Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/278

 In pursuing this sort of intellectual diversion, the teacher’s purpose is favoured by his allowing himself a good deal of license in applying the phrases of common life, and the technical terms of the mechanic arts, as well as all but the more sacred and elevated language of the moral and social economy, to the operations of the insect tribes. He will however observe the line which separates the regions of natural history, strictly considered, from the unfenced common of fable; for children must be left in no uncertainty as to the boundary between the domains of Linnæus, and those of Æsop. The use of the fable, in education, we must return to presently.

If the reader wishes to satisfy himself as to the alleged fact, that the discernment of analogies generates very vivid emotions in the human mind, and that therefore it may be made much use of, as an engine of education, let him try the easy experiment of first describing, to children, the economy of the bee-hive, and of the ant-hill, in terms such as shall indicate the many points of analogy that exist between the wonders of instinct, and the operations of reason: let the mathematical perfection attained by the one class of operatives, be compared with the empirical and scientific performances of the other: let the impulses of the insect actors, and the regulations and dependencies of the microscopic commonwealth, be translated into the language of human life, of history and of political science. The most agreeable excitement will attend such a lecture. But then let a sudden transition be made to those subjects, in natural history, which involve no such analogical relations to human labours, or affairs: a very sensible lowering of the intellectual temperature will give evidence that a potent principle of the mind has ceased to be wrought upon. In thus turning from the natural history of the bee, to that of the moth or common fly; from that of the ant to that of the beetle; or in following our account of the