Brought up in the spirit of our maxims, accustomed to make his own
tools and not to appeal to others until he has tried and failed, he
will examine everything he sees carefully and in silence. He thinks
rather than questions. Be content, therefore, to show him things at
a fit season; then, when you see that his curiosity is thoroughly
aroused, put some brief question which will set him trying to
discover the answer.
On the present occasion when you and he have carefully observed
the rising sun, when you have called his attention to the mountains
and other objects visible from the same spot, after he has chattered
freely about them, keep quiet for a few minutes as if lost in
thought and then say, "I think the sun set over there last night;
it rose here this morning. How can that be?" Say no more; if he
asks questions, do not answer them; talk of something else. Let
him alone, and be sure he will think about it.
To train a child to be really attentive so that he may be really
impressed by any truth of experience, he must spend anxious days
before he discovers that truth. If he does not learn enough in this
way, there is another way of drawing his attention to the matter.
Turn the question about. If he does not know how the sun gets from
the place where it sets to where it rises, he knows at least how
it travels from sunrise to sunset, his eyes teach him that. Use the
second question to throw light on the first; either your pupil is
a regular dunce or the analogy is too clear to be missed. This is
his first lesson in cosmography.
As we always advance slowly from one sensible idea to another, and
as we give time enough to each for him to become really familiar
with it before we go on to another, and lastly as we never force
our scholar's attention, we are still a long way from a knowledge
of the course of the sun or the shape of the earth; but as all
the apparent movements of the celestial bodies depend on the same
principle, and the first observation leads on to all the rest, less
effort is needed, though more time, to proceed from the diurnal
revolution to the calculation of eclipses, than to get a thorough
understanding of day and night.
Since the sun revolves round the earth it describes a circle, and
every circle must have a centre; that we know already. This centre
is invisible, it is in the middle of the earth, but we can mark
out two opposite points on the earth's surface which correspond to
it. A skewer passed through the three points and prolonged to the
sky at either end would represent the earth's axis and the sun's
daily course. A round teetotum revolving on its point represents
the sky turning on its axis, the two points of the teetotum are the
two poles; the child will be delighted to find one of them, and I
show him the tail of the Little bear. Here is a another game for
the dark. Little by little we get to know the stars, and from this
comes a wish to know the planets and observe the constellations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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