“In the first place, you are to consider how seldom it is proper for you to propose what he is to learn; it is his place to desire to know, to seek for, to discover it: it is yours artfully to excite his desire, to place the object within his reach, and furnish him with the means of attaining it” (17: i, pp. 285-286). “Direct the attention of your pupil to the phenomena of nature, and you will soon awaken his curiosity; but to keep that curiosity alive, you must be in no haste to satisfy it. Put questions to him adapted to his capacity, and leave him to resolve them. Let him take nothing on trust from his preceptor, but on his own comprehension and conviction: he should not learn, but invent the sciences. If you ever substitute authority in the place of argument, he will reason no longer; he will be ever afterwards bandied like a shuttlecock between the opinions of others” (17: i, p. 263). “The mere speculative part of science is by no means adapted to children, even when they approach adolescence;.... In your researches into the laws of nature, begin always with the most common and obvious phenomena, accustoming your pupil to look upon them always as mere facts” (17: i, pp. 280-281). The following passage because of its recognition of a much neglected principle deserves to be hung upon the wall of every schoolroom: “Among the many admirable methods taken to abridge the study of the sciences, we are in great want of one to make us learn with difficulty” (17: i, p. 280). The fundamental cause of the superficiality and ineffectiveness of our school instruction lies in our mistaken desire to teach as many things as possible in as short a time as possible. This leads to the insistence on a precocious application to the studies beyond children’s interest and experience. And we complacently believe that we can make them understand these by the abundance of explanation on our part. But this helps not a whit. In the words of Rousseau: “I do not at all admire explanatory discourses; young people give little attention to them, and never retain them in their memory. The things themselves are the best explanations. I can never enough repeat it, that we make words of too much consequence; with our prating modes of education, we make nothing but praters” (17: i, p. 286).