What now is the common characteristic of these several changes?  Is it not an increasing conformity to the methods of Nature?  The relinquishment of early forcing, against which Nature rebels, and the leaving of the first years for exercise of the limbs and senses, show this.  The superseding of rote-learnt lessons by lessons orally and experimentally given, like those of the field and play-ground, shows this.  The disuse of rule-teaching, and the adoption of teaching by principles—­that is, the leaving of generalisations until there are particulars to base them on—­show this.  The system of object-lessons shows this.  The teaching of the rudiments of science in the concrete instead of the abstract, shows this.  And above all, this tendency is shown in the variously-directed efforts to present knowledge in attractive forms, and so to make the acquirement of it pleasurable.  For, as it is the order of Nature in all creatures that the gratification accompanying the fulfilment of needful functions serves as a stimulus to their fulfilment—­as, during the self-education of the young child, the delight taken in the biting of corals and the pulling to pieces of toys, becomes the prompter to actions which teach it the properties of matter; it follows that, in choosing the succession of subjects and the modes of instruction which most interest the pupil, we are fulfilling Nature’s behests, and adjusting our proceedings to the laws of life.

Thus, then, we are on the highway towards the doctrine long ago enunciated by Pestalozzi, that alike in its order and its methods, education must conform to the natural process of mental evolution—­that there is a certain sequence in which the faculties spontaneously develop, and a certain kind of knowledge which each requires during its development; and that it is for us to ascertain this sequence, and supply this knowledge.  All the improvements above alluded to are partial applications of this general principle.  A nebulous perception of it now prevails among teachers; and it is daily more insisted on in educational works.  “The method of nature is the archetype of all methods,” says M. Marcel.  “The vital principle in the pursuit is to enable the pupil rightly to instruct himself,” writes Mr. Wyse.  The more science familiarises us with the constitution of things, the more do we see in them an inherent self-sufficingness.  A higher knowledge tends continually to limit our interference with the processes of life.  As in medicine the old “heroic treatment” has given place to mild treatment, and often no treatment save a normal regimen—­as we have found that it is not needful to mould the bodies of babes by bandaging them in papoose-fashion or otherwise—­as in gaols it is being discovered that no cunningly-devised discipline of ours is so efficient in producing reformation as the natural discipline of self-maintenance by productive labour; so in education, we are finding that success is to be achieved only by making our measures subservient to that spontaneous unfolding which all minds go through in their progress to maturity.