ing our judgments, and put the elements together in another form better suited to our apprehension. These mental operations indicate that we have passed into a higher region of thought, and that we have arrived at an altitude of development which gives us a wider, a more exact, and a less obstructed range of view than we had at the anterior period of development.

FOURTH STAGE.-Being provided with the great instrument of thought-language-reason now freely expands itself; it wings its ways into every region of inquiry in search of truth; it methodises all its materials of thought, and proceeds to investigate truth according to certain definite and explicit modes; it lays down certain self-determined principles of action, and suborns to itself all the other operations of the mind; with a penetrating and comprehensive glance, it looks back upon all the processes of thought through which it has passed, and links the past with the present, and the present with the future. Reason, in this condition of freedom, is not merely cognitive, it is also cogitative; it not merely seeks knowledge, but it also seeks to discover the sources of knowledge;-it endeavours to penetrate truth to its very centre,—to trace truth in its origin, history, and consequences.

Inductive, reasoning leads us to a knowledge of the general laws of nature; deductive reasoning enables us to tell the antecedents of any given phenomenon, and to foretell its consequents. By abstract or speculative reason we attain a knowledge of universal truths, embracing alike the laws which govern the operations of nature, and the operations of thought. Our intelligence is now much higher in the scale of development, than that which we characterised by conception and understanding; it contains the ideality of the one combined with the exactness of the other; it embodies all the anterior developments in one harmonious definite unity: -in short, it is complete freedom of thought under the condition of law and responsibilty.

ESSENTIAL POINTS TO BE CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO METHOD AS APPLIED TO EDUCATION.

I. The nature of the faculties.

II. The subjects best adapted for the cultivation of each class of faculties.

III. The nature of the motives acting on each class of faculties.

IV. The habits of action to be established in relation to each class of faculties.

V. The methods of instruction adapted to each class of faculties.

VI. Application of results to the different periods of education.

I. NATURE OF THE FACULTIES.

The nature of the faculties may be viewed under the following aspects:

1. The peculiar function of each faculty.

2. Mutual relation of the faculties.

3. Classification of the faculties with respect to their simultaneous cultivation.

1. The peculiar Function of each Faculty.

What we have further to adduce relative to the nature of each faculty, has a special bearing on method as applied to education.

It has been observed, that reason and other faculties of thought exist in a rudimentary form at the very earliest stages of development; but there is a period in our intellectual growth when these faculties attain certain definite or explicit states of development. So far as regards the purpose of elementary education, it may be assumed that each faculty may exist in two distinct states of development; viz., in its first or simple form of development, or in its latest or complex form. What, then, are the characteristics of these two states?

Certain faculties may exist in distinct and determinate states of development, depending for the most part on the

nature of the subject of instruction; that is to say, whether the subject be concrete or abstract.

In general a faculty will exist either in a simple or in a complex state, according as the subject to which it is directed is concrete or abstract. Thus, we may have either simple conception or abstract conception; simple abstraction or complex abstraction; simple memory or recollection, ideality or imagination; intuitive reasoning or abstract reasoning, and so on. These faculties at the first stage of their development have simple and definite functions, whereas at the latest stage they assume new and more complex functions as we rise higher into the region of intellection. It is true that these two states of development gradually merge into each other, according as we blend the two classes of subjects together.

CONCEPTION.-Our simplest conceptions are formed by the aid of models and pictorial representations; abstract conception is the conception of a thing formed from a verbal description of it.

IMAGINATION. This faculty, in its latest state of development, creates fictitious scenes and events, and invests mere abstractions with all the qualities of vital existence. But the IDEALITY peculiar to young children is very little removed from simple conception: with the aid of visible representations they form the idea of absent objects or distant scenes; a stick with a rag tied round it is invested with all the qualities of a living baby; a small picture enables them to realise the idea of an unseen reality in this case the ideal conception is formed in connection with the concrete representation.

ABSTRACTION.-A child's first abstractions are derived from a comparative examination of the properties of concrete things: He forms an abstract idea of number by counting various familiar objects: he forms the abstract conception of a quadruped by observing the fact that cats, dogs, horses, &c., have a certain quality in common, viz., four legs or four feet. Whereas in some of our higher abstractions the subject undergoes a process of intellection, or intellectual elaboration, before the abstractions are completed. Thus, in order to realise the idea of a

noun, the child must frequently form a double or complex abstraction; for the name of a thing (e. g. bird) is a noun, not the thing itself; on the other hand, a horse is really a quadruped.

Some eminent writers on education assert “that the faculty of abstraction is the latest in the development of the human mind." Now this is only true as regards the faculty of complex abstraction, for even young children readily exercise the faculty of simple abstraction.

Ideas of number, form, magnitude, weight, colour, &c., belong to our simple abstractions; ideas connected with our mental operations, the analysis of language, pure science, &c., belong to our complex abstractions.

REASON. A child's reasoning chiefly consists in making simple deductions or inferences from palpable facts or from the relations of concrete things: whereas reason, in its highest form of development, investigates the relations of abstract things. Mental arithmetic, taught by objects, calls into activity this early or first form of reason: physical laws, geometry, &c., taught in the same manner, also exercise this first form of reason.

The peculiar function of reason is the investigation and recognition of truth; but in every process of reasoning there is always something taken for granted or assumed to be true. The truths assumed may be self-evident axioms, facts derived from observation and experiment, principles derived from induction, or abstract propositions which have been previously established. When a child reasons about familiar things, or familiar phenomena, the axioms forming the basis of his inferences are not expressed in an abstract form of language, they are rather understood from their actual and special relation to the subjects or objects; in fact, his belief in these axioms is of that silent, unconscious, instinctive kind of belief.

The simplicity or complexity of a process of reasoning depends upon, 1. The nature of the subject; 2. The method; 3. The nature or form of the axiomatic truths or propositions, as the case may be.

1. The nature of the subject. The subject may be

either concrete or abstract. In the former case, other things being the same, our reasoning will be simple or intuitive; in the latter case abstract.

2. The method may be experimental, inductive, tentative, or some other method which appeals to the perceptive faculties; or it may be abstract, that is, the method may appeal to the reflective faculties, and not to the perceptive faculties. In the former case, other things being in keeping, our reasoning will be simple or intuitive; in the latter case abstract.

3. The nature or form of the axiomatic truths or propositions. These may be explained in connection with the particular subject, or they may be expressed in the form of abstract truths. In the former case, other things being in keeping, our reasoning will be simple or intuitive; in the latter case abstract.

Hence we come to the general conclusion, that our reasoning will be more or less abstract or difficult, according as the faculty of abstraction is more or less exercised in the process.

That our intellectual faculties may exist in two distinct states of development seems to have been overlooked by teachers, as well as by educational writers: these states, as we have endeavoured to show, depend on the nature of the subject to which the faculty is directed; the concrete exercising the simple form of the faculty, and the abstract the complex form of the faculty. The result of this misconception has been that the cultivation of the higher faculties has been too much neglected in our elementary schools. We have no hesitation in saying that the higher faculties, in their first or simple forms, may be healthfully exercised at an early age. A child of seven years readily forms simple abstractions, and reasons clearly about concrete things.

2. Mutual Relation of the Faculties.

The following points of relation are worthy of consideration: