contained in one of Mr. Dexter’s cabinets, would have been of far greater educational value, and more interesting to the children. This loose and desultory habit of teaching encourages a loose and desultory habit of thought; it is for this reason that I attach great value to consecutive courses of instruction.  I think, it will not be difficult to show that the study of almost any branch of elementary science not only has a direct bearing on many of the practical affairs of every-day life, but also supplies all the conditions necessary to stimulate and strengthen the intellectual faculties in a much greater degree than many of the subjects now taught in our elementary schools.’

All the lines of our investigation, as well as the most competent testimony, thus converge in showing that the object-lesson and common-things teaching is but a partial and preliminary resource in the business of education; that, to avoid working positive harm, it must be restricted within due limits of age, capacity, and subject; that it is not, therefore, the real and total present desideratum of our schools; and that, subsequently to the completion of the more purely sensuous and percipient phase of the mind, and to the acquirement of the store of simpler ideas and information, and the degree of capacity, that ought to be secured during that period—­hence, from an age not later than eleven, or according as circumstances may determine, thirteen years—­all the true and desirable ends of education, whether they be right mental habits and tastes, discipline and power of the faculties, or a large information and practical command of the acquisitions made—­all these ends, we say, are thenceforward most certainly secured by the systematic prosecution, in a proper method, of the usually recognized distinct branches or departments of scientific knowledge.  Let then, ’common things,’ et id genus omne, early enough give place to thorough-going study of the elements of Geometry, of Geography, Arithmetic, Language, (including Grammar,) of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Botany, Physiology, and something of their derivations and applications.  Thus shall our schools produce a race not of mere curious gazers, but of conscious and purposive investigators; not a generation of intellectual truants and vagabonds, but one of definitely skilled cultivators of definite domains in handicraft, art, or science.

We are compelled to take issue, therefore, with Mr. Spencer’s recommendation, indorsed in the Chicago Report, to the effect that object-lessons should, after a ‘different fashion,’ ’be extended to a range of things far wider, and continued to a period far later than now.’  Not so:  after any possible fashion.  But let us, as early as the child’s capacity and preparation will allow, have the individualized, consecutive studies, and the very manner of studying which shall be made to do for the higher and the lower intellectual