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THE 
 
 SEVEN LAWS 
 
 OF 
 
 TEACHING. 
 
 ^ 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN M. GREGORY, LL.D., 
 
 Ex-Co))U)nssioncr of the Civil Service of the United States, and Ex-Presi- 
 dent of the State University of Illinois. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 (•Tonsrcgational $untiag=$cf)ool anli ^ubltsfjmg Socictg, 
 
 Congregational House, Beacon Street. 
 
LBlOZS 
 
 Copyrighted, 1886, 
 By John M. Gregory. 
 
 Electrotyped and Printed by Stanley &=■ Usher, 
 jji Devonshire Street. 
 
" Train up a child in the way he should go : and when he is old he 
 will not depart from it." — Bible. 
 
 " Why is it that we, the elder, are spared to the world, except to train 
 up and instruct the young? It is impossible that the gay little folks 
 should guide and teach themselves, and accordingly God has committed 
 to us who are old and experienced the knowledge which is needful for 
 them, and he will require of us a strict account of what we have done 
 with it." — Martin Luther. 
 
 " Faith in God is the source of peace in life ; peace in life is the 
 source of inward order; inward order is the source of the unerring 
 application of our powers, and this again is the source of the growth of 
 those powers, and of their training in wisdom ; wisdom is the spring 
 of all human blessings." — Pestalozzi. 
 
 " If you follow nature, the education you give will succeed without 
 giving you trouble and perplexity ; especially if you do not insist upon 
 acquirements precocious or over-extensive." — Plato. 
 
 " It should not be claimed that there is no art or science of training 
 up to virtue. Remember how absurd it would be to believe that even 
 the most trifling employment has its rules and methods, and at the same 
 time, that the highest of all departments of human effort — virtue — can 
 be mastered without instruction and practice ! " — Cicero, 
 
I 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 The Laws of Teaching i 
 
 II. 
 The Law of the Teacher 15 
 
 III. 
 The Law of the Learner 28 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Law of the Language 48 
 
 V. 
 
 The Law of the Lesson 65 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Law of the Teaching Process 81 
 
 VII. 
 The Law of the Learning Process 104 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Law of Review n§ 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Let us, like the Master, place a little child in our midst. 
 Let us carefully observe this child that we may learn from it 
 what education is ; for education, in its broadest meaning, 
 embraces all the steps and processes by which an infant is 
 gradually transfon^ed into a full grown and intelligent man. 
 
 Let us take account of the child as it is. It has a complete 
 human body, with eyes, hands, and feet, — all the organs of 
 sense, of action and of locomotion, — and yet it lies helpless 
 in its cradle. It laughs, cries, feels, and seems to perceive, 
 remember, and will. It has all the faculties of the human 
 being, but is without power to use them save in a merely 
 animal way. 
 
 In what does this infant differ from a man? Simply in being 
 a child. Its body and limbs are small, weak, and without 
 voluntary use. Its feet can not walk. Its hands have no 
 skill. Its lips can not speak. Its eyes see without per- 
 ceiving ; its ears hear without understanding. The universe 
 into which it has come lies around it wholly unseen and 
 unknown. 
 
 As we more carefully study all this, two chief facts become 
 clear : First, this child is but a germ — it has not its destined 
 growth. Second, it is ignorant — without acquired ideas. 
 
 On these two facts rest the two notions of education, 
 (i) The development of powers. (2) The acquisition of 
 knowledge. The first is an unfolding of the faculties of body 
 and mind to full growth and strength ; the second is the 
 furnishing of the mind with the knowledge of things — of 
 the facts and truths known to the human intelligence. 
 
vi Inti'oductioii. 
 
 Each of these two facts — the child's immaturity and its 
 ignorance — might serve as a basis for a science of educa- 
 tion. The first would include a study of the faculties and 
 powers of the human being, their order of development and 
 their laws of growth and action. The second would involve 
 a study of the various branches of knowledge and arts with 
 their relations to the faculties by which they are discovered, 
 developed, and perfected. Each of these sciences would 
 necessarily draw into sight and involve the other ; just as a 
 study of powers involves a knowledge of their products, and 
 as a study of effects includes a survey of causes. 
 
 Corresponding to these two forms of educational science, 
 we find two branches of the art of education. The one is 
 the art of iraming', the other the art of teaching. Training 
 is the systematic development and cultivation of the powers 
 of mind and body. Teaching is the systematic inculcation of 
 knowledge. 
 
 As the child is immature in all its powers, it is the first 
 business of education, as an art, to cultivate those powers, by 
 giving to each power regular exercise in its own proper 
 sphere, till, through exercise and growth, they come to their 
 full strength and skill. This training may be physical, mental, 
 or moral, according to the powers trained, or the field of their 
 application. 
 
 As the child is ignorant, it is equally the business of educa- 
 tion to communicate knowledge. This is properly the work 
 of teaching. But as it is not expected that the child shall 
 acquire at school all the knowledge he will need, nor that he 
 will cease to learn when school instruction ceases, the first 
 object of teaching is to communicate such knowledge as may 
 be useful in gaining other knowledge, to stimulate in the pupil 
 the love of learning, and to form in him the habits of 
 independent study. 
 
 These two, the cultivation of the powers and the com- 
 munication of knowledge, together make up the teacher's 
 work. All organizing and governing are subsidiary to this 
 
Introduction. vii 
 
 twofold aim. The result to be sought is a full grown physi- 
 cal, intellectual, and moral manhood, with such intelligence 
 as is necessary to make life useful and happy, and as will fit 
 the soul to go on learning from all the scenes of life and from 
 all the available sources of knowledge. 
 
 These two great branches of educational art, — training and 
 teaching, — though separable in thought, are not separable in 
 practice. We can only train by teaching, and we teach best 
 when we train best. Training implies the exercise of the 
 powers to be trained ; but the proper exercise of the intellect- 
 ual powers is found in the acquisition, the elaboration, and 
 the application of knowledge. 
 
 There is, however, a practical advantage in keeping these 
 two processes of education distinct before the mind. The 
 teacher with these clearly in view will watch more easily 
 and estimate more intelligently the real progress of his pupils. 
 He will not, on the one side, be content with a dry daily 
 drill which keeps his pupils at work as in a tread-mill, without 
 any sound and substantial advance in knowledge ; nor will he, 
 on the other side, be satisfied with cramming the memory 
 with useless facts or empty names, without any increase of the 
 powers of thought and understanding. He will carefully note 
 both sides of his pupils' education — the increase of power 
 and the advance in knowledge — and will direct his labors 
 and select the lessons with a wise and skillful adaptation to 
 secure both of the ends in view. 
 
 This statement of the two sides of the science and art of 
 education brings us to the point of view from which may be 
 clearly seen the real aim of this little volume. That aim is 
 stated in its title — The Seven Laws of Teaching. Its 
 object is to set forth, in a certain systematic order, the 
 principles of the art of teaching. Incidentally it brings into 
 view the mental faculties and their order of growth. But it 
 deals with these only as they need to be considered in a clear 
 discussion of the work of acquiring knowledge. 
 
viii Introduction, 
 
 As the most obvious work of the school-room is that of 
 learning lessons from the various branches of knowledge, so 
 the work of teaching — the work of assigning, explaining, 
 and hearing these lessons — is that which chiefly occupies 
 the time and attention of the school-master or instructor. 
 To explain the laws of teaching will, therefore, seem the 
 most direct and practical way to instruct teachers in their art. 
 It presents at once the clearest and most practical view of 
 their duties, and of the methods by which they may win 
 success in their work. Having learned the laws of teaching, 
 the teacher will easily master the philosophy of training. 
 
 The author does not claim to have expounded the whole 
 Science of Education, nor to have set forth even the whole 
 Art of Teaching. This would require a systematic study of 
 each mental faculty, and of the relation of each to every 
 branch of knowledge, both of sciences and arts. But if he 
 has succeeded in grouping around the Seven Factors, which 
 are present in every act of true teaching, the leading princi- 
 ples and rules of the teaching art, so that they can be seen 
 in their natural order and connections, and can be methodi- 
 cally learned and used, he has done what he wished to do. 
 He leaves his offering on the altar of service to God and his 
 fellow-men. 
 
THE SEVEN LAWS OF TEACHING. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 THE LAWS OF TEACHING. 
 
 1. Teaching has its natural laws as fixed 
 as the laws of circling planets or of growing 
 organisms. Teaching is a process in which 
 definite forces are employed to produce definite 
 effects, and these effects follow their causes as 
 regularly and certainly as the day follows the 
 sun. What the teacher does, he does through 
 natural agencies working out their natural effects. 
 Causation is as certain, if not always as clear, 
 in the movements of mind as in the motions 
 of matter. The mind has its laws of thought, 
 feeling, and volition, and these laws are none 
 the less fixed that they are spiritual rather than 
 material. 
 
 2. To discover the laws of any process, 
 whether mental or material, makes it possible 
 to bring that process under the control of him who 
 knows the law and can command the conditions. 
 He who has learned the laws of the electric 
 currents may send messages through the ocean ; 
 
2 TJie Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 and he who has mastered the chemistry of the 
 sunbeam may make it paint him portraits and 
 landscapes. So he that masters the laws of 
 teaching may send knowledge into the depths 
 of the soul, and may impress upon the mind 
 the images of immortal truth. He who would 
 gain harvests must obey nature's laws for the 
 growing corn ; and he who would teach a child 
 successfully must follow the laws of teaching, 
 which are also laws of the mental nature. 
 Nowhere, in the world of mind or in the world 
 of matter, can man produce any effects except 
 as he employs the means on which those effects 
 depend. He is powerless to command nature's 
 forces except as, by design or by chance, he 
 obeys nature's laws. 
 
 What is Teaching? 
 
 3. Teaching, in its simplest sense, is the 
 communication of knowledge. This knowledge 
 may be a fact, a truth, a doctrine of religion, 
 a precept of morals, a story of life, or the 
 processes of an art. It may be taught by the 
 use of words, by signs, by objects, by actions, 
 or examples ; and the teaching may have for 
 its object instruction or impression — the training 
 of mind, the increase of intelligence, the im- 
 plantation of principles, or the formation of 
 character ; but whatever the substance, the mode, 
 or the aim of the teachinsf, the act itself, funda- 
 
The Laivs of Teaching. 3 
 
 mentally considered, is always substantially the 
 same : it is a communication of knowledge. It 
 is the painting in another's mind the mental 
 picture in one's own — the shaping of a pupil's 
 thought and understanding to the comprehension 
 of some truth which the teacher knows and 
 wishes to communicate. Further on we shall 
 see that the word communication is used here, 
 not in the sense of the transmission of a mental 
 something from one person to another, but rather 
 in the sense of helping another to reproduce 
 the same knowledge, and thus to make it common 
 to the two. 
 
 The Seven Factors. 
 
 4. To discover the law of any phenomenon, 
 we must subject that phenomenon to a scientific 
 analysis and study its separate parts. If any 
 complete act of teaching be so analyzed, it will 
 be found to contain seven distinct elements or 
 factors: (i) two actors — a teacher and a learner; 
 (2) two mental factors -^ a common language or 
 medium of communication, and a lesson or truth to 
 be communicated ; and (3) three functional acts 
 or processes — that of the teacher, that of the 
 learner, and a final or finishing process to test 
 and fix the result. 
 
 5. These are essential parts of every full and 
 complete act of teaching. Whether the lesson be 
 a single fact told in three minutes or a lecture 
 
4 TJie Seven Laivs of Teachmg. 
 
 occupying as many hours, the seven factors are 
 all there, if the work is entire. None of them 
 can be omitted, and no other need be added. No 
 full account of the philosophy of teaching can be 
 given which does not include them all, and if 
 there is any true science of teaching, it must lie 
 in the laws and relations of these seven elements 
 and facts. No true or successful art of teaching 
 can be found or contrived which is not based upon 
 these factors and their laws. 
 
 6. To discover their laws, let these seven 
 factors be passed again in careful review and 
 enumeration, as follows : (i) a teacher ; (2) a learner ; 
 (3) .a common language or medium of communica- 
 tion ; (4) a lesson or truth ; (5) the teacher's work ; 
 (6) the learner's work ; (7) the review work, which 
 ascertains, perfects, and fastens the work done. 
 Is it not obvious that each of these seven must 
 have its own distinct characteristic, which makes it 
 what it is } Each stands distinguished from the 
 others, and from all others, by thi» essential char- 
 acteristic, and each enters and plays its part in the 
 scene by virtue of its own character and function. 
 Each is a distinct entity or fact of nature. And 
 as every fact of nature is the product and proof 
 of some law of nature, so each element here 
 described has its own great law of function or 
 action, and these taken together constitute the 
 Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 7. It may seem trivial to so insist upon all 
 
The Laivs of Teaching. 5 
 
 this. Some will say : " Of course there can be no 
 teaching without a teacher and a pupil, without a 
 language and a lesson, and without the teacher 
 teaches and the learner learns ; or, finally, without 
 a proper review, if any assurance is to be gained 
 that the work has been successful and the result 
 is to be made permanent. All this is too obvious 
 to need assertion." So also is it obvious that 
 when seeds, soil, heat, light, and moisture come 
 together in proper measure, plants are produced 
 and grow to the harvest ; but the simplicity of 
 these common facts does not prevent their hiding 
 among them some of the profoundest and most 
 mysterious laws of nature. So, too, a simple act 
 of teaching hides within it some of the most 
 potent and significant laws of mental life and 
 action. 
 
 The Laws Stated. 
 
 8. These laws are not obscure and hard to 
 reach. They are so simple and natural that they 
 suggest themselves almost spontaneously to any 
 one who carefully notes the facts. They lie 
 imbedded in the simplest description that can be 
 given of the seven elements named, as in the 
 following : — 
 
 (i) A teacher must be one who knows the 
 lesson or truth to be taught. 
 
 (2) A learner is one who attends with interest 
 to the lesson given. 
 
6 The Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 (3) The language used as a medium between 
 teacher and learner must be common to both. 
 
 (4) The lesson to be learned must be explicable 
 in the terms of truth already known by the 
 learner — the unknown must be explained by 
 
 the KNOWN. 
 
 (5) Teaching \?, arousing and using the pupil's 
 mind to form in it a desired conception or thought. 
 
 (6) Learning!?, thinking into one's own under- 
 standing a new idea or truth. 
 
 (7) The test and proof of teaching done — the 
 finishing and fastening process — must be a 
 
 RE-VIEWING, re-thinking, RE-KNOWING, and RE- 
 PRODUCING of the knowledge taught. 
 
 The Laws Stated as Rules. 
 
 9. These definitions and statements are so 
 simple and obvious as to need no argument or 
 proof ; but their force as fundamental laws may be 
 more clearly seen if stated as rules for teaching. 
 Addressed to the teacher, they may read as 
 follows : — 
 
 I. Know thoroughly and familiarly the lesson 
 you wish to teach ; or, in other words, teach from 
 a full mind and a clear understanding. 
 
 II. Gain and keep the attention and interest 
 of the pupils upon the lesson. Refuse to teach 
 without attention. 
 
 III. Use words understood by both teacher 
 and pupil in the same sense — language clear 
 and vivid alike to both. 
 
The Laws of Teaching. *j 
 
 IV. Begin with what is already well known to 
 the pupil in the lesson or upon the subject, and 
 proceed to the unknown by single, easy, and 
 natural steps, letting the known explain the 
 unknown. 
 
 V. Use the pupil's own mind, exciting his self- 
 activities. Keep his thoughts as much as possible 
 ahead of your expression, making him a discoverer 
 of truth. 
 
 VI. Require the pupil to reproduce in thought 
 the lesson he is learning — thinking it out in its 
 parts, proofs, connections, and applications till he 
 can express it in his own language. 
 
 VII. Review, review, review, reproducing cor- 
 rectly the old, deepening its impression with new 
 thought, correcting false views, and completing 
 the true. 
 
 Essentials of Successful Teaching. 
 
 lO. These rules, and the laws which they cut- 
 line and presuppose, underlie and govern all suc- 
 cessful teaching. If taken in their broadest 
 meaning, nothing need be added to them ; nothing 
 can be safely taken away. No one who will 
 thoroughly master and use them need fail as a 
 teacher, provided he will also maintain the good 
 order which is necessary to give them free and 
 undisturbed action. Disorder, noise, and con- 
 fusion may hinder and prevent the results desired, 
 just as the constant disturbance of some chemical 
 
8 The Seven Lazvs of Teaching. 
 
 elements forbids the formation of the compounds 
 which the laws of chemistry would otherwise 
 produce. Good order is a condition precedent to 
 good teaching. 
 
 11. Like all the great laws of nature, these 
 laws of teaching will seem at first simple facts, 
 so obvious as scarcely to require such formal 
 statement, and so plain that no explanation can 
 make clearer their meaning. But, like all funda- 
 mental truths, their simplicity is more apparent 
 than real. Each law varies in applications and 
 effects with varying minds and persons, though 
 remaining constant in itself ; and each stands 
 related to other laws and facts, in long and wide 
 successions, till it reaches the outermost limits of 
 the science of teaching. Indeed, in a careful 
 study of these seven laws, to which we shall pro- 
 ceed in coming chapters, the discussion will reach 
 every valuable principle in education, and every 
 practical rule which can be of use in the teacher's 
 work. 
 
 12. They cover all teaching of all subjects and 
 in all grades, since they are the fundamental con- 
 ditions on which ideas may be made to pass from 
 one mind to another, or on which the unknown 
 can become known. They are as valid and use- 
 ful for the college professor as for the master of a 
 common school ; for the teaching of a Bible truth 
 as for instruction in arithmetic. In proportion as 
 the truth to be communicated is high and difficult 
 
The Laws of Teaching. 9 
 
 to be understood, or as the pupils to be instructed 
 are young and ignorant, ought they to be carefully 
 followed. 
 
 13. Doubtless there are many successful 
 teachers who never heard of these laws, and who 
 do not consciously follow them ; just as there are 
 people who walk safely without any theoretical 
 knowledge of gravitation, and talk intelligibly 
 without studying grammar.. Like the musician 
 who plays by ear, and without knowledge of notes, 
 these '' natural teachers," as they are called, have 
 learned the laws of teaching from practice, and 
 obey them from habit. It is none the less true 
 that their success comes from obeying law, and 
 not in spite of laws. They catch by intuition the 
 secret of success, and do by a sort of instinct 
 what others do by rule and reflection. A careful 
 study of their methods would show how closely 
 they follow these principles ; and if there is any 
 exception it is in the cases in which their wonder- 
 ful practical mastery of some of the rules — usually 
 the first three — allows them to give slighter heed 
 to the others. To those who do not belong to this 
 class of "natural teachers," the knowledge of these 
 laws is of vital necessity. 
 
 Skill and Enthusiasm. 
 
 14. Let no one fear that a study of the laws of 
 teaching will tend to substitute a cold, mechanical 
 sort of work for the warm-hearted, enthusiastic 
 
lO The Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 teaching so often admired and praised. True skill 
 kindles and keeps alive enthusiasm by giving it 
 success where it would otherwise be discouraged 
 by defeat. The true worker's love for his work 
 grows with his ability to do it well. Even enthu- 
 siasm will accomplish more when guided by intel- 
 ligence and armed with skill, while the many who 
 lack the rare gift of an enthusiastic nature must 
 work by rule and skill or fail altogether. 
 
 15. Unreflecting superintendents and school- 
 boards often prefer enthusiastic teachers to those 
 who are simply well educated or experienced. 
 They count, not untruly, that enthusiasm will ac- 
 complish more with poor learning and little skill 
 than the best trained and most erudite teacher 
 who has no heart in his work, and who goes 
 through his task without zeal for progress and 
 without care for results. But why choose either 
 the ignorant enthusiast or the educated sluggard .? 
 Enthusiasm is not confined to the unskilled and 
 the ignorant, nor are all calm, cool men idlers. 
 Conscience and the strong sense of right and duty 
 often exist where the glow of enthusiasm is un- 
 known or has passed away. And there is an 
 enthusiasm born of skill — a joy in doing what 
 one can do well — that is far more effective, where 
 art is involved, than the enthusiasm born of vivid 
 feeling. The steady advance of veterans is far 
 more powerful than the mad rush of raw recruits. 
 The world's best work, in the schools as in the 
 
The Lazvs of Teaching. i 1 
 
 shops, is done by the calm, steady, persistent 
 efforts of skilled workmen who know how to keep 
 their tools sharp, and to make every effort reach its 
 mark. No teacher perhaps ever excelled Pestalozzi 
 in enthusiasm, and few have ever personally done 
 poorer work. 
 
 1 6. But the most serious objection to systematic 
 teaching, based on the laws of teaching, comes 
 from Sunday-school men, pastors and others, who 
 assume that the principal aim of the Sunday-school 
 is to impress and convert rather than to instruct ; 
 and that skilful teaching, if desirable at all, is much 
 less important than warm appeals to the feelings 
 and earnest exhortations to the conscience. No 
 one denies the value of such appeals and exhorta- 
 tions, nor the duty of teachers, in both day-schools 
 and Sunday-schools, to make them on all fit oppor- 
 tunities. But what is to be the basis of the Sunday 
 teacher's appeals, if not the truths of Scripture .? 
 What religious exhortation will come home with 
 such abiding power as that which enters the mind 
 with some clear Bible truth, some unmistakable 
 "Thus saith the Lord," in its front.? What 
 preacher wins more souls than Moody with his 
 open Bible ever in hand.? What better rule for 
 teacher or pupil than the Master's "Search the 
 Scriptures " .? What finer example than that of 
 Paul who "reasoned" with both prejudiced Jews 
 and caviling Greeks "out of the Scriptures".? 
 If the choice must be between the warm-hearted 
 
12 The Seven Laivs of Teaching. 
 
 teacher who simply gushes appeals, and the cold- 
 hearted who stifles all feeling by his icy indifference, 
 give me the former by all odds ; but why either ? 
 Is there no healthful mean between steam and ice 
 for the water of life ? Will the teacher whose 
 own mind glows with the splendid light of divine 
 truths, and who skillfully leads his pupils to a clear 
 vision of the same truths, fail in inspirational 
 power? Is not the divine truth itself — the very 
 Word of God — to be credited with any power to 
 arouse the conscience and convert the soul ? 
 
 17. These questions may be left to call forth 
 their own inevitable answers. They will have met 
 their full purpose if they repel this disposition to 
 discredit the need of true teaching-work, in Sun- 
 day-schools as well as in common schools ; and if 
 they convince Sunday-school leaders that the great 
 natural laws of teaching are God's own laws of 
 mind, which must be followed as faithfully in 
 learning his Word as in studying his works. 
 
 A W^ord to Teachers. 
 
 1 8. Leaving to other chapters the full discussion 
 of the meaning and philosophy of these seven 
 laws, we only add here the exhortation to the 
 teacher, and especially to the Sunday-school 
 teacher, to give them the most serious attention. 
 Sitting before your class of veiled immortals, how 
 often have you craved the power to look into the 
 depths of those young souls, and to plant there 
 
The Laws of Teaching. 1 3 
 
 with sure hand some truth of science or some 
 grand and Hfe-giving belief of the gospel ? How 
 often have you tried your utmost, by all the meth- 
 ods you could devise, to direct their minds to the 
 deep truths and facts of the Bible lesson, and 
 turned away, almost in despair, to find how power- 
 less you were to command the mental movement 
 and to secure the spiritual result? No key will 
 ever open to you the doors of those chambers in 
 which live your pupils' souls ; no glass will ever 
 enable you to penetrate their mysterious gloom. 
 But in the great laws of your common nature lie 
 the electric lines by which you may send into each 
 little mind the thought fresh from your own, and 
 awaken the young heart to receive and embrace it. 
 He who made us all of kindred nature settled the 
 spiritual laws by which our minds must communi- 
 cate, and made possible that art of arts which 
 passes thought and truth from soul to soul. 
 
 19. Remark. In the discussion of these laws 
 there will necessarily occur some seeming repeti- 
 tions. They are like seven hill-tops of different 
 height scattered over a common territory. As we 
 climb each in succession, many points in the land- 
 scapes seen from their summits will be found 
 included in different views, but it will be always in 
 a new light and with a fresh horizon. The truth 
 that is common to two or more of these laws will 
 be found a mere repetition. New groupings will 
 show new relations and bring to light for the care- 
 
14 TJie Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 fill student new aspects and uses. The repetitions 
 themselves will not be useless, as they will serve to 
 emphasize the most important features of the art 
 of teaching, and will impress upon the younger 
 teachers those principles which demand the most 
 frequent attention. 
 
Chapter II. 
 
 THE LAW OF THE TEACHER. 
 
 I. The universal reign of law is the central 
 truth of modern science. No force in man or 
 nature but works under the control of law ; no 
 effect in mind or matter but is produced in con- 
 formity with law. The simplest notion of natural 
 law is that nature remains forever uniform in its 
 forces and operations. Causes compel their effects, 
 and effects obey their causes, by irresistible laws. 
 Things are what they are by reason of the laws of 
 their being, and to learn the law of any fact is to 
 learn the deepest truth we can know about it. 
 This uniformity of nature is the basis of all science 
 and of all practical art. In mind and in matter the 
 reign of unvarying laws is the primal condition of any 
 true science. The mind, indeed, has its freedoms, 
 but among these there is found no liberty to produce 
 effects contrary to laws. The teacher is therefore 
 as much the subject of law as the star that 
 shines or the ship that sails. Many qualifications 
 are easily recognized as important to the teacher's 
 position and work ; and if all the requirements 
 popularly sought for could be obtained, the teacher 
 would be a model man or woman ; perfect in 
 
1 6 TJie Seven Lazvs of Teaching. 
 
 manners, pure in morals, unerring in wisdom, just 
 in judgment, loving in temper, firm in will, tireless 
 in work, conscientious in word and deed, a genius 
 in learning, an angel in charity, an incarnate 
 assemblage of impossible excellencies. Certainly, 
 good character and rare moral qualities are desira- 
 ble in an instructor of the young, if not for his 
 actual work, at least to prevent harm from his 
 example ; but if, one by one, we dismiss from our 
 catalogue of needful qualifications for the work of 
 teaching those not absolutely indispensable, we 
 shall find ourselves obliged to retain at last, as 
 necessary to the very notion of teaching, a knowl- 
 edge of the branches to be taught. 
 
 The Law of the Teacher, then, — the law which 
 limits and describes him, — is this : — 
 
 The teacher must know that which he would teach. 
 
 Philosophy of the La\v. 
 
 2. It seems too simple for proof that one can 
 not teach without knowledge. How can something 
 come out of nothing, or how can darkness give 
 light ? To affirm this law seems like declaring a 
 truism ; but deeper study shows it to be a funda- 
 mental truth — the very law of the teacher's action 
 and being as a teacher. No other characteristic 
 or qualification is so fundamental and essential. 
 The law will reveal a deeper truth if we reverse 
 its terms and read : What the teacher knows he 
 must teach. There is an inborn need and desire in 
 
TJie Lazv of the Teacher. 1 7 
 
 man for expression. It is the instinctive impulse 
 to tell in some way, by word or action, our thoughts 
 and emotions so soon as they become vivid and 
 intense enough. It is the teaching passion. 
 '' While I was musing the fires burned : then spake 
 I with my tongue." Other motives and impulses 
 may mingle and aid, but this is primary and funda- 
 mental. The hot heart — hot with visions and 
 discovered truth — forces speech, or teaching 
 which is better than speech. 
 
 3. The word know stands central in the law 
 of the teacher. K7iowledge is the material with 
 which the teacher works, and the first reason of 
 the law must be sought in the nature of knowl- 
 edge. What men call knowledge is of all degrees, 
 from the first dim glimpse of a fact or truth to 
 the full and familiar understanding of that fact or 
 truth in all its parts and aspects — its philosophy, 
 its beauty, and its power, (i) We may know a 
 fact so faintly as merely to recognize it when an- 
 other tells it ; (2) we may know it in such degree 
 as to be able to recall it for ourselves, or to describe 
 it in a general way to another ; (3) better still, we 
 may so know it that we can readily explain, prove, 
 and illustrate it ; or (4), mounting to the highest 
 grade of knowledge, we may so know and vividly 
 see. a-- truth in its deeper significance and wider 
 relations that its importance, grandeur, or beauty 
 impresses and inspires us. History is history only 
 to him >vho thus reads and knows it ; and Scripture 
 
1 8 The Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 is Holy Writ only when seen by this inner light. 
 It is this last form of knowledge which must be 
 read into the law of the true teacher. 
 
 4. It is not affirmed that no one can teach with- 
 out this fulness of knowledge ; nor is it true that 
 every one who knows his lessons thus thoroughly 
 will teach successfully. But imperfect knowing 
 must make imperfect teaching. What a man does 
 not know he can-not teach, or, if he teaches, can 
 not know that he teaches. But the law of the 
 teacher is only one of the laws of teaching. Fail- 
 ure may come from the violation of other condi- 
 tions as well as from neglect of this. So, too, 
 success may come from obedience to other laws. 
 A poor, illiterate mother may so inspire the ambi- 
 tion of her boy that he will work out his lessons 
 from a book without a teacher. Many a teacher 
 can do little more than to study up the lesson of 
 the day, and may use that skillfully to set his 
 pupils to work; but teaching must be uncertain 
 and limping with such limitations of knowledge. 
 
 5. A truth can be fully seen only in the light 
 of other truths. It is known by its resemblances. 
 A fact which is only partly known never reveals 
 its thousand beautiful analogies to other facts. It 
 stands alone, beclouded and barren — half fact and 
 half phantom. The eye catches no fine resem- 
 blances, and the understanding finds no fruitful 
 relations, linking it to the great body of truth. 
 The imagination looks in vain for the light of some 
 
The Lazv of the Teacher. 19 
 
 rich and beautiful simile to transfigure the truth 
 seen only in dim outline, or known only in shape- 
 less and imperfect fragments. Only amid facts 
 vividly seen, and among truths clearly and splen- 
 didly conceived, are to be discovered the images 
 of grander facts and the shadowy forms of wider 
 truths. The power of illustration — that chief and 
 central power in the teacher's art — comes only 
 out of clear and familiar knowledge. The unknow- 
 ing teacher is the Wind trying to lead the blind 
 with only an empty lamp to light the way. 
 
 6. Take the common facts taught in the geog- 
 raphies of the schools, — the roundness of the 
 earth, the extent of oceans and continents, moun- 
 tains, rivers, and peopled states and cities, — how 
 tame and slight in interest as known to the half- 
 taught teacher and his pupils ; but how grand and 
 imposing as seen by the great astronomers, geolo- 
 gists, and geographers — the Herschels, Danas, 
 and Guyots ! To these appear in vision the long 
 processions of age-filling causes and revolutions 
 which have not only given shape to this enormous 
 globe, but have peopled the boundless universe 
 with countless millions of similar and still grander 
 spheres — causes which yet move and work in the 
 ceaseless march of suns and systems, in the per- 
 petual roll of the earth's revolutions, in the swine; 
 of tides, the sweep of winds and storms, the flow 
 of rivers, the slow heave of the continents, the 
 incessant climatic changes and seasons, and in all 
 
20 The Seven Laivs of Teaching. 
 
 the various births, growths, and decays of nature 
 and mankind. To such teachers geography is but 
 a chapter in the science and history of the uni- 
 verse, borrowing hght and meaning from all that 
 goes before or follows. So, too, the great texts 
 and truths of Holy Writ : how meager in meaning 
 to the careless reader and the unstudious teacher ! 
 but how brilliant and burning with divine fact and 
 truths to him who brings to its study the converg- 
 ing lights of history, science, and experience ! 
 
 7. But the law of the teacher goes deeper still. 
 Truth must be clearly understood before it can be 
 vividly felt. Only the true scholars in any science 
 grow enthusiastic over its glories and grandeurs. 
 It is the clearness of their mental vision which 
 inspires the wonderful eloquence of the poet and 
 orator, and makes them the born teachers of their 
 race. It was Hugh Miller, the deep-read geologist, 
 whose trained eye deciphered, and whose eloquent 
 pen recorded, "The Testimony of the Rocks." 
 Kepler, the great astronomer, grew wild as the 
 mysteries of the stars unrolled before him, and 
 Agassiz could not afford time to lecture for money 
 while absorbed in the deep study of the old dead 
 fishes of an ancient world. He must ever be a 
 cold and lifeless teacher who only half knows the 
 lessons he would teach ; but he whose soul has 
 caught fire from the truths which he carries, glows 
 with a contagious enthusiasm and unconsciously 
 inspires his pupils with his own deep interest. 
 
TJie Lazu of the Teacher. 21 
 
 " Much learning doth make thee mad," said the 
 half-startled Festus, as Paul, the great apostle, told 
 with irrepressible warmth the story so vivid in his 
 remembrance, so fresh in his feeling. 
 
 8. This earnest feeling of truths clearly and 
 grandly conceived is the very secret of the earnest- 
 ness and enthusiasm so much praised and admired 
 in teacher and preacher. Even common truths 
 become transformed and grand in the mind and 
 heart of such a teacher. History turns to a living 
 panorama ; geography swells out into great conti- 
 nental stretches of peopled kingdoms ; astronomy 
 becomes the marshaled march of shining worlds 
 and world-systems, and Bible truths grow sublime 
 as with the felt presence of Deity. How can the 
 teacher's manner fail to be earnest and inspiring 
 when his matter is so rich with radiant reality .'* 
 
 9. While knowledge thus thoroughly and famil- 
 iarly known rouses into higher action all the 
 powers of the teacher, it also gives him the unfet- 
 tered command and use of those powers. Instead 
 of the hurry and worry of one who has to glean 
 from the text-book each moment the answers to 
 the questions he has asked, he who knows his 
 lesson as he ought is at home, on familiar ground, 
 and can watch at ease the efforts of his class and 
 direct with certainty the current of their thoughts. 
 He is ready to recognize and interpret their first 
 faint glimpses of the truth, to remove the obsta- 
 cles from their path, and to aid and encourage 
 
22 TJie Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 their struggling search by the skillful hint which 
 flashes a half-revealing light into the too thick 
 darkness. 
 
 lO. A teacher's ready and evident knowledge 
 helps to give the pupil needed confidence. We 
 follow with eager expectation and delight the 
 guide who shows thorough knowledge of the field 
 we wish to explore, but we drag reluctantly and 
 without interest after an ignorant and incompe- 
 tent leader. Children instinctively object to 
 being taught by one whom they have found to be 
 ignorant or unready in their lessons, just as sol- 
 diers refuse to follow an incompetent commander. 
 Nor is this all. As the great scholars, the New- 
 tons, the Humboldts, and the Huxlcys kindle pub- 
 lic interest in the sciences which lend them their 
 renown, so the ripe knowledge of the well-prepared 
 teacher awakens in his class the active desire to 
 know more of the studies in which he is profi- 
 cient. Science and religion are never so attract- 
 ive as when seen through a living scholar or 
 Christian. And yet it must be confessed that the 
 ability to inspire puj^ils with a love of study is 
 sometimes lacking even where great knowledge is 
 possessed ; and this lack is fatal to all successful 
 teaching, especially among young pupils. Better 
 a teacher with limited knowledge but with this 
 power to stimulate his pupils than a very Agassiz 
 without it. The cooped hen may by her encourag- 
 ing cluck send forth her chickens to the fields she 
 
TJie Law of the Teacher. 23 
 
 can not herself explore ; but sad the fate of the 
 brood if they remain in the coop while she goes 
 abroad to feed. 
 
 II. Such is the profound philosophy, the wide 
 
 and generous meaning, of this first great law of 
 teaching. Thus understood, it clearly portrays the 
 splendid ideal which no one except the Great 
 Teacher ever fully realized, but which every true 
 teacher must more or less nearly approach. -- It 
 defines with scientific certainty the forces with 
 which the successful teacher must go to his work. 
 From the mother teaching her child to talk, to the 
 highest teacher of science, the orator instructing 
 listening senates, and the preacher teaching great 
 congregations, this law knows no exceptions and 
 allows no successful violations. It affirms every- 
 where, the teacher must knozv that zvhich he would 
 teach. Out of this one fundamental law must 
 arise every practical rule to guide the teacher in 
 preparing for his work. 
 
 Rules for Teachers. 
 
 12. Among the rules which arise out of the 
 Law of the Teacher, the following are the most 
 important : — • 
 
 (i) Prepare each lesson by fresh study. Last 
 year's knowledge has necessarily faded somewhat. 
 Only fresh conceptions warm and inspire us. 
 
 (2) Seek in the lesson its analogies and like- 
 nesses to more familiar truths. In these lie the 
 illustrations by which it may be taught to others. 
 
24 J^hc Seven Laivs of TeacJimg. 
 
 (3) Study the lesson till its thoughts take shape 
 in familiar language. The final proof and product 
 of clear thought is clear speech. 
 
 (4) Find the natural order and connection of 
 the several facts and truths in the lesson. In 
 every science there is a natural path of ascent, 
 from its simplest notions to its sublimest outlooks. 
 So, too, in every lesson. The temple of truth is 
 not a jumbled mass of disjointed facts. 
 
 (5) Seek the relation of the lesson to the 
 lives and duties of the learners. The practical 
 value of truth lies in these relations. 
 
 (6) Use freely all aids^ but never rest till the 
 truth rises clear before you as a vision seen by 
 your own eyes. 
 
 (7) Ask for <:?//the facts and views of a subject, 
 but be sure to master some. Better to know one 
 truth well than to know a hundred imperfectly. 
 
 (8) Have a time for the study of each lesson, 
 and, if possible, some days in advance of the teach- 
 ing. All things help the duty done on time, but 
 all things hinder or hurry the duty out of time. 
 The mind keeps on studying the lesson learned in 
 advance, and gathers fresh interest and illustra- 
 tions. 
 
 (9) Have a plan of study, but study beyond the 
 plan. I once suggested as an artificial but helpful 
 plan for the study of a Bible lesson the letters of 
 the word BIBLE. B — Book in which the lesson 
 is found, with its date, author, object, and contents 
 
TJie Laiv of the Teacher. 25 
 
 or scope. I — Intention of the lesson ; the in- 
 cluded facts, and the interpretation of those facts. 
 B — Blessings and Benefits to be gained from the 
 lesson. L — Losses likely to follow from a failure 
 to learn and obey. E — Examples, Experiences, 
 and Exhortation. Let the teacher address each 
 point as a question to his own mind, and think till 
 he gets an answer — and an answer that is true. 
 The three questions What } How } and Why t 
 afford a more perfect mnemonic, calling for more 
 scientific research and applying to all branches of 
 knowledge. 
 
 (10) Do not deny yourself the help of good 
 books on the subject of the lessons. Buy, borrow, 
 or beg, if necessary, but get the help of the best 
 scholars and thinkers, enough at least to set your 
 own thoughts going ; but do not read without 
 deep and original thinking. If possible, talk your 
 lesson over with an intelligent friend. Collision 
 often brings light. In the absence of these aids, 
 write your views. The nib of the pen digs deep 
 into the mines of truth. Expressing thought 
 often clears it of its dross and obscurities. 
 
 Violations and Mistakes. 
 
 1 3. The discussion would be incomplete without 
 some notice of the frequent violations of the law. 
 Some one has said : " The secret of success is to 
 make no mistakes." Certain it is that the best 
 teacher may spoil his most careful and earnest 
 work by some small and careless blunder. 
 
26 The Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 (i) The very ignorance of his pupils often tempts 
 the teacher to neglect all preparation and study. 
 He thinks that at any rate he will know much 
 more of the lesson than the children can, and 
 counts that he will find something to say about it, 
 or that at worst his ignorance will pass unnoticed. 
 A sad mistake, and often costing dear ! Some 
 bright or studious pupil is almost sure to discover 
 the cheat, and henceforth that teacher's credit 
 with his class is gone. 
 
 (2) Some teachers assume that it is the pupils' 
 work, not theirs, to study the lesson ; and that 
 with the aid of the book in hand, they will easily 
 enough be able to ascertain if the children have 
 done their duty. Better let one of the pupils who 
 knows his lesson examine the others, and sit by as 
 a learner, rather than discourage study by your 
 too evident ignorance and indifference. 
 
 (3) Others look hastily through the lesson, and 
 conclude that though they have not mastered it, 
 nor perhaps one thought in it, they have gathered 
 enough to fill the brief hour, and they can, if need- 
 ful, eke out the little they know with random talk 
 or story. Or, lacking time or heart for any prep- 
 aration, they carelessly dismiss all thought of 
 teaching, fill the hour with such exercises as may 
 occur to them, and hope that, as the Sunday-school 
 is a good thing, the children will get some good 
 from mere attendance. 
 
 (4) A more serious fault is that of those who, 
 failing to find anything in the lesson, try to graft 
 
TJie Lazv of the TcacJier. 27 
 
 something upon it, and make it a mere cart to 
 carry their own fancies on. 
 
 (5) There is a meaner, if not also a more mis- 
 chievous, wrong done by the teacher who seeks to 
 conceal his lazy ignorance by some pompous pre- 
 tence of learning, hiding his lack of knowledge by 
 an array of high-sounding words beyond the com- 
 prehension of his pupils, uttering solemn plati- 
 tudes in a wise tone, or claiming extensive study 
 and profound information which he has not the 
 time to lay properly before them. Who has not 
 seen or heard all these shams practised upon 
 children .-* 
 
 Thus a majority, perhaps, of teachers go to their 
 work either wholly without the requisite knowl- 
 edge, or only partly prepared for their task. They 
 go like messengers without a message, and all 
 wanting in that power and enthusiasm which fresh 
 truth alone can give ; and so the grand fruits we 
 look for from this great army of workers seem 
 long in coming, if not beyond hope. Let this first 
 great fundamental law of teaching be thoroughly 
 obeyed, or even as fully as the circumstances of 
 our teachers will permit, and there will come to 
 our schools an attractive charm which would at 
 once increase their numbers and double their use- 
 fulness. The school-rooms, now so often dark and 
 dull, would glow as with a living light, and teach- 
 ers and pupils, instead of dragging to their weary 
 task, would hasten to their meeting as to a joyous 
 feast. 
 
Chapter III. 
 
 THE LAW OF THE LEARNER. 
 
 I. Passing from the side of the teacher to the 
 side of the pupil, our next inquiry is for the Laiv 
 of the Learner. Here the search must be for that 
 one characteristic, if there be such, which divides 
 and differentiates the learner from other persons 
 — for that essential element which makes the 
 learner a learner. Let us place before us the suc- 
 cessful scholar, and note carefully whatever is 
 peculiar and essential in his action and attributes. 
 His intent look, his absorbed manner, his face full 
 of eager action or of profound study, — all these 
 are but so many signs of deep interest and active 
 attention. This interest and attention, the insep- 
 arable parts of one mental state, make up the 
 essential attribute of every true learner. The 
 very power to learn lies in this interested atten- 
 tion. It is the one essential condition on which 
 all learning is possible. It constitutes, therefore, 
 the natural law of the learner, and may be stated 
 in preceptive form as follows : — 
 
 The learner must attend with Interest to the fact 
 or truth to be /earned. 
 
The Law of the Learner. 2g 
 
 2. The law thus stated will seem as trite as a 
 common truism, but it is as really profound as it is 
 seemingly simple. The plainest proof of its truth 
 lies in the readiness with which every one will 
 admit it. Its real depth can only be found by 
 careful study. 
 
 Attention Described. 
 
 3. Avoiding as much as possible all metaphysi- 
 cal discussion, we may describe attention as a 
 mental attitude — the attitude in which the 
 thought-power is actively bent toward, or fast- 
 ened upon, some object of thought or percep- 
 tion. It is an attitude, not of ease and repose, 
 but of effort and exertion. It means not merely 
 position and direction, but action. It is the 
 will-power marshaling all the faculties of the 
 mind for some expected onset, or holding them 
 with steady front in the midst of conflict and 
 activity. It may be seen in the man who, stand- 
 ing with idle, vacant stare, gazing at nothing, is 
 suddenly aroused by some sight or sound. At 
 once a light comes into the eye, the look becomes 
 alert, and the mind is put into conscious action. 
 There is a felt strain of the thinking faculty, as 
 of an appetite hungering for its food — an intent 
 fastening of the intellect upon its chosen objects. 
 This aroused activity of the mind — this awakened 
 attitude of mental power, poised and eager for its 
 work — we call Attention. 
 
30 The Seven Lazvs of Teachi7ig. 
 
 Compelled and Attracted Attention. 
 
 4. We may somewhat loosely divide attention 
 into two classes : compelled and attraeted. The 
 first is given by an effort of the will, in obedience 
 to some command of authority, or call of irksome 
 duty ; the second springs from desire, and is given 
 without conscious effort and with eager delight. 
 The first is cold, mechanical, and powerless ; it is 
 the child studying its lesson as a task, with slight 
 interest and no pleasure. The second is living 
 and full of power, the mind eager to grasp and 
 possess its object. It is that of the boy reading a 
 story full of wonder and delight. Compelled 
 attention in adults is dull and dogged ; in little 
 children it is partial even when possible. Gener- 
 ally it is not attention at all. The face may take 
 on the look of attention, but the mind wanders to 
 more winsome objects. It learns to hate lessons 
 as slaves hate labor. Attracted attention is men- 
 tal power alert with desire and eager for gratifica- 
 tion. It is mental hunger seeking its food, and 
 delighting itself as at a feast. Unconscious of 
 exertion, it gathers strength from its efforts, and 
 scarcely knows fatigue. 
 
 5. Compelled attention is short-lived and easily 
 exhausted. Its very painfulness wearies the 
 powers of body and mind. If urged too far, its ten- 
 sion breaks, and the child yawns and even sleeps 
 with exhaustion, or cries with pain and anger. 
 
The Law of the Learner. 3 1 
 
 Attracted attention, on the other hand, is full of 
 power and endurance. Its felt interest calls dor- 
 mant energies into play, and the pleasure given by 
 its efforts seems to refresh rather than weary the 
 mind. The boy forced to study what he does not 
 like feels thoroughly tired in half an hour. Give 
 him now a story which he enjoys, and he will read 
 without a sign of weariness for two or three hours 
 longer, till the tired body rebels, and will not sit 
 still any longer. 
 
 6. At times in the outset of a lesson or of a 
 subject, there may seem a need of securing the 
 attention of the class or of some members of it 
 by a gentle compulsion, an appeal to the sense of 
 duty, or other like means ; but the effort in such 
 case should be made to transform this compelled 
 attention into that which is fuller of spontaneity 
 and power. We may be obliged to lift a sleepy child 
 to his feet by main strength, but unless we can 
 waken him soon to walk by himself, his progress 
 will be slow and small. The same holds true in 
 mental movements. 
 
 Degrees of Attention. 
 
 7. These two classes of attention melt into each 
 other by almost insensible degrees. The com- 
 pelled sometimes rises into true or attracted atten- 
 tion by some kindling of interest in the subject ; 
 and not unfrequently the latter sinks into the 
 former with the disappearance of novelty in the 
 
32 TJic Seven Laws of TcacJiing. 
 
 lesson. Of these degrees or grades in attention, 
 the first and lowest is that in which the physical 
 senses, the eye and ear especially, are lent to the 
 teacher, and the mind almost passively receives 
 what the teacher is able to impress forcibly upon 
 it. This grade of attention is too common to need 
 description. It may be seen in nearly all school- 
 rooms, and in most classes at the beginning of the 
 lesson. The pupils sit at ease waiting to be 
 aroused. 
 
 8. From this lowest grade the intellect lifts itself 
 by successive steps to higher activity and power 
 under some impulse of duty, of sympathy, of emu- 
 lation, or of hope of reward, or other motives 
 addressed to it it by the skillful teacher. But the 
 highest grade of attention is that in which the sub- 
 ject interests, the feeling is enlisted, and the whole 
 nature attends. Eye, ear, intellect, and heart con- 
 center their powers in a combined effort, and the 
 soul sends to the task all its faculties roused to 
 their utmost activity. Such is the attitude of the 
 true learner, and such is the attention demanded 
 by this law of the learner in its perfect fulfillment. 
 Every experienced teacher knows how easy is the 
 teaching, and how rapid the learning, when the law 
 is thus fulfilled. 
 
 The Philosophy of the Law. 
 
 9. However much teachers may neglect it in 
 practice, they readily admit in theory that without 
 
TJie Law of the Learner, 33 
 
 attention the pupil can learn nothing. One may 
 as well talk to the deaf or the dead as to teach a 
 child who is wholly inattentive. All this seems 
 too obvious to need discussion ; but a brief survey 
 of the psychological facts which underlie this law 
 will bring out into clearer and more impressive 
 light its vital force and its irrevocable authority. 
 10. Knowledge can not be passed, like some 
 material substance, from one person to another. 
 Thoughts are not things which may be held and 
 handled. They are the unseen and silent acts of 
 the invisible mind. Ideas, the products of thought, 
 can only be communicated by inducing in the 
 receiving mind action correspondent to that by 
 which these ideas were first conceived. In other 
 words, ideas can only be transmitted by being re- 
 thought. It is obvious, therefore, that something 
 more is required than a passive presentation of the 
 pupil's mind to the teacher's mind as face turns to 
 face. The pupil must think. His mind must 
 work, not in a vague way, without object or direc- 
 tion, but under the control of the will, and with a 
 fixed aim and purpose ; in other words, with atten- 
 tion. It is not enough to look and listen. The 
 learner's mind must work through the senses. 
 There must be mind in the eye, in the ear, in the 
 hand. If the mental power is only half aroused 
 and feeble in its action, the conceptions gained 
 will be faint and fragmentary, and the knowledge 
 acquired will be as inaccurate and useless as it will 
 
34 TJie Seven Lazus of Teaching. 
 
 be fleeting. Teacher and text-book may be full of 
 knowledge, but the learner will get from them only 
 so much as his power of attention, vigorously 
 exercised, enables him to shape in his own mind. 
 Knowledge is inseparable from the act of knowing. 
 If the power of knowing is small, the actual knowl- 
 edge acquired will also be small. 
 
 11. The notion that the mind can be made 
 merely recipient — a bag to be filled with other 
 people's ideas, a piece of paper on which another 
 may write, a cake of wax under the seal — is 
 neither safe nor philosophical. The very nature 
 of mind, as far as we can understand it, is that of 
 a self-acting power or force — a force with a will 
 within it, and full of attractions and repulsions for 
 the objects around it. It is among these felt 
 attractions or repulsions that the self-moving mind 
 finds its motives. Without motive there is no 
 will ; without will no attention ; without attention 
 no perception or intelligence. The striking clock 
 may sound as loud as ever in the portal of the ear, 
 and the .passing object may paint its image as clear 
 as light in the open eye, but the absorbed and 
 inattentive mind hears no voice and sees no vision. 
 What reader has not sometime read a whole page 
 with the eyes, and when he reached the bottom 
 found himself unable to recall a single word or 
 idea it contained .? The sense had done its work, 
 but the mind had been busy with other thoughts. 
 
 12. The vigor of mental action, like that of 
 
The Law of the Lem^ner. 35 
 
 muscular action, is proportioned to the feeling 
 which inspires it. The powers of the intellect do 
 not come forth in their full 'strength at the mere 
 command of a teacher, nor on the call of some 
 cold sense of duty. Nor can the mind exert its 
 full force upon themes which but lightly touch the 
 feelings. It is only when we *'work with a will," 
 that is, with a keen and stirring interest in our 
 work, that we bring our faculties of body or mind 
 out in their fullest energy. Great occasions make 
 men great. Unsuspected reserve powers come 
 forth as soon as the demand is large enough. In 
 the heat of a great battle, common men become 
 heroic, and weak men strong. So, with deepen- 
 ing interest, attention deepens, and the mind's 
 reserve powers come into work. 
 
 Sources of Interest. 
 
 13. The sources of interest, which are the 
 approaches to the attention, are as numerous as 
 the faculties and desires of man and the different 
 aspects of the subjects to be studied. Each organ 
 of sense is the gate-way to the pupil's mind, 
 though these gate-ways differ much in the ease of 
 approach and in the volume and variety of ideas 
 admitted. The hand explores a field limited each 
 moment by the reach of the arm, and takes in 
 only the tactual qualities of matter ; but the eye 
 admits the visible universe to its portals with the 
 swiftness of light, and takes note of all of its phe- 
 
36 TJie Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 nomena of form, size, color, and motion. To com- 
 mand all these gate-ways of the senses is ordi- 
 narily to control the mind. Infants in the cradle 
 may be lured to attention by a bit of bright rib- 
 bon, and they will cease feeding or crying to gaze 
 upon some strange object swung before their eyes. 
 The orator's gesturing hand, his smiling or passion- 
 laden look, and his many-toned voice, — all mere 
 addresses to the senses, — often do more to wake the 
 minds and hold the attention of his auditors than 
 all the meanings of his speech. The mind can not 
 refuse to heed that which appeals with power to 
 the senses. Whatever is novel and curious, beau- 
 tiful, grand, or sublime in mass or motion ; what- 
 ever is brilliant, strange, or charming in color or 
 combination, — the eye fastens and feeds upon 
 these, and the mind comes at its bidding to enjoy 
 and protract the feast. 
 
 14. The teacher has not the orator's opportunity 
 for free and grand gesticulation, nor for his com- 
 manding use of the voice ; but within narrower 
 limits and in finer, because more easy and familiar, 
 play, he has within his power all that face, voice, or 
 hand can do to arrest atention ; and has, besides, 
 all that nature and art can afford to address the 
 senses and awaken the intelliirence. A sudden 
 pause, with lifted hand, as if listening, will silence 
 all noise in the class and put the pupils to listen- 
 ing also. The sudden showing of a picture, or cf 
 some object illustrating the lesson, will attract the 
 
The Laiv of the Learner. 37 
 
 most careless and awaken the most apathetic. It 
 is the shock of change, as well as the novelty of a 
 new sensation, which helps to produce the effect. 
 The sudden raising or dropping of the voice 
 arouses fresh attention, as also does a quick and 
 unusual movement of the hands, head, or body. A 
 person who has fallen asleep amid noise wakes 
 when the noise suddenly ceases. The shock of 
 silence awakens the senses put to sleep by monot- 
 onous sounds. So, on the contrary, the shock of 
 sudden noise awakens those who are sleeping amid 
 silence. 
 
 Effect of a New Idea. 
 
 15. The influence of shock extends also to the 
 mind. A sudden appeal made to any mental 
 faculty awakens us like the sudden shaking of a 
 sleeper by the shoulder. It drives away all dreami- 
 ness and apathy. When we see a careless and 
 listless pupil suddenly become alert and attentive, 
 we say to ourselves : *' He has been strtcck with a 
 new idea." He rouses like one who has felt a 
 blow. The shock of a new thought has sometimes 
 had the power to change the entire course of a 
 life, as in the story of the Prodigal Son, and as in 
 less degree all lives change with the changes of 
 thinking. 
 
 Questions that Startle. 
 
 16. The awakening and stirring power of a 
 skillful question lies largely in this principle of 
 
38 The Seven Laws of TeacJihig. 
 
 the shock. It startles the intelligence as with an 
 impinging blow. The ordinary questions read 
 from the book, where the pupils have already seen 
 and answered them, may have their uses, but they 
 lack all power to startle and stir the mind. They 
 simply call for the repetition of thoughts already 
 studied and known. To produce its highest effect, 
 the question must have the element of the unex- 
 pected in it. It must surprise the mind with 
 some fresh and novel view of the subject, and 
 must call sharply for new thought. The common 
 style of Sunday-school questions asked with the 
 book open before the pupil, such as : '' What did 
 Nicodemus say to Jesus } What did Jesus 
 answer.?" has little power to stir or teach. The 
 mind feels no shake of the shoulder — no stimu- 
 lating call to wakeful effort. They are sham ques- 
 tions — questions in form only, asking for what is 
 well known and in plain sight. The true question 
 implies the uncertain. It asks for the unseen and 
 unknown. Like bugle blasts, such questions sum- 
 mon all the faculties into the field of action. 
 
 The Mental Appetites. 
 
 17. Passing within to the field of the mind's 
 own powers, other sources of interest and springs 
 of attention appear. There lurks the imagina- 
 tion ready to take wing with delight at any pic- 
 turesque, beautiful, or sublime aspect which the 
 lesson may present. There sits the intelligence 
 
TJic Lazv of the Lcainic7\ 39 
 
 quick to stir, with its intense curiosity to see and 
 know the hidden and unknown ; and there stands 
 the reason, restless till it shall array its facts, con- 
 struct its theories, collect proofs, and demonstrate 
 its solutions of the problems and questions which 
 the lesson involves. These are the mental appe- 
 tites, and each has its objects of search, its joy in 
 action, and its pride of achievement. 
 
 18. Another source of genuine interest may be 
 found in the connection of the lesson with some- 
 thing in the past life and studies of the learner ; 
 and a still richer one in its relations to his future 
 duties and employments. We may add to these 
 the sympathetic interest inspired by the teacher's 
 manifested delight in the theme, and by the gener- 
 ous emulation of fellow-learners in the same field. 
 All these touch the pupil's personality. They ap- 
 peal to his selfhood. They stir the hopes or fears, 
 which are quick to color every truth with some 
 bright promise of good to be gained or shade it 
 with some menace of evil to be escaped. The 
 mind will brave and undergo the most fatiguing 
 efforts, and persistently study the most tiresome 
 lessons, to secure some high advantage or to avoid 
 some threatened trouble. Self-love, the strongest 
 and most persistent of human feelings, sways the 
 scepter of a monarch over all faculties and feelings. 
 When it bids, they wake and work with sharpest 
 energies. Such are the great sources of the mind's 
 interest in its objects, and when the appeal can be 
 
40 The Seven Lazus of Teaching. 
 
 made to several of them the effect is deep and in- 
 tense. The teacher who knows how to touch all 
 these keys whose vibrant chords thrill mind and 
 heart may command all the resources of his pupil's 
 soul. But he should note that any one element of 
 interest felt in its greatest fulness may be stronger 
 than several only partly awakened. 
 
 Interest varies w^ith Age. 
 
 19. The sources of interest vary with the ages 
 of learners and with the advancing stages of growth 
 and intelligence. This fact is important. The 
 child of six ijeels little interest and gives no gen- 
 uine attention to many of the themes which en- 
 gross the mind of the youth of sixteen. In general, 
 the lower motives are felt first ; the nobler and finer 
 come only with years and culture. The animal 
 appetites awaken long before the spiritual. Chil- 
 dren and adults are often indeed interested in the 
 same scenes and objects, but it does not follow 
 that they are interested in the same ideas. The 
 child finds in the object some striking fact of sense 
 or some personal gratification ; the adult mind 
 attends to the profounder relations, the causes or 
 consequences of the fact. As attention follows in- 
 terest, it is folly to attempt to gain attention to a 
 lesson in which the pupil can not be led to feel any 
 genuine interest. The assertion that children 
 ought to be compelled to pay attention because it 
 is their duty denies the fundamental condition of 
 
The Law of the Learner. 41 
 
 attention. If the duty is felt by the child, it is an 
 element of interest ; but if it is felt simply in the 
 teacher's mind it only repels. In the little child, 
 affection and sympathy take, in part, the place of 
 conscience, and through these he may be made to 
 feel the claims of obligations which he can not fully 
 understand. The mother's horror of wrong-doing 
 and her delight in well-doing are felt through sym- 
 pathy in the heart of her boy ; and so, too, the little 
 pupil may be led to feel an interest in studies 
 which the teacher loves and praises, before his 
 intelligence has come to fully appreciate their 
 importance. 
 
 20. The power of attention increases with the 
 mental development, and is proportioned nearly to 
 the years of the child. It is one of the most valu- 
 able products of education. Idiots and infants are 
 almost destitute of it ; even short lessons wearying 
 and exhausting the attention of young children. 
 *' Little and often " is the rule for teaching very 
 young pupils. The power of steady and prolonged 
 attention belongs only to strong minds, and to 
 those trained by long education. Said a man of 
 noted intellectual distinction : " The difference be- 
 tween me and ordinary men lies in my ability to 
 maintain my attention — to keep on plodding." 
 
 21. Attention is not a separate faculty of the 
 mind, but rather an active attitude of some or all 
 the faculties. Its power, therefore, must depend 
 upon the number and strength of the faculties in- 
 
42 The Seven Lazvs of Teaching. 
 
 volved. Attention will be steadiest when the ap- 
 peal is made to the strongest faculty. One person 
 can give steady attention to objects of sense, an- 
 other to objects of the imagination, and a third to 
 processes of reason. A lawyer reads and remem- 
 bers law cases with great facility ; a physician is at 
 once interested in the reports of medical cases, and 
 a clergyman in a new treatise on theology. These 
 are fruits of education ; but there are aiso native 
 diversities of tastes and powers which appear even 
 in childhood. Kriisi, the pupil of Pestalozzi, and 
 himself one of the noblest and most sagacious of 
 teachers, tells of two children. The one, six years 
 old, " sees God every where as an omnipresent man 
 before him. God gives the birds their food ; God 
 has' a thousand hands ; God sits upon all the trees 
 and flowers." The other child, he says, "has an 
 entirely different view of God. To him he is a 
 being afar off, but who from afar sees, hears, and 
 controls every thing." So differently do the minds 
 of children work. One student is successful in 
 mathematics, another in history, a third in lan- 
 guage. To teach in the line of the strongest facul- 
 ties is to teach with the highest success. Nature 
 itself favors such teaching. 
 
 Hindrances to Attention. 
 
 22. The two chief hindrances to attention are 
 apathy and disU^action. The former may arise from 
 constitutional inertness, from lack of taste for the 
 
The Lazv of the Learner. 43 
 
 subject under consideration, or from weariness or 
 other unfavorable bodily condition of the hour. 
 Distraction is the division of the attention between 
 several objects. It is the common fault of undis- 
 ciplined minds, and is the foe of all sound learning. 
 The quick senses of children are caught so easily 
 by a great variety of objects, and they find in each 
 so little to interest them, that their thoughts flit as 
 with the tireless wing of the butterfly. Memory 
 holds with loose grasp the lessons learned with 
 apathy or distraction, and the reason refuses such 
 poor materials for its work. If the apathy or dis- 
 traction come from fatigue or illness, the wise 
 teacher will not attempt to force the lesson. Bet- 
 ter to let it go for the time, and cheer and lift up 
 the pupil by a kindly sympathy, diverting and 
 arousing him by some unexpected talk or story, or 
 leaving him to rest in quiet. 
 
 Rules for Teachers. 
 
 Out of this Law of the Learner, thus expounded, 
 emerge some of the most important rules for 
 teaching : — 
 
 1. Never begin a class exercise till the atten- 
 tion of the class is secured. Study for a moment 
 in silence, the face of each pupil to see if all are 
 mentally, as well as bodily, present. 
 
 2. Pause whenever the attention is interrupted 
 or lost, and wait till it is completely regained. 
 
 3. Never exhaust wholly the pupil's power of 
 
44 The Seven Lazvs of Teaching. 
 
 attention. Stop when signs of weariness appear, 
 and either dismiss the class or change the subject 
 to kindle fresh attention. 
 
 4. Fit the length of the exercise to the ages 
 of the class : the younger the pupils the briefer 
 the lesson. 
 
 5. Arouse, and when needful rest, the atten- 
 tion by a pleasing variety, but avoid distraction. 
 Keep the real lesson in view. 
 
 6. Kindle and maintain the highest possible 
 interest in the subject itself. Interest and atten- 
 tion react upon each other. 
 
 7. Present those aspects of the lesson, and use 
 such illustrations, as fit the ages, characters, and 
 attainments of the class. 
 
 8. Watch to learn the tastes and strongest fac- 
 ulties of each pupil, and as far as possible ad- 
 dress the questions to those tastes and faculties. 
 To do this is to hold the very heart-strings of the 
 pupil. 
 
 9. Find out the favorite stories, songs, and 
 subjects of each scholar. In these will be found 
 the keys to their mental powers and habits and 
 the ready means to arouse their interest and 
 attention. 
 
 10. Watch keenly against all sources of dis- 
 traction, such as unusual noises and sights, inside 
 the class and out ; all contacts and motions dis- 
 comforting or diverting. 
 
 11. Prepare beforehand some questions which 
 
TJie Laiv of the Learner. 45 
 
 will awaken thought, but not beyond the powers 
 and knowledge of the pupils. 
 
 12. Address the instruction to as many of the 
 senses and faculties as possible, but beware of 
 drawing the attention from the subject to some 
 mere illustration. 
 
 13. Let the teacher maintain in himself and 
 exhibit the closest attention and the most genu- 
 ine interest in the lesson. True enthusiasm is 
 contagious. 
 
 14. Study the best use of the eye and hand. 
 These are the natural instruments of mental com- 
 mand. No pupil can help feeling the earnest gaze 
 fixed upon his face ; and none will fail to watch 
 and interpret the lifted hand, the working fingers, 
 the clenched fist, or any of the eloquent move- 
 ments of these five-fingered monitors. 
 
 Violations and Mistakes. 
 
 The violations of the Law of the Learner are 
 many, and they constitute the most fatal class of 
 errors committed by ordinary teachers, 
 
 (i) Lessons are commenced before the atten- 
 tion of the class is gained, and continued after it 
 has ceased to be given. As well begin before the 
 pupils have entered the room, or continue after 
 they have left. You can not pour water into a jug 
 while the stopper is in place, nor get sight from 
 the eye when the lids are closed. 
 
 (2) Pupils are urged to listen and learn after 
 
46 The Seven Laws of Te etching, 
 
 their limited power of attention is exhausted and 
 when weariness has sealed their minds against 
 any further impression. I remember seeing a 
 teacher of good reputation try to teach a large 
 class the use of the possessive case. She began 
 with all eyes fixed upon her ; but, as she went on, 
 one after another lost interest and ceased to at- 
 tend, till, at the close of her explanation, only one 
 pupil was carefully following, and to this one she 
 addressed her closing question. 
 
 (3) Little or no effort is mxade to discover the 
 tastes of the pupil or to create a real interest in 
 the subject studied. The teacher, feeling no fresh 
 interest in his work, seeks to compel the attention 
 he is unable to attract, and awakens disgust by 
 his dulness and dryness where he ought to inspire 
 delight by his intelligence and active sympathy. 
 
 (4) Not a few teachers nearly kill the power of 
 attention in their pupils by neglecting to call it 
 out and give it vigorous exercise. They drone on 
 through dull hours and dreary routine, reading 
 commonplace questions from the books, without a 
 single fresh inquiry or startling and interesting 
 statement ; and without any keen and stirring de- 
 mand for all the powers of the pupils to rush to 
 action. The children in such schools seek some 
 attitude of lazy ease as soon as they enter the 
 room. 
 
 What wonder that through these and other vio- 
 lations of this law of teaching our schools are often 
 
The Law of the Learner. 47 
 
 made unattractive, and their success is so limited 
 and poor ! If obedience to these rules is so 
 important in the common schools, where the 
 attendance of the children is compelled by parents, 
 and where the professional instructor teaches with 
 full authority of law, how much more is it neces- 
 sary in the Sunday-school, where attendance and 
 teaching are voluntary, and where attraction must 
 do the work of authority ! Fortunately the Sun- 
 day-school holds, in the interest of its associations, 
 in the surpassing sacredness and divine grandeur 
 of its themes, in the variety and splendor of its 
 truths and facts, and, above all, in the tender and 
 immortal relationship which these truths establish 
 between the Christian teacher and his pupils, 
 advantages which may amply compensate for the 
 lack of the authority and of the professional expe- 
 rience of the common school. But let the Sun- 
 day-school teacher who would win the richest and 
 best results of teaching give to this Law of the 
 Learner his profoundest thought and his' most 
 patient following. Let him master the art of 
 gaining and keeping attention, and of exciting 
 genuine and stirring interest, and he will wonder 
 and rejoice at the fruitfulness of his work. 
 
Chapter IV. 
 
 THE LAW OF THE LANGUAGE. 
 
 1. We have now, confronting each other, the 
 Teacher with his law of knowledge, and the 
 Learner with his condition of interested atten- 
 tion. We are next to study the medium of com- 
 munication between them and learn the Law of 
 the Language. 
 
 2. Two minds, housed in material bodies which 
 are at once limiting prisons and living machinery, 
 are to be brought into intellectual intercourse — 
 the fine commerce of thought and feeling. What- 
 ever souls may do in other worlds, in this they 
 have no known spirit connections. Here the or- 
 gans of sense are parts of material bodies, and can 
 be touched and impressed only by matter and ma- 
 terial phenomena. The two minds must find in 
 these physical phenomena the means of intercourse. 
 Out of these they must construct the symbols and 
 signs by which they can signal to each other the 
 mental facts which they wish to communicate. A 
 system of such symbols or signs is language. It 
 may consist of the picture-writing of the savage 
 races, the alphabets of civilized peoples, the fin- 
 ger alphabet or signs of the deaf-mutes, the oral 
 
The Law of the Language. 49 
 
 speech of the hearing, or of the objects of sense, 
 pictures, and gestures ; but, whatever its form, or 
 to whatever sense it is addressed, it is language — 
 a medium of communication between minds, a 
 necessary instrument of teaching, and having, 
 hke all other factors in the teaching art, its own 
 natural law. 
 
 3. This law, like those already discussed, is as 
 simple as an every-day fact. It may be stated as 
 follows : — 
 
 The language used in teaching must be common 
 to teacher and learner. 
 
 In other words, it must be a true language to 
 each, — to him that hears as well as to him that 
 speaks, — with the same meaning to both, clear in 
 sense and clearly understood. 
 
 The Philosophy of the Law. 
 
 4. This Law of Language reaches down into 
 the deepest facts of mind, and runs out to the 
 widest connections of thought with life and with 
 the world we live in. The very power of thought 
 rests largely upon this fabric of speech. 
 
 5. Language in its simplest definition is a sys- 
 tem of artificial signs. Its separate words have 
 no likeness to the things they signify, and no 
 meanings except those we give them. A word is 
 the sign of an idea to him alone who has the idea, 
 and who has learned the word as its sign or 
 
50 The Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 symbol. Without the idea in the mind, the 
 word comes to the ear only as an unmeaning 
 sound, a sign of nothing at all. No one has 
 more language than he has learned, and the 
 acquisition of a large vocabulary is the work of a 
 lifetime. A teacher may know ten thousand 
 words ; the child will scarcely know as many hun- 
 dreds, but these few hundreds of words represent 
 the child's ideas, and within this narrow circuit of 
 signs and thoughts the teacher must come if 
 he would be understood. Outside of these the 
 teacher's language is as unmeaning to the child as 
 if it were mere drum-taps. His language may 
 sometimes be partially and vaguely understood by 
 reason of the known words scattered through it 
 but may as frequently mislead as lead aright. 
 
 6. Most words have more than one meaning. 
 In the common expressions — " Mind and matter ; " 
 "What is the matter f' "What matters it.?" "It 
 is a serious matter ; " "The subject matter, " — the 
 same word is made not only to carry double, but 
 quadruple. This variety of meanings given to our 
 words may enrich them for the orator and poet, 
 but it is a serious defect in language for the young 
 learner. Having mastered a word as the sign of 
 a familiar idea, he is suddenly confronted by it 
 with a new and unknown meaning. He has 
 learned, perhaps, to fasten a horse to a post, when 
 he hears the strange text, " My days are swifter 
 than a post," or reads the warning, " Post no bills 
 
The Lazv of tJie Language. 5 1 
 
 here," and hears of a "military post." The 
 teacher knowing all the meanings of his words, 
 and guided by the context in selecting the one re- 
 quired by the thought, reads on or talks on, think- 
 ing that his language is rich in ideas and bright 
 with intelligence ; but his pupils, knowing only a 
 single meaning perhaps for each word, are stopped 
 by great gaps in the sense, bridged only by un- 
 meaning sounds which puzzle and confuse them. 
 It would often amuse us if we could know what 
 ideas our words call up in little children. The boy 
 who wanted to see "the wicked^?^^ whom no man 
 pursueth," and the other who said : " Don't view 
 me with a cricket's eye," have many classmates in 
 the schools. 
 
 The Vehicle of Thought. 
 
 7. Language has been called the veJiicle of 
 thought ; but it does not carry thoughts as carts 
 carry goods, to fill an empty store-house. It rather 
 conveys them as the wires convey telegrams, as 
 signals to the receiving operator, who must re- 
 translate the message from the ticks he hears. Not 
 what the speaker expresses from his own mind, but 
 what the hearer understands and reproduces in JiisX 
 mind, measures the exact communicating power o^ 
 the language used. Words that are poor and weak' 
 to the young and ignorant are eloquent with a 
 hundred rich and impressive meanings to the edu- 
 cated and intelligent. Thus the simple word art 
 
52 TJie Scve7i Laws of TcacJiing. 
 
 to the common mind means craft, — a mechanic's 
 trade or a hypocrite's pretence ; to a Reynolds or a 
 Ruskin it is also the expression of all that is grand 
 and beautiful in human achievement and of all 
 that is benign and elevating in civilization. It 
 speaks of paintings, sculptures, and cathedrals, and 
 of all that is beautiful in nature, in landscape, sky, 
 and sea — all that is noble or picturesque in history 
 and life — all that is hidden in the moral and 
 aesthetic nature of man. Men's words are ships 
 freighted with the riches" of every shore of knowl- 
 edge which their owner has visited ; a child's words 
 are but toy boats on which are loosely loaded the 
 simple notions he has picked up in his play- 
 grounds. 
 
 8. So, too, words come often to be loved or 
 hated for the ideas they suggest. Thus the word 
 religion, to the Christian thinker, is sacred and 
 sublime with the divinest meanings. It paints on 
 the dark background of human history, filled with 
 sin and sorrow, all that is glorious in the character 
 and government of God, all that is highest in faith 
 and feeling, and all that is hopeful and bright in 
 the immortality of man. To the mere worldling it 
 is the name of a mass of disagreeable ceremonies 
 or of more distasteful duties. To the atheist it is 
 the expression of what he calls degrading supersti- 
 tions and hateful creeds. In a less marked de- 
 gree, such variations of significance belong to hun- 
 dreds of the common words of our language. It is 
 
The Lazv of the Language. 53 
 
 evident that he will teach most and best whose 
 well-chosen words raise the most and clearest 
 images, and excite the highest action, in the minds 
 of his pupils. 
 
 9. The reason goes further. In all true teach- 
 ing thought passes in both directions —- from pupil 
 to teacher as well as from teacher to pupil. It is 
 as needful that the man shall clearly understand 
 the child as it is that the child shall understand 
 the man. A child often loads a common word with 
 some strange, false, or half meaning, and years may 
 pass before the mistake is detected and corrected. 
 Their very poverty of speech often compels chil- 
 dren to use words out of the true sense. How 
 shall the teacher know what to teach till he knows 
 what the pupil needs to learn.? And how shall he 
 know the pupil's needs till he learns it from that 
 pupil's words } 
 
 The Instrument of Thought. 
 
 10. But language is the instniment, as well as 
 the vehicle, of thought. Words are tools under 
 whose plastic touch the mind reduces the crude 
 masses of its impressions into clear and valid prop- 
 ositions. Ideas become incarnate in words. They 
 rise into visible forms in language, and stand ready 
 to be studied and known, to be marshaled into 
 the combinations and mechanism of intelligible 
 thought. Till our conceptions are thus shaped'^into 
 expression, they flit as vague phantoms, intangible 
 
54 The Seven Laws of Teaching, 
 
 and indistinct. Their real character and value, 
 and their manifold and useful relations, are un- 
 known, if not also unsuspected. More than half 
 the work of teaching is that of helping the child to 
 gain a full and clear expression of what it already 
 knows imperfectly. It is to aid him to lift up into 
 full sight, and to round out into plain and adequate 
 sentences, the dim and fragmentary ideas and per- 
 ceptions of childhood. No teaching is complete 
 that does not issue in plain and intelligent expres- 
 sion of the truth taught ; but it is the most miser- 
 able of mockeries when, in place of leading the 
 child to perfect and put into its own simple speech 
 its own simple conceptions of truth, we impose 
 upon it the ready-made definitions of some learned 
 master or teacher, dressed, for the most part, 
 in words it never heard before. Better David's 
 simple sling than Saul's kingly armor for the 
 young warrior seeking the mastery over some 
 science. 
 
 II. We may go further, and say that in a large 
 degree talking is thinking. Ideas must precede 
 words in all but parrot speech. The most useful, 
 and sometimes the most difficult, processes in 
 thinking are those in which we fit words to ideas, 
 and fashion sentences to express thoughts. To 
 state a question or problem fully and clearly is 
 often the best part of answering it. Ideas rise be- 
 fore us at first like the confused mass of objects in 
 a new landscape. To put them into clear and cor- 
 
The Lata of the Language. 55 
 
 rect words and sentences is to make the landscape 
 
 famil 
 
 lar. 
 
 " Thoughts disentangle passing o'er the lip." 
 
 12. We master truth by expressing it, and re- 
 joice when we have clearly expressed our thouo-ht 
 as one who has gained a victory. But to make 
 talkmg thmkingit must be original, not mere par- 
 rot-like repetition of other people's words.- In this 
 battle with truth, reluctant to surrender itself it 
 IS the child's own hand that must grasp and use 
 the weapon. It is the pupil who must talk. What 
 teacher has not stood and watched the battle when 
 a little group of children have attacked some knotty 
 problem, and each in turn has tried to reduce the 
 truth to proper speech.? and how proud and hon- 
 ored the victor when he has forced the thought into 
 the fitting words which all recognized as the true ex- 
 pression ! Krusi tells of one of his pupils who was 
 set to write a letter to his parents, and complained : 
 it IS hard for me to write a letter." " Why I you 
 are now a year older, and ought to be better able 
 to do It" " Yes ; but a year ago I could say every- 
 thing I knew, but now I know more than I can 
 say." Krusi adds : "This answer astonished me " 
 It will astonish all who have not thought deeply of 
 the difficulty of getting a mastery of language to 
 express our thoughts. 
 
 13- Language has yet another use. It is the 
 store-lwuse of our knowledge. All that we know 
 
56 TJie Seven Lazvs of Teaching. 
 
 of any object, fact, or truth may be found laid up 
 in the words we use concerning them. Words 
 are not only the signs of our ideas, but they are 
 clue lines by which we recover and recognize those 
 ideas at will, and in the manifold derivative forms 
 and combinations of these words we store up all 
 the modifications and relations of the radical fact or 
 notion of which the simple word is the symbol. 
 In the group or family of words, act, acted, acting, 
 actor, actress, action, actionable, active, actively, ac- 
 tivity, actual, actually, actualize, actuality, actuate, 
 enact, exact, transact, and the derivatives of these 
 last forms what a volume of facts and truths — 
 of persons, movements, relations, qualities, and 
 philosophy lies recorded ! 
 
 14. The child's language, then, is not only the 
 measure of its knov/ledge, but is the virtual em- 
 bodiment of the elements of that knowledge. 
 When we employ in our teaching the language of 
 our pupils, we summon all their acquired intelli- 
 gence to our aid. Each word flashes its own 
 familiar light upon the new truth we wish to ex- 
 hibit. The first new and unknown word intro- 
 duced breaks the electric chain of thousrht. A 
 shadow falls upon the field of view, and the pupils 
 cease to work or grope in darkness. New words 
 must be learned when new objects are to be named 
 or new ideas are to be symbolized ; but if care is 
 taken that the idea shall go before the word, and 
 that the word is mastered as a symbol before it is 
 
The Law of the Language. 57 
 
 used in speech, it will illumine and guide where 
 otherwise it would but darken and delude. 
 
 The Language of Things. 
 
 15. Words are not the only medium through 
 which mind speaks to mind. The thinker has a 
 hundred ways to express his thoughts. The eye 
 talks with a various eloquence ; and the skilled 
 orator finds in lip and brow, in head and hand, in 
 the shrugging shoulder and the stamping foot, 
 organs for most intelligible speech. The gestures 
 of John B. Gough often tell more than the clearest 
 sentences of other speakers. A German described 
 him as '' the man what talks mit his coat-tails," 
 referring to some illustration in which the facile 
 orator had made a flirt of his coat-tails tell the 
 idea he wished to express. Deaf-mutes can talk 
 together by the hour by signs, without spelling out 
 a single word. Among savage peoples whose lan- 
 guage is too meager to meet the native needs of 
 their minds, symbolic actions supply the lack of 
 words. There is also speech in pictures. From 
 the rudest chalk sketch on the blackboard to the 
 highest work of the painter's art, no teaching is 
 more swift and impressive than that of pictorial 
 representation. The eye gathers here at a glance 
 more than the ear could learn from an hour of 
 verbal description. 
 
 16. Finally, nature aids human speech. "She 
 speaks a various language." Her innumerable 
 
58 The Seven Lazvs of Teachhig. 
 
 forms stand always ready as illustrations, and her 
 endless analogies throw light upon hundreds of 
 our deepest and darkest problems. No teaching 
 was ever more clear or instructive than that of 
 the parables of Jesus drawn from nature around 
 him. 
 
 17. In ordinary teaching, artificial language 
 must doubtless be the chief means of communica- 
 tion between master and learner ; but no wise 
 teacher will forget or forego the aid of all these 
 various means of entrance into the chambers of 
 his pupil's understanding, to take account of the 
 knowledge there, and to guide to the mastery of 
 more. Language is at best an imperfect medium 
 of thought. None know this better than the 
 experienced teacher who has tried to use it for the 
 conveyance of the higher truths of science or 
 religion, and who has found himself forced to seize 
 upon every available means of illustration to get 
 himself understood. 
 
 18. This discussion of language is not to be 
 interpreted as an encouragement to the teacher to 
 become a lecturer before his class. The lecture is 
 useful in its place, but its place is small in a 
 school for children. It will be shown elsewhere 
 that a too talkative teacher is rarely a good 
 teacher. A fine and accurate knowledge of lan- 
 guage is still of great use, for he who talks but 
 little should talk well, and he who must teach 
 language should know that which he is to teach. 
 
The Lazv of tJie Language. 59 
 
 Rules for Teachers. 
 
 Out of our Law of Language, thus defined and 
 explained, flow some of the most useful rules for 
 teaching. ' 
 
 1. Study constantly and carefully the pupil's 
 language to learn what words he uses and the 
 meanings he gives them. 
 
 2. Secure from him as full a statement as pos- 
 sible of his knowledge of the subject, to learn both 
 his ideas and his mode of expressing them, and to 
 help him to correct his language. 
 
 3. Express your thoughts as far as possible in 
 the pupil's words, carefully correcting any defect 
 in the meaning he gives them. 
 
 4. Use the simplest and fewest words that will 
 express the idea. Unnecessary words add to the 
 child's work and increase the danger of misunder- 
 standing. 
 
 5. Use short sentences, and of the simplest con- 
 struction. Long sentences tire the attention, while 
 short ones both stimulate and rest the mind. At 
 each step the foot rests firmly on the ground. 
 
 6. If the pupil evidently fails to understand the 
 thought, repeat it in other language and if possible 
 with greater simplicity. 
 
 7. Help out the meaning of the words by all 
 available illustrations; preferring pictures and 
 natural objects for young children. 
 
 8. When it is necessary to teach a new word, 
 
6o The Seven Lazvs of Teaching. 
 
 give the idea before the word. This is the order 
 of nature. 
 
 9. Seek to increase the pupil's stock of words, 
 both in number and in the clearness and extent 
 of meaning. All true enlargement of a child's 
 language is increase of his knowledge and of 
 his capacity for knowing. 
 
 10. As the acquisition of language is one of 
 the most important objects of education, be not 
 content to have the pupils listen in silence, 
 however attentive they may seem. That teacher 
 is succeeding best whose pupils talk most freely 
 upon the lessons. 
 
 11. Here, as everywhere in teaching the 
 young, make haste slowly. Let each word be 
 conquered into use before it is displaced by too 
 many others. 
 
 12. Test frequently the pupil's sense of the 
 words he uses, to make sure that he attaches no 
 false meaning and that he vividly conceives the 
 true meaning. 
 
 Violations and Mistakes. 
 
 This third law of teaching is violated more fre- 
 quently than even the best teachers suspect. 
 
 (i) The interested look and the smiling assent 
 of the pupil often cheat the teacher into the 
 belief that his language is understood, and all the 
 more easily because the pupil himself is deceived 
 and says he understands, when, in fact, he has 
 caught only a mere glimpse of the meaning. 
 
The Laiv of the Language, 6i 
 
 (2) Children are often entertained with the 
 manner of the teacher, and seem attentive to his 
 words when they are only watching his eyes, lips, 
 or actions. They sometimes profess to understand 
 simply to please their instructor and to gain his 
 praise. 
 
 (3) The misuse of language is perhaps one of 
 the most common failures in teaching. Not to 
 mention those pretended teachers who cover up 
 their own ignorance or indolence with a cloud of 
 verbiage which they know the children will not 
 understand, and omitting also those who are more 
 anxious to exhibit their own wisdom than to con- 
 vey knowledge to others, we find still some honest 
 teachers who labor hard to make the lesson clear, 
 and then feel that their duty is done. If the chil- 
 dren do not understand, it must be from hopeless 
 stupidity or from wilful inattention. They do not 
 suspect that they have used words which have no 
 meaning to the class or to which the children give 
 a meaning differing from the teacher's. I once 
 heard a legislator, who was also a preacher, in ad- 
 dressing the pupils of a reform school on the para- 
 ble of the Prodigal Son, ask the question : " Boys, 
 are you of the opinion that the customary aliments 
 of swine are adapted to the digestive apparatus of 
 the genus homo?'' An interrogative grunt was 
 the only reply. 
 
 (4) It may be a single unusual or misunderstood 
 term that breaks the electric line ; but it does not 
 
62 The Seven Laivs of Teaching. 
 
 occur to the teacher to hunt up the break and re- 
 store the connection. Two adults rarely talk five 
 minutes without having occasion to ask the sense 
 of some word used or a restatement of some 
 thought advanced. But children do not ask expla- 
 nations. Fear of the teacher, or a sense of their 
 own ignorance, discourages them, and too often 
 they are charged with stupidity or inattention 
 when no amount of attention would have helped 
 them to understand the unknown tongue. 
 
 (5) Even those teachers who easily use simple 
 language to their classes frequently fail in the 
 higher use of this instrument of teaching. They 
 do not take care to secure from the child in return 
 a clear statement of the truth, and they have, 
 therefore, no test of their success. The children 
 do not talk back. 
 
 (6) Very few teachers appreciate as they ought 
 the wonderful character and complexity of lan- 
 guage, this most magnificent product of the 
 human intelligence, and this mightiest agency of 
 human advancement and influence. Modern soci- 
 ety could not exist without speech ; and the rich- 
 est commerce that is carried on among men and 
 nations is that which is freighted in words, "the 
 airy navies of the world." The English language 
 claims over one hundred thousand words. Few 
 men understand more than twenty thousand of 
 these, and the vocabulary of a child of ten rarely 
 contains more than fifteen hundred. It has been 
 
The Lazv of the Language. 63 
 
 found that the greatest obstacle to the general 
 enlightenment of the common people lies in their 
 lack of knowledge of the language through which 
 they must be addressed. A commission from the 
 British Parliament was once set to investigate the 
 language of the coal-miners and other laborers of 
 England, to ascertain the possibility of diffusing 
 useful information among them by means of tracts 
 and books. It was found, as reported, that their 
 knowledge of language, in a large number of the 
 cases examined, was too meager to allow of such 
 means of instruction. How much greater must 
 be this deficiency among the young, whose expe- 
 rience is less and whose imperfection of ideas com- 
 pels vagueness in language ! If we would teach 
 children successfully, we must deepen and widen 
 this channel of communication between our minds 
 and theirs. 
 
 (7) Most of the topics studied in school lie out- 
 side the daily life and language of children ; and 
 every science has a language of its own which 
 must be mastered by him who will learn its truths. 
 And if in common science this need of language 
 is so great, how much more in those high, spiritual 
 themes with which the Sunday-school teacher has 
 to deal ! Religion involves the grandest facts and 
 the sublimest truths known to the mind of man ; 
 but how are they dwarfed and distorted by the 
 half-understood terms in which they are frequently 
 told ! The Word of God is the sword of the 
 
64 TJlc Seven Lazvs of Teaching. 
 
 Spirit ; but how shall it make its way to heart and 
 conscience when wrapped in a mass of half-con- 
 cealing words ? To the teacher of children in the 
 schools of Bible learning, more than to any others, 
 should come the warning to make his words clear 
 as plate-glass, luminous as light itself, sharp as 
 polished blades, painting truths as " apples of gold 
 in pictures of silver," and stirring the depths of 
 the mind as the bugle stirs an army. 
 
Chapter V. 
 
 THE LAW OF THE LESSON. 
 
 T. Our fourth law takes us at once to the 
 center of the teaching work. The first three laws 
 defined the teacher, the learner, and language, the 
 medium of communication between them. We 
 come now to the Lesson — the truth or fact to be 
 learned, the process to be mastered, or the problem 
 to be solved — the knowledge which the teacher 
 seeks to give and the learner studies to gain. To 
 make the unknown known ; to give knowledge to 
 the pupil as a personal possession ; to place it as 
 an active force in his mind ; to plant it as an 
 inspiring principle in his heart ; to kindle it as 
 a guiding light in his understanding ; to make it 
 to him a growing germ of higher knowledge, an 
 instrument of research, a practical power in his 
 life and work, — this is the very core of the 
 teacher's work, the condition and instrument, as 
 well as the crown and fruitage, of all the rest. 
 
 2. It is the Law of the Lesson, or of knowl- 
 edge, we are next to seek. Passing, as too remote, 
 all discussion of the steps by which an infant 
 mind obtains its first ideas, and of the mental pro- 
 cesses by which our sensations ripen into true per- 
 
66 The Seven Lazvs of Teaching. 
 
 ceptions, and these into reflective knowledge, we 
 go at once to the obvious fact that our pupils 
 learn new truths by the aid of those that are old 
 and familiar. The new and unknown can be 
 explained only by the familiar and the known. 
 This, then, is the Law of the Lesson : — 
 
 The truth to be taught must be /earned through 
 truth a/ready known. 
 
 3. This law is neither so simple nor so obvious 
 as those which have preceded it ; but it is no less 
 certain than they, while its scope is wider and its 
 relations are more important. It lies linked with 
 the great system of nature and with the constitu- 
 tion of the mind. 
 
 Truth, Ideal and Actual. 
 
 4. Truth in its entirety is but the ideal tran-' 
 script of the universe. It is the mirrored reflec- 
 tion of all fact and being — the thought and will 
 of the Creator as written and revealed by all that 
 exists, material and spiritual, with all their laws, 
 relations, changes, evolutions, and history. More, 
 — the all-truth embraces the being of God him- 
 self. 
 
 Truth in actions, in art, in objects, in conduct, 
 and in character is only the correlative of truth 
 in ideas ; it is the conformity of the actual 
 to the true ideal — the fact answering to the 
 divine law and purpose of things. Truth in 
 
The Law of the Lesson. 6y 
 
 action — that is wisdom, that is the Right and the 
 Good. 
 
 The Known and Unknown. 
 
 5. Knowledge is truth discovered and under- 
 stood. Truth yet hidden in the depths and ocean 
 of the undiscovered is the Unknown. The Known 
 is science, learning — the revealed. It is the gold 
 taken from the mines of truth by human hands 
 and wrought into forms of beauty or of use, or 
 coined into currency for the market^ of the world. 
 The Unknown is the precious metal lying hidden 
 under sea and land, seen only by Omniscience. 
 The Known, to each individual, is that truth which 
 he has mastered and made his own ; all else is to 
 him the Unknown. Much which is to the teacher 
 knowledge is to the child the Unknown, and it is 
 to this Unknown that our law especially applies. 
 The path of learning to this must be constructed 
 through the pupil's knowledge. 
 
 Philosophy of the Law. 
 
 6. The Law of the Lesson has its reason in the 
 nature of mind and the nature of human knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 7. All teaching must begin at some point of 
 the subject or lesson. Where can it begin but at 
 that which is seen or known by the learner .? If 
 the subject is wholly new, or the fact to be taught 
 is entirely strange, then a known point must be 
 
68 TJie Seven Lazvs of Teaching. 
 
 sought or made by showing some Hkeness of the 
 new and unknown to something known and famil- 
 iar. Even among grown people the skillful con- 
 verser, narrating a new fact, struggles to find some 
 comparison with familiar objects, and affirms some 
 likeness of the unknown to a known thing before 
 proceeding with his description or story. Till this 
 starting-point in the familiar is found, he knows it 
 is useless to go on. As well bid one to follow you 
 through a winding way in the pitch darkness with- 
 out first letting him know where you are or put- 
 ting him in the path. If intelligent men require 
 this known starting-point in some familiar fact or 
 truth, how shall the child be expected to proceed 
 without it } How often and how justly do children 
 explain their seeming stupidity by the simple 
 statement : " I did not know what the teacher was 
 talking about " ! It is the teacher, and not the 
 pupil, who is stupid in such a case. 
 
 8. All teaching must advance in some direction. 
 Whitherward shall it march but to that which is to 
 the pupil new and unknown } To teach again what 
 is already known and understood is to mock the 
 pupil's desire for knowledge, and to deaden his 
 power of attention by compelling him to walk the 
 weary round of a treadmill, in place of leading 
 him forward to the inspiration of new scenes and 
 the conquest of new truths. No more fatal blow 
 can be dealt to a child's native love of learning 
 than to confine its studies too long to familiar 
 
The Lazv of the Lesson. 69 
 
 ground under the fallacious plea of thoroughness. 
 Old mines may be reworked if you can find ore at 
 deeper levels, and old lessons may be relearned if 
 new truth can be dug out or new uses made of old 
 truth. Properly understood, this does not contra- 
 dict the law of the review, to be discussed in 
 another chapter. 
 
 9. All learning must proceed by some steps. 
 By what steps can it advance except by those 
 which link one fact or truth to another, as simple 
 facts lead to more general facts, premises conduct 
 to conclusions, and phenomena come at last to the 
 explaining laws and reasons .'* In all true learning, 
 each new fact mastered becomes a part of the 
 known, and serves as a new starting-point for a 
 fresh advance. It adds its own light to the knowl- 
 edge that preceded it, and throws increased illum- 
 ination forward for the next discovery. But each 
 step must be fully mastered before taking the 
 next, else at the second step the pupil will be mov- 
 ing from the unknown to the unknown, and thus 
 violate the law. It is here that the demand for 
 true thoroughness arises ; not the thorough mas- 
 tery which a philosopher might gain of the lesson 
 and all it contains, but such a clear understanding 
 as the child may have of so much of the lesson as 
 a child can comprehend. Thoroughness of this 
 sort is the essential condition of true teaching. 
 Imperfect knowledge at any point casts shadow 
 rather than light. The half-known reveals noth- 
 
70 TJie Seven Laws of TeacJiing. 
 
 ing. It is simply disturbed ignorance, and soon 
 settles again into complete ignorance. The pupil 
 who knows thoroughly one lesson, already half 
 knows the next. The known explains the nearest 
 unknown, as the lighted torch drives back dark- 
 ness. Hence the well-taught class is eager for the 
 next lesson. They guess already the coming truth. 
 " It is easy to add to what is already discovered." 
 This was one of the sayings of Pestalozzi. 
 
 10. But the philosophy of this law goes deeper 
 still. Knowledge is not a mass of simple inde- 
 pendent facts revealed to the senses ; it is made up 
 of facts with their laws and relations. Facts stand 
 linked together in classes, groups, and systems ; 
 associated by likeness, by causation, by contact and 
 environment. Each fact is related to innumerable 
 other facts ; each truth is a part of some larger 
 truth which includes and explains it. The truths 
 and facts known are but the seen segments of the 
 all-fact and all-truth whose grander segments are 
 still hidden in the vast unknown. Knowledges 
 are mutually illustrative. Each one leads to, and 
 explains, another. The old reveals the new ; the 
 new confirms and corrects the old. 
 
 11. All this is as true of children's knowledge 
 as of riper and larger sciences. Every new fact 
 or truth must be brought into connection or com- 
 parison with facts and truths already known before 
 it will fully reveal itself and take its place in the 
 widening circle of knowledge. Thus the very 
 
The Laiv of the Lesson, 71 
 
 nature of knowledge compels us to seek the 
 unknown through the aid of the known. To 
 know one thing, we must know many. To know 
 that an object is a flower, the child must know 
 other flowers ; to know it as a rose he must know 
 other roses ; to know its petals, calyxes, stamens, 
 and pistils, and their uses, he must know these 
 organs in other plants. And so of all other 
 objects of sense. And so also in a higher degree 
 of the objects of the spiritual sense, the facts of 
 mind, of conscience, and of affection. It is the 
 law of all knowledge whatever. It is probable 
 that this discussion itself will seem to some readers 
 dull, obscure, and of little interest or importance 
 simply from their lack of knowledge of the mental 
 phenomena and science necessary to understand 
 the statements and principles here involved. 
 
 12. The very act of knowing is an act of com- 
 paring and judging, and one of the terms under 
 comparison always belongs to the known. We 
 have no mental power by which we can gain 
 knowledge otherwise. Even the eye — that open- 
 est of all the avenues of intelligence — comes 
 under the same condition. Every object when first 
 seen is strange and nondescript. It begins to be 
 known when we find in it some resemblance to an 
 object before known, and then we pronounce it a 
 stick or a stone, or whatever its recognized like- 
 ness reveals it to be, and we know it better as we 
 detect by fuller comparison more resemblances. If 
 
*J2 The Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 a friend tells us an experience or an adventure, we 
 interpret his story by a running comparison of it 
 with whatever has been most like it in our own 
 experience ; and if he states facts utterly without 
 likeness to all we have known, we stop him to ask 
 explanations or illustrations which may bring the 
 strange facts into connection with our knowledge 
 of things. Tell a child something utterly novel 
 and differing entirely from all his former expe- 
 rience and knowledge, and he will struggle in vain 
 to understand you. If he does not at once aban- 
 don the effort as hopeless, he eagerly asks : *' What 
 is it like? How does it look?" and thus seeks in- 
 stinctively to bring it under the light of facts 
 already known to him. The whole system of 
 figures of speech — tropes, metaphors, similes, 
 comparisons, parables, and illustrative stories — 
 has sprung out of this law. They are but so many 
 attempts to reach the unknown through the 
 known — they seek to flash some light from 
 the familiar and well-known upon the strange 
 or half-known. 
 
 The Unknown can not explain the Unknown. 
 
 13. It is evident that the unknown can not be 
 explained by the unknown. The very notion of 
 explanation is the citation and use of facts or prin- 
 ciples already familiar, to make clear the nature of 
 new facts. The knowledge already possessed 
 must furnish the explanation of all new facts and 
 
The Law of the Lesson. 73 
 
 phenomena, or they must remain unexplained. 
 The difficulty so often felt in answering the ques- 
 tions of little children lies not so much in the 
 hardness of the questions themselves, as in the 
 child's lack of the knowledge required in the expla- 
 nation. To answer fully a boy's questionings 
 about the stars, you must first teach him astrono- 
 my. The lad who has seen a city can easily 
 understand a description of London or Paris, but 
 one whose observation has been confined to his 
 country home can not picture to himself the inter- 
 minable net-work of streets, walled in by blocks 
 of lofty buildings with all the shifting panorama 
 of life and traffic. 
 
 14. The very language with which new 
 knowledge must be expressed takes all its 
 meanings from old knowledge. The child with- 
 out knowledge would be also without words, for 
 words are but signs of things known — of our 
 ideas or notions of things known to us. An 
 American traveler in Europe fancied he could 
 make people understand him by speaking with a 
 loud, clear, and slow pronunciation, forgetting for 
 the moment that his words had no meaning 
 whatever to his listeners. Similar is the blunder 
 of the teacher who hopes by the mere urgency 
 of his manner, and by his clear use of words 
 familiar to himself, to carry his ideas into the very 
 center of the pupil's understanding without any 
 reference to that pupil's previous knowledge of 
 
74 The Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 the subject. He violates a law of nature as 
 inflexible as that which forbids vision without 
 light, hearing without sound, or feeling without 
 touch. 
 
 15. The mind uses by preference only its clear- 
 est and most familiar knowledge in the interpreta- 
 tion of new facts. Each man borrows his illus- 
 trations from his calling : the soldier from the 
 camps and marches, the sailor from the ships and 
 the sea, the merchant from the market, and the 
 artisan from his craft. And so in the objects of 
 study, each student is attracted to the qualities 
 which relate it to his business or experience. To 
 the chemist, common salt is chloride of sodium, a 
 binary compound ; to the cook it is a condiment 
 used to season food and preserve meats. Each 
 thinks of it in the aspect most familiar to him, 
 and in this aspect would use it to illustrate any 
 other truth. Finding a new plant, the botanist 
 would compare it with known plants, to discover 
 its class and species ; the farmer would ask after 
 its use, and the painter after its beauty. This bent 
 of preference is one of the elements of prejudice 
 which shuts the eyes to some truths and opens 
 them wide to others. It is also one of the elements 
 of strength in intellectual work. 
 
 16. A fact or truth only partly and imperfectly 
 known is used rarely and reluctantly as a term in 
 the judgments by which we seek to discover the 
 nature and value of new truth ; and if used, it car- 
 
TJie Laiv of the Lesson. 75 
 
 ries its own vagueness and imperfection into the 
 new knowledge. A cloud left upon the lesson of 
 yesterday casts its shadow over the lesson of to-day. 
 On the other hand, the thoroughly mastered lesson 
 throws its illuminating light over each succeeding 
 one. Hence the value of that practice of some 
 able teachers who make the elementary portions 
 of a new study familiar as household words — a 
 perfectly conquered territory from which the pupil 
 may go on to new conquests as from an established 
 base, with the confidence and power of a victor. 
 
 17. But it must be carefully noted that such a 
 conquest of elements, like all thoroughness in 
 study, is relative. No human knowledge is per- 
 fect, and the knowledge of childhood is neces- 
 sarily less complete than that of manhood. What 
 would be thoroughness in a child would be but 
 shallowness in a man ; and there are wide differ- 
 ences between men. The thought-pictures of one 
 are but sketches in outline ; those of another are 
 paintings in colors, full of light and shades 
 minutely representing nature itself. Young teach- 
 ers, uged on by the constant exhortations to thor- 
 oughness given them by older educators, and not 
 reflecting that a child's knowledge is necessarily 
 less than that of grown men, attempt to hold their 
 little pupils to each lesson studied till they know it 
 with the same fulness as the teacher himself. As 
 well ask the child to walk with a man's stride and 
 speak with a man's voice. Wb^t is wanted is not 
 
j6 The Seven Laws of TeacJiing. 
 
 absolute completeness of knowledge as the book 
 may give it, but clear and correct thinking and 
 knowing up to the limits within which the child 
 can know — such knowledge as the pupil's pre- 
 vious knowledge has made possible, and such as 
 will serve him to learn more. He who knows little 
 can learn little ; he who knows much can easily 
 learn much. " To him that hath shall be given, 
 and he shall have abundantly. From him that 
 hath not shall be taken away that which he 
 seemeth to have." 
 
 Rules for Teachers. 
 
 This law of knowledge, written thus in the very 
 nature of truth, as also in the nature of mind, and 
 having therefore a double testimony to its verity 
 and importance, affords to the thoughtful teacher 
 rules of the highest practical value. Marking the 
 sole possible pathway to knowledge, it offers a clue 
 of clearest guidance to him who will unyieldingly 
 follow it. The following rules seem self-evident : 
 
 1. Find what your pupil knows of the subject 
 you wish to teach — not of some text-book, but of 
 the facts and elements of the subject. This is his 
 starting-point. 
 
 2. Make the most of the pupil's knowledge. 
 Let him feel its extent and value as a means of 
 learning more. 
 
 3. Lead him to clear up and freshen his knowl- 
 edge by attempting a clear statement of it. This 
 will bring him to the border of the unknown. 
 
The Law of tJie Lesson, JJ 
 
 4. Begin with facts which lie next, and which 
 can be reached by a single step from those already- 
 familiar — geography with the visible landscape, 
 or some river or mountain the pupil has visited — 
 history, with his own memories — morals, with his 
 own conscience. 
 
 5. Connect every lesson as much as possible 
 with former lessons, and with the pupil's knowl- 
 edge and experience. 
 
 6. Study the steps so that one shall lead natu- 
 rally and easily to the next, the known leading to 
 the unknown. 
 
 7. Proportion the steps to the age and power of 
 the pupil, and make sure that he understands fully 
 the new truth. Each additional fact, reason, proof, 
 and inference may be treated as a step. Do not 
 discourage the little one with too long lessons, nor 
 disgust older pupils with lessons too short and 
 easy. 
 
 8. Find illustrations in the most common and 
 familiar objects and facts suitable for the purpose. 
 They will carry their own familiarity into the 
 subject. 
 
 9. Lead the pupil to find fresh illustrations of 
 the lesson in something he has seen or heard. 
 
 10. Make every new truth familiar and fix it in 
 the memory for ready use to explain other truths. 
 
 1 1. Incite the pupil to use his knowledge in all 
 vays practicable, to find or explain other knowl- 
 edge. Teach him that knowledge gives power to 
 
yS TJie Seven Laws of TeacJdng. 
 
 know more ; that the known is the key to the 
 unknown. 
 
 12. Make every advance clear and familiar, 
 else the next step may be from unknown to un- 
 known — a violation of the law. 
 
 These rules apply to all kinds of learning : to 
 arithmetic, grammar, geography, history, and to 
 both scientific and religious knowledge ; but the 
 teacher, to apply them wisely, must understand 
 the nature of the knowledge he would teach. Sci- 
 ence, history, philosophy, language, and religion, 
 each has its own kind of facts, its own method of 
 proof, and its own law of acquisition and use. 
 Science is learned chiefly through the senses or 
 by observation ; history is human experience ; 
 philosophy is the work of reason ; language repre- 
 sents the forms of thought ; religion belongs to the 
 conscience, the heart, the faith in the eternal and 
 the divine. But whatever the kind of truth, be it 
 science or Scripture, the unknown must be reached 
 through the known. Some experience may be 
 required to apply these rules readily ; but the very 
 effort to use them will reveal to the observant 
 teacher some of the richest secrets of the teacher's 
 
 art. 
 
 Mistakes and Violations. 
 
 The wide scope and profound reach of this 
 great Law of the Lesson affords room for many 
 mistakes and violations. Among the more com- 
 mon are the following : — 
 
TJie Laiv of the Lesson. 79 
 
 1. Setting young pupils to study strange les- 
 sons or new subjects for which they have had no 
 preparation in previous life or studies. 
 
 2. The neglect to ascertain with care the 
 pupil's knowledge of the subject before begin- 
 ning the advance. 
 
 3. The failure to connect the new lesson with 
 the old in such a way that the pupil shall bring 
 forward what he knows to explain the new. Les- 
 sons are too often given hap-hazard and treated as 
 if each were independent of all others. 
 
 4. Treating past acquisitions like goods fin- 
 ished and stored away, not recognizing that the 
 knowledge gained is the very instrument of 
 fresh learning. 
 
 5. The common failure to make thoroughly 
 familiar the elementary facts and definitions. 
 
 6. The like failure to make each step thor- 
 oughly understood before taking the next. 
 
 7. The frequent assignment of lessons too 
 long for the power or time of the pupil, compelling 
 him to imperfect knowledge, which hinders and 
 spoils all after-progress, making the pupil feel as if 
 dragged at a cart-tail rather than as walking erect 
 on his own feet. 
 
 8. The neglect to set the child to the use 
 of his knowledge to become a discoverer of 
 new truth. 
 
 9. The failure to show the connections of 
 knowledge, new and old, and especially with the 
 unknown sought for. 
 
8o The Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 As a consequence of these and other violations 
 of this law, how poor, fragmentary, and fleeting is 
 much of the knowledge so laboriously studied ! 
 How little of true knowledge is possessed by the 
 people, and how little their ability to get new 
 knowledge ! Instead of temples of truth rising 
 from solid foundations, beautiful in proportions 
 and noble in use, the knowledge of most men lies 
 in little scattered heaps, like those which boys 
 scrape together by the dusty road-side. Such, too 
 often, is the knowledge of Bible truth, made up of 
 scattered texts and bits of exegesis. The sacred 
 volume is never seen by most men as a grand 
 whole, joined together by deep connections and 
 having a single divine and mighty purpose run- 
 ning through it all. Instead of a true revelation 
 of God, — a magnificent mirror reflecting his eter- 
 nal grace and glory, — they find in it only bits of 
 broken glass which show the divine will and wis- 
 dom in distorted parts, and often puzzle where 
 they should instruct and persuade. 
 
Chapter VI. 
 
 THE LAW OF THE TEACHING PROCESS. 
 
 1. Our survey of the teaching art has thus far 
 taken in the four entities involved in an act of 
 teaching : the Teacher, the Learner, the Language, 
 and the Lesson. We are now to contemplate 
 these in motion, and to study the distinctive action 
 of the teacher and his pupil. The previous discus- 
 sions have already brought these partly into view ; 
 but as each of them has its own natural law, each 
 demands a more careful discussion than has yet 
 been given it. In the laws of the teacher and the 
 learner we found necessarily reflected the func- 
 tions of both ; but an actor and his act are easily 
 separated in thought, and each possesses aspects 
 and characteristics of its own. 
 
 Following the natural order, the teaching act or 
 function comes first before us, and we are now 
 to seek its law. The law of the teacher was a law 
 of essential qualification. The law of teaching is 
 a law of function. 
 
 2. Thus far we have considered teaching as the 
 communication of knowledge ; but this defines the 
 act by its results. Whether by telling, showing, 
 explaining, or setting lessons, the teacher seems 
 
82 TJie Seven Lazvs of Teaching. 
 
 to communicate knowledge. But there is a deeper 
 and truer view of the teacher's work, a profounder 
 and more philosophical explanation of his function. 
 Behind and beyond all the telling, explaining, and 
 lesson-giving, there lies as the essential aim of it 
 all, and of all that the teacher does, the awakening 
 and setting in action the learner's mind, the arous- 
 ing of his self-activities^ as they have been called 
 — those faculties of cognition, imagination, and 
 reasoning whose action must always be voluntary 
 and self-impelled. As already shown, knowledge 
 can not be passed from mind to mind like apples 
 from one basket to another, but must in every 
 case be re-cognized, re-thought by the receiving 
 mind. All telling, explaining, or other acts of so- 
 called teaching are useless except as they serve to 
 excite and direct the pupil's voluntary mental 
 powers. If these are not put in action, nothing 
 follows ; the teacher's words fall upon deaf ears. 
 
 3. This may therefore be taken as 
 
 The Law of Teaching : 
 
 Excite and direct the self-activities of the learner, 
 and tell him nothing that he can learn himself. 
 
 4. The latter clause is only a limiting caution 
 whose importance is so great as to require its 
 statement as part of the law. There are cases in 
 which this caution must be disregarded in order to 
 save time, or to favor a weak or discouraged 
 pupil, but its violation is always a loss which 
 
The Lazv of tJie Teaching Process. ^t, 
 
 should be compensated by some greater gain. 
 Taken in its affirmative form, this caution would 
 read : " Leave the pupil to discover the truth for 
 himself — make him a truth-finder." The validity 
 and value of this law have been too often and too 
 strongly stated to demand further proof. No great 
 writer on education has failed to notice and enun- 
 ciate it under some form or other ; and if we were 
 seeking for the educational maxim the most widely 
 received among good teachers, and the most ex- 
 tensive in its applications and results, we should 
 inevitably fix upon this. It is the truth recognized 
 in such rules as the following, so often urged by 
 eminent teachers upon beginners : " Wake up the 
 mind;" "Set pupils to thinking;" ''Arouse the 
 spirit of inquiry ; " '' Get your pupils to work." All 
 these maxims are but various expressions of one 
 law. 
 
 In tracing the laws of attention, of language, 
 and of knowledge, the mental faculties acting 
 under those laws have necessarily come into view, 
 but they will now demand a fuller and more explicit 
 discussion ; for it is in the modes of mental action 
 that we must seek the 
 
 Philosophy of the Law. 
 
 5. We can learn without a teacher. Children 
 learn hundreds of facts before they are sent to 
 school, sometimes with the aid of parents or 
 others, but often by their own unaided activities. 
 
84 The Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 In the greater part of our acquisitions we are all 
 self-taught, and it is generally conceded that the 
 knowledge is most permanent and best in use 
 which is dug out by unaided research. All knowl- 
 edge, at the outset, must be learned by its discov- 
 erer without an instructor, since no instructor 
 knows it. If, then, we can learn without teaching, 
 it follows that the true and only function of a 
 teacher is to stimulate and help the learner to do 
 what he might otherwise do by himself and with- 
 out a teacher. Essentially the acquisition of 
 knowledge must be made by the same faculties 
 used in the same methods, whether with or with- 
 out a teacher. 
 
 6. What, then, is the use of schools, and what 
 the necessity of a teacher } The question is perti- 
 nent, the answer plain. Knowledge lies in nature 
 in scattered facts, mixed and confused; connected, 
 it is true, in great systems, but connected by laws 
 and relations hidden from the tyro's vision, and 
 learned by mankind only through ages of observa- 
 tion. The school selects for its curriculum what 
 it regcards as the most useful of nature's truths, 
 and offers these with all the gathered facilities for 
 learning them. It secures to the learner leisure 
 and quiet for study, and offers in its books and 
 apparatus the results of the labors of other learners, 
 which may serve as charts of the territories to be 
 explored, and as beaten paths through the fields of 
 knowledge. True teaching is not that which gives 
 
The Law of the Teaching Process. 85 
 
 knowledge, but that which stimulates pupils to 
 gain it. It may be said that he teaches best zvho 
 teaches least ; or, better still, he teaches most whose 
 pupils learn most without his teaching. 
 
 7. The teacher is a sympathizing guide whose 
 familiarity with the subjects to be learned enables 
 him to direct the learner's efforts, to save him 
 from the waste of time and strength, or needless 
 or insuperable difficulties, and to keep him from 
 mistaking truth for error. But no aid of school 
 or teacher can change nature's modes in mind 
 work, or take from the learner the lordly prerog- 
 ative and need for knowing for himself. The eye 
 must do its own seeing, the ear its own hearing, 
 and the mind its own thinking, however much 
 may be done to furnish objects of sight, sounds 
 for the ear, and ideas for the intelligence. It is 
 the child's own inward digestion which produces 
 growth of body or mind. "■ If childhood is edu- 
 cated according to the measure of its powers," said 
 St. Augustine, *' they will continually grow and in- 
 crease ; while if forced beyond their strength, 
 they decrease instead of increasing." The sooner 
 the teacher abandons the false notion that he can 
 make his pupils intelligent by hard work on their 
 passive receptivity, the sooner he may attain the 
 true teacher's art, as Socrates expressed it, to as- 
 sist the mind to shape and put forth its own con- 
 ceptions. It was to his skill in this that the great 
 Athenian owed his power and greatness among his 
 
86 TJie Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 contemporaries, and gave him the place he still 
 holds as next to Jesus of Nazareth, that foremost 
 among the great teachers of mankind. It is the 
 "forcing process" in teaching which separates 
 learning from knowing. A boy having expressed 
 surprise at the shape of the earth when he was 
 shown a globe, was asked: "Did you not learn 
 that in school?" He replied: "Yes, I learned it, 
 but I never knew it." 
 
 8. The two great coordinate aims of educa- 
 tion are to acquire knozvledge and to develop poiver. 
 Our law derives its significance from both of these 
 aims. The pupil must know for himself, or his 
 knowledge will be knowledge only in form. The 
 very effort required in the act of thus learning 
 and knowing gives both vividness to the knowl- 
 edge learned and increases the power to learn. 
 Mental toil gives to theu mind both appetite and 
 digestive power, and he who is taught without 
 study, like him who is fed without exercise, will 
 lose both appetite and strength. 
 
 9. But the argument goes deeper. Confidence 
 in our own powers is an essential condition of 
 their successful exercise. This confidence can be 
 gained only by the self-prompted, voluntary, and 
 independent use of these powers. We gain con- 
 fidence to walk by walking, not by seeing others 
 walk. So the faith we need to feel in our own 
 intellect must come from the self-controlled 
 and successful use of that intellect. 
 
The Law of the TeacJiing Process. 8/ 
 
 10. The self-activities or voluntary mental 
 powers do not set themselves at work without 
 some motive or excitant to put them in action. 
 They sleep as if behind closed doors till some 
 external object touches the senses or some inter- 
 nal craving or emotion stirs the thought. Of 
 these two classes of excitants, the external are 
 strongest in early life, the internal in riper years. 
 To the young child the objects of sense — bright 
 colors, live animals, and things in motion — • are 
 most attractive and mind-exciting. At the other 
 end of life, the inner facts of thought and feeling 
 most stir and engage the powers. The child's 
 mental life has in it an excess of sensation ; the 
 old man's an excess of reflection. 
 
 11. But whatever the excitant which starts the 
 mental powers, the processes of cognition are 
 nearly the same. There is the comparison of the 
 new with the old, the alternating analysis and syn- 
 thesis of parts, wholes, classes, causes, and effects ; 
 the reciprocal action of memory and imagination, 
 the combinations of the judgment and the reason, 
 and the various excursions of thought controlled 
 by the tastes, powers, needs, and previous knowl- 
 edge of each thinker. If this inner and volun- 
 tary action does not go on, the teacher has applied 
 his external excitants in vain. He may wonder 
 that he can not make his pupil understand and 
 remember, and will perhaps impatiently believe 
 him stupid and incompetent or idle. The stupid- 
 
88 The Seven Lazvs of Teaching. 
 
 ity is often on the other side, and it sins against 
 this plain law of teaching in assuming that the 
 teacher can make the pupil learn by dint of vigor- 
 ous telling, or teaching as he calls it, whereas true 
 teaching only brings to bear upon the pupil's mind 
 nature's various excitants. If some of these fail, 
 he must find others, and rest not till he reaches 
 the desired result and sees in full play upon the 
 lesson the self-activities of the child. 
 
 12. Said Comenius, over two hundred years 
 ago : "■ Most teachers sow plants instead of seeds 
 of plants ; instead of proceeding from the simplest 
 principles, they introduce the scholar at once into 
 a chaos of books and miscellaneous studies." The 
 figure of the seed is a good one, and is much 
 older than Comenius. The greatest of teachers 
 said : "The seed is the word." The true teacher 
 does but stir the ground and sow the seed. It is 
 the work of the soil through its own forces to 
 develop the growth and ripen the grain. 
 
 13. The difference between the self-acting 
 pupil and the pupil who only acts when he is acted 
 on is too obvious to need description. The one 
 acts as a living and free agent ; the other resem- 
 bles a machine. The former is attracted by his 
 work, and, prompted by his own inborn interest, 
 he works on till he meets some overcoming diffi- 
 culty or reaches the end of his task. The latter 
 moves only as he is moved upon. He sees what is 
 shown him, hears what is told, advances when the 
 
The Law of the Teaching Process. 89 
 
 teacher leads, and stops just where and when the 
 teaching stops. The one moves by self-activities, 
 the other by a borrowed impulse. The former is 
 a mountain stream fed by living springs, the latter 
 a ditch filled from a pump worked by another's 
 hand. 
 
 Knowledge necessary to Thought. 
 
 14. The voluntary action of every mind is 
 limited practically to the field of its acquired 
 knowledge. He who knows nothing can not 
 think : he has nothing to think about. In 
 comparing, imagining, judging, and reasoning, 
 and in applying knowledge to plan, criticize, 
 express, or execute one's thoughts, the mind must 
 necessarily work upon the material it possesses. 
 Hence the power of any object or truth as a 
 mental excitant depends in each case upon the 
 number of related objects or truths which the 
 mind already knows. A botanist will be aroused 
 to the keenest interest by the discovery of a new 
 plant, but will care little for a new stone or star. 
 The physician studies eagerly new diseases, the 
 lawyer new decisions, the farmer new crops or 
 cattle, the mechanic new structures and machines. 
 
 15. The infant knows little, and his interest in 
 any new object is short and slight ; the man knows 
 many things, and his interest is deeper, wider, and 
 more persistent. Thoughtfulness deepens and 
 grows intense with increase of knowledge. He 
 
go The Seven Lazvs of Teaching. 
 
 who studies mathematics long and deeply never 
 finds this study dry or tiresome, and the wisest 
 student of the Bible finds in its pages the highest 
 delight and gathers there the grandest revelations 
 of supernal truths. All these varying illustrations 
 familiarly show the principles which underlie our 
 law and prove its truth. 
 
 Two Excitants of Thought. 
 
 i6. The two chief springs of interest through 
 which the mind can be aroused to a voluntary ex- 
 ertion of its powers are the love of knowledge as 
 a mental satisfaction, and the desire of knowledge 
 as a means of obtaining other satisfactions. In 
 the former, or the love of knowledge for its own 
 sake as it is sometimes called, are mingled the 
 satisfaction of the native curiosity of the mind 
 which craves to know the real nature and causes 
 of the phenomena around us, the solution of the 
 unquiet questionings which often trouble the 
 spirit, the relief from apprehensions which igno- 
 rance feels in the presence of nature's mysteries, 
 the sense of power and liberty which knowledge 
 often brings, the feeling of mental elevation and 
 superiority which each fresh increment of intel- 
 ligence gives, and the ''rejoicing in the truth" 
 because of its own beauty and sublimity, or its 
 moral charm and sweetness, its appeals to our 
 taste for wit and humor, for the wonderful and 
 the beneficent. All these enter separately or 
 
The Law of the Teaching Process, 91 
 
 together into the intellectual appetite to which 
 the various forms of knowledge appeal, and which 
 gives to reading and study their highest if not 
 strongest attraction. Each affords an avenue 
 through which the mind can be reached and 
 roused by the skillful teacher. 
 
 17. It is evident that this manifold mental ap- 
 petite must vary in character and intensity with 
 the tastes and attainments of pupils. Some love 
 nature and her sciences of observation and experi- 
 ment ; others love the mathematics and delight in 
 their problems ; others love languages and litera- 
 ture, and others still history and the spiritual sci- 
 ences which deal with the powers, doings, and 
 destinies of mankind. Each special appetite 
 grows by feeding, and becomes absorbing as its 
 acquisitions become great. The great masteries 
 and achievements in arts, learning, literature, and 
 science have come from these inborn tastes, and 
 in all these 
 
 " The child is father of the man."" 
 
 In each little pupil sleep the germs of such 
 tastes, — the coiled springs of such powers, — • 
 awaiting the art of the teacher to water the germs 
 and set in motion the springs. The natural ex- 
 citant of each appetite is the offered food of each. 
 
 18. The love of knowledge for its uses includes 
 the desire for education as a means of livelihood 
 gr as a source of respectability ; the felt or antici- 
 
92 TJie Seven Lazvs of Teaching: 
 
 pated need of some special knowledge, as artist, 
 artisan, lawyer, writer, or other brain-worker, as 
 well as the study made to win reward or to avoid 
 punishment and disgrace. This indirect desire 
 for learning varies with the character and aims of 
 the pupil, but does not increase with attainment 
 unless it ripens, as it may, into the true love of 
 knowledge above described. Its strength depends 
 on the nature and largeness of the need which 
 impels to study. The self-activities aroused for 
 such study go to a self-imposed task and are little 
 likely to continue their work after the task is 
 done. The rewards and punishments used in 
 school to promote lesson-getting have just this 
 force and no more. They inspire no generous ac- 
 tivity which works for the love of the work and 
 which pauses not when its appointed lesson is 
 learned. If the study they induce shall become 
 transfigured into a true love of knowledge, then 
 the violence they do to the pupil's mind may be 
 forgotten ; but in most cases they sow disgust in 
 place of generous desire and make all high edu- 
 cation harder, if not impossible. Witness the 
 spirit that pervades every school so taught 
 and managed. 
 
 The Moral Intellect. 
 
 19. Our whole discussion thus far has taken 
 for granted the intimate and indissoluble connec- 
 tion of the intellect and the sensibilities — the in- 
 
The Lazv of the TeacJiing Process. 93 
 
 separable union of thought and feeUng. To think 
 without feeling would be thinking with a total in- 
 difference to the object of thought, which would 
 be absurd ; and to feel without thinking would be 
 to feel without knowing that we feel, which is 
 impossible. Now, as most of the objects of 
 thought are objects also of desire or dislike, and 
 therefore objects of choice, it follows that all im- 
 portant action of the intellect has a moral side or 
 quality ; and this, too, has been assumed through- 
 out this volume. This moral side of the intelli- 
 gence may be called the Moral Intellect, the 
 intellect working in the field of the moral life. 
 The love of knowledge for itself or its uses is 
 moral at bottom, as it implies moral affections 
 and purposes of good or evil. All motives of 
 study have a moral character or connection, at 
 their first or second step ; and hence no education 
 or teaching can be absolutely divorced from 
 morals. The affections and conscience always 
 come to school with the intellect. 
 
 20. But the Moral Intellect, or cognitive con- 
 science as we may call it, finds its fuller sphere in 
 the recognized domain of duty — the higher realm 
 of the affections, the virtues, and religion. From 
 these the mind borrows its highest and strongest 
 incentives to study and its clearest light in under- 
 standing. Let the teacher constantly address the 
 moral nature and stimulate the moral sentiments, 
 if he wishes to achieve the highest success possi- 
 ble for him. 
 
94 The Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 21. This moral teaching was the chief excel- 
 lency of Pestalozzi's work, and it is the leading 
 characteristic of every great teacher of mankind. 
 He who would get from the mind of his pupil its 
 highest and most heroic efforts must appeal to its 
 noblest sentiments, — its love of God, of its coun- 
 try, and its fellows, — its personal aspirations for 
 a noble, useful, and beneficent life, — its love for 
 truth and goodness and its purest hopes of 
 heaven. If these sentiments are feeble or want- 
 ing, the teacher must build them up, or he will 
 fail in his work. 
 
 The Power of the Sunday-school. 
 
 22. The Sunday-school ought to be the best 
 and most successful of all schools, because it is 
 openly, freely, and fearlessly religious. The whole 
 moral and religious nature of the child is open to 
 its work. Its education ought therefore to domi- 
 nate, inspire, and consecrate all other education. 
 
 23. Through the Sunday-school, Christianity 
 is free to pour its faith into all other schools. 
 Standing as it does on the moral and social hill-top 
 of the week, it should be able to throw its light 
 along all the path of the children's daily work 
 and studies. 
 
 24. So soon as the Sunday-school becomes 
 strong enough and skillful enough in its teach- 
 ings, it will color and control all learning with its 
 own higher ideas and hopes. The true interests 
 
TJie Law of the Teaching Process. 95 
 
 of mankind, as well as the progress and final suc- 
 cess of Christianity itself, demand that this shall 
 be done. Science will cease to be infidel or scep- 
 tic when its students shall be good Bible scholars. 
 Witness Newton, Hugh Miller, Agassiz, and Dana, 
 second to none as scientists, but never sceptic, 
 because trained in religious knowledge. 
 
 The Mind does its Own Work. 
 
 25. It follows from all this that only when the 
 mental powers work free and in their own way 
 can the product be sure or permanent. No one 
 can know what any mind contains, or what labor 
 it performs, save as that mind imperfectly reveals 
 it by words or acts, or as we conjecture it by 
 reflecting on our own conscious experience. 
 Into the sealed workshop of the soul no spectator 
 enters. What the occupant does there no one but 
 himself can tell. Working by his own light on 
 materials furnished by his own senses and gath- 
 ered by his own intelligence, it is his to mould, 
 shape, combine, and construct as he will. Just as 
 the digestive organs must do their own work, 
 masticating and digesting whatever food they can 
 get, selecting, secreting, assimilating, and so build- 
 ing bone, muscle, brain, nerve, skin, and all the 
 various tissues and organs of the body ; so, too, 
 in the last resort, the mental faculties must do 
 theirs, without external aid, building as they 
 can, opinions, beliefs, purposes, faiths, and all 
 
96 The Seven Laws of Teac/iing. 
 
 the forms of intelligence and character. As 
 Milton expressed it : — 
 
 *' The mind is its own place, and in itself 
 Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." 
 
 26. If I thus emphasize the fact of each mind's 
 autocracy, it is not to belittle the teacher's work, 
 but to show more clearly the law which gives that 
 work all its force and dignity. It is the teacher's 
 mission to stand at the impassable gate-ways of 
 young souls, a wiser and stronger soul than they, 
 serving as a herald of science, a guide through 
 nature, to summon the faculties within to their 
 work, to place before them the facts to be ob- 
 served, and to guide them to the paths to be 
 trodden. It is his by sympathy, by example, and 
 by every means of influence — by objects for the 
 senses, by facts for the intelligence, by pictures 
 for the imagination^ by stories for the fancy and 
 the heart, to excite the mind, stir the curiosity, 
 stimulate the thoughts, and send them forth as 
 warriors, armed and eager for the conflict. Every 
 thoughtful and observant teacher has had occa- 
 sion to note the various and original ways in 
 which different pupils will reach the answer to 
 a question, or other mental result, when left to 
 themselves. 
 
 27. The cautionary clause of our law which 
 forbids giving too much help to pupils will be 
 needless to the teacher who clearly sees his proper 
 
TJie Laiv of the TeacJiing Process. 97 
 
 work, and who is eager only to get his pupil's 
 mind into free and vigorous action. Like a skill- 
 ful engineer who knows the power of his engine, 
 he chooses to stand and watch the play of the 
 splendid machine and marvel at the ease and vigor 
 of its movements. It is only the unskillful and 
 self-seeking teacher who prefers to hear his own 
 voice in endless talk, rather than watch the work- 
 ing of his pupil's thoughts. 
 
 28. There is no real disagreement between 
 this law and the first and third, which so strongly 
 insist on the teacher's knowledge of his subject 
 and on his use of familiar language. Only 
 through his own full knowledge of the subject 
 can he understand the difficulties met by the 
 pupil, or be able to determine when the pupil has 
 mastered the lesson, and to follow it with thorough 
 drills and reviews. As well insist that a general 
 need know nothing of a battle-field because he is 
 not to do the actual fighting, as that a teacher 
 may get on with slight knowledge because his 
 pupils must do the studying. Besides, there are 
 some exceptions to the rule to tell the pupil 
 nothing which he can discover for himself. There 
 come occasions when the teacher may, for a few 
 minutes, turn lecturer or preacher, and before a 
 class well prepared to receive it may, from the 
 stores of his own riper studies, give them broader, 
 richer, and clearer views of the field of their work. 
 He may, for a little, lift the child to his own 
 
98 The Seven Laivs of TeacJiing, 
 
 strong shoulders to give it a clearer view of the 
 path it has traveled, or an inspiring and guiding 
 glimpse of the roadway yet to come ; only he 
 must take care not to substitute telling for true 
 teaching, and thus encourage lazy listening where 
 he needs to call for earnest work. 
 
 Questions as Excitants. 
 
 29. The chief excitants which nature uses to 
 stir the minds of men have already been noticed. 
 They might all be described as the silent but 
 ceaseless questions which the universe addresses 
 to the spirit of man. The strange and endless 
 questionings which an active child presses upon 
 its often wearied parents are but the echoes of 
 those which nature presses upon its young intel- 
 lect. The true stimulant of the human mind is 
 a question, and the object or event that does not 
 raise any question will stir no thought. Ques- 
 tioning is not, therefore, merely one of the modes 
 of teaching, it is the whole of teaching; it is 
 the excitation of the self-activities to their work 
 of discovering truth, learning facts, knowing the 
 unknown. Nature always teaches thus. But it 
 is not necessary that every question shall be in 
 the interrogative form. The strongest and clear- 
 est affirmation may have all the effect of the 
 sharpest interrogation, if the mind be sufficiently 
 aroused to so receive it. An explanation may be 
 so given as to raise new questions while it 
 answers old ones. 
 
The Laiv of the Teaching Process. 99 
 
 30. The explanation that settles every thing 
 and ends all questions, ends also all thinking ; on 
 that subject at least for the time and in that direc- 
 tion. After a truth is clearly understood, or a fact 
 is established, there still remain its consequences, 
 apphcations, and uses to be inquired into. And 
 each fact and truth thoroughly studied leads us 
 into the presence of other facts and truths, which 
 renew the questionings and demand fresh inves- 
 tigations. The thoroughly alert and scientific 
 mind is one that never ceases to ask questions 
 and seek answers. The scientific spirit is the 
 spirit of tireless inquiry and investigation. The 
 nineteenth century, which so far excels all its 
 predecessors in the extent of its sciences and arts, 
 excels them also in the number and reach of its 
 questionings. It is above all others the century 
 of great questions. 
 
 31. And as with the world, so with the child: 
 his intellectual education fairly begins so soon as 
 he commences earnestly to ask questions. It is 
 only when the questioning spirit has been fully 
 awakened, and the power and habit of raising 
 questions have been largely developed, that the 
 teaching process may give way to the lecture plan, 
 and the student may be turned into the listener. 
 The truth asks its own questions so soon as the 
 mind is sufficiently awake. The falling apple had 
 the question of universal gravitation in it for the 
 mind of Newton ; and the boiling tea-kettle pro- 
 
loo The Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 pounded to James Watt the problem of a steam- 
 engine. 
 
 Rules for Teachers. y 
 
 Like our other laws, this one also suggests 
 some practical rules for teaching. 
 
 1. Adapt lessons to the ages and tastes of the 
 children. Young pupils will be interested in 
 whatever appeals to the senses ; only the mature 
 minds will enter heartily into the truths of 
 reason and reflection. 
 
 2. Select lessons which relate to the present 
 circumstances and wants of pupils. The mind is 
 already awake for these. The story of Lazarus 
 will easily engage the attention of one who has 
 just lost a friend, or been to a funeral. 
 
 3. Consider carefully the subject and the 
 lesson to be taught, and find its points of interest 
 for your own pupils. 
 
 4. Excite the pupil's interest in the lesson 
 when it is given out, by some question or by 
 some statement which will awaken inquiry. Hint 
 that something worth knowing is to be found out 
 if the lesson is thoroughly studied, and be sure 
 to ask for the truth discovered. 
 
 5. Place yourself frequently in the position 
 of a pupil among pupils, and join in the search 
 for some fact or truth, or for the meaning of a 
 text. 
 
 6. Repress the impatience which can not wait 
 for the pupil to explain himself, and which takes 
 
TJie Lazv of the Teaching Process. loi 
 
 the words out of his mouth. He will resent it, 
 and tell his comrades, if not you, that he could 
 have answered if you had given him time. 
 
 7. In all class exercises aim to excite con- 
 stantly fresh interest and activity. Start ques- 
 tions for the pupils to investigate out of the class. 
 The lesson that does not end in fresh questionings 
 ends wrong. 
 
 8. Observe each pupil to see that his mind is 
 neither so wandering nor weary as to forbid its 
 activities being bent to the lesson in hand. 
 
 9. Count it your chief duty to ''wake up 
 mind," and rest not till each pupil shows his 
 mental activity by asking questions in turn. 
 
 10. Repress the desire to tell all you know 
 or think upon the lesson or subject ; and if you 
 tell something to illustrate or explain, let it start 
 a fresh question. 
 
 11. Give the pupil time to think, after you are 
 sure his mind is actively at work, and encourage 
 him to ask questions when puzzled. 
 
 12. Do not answer too promptly the questions 
 asked, but restate them, to give them greater 
 force and breadth, and often answer with new 
 questions to secure deeper thought. 
 
 13. Teach pupils to ask What? Why? and 
 How? — the nature, cause, and method of every 
 fact observed or told them ; also Where ? WJieu ? 
 By whom? and WJiat of it? — the place, time, 
 actors, and consequences of events. 
 
102 The Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 14. Recitations should not exhaust a subject, 
 but leave work on hand for the class to think out. 
 
 Violations and Mistakes. 
 
 Many a teacher neglecting these plain rules 
 kills all interest in his class, and wonders how 
 he did it. 
 
 (i) The chief and almost constant violation of 
 this law of teaching is the attempt to force lessons 
 into pupils' minds by simply telling. " I have told 
 you ten times, and yet you don't know! " exclaimed 
 a teacher of this sort. Poor teacher, can you not 
 remember that knowing comes by thinking, not 
 by telling } Better the school tyrant who whips 
 his pupils into learning their own lessons than 
 a teacher who tells them all. 
 
 (2) It is another mistake to complain of 
 memory for not keeping what it never fairly held. 
 The only cure for a bad memory is to mix more 
 thinking in one's learning. The fact that is seen 
 or read without thought will be forgotten in an 
 hour ; but think deeply about a fact for ten 
 minutes, and the chances are that it will be fresh 
 in memory ten years later. 
 
 (3) A third violation of the law comes from the 
 hurry which leads teachers to require prompt and 
 rapid recitations in the very words of the book ; 
 and, if a question is asked in the class, to refuse 
 the pupils time to think. If the pupil hesitates 
 and stops for lack of thought, or from fault of 
 
The Laiv of the TeacJiing Process. 103 
 
 memory, which is also lack of thought, the evil 
 lies in yesterday's teaching which shows its fruit 
 to-day ; but if it comes from the slowness of the 
 pupil's thinking, or from the real difficulty of the 
 subject, then time should be given for thought ; 
 and, if the lesson- hour will not allow it, let the 
 answer go over to the morrow. 
 
 It is to this hurried and unthinking lesson-say- 
 ing that we owe the superficial and impractical 
 character of so much of our school learning. For 
 the noble advice of Paul, to "read, mark, learn, 
 and inwardly digest " the truth, we have substi- 
 tuted the rule, '' Learn so as to recite promptly." 
 Thus the word remains ''unmixed with faith in 
 those who have it," and it is as the seed sown by 
 the way-side, which the birds snatch away. If these 
 are bad faults in our day-schools, how much more 
 serious in the Bible-schools, where the truths 
 studied are wider and grander in themselves, and 
 where the lessons have their great use in their 
 applications to the mind, heart, and conscience of 
 the learner. If it is true that there resides in 
 God's Word power to convert the soul, to purify 
 the life, to make wise the simple, and to judge the 
 world, how inexcusable the folly of the teaching 
 which leaves its truths unknown, and sheathes its 
 sharp and glittering blade in the scabbard of a 
 text familiar to the ear but shut to the understand- 
 ing and the heart ! 
 
 How different is the result where this great 
 
I04 The Seveii Laws of Teaching. 
 
 law of teaching is understood and obeyed ! The 
 stimulated activities make the scene radiant as 
 with flashing light. The school-room is trans- 
 formed under their power into a busy laboratory 
 of thought and emotion. The pupils become 
 thinkers — discoverers. They master great 
 truths, and apply them to the questions of 
 life and duty. They invade new fields of knowl- 
 edge. The teacher does but lead the march. 
 Their reconnoissance becomes a conquest. Skill 
 and power grow with their exercise. Mind 
 awakens to its high birthright, and the scholar 
 of the school-time becomes the student of a 
 life-time. 
 
Chapter VII. 
 
 THE LAW OF THE LEARNING 
 PROCESS. 
 
 1. We must now pass again from the side of 
 the teacher to the side of the learner. It has 
 been seen that the teacher's work consists essen- 
 tially in arousing and guiding the self-activities 
 of the pupil. The pupil's work, which now 
 demands study, is the use of those self-activities 
 in getting his lesson. The laws of teaching and 
 learning may seem at first to be only different 
 aspects of the same law, but they are quite dis- 
 tinct — the one applying to the work of the 
 instructor, the other to that of the instructed. 
 The law of the teaching process involves the means 
 by which the self-activities are to be awakened ; 
 the law of the learning process determines the 
 manner in which these activities shall be em- 
 ployed. 
 
 2. If we watch again a child at his studies, and 
 mark carefully what he is to do, we shall easily 
 see that it is not merely an effort of the attention, 
 nor a vague and aimless exertion of his mental 
 powers, that is required of him. There is a clear 
 and distinct act or process which we wish him 
 to accomplish. It is to form in his own mind, 
 
Io6 The Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 by the use of his own powers, a complete and 
 truthful conception or notion of the facts and 
 truths in the lesson, in all their parts, relations, 
 proofs, and applications. This is the result to 
 which all efforts of teacher and learner must be 
 bent. The Law of the Learning Process may 
 therefore be stated thus : — 
 
 The learner must reproduce in his own mind the 
 truth to be acquired. 
 
 3. The laws before discussed have addressed 
 themselves chiefly to the teacher : this comes 
 home also to the learner. It brings into sight 
 the principles which must guide the student in 
 his studies, and which it is the business of the 
 instructor to emphasize and enforce. While tell- 
 ing the teacher how to teach, it also tells the 
 learner how to learn. This will appear more 
 clearly in the discussion which follows. 
 
 The Philosophy of the Law. 
 
 4. As that is not true teaching which simply 
 pours out before the pupil the treasures of the 
 teacher's knowledge, so that is not true learning 
 which merely memorizes and repeats the teacher's 
 words and ideas. Vastly more than is commonly 
 understood or believed, the work of education, 
 of acquiring knowledge, is the work of the pupil 
 and not that of the teacher. This truth has 
 already been affirmed in other connections. It 
 
TJie Laiv of the Learnijig Process, 107 
 
 is reaffirmed here as the fundamental notion in 
 the present discussion. Learning is the formation 
 by the learner in his own mind of the conceptions 
 contained in the lesson learned. 
 
 5. We must distinguish between the original 
 discovery of a truth and the learning it from 
 others. Discovery is made by processes of inves- 
 tigation which are commonly slow, tentative, and 
 laborious. Learning comes by processes of inter- 
 pretation, which are often easy and rapid. Still 
 there is much in common. The learner redis- 
 covers in part the truth he learns. No discovered 
 truth is wholly new. No true learning is wholly 
 a repetition of other men's thoughts. The dis- 
 coverer borrows largely of truths known to others ; 
 the student must add much to the lesson he 
 studies. His constant aim should be to rise from 
 being a learner at other men's feet, to become 
 an independent searcher of truth for himself. 
 Both discoverer and learner must alike be truth- 
 seekers. Both must aim to gain clear and distinct 
 conceptions of it. Both must needs employ in 
 their work the truths already familiar to them, 
 and both must put their learning to use, to find 
 its full power and value. It is indispensable that 
 the learner shall become an investigator. 
 
 6. Learning has several stages of progress 
 which need to be carefully noticed in order that 
 the full meaning of the law shall be seen and 
 understood. They are the following : — 
 
Io8 The Seven Laws cf TcacJdn^. 
 
 First. A pupil may be said to have learned his 
 lesson when he has committed it to memory, and 
 can recite it word for word. This is all that is 
 attempted by many pupils, or required by those 
 teachers who count their work well done if they 
 can secure sucli verbatim recitations. Education 
 would be cheap if such learning could be made to 
 stay; but it passes away like the images from a 
 mirror, unless fixed by almost endless repetitions. 
 
 Second. It is an evident advance over the mem- 
 orizing of words when the pupil adds a clear 
 understanding of the thought. So much better is 
 this learning than the other that thoughtful teach- 
 ers are tempted to say to their pupils : " I do not 
 care for the words of the lesson ; give me the 
 thought." But in many cases, especially in Bible 
 lessons, it is important to know and remember the 
 very words. 
 
 Third. It is a higher stage in study when the 
 thought is so mastered and measured, as it were, 
 that the pupil can translate it accurately into 
 other words with no loss of meaning. He who 
 can do this has advanced beyond the mere work of 
 learning, and has begun the work of discovering. 
 He is dealing not merely with another's thought 
 of the truth, but with the truth itself. The wise 
 teacher will recognize this, and will pardon the 
 crudeness in expression, while he encourages the 
 pupil to more accurate thinking as a means to 
 more correct language. 
 
The Laiv of the Learning Process, 109 
 
 Fourth. The learner shows higher work still 
 when he begins to seek the evidences of the 
 statements which he studies. He who can give 
 a reason for the faith which is in him is a much 
 better learner, as well as stronger believer, than 
 the man who believes, he knows not why. The 
 true investigator seeks proofs, and a large part of 
 the work of a student of nature is to prove the 
 truths which he discovers. So also ought the 
 Bible student to "search the Scriptures" to see 
 for himself if these things are so. Even the 
 youngest learner takes a stronger hold of the 
 truth if he can see a reason for it. In hunting 
 for proofs, the student comes in sight of a hun- 
 dred other truths, just as one who climbs a moun- 
 tain finds the landscape always widening around 
 him. The little lesson he is learning is seen to be 
 a part of the great empire of the all-truth ; its 
 truth grows clearer in the reflected light of other 
 truths, and the heart, like that of the mountain 
 traveler, revels in the splendid outlook and in the 
 consciousness of growing power. 
 
 FiftJi. But there is a still higher and more 
 fruitful stage in learning. It is found in the study 
 of the uses and applications of knowledge. No 
 lesson is learned to its full and rich ending till it 
 is traced to its connections with the great working 
 machinery of nature and of life. Nature is not 
 an idle show, nor is the Bible a mass of old wives' 
 fables. Every fact has its uses, and every truth 
 
I 10 The Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 its applications, and till these are found the les- 
 son lies idle and useless as a wheel out of gear 
 with its fellows in the busy machinery. The prac- 
 tical relations of truth, and the forces which lie 
 hid behind all facts, are never really understood 
 till we apply our knowledge to some of the practi- 
 cal purposes of life and thought. The boy who 
 finds a use for his lesson becomes doubly inter- 
 ested and successful in his studies. What was 
 idle knowledge, only half understood, becomes 
 practical wisdom full of zest and power. Espe- 
 cially is this true of Bible knowledge, whose 
 superficial study is of slight effect, but whose pro- 
 founder learning changes the whole man. " The 
 letter killeth ; the spirit giveth life." 
 
 7. No learning is complete till these five stages 
 are passed. They are like five windows of increas- 
 ing size, each of which pours its fuller light in 
 succession upon the lesson. The first shows 
 it in dim outline only, like an object seen at 
 twilight without distinctness of form or color. 
 The others give increasing clearness to the vieW; 
 till the gathered illumination of them all makes 
 the truth to stand forth in all its grandeur and 
 beauty, a landscape complete and rich, in colors, 
 forms, and life. Such is the reproduction of the 
 lesson which our law demands, and to this must 
 the efforts of teacher and pupil be steadily bent. 
 
 8. The earnest student will find in these five 
 stages of study the clearest directions for the 
 
The Lazv of the Learning Process. 1 1 1 
 
 work he has to do. Let him ask himself: (i) 
 What does the lesson say, word for word ? (2) 
 Exactly what does it mean ? (3) How express 
 this meaning in my own language ? (4) Is the 
 lesson true ; in what sense and why ? (5) What 
 is the good of it — how apply and use the knowl- 
 edge it gives ? It is along these five steps that 
 the learner must mount, if at all, to a broad and 
 clear conception of the full significance and value 
 of the truth learned. 
 
 9. It is true that not many lessons are learned 
 with this comprehensive thoroughness, and it may 
 be tliat only the briefest and simplest lessons can 
 be so mastered at a single sitting; but this does 
 not change the fact that no lesson can be counted 
 as fully learned till so mastered and understood. 
 Better one subject so learned than a whole curric- 
 ulum skimmed with lighter study. ''Better to 
 know one thing than not to know a hundred." 
 ''It is worth more," said the wise Seneca, "to be 
 possessed of but few of the lessons of wisdom, but to 
 apply these diligently, than to know many but not 
 to have them at hand." Such knowledsfe, and 
 such alone, is power. Truth so studied cleaves 
 to the memory, quickens the intellect, fires the 
 heart, shapes the character, and transforms the 
 life. 
 
 The Two Limitations. 
 
 10. Two limitations to this law of learning 
 need to be considered. First. That of the age 
 
1 1 2 The Seveji Laws of Teaching. 
 
 and powers of the learner. Each of the five 
 stages may be climbed by the youngest as well 
 as by the oldest pupil, but on a path answering 
 to the pupil's active powers, (i) The mental 
 activity of young children lies close to the senses. 
 Their thinking is a sort of mental seeing. It 
 pictures rather than thinks. Their knowledge 
 of a lesson will be confined chiefly to the facts 
 in it which appeal to the eye, or which can be 
 illustrated to the senses. Many subjects are, of 
 course, beyond their comprehension, but in the 
 subjects which can be taught to them at all, the 
 expression, the meaning, the proofs, and the uses 
 can be shown to their understanding. (2) From 
 ten to fourteen years of age, the imagination is 
 the most active power, and the lesson will be best 
 and most easily learned which can be pictured 
 to the fancy or turned into a plan for some active 
 effort or enterprise. (3) Later the reason begins 
 to assume sway, and the lesson will appeal most 
 to the mind if it asks reasons and gives conclu- 
 sions. Each great subject of human knowledge 
 will be found to have these three stages of truth 
 in it, and to offer, therefore, some lessons for all 
 ages of learners. 
 
 Second. The other limitation is that which 
 comes from the kinds of knowledge. Science, 
 history, art, and Scripture, each has its own 
 evidences and its own uses and applications. In 
 each case the law of learning or study varies to 
 
TJie Lazu of tJie Learning Process. 1 1 3 
 
 meet conditions. Let the intelligent teacher take 
 a simple example of each sort, and he will easily 
 note the differences and find the true conditigns 
 of successful study of each. The student Avhose 
 powers or methods of study best meet the condi- 
 tions of learning in any branch of knowledge, 
 easily excels in that branch. Examples are 
 common. 
 
 II. Hermann Kriisi, one of the most sagacious 
 of teachers because one of the most sympathetic 
 students of childhood, said : " Every child that 
 I have ever observed, during all my life, has 
 passed through certain remarkable questioning 
 periods which seem to originate from his inner 
 being. After each had passed through the early 
 time of lisping and stammering, into that of 
 speaking, and had come to the questioning period, 
 he repeated at every new phenomenon the ques- 
 tion, '■ What is that 1 ' If for answer he received 
 the name of a thing, it completely satisfied him ; 
 he wished to know no more. After a number 
 of months, a second state made its appearance, 
 in which the child followed its first question with 
 a second: 'What is there in it.^' After some 
 months more, there came of itself the third ques- 
 tion : 'Who made it .'* ' and lastly, the fourth: 
 ' What do they do with it t ' These questions had 
 much interest for me, and I spent much reflection 
 upon them. In the end it became clear to me 
 that the child had struck out the right method for 
 
1 14 The Seven Laws of Teaehing. 
 
 developing its thinking faculties. In the first 
 question, * What is that ? ' he was trying to get 
 a consciousness of the thing lying before him. 
 By the second, ' What is there in it .? ' he was 
 trying to perceive and understand its interior, 
 and its general and special, marks. The third, 
 ' Who made it ? ' pointed toward the origin and 
 creation of the thing ; and the fourth, * What do 
 they do with it.?' evidently points at the use and 
 design of the thing. Thus this series of questions 
 seemed to me to include in itself the complete 
 system of mental training. That this originated 
 with the child is not only no objection to it, but 
 is a strong indication that the laws of thought are 
 within the nature of the child, in their simplest 
 and most ennobling form." Kriisi's questions 
 belong chiefly to the first period of growth and 
 education. In the second and third periods other 
 questions follow. 
 
 Practical Rules for Teachers and Learners. 
 
 The rules which follow from this law are useful 
 for both teacher and pupil. 
 
 1. Help the pupil to form a clear idea of the 
 work to be done, in its several parts and stages. 
 
 2. Warn him that the words of his lesson 
 have been carefully chosen ; that they may have 
 peculiar meanings, which it may be important to 
 find out. 
 
 3. Show him that there are always more 
 things implied than are said in any lesson. 
 
TJie Laiv of tJie Learning Process. 1 1 5 
 
 4. Ask him to express, in simple words of his 
 own, the meaning as he understands it, and to 
 persist till he has the whole thought. 
 
 5. Let the reason why be perpetually asked 
 till the pupil is brought to feel that he is expected 
 to give a reason for his opinions ; but let him also 
 understand clearly that reasons must vary with 
 the nature of the truth taught. 
 
 6. Aim to make the pupil an independent inves- 
 tigator — a student of nature, a seeker for truth. 
 Cultivate in him a fixed and constant habit of 
 research. 
 
 7. Help him to test his conceptions to see that 
 they exactly reproduce the truth taught, in its 
 widest aspects and relations, as far as his powers 
 permit. 
 
 8. Inculcate constantly a profound regard for 
 TRUTH as something noble, enduring and divine 
 — something that God loves and all true and good 
 men revere. 
 
 9. Let it be seen and felt that truth in facts, 
 truth in feeling, truth in words, and truth in action 
 all come under the same eternal and divine law, 
 and that the honest truth-seeker will seek them all 
 alike earnestly. 
 
 10. Teach the pupil to hate all falsehoods, 
 sophistries, and shams as things that are odious, 
 hurtful, dishonoring, shameful, cowardly, and 
 intensely mean and wicked. Make him to dread 
 . false answer to a problem as a lie from the lips. 
 
Ii6 TJie Seven Laws of TeacJiing. 
 
 Violations and Mistakes. 
 
 The violations of this law of the learning 
 process are perhaps among the most common and 
 most fatal of any in our school work. Just 
 because this work of learning is the very center 
 of the school work, — that for which all else is 
 undertaken, — therefore a failure here is a failure 
 in all. Knowledge may be placed before the 
 minds of the young in endless profusion and in 
 the most attractive guise ; teachers may pour out 
 instruction without stint, and lessons may be 
 learned and recited under all the pressure of the 
 most effective discipline and of the strongest 
 appeals ; but if this law is disobeyed, the teaching 
 is fruitless and the attainments will be short-lived 
 and delusive. Some of the more common mis- 
 takes are these : — 
 
 (i) The pupil is left in the twilight of an imper- 
 fect and fragmentary knowledge by a failure to 
 think it into clearness. The haste to get forward 
 often precludes time for thinking. 
 
 (2) The language of the book is so insisted on 
 that the pupil is forbidden to try his own power of 
 expression. Thus the student is taught to feel 
 that the word is every thing, the meaning nothing. 
 College students have been known to learn the 
 demonstrations of geometry by heart, and never 
 to suspect any meaning in them. 
 
 (3) The failure to insist upon original think- 
 ing by the pupils is one of the most common 
 
The Lazv of the Learning Process. 1 1 7 
 
 faults of our schools. A really thoughtful scholar 
 is the rare exception in most schools. 
 
 (4) Commonly no reason is asked for the state- 
 ments in the lesson, and none is given. The 
 pupil is taught to believe what the book says, and 
 because the book says it. Thus the reason is 
 dwarfed by disuse, and gives no help in study 
 except in following the book. Not knowing how 
 to prove his thought true when it is true, he is 
 unable to detect its falsehood when false. 
 
 (5) The applications of knowledge are persist- 
 ently neglected. That his lesson has a use, and 
 that he can apply it to some practical purpose, is 
 the last thought to enter the minds of many 
 pupils. The examples of this fault are too many 
 and too common to need further detail here. 
 
 Nowhere are these faults in teaching more fre- 
 quent or more serious in their consequences than 
 in the Sunday-school. ** Always learning, but 
 never able to come to a knowledge of the truth," 
 tells the sad story of many a Sunday-school class. 
 Let that class be taught for six months as our law 
 prescribes ; let the pupils penetrate beyond the 
 letter to the deep meaning of the texts ; let the 
 splendid truths of religion in all their breadth of 
 meaning be pondered, proved, and applied, and its 
 whole character would be changed. Faith would 
 follow hearing ; frivolity would give place to 
 the deepest earnestness, and the truth of God 
 would vindicate its divine origin by the exhibition 
 of its transforming power. 
 
Chapter VIII. 
 
 > THE LAW OF REVIEW. 
 
 I. Let us suppose the ordinary process of 
 teaching to be finished. The teacher and pupil 
 have met and have done their work together. 
 Language freighted with ideas and aided with 
 illustrations has been uttered and understood. 
 Knowledge with its treasures of truth has been 
 thought into the mind of the learner, and it lies 
 there in greater or less completeness, to feed 
 thought, to guide conduct, and to form character. 
 What more is needed } The teacher's task seems 
 ended. But no ! The most delicate, if not also 
 the most difficult, work remains to be accom- 
 plished. All that has been done lies hidden in 
 the learner's mind, and lies there as a potency 
 rather than a possession. What eye shall pene- 
 trate the understanding to determine the clearness 
 and accuracy of the pupil's cognitions ? What 
 hand shall nurse into larger growth and into per- 
 manent force the ideas he has been led to conceive ? 
 What process shall fix into active habits the 
 thought-potencies which have been evolved .'' It 
 is for this final and finishing work that our seventh 
 and last law provides. This Law of the Test, of 
 
The Lazv of Review. 1 19 
 
 the confirmation and ripening of results, may be 
 expressed as follows : — 
 
 The completion, test, and confirmation of teaching 
 must be made by reviews. 
 
 2. This wording of the law seeks to include 
 the three chief aims of reviews : (i) To perfect 
 knowledge. (2) To confirm knowledge. (3) To 
 render knowledge ready and useful. These three 
 aims, though distinct in idea, are so connected 
 in fact as to be secured by the same process. It 
 would be difficult to overstate the value and 
 importance of this law of reviews. No time in 
 teaching is spent more profitably than that spent 
 in reviewing. Other things being equal, he is the 
 ablest and most successful teacher who secures 
 from his pupils the most frequent, thorough, and 
 interesting reviews. 
 
 Philosophy of the Law. 
 
 3. A review is something more than a repeti- 
 tion. A machine may repeat a process, but only 
 an intelligent agent can review it. The repetition 
 done by a machine is a second movement pre- 
 cisely like the first ; a repetition by the mind is 
 the re-thinking of a thought. It is necessarily 
 a review. It is more : it involves fresh concep- 
 tions and new associations, and brings an increase 
 of facility and power. 
 
 4. Reviews are of different grades of complete- 
 
I20 The Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 ness and thoroughness, from the mere repetition 
 of the words of by-gone lessons, or a rapid glance 
 thrown back to some fact or phrase, to the most 
 careful resurvey of the whole field, — the occupancy 
 in full force of the ground of which the first study 
 was only a reconnoissance. The first and simplest 
 reviews are mostly repetitions ; the final and com- 
 plete reviews should be thorough re-studies of the 
 lessons. 
 
 5. A partial review may embrace a single 
 lesson, or it may include a single branch of the 
 subject, — the development of a single truth, 
 the recall of some one fact or event, or of some 
 difficult point or question. The complete review 
 may be a cursory reviewing of the whole field in 
 a few general questions, or it may be a full and 
 final reconsideration of the whole ground. Each 
 form of review has its place and use. The value 
 and real character of a true review will appear 
 in the discussion. We shall see that no teaching 
 can be complete without the review, made either 
 under the teacher's direction, or voluntarily by 
 the scholar himself. 
 
 6. A new lesson or fresh subject never reveals 
 all its truth on a first study of it. Its novelties 
 dazzle the mind and distract the attention. 
 When we enter a strange house, we know not 
 where to look for its several rooms, and the 
 attention is drawn to a few of the more singular 
 and conspicuous features of furniture. We must 
 
TJie Laiv of Review. 121 
 
 return again and again, and re-survey the scene 
 with eyes grown famiUar to the place and to the 
 light, before the whole plan of the building and 
 the uses of all the rooms with their furniture will 
 stand clearly revealed. So one must return again 
 and again to a lesson if he would see all there 
 is in it, and come to a true and vivid understanding 
 of its meaning. We have all noticed how much 
 we find that is new and interesting in reading 
 again some old and familiar volume. 
 
 7. Even in the best studied book, we are often 
 surprised to find fresh truths and new meanings 
 in passages which we had pondered again and 
 again without seeing. It is the ripest student 
 of Shakespeare who finds most of freshness in the 
 works of the great dramatist. The familiar eye 
 discovers in any great masterpiece of art or litera- 
 ture touches of power and beauty which the casual 
 observer can not see. So a true review always 
 adds something to the knowledge of the student 
 making it. The practised mind finds truths which 
 the first study did not reveal. 
 
 8. Especially is this true of the Bible, of which 
 the last study is always the richest and most 
 interesting. Nothing more surprises or delights 
 us in the great preachers than the new meanings 
 they discover in old and familiar texts — meanings 
 which we are obliged to confess lie clearly there, 
 but which our careless reading had prevented us 
 from finding. Sometimes these meanings lie 
 
122 The Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 hidden in a word, and need only the right empha- 
 sis to reveal them ; sometimes they lie close by 
 the path and appear by some sidelight skillfully 
 thrown upon them from the text. If any one 
 wishes to try this for himself, let him take some 
 familiar passage, the first verse of the Bible for 
 example, and recite it, first in the rapid and care- 
 less way a child would usually say it, then repeat 
 it several times slowly and solemnly, with varying 
 emphasis, and with all the thought and feeling 
 he can summon; somewhat as here indicated: — 
 
 /;/ the begmning God created the /ieave?i and the earth. 
 
 Now read with longer pauses and deeper 
 thinking : — 
 
 In — the beginning — God — created — the heaven — and 
 — the earth. 
 
 Then more slowly, pausing and concentering the 
 whole power of thought on the words marked for 
 emphasis : — 
 
 In the BEGINNING — God created the heaven and the 
 earth. 
 
 In the beginning — GOD — created the heaven and the 
 earth. 
 
 In the beginning — God — CREATED — the heaven and 
 the earth. 
 
 In the beginning God created — the HEAVEN — and the 
 EARTH. 
 
 IN — THE BEGINNING— GOD — CREATED — THE 
 HEAVEN — AND — THE EARTH. 
 
The Law of Reviezv. 123 
 
 What a world of meaning at last rolls along 
 with the resounding words ! How wondrously 
 in that remote and awful beginning, where the 
 Deity stands alone with his eternal wisdom, 
 power, and glory, the peopled heavens and the 
 green earth fhove forth from the creating hand 
 of God, and begin the long march of geologic and 
 historic time ! 
 
 9. On one occasion at least, the Great Teacher 
 himself resorted to this power of repetition, when 
 three times in succession he asked Peter the ques- 
 tion : *' Lovest thou me ? " The heart of the rock 
 disciple burned as with fire under this powerful 
 iteration, and with memory and conscience quick- 
 ened he appealed to the omniscience of his Master 
 to witness to the truth of his questioned love. 
 
 10. But the repetitions of a review are not 
 made the same hour. They are spread over days 
 and weeks, and hence they bring a new element 
 into play. The lapse of time changes the point 
 of view. At every review we survey the lesson 
 from a new standpoint. Its facts rise in a new 
 order and are seen in new relations. Truths that 
 stood in the shadow in the first study come forth 
 into the light. When .one climbs a mountain, 
 from each successive opening and outlook the eye 
 visits again the same landscape, but the observer's 
 position is always changed. The features of the 
 landscape are seen in different perspective, and 
 each successive view is larger, more comprehen- 
 sive, and more complete than its predecessor. 
 
124 'The Seven Lazvs of Teaching. 
 
 11. The human mind does not achieve its 
 victories by a single effort. There is a sort of 
 mental incubation by which frequently, from some 
 common fact, the eagle form of a splendid dis- 
 covery springs forth. The physiologists call it 
 unconscious cerebration, by which they mean that 
 the brain itself goes on working all unknown to 
 us, and works out new truths from the facts we 
 have learned. It is an easier if not also a truer expla- 
 nation that the ever advancing and growing mind 
 reaches constantly new positions, and obtains new 
 light by which the new truth becomes visible. 
 Some fresh experience or newly acquired idea 
 serves as a key to the old lesson, and what was 
 dark in the first study is made clear and bright 
 in the review. The mind, like an artist, sketches 
 its pictures at first simply in outline, and in 
 detached parts. Only after many returns to each 
 part do its conceptions stand forth in full light 
 and shade, perfect paintings, lifelike and com- 
 plete. 
 
 12. The old saying, '^ Beware of the man of 
 one book," has this in it, that his repeated readings 
 of his one book give him a mastery of the subject 
 which makes him a dangerous antagonist on his 
 chosen field. He but shows the power conferred 
 by frequent reviews. 
 
 13. The memory, too, requires frequent repeti- 
 tions as the essential condition of its retentive 
 holding, and its ready recall of its treasures. 
 
The Law of Review. 125 
 
 Memory depends wholly on the association of 
 ideas, — the idea in mind recalling the ideas with 
 which it has been linked by some past association. 
 Each review establishes new associations, while 
 it familiarizes and strengthens the old. The 
 lesson that is studied but once is learned only 
 to be forgotten. That which is thoroughly and 
 repeatedly reviewed is woven into the very fabric 
 of our thoughts, and becomes a part of our perma- 
 nent knowledge. Not what a pupil has once 
 learned and recited, but what he permanently 
 remembers is the true measure of his advance. 
 One fact well remembered is of' more worth than 
 a hundred forgotten. 
 
 14. Not merely to know, but to have knowledge 
 for use, — to possess it fully, like coin for daily 
 traffic, or like tools and materials for daily work, 
 — such is the true aim of study. This readiness 
 of knowledge can never be gained by a single 
 study. Frequent and thorough reviews can alone 
 give the mind this firm hold and free handling 
 of the truth. There is a skill in scholarship as 
 well as in handicrafts, and this skill in both cases 
 depends upon habits ; and habit is the child of 
 repetition. 
 
 15. The plastic power of truth in shaping con- 
 duct and moulding character belongs only to the 
 truths which have become familiar by repetitions. 
 Not the scamper of a passing child but the re- 
 peated tread of going and coming feet beats for 
 
126 TJic Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 us the paths of our daily life. L" we would have 
 any great truth sustain and control us, we must 
 return to it so often that it will at last rise up in 
 mind as a dictate of conscience, and pour its 
 steady light upon every act and purpose with 
 which it is concerned. 
 
 1 6. The well-known influence of maxims and 
 proverbs comes from the readiness with which 
 they are remembered and recalled, and the power 
 they gather by repetition. So the texts of Scrip- 
 ture which most influence us are those that have 
 become familiar by use, and which arise in mind 
 as occasions demand. Thousands have been con- 
 verted by the well-remembered text on whom the 
 sermon made no impression. 
 
 17. From all this it will be seen that the 
 review is not simply an added excellency in teach- 
 ing which may be dispensed with if time is lacking, 
 but it is one of the seven essential conditions of 
 all true teaching. Not to review is to leave the 
 work half done, to fade out with the passing hour. 
 The law of review rests upon the universal and 
 unchangeable laws of mind. The review may not 
 always be made formally and with clear design, 
 but no successful teaching was ever done in which 
 the review in some form, either by direction of 
 the teacher or by the private impulse of the 
 learner, did not take place — the revisiting and 
 repetition of the lesson learned. The " line upon 
 line and precept upon precept " rule of the Bible 
 is a recognition of this truth. 
 
The Lazu of Review. 1 27 
 
 18. The processes of review must necessarily 
 vary with the subject of study, and also with the 
 age and advancement of the pupils. With very 
 young pupils the review can be little more than 
 a simple repetition ; with older students, the 
 review will be a thoughtful re-study of the ground 
 to gain deeper understanding. 
 
 A principle in mathematics may be reviewed 
 with fresh applications and problems. A scientific 
 truth may be fixed by the study or analysis of 
 a fresh specimen, or by additional facts proving 
 the same truth. A chapter in history may be 
 re-studied with fresh questions calling for a fresh 
 view, or by comparing it with the fresh statements 
 of another author. A Scripture truth will be 
 reviewed by a new application to the heart and 
 conscience or to the judgment of the duties and 
 events of the life. 
 
 19. In the Bible more than in any other book 
 are reviews needful and valuable. Not only does 
 the Bible most require and most repay repeated 
 study, but most of all ought Bible knowledge 
 to be familiar to us, if it be, as is claimed, the 
 Word of God. Its great truths ought to dwell 
 in the heart and in the conscience as a divine 
 presence ; its very language should haunt the 
 memory as echoes from the hills of heaven. Its 
 words and precepts should rest clear and precise 
 in the thoughts as the dictates of duty and the 
 prophecies of destiny. Its grand and divine doc- 
 
128 TJie Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 trines, its august and vital precepts, its blessed 
 promises, its sublime histories, and still sublimer 
 prophecies, ought to inhabit the mind as heavenly 
 and familiar guests, or rather as divine forces 
 bearing with a constant and moulding pressure 
 upon all the acts and decisions of our lives. It 
 is that part of the Bible which thus lives within 
 us, not the great volume which lies upon the table 
 or shelf, which is the true Word of God to us — 
 the daily bread of our God-ward life. 
 
 20. Any exercise may serve for a review which 
 recalls the truth to be reviewed. One of the best 
 and most practical forms of review is the calling 
 up of any fact or truth learned and applying it 
 to some use. Nothing so fixes it in the memory 
 or gives such a grasp of it to the understanding. 
 Thus the multiplication table may be learned by 
 orderly repetitions of its successive factors and 
 products, but its frequent review and use in daily 
 computations alone give us that perfect mastery 
 of it which makes it come, as it were, without call, 
 and serve us as if a native part of the mind itself. 
 So in that largest, most wonderful because most 
 arbitrary, and yet most perfect, acquisition of the 
 human mind, — the thousands of wholly artificial 
 word-signs and idioms of the mother-tongue, — 
 nothing but the ceaseless repetitions and reviews 
 of daily use could so bed them in the memory and 
 so in-work them into the habitudes of the mind 
 that they come with the ideas they symbolize and 
 
The Lazi' of Review. 129 
 
 keep pace with the swift movements of thought 
 itself, as if a natural part of the thinking process. 
 
 21. The ready skill of artisans and professional 
 men in recalling instantaneously the principles 
 and processes of their arts or professions is the 
 product of the innumerable repetitions of 
 daily practice. This kind of review is available 
 in all cases in which the learner can be called 
 upon to apply the truths learned to the answer 
 of common questions, the solution of problems, 
 the conduct of any process, or the performance 
 of any scries of acts. The art of the teacher, 
 in this work, lies in the starting of questions or 
 finding which shall require the use of the knowl- 
 edge he wishes to have reviewed. 
 
 22. The use of the pen and pencil in review 
 work ought by no means to be forgotten. Next 
 to the eye, the hand is the born teacher of the 
 mind, and no reviews are more effective than those 
 which the hand helps. Witness the power of the 
 laboratory work, now so common in all scientific 
 study. The ingenious teacher will easily find 
 handwork for pen or pencil in any branch of 
 learning. The request for the pupils to bring 
 lists of persons, objects, places, dates, or distances 
 mentioned in the lessons gone over, for tabular 
 statements of facts or events, for maps, plans, or 
 drawings of places or things, or for short written 
 statements or answers, will set a review in 
 progress of no mean value. 
 
1 30 TJie Seven Lazvs of TeacJnng. 
 
 23. In Bible lessons these pen and pencil 
 reviews are peculiarly easy and valuable. Its 
 biographies, histories, and geography, — its doc- 
 trines, promises, precepts, and duties, — its para- 
 bles, miracles, and prophecies, — its patriarchs, 
 prophets, priests, judges, kings, apostles, sinners, 
 and saints, and all its marvelous classes and diver- 
 sities of texts, give endless fields of useful work 
 for the writing hands. 
 
 Practical Rules for Teachers. 
 
 Among the many practical rules and methods 
 for reviews, the following are some of the most 
 useful : — 
 
 1. Count reviews as always in order. When- 
 ever a spare moment occurs while waiting for 
 other exercises, or when the teacher or class is 
 unprepared to do anything else, a review may 
 go on. 
 
 2. Have also set times for reviews. At the 
 opening of each lesson-hour take a brief review 
 of the preceding lesson, to put the two lessons 
 in connection that no break may occur in the 
 work. 
 
 3. At the close of each lesson give a glance 
 backward to the ground gone over, and note the 
 points to be especially remembered. 
 
 4. After five or six lessons are past, start a 
 review from the beginning, taking the substance 
 of two or three lessons each day. The order of 
 
TJie Law of Review. 131 
 
 an exercise may be as follows : First, a brief review 
 of the first two lessons, to be followed the next 
 day by the second two, and so on ; second, a more 
 careful review of the last preceding lesson ; third, 
 the advance lesson of the day. All this must, 
 of course, be adapted to the time given to the 
 class work. If that is short, the reviews must also 
 be brief. The best teachers give about one third 
 of each lesson-hour to reviews. Thus they make 
 haste slowly but surely. 
 
 5. Whenever a reference can be usefully made 
 to former lessons, the opportunity should be seized 
 to bring forward into fresh light and new connec- 
 tions the old knowledge. 
 
 6. All advance lessons may be made to bring 
 into review truths in former lessons, since the 
 advance in some way depends upon the be- 
 ginnings. 
 
 7. Make the first review as soon as practicable 
 after the lesson is first learned, before the memory 
 has lost its hold. Afterward occasional reviews 
 will suffice. 
 
 8. In order to make reviews easily and rapidly, 
 the teacher should hold in mind large masses 
 of the lessons learned, ready for instant use. He 
 is thus able to begin at any spare minute an 
 impromptu miscellaneous review on any part 
 of the field ; and the pupils, seeing that the 
 teacher thinks it worth while to remember what 
 they have studied, will be ambitious to be ready 
 to meet his questions. 
 
132 TJie Seven Laws of Teaching. 
 
 9. New questions started on old lessons, new 
 illustrations for old texts, new proofs for old state- 
 ments, will often send the pupil back with fresh 
 interest to look again into the old lesson, and he 
 will be thus lured into an unsuspected review. 
 
 10. The final review, never to be omitted, 
 should be searching, comprehensive, and master- 
 ful, grouping all parts of the subject learned as 
 on a map, and giving the pupil the feeling of 
 a familiar mastery of it all. 
 
 11. Seek as many applications as possible of 
 the subject studied. Every thoughtful application 
 involves a useful and effective review. 
 
 12. Forget not the value of pencil and pen 
 work in reviews. This work can be done out 
 of class, and it shows for itself. 
 
 13. An interesting form of review is to allow 
 members of the class to ask questions on previous 
 lessons. If this is a frequent exercise, the pupils 
 will make volunteer studies both to get questions 
 and to be ready with answers. 
 
 Violations and Mistakes. 
 
 The common and almost constant violations 
 of this last great law of teaching will occur to 
 every one who reads the foregoing rules and state- 
 ments. But the disastrous results of these viola- 
 tions are known only to those who have taken 
 thoughtful account of the poor and stinted out- 
 come of all our laborious and costly teaching 
 
TJie Law of Rcvieiv. I33 
 
 work. When for the time our pupils should have 
 become teachers they " have need that one teach 
 them again." Forever learning, they seem "never 
 able to come to a knowledge of the truth." And 
 although the lack of reviews is not the sole cause 
 of failures, their thorough use would go far to 
 remedy the evils from other sources. We pour 
 water into broken cisterns : good reviews would 
 stop the leaks, though they might not increase 
 at once the quantity poured in. 
 
 The first violation of the law is the total neglect 
 of reviews. This is the folly of the utterly poor 
 and idle teacher. 
 
 Second comes the wholly inadequate reviews. 
 This is the fault of the hurried and impatient 
 teacher, who is more anxious to get through the 
 book than to get the book through the mind of 
 his pupils. 
 
 The third mistake is that of delaying all reviews 
 till the end of the quarter, when, the lessons being 
 wholly forgotten, the review amounts to a poor 
 and hurried re-learning, with little interest and 
 less profit. 
 
 The fourth blunder is that of degrading the 
 review into a lifeless repetition of the same 
 questions and answers as those used at first. This 
 has the form of a review without its power. 
 
 The law of reviews in its full force and philoso- 
 phy requires that there shall be a fresh vision — 
 a clear re-thinking of the truths of the lesson, 
 
134 '^^^^ Seven Laivs of Teaching. 
 
 which shall stand related to the first study as the 
 artist's finishing-touches stand to his first sketches; 
 or shall be as the final trial and polishing of the 
 weapons with which the pupil is sent forth to 
 the battles of life. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 I have now finished the discussion of the Seven 
 Laws of Teaching. If I have succeeded in my 
 purpose, I have made to rise up and pass before 
 the reader, first, the True Teacher richly laden 
 with the lesson he desires to communicate, inspired 
 and inspiring by the clear vision he has caught 
 of the truth ; second, the True Learner with atten- 
 tion fixed and interest excited, eager to enter and 
 possess the promised land of the unknown lying 
 before him ; tJiird, the True Medium of communi- 
 cation between these two — a language clear, 
 simple, and perfectly understood by both ; fonrth, 
 the True Lesson — the knowledge, to the pupil 
 the unknown standing next to his known, and half 
 revealed in its light. These four — the actors and 
 machinery of the drama — have also been shown 
 in action, gWmg, fifth, the True Teaching Process, 
 the teacher arousing and directing the self-activi- 
 ties of the pupil, like a chieftain leading his soldiers 
 into battle ; sixth, the True Learning Process, the 
 pupil reproducing in thought — thinking into 
 his own mind, step by step — first in mere outline 
 and finally in full and finished conception — the 
 
The Law of Revieiv. 135 
 
 lesson to be learned ; and seventh^ the True Reviews, 
 testing, correcting, completing, connecting, and 
 fixing into permanence, power, and use the subject 
 studied. In all this there has been seen only the 
 play of the great natural laws of mind and of truth 
 effecting and governing that complex process by 
 which a human intelligence gains possession of 
 any branch of knowledge. The study of these 
 laws may not make of every reader a perfect 
 teacher; but the laws themselves, when fully 
 observed in use, will produce their effects with 
 the same certainty that the chemic laws generate 
 the compounds of chemical elements, or that the 
 laws of life produce the growth of the body. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Page 
 
 Action, Mental, proportioned to feeling 35 
 
 Appeals, Basis of 11 
 
 Gushing 12 
 
 Appetites, The mental 38 
 
 Attention, Description of 29 
 
 Compelled and attracted 30 
 
 Degrees of 31 
 
 Highest grade of 32 
 
 Fresh, how aroused 37 
 
 Because of duty 40 
 
 Power of, increases with mental development 41 
 
 An active attitude of faculties 41 
 
 Hindrances to 42 
 
 Rested by pleasing variety 44 
 
 Secured by pertinent illustrations 44 
 
 Secured by favorite stories, songs, etc 44 
 
 Secured by questions 44 
 
 How not secured 45. 46 
 
 Bible truth as basis of appeal 11 
 
 Child, Small vocabulary of 50 
 
 Must be understood 53 
 
 Questionings of 98 
 
 Beginning of education 99 
 
 What is required from, in study 105 
 
 Mental activity of 112 
 
 Questioning period of 113 
 
 How to develop thinking faculties of 114 
 
 Class, helped by teacher 21 
 
 Comenius, saying of 88 
 
 Conclusion 134 
 
 Earnestness, Secret of 21 
 
 Education, Two great coordinate aims of 86 
 
138 Index. 
 
 Enthusiasm, kindled by skill 10 
 
 Kindled by knowledge 20 
 
 Secret of 21 
 
 Exhortations, Earnest 11 
 
 Explanations, which end thinking 99 
 
 Figures of speech : From what law they spring 72 
 
 Idea, New, effect of 37 
 
 Ideas incarnated in words 53 
 
 Must precede words 54 
 
 Illustration, Power of, comes through knowledge 19 
 
 Illustrations from nature 57 
 
 From what borrowed 74 
 
 Infant, the : Interest in new objects 89 
 
 Intellect, The moral 92 
 
 Its fuller sphere 93 
 
 Interest, Sources of 35 
 
 How increased 35. 36, 39 
 
 Varies with age 40 
 
 Limited by knowledge 89 
 
 Two chief springs of 90 
 
 Knowledge : What it may be 2 
 
 How taught 2 
 
 Necessity of 16 
 
 Degrees of 17 
 
 The teacher's material 17 
 
 Imperfect, makes imperfect teaching 18 
 
 Power of illustration comes from 19 
 
 Full, necessary to greatest interest 19 
 
 Pupils' confidence inspired by 22 
 
 How communicated 33 
 
 Is truth discovered and understood 67 
 
 Not a mass of simple facts . . '. 70 
 
 By comparing and judging 71 
 
 Never perfect 75 
 
 Necessary to thought 89 
 
 Love of, for its own sake 90 
 
 Appetite for, grows by feeding 91 
 
 Love of, for its use 91 
 
 Ready for use 125 
 
 Known and unknown 67 
 
 Kriisi, Hermann, saying of 113 
 
 Language, Law of ,,,,,.. 6, 48 
 
htdex. 139 
 
 Language, Stated as a rule 6 
 
 The law of, stated 49 
 
 Philosophy of the 49 
 
 Of what it consists 4^1 49 
 
 The vehicle of thought 5^ 
 
 The instrument of thought 53 
 
 Expressing original thought 55 
 
 The storehouse of knowledge 55 
 
 The measure of knowledge 56 
 
 By signs 57 
 
 An imperfect medium of thought 58 
 
 Rules for teachers 59 
 
 Violations and mistakes 60 
 
 Misuse of 61 
 
 Complexity of 62 
 
 Lack of knowledge of, a great obstacle 63 
 
 Takes its meanings from old knowledge 73 
 
 Law, The teacher subject to 15 
 
 Reign of universal 15 
 
 Laws, Discovery of i 
 
 Stated 5 
 
 Stated as rules 6 
 
 Learner, The law of 5. 28 
 
 Stated as a rule . 6 
 
 Philosophy of 32 
 
 The true 28 
 
 A rediscoverer 107 
 
 How must mount iii 
 
 Rules for 114 
 
 Learning, Law of 6 
 
 Stated as a rule 7 
 
 Pompous pretence of 27 
 
 Its one essential condition 28 
 
 How it should proceed 69 
 
 Without a teacher 83 
 
 Superficial course of . 103 
 
 What is not true 106 
 
 What is true 107 
 
 How it comes 107 
 
 Its several stages 107 
 
 And memorizing 108 
 
 And understanding , . io8 
 
140 Index. 
 
 Learning, And mastery of thought 108 
 
 And testing statements 109 
 
 And application of knowledge 109 
 
 Learning process, The law of 105 
 
 The law stated 106 
 
 Philosophy of the law 106 
 
 The two limitations of iii 
 
 Rules for teachers and learners 114 
 
 Violations and mistakes 116 
 
 Lecture plan : When justifiable 99 
 
 Lesson, Law of 6, 65 
 
 Stated as a rule 7 
 
 Philosophy of the law of 67 
 
 Fresh study of 23 
 
 Analogies and likenesses in 23 
 
 Natural order and connection of its facts and truths .... 24 
 
 Relations to lives and duties 24 
 
 All aids to be used 24 
 
 Time for study of 24 
 
 Plan of study of 24 
 
 Good books on 25 
 
 Grafting on 26 
 
 Connection with the learner 39 
 
 Lessons, Thoroughly learned in 
 
 Maxims, Influence of 126 
 
 Meanings, New, in old texts 121 
 
 Memory : Conditions of its retentive holding 124 
 
 Dependence on association of ideas 125 
 
 Mental powers : Essential condition of their exercise 86 
 
 Self-activities of 87 
 
 Processes of cognition of 87 
 
 Work in their own way 95 
 
 Milton, " the Mind is " 96 
 
 Mind : Its laws of thought i 
 
 A self-acting power 34 
 
 Reserve powers of 35 
 
 How controlled 36 
 
 Sources of its interest 39 
 
 The adult 40 
 
 Action of, limited 89 
 
 Does its own work 96 
 
 Autocracy of ...... , . . . . 96 
 
Index. 141 
 
 Mind :" The mind is," etc. (Milton) 96 
 
 True stimulant of 9 
 
 Does not achieve victories by single efforts 124 
 
 Powers, Unfettered command and use of 21 
 
 Preparation, Lack of 
 
 Pupil, Confidence of ^^ 
 
 • 22 
 
 Ability to inspire 
 
 Ignorance of 
 
 Must think 33 
 
 Resources commanded 4° 
 
 Needs of, to be learned from his words S3 
 
 Taught to make clear statements 59. 62 
 
 Seeming attention of 60, 61 
 
 Stupidity of, explained 
 
 The self-acting and acted on 88 
 
 Too much help for 9° 
 
 Philosophy of 
 
 The law of the teacher ^^ 
 
 The law of the learner 3^ 
 
 The law of the language 49 
 
 The law of the lesson ^7 
 
 The law of the teaching process 83 
 
 The law of the learning process lo^ 
 
 The law of review ^^9 
 
 Questions, that startle 37 
 
 Element of the unexpected 3^ 
 
 Sham 38 
 
 As excitants 9 
 
 Review, The law of ^^^ 
 
 Statement of ^^9 
 
 Philosophy of ^^9 
 
 Different grades of ^^9 
 
 Partial ^^ 
 
 Fresh themes discovered by ^21 
 
 New standpoint of -^^3 
 
 Establishes new associations 125 
 
 Gives the mind firm hold ^^S 
 
 And essential conditions of teaching 126 
 
 Processes of, vary ^^ 
 
 Needful in Bible study ^^ 
 
 Practical forms of ^^8 
 
 Ready skill produced by , , , f » . » • 129 
 
42 Index. 
 
 Review, Use of pen and pencil in 129 
 
 Practical rules for teachers 130 
 
 Violations and mistakes 132 
 
 Scholar, The successful 28 
 
 Senses, Gateways of 36 
 
 Sentences, Short and long 59 
 
 Signs as a medium of speech 57 
 
 Skill and enthusiasm 9 
 
 Spirit, Scientific : What it is 99 
 
 Success, Secret of 25 
 
 Sunday-school, The power of 94 
 
 Study of the lesson 24 
 
 Time for 24 
 
 Temptation to neglect 26 
 
 Not the pupil's work only 26 
 
 Thoroughness in, relative 75 
 
 Talking is thinking 54 
 
 Teacher, Law of 5, 15 
 
 Stated as a rule 6 
 
 Philosophy of 16 
 
 Quahfications of 15 
 
 Powers of, roused 21 
 
 As a helper of the class 21 
 
 Confidence of pupil in 22 
 
 Loss of credit of 26 
 
 What he has within his power 36 
 
 The too talkative 58 
 
 Necessity of 84 
 
 The best 85 
 
 The true 88 
 
 Mission of 9^ 
 
 The Great 123 
 
 Teachers, Enthusiastic versus trained 10 
 
 Rules for concerning 
 
 The law of the teacher 23 
 
 The law of the learner 43 
 
 The law of the language 59 
 
 The law of the lesson 76 
 
 The law of the teaching process 100 
 
 The law of the learning process 114 
 
 The law of review 130 
 
 gnthvisiastic from knowledge ,,,.♦», 20 
 
Index. 143 
 
 A word to ^2 
 
 Teaching, Fixed natural laws of ^ 
 
 Definition of ^ 
 
 Seven factors of • • 3 
 
 Analysis of 3 
 
 Law of, stated as a rule 6 
 
 Essentials of successful 7 
 
 Real complexity of laws of ^ 
 
 Laws obeyed by all successful teachers 9 
 
 Aim of Sunday-school i^ 
 
 Systematic, objection to ^^ 
 
 Laws of: God's own laws of mind 12 
 
 Highest success in 4^ 
 
 Helping the child to expression 54 
 
 Where it must begin 67 
 
 How it must advance 68 
 
 Forcing process °° 
 
 Teaching process °^ 
 
 The law stated ^^ 
 
 Philosophy of ^3 
 
 Rules for teachers ^°° 
 
 Violations and mistakes 102 
 
 Test and proof, Law of 6 
 
 Stated as a rule 7 
 
 Things, The language of 57 
 
 Thought, New, shock of 37 
 
 The vehicle of 5^ 
 
 The instrument of 53 
 
 Two excitants of 9° 
 
 Truth understood through other truths 18 
 
 Necessity of understanding 20 
 
 Mastered through expression 55 
 
 Ideal and actual 66 
 
 Imperfectly known 74 
 
 Truths, Common, transformed 21 
 
 Unknown taught through the known 66 
 
 Can not bd explained through the unknown 72 
 
 Violations and mistakes : — 
 
 The law of the teacher 25 
 
 The law of the learner 45 
 
 The law of the language 60 
 
 The law of the lesson .,,.,»,... 7§ 
 
144 Index. 
 
 The law of the teaching process 102 
 
 The law of the learning process 116 
 
 The law of review 132 
 
 Words : Small number in child's vocabulary 50 
 
 Different meanings of 50, 51, 52 
 
 Loved or hated for their ideas . . . : 52 
 
 Loaded with false meanings . . " 53 
 
 As clue lines 56 
 
 Group or family of , 56 
 
 Not the only medium of speech 57 
 
 Unnecessary 59 
 
 As signs 73 
 

 
 
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