observations to
the measure of their theories; they have been negligent in collecting
facts, and have not condescended to try experiments. This disposition
of mind, during a long period of time, retarded improvement, and
knowledge was confined to a few peremptory maxims and exclusive
principles. The necessity of collecting facts, and of trying
experiments, was at length perceived; and in all the sciences this
mode has lately prevailed: consequently, we have now on many subjects
a treasure of accumulated facts. We are, in educating children, to put
them in possession of all this knowledge; and a judicious preceptor
will wish to know, not only how these facts can be crammed speedily
into his pupil's memory, but what order of presenting them will be
most advantageous to the understanding; he will desire to cultivate
his pupil's faculties, that he may acquire new facts, and make new
observations after all the old facts have been arranged in his mind.

By a judicious arrangement of past experiments, and by the rejection
of what are useless, an able instructer can show, in a small compass,
what it has cost the labour of ages to accumulate; he may teach in a
few hours what the most ingenious pupil, left to his own random
efforts, could not have learned in many years. It would take up as
much time to go over all the steps which have been made in any
science, as it originally cost the first discoverers. Simply to repeat
all the fruitless experiments which have been made in chemistry, for
instance, would probably employ the longest life that ever was devoted
to science; nor would the individual have got one step forwarder; he
would die, and with him his recapitulated knowledge; neither he nor
the world would be the better for it. It is our business to save
children all this useless labour, and all this waste of the power of
attention. A pupil, who is properly instructed, with the same quantity
of attention, learns, perhaps, a hundred times as much in the same
time, as he could acquire under the tuition of a learned preceptor
ignorant in the art of teaching.

The analytic and synthetic methods of instruction will both be found
useful when judiciously employed. Where the enumeration of particulars
fatigues the attention, we should, in teaching any science, begin by
stating the general principles, and afterwards produce only the facts
essential to their illustration and proof. But wherever we have not
accumulated a sufficient numb