t is
self-active, needing no artificial stimulus, let it alone. On the
contrary, if in a healthy pursuit of knowledge it brings the varied
mental powers into a natural sequence where they will strengthen and
support one another, it should be studied and used by teachers. It
would be very commonplace to say that each of the faculties or
activities involved in the inductive process should be disciplined and
strengthened by school studies. There is but little difference of
opinion on this subject, though some would lay more stress upon sense
training, some on memory, some on reasoning. The ground for this
general conviction is the notorious fact that with children every one
of these acts, is performed in a _faulty and superficial manner_. The
observations of children are very careless and unreliable. Even adults
are extremely negligent and inaccurate in their observations of natural
objects, persons, and phenomena. But the mental powers brought to bear
in observation are simple and elementary. The exercise of higher
mental powers, such as analysis, comparison, judgment, and reasoning,
is prone to be still more accidental and erroneous.

Acknowledging then the necessity for training all these powers, how can
it best be done? Not by delegating to each study the cultivation of
one kind or set of mental activities, but by observing that _the same
general process_ underlies the acquisition of knowledge in each
subject, and that all the kinds of mental life are brought into action
in nearly every study. In short, the inductive process is a natural
highway of human thought in every line of study, bringing all the
mental forces into an orderly, successive, healthful activity. We may
yet discover that the inductive process not only gives the key to an
interesting method of mastering different branches of knowledge, but in
developing mental activity it brings the various mental powers into a
strong natural sequence.

One of the great ends of intellectual culture is gradually _to
transform this careless, unconscious, inductive tendency in children
into the painstaking and exact scrutiny of the student, and later of
the specialist_.

Although the inductive process is a common highway of thought in all
stages of intellectual growth from childhood to maturity, certain parts
of the road are much more frequently traveled in childhood, and still
others in youth and maturity. It is the work of pedagogy to adapt its
materials