Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/279

 beaver, with an account of the otter; it will be manifest that it is not so much insulated facts, as facts related by some principles of agreement, that awaken the intellect.

The analogies of operation above alluded to, do not fail to attract even the dullest minds; but an exercise more purely intellectual, and of a more substantial quality, is afforded when the many points of analogy which connect animal and vegetable physiology, and again human and comparative anatomy, are adduced. On this ground the teacher finds inexhaustible materials, out of which to construct the very best kind of intellectual exercises; and let me here again press upon his notice the important distinction between the mere conveyance of the facts of natural history, for example; and that employment of natural history, as an instrument of mental culture, which I am now recommending. While using these or any other studies for this latter purpose, the former, and more obvious one, is fully secured; but it is certain that this, namely, the conveyance of mere facts, may be so attended to as scarcely at all to promote the other.

There may be books better adapted to the purpose now in view than Dr. Roget’s Bridgewater Treatise; but I will suppose that the teacher avails himself of this admirable work as his text book, and following the author’s track, with-out always adopting his language, which may not be readily understood by children, he goes through with the several functions of vegetable and animal life, comparing the various modes in which the same, or similar ends, are secured, either by the same, or by dissimilar, yet analogous means.

The obvious and wide unlikeness of a plant and an animal, serves the very purpose intended, of enhancing the feelings of pleasure and surprise excited by discovering points of analogy between the two, in the economy of