Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/779

Rh will educate him—a distinction that requires full emphasis. In illustration of what has here been said, I translate a few passages from the works of Comenius:

"The order of instruction must be learned from Nature. Hence it follows that education has, first of all, to set forth and keep firm hold of the fundamental principles for the preservation of life, that the necessary time may be given to a course of instruction. We must guard the body from disease and deadly accident, because it is the only temporal residence of the soul, and because it is the instrument of the rational spirit. (Italics are the present writer's.)

"Nature waits, in all her undertakings, for the suitable time. So must we seize the right time for the discipline of the mind, and must carry out this discipline progressively. Training should begin in childhood, the spring-time of life; it should be prosecuted in the morning hours, the spring-time of the day; and that only should be learned which is adapted to the capacity of apprehension." This simple sentence, had it been able to prevail from the time at which it was written, would have prevented the blank horror on many a youthful countenance as it faced the statement that "a noun and participle are put into the ablative called absolute to denote the time, cause, manner, means, the concomitant of an action, or the condition on which it depends."

To return to Comenius: "Nature first prepares the material, then gives it a form. The architect follows the same principle: he brings together all that is necessary for the building, and then works his material. Corresponding to this, we must have at hand in the schools all needful books and every appliance. We must cultivate the understanding before the languages. We must teach no language from grammar but from its writers, and we must allow the experimental sciences to precede the organic.

"Nature begins every one of her works from within. The bird proceeds from within outward. The tree draws its nourishment through the pores of the inner part; it grows from within. Likewise in education this requirement stands fast: first help to gain an insight into the things, then cultivate the memory.

"Nature begins all her works with the most universal and ends with the particular. When she builds a bird, she draws through the warmed mass a film, that an outline of the entire bird may arise. Then and for the first time she shapes each particular portion. The architect imitates this method. First he makes the tracing, then lays the foundation. The painter does the same. He does not at first paint a complete ear, but makes an outline of the countenance and then paints it in. Accordingly, the youth who give themselves to study must, in the very first part of their training, lay the groundwork of a universal culture. The objects of pursuit must be so ordered that the later studies will not appear to bring anything new, but