To explain now what is meant by such scheming as is to be condemned, let us suppose a case which is riot very uncommon.  A young man, while preparing for college, takes a school.  When he first enters upon the duties of his office, he is diffident and timid, and walks cautiously in the steps which precedent has marked out for him.  Distrusting himself, he seeks guidance in the example which others have set for him, and, very probably, he imitates precisely, though it may be insensibly and involuntarily, the manners and the plans of his own last teacher.  This servitude soon, however, if he is a man of natural abilities, passes away; he learns to try one experiment after another, until he insensibly finds that a plan may succeed, even if it was not pursued by his former teacher.  So far it is well.  He throws greater interest into his school, and into all its exercises, by the spirit with which he conducts them.  He is successful.  After the period of his services has expired, he returns to the pursuit of his studies, encouraged by his success, and anticipating farther triumphs in his subsequent attempts.

He goes on through college, we will suppose, teaching from time to time in the vacations, as opportunity occurs, taking more and more interest in the employment, and meeting with greater and greater success.  This success is owing in a very great degree to the freedom of his practice, that is, to his escape from the thraldom of imitation.  So long as he leaves the great objects of the school untouched, and the great features of its organization unchanged, his many plans for accomplishing these objects in new and various ways awaken interest and spirit both in himself and in his scholars, and all goes on well.

Now in such a case as this, a young teacher, philosophizing upon his success and the causes of it, will almost invariably make this mistake, namely, he will attribute to something essentially excellent in his plans the success which, in fact, results from the novelty of them.

When he proposes something new to a class, they all take an interest in it because it is new.  He takes, too, a special interest in it because it is an experiment which he is trying, and he feels a sort of pride and pleasure in securing its success.  The new method which he adopts may not be, in itself, in the least degree better than old methods, yet it may succeed vastly better in his hands than any old method he had tried before.  And why?  Why, because it is new.  It awakens interest in his class, because it offers them variety; and it awakens interest in him, because it is a plan which he has devised, and for whose success, therefore, he feels that his credit is at stake.  Either of these circumstances is abundantly sufficient to account for its success.  Either of these would secure success, unless the plan was a very bad one indeed.