, but of
conscious and purposive investigators; not a generation of intellectual
truants and vagabonds, but one of definitely skilled cultivators of
definite domains in handicraft, art, or science.

We are compelled to take issue, therefore, with Mr. Spencer's
recommendation, indorsed in the Chicago Report, to the effect that
object-lessons should, after a 'different fashion,' 'be extended to a
range of things far wider, and continued to a period far later than
now.' Not so: after any possible fashion. But let us, as early as the
child's capacity and preparation will allow, have the individualized,
consecutive studies, and the very manner of studying which shall be made
to do _for the higher and the lower intellectual faculties together,
what well-conducted object-lessons can and now do perform, mainly for
the lower_. Of all school-method, this we conceive to be the true end
and consummation. This would be the ultimate fruitage of the Baconian
philosophy, and of philosophy larger than the Baconian--by