dinary acceptance the notion of learning is associated with two persons-the one an instructor or teacher of the other, who is called the learner, student, scholar, child, or pupil. When the pupil learns through the instrumentality of a living teacher he is said to be taught.

77. When he learns without this instrumentality, he is said to be self-informed, or selfeducated. The self-informed student applies himself to understand whatever engages his attention, whether books, or objects of nature, or works of art; he applies his powers of observation and of reason to the things that he finds scattered about him as a heterogeneous mass; he constructs his own questions for himself, invents his own illustrations, creates his own hypotheses, and adjudges the validity of his own arguments and conclusions that is, he alone pronounces upon the form and matter of his knowledge, and way of approaching it. In very many important matters he must leave it for time and experience to inform him whether his knowledge is correct in fact. The element of time spent in arriving at truth by the self-educated student is often great for the amount and quality of knowledge gained. The difficulties that present themselves to this learner are frequently sufficient to deter any but the most persevering and venturesome from attempting to surmount them. The fields of learning are so many and so extensive, and human life so short, that the imperative demands of our brief years give a practical value to some kinds of knowledge over others.

The exclusively self-informed student is not assured that his learning is best calculated to promote the welfare of himself and his fellow-man. A well-authenticated instance, related to the writer by Dr. J. Dorman Steele, will illustrate this statement: A young man of excellent parts entered college. He had adopted the theory that self-education is the only way to learning, and refused to consult or study books to prepare his lessons. He attended the recitations, observed closely what was said there, and depended upon his genius, or "inner consciousness, to evolve from himself the knowledge he possessed. In process of time he was graduated, and dropped into obscurity. After five or six years he suddenly appeared at the office of the president of the college. He desired to submit to the president a law in physics which he had discovered by his own unaided observations during the past six years. If approved by the president, he would publish his discovery. He had discovered that heat expands metals, and cold contracts them." The president called his little daughter, and asked her, what is the first law in Natural Philosophy"? She said, "That heat expands metals, and cold contracts them." Said the president, "You see how many valuable years you have lost by neglecting to study books as well as objects, depending entirely upon your own inner consciousness for your knowledge.

78. These considerations of reason and experience bring forward the idea of aiding the

youth of the State by means of appropriating to their benefit the learning and experience of some of the older members of the State. Those who consciously and methodically aid the young in acquiring learning and experience are known as Teachers. The efforts, which they put forth to advance their pupils in knowledge, constitute the idea that is designated Teaching.

79. Teaching is consciously adjusting objects and acts to the proper faculties and capacities of the learner. "Adjust is to set right (Fr. juste, straight, right). Hence the word implies some relative order, shape, or standard, to which matters have to be brought, or some antecedent condition of inherent fitness to which they have to be reduced." (Smith, Syn. Discr.) The order in which objects are to be presented to the pupil is determined by the teacher. Nature, as the child finds her, presents objects to it in an unclassified, promiscuous mass. The pupil may see a cat, then an elephant, then a thunder-storm, all in one hour. The teacher would present objects in a sequence determined by previous study and classification. This order is artificial to the child, compared to the heterogeneous order in which Nature exhibits objects to it. From this view, it may be said that teaching is the conscious and philosophic adjustment of object-matter to the abilities of the pupil.

80. The teacher has other duties towards his pupil. He presents before the mind of the learner some entire object-Nature also usually

does this, but she leaves the mind to struggle with the whole at once-the teacher, finding the whole too vast for the pupil, separates it, practically and virtually, into parts. This process of dissection may be accomplished by using the scalpel, the hammer, or by questions; for questions are but knives that dissect out parts to display to the pupil, or they are colter-shares that cut out furrows in the turf, narrower or wider, for the pupil to turn over, according to his strength.

81. The teacher has still other duties in the case. He is to note both the form and the matter of the knowledge which the learner acquires, whether it stand in his mind correct in its impression and true in its essence.

To se

cure these ends requires consummate skill of the teacher his reason must be well trained and certain in its logical processes, his wit must be ready at analogies, his imagination must be fertile in illustration, his hands must be cunning in constructing, his understanding must be profound, and his knowledge must be overflowing in its quantity. Here lie the purely professional regions of teaching-here also are the processes called Methods of Teaching.

82. The teacher has now reached the great question of the Profession: How to teach? For it is in teaching and with teachers, as it is in Logic, "Where two conditions are found or assumed Firstly, that there exist certain mental laws to which every sound thinker is bound to conform. Secondly, that it is possible to

transgress those laws, or to think unsoundly." (Mansel, Prolegomena Logica, p. 16, ed. 1860.)

83. In order to answer this question, How to teach even approximately, it is necessary to enter into a more critical examination of the conception of the word Teaching. To teach requires, obviously: (1) The mind of the learner, or the learner; (2) The mind of the instructor, or the teacher; (3) The objects, actions, or things to be learned by the student, which are commonly designated, collectively, as subjects, subject-matter, objects, or objectmatter. The intellectual activities of the teacher proceed under certain fixed laws of mind. His intellectual faculties conform to spheres of activity into which they are necessitated or determined by their very nature. He cannot remember with his faculty of imagination, nor reason with memory. He must perceive with his senses, reason with his reflective powers, and retain by his memory. As with the teacher so with the learner, whose mental faculties and capabilities may differ from those of the teacher in original quantum of functional endowment, and in degrees of power, but not in kind or function.

84. This being true, the case resolves itself into this: (1) If the teacher knew subject-matter thoroughly he could arrange its parts into any order of dependence, or steps, or points, or classifications, that circumstances or exigencies might necessitate, or expediency demand. This would enable him to arrange and present his system of subject-matter. (2) If, in addition