Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/102

 "Oh yes, mamma, I understand that very well; for I know it costs you much trouble to teach me, and unless you were of a very active disposition I am sure you would not be able todo it; and then I am often very tired, and have the head-ache when you have been teaching me; and so I suffer, when I am taught, and therefore being taught, is a passive verb:all this about verbs is very plain."

An intelligent teacher, if, during the early period of education, he aims at all to elicit the abstractive and reasoning faculty (which there is no motive for doing) will at least observe the distinction between presenting such conclusions as are mere statements of known facts, and such as involve a train of inferences, and which must be seen in their dependence, from the first link to the last, as for example.If the see-saw be evenly balanced, and you get upon one end of it, what happens?My end comes to the ground, and the other mounts aloft.Yes, unless there be some one of equal weight at that end, and then?it balances. But if you slip off when your end touches the ground, what then? Whoever is at the other end will descend with a jerk, and perhaps will be hurt.Well then, remember never again to jump off, as you did yesterday, unless your companion is prepared to do so at the same time.

This is at once understood, because the inference, with its practical conclusion, is itself only the statement of a fact as familiarly known as the premises, and in experience, the premises and the conclusion are actually conjoined. But if we were to ask the same child to give the reason, or were ourselves to state it, why, when one sits nearer to the fulcrum than the other, he can no longer counterpoise his antagonist; or why boys of unequal weight may balance each other by placing themselves at proportionate distances from the centre of oscillation, the explanation, in this case, involves the doctrine of the compensations of