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78 holes, to initiate the movements of opening and shutting, and to direct and steady those movements. Till this is accomplished the use of scissors is artificial; and, while it is so, we do not puzzle the brain with any new idea in connexion with scissors; they are used only in doing what the unaided fingers did before—severing the paper. Not till the process of cutting has become a natural one do we introduce the new idea that destruction is not to be merely destructive, that it can and should be directed towards some definite aim, subordinated to some constructive purpose; at no step in this sequence is the mind distracted by trying simultaneously to receive a new idea and to correlate for a still artificial process.

I believe that hardly any mistake in education is more disturbing to normal brain-action, more likely to induce nerve-storms in delicate children, or more dangerous to future brain-power in all children, than the attempt to convey a new idea by means of a process still artificial (i.e. inadequately co-ordinated) or to teach a new process by means of an idea still unfamiliar. Another aspect of the same principle is expressed in the homely adage 'Fingers before forks.' The word 'before' of course is here a pure adverb of time; it has no reference to ultimate preference. None of us