“Do you think of any other common motive of action besides love of money and friendship?”

“Love of honor,” says one; “fear,” says another.

“Yes,” continues the teacher, “both these are common motives.  I might, to exhibit them, call two more boys, one after the other, and say to the one, ’I will thank you to go and copy this piece of poetry as well as you can.  I want to send it to the school committee as a specimen of improvement made in this school.’

“To the other I might say, ’You have been a careless boy to-day; you have not got your lessons well.  Now take your seat and copy this poetry.  Do it carefully.  Unless you take pains, and do it as well as you possibly can, I shall punish you severely before you go home.’

“How many motives have I got now?  Four, I believe.”

“Yes, sir,” say the boys.

“Love of money, friendship, love of honor, and fear.  We called the first boy A; let us call the others B, C, and D; no, we shall remember better to call them by the name of their motives.  We will call the first M, for money; the second, F, for friendship; the third, H, for honor; and the last, F—­we have got an F already; what shall we do?  On the whole, it is of no consequence; we will have two F’s, but we will take care not to confound them.

“But there are a great many other motives entirely distinct from these.  For example, suppose I should say to a fifth boy, ’Will you copy this piece of poetry?  It belongs to one of the little boys in school:  he wants a copy of it, and I told him I would try to get some one to copy it for him.’  This motive, now, would be benevolence; that is, if the boy who was asked to copy it was not particularly acquainted with the other, and did it chiefly to oblige him.  We will call this boy B, for Benevolence.

“Now suppose I call a sixth boy, and say to him, ’I have set four or five boys to work copying this piece of poetry; now I wish you to sit down, and see if you can not do it better than any of them.  After all are done, I will compare them, and see if yours is not the best.’  This would be trying to excite emulation.  We must call this boy, then, E. But the time I intended to devote to talking with you on this subject for to-day is expired.  Perhaps to-morrow I will take up the subject again.”

The reader now will observe that the grand peculiarity of the instructions given by this last teacher, as distinguished from those of the first, consists in this, that the parts of the subject are presented in detail, and in particular exemplification. In the first case, the whole subject was dispatched in a single, general, and comprehensive description; in the latter, it is examined minutely, one point being brought forward at a time.  The discussions are enlivened, too, by meeting and removing such little difficulties as will naturally come up in such an investigation.  Boys and girls will take an interest in such a lecture; they will regret to have it come to a conclusion, and will give their attention when the subject is again brought forward on the following day.  Let us suppose the time for continuing the exercise to have arrived.  The teacher resumes the discussion thus: