up a store of facts, which it can afterwards use in the investigation of general principles. And even when the mind has advanced so far as to be able to grapple with the abstract, the study of phenomena practically illustrating abstract principles should chiefly occupy the attention.

The general proposition which I have stated is also true, if we consider facts as distinguished from the signs used in the expression of the facts. Language, in its various forms, is a system of the signs by which facts are described or communicated. This is as true of technicalities and classifications, as it is of common language. That instruction in language, in signs, should be entirely subsidiary to instruction in the facts which these signs represent, is so obvious, that I need not dwell upon the proposition.

These principles, which I have thus briefly developed, are disregarded to a great extent in the prevalent modes of education. Generalizations and abstract principles are thrust into the mind before it has the power to appreciate them. The learning of signs, in their various forms of common language, technicalities, and classifications, is urged upon it in such a way as to make it tire of the every-day drudgery. Meanwhile it is shut out, in a great measure, from the observation of the multitude of phenomena in the world of mind and matter all around it. Mere glimpses of this wide and interesting field of knowledge are afforded to those who are confined to the routine of the school-room. Education is thus in its very beginning stripped of

that which should give to it its great interest. The order of nature is reversed. What should be merely subsidiary is made the principal thing. What should come last in order comes first. Means are

made of more importance than ends.

The books for the school-room are to a great extent constructed on those false principles. They of course would be mostly conformed to the prevalent mode of teaching. The errors to which I refer are both systematized, and fixed by long continued custom, and it is difficult to get rid of them. The truth on this subject has indeed been spoken out in various ways, but not so definitely and fully, as to awaken general attention, and to produce a general reform. The abuses to which I have alluded, cling to most of the school-rooms even in enlightened New England, and most of those teachers who see the truth on this subject, appear to see it but in part and dimly.

I propose in this lecture to illustrate the errors referred to in a plain, practical way, and to point out certain changes which should be made in our prevalent modes of education. The compass of a volume is really needed to do full justice to the subject, and the hour which is allotted me will allow me to do no more than to throw out some suggestions for your consideration.

I have said that the child begins its education on the day of its birth. It is an education of observation. He observes with his senses facts or phenomena. He does this dimly and confusedly at first, because he is unskilled in the use of these instru

ments of his observation. But by exercising himself with them from day to day, he soon acquires skill in their use, or in other words, he becomes a skilful observer. He knows absolutely nothing at the beginning. His mind is a blank so far as actual knowledge is concerned, and would remain so if the senses were not there to connect it with the world around it. The power to acquire is there, but this would avail nothing without the instruments through which it acquires. The amount of knowledge which the child's mind gathers through the senses in the first few years is very great. In other words, he accumulates a large number of observations of phenomena. In estimating the amount of his labor, for so we may call it, in doing this, we must bear in mind, that a part of it consists in learning how to use the instruments of his observation. The idea, that to see he has merely to open his eyes, and to hear he has merely to attend with his ears, and to feel he has only to put forth his hands, is a great though common error. He has to learn to see, and hear, and feel, and the process is by no means an easy or a brief one. Now this learning to use these instruments, the senses, the gathering by them of facts, and the comparing of the reports of the senses, which is continually going on, constitute education in the young child. It is as really education as that which is pursued in the school. And it is not selfeducation alone. Every one that influences the child in any way in this daily work of observation has a share in his education.

It is obvious that precisely this education in the

observation of facts or phenomena, to which the very necessities of nature lead at the beginning, should be continued through childhood. It should be carried from the fireside into the school-room. Only it should be pursued there more skilfully, and with greater range, than is commonly done in the family. But this is seldom done, and never to the extent that it should be. The school-room is ordinarily no place for the cultivation of observation. The child, however acute and busy an observer he may be, finds little or no encouragement here to these natural tendencies. The tedious drilling gone through every day in spelling and reading, is a different training from that to which he has been accustomed, if those by whom he has been nurtured have been willing to answer the many inquiries prompted by his busy observation. And as he is taught to think that all learning comes from the school-room, and does not dream that when he observes he is acquiring what may be properly called learning, he settles down into the feeling, that, although learning or knowledge must be very desirable, because every body puts such a high estimation upon it, it is certainly a very hard and a very stupid thing. If he could only be impressed with the idea, as he should be, that in his observation of phenomena he is learning in the best way, and that the learning to spell and read is intended to assist him in this observation, how different would be his views of what is called learning, how would it lose to him its bugbear character, and with what alacrity would he con the tasks which are now so wearisome.

The union, which I have just indicated, between intelligent home-teaching and the instruction of the school-room, is perfectly practicable. It is sometimes partially realized by some very intelligent teachers, but in no case to any thing like the extent to which it should be. The union may be rendered complete. The learning to spell and read may be so managed, as to be for the most part subsidiary to the education of observation, and may thus be relieved of that tedium which disgusts the young mind with what is called learning at the very beginning of its school education.

It is easy for any one to see how this can be done with learning to read. For the reading may be about facts which are interesting to the child, and the teacher may instruct him in relation to those facts, making the bare reading an incidental part of the lesson. But the same thing can be done to a considerable extent with spelling, and even with learning the letters. Instruction in facts may here constitute the substance of the teaching, and the spelling, and the learning of the letters even, may be made subsidiary and incidental. Gallaudet, who was a wise man on this great subject of education, adopted the principle of which I have spoken, and proposed the true plan of teaching the child his letters. His plan is, to familiarize first the eye of the child with short words, the names of objects, representations of these objects being placed over the words, and afterwards to familiarize his eye with the letters that make up the words. The wisdom of the plan consists in giving the interest of