A much more laborious art is that which leads the child to find by means of its own mental processes, not what it would naturally find, but what the teacher desires, although he does not say what he desires; he urges on the child to associate his ideas "spontaneously"--as the teacher associates them--and even succeeds in making the child compose definitions with the exact words he himself has fixed upon, without having revealed them. Such a thing would seem the result of some occult science, a kind of conjuring trick. Nevertheless, such methods have been and still are in use, and in some cases they form the sole art of the teacher. When in 1862 Tolstoy was making his tours of inspection in the schools of Germany, he was struck by this method of tuition, and among the pedagogic writings describing his school, Iasnaja Poliana, he reproduces a lesson which deserves to be recorded, although perhaps it would no longer be possible to find an example of such a lesson in any German school. IASNAJA POLIANA, 1862. Calm and confident, the professor is seated in the class-room; the instruments are ready; little tables with the letters, a book with the picture of a fish. The master looks at his pupils; he knows beforehand all they are to understand; he knows of what their souls consist, and various other things he has learned in the seminary. He opens the book and shows the fish. "Dear children, what is this?" The poor children are delighted to see the fish, unless indeed they already know from other pupils with what sauce it is to be served up. In any case, they answer: "It is a fish." "No," replies the professor (all this is not an invention nor a satire, but an exact account of what I have seen without exception in all the best schools in Germany, and in those English schools which have adopted this method of teaching). "No," says the professor. "Now what is it you do see?" The children are silent. It must not be forgotten that they are obliged to remain seated and quiet, each one in his place, and that they are not to move. "Well, what do you see?" "A book," says the most stupid child in the class. Meanwhile, the more intelligent children have been asking themselves over and over again what it is they do see; they feel they cannot guess what the teacher wants, and that they will have to answer that this fish is not a fish, but something the name of which is unknown to them. "Yes, yes," says the master, eagerly, "very good indeed, a book. And what else?" The intelligent ones guess, and say joyfully and proudly: "Letters." "No, no, not at all!" says the teacher, disappointed; "you must think before you speak." Again all the intelligent ones lapse into mournful silence; they do not even try to guess; they think of the teacher's spectacles,