is the attitude of the true learner, and such is the attention demanded by this law of the learner in its perfect fulfilment. Every experienced teacher knows how easy is the teaching, and how rapid the learning, when the law is thus fulfilled.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE LAW.

However much teachers may neglect it in practice, they readily admit in theory that without attention the pupil can learn nothing. One may as well talk to the deaf or the dead as to teach a child who is wholly inattentive. All this seems too obvious to need discussion; but a brief survey of the psychological facts which underlie this law will bring out into clearer and more impressive light its vital force and its irrevocable authority.

I. Knowledge cannot be passed, like some material substance, from one person to another. Thoughts are not things, which may be held and handled. They are the unseen and silent acts of the invisible mind. Ideas, the products of thought, can only be communicated by inducing in the receiving mind action correspondent to that by which these ideas were first conceived. In other words, ideas can only be transmitted by being re-thought. It is obvious, therefore, that something more is required than a passive presentation of the pupll's mind to the teacher's mind as face turns to face. Attention is an act, not merely a position.

If it is an attitude, it is a mental attitude full of poise and power. The learner's mind must work through the senses. There must be mind in the eye, in the ear, in the hand. If the mental power is only half aroused and feeble in its action, the conceptions gained will be faint and fragmentary, and the knowledge acquired will be as inaccurate and useless as it will be fleeting.

2.

Aroused attention is something more than a state of waiting and expectancy. The notion that the mind can be made merely recipient -a bag to be filled with other people's ideas, a piece of paper on which another may write, a cake of wax under the seal-is neither safe nor philosophical. Its very nature, as far as we can understand it, is that of a self-acting power or force-a force with a will behind it, and full of attractions and repulsions for the objects around it. It is among these felt attractions or repulsions that the self-moving mind finds its motives. Without motive there is no will; without will no attention. 3. The vigor of mental action, like that of muscular action, is proportioned to the feeling which inspires it. The powers of the intellect do not come forth in their full strength at the mere command of a teacher, nor on the call of some cold sense of duty. Nor can the mind exert its full force upon themes which but lightly touch the feelings.

It is only when we "work with a will," that is, with a keen and stirring interest in our work, that we bring our faculties of body or mind out in their fullest energy. Great occasions make men great. Unsuspected reserve powers come forth as soon as the demand is large enough. In the heat of a great battle, common men become heroic, and weak men strong. So, with deepening interest, attention deepens, and the mind's reserve powers come into work.

4. The sources of interest and the approaches to the attention are as numerous as the faculties of man and the different aspects of the subjects to be studied. Each organ of sense is a gateway to the pupil's mind, though these gateways differ much in the ease of approach, and in the volume and variety of ideas admitted. The hand explores a field limited each moment by the reach of the arm, and takes in only the tactual qualities of matter; but the eye admits the visible universe to its portals with the swiftness of light, and takes note of all its phenomena of form, size, color, and motion. To command all these gateways of the senses is ordinarily to control the mind.

Passing within to the faculties of the soul itself, other sources of interest appear. The subject may appeal to the imagination by its beauty or grandeur, or to the reason by its questions requiring answer, or by its propositions asking assent. It may stir hopes or fears and touch self-love or sympathy by some promise of good or menace of evil to the learner himself or to others. A source of genuine interest may be found in the connection of the lesson with something in the past life and studies of the learner; and a still richer one in its relations to his future duties and employments. We may add to these the sympathetic interest to be inspired by the teacher's manifested delight in the theme, and by the generous emulation of fellow-learners in the same field.

These are the great sources of the mind's interests in its objects, and when the appeal can be made to several of them the effect is deep and intense. The teacher who knows how to touch all these keys, whose vibrant chords thrill mind and heart, may command all the resources of his pupil's soul. But it should be noted that any one element of interest felt in its greatest fulness may be stronger than several only partly awakened. The great landscapes of truth grow more resplendent with every new increment of light thrown upon them.

tant.

5. The sources of interest vary with the ages of learners and with the advancing stages of growth and intelligence. This fact is imporThe child of six feels little interest, and gives no genuine attention to themes which engross the mind of the youth of sixteen. general the lower motives are felt first, the nobler and finer coming

In

only with years and culture. The animal appetites awaken long before the spiritual. Children and adults are often indeed interested in the same scenes and objects, but it does not follow that they are interested in the same ideas. The child finds in the object some striking fact of sense or some personal gratification; the adult mind attends to the profounder relations, the causes or consequences of the fact. Attention follows interest, and it is folly to attempt to gain attention to a lesson in which the pupil cannot be led to feel any genuine interest. The assertion that children ought to be' compelled to pay attention because it is their duty, denies the fundamental condition of attention. If the duty is felt by the child, it is an element of interest; but if it is simply in the teacher's mind it only repels.

6. The power of attention increases with the mental development, and is proportioned nearly to the years of the child. It is one of the most valuable products of education. Idiots and infants are almost destitute of it; even short lessons wearying and exhausting the attention of young children. "Little and often" is the rule for teaching very young pupils. The power of steady and prolonged attention belongs only to strong minds. Said a man of noted intellectual distinction, "The difference between me and ordinary men lies in my ability to maintain my attention-to keep on plodding."

7. Attention is not a separate faculty of the mind, but rather an active attitude of some or all the faculties. Its power, therefore, must depend upon the number and strength of the faculties involved. Attention will be steadiest when the appeal is made to the strongest faculty. One person can give steady attention to objects of sense, another to objects of imagination, and a third to processes of reason. One student is successful in mathematics, another in history, a third in language. To teach in the line of the strongest faculties is to teach with the highest success. Nature favors such teaching.

8. The two chief hindrances to attention are apathy and distraction. The former may arise from constitutional inertness, from lack of taste for the subject under consideration, or from weariness or other unfavorable bodily condition of the hour. Distraction is the division of the attention between several objects. It is the common fault of undisciplined minds, and is the foe of all sound learning. The quick senses of children are caught so easily by a great variety of objects, and they find in each so little to interest them, that their thoughts flit as with the tireless wing of the butterfly. Memory holds with loose grasp the lessons learned with apathy or distraction, and the reason refuses such poor materials for its work.

RULES FOR TEACHERS.

Out of this Law of the Learner, thus expounded, emerge some of the most important rules for teaching :

1. Never begin a class exercise till the attention of the class is secured.

2. Pause whenever the attention is interrupted or lost, and wait till it is completely regained.

3. Never exhaust wholly the pupil's power of attention. Stop when signs of weariness appear, and either dismiss the class or change the subject to kindle fresh attention.

4. Fit the length of the exercise to the ages of the class; the younger the pupils the briefer the lesson.

5. Arouse, and, when needful, rest the attention by a pleasing variety, but avoid distraction. Keep the real lesson in view.

6. Kindle and maintain the highest possible interest in the subject itself. Interest and attention react upon each other.

7. Present those aspects of the lesson, and use such illustrations, as fit the ages, characters, and attainments of the class.

8. Address the instruction to as many of the senses and faculties as possible, but beware of drawing the attention from the subject to some mere illustration.

9. Let the teacher maintain in himself and exhibit the closest attention and the most genuine interest in the lesson. True enthusiasm is contagious.

VIOLATIONS AND MISTAKES.

The violations of the Law of the Learner are many, and they constitute the most fatal class of errors committed by ordinary teachers. Lessons are commenced before the attention of the class is gained, and continued after it has ceased to be given. Pupils are urged to listen and learn after their limited power of attention is exhausted, and when weariness has sealed their minds against any further impression. Little or no effort is made to discover the tastes of the pupil, or to create a real interest in the subject studied. The teacher, feeling no fresh interest in his work, seeks to compel the attention he is unable to attract, and awakens disgust by his dullness and dryness where he ought to in. spire delight by his intelligence and active sympathy.

What wonder that through these and other violations of this law of teaching our schools are made unattractive and their success is so limited and poor! If obedience to these rules is so important in the common schools, where the attendance of the children is compelled by parents, and where the professional instructor teaches with full author

ity of law, how much more is it necessary in the Sunday school where all attendance and teaching are voluntary, and where attraction must do the work of authority! Fortunately the Sunday school holds, in the interest of its associations, in the surpassing sacredness and divine grandeur of its themes, in the variety and splendor of its truths and facts, and above all, in the tender and immortal relationship which these truths establish between the Christian teacher and his pupils, advantages which may amply compensate for the lack of the authority and of the professional experience of the common school teacher. But let the Sunday school teacher who would win the richest and best results of teaching give to this Law of the Learner his profoundest thought and his most patient following. Let him master the art of gaining and keeping attention, and of exciting genuine and stirring interest, and he will wonder and rejoice at the fruitfulness of his work.

NATURAL METHODS OF TEACHING LANGUAGES.

BY CHAS. W. SUPER.

Not long ago, in a city of our Northwest, there was handed to me a circular stating that a few blocks away a professor de langues was teaching persons to read, write and speak two or three foreign languages in the short space of five weeks to each. I had the curiosity to witness for a few evenings the performances of this quasi-professor of pantomime, and found that he, just like many others of the same craft elsewhere, professed a method which he designated as "natural." To judge from the recommendations he dispensed with a profuse liberality he was able to do what no one had ever accomplished before. It looked as if all study of languages till now the world over had been sheer waste of time. True, many of his recommendations seemed to have grown out of interviews with newspaper men to whom the professor had explained his method, but his explanations were so lucid that the knights of the lead pencil were at once convinced and fell to lauding what they understood just as well as they understood the Republic of Plato.

During the past few years the public has had frequent occasion to remember that we have nowadays many teachers "according to the natural method," who yet differ somewhat widely from each other.

Generally speaking, this method consists in requiring the pupil to learn a foreign language as he learned his mother tongue. A great many persons profess to believe, or at least admit, that such a thing is