We assert, then, that from a course or manner of instruction from which those characteristics of true study—­real work of the learner’s faculties, and a just consecution of steps—­are largely omitted or excluded, the best sort of intellectual education can not, in the majority of instances, accrue.  On the other hand, the method embodying these characteristics must present that unity, certainty, and guiding force hinted at in the outset.  Concisely summed up, it is a method proceeding throughout by discovery, or, as we may say, by re-discovery of the truths and results to be acquired in each department of knowledge undertaken by the learner.  In the absence of the one true method of intellectual advance, what should we expect but a confusion of clashing, imperfect, or tentative processes of instruction?  He who could, to-day, ciceroned by some pedagogic Asmodeus, visit one hundred of our schools, or listen successively to a recitation on a given topic, conducted by one hundred qualified and faithful instructors, would find the methods and no-methods of introducing to the century of classes the truths of this self-same subject to be—­and we do not mean in the personal element, which ought to vary, but in the radical substance and order of the theme—­quite as numerous as the workmen observed; in fact, a conflicting and confusing display.  Now, do causes, in any realm of being, forbear to produce fruit in effects?  Are the laws of psychologic sequence less rigid and certain than those laws of physical sequence which determine in material nature every phenomenon, from planet-paths in space to the gathering of dew-drops on a leaf?  If it were so, falsity or confusion in intellectual method might be pronounced a thing of trifling import, or wholly indifferent.  But such suppositions are the seemings only of postulates floating through the brains of Ignorance or Un-heed, who really postulate nothing at all.  If, on the contrary, we admit this inflexible relation of cause and result in the mental, as well as in the material world, and if we admit also that our school-methods are yet fragmentary, varying and tentative, then we are compelled to the conclusion, that at least the greater number of our schools are falling short, in the time and with the outlay invested, of doing their best and largest work, while in very many of our schools there must be steadily going forward a positive and potent mis-education!

If it be urged that these are in a degree deductive conclusions, let them be submitted to the test of fact.  At least two important circumstances, it is admitted, will come in to complicate the inquiry:  first, one purpose of school training is to divert the forming mind in a degree from sense toward thought, the latter being a less observable sort of product than that curiosity and store of facts attendant on activity of the merely perceptive powers; secondly, there is the growing absorption of the mental powers with increase of age in the practical, in meeting