The consideration of out-of-door life, in developing a method of education, comes second in order; because my object is to show that the chief function of the child – his business in the world during the first six or seven years of his life – is to find out all he can, about whatever comes under his notice, by means of his five senses; that he has an insatiable appetite for knowledge got in this way; and that, therefore, the endeavor of his parents should be to put him in the way of making acquaintance freely with Nature and natural objects; that, in fact, the intellectual education of the young child should lie in the free exercise of perceptive power, because the first stages of mental effort are marked by the extreme activity of this power; and the wisdom of the educator is to follow the lead of Nature in the evolution of the complete human being.
The next subject for consideration – a rather dry psycho-physiological one – seems to me, all the same, to be very well worthy of attention as striking the keynote of a reasonable method of education.