'The indulgence of this querulousness increased it beyond all endurance. Before the master had time to examine the justice of one complaint, his attention was called away to redress another; until, wearied with investigation into offences which were either too trifling or too justly provoked for punishment, he treated all complainants with harshness, heard their accusations with incredulity, and thus tended, by a first example, to the re-establishment of the old system.' The issue in any case was--that, apart from what nature and the education of real life did for the child's morals, the school education did nothing at all except by the positive moral instruction which the child might draw from his lessons--_i. e._ from B. But as to A, _i. e._ the school arrangements, either at best their effect was = 0; or possibly, by capricious interference for the regulation of what was beyond their power to regulate, they actually disturbed the moral sense (_i. e._ their effect was =-_x_). Now, on the new system of our Experimentalist, the very laws and regulations, which are in any case necessary to the going on of a school, have such an origin and are so administered as to cultivate the sense of justice and materially to enlarge the knowledge of justice. These laws emanate from the boys themselves, and are administered by the boys. That is to say, A (which on the old system is at best a mere blank, or negation, and sometimes even an absolute negative with regard to B) thus becomes a positive agent in relation to B--_i. e._ to one of the main purposes of the school. Again, to descend to an illustration of a lower order, in most schools arithmetic is one part of B: now on the new system it is so contrived that what is technically termed _calling over_, which on any system is a necessary arrangement for the prevention of mischief, and which usually terminates there (_i. e._ in an effect = 0), becomes a positive means of cultivating an elementary rule of arithmetic in the junior students--and an attention to accuracy in all: _i. e._ here again, from being simply = 0, A becomes = + _x_ in relation to B. A school in short, on this system, burns its own smoke: The mere negative conditions of its daily goings on, the mere waste products of its machinery, being converted into the positive pabulum of its life and motion. Such then, we affirm, is the brief abstract--antithetically expressed--of the characteristic principle by which the system under review is distinguished from all former systems. In relation to B (which suppose 20 _x_) A, which heretofore was =-_x_, or at best = 0, now becomes = + _x_, or + 2 _x_, or 3 _x_, as it may happen. In this lies the merit of the conception: what remains to be inquired--is in what degree, and upon what parts of B, it attains this conversion of A into a positive quantity: and this will determine the merit of the execution. Let us now therefore turn to the details of the book.