Furthermore, in his intellectual tasks such a pupil should be trained, as far as may be, on the more abstract subjects, which do not give immediate openings for action. Mathematics is the best possible discipline for him. Grammar also is good; it serves at once to interest him, if it is well taught, in certain abstract relationships, and also to send out his motor energies in the exercise of speech, which is the function which always needs exercise, and which is always under the observation of the teacher. Grammar, in fact, is one of the very best of primary-school subjects, because instruction in it issues at once in the very motor functions which embody the relationships which the teacher seeks to impress. The teacher has in his ear, so to speak, the evidence as to whether his instruction is understood or not. This gives him a valuable opportunity to keep his instruction well ahead of its motor expression--thus leading the pupil to think rather than to act without thinking--and at the same time to point out the errors of performance which follow from haste in passing from thought to action. These indirect methods of reaching the impulsive pupil should never be cast aside for the direct effort to "control" such a scholar. The very worst thing that can be done to such a boy or girl is to command him or her to sit still or not to act; and a still worse thing--to make a comparative again on the head of the superlative--is to affix to the command painful penalties. This is a direct violation of the principle of Suggestion. Such a command only tends to empty the pupil's mind of other objects of thought and interest, and so to keep his attention upon his own movements. This, then, amounts to a continual suggestion to him to do just what you want to keep him from doing. On the contrary, unless you give him suggestions and interests which lead his thought away from his acts, it is impossible not to aggravate his bad tendencies by your very efforts. This is the way, as I intimated above, that many teachers create or confirm bad habits in their pupils, and so render any amount of well-intended positive instruction abortive. It seems well established that a suggestion of the negative--that is, not to do a thing--has no negative force; but, on the contrary, in the early period, it amounts only to a stronger suggestion in the positive sense, since it adds emphasis, to the thing which is forbidden. The "not" in a prohibition is no addition to the pictured course to which it is attached, and the physiological fact that the attention tends to set up action upon that which is attended to comes in to put a premium on disobedience. Indeed, the philosophy of all punishment rests in this consideration, i. e., that unless the penalty tends to fill the mind with some object other than the act punished, it does more harm than good. The punishment must be actual and its nature diverting; never a threat which terminates there, nor a