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HISTORIC GROWTH OF MAN.

NATURAL METHODS.   123

think from the civilized methods of teaching, that many modern instructors have taken a special delight in rendering all the roads of knowledge unroyal and disagreeable. We have taught the knowledge which is in books as though it were something quite different from that which belongs to things.

The black, dead letters of our books have no vitality. They do not reach the child's feelings, the quickening center of all his intellectual activity. Even the teachers have forgotten what the names and forms of the letters mean.

NATURAL METHODS. We must realize that it is

just as natural for a child to acquire knowledge as it is to breathe. If we conform our methods to the natural laws, then education will become a vital growth and not an artificial process.

Our method must speak to all the senses of the child. These senses are the doors through which all the materials of his knowledge must come. To him this world is a concrete world. It is made up of things. All truths are embodied. They have an outward clothing of substance. Analysis may distinguish separate properties ; we may consider the color of an orange without paying any attention to the fact that it is spherical. Only in this way can knowledge be abstract.

It is in this world of objects that the keen senses and active imagination of the child are perpetually delighted. It is to bring this objective world within the school-room that we invent the color-balls and blocks, the tablets and weaving-slats, the paints and patterns and leaves, for the younger pupils. It is for this that we organize the training shops for the older hands and brains,

This method has already been tried with much success in many schools, although not generally adopted. We know that it has been uniformly successful in the highest scientific classes of the universities. The students are required there to study by direct contact with the objects. The chemical student must actually combine chemical substances; the student of mineralogy must handle and fuse minerals; and one studying zoology must examine and dissect animals. The same method can be used with success in all the grades of study, from the kindergarten to the college. It vitalizes and fills each study with fresh interest.

THE GREATEST CHANGES which we propose are

are in the two divisions of systematic culture and physical training. But we must first give a few pages to the subject of natural methods, in order to make our general sketch of education fairly complete.

A few examples will show how these new methods work in practice. We will describe them here partly in the words of another, who is writing of the Quincy schools where these methods were adopted.

THE SCHOOL ROOM is made one of the most

attractive rooms in the harmonic home. It is adorned with pictures, flowers, minerals, curiosities and all that can appeal to the opening senses of the young mind. In the aisles between the desks are carpets to lessen the noise. On these desks are tablets and lead pencils. On the blackboards are words written with colored crayons, in red and green and white. The teacher now says

"' Mattie's class may copy the red words; Willie's