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the faculties; and Part II. of this work contains specific methods for the cultivation of the different classes of faculties.

VI. APPLICATION OF RESULTS TO THE DIFFERENT
PERIODS OF EDUCATION.

Five Educational Periods.

Our early life may be divided into five periods. 1. Infancy, comprehending about four years. 2. Early childhood, extending from four to about seven years 3. Childhood extending from seven to about ten years of age. 4. Early youth, from ten to about fourteen years of age. 5. Youth, extending from the age of fourteen to manhood.

of age.

First Period. Infancy.

The infant has first to acquire the right use of its senses. During the later part of this period the perceptive faculties attain a considerable degree of vigour and acuteness; and the conceptive and representative faculties, constituting the first evidences of mental existence, also characterise the later part of this period. As the brain, the organ of thought, is in an imperfect state, our instruction should be entirely of a desultory character; we should wait for the spontaneous development of the faculties. Speaking, singing, and the names of familiar objects constitute the chief subject matters of instruction.

Second Period. Early Childhood.

This period is marked by a greater activity and precision of the conceptive and representative faculties, associated to some extent with the knowing faculties, and the first glimmerings of reason. The sensibilities of the child are also quickened, and the impressions produced by external objects are deeper and more lasting. Attention, at first spontaneous, now becomes a voluntary faculty. At the early part of this period instruction should be identified with amusement, and all technical learning

should be carefully excluded. We should invest our subjects of instruction with some charm calculated to engage the feelings. During this period the mind should be prepared for commencing the exertions required at the subsequent period. Without being technical or strictly systematic, our subjects of instruction should be comprehensive, the exclusive object of all our instruction being the development of the faculties. Speaking, singing, object lessons, lessons on striking natural phenomena, picture lessons, mental arithmetic, and the facts of Scripture (life of Christ, &c.), should form the chief subjects of instruction throughout the whole of this period. At the latter part of this period, writing, drawing, reading, common arithmetic, and geography should be taught in such a way as to form the basis of future instruction. Intuitive truths, or simple propositions, may also be taught as inferences from familiar facts.

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This period is chiefly marked by the dawn of reason and imagination, and the fuller development of the faculties of the understanding. During this period, the studies of the preceding period should be extended and associated with easy processes of reasoning and abstraction. The abstract terms and phrases of language, arithmetic, geometry, natural science, and grammar, should be taught in connection with their concrete forms. Lessons on general knowledge should also be given, comprehending simple stories, narratives, historical sketches, and descriptions of natural scenery, in prose as well as in verse.

Fourth Period. Early Youth.

Although the perceptive and conceptive faculties still maintain their ascendancy, yet during this period the understanding and reason attain a certain degree of strength. Reason now gives strength and vivacity to

all the other faculties, and especially to the recollective faculty. As the mind is now capable of more sustained exertion, the habit of intensified attention, or the habit of directing the undivided force of the faculties to a given subject, should form an important object of culture. The subjects of instruction belonging to the foregoing period should be enlarged, and studied more systematically, yet not without a due regard to the imperfect state of the reflective faculties. Language, mathematics, and the physical sciences and useful arts, should be specially studied, not only as means of intellectual culture, but also as subjects having a direct bearing on the business of life.

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During this period all the faculties of our nature attain their full development. Every subject must now be studied in its most technical and systematic form; that is, supposing the preceding periods have been duly improved. Every study must now be pursued with earnestness, vigour, and determination; and duties, requiring strenuous and continued labour, should be performed with cheerfulness and exactness for the sake of the end to be attained. Competitive examinations and rewards now become appropriate as well as powerful stimulants to exertion. During this period the subjects of study should have a special bearing on the profession or business for which the youth is being educated.

CHAP. IV.

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF TEACHING, OR ELEMENTS OF METHOD.

HAVE we arrived at any well recognised general principles of method as applied to education? If so, what are they? Unfortunately the philosophy of method has never yet been systematically studied by practical teachers, nor have its principles been fairly applied by

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them with the view of determining what are the true general principles or axioms of education. However, a careful induction of recognised psychological facts has led us to regard the following as deserving a place amongst those axioms or general principles. The unsettled state of our knowledge on this subject will form the best apology for the imperfection, or it may be the errors, of the following summary of general principles.

It will be observed, that many of these principles give different faces or aspects of the same general principle; such aspects are essential to the full development of the subject matter, and give a precision and a distinctiveness to the different modes in which an important general principle may be applied.

I. Our methods of education should act in co-operation with, and should form adjuncts to, the natural order and mode of development of the physical, intellectual, and moral faculties of the children; in short, we must teach children after the way by which nature intended that they should be taught.

This must comprehend all other general principles of education.

The faculties of children develop themselves slowly; one faculty shows itself before another; some are as active, and almost as vigorous, in the child as they are in the full-grown man,—such as perception, simple memory, curiosity, &c.: on the contrary, certain faculties never attain their full development until the child has arrived at the period of maturity, such as recollection, or philosophical memory, imagination, abstraction, reason, &c.

All the faculties are invigorated by being properly exercised; whereas, on the other hand, they may be enfeebled by being overtasked, or by being exercised on subjects which do not come within their proper sphere. The subjects of instruction as well as the methods of instruction should be adapted to the strength of the faculties.

Our business is not to destroy any faculty, but to follow out the intentions of nature in relation, to its development;-our business is not to create any faculty, but to cultivate all the faculties which God has bestowed upon the child, according to the plan or method which He has ordained.

The cultivation of any faculty should have a relation to the period at which it devolops itself; thus, for example, the faculty of observation is strong in young children, that of abstract reason is weak; hence we should communicate knowledge to young children through their perceptive faculties, and we should at the same time be careful that we do not overtask the faculty of reason. Certain faculties attain distinct states of development corresponding to the growth of the mind as a whole: ideality, simple abstraction, and intuitive reason are developed at an early period; whereas complex abstraction and abstract reason are the latest in the development of the human mind.

As a first condition of success in teaching, the master should be thoroughly acquainted with the laws regulating the development of the faculties of the being to be educated his work becomes comparatively easy and pleasant when his methods of instruction are framed in accordance with these laws.

The various faculties require distinct modes of cultivation; so that what may be requisite for the development of one, may not be best adapted for the development of another; one course of study may cultivate the faculty of recollection, another course that of imagination; and so on. In order, therefore, to give a full elucidation of this subject, it is necessary that we should consider the various faculties of our nature in detail, with the view of determining the best modes for their respective cultivation. This we purpose to do in another part of this work. But there are certain general principles which have respect to the development of the mind as a whole, and these we purpose to consider before giving an account of the cultivation of particular faculties, or particular classes of faculties.

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