First, then, we are not to make the presentation of any topic or lesson, even to the youngest learner, needlessly inconsecutive; but with the more advanced learners—­with those in the academic and collegiate courses—­we should insist on the display, and in so doing best insure the increase of the true robur of the intellect, by positive requirement that all the topics shall be developed logically; that sufficient facts shall come before all conclusions; and rigid, sharp, and satisfactory analysis before every generalization or other synthesis.  So, the more advanced mind would learn induction, and logic, and method, by use of them upon all topics; it would know by experience their possibilities, requirements, and special advantages; and it would be able to recognize their principles, when formally studied, as but the reflex and expression of its own acquired habitudes.  Such a mind, we may safely say, would be educated.  But secondly, the foregoing considerations show that we are not unnecessarily to jumble together the topics and lessons; to vacillate from one line of study to another; to wander, truant-like, among all sorts of good things—­exploiting, now, a color; then milk; then in due time gratitude and the pyramids; then leather, (for, though ‘there’s nothing like leather,’ it may be wisest to keep it in its place;) then sponge, and duty to parents, lying, the points of compass, etc.!  And here, for all ages above nine or ten years, is a real drawback, or at the least, a positive danger, of the Object-Lesson and Common-Things teaching.  Just here is shadowed forth a real peril that threatens the brains of the men and women of the—­we may say, ‘rising’ generation, through this fresh accession of the object-lesson interest in our country. Objects, now, are unquestionably good things; and yet, even objects can be ’run into the ground.’

We had put the essential thought here insisted on into words, before object-lessons had acquired the impetus of the last and current year.

’The ‘object lessons’ of Pestalozzi and his numerous followers, had, in a good degree, one needed element—­they required WORK of the pupil’s own mind, not mere recipiency.  But they have [almost] wholly lacked another element, just as important—­that of CONSECUTION in the steps and results dealt with.  In most of the schools in our country—­in a degree, in all of them—­these two fundamental elements of all right education, namely, true work of the learner’s mind, and a natural and true consecution in not only the processes of each day or lesson, but of one day on another, and of each term on the preceding, are things quite overlooked, and undreamed of, or, at the best, imperfectly and fragmentarily attempted.  But these, in so far as, he can secure their benefits, are just the elements that make the thinker, the scholar, the man of real learning or intellectual