shows how a naughty boy, who has absolutely refused to learn how to read, is brought to do so with avidity, in order to procure some information about the cultivation of radishes-in which practical enterprise he has been made keenly interested." So, as I have already suggested, much substantial knowledge of the cube can readily be acquired, when the child is encouraged to use it as a building block. Innumerable applications of this method will suggest themselves to every skillful teacher. The internal activity of the mind is aroused by desire, and no desire is more effective than that to accomplish a purpose. Many individuals, throughout their lifetime, never think except in connection with something they do. And indeed if we consider the world at large, we may perceive that all thought has developed out of impulses to action. Why should it be otherwise with the growing child?

When experiments are performed by the pupil for the purpose of demonstrating the properties of sensible objects, the influence of his voluntary action becomes still more obvious. The experiment may be as simple as that of dissecting an apple, or it may be among the most abstruse offered in the study of the physical sciences. But in every case the pupil is compelled to do something in order to bring about a situation or elicit a phenomenon which he may subsequently observe. Each action involves cerebro-mental excitation, thus a phase of consciousness, a moment of life to be woven into the chain of existence. Thus the immense importance of experimental study and physical science does not consist, as is sometimes crudely claimed, in a training of the senses. It lies in the circumstance that sensible facts are constantly being transformed into mental facts through the energy of human volition. The world external to the brain becomes resolved into perceptions or ideas in the mind. Such training of the senses as occurs is incidental. At present we cannot be said to possess any system of elementary training for the senses beyond what is afforded by the study of music, or by the exercises of the gymnasium. * The sound philosophy of Miss Edgeworth's stories is often concealed by the simplicity of the garb in which it is clothed.

Such a system might very usefully be devised, based upon psycho-physical investigations.

One very interesting consideration lies right in my path, and should be mentioned, for it concerns a much-mooted but really futile question. The question is: Shall the child study Latin or science? I call the question futile because in reality the child must study Latin in order to be able to study science. In the Latin language, which is also ours, we are enabled to witness an extraordinary phenomenon, which has become the basis of all our thoughts. We are able to witness the incessant transformation of sense perceptions into concepts and abstract ideas. The Latin words are all alive with sensuous force; they move, and fall, and leap, and burn, and sing. Every word is either a picture of a thing, or an event; or else it indicates some space relation between things. Things are above or below, within or without other things. We do not possess superior or subordinate ideas, but ideas of subordination or superiority. That is, we have mental images of objects standing in a superior or inferior position to other objects. Hence there are no such things as synonyms. There are equivalences in nature, but there can be no synonyms in language, for every word represents a different angle of vision for the mind contemplating nature. I have tabulated a small group of words which would most readily be classed as synonymous, and are often carelessly interchanged in English. But read in Latin, and in their native picturesqueness, they are seen to be quite distinct. "Illustrious" is what the light shines. upon; "conspicuous," what is espied; "distinguished," what is separated from the rest; "notable," or "notorious," what is known by a sign; and "egregious," which we now only use for blunders, was, originally applied to any celebrity that raised his head out of the flock, as an ambitious ram was so often seen to do.

In a commonplace way of considering these things, the child is merely told that the words are derived from such and such circumstances. The impression is left-is perhaps intended— that some one, already possessed of an abstract idea, seized

upon the sensory image as a means of expressing this. But the reverse is true. The sensory images were first perceived, grouped together, and the relations common to all abstracted, then these relations remained as a residuum in consciousness, an idea mysteriously capable of expression by a sign—a word. This process of the genesis of thought for the race, is exactly repeated for each child. Whoever would acquire some little of the masterful grasp of the world which has forever characterized the Romans, must follow them, and allow their thoughts and language to grow up from their vision of the world. What the eye sees clearly, and the speech reproduces truthfully, that will the hand grasp forcibly, and the mind thoroughly dominate. Because of this mode of evolution of thought, experimental volition can be invoked for the aid of other ideas than sense perceptions.

Let me return to the three other pieces of information which I have imagined to be presented to the child. The next after the cube was the contour of the north shore of Long Island Sound.

This is an actual object in space; but it can never be an object of direct perception to the child, because his visual sense can never embrace it. The space relations of the different points on the outline in question, can, however, be estimated by means of actual surveys, and these space relations be expressed diagrammatically in a visual image, that is, in a map. It is this visual image which must be presented to the child, in order to excite an idea; it is the map outline which is perceived, and the space relations of its different segments. The visual perception of the map becomes an idea in the mind; its revival in memory, as an internal mental image, is effected by an act of attention.

The third knowledge to be imparted, the date of the landing of the Pilgrims, no longer involves space relations, but relations in time. These are immensely more difficult of apprehension. Relations in space are directly apprehended by the visual sense, or inferred from signs which are directly perceived. But the perception of time is a matter of internal

experience. We know time because we are conscious of a change of our own state; we are aware of a series of sequences in such changes. But how can this inform us of periods of time which lie entirely outside of our personal experience? How can a child be informed, whose experience is so much narrower, who forgets so much even of that experience, and who therefore only has an idea of the shortest series of events? The problem is in many respects analogous to that of calling up a mental image of geographical relations, which can never be directly perceived. This problem was solved by means of a symbol, the map. The symbol itself is constructed by means of a series of laborious inferences from direct space observations, those involved in the process of surveying. In the same way, our knowledge of historical sequences depends upon a complicated series of laborious inferences which are far beyond the capacity of the child, to whom nevertheless it may be convenient to tell the story of the Pilgrims, and the date of their landing. These inferences, to be intelligible to the child, must be represented by means of a space symbol. A date has no meaning except in relation to something before and behind it. This relation of sequence in time can be expressed by a coexistence in space, and as such converted into a visual image, which can pass into the child's consciousness as an idea. The symbol might be nothing but a very long line drawn on the wall, and intersected at suitable proportionate intervals by vertical lines, representing salient epochs, as, the Trojan War, the first Olympiad, the birth of Christ, the discovery of America, the landing of the Pilgrims, and the last Presidential election. [Fig. 11.] Other more complex

diagrams may be used, and Bern's historical charts are admirable. But the single line already suffices to convey the funda

mental idea of before and after, and without this idea, knowledge of historical dates is an illusion.

I think every one on examining his own mind will notice that the conception of a time period always presents itself as a space tract. We must think of some event from which to date any other event; and therefore at least two ideas must be present in consciousness. But what is simultaneous in consciousness can always be represented as coexistent in space. We only live in the present, and can only think of the past by recalling it into the present. This fact is the foundation for the entire graphic method, which is of such immense importance in modern science. The beatings of the pulse, the movements of the chest in respiration, even the ebb and flow of the body temperature during long weeks of fever, may all be represented on a chart, and thus brought within the limits of a single visual perception. The essential physiognomy of special diseases may thus be imaged. At a glance it is possible to see that one series of curves is taken from a typhoid fever patient, and another from a case of famine fever. For everything is motion: and the stillest form only indicates the direction in which many masses of molecules move.

Our fourth piece of knowledge is the relation of the subjunctive to the indicative mood. This is a specimen of as abstract a kind of knowledge as can be presented to the child. The refined modality of an action, its possibility, its relation to a dozen different mental states, doubt, fear, concession, and

Indicative

Subjunctive

FIG. 12.

the rest, all this is difficult to convey to a child's understanding. Frequently, on that account, I suppose, such conveyance is not attempted, but a form of words is substituted, to be learned by heart. In Fig. 12, I have tried to show how some

of the most salient characteristics of the subjunctive mood can be shown. The parallelogram standing for the subjunc