are (1) the perceptive, (2) the expressive, (3) the reflective. In education all these groups of powers are exerted, to some extent, simultaneously; but with very different degrees of relative activity and strength in the successive stages of school life. In the beginning, the perceptive faculties are most active; then the expressive faculties come into freer play; and, finally, the reflective or reasoning powers are developed by slow degrees.

II. THE PERCEPTIVE FACULTIES.

The modes of action of these faculties are sensation, perception, attention, and observation; their impelling force is curiosity, and the result of their action is knowledge. These faculties are exceedingly active in childhood; hence, in the order of nature, the first years of the child in school should be mainly devoted to such things as will best secure perceptive development. These processes consist of object-lessons; of exercises in color, form, measure; of writing and drawing; of reading and speech; of the elements of natural science; and, in general, of exercises in observation which include examination, analysis, inspection, comparison, discrimination, and classification, begun and carried on to a limited extent. "Mind," says Bain, "starts from discrimination. Our intelligence is absolutely limited by our power of discrimination."

Analysis," says Russell, "is the grand instrument in all the operations of the perceptive faculties; and of all the implements of science, it is the keenest in its edge, the truest in its action, and the surest in the results which it attains. It is the key to knowledge in all departments of intelligence."

Principles in Training.—“Sensations," says Payne,

"constitute the elements of knowledge, and sensations grow into ideas."

"Knowledge, with children," says Russell," is what they have experienced in their own intellect, by means of their own observation; in other words, it is the accurate interpretation of the facts of sense in matters usually of color, form, number, weight, or sound, and the relations these bear to one another.”

Pestalozzi says, "If I look back and ask myself what I have really done towards the improvement of elementary instruction, I find that, in recognizing observation as the absolute basis of all knowledge, I have established the first and most important principle of instruction." The distinguished German educator Niemeyer says, "What is perceived by the senses is fixed in the mind more firmly than what is merely said over even a hundred times. It is not the shadows of things, but things themselves, which should be presented to youth."

In order to train pupils to habits of observation, the teacher must make every effort to secure the fixed attention of every pupil in the class to whatever is inspected, to whatever is done, and to whatever is said. The main instrument in securing an attentive examination of things is by means of skilful questioning. "The faculty of perception," says Niemeyer, "united with the endeavor to attain clear consciousness of the ideas received by means of exerted attention, is the life of thought; without it, all teaching, all machinery for communicating ideas to the young, are useless. They may have ears and all the other organs of sense, but they will neither hear, nor see, nor perceive; for they will pay no attention."

It is easier to secure the attention of young children to

actual things than to spoken descriptions of things; hence the value of object - lessons as a means of instruction. Things are learned more quickly and accurately through the eye than through the ear. Without the object, the teacher may spend a long time in endeavoring to convey to a class, through the ear by description, an idea of what may be understood at a glance of the eye; and, after all his pains, he may give his pupils the wrong idea.

Kindergarten training is admirably adapted to call the perceptive faculties into appropriate exercise, while, at the same time, it calls into play the expressive faculties. The careful study of a Kindergarten manual, together with a few visits to a Kindergarten school, will supply every young teacher with ideas upon which to build a rational system of primary teaching. "Froebel," says Emily Shirreff, “makes discipline of the moral and intellectual faculties his direct aim. He cares more for the habit of observing than for the matter of the observation; more for the correctness of the reasoning than for the subject on which it is exercised; more for strict accuracy of thought and expression than for the amount of knowledge."

In order to secure the best possible results in training young children to habits of attention and observation, there must be a frequent transition from one subject to another, and the hours of school confinement must not be too long. For children under eight years of age, the school-day ought not to exceed four hours, and those hours should be broken by two twenty-minute recesses. As to the limit of time in fixing the attention, the following is an approximate statement: A child from five to seven years of age may be able to give unflagging attention to one lesson or subject for from ten to fifteen min

utes; from seven to ten years of age, from fifteen to twenty minutes; from ten to twelve years of age, from twenty to thirty minutes; from twelve to sixteen years of age, from thirty to forty minutes.

It is well to bear in mind the irrevocable law of nature, that work in excess of the power of the system adds nothing to the result achieved.

III. THE EXPRESSIVE FACULTIES.

The modes of action of these faculties are emotion, imagination, fancy, imitation, personation, representation, language, and taste; their impelling force is feeling; and the result of their action is communication. The educational processes consist of exercises in language-words, reading, grammar; of practice in oral speech and written expression; of studies in natural science and art.

Principles in Training.—The first impulse of the child, on making some discovery by means of the senses, is to express its surprise or satisfaction to others. Speech, in its early stages, is almost unconsciously acquired by imitation. The process is a long and slow one; but by long-continued repetition it is effective. Here again the Kindergarten system is suggestive of natural methods of training, as opposed to the old repressive system summed up in the formula "Study your book; don't ask questions." Wellconducted oral recitations afford the most effective means of securing correctness and readiness of oral expression. "It is an obvious defect in teaching," says Bain, "to keep continually lecturing pupils without asking them, in turn, to reproduce and apply what is said.”

Readiness in written expression is a more difficult attainment than correctness of speech. Training in com

position should begin as soon as the child can write at all, and should be continued during the whole period of school life. "The ability to define our thoughts," says Currie, "and to express them in a clear and orderly manner, may be taken as a practical test of an intellectual education." "A child," says Horace Mann, "must not only be exercised into correctness of observation, but into accuracy in the narration or description of what he has seen, heard, thought, or felt; so that whatever thoughts, emotions, memories, are within him, he can present them all to others in exact and luminous words."

Imagination. The first step is to train the pupil to observe facts; the next, to reproduce clearly the conception of facts, which power may be classed under the term imagination, as that word is used to include the whole work of remembering, reproducing, and modifying the pictures of direct perception. The imagination may be specially cultivated by the recitation of suitable poetry, by the speaking of dialogues, by declamations, by compositions upon subjects which exercise the inventive faculty, and by the perusal of the best works of creative genius.

IV. THE REFLECTIVE FACULTIES.

The modes of action of these faculties are included under the heads of memory, conception, consciousness, reason, understanding, and judgment; their impelling force is inquiry; and the result of their action is truth. The educational processes are language and grammar, composition and rhetoric, geography and history, mathematics and natural science, or whatever is made a subject of thought.

Principles in Training.-Memory, as the basis of the reflective faculties, consists, not so much in remembering