Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/134

 of the mind’s first struggles, be they never so feeble, to obtain the comfort of internal order. There is, at this period, a tendency in the mind to crystallization, and the part of the teacher is to promote it, and to guard it from disturbance.

Now the most obvious principles of mental order, are those relating to TIME, PLACE, FORM, and CAUSATION; and there is something which may be done in connexion with each of these principles, for giving consistency to a child’s acquirements and conceptions; as thus:

A child of six years old readily listens to single stories, drawn promiscuously from sacred or profane history, or to descriptions of places and scenes; but he never spontaneously desires to connect any such insulated narrations, one with another; and it must be accounted an ill-judged attempt to impart any thing which the mind feels no want of. You may, if you please, compel a child to commit dates and summaries to memory; but the process antiei-pates the course of nature, and is a drudgery worse than useless:the mind as yet does not grasp either time or space.

A year or two later, however, these very notions begin to be sought after; or when intelligibly presented, are gladly admitted. In addition therefore to the single incidents, or the scattered leaves of history, we may now convey some general conception of the flux of ages, and of the progression of human affairs : and this conception may be mechanically aided by the use of a clear and well constructed chronological chart; the principle of which, if not fully understood at once, may be illustrated by placing before the learner a chart of his personal history, marked off in divisions of months and years. But it need not be said that, in the use of means such as these, our intention is far from being that of enabling a child to tell you, in a twinkling, and to the astonishment of a company, who were the