The disadvantages of the individual method are obvious. It is a great waste of time. If a teacher has a class of twenty, and an hour to hear them in, it gives him but three minutes for each pupil, supposing there are no interruptions. But there always are interruptions. In public schools the class oftener numbers forty than twenty, and the time for recitation is oftener half an hour than an hour. The teacher who pursues the individual method to its extreme, will rarely find himself in possession of more than one minute to each scholar. In so brief a time, very little can be ascertained as to what the scholar knows of the lesson, and still less can anything be done to increase that knowledge. Moreover, while the teacher is bestowing his small modicum of time upon one scholar, all the other members of the class are idle, or worse. Teaching, of all kinds of labor, is that in which labor-saving and time-saving methods are of the greatest moment. The teacher who is wise, will aim so to conduct a recitation that, first, his whole time shall be given to every scholar; and secondly, each scholar's mind shall be exercised with every part of the lesson, and just as much when others are reciting, as when it is his own time to recite. A teacher who can do this is teaching every scholar, all the time, just as much as if he had no scholar but that one. Even this does not state the whole case. A scholar in such a class learns more in a given time, than he would if he were alone and the teacher's entire time were given exclusively to him. The human mind is wonderfully quickened by sympathy. In a crowd each catches, in some mysterious manner, an impulse from his fellows. The influence of associated numbers, all engaged upon the same thought, is universally to rouse the mind to a higher exercise of its powers. A mind that is dull, lethargic, and heavy in its movements when moving solitarily, often effects, when under a social and sympathetic impulse, achievements that are a wonder to itself.