The plan of this book was formed during the year 1855. Tɔ fill out the plan much reading as well as much thinking has been done; but to tell to-day what was obtained by the first process and what by the second is an impossibility. Wishing to do justice to everybody, no claim that may be fairly made to any idea in it will be disputed; and it is hoped that something may be left even when all claims are satisfied. Nothing, however, has been taken from others and used without digestion. All the facts and principles found in the book, come whence they may, have been fused into a common whole. This whole-this collecting and uniting of the scattered fragments of thought concerning education this system, is what the author asks credit for, if credit be deemed his due. The question is a disputed one as to whether Teaching is a science or an art. The settlement of this question depends wholly upon the definitions of science and art. Teaching seeks an end without itself, and this is a characteristic of art. It comprehends many scientific principles which admit systematic arrangement, and this is a characteristic of science. It applies those principles in the form of rules or precepts in the accomplishment of its ends, and this again exhibits its relationship to the arts. All the principles of Teaching come to it second-hand. They are first found in the material or mental sciences, and are used in Teaching to furnish a ground for its methods of procedure. But as a body of truths they are among the broadest and noblest that the human mind can contemplate, and consequently place Teaching side by side, as the peer of the proudest professions known to mer. Teaching has the same claims to be considered a science as Jurisprudence, Medicine, or practical Ethics; for all these are constructed in a manner precisely like Teaching. All of them borrow their principles, and all of them use these principles in the effort to attain their respective ends. Perhaps, as Mill following Comte suggests, "There ought to be a set of intermediate scientific truths, derived from the higher generalities of science, and destined to serve as the generalia, or first principles, of the various arts." Some such generalia relating to Teaching are given in this book under the head of Conditioning Principles. These and other principles like them constitute the claim Teaching has to be called a Science. If the claim is not well founded with respect to Teaching, it cannot be well founded with respect to any other profession. I am quite willing to consider Teaching an art, but it is an art based upon scientific principles that should always guide its practice. Let teachers forever discard the degrading idea that the highest and holiest work in which men can engage on earth, the right education of the human soul, is a mere mechanical employment that can be learned by imitation-is a thing so easy that no special preparation is required to do it. Let them hold to the truth, though their pearls be trampled on by vulgar feet, that Teaching lays under contribution all science and all art in working out the grandest end that human conception ever realized the perfection of the race. With grateful thanks for the kind reception accorded to his first volume, the author now hopefully trusts his second to the same generous hands. J. P. W. STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, January, 1865. CONTENTS. 2. Special preparation on the part of teachers is necessary to make Teaching a permanent business... 33 3. Human beings have been created with different tastes and talents to fit them for performing different duties or for occupying different spheres in life....... 39 4. The Perceptive powers are stronger and more active in youth than the other intellectual faculties and thus furnish a basis for the superstructure of knowledge 40 5. Commencing with the Perceptive Powers, the various intellectual faculties increase in relative strength in the following order: Memory, Recollection, Imagina- tion, Understanding, Reason........... 6. The human mind possesses two sources of knowledge, 7. In acquiring knowledge, the mind first distinguishes its objects in kind, then in quantity, and afterwards in 8. The ratiocinative faculty in elaborating systems of science, proceeds inductively or deductively, analyti- 9. The acquisitive powers of the mind in getting knowledge operate according to certain laws of suggestion 10. The reproductive powers of the mind by means of laws of association enable it to recall its knowledge, and to hold it up in vivid pictures before it............. 11. The productive powers of the mind enable it to make new discoveries and new inventions..... 14. The intellect of man has limits which no extent of educa- tion can enable it to pass...... II. Principles inferable from the Nature of Knowledge.... 1. The several branches of knowledge can be made to fur- |