and discoverers of riper years.  It is to come to results not only previously unknown, but not even conceived of.  Because their nature and faculties are identical, the law of their intellectual action must be the same.’  ‘Study is research.’  In subsequent articles, it was claimed that the law here indicated is for intellectual education, the one true and comprehensive law; and it was expressed more fully in the words:  ’All true study is investigation; all true learning is discovery.’

We say, now, that when the first of these articles appeared, the leading thought it contained, namely, that our pupils can and should learn by a process of re-discovery, in the subjects they pursue, had not in distinct nor in substantial statement in any way appeared in the educational treatises or journals; and further, that it was not, so far as their uttered or published expressions show, previously occupying the attention of teachers or of educational writers, nor was it the subject or substance of remarks, speeches, or debates, in the meetings of Teachers’ Associations.  We say further, and because history and justice require it, that in our country, especially in the educational movements in the State of New-York, and in the several national associations of educators, a marked change and revolution in the course of much of the thought and discussion touching matters of education has, since the year 1858, become apparent, and that to the most casual participant or observer, and in the precise direction in which the thought above referred to points.  The essential issue itself—­the practicability and desirableness of casting our studies into the form of courses of re-discovery is somewhat distantly and delicately approached, incorporated into speeches by an allusion or in the way of apercu, or thrown out as a suggestion of a partial or auxiliary method with the younger learners, all which is of a fashion highly patronizing to the thought, spite of the scruples about confessing who was the suggester of it.  But other questions, which spring up in the train of this, which by themselves had received attention long since, but had been mainly dropped and unheard of among us during the past twenty-five years, have come again into full and unconcealed prominence.  Such are the questions about the natural order of appearance of the faculties in childhood, as to what are the elementary faculties of the mind, as to the adaptation of the kinds and order of studies to these, etc.  And thus, all at once, is disclosed that Education itself, which many had thought quite a ‘finished’ thing, well and happily disposed of, or at least so far perfected as to leave no work further save upon the veriest outskirts of details, is in truth a giant superstructure with foundations in sand, or so almost visibly lacking underneath it, that it threatens to fall.  For, in the name of the simplest of all common sense, how are we to educate to the best, not yet knowing—­and