Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/133

 his instructor does for him; and the two, with a good understanding of their several parts, and a firm resolution to overcome all difficulties, ascend the arduous height, hand in hand.

I have said that early childhood is the time for oral instruction, and that, whereas heretofore this was desultory and fortuitous, it must now become in some degree systematic, comprehensive, and precise. Indeed an indication of that natural development of the mind which takes place about the ninth year, and which we may name as the second characteristic of early childhood (a consciousness of time, being the first) is an endeavour to connect and arrange, in some way, its acquired stock of ideas. It is this tendency of the mind toward ORDER, and this desire to grasp consecutively, and in connexion, what it already holds in fragments, that prompts the many questions which are put by an intelligent child, and which are usually prefaced by a statement of facts, seemingly at variance. Parents must have noticed the circumstance that a child whose curiosity is at all intelligent, much less often asks a naked and insulated question, than propounds a difficulty. Now these difficulties are, for the most part, instances of the apparent disagreement of things which, in a child’s view of the whole case, ought to fit; and accordingly he begins in this sort of wayPapa, you said so and so; but how is it then that I see so and so? The very common question, How can it be? indicates a tendency of the mind toward induction, or simplification, or generalization, as the case may be; and we may safely infer, from any such indication of nature, that the process of mental culture should now assume a more systematic form.

It is only a few children of the rarest promise that very eagerly demand this sort of satisfaction; but there are few who seem totally indifferent to it, when placed before them; and the intelligent teacher will be prompt to avail himself