Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/490

472 as when he arranges building-blocks into definite forms. 2. The outlines of the object itself may be magnified, and at the same time roughened, by being copied with sticks, as may be done in the first attempts at map-drawing. The copy substitutes a schematic outline for the real one, but by the very fact blends a mental conception with the simple visual image. This necessity for amplification is very important, and, as it seems to me, very often overlooked. It is strictly in accordance with the physiological law in neuro-dynamics, that a stimulating impression must vary in intensity inversely to the susceptibility of the nerve-element to be impressed. The more developed and vigorous the mind, the slighter the object that is perceived and remembered; and, as Mr. Froude remarks, men of genius always have tenacious memories. Conversely, the relatively feeble mind of the young child requires a large object to awaken its prehensile faculties. If the memory of children for what has once impressed them is often remarkable, it is because the infantile period of mental development bears much analogy with the character of genius.

It seems to me that for several years no abstract statements should be made to a child, except such as may be, at least schematically, represented by tangible objects, and at every new point of even advanced studies recurrence to such schemas may be usefully made.

Perception and memory should be indissolubly associated. There are two prevalent errors of method which I have noticed: to expect a child to remember what it has never perceived; and to allow it to perceive without any systematic representation of the object in memory. In the earliest training, contemplation of an object is insufficient to fix its outlines on the mind: it must be handled as well as seen. In my own experiment with a child of four, Froebel's building blocks were used to construct definite models; but these, once framed, were repeated from memory. Sometimes the details of an exciting story, as that of "Blue-Beard," were associated with the different details of the model, so that these were more vividly remembered.

By building in succession the different rooms in which the various acts of the tragedy were supposed to have occurred, the child learned, on the one hand, mathematical outlines; on the other hand, to remember history by, in a degree, acting history herself. The principle of this method is applicable to much more advanced studies.

President Hill, in his eloquent little book on the "True Order of Studies," emphatically insists on the necessity for a selection of studies which differ widely from the conventional programme. "We awake to consciousness," he observes, "through the fact of motion which reveals to us an outer world, and a universe of space and time in which that world of matter moves. These space and time relations are the earliest objects of distinctly conscious intellection; the first objects concerning which our knowledge takes a scientific form. This was true of the race, and it is true of the individual. Before the child has