LIBRARY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
Deceived j AN 4 1993
Accessions A/o.l3"3^? . Class No.
THE
SEVEN LAWS
OF
TEACHING.
BY
JOHN M. GREGORY, LL.D.,
Ex'Commissioner of the Civil Service of the United States, and Ex-Presi
dent of the State University of Illinois.
BOSTON :
Congregational ^unoag^cfjool ano -^tifcltsfjtng Sonets,
CONGREGATIONAL HOUSE, BEACON STREET.
Copyrighted, 1886,
BY JOHN M. GREGORV.
E2ectrotyped and Printed by Stanley &> Usher,
171 Devonshire Street.
" Train up a child in the way he should go : and when he is old he
will not depart from it." Bible.
" Why is it that we, the elder, are spared to the world, except to train
up and instruct the young? It is impossible that the gay little folks
should guide and teach themselves, and accordingly God has committed
to us who are old and experienced the knowledge which is needful for
them, and he will require of us a strict account of what we have done
with it." Martin Luther.
"Faith in God is the source of peace in life; peace in life is the
source of inward order; inward order is the source of the unerring
application of our powers, and this again is the source of the growth of
those powers, and of their training in wisdom ; wisdom is the spring
of all human blessings." Pestalozzi.
" If you follow nature, the education you give will succeed without
giving you trouble and perplexity ; especially if you do not insist upon
acquirements precocious or over-extensive." Plato.
" It should not be claimed that there is no art or science of training
up to virtue. Remember how absurd it would be to believe that even
the most trifling employment has its rules and methods, and at the same
time, that the highest of all departments of human effort virtue can
be mastered without instruction and practice 1 " Cicero*
CONTENTS.
i.
THE LAWS OF TEACHING
II.
THE LAW OF THE TEACHER 15
in.
THE LAW OF THE LEARNER 28
IV.
THE LAW OF THE LANGUAGE . 48
v.
THE LAW OF THE LESSON 65
VI.
THE LAW OF THE TEACHING PROCESS 81
VII.
THE LAW OF THE LEARNING PROCESS 104
VIII.
THE LAW OF REVIEW 118
INTRODUCTION.
LET us, like the Master, place a little child in our midst.
Let us carefully observe this child that we may learn from it
what education is ; for education, in its broadest meaning,
embraces all the steps and processes by which an infant is
gradually transformed into a full grown and intelligent man.
Let us take account of the child as it is. It has a complete
human body, with eyes, hands, and feet, all the organs of
sense, of action and of locomotion, and yet it lies helpless
in its cradle. It laughs, cries, feels, and seems to perceive,
remember, and will. It has all the faculties of the human
being, but is without power to use them save in a merely
animal way.
In what does this infant differ from a man? Simply in being
a child. Its body and limbs are small, weak, and without
voluntary use. Its feet can not walk. Its hands have no
skill. Its lips can not speak. Its eyes see without per-
ceiving ; its ears hear without understanding. The universe
into which it has come lies around it wholly unseen and
unknown.
As we more carefully study all this, two chief facts become
clear : First, this child is but a germ it has not its destined
growth. Second, it is ignorant without acquired ideas.
On these two facts rest the two notions of education.
(i) The development of powers. (2) The acquisition of
knowledge. The first is an unfolding of the faculties of body
and mind to full growth and strength; the second is the
furnishing of the mind with the knowledge of things of
the facts and truths known to the human intelligence.
vi Introduction.
Each of these two facts the child's immaturity and its
ignorance might serve as a basis for a science of educa-
tion. The first would include a study of the faculties and
powers of the human being, their order of development and
their laws of growth and action. The second would involve
a study of the various branches of knowledge and arts with
their relations to the faculties by which they are discovered,
developed, and perfected. Each of these sciences would
necessarily draw into sight and involve the other ; just as a
study of powers involves a knowledge of their products, and
as a study of effects includes a survey of causes.
Corresponding to these two forms of educational science,
we find two branches of the art of education. The one is
the art of training] the other the art of teaching. Training
is the systematic development and cultivation of the powers
of mind and body. Teaching is the systematic inculcation of
knowledge.
As the child is immature in all its powers, it is the first
business of education, as an art, to cultivate those powers, by
giving to each power regular exercise in its own proper
sphere, till, through exercise and growth, they come to their
full strength and skill. This training may be physical, mental,
or moral, according to the powers trained, or the field of their
application.
As the child is ignorant, it is equally the business of educa-
tion to communicate knowledge. This is properly the work
of teaching. But as it is not expected that the child shall
acquire at school all the knowledge he will need, nor that he
will cease to learn when school instruction ceases, the first
object of teaching is to communicate such knowledge as may
be useful in gaining other knowledge, to stimulate in the pupil
the love of learning, and to form in him the habits of
independent study.
These two, the cultivation of the powers and the com-
munication of knowledge, together make up the teacher's
work. All organizing and governing are subsidiary to this
Introduction. vii
twofold aim. The result to be sought is a full grown physi-
cal, intellectual, and moral manhood, with such intelligence
as is necessary to make life useful and happy, and as will fit
the soul to go on learning from all the scenes of life and from
all the available sources of knowledge.
These two great branches of educational art, training and
teaching, though separable in thought, are not separable in
practice. We can only train by teaching, and we teach best
when we train best. Training implies the exercise of the
powers to be trained ; but the proper exercise of the intellect-
ual powers is found in the acquisition, the elaboration, and
the application of knowledge.
There is, however, a practical advantage in keeping these
two processes of education distinct before the mind. The
teacher with these clearly in view will watch more easily
and estimate more intelligently the real progress of his pupils.
He will not, on the one side, be content with a dry daily
drill which keeps his pupils at work as in a tread-mill, without
any sound and substantial advance in knowledge ; nor will he,
on the other side, be satisfied with cramming the memory
with useless facts or empty names, without any increase of the
powers of thought and understanding. He will carefully note
both sides of his pupils' education the increase of power
and the advance in knowledge and will direct his labors
and select the lessons with a wise and skillful adaptation to
secure both of the ends in view.
This statement of the two sides of the science and art of
education brings us to the point of view from which may be
clearly seen the real aim of this little volume. That aim is
stated in its title THE SEVEN LAWS OF TEACHING. Its
object is to set forth, in a certain systematic order, the
principles of the art of teaching. Incidentally it brings into
view the mental faculties and their order of growth. But it
deals with these only as they need to be considered in a clear
discussion of the work of acquiring knowledge.
viii Introduction.
As the most obvious work of the school-room is that of
learning lessons from the various branches of knowledge, so
the work of teaching the work of assigning, explaining,
and hearing these lessons is that which chiefly occupies
the time and attention of the school-master or instructor.
To explain the laws of teaching will, therefore, seem the
most direct and practical way to instruct teachers in their art.
It presents at once the clearest and most practical view of
their duties, and of the methods by which they may win
success in their work. Having learned the laws of teaching,
the teacher will easily master the philosophy of training.
The author does not claim to have expounded the whole
Science of Education, nor to have set forth even the whole
Art of Teaching. This would require a systematic study of
each mental faculty, and of the relation of each to every
branch of knowledge, both of sciences and arts. But if he
has succeeded in grouping around the Seven Factors, which
are present in every act of true teaching, the leading princi-
ples and rules of the teaching art, so that they can be seen
in their natural order and connections, and can be methodi-
cally learned and used, he has done what he wished to do.
He leaves his offering on the altar of service to God and his
fellow-men.
THE SEVEN LAWS OF TEACHING.
CHAPTER I.
THE LAWS OF TEACHING.
1. Teaching has its natural laws as fixed
as the laws of circling planets or of growing
organisms. Teaching is a process in which
definite forces are employed to produce definite
effects, and these effects follow their causes as
regularly and certainly as the day follows the
sun. What the teacher does, he does through
natural agencies working out their natural effects.
Causation is as certain, if not always as clear,
in the movements of mind as in the motions
of matter. The mind has its laws of thought,
feeling, and volition, and these laws are none
the less fixed that they are spiritual rather than
material.
2. To discover the laws of any process,
whether mental or material, makes it possible
to bring that process under the control of him who
knows the law and can command the conditions.
He who has learned the laws of the electric
currents may send messages through the ocean ;
2 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
and he who has mastered the chemistry of the
sunbeam may make it paint him portraits and
landscapes. So he that masters the laws of
teaching may send knowledge into the depths
of the soul, and may impress upon the mind
the images of immortal truth. He who would
gain harvests must obey nature's laws for the
growing corn; and he who would teach a child
successfully must follow the laws of teaching,
which are also laws of the mental nature.
Nowhere, in the world of mind or in the world
of matter, can man produce any effects except
as he employs the means on which those effects
depend. He is powerless to command nature's
forces except as, by design or by chance, he
obeys nature's laws.
What is Teaching?
3. Teaching, in its simplest sense, is the
communication of knowledge. This knowledge
may be a fact, a truth, a doctrine of religion,
a precept of morals, a story of life, or the
processes of an art. It may be taught by the
use of words, by signs, by objects, by actions,
or examples ; and the teaching may have for
its object instruction or impression the training
of mind, the increase of intelligence, the im-
plantation of principles, or the formation of
character ; but whatever the substance, the mode,
or the aim of the teaching, the act itself, funda-
The Laws of Teaching. 3
mentally considered, is always substantially the
same : it is a communication of knowledge. It
is the painting in another's mind the mental
picture in one's own the shaping of a pupil's
thought and understanding to the comprehension
of some truth which the teacher knows and
wishes to communicate. Further on we shall
see that the word communication is used here,
not in the sense of the transmission of a mental
something from one person to another, but rather
in the sense of helping another to reproduce
the same knowledge, and thus to make it common
to the two.
The Seven Factors.
4. To discover the law of any phenomenon,
we must subject that phenomenon to a scientific
analysis and study its separate parts. If any
complete act of teaching be so analyzed, it will
be found to contain seven distinct elements or
factors: (i) two actors a teacher and a learner;
(2) two mental factors a common language or
medium of communication, and a lesson or truth to
be communicated ; and (3) three functional acts
or processes that of the teacher, that of the
learner, and a final or finishing process to test
and fix the result.
5. These are essential parts of every full and
complete act of teaching. Whether the lesson be
a single fact told in three minutes or a lecture
4 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
occupying as many hours, the seven factors are
all there, if the work is entire. None of them
can be omitted, and no other need be added. No
full account of the philosophy of teaching can be
given which does not include them all, and if
there is any true science of teaching, it must lie
in the laws and relations of these seven elements
and facts. No true or successful art of teaching
can be found or contrived which is not based upon
these factors and their laws.
6. To discover their laws, let these seven
factors be passed again in careful review and
enumeration, as follows : (i) a teacher ; (2) a learner ;
(3) a common language or medium of communica-
tion ; (4) a lesson or truth ; (5) the teacher's work ;
(6) the learner's work ; (7) the review work, which
ascertains, perfects, and fastens the work done.
Is it not obvious that each of these seven must
have its own distinct characteristic, which makes it
what it is ? Each stands distinguished from the
others, and from all others, by this essential char-
acteristic, and each enters and plays its part in the
scene by virtue of its own character and function.
Each is a distinct entity or fact of nature. And
as every fact of nature is the product and proof
of some law of nature, so each element here
described has its own great law of function or
action, and these taken together constitute the
SEVEN LAWS OF TEACHING.
7. It may seem trivial to so insist upon all
The Laws of Teaching. 5
this. Some will say : " Of course there can be no
teaching without a teacher and a pupil, without a
language and a lesson, and without the teacher
teaches and the learner learns ; or, finally, without
a proper review, if any assurance is to be gained
that the work has been successful and the result
is to be made permanent. All this is too obvious
to need assertion." So also is it obvious that
when seeds, soil, heat, light, and moisture come
together in proper measure, plants are produced
and grow to the harvest ; but the simplicity of
these common facts does not prevent their hiding
among them some of the profoundest and most
mysterious laws of nature. So, too, a simple act
of teaching hides within it some of the most
potent and significant laws of mental life and
action.
The Laws Stated.
8. These laws are not obscure and hard to
reach. They are so simple and natural that they
suggest themselves almost spontaneously to any
one who carefully notes the facts. They lie
imbedded in the simplest description that can be
given of the seven elements named, as in the
following :
(1) A teacher must be one who KNOWS the
lesson or truth to be taught.
(2) A learner is one who ATTENDS with interest
to the lesson given.
6 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
(3) The language used as a MEDIUM between
teacher and learner must be COMMON to both.
(4) The lesson to be learned must be explicable
in the terms of truth already known by the
learner the UNKNOWN must be explained by
the KNOWN.
(5) Teaching is AROUSING and USING the pupil's
mind to form in it a desired conception or thought.
(6) Learning is THINKING into one's own UNDER-
STANDING a new idea or truth.
(7) The test and proof of teaching done the
finishing and fastening process must be a
RE-VIEWING, RE-THINKING, RE-KNOWING, and RE-
PRODUCING of the knowledge taught.
The Laws Stated as Rules.
9. These definitions and statements are so
simple and obvious as to need no argument or
proof ; but their force as fundamental laws may be
more clearly seen if stated as rules for teaching.
Addressed to the teacher, they may read as
follows :
I. Know thoroughly and familiarly the lesson
you wish to teach ; or, in other words, teach from
a full mind and a clear understanding.
II. Gain and keep the attention and interest
of the pupils upon the lesson. Refuse to teach
without attention.
III. Use words understood by both teacher
and pupil in the same sense language clear
and vivid alike to both.
The Laws of Teaching. 7
IV. Begin with what is already well known to
the pupil in the lesson or upon the subject, and
proceed to the unknown by single, easy, and
natural steps, letting the known explain the
unknown.
V. Use the pupil's own mind, exciting his self-
activities. Keep his thoughts as much as possible
ahead of your expression, making him a discoverer
of truth.
VI. Require the pupil to reproduce in thought
the lesson he is learning thinking it out in its
parts, proofs, connections, and applications till he
can express it in his own language.
VII. Review, review, REVIEW, reproducing cor-
rectly the old, deepening its impression with new
thought, correcting false views, and completing
the true.
Essentials of Successful Teaching.
10. These rules, and the laws which they cut-
line and presuppose, underlie and govern all suc-
cessful teaching. If taken in their broadest
meaning, nothing need be added to them ; nothing
can be safely taken away. No one who will
thoroughly master and use them need fail as a
teacher, provided he will also maintain the good
order which is necessary to give them free and
undisturbed action. Disorder, noise, and con-
fusion may hinder and prevent the results desired,
just as the constant disturbance of some chemical
8 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
elements forbids the formation of the compounds
which the laws of chemistry would otherwise
produce. Good order is a condition precedent to
good teaching.
11. Like all the great laws of nature, these
laws of teaching will seem at first simple facts,
so obvious as scarcely to require such formal
statement, and so plain that no explanation can
make clearer their meaning. But, like all funda-
mental truths, their simplicity is more apparent
than real. Each law varies in applications and
effects with varying minds and persons, though
remaining constant in itself ; and each stands
related to other laws and facts, in long and wide
successions, till it reaches the outermost limits of
the science of teaching. Indeed, in a careful
study of these seven laws, to which we shall pro-
ceed in coming chapters, the discussion will reach
every valuable principle in education, and every
practical rule which can be of use in the teacher's
work.
12. They cover all teaching of all subjects and
in all grades, since they are the fundamental con-
ditions on which ideas may be made to pass from
one mind to another, or on which the unknown
can become known. They are as valid and use-
ful for the college professor as for the master of a
common school ; for the teaching of a Bible truth
as for instruction in arithmetic. In proportion as
the truth to be communicated is high and difficult
The Laws of Teaching. 9
to be understood, or as the pupils to be instructed
are young and ignorant, ought they to be carefully
followed.
13. Doubtless there are many successful
teachers who never heard of these laws, and who
do not consciously follow them ; just as there are
people who walk safely without any theoretical
knowledge of gravitation, and talk intelligibly
without studying grammar. Like the musician
who plays by ear, and without knowledge of notes,
these " natural teachers," as they are called, have
learned the laws of teaching from practice, and
obey them from habit. It is none the less true
that their success comes from obeying law, and
not in spite of laws. They catch by intuition the
secret of success, and do by a sort of instinct
what others do by rule and reflection. A careful
study of their methods would show how closely
they follow these principles ; and if there is any
exception it is in the cases in which their wonder-
ful practical mastery of some of the rules usually
the first three allows them to give slighter heed
to the others. To those who do not belong to this
class of " natural teachers," the knowledge of these
laws is of vital necessity.
Skill and Enthusiasm.
14. Let no one fear that a study of the laws of
teaching will tend to substitute a cold, mechanical
sort of work for the warm-hearted, enthusiastic
IO The Seven Laws of Teaching.
teaching so often admired and praised. True skill
kindles and keeps alive enthusiasm by giving it
success where it would otherwise be discouraged
by defeat. The true worker's love for his work
grows with his ability to do it well. Even enthu-
siasm will accomplish more when guided by intel-
ligence and armed with skill, while the many who
lack the rare gift of an enthusiastic nature must
work by rule and skill or fail altogether.
15. Unreflecting superintendents and school-
boards often prefer enthusiastic teachers to those
who are simply well educated or experienced.
They count, not untruly, that enthusiasm will ac-
complish more with poor learning and little skill
than the best trained and most erudite teacher
who has no heart in his work, and who goes
through his task without zeal for progress and
without care for results. But why choose either
the ignorant enthusiast or the educated sluggard ?
Enthusiasm is not confined to the unskilled and
the ignorant, nor are all calm, cool men idlers.
Conscience and the strong sense of right and duty
often exist where the glow of enthusiasm is un-
known or has passed away. And there is an
enthusiasm born of skill a joy in doing what
one can do well that is far more effective, where
art is involved, than the enthusiasm born of vivid
feeling. The steady advance of veterans is far
more powerful than the mad rush of raw recruits.
The world's best work, in the schools as in the
The Laws of Teaching. 1 1
shops, is done by the calm, steady, persistent
efforts of skilled workmen who know how to keep
their tools sharp, and to make every effort reach its
mark. No teacher perhaps ever excelled Pestalozzi
in enthusiasm, and few have ever personally done
poorer work.
16. But the most serious objection to systematic
teaching, based on the laws of teaching, comes
from Sunday-school men, pastors and others, who
assume that the principal aim of the Sunday-school
is to impress and convert rather than to instruct ;
and that skilful teaching, if desirable at all, is much
less important than warm appeals to the feelings
and earnest exhortations to the conscience. No
one denies the value of such appeals and exhorta-
tions, nor the duty of teachers, in both day-schools
and Sunday-schools, to make them on all fit oppor-
tunities. But what is to be the basis of the Sunday
teacher's appeals, if not the truths of Scripture ?
What religious exhortation will come home with
such abiding power as that which enters the mind
with some clear Bible truth, some unmistakable
"Thus saith the Lord," in its front? What
preacher wins more souls than Moody with his
open Bible ever in hand? What better rule for
teacher or pupil than the Master's " Search the
Scriptures " ? What finer example than that of
Paul who " reasoned" with both prejudiced Jews
and caviling Greeks " out of the Scriptures " ?
If the choice must be between the warm-hearted
12 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
teacher who simply gushes appeals, and the cold-
hearted who stifles all feeling by his icy indifference,
give me the former by all odds ; but why either ?
Is there no healthful mean between steam and ice
for the water of life ? Will the teacher whose
own mind glows with the splendid light of divine
truths, and who skillfully leads his pupils to a clear
vision of the same truths, fail in inspirational
power? Is not the divine truth itself the very
Word of God to be credited with any power to
arouse the conscience and convert the soul ?
17. These questions may be left to call forth
their own inevitable answers. They will have met
their full purpose if they repel this disposition to
discredit the need of true teaching-work, in Sun-
day-schools as well as in common schools ; and if
they convince Sunday-school leaders that the great
natural laws of teaching are God's own laws of
mind, which must be followed as faithfully in
learning his Word as in studying his works.
A 'Word to Teachers.
1 8. Leaving to other chapters the full discussion
of the meaning and philosophy of these seven
laws, we only add here the exhortation to the
teacher, and especially to the Sunday-school
teacher, to give them the most serious attention.
Sitting before your class of veiled immortals, how
often have you craved the power to look into the
depths of those young souls, and to plant there
The Laws of Teaching. 1 3
with sure hand some truth of science or some
grand and life-giving belief of the gospel ? How
often have you tried your utmost, by all the meth-
ods you could devise, to direct their minds to the
deep truths and facts of the Bible lesson, and
turned away, almost in despair, to find how power-
less you were to command the mental movement
and to secure the spiritual result? No key will
ever open to you the doors of those chambers in
which live your pupils' souls ; no glass will ever
enable you to penetrate their mysterious gloom.
But in the great laws of your common nature lie
the electric lines by which you may send into each
little mind the thought fresh from your own, and
awaken the young heart to receive and embrace it.
He who made us all of kindred nature settled the
spiritual laws by which our minds must communi-
cate, and made possible that art of arts which
passes thought and truth from soul to soul.
19. Remark. In the discussion of these laws
there will necessarily occur some seeming repeti-
tions. They are like seven hill-tops of different
height scattered over a common territory. As we
climb each in succession, many points in the land-
scapes seen from their summits will be found
included in different views, but it will be always in
a new light and with a fresh horizon. The truth
that is common to two or more of these laws will
be found a mere repetition. New groupings will
show new relations and bring to light for the care-
14 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
ful student new aspects and uses. The repetitions
themselves will not be useless, as they will serve to
emphasize the most important features of the art
of teaching, and will impress upon the younger
teachers those principles which demand the most
frequent attention.
CHAPTER II.
THE LAW OF THE TEACHER.
i. The universal reign of law is the central
truth of modern science. No force in man or
nature but works under the control of law; no
effect in mind or matter but is produced in con-
formity with law. The simplest notion of natural
law is that nature remains forever uniform in its
forces and operations. Causes compel their effects,
and effects obey their causes, by irresistible laws.
Things are what they are by reason of the laws of
their being, and to learn the law of any fact is to
learn the deepest truth we can know about it.
This uniformity of nature is the basis of all science
and of all practical art. In mind and in matter the
reign of unvarying laws is the primal condition of any
true science. The mind, indeed, has its freedoms,
but among these there is found no liberty to produce
effects contrary to laws. The teacher is therefore
as much the subject of law as the star that
shines or the ship that sails. Many qualifications
are easily recognized as important to the teacher's
position and work ; and if all the requirements
popularly sought for couid be obtained, the teacher
would be a model man or woman ; perfect in
1 6 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
manners, pure in morals, unerring in wisdom, just
in judgment, loving in temper, firm in will, tireless
in work, conscientious in word and deed, a genius
in learning, an angel in charity, an incarnate
assemblage of impossible excellencies. Certainly,
good character and rare moral qualities are desira-
ble in an instructor of the young, if not for his
actual work, at least to prevent harm from his
example ; but if, one by one, we dismiss from our
catalogue of needful qualifications for the work of
teaching those not absolutely indispensable, we
shall find ourselves obliged to retain at last, as
necessary to the very notion of teaching, a knowl-
edge of the branches to be taught.
The Law of the Teacher, then, the law which
limits and describes him, is this :
The teacher must know that which he would teach.
Philosophy of the Law.
2. It seems too simple for proof that one can
not teach without knowledge. How can something
come out of nothing, or how can darkness give
light ? To affirm this law seems like declaring a
truism ; but deeper study shows it to be a funda-
mental truth the very law of the teacher's action
and being as a teacher. No other characteristic
or qualification is so fundamental and essential.
The law will reveal a deeper truth if we reverse
its terms and read : What the teacher knows he
must teach. There is an inborn need and desire in
The Law of the Teacher. 17
man for expression. It is the instinctive impulse
to tell in some way, by word or action, our thoughts
and emotions so soon as they become vivid and
intense enough. It is the teaching passion.
" While I was musing the fires burned : then spake
I with my tongue." Other motives and impulses
may mingle and aid, but this is primary and funda-
mental. The hot heart hot with visions and
discovered truth forces speech, or teaching
which is better than speech.
3. The word KNOW stands central in the law
of the teacher. Knowledge is the material with
which the teacher works, and the first reason of
the law must be sought in the nature of knowl-
edge. What men call knowledge is of all degrees,
from the first dim glimpse of a fact or truth to
the full and familiar understanding of that fact or
truth in all its parts and aspects its philosophy,
its beauty, and its power, (i) We may know a
fact so faintly as merely to recognize it when an-
other tells it ; (2) we may know it in such degree
as to be able to recall it for ourselves, or to describe
it in a general way to another ; (3) better still, we
may so know it that we can readily explain, prove,
and illustrate it ; or (4), mounting to the highest
grade of knowledge, we may so know and vividly
see a truth in its deeper significance and wider
relations that its importance, grandeur, or beauty
impresses and inspires us. History is history only
to him who thus reads and knows it ; and Scripture
1 8 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
is Holy Writ only when seen by this inner light.
It is this last form of knowledge which must be
read into the law of the true teacher.
4. It is not affirmed that no one can teach with-
out this fulness of knowledge ; nor is it true that
every one who knows his lessons thus thoroughly
will teach successfully. But imperfect knowing
must make imperfect teaching. What a man does
not know he can not teach, or, if he teaches, can
not know that he teaches. But the law of the
teacher is only one of the laws of teaching. Fail-
ure may come from the violation of other condi-
tions as well as from neglect of this. So, too,
success may come from obedience to other laws.
A poor, illiterate mother may so inspire the ambi-
tion of her boy that he will work out his lessons
from a book without a teacher. Many a teacher
can do little more than to study up the lesson of
the day, and may use that skillfully to set his
pupils to work; but teaching must be uncertain
and limping with such limitations of knowledge.
5. A truth can be fully seen only in the light
of other truths. It is known by its resemblances.
A fact which is only partly known never reveals
its thousand beautiful analogies to other facts. It
stands alone, beclouded and barren half fact and
half phantom. The eye catches no fine resem-
blances, and the understanding finds no fruitful
relations, linking it to the great body of truth.
The imagination looks in vain for the light of some
The Law of the Teacher. 19
rich and beautiful simile to transfigure the truth
seen only in dim outline, or known only in shape-
less and imperfect fragments. Only amid facts
vividly seen, and among truths clearly and splen-
didly conceived, are to be discovered the images
of grander facts and the shadowy forms of wider
truths. The power of illustration that chief and
central power in the teacher's art comes 'only
out of clear and familiar knowledge. The unknow-
ing teacher is the blind trying to lead the blind
with only an empty lamp to light the way.
6. Take the common facts taught in the geog-
raphies of the schools, the roundness of the
earth, the extent of oceans and continents, moun-
tains, rivers, and peopled states and cities, how
tame and slight in interest as known to the half-
taught teacher and his pupils ; but how grand and
imposing as seen by the great astronomers, geolo-
gists, and geographers the Herschels, Danas,
and Guyots ! To these appear in vision the long
processions of age-filling causes and revolutions
which have not only given shape to this enormous
globe, but have peopled the boundless universe
with countless millions of similar and still grander
spheres causes which yet move and work in the
ceaseless march of suns and systems, in the per-
petual roll of the earth's revolutions, in the swing
of tides, the sweep of winds and storms, the flow
of rivers, the slow heave of the continents, the
incessant climatic changes and seasons, and in all
2O The Seven Laws of Teaching.
the various births, growths, and decays of nature
and mankind. To such teachers geography is but
a chapter in the science and history of the uni-
verse, borrowing light and meaning from all that
goes before or follows. So, too, the great texts,
and truths of Holy Writ : how meager in meaning
to the careless reader and the unstudious teacher !
but how brilliant and burning with divine fact and
truths to him who brings to its study the converg-
ing lights of history, science, and experience !
7. But the law of the teacher goes deeper still.
Truth must be clearly understood before it can be
vividly felt. Only the true scholars in any science
grow enthusiastic over its glories and grandeurs.
It is the clearness of their mental vision which
inspires the wonderful eloquence of the poet and
orator, and makes them the born teachers of their
race. It was Hugh Miller, the deep-read geologist,
whose trained eye deciphered, and whose eloquent
pen recorded, " The Testimony of the Rocks."
Kepler, the great astronomer, grew wild as the
mysteries of the stars unrolled before him, and
Agassiz could not afford time to lecture for money
while absorbed in the deep study of the old dead
fishes of an ancient world. He must ever be a
cold and lifeless teacher who only half knows the
lessons he would teach ; but he whose soul has
caught fire from the truths which he carries, glows
with a contagious enthusiasm and unconsciously
inspires his pupils with his own deep interest.
The Law of the Teacher. 21
" Much learning doth make thee mad," said the
half-startled Festus, as Paul, the great apostle, told
with irrepressible warmth the story so vivid in his
remembrance, so fresh in his feeling.
8. This earnest feeling of truths clearly and
grandly conceived is the very secret of the earnest-
ness and enthusiasm so much praised and admired
in teacher and preacher. Even common truths
become transformed and grand in the mind and
heart of such a teacher. History turns to a living
panorama ; geography swells out into great conti-
nental stretches of peopled kingdoms ; astronomy
becomes the marshaled march of shining worlds
and world-systems, and Bible truths grow sublime
as with the felt presence of Deity. How can the
teacher's manner fail to be earnest and inspiring
when his matter is so rich with radiant reality ?
9. While knowledge thus thoroughly and famil-
iarly known rouses into higher action all the
powers of the teacher, it also gives him the unfet-
tered command and use of those powers. Instead
of the hurry and worry of one who has to glean
from the text-book each moment the answers to
the questions he has asked, he who knows his
lesson as he ought is at home, on familiar ground,
and can watch at ease the efforts of his class and
direct with certainty the current of their thoughts.
He is ready to recognize and interpret their first
faint glimpses of the truth, to remove the obsta-
cles from their path, and to aid and encourage.
22 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
their struggling search by the skillful hint which
flashes a half-revealing light into the too thick
darkness.
10. A teacher's ready and evident knowledge
helps to give the pupil needed confidence. We
follow with eager expectation and delight the
guide who shows thorough knowledge of the field
we wish to explore, but we drag reluctantly and
without interest after an ignorant and incompe-
tent leader. Children instinctively object to
being taught by one whom they have found to be
ignorant or unready in their lessons, just as sol-
diers refuse to follow an incompetent commander.
Nor is this all. As the great scholars, the New-
tons, the Humboldts, and the Huxleys kindle pub-
lic interest in the sciences which lend them their
renown, so the ripe knowledge of the well-prepared
teacher awakens in his class the active desire to
know more of the studies in which he is profi-
cient. Science and religion are never so attract-
ive as when seen through a living scholar or
Christian. And yet it must be confessed that the
ability to inspire pupils with a love of study is
sometimes lacking even where great knowledge is
possessed ; and this lack is fatal to all successful
teaching, especially among young pupils. Better
a teacher with limited knowledge but with this
power to stimulate his pupils than a very Agassiz
without it. The cooped hen may by her encourag-
ing cluck send forth her chickens to the fields she
The Law of the Teacher. 23
can not herself explore ; but sad the fate of the
brood if they remain in the coop while she goes
abroad to feed.
11. Such is the profound philosophy, the wide
and generous meaning, of this first great law of
teaching. Thus understood, it clearly portrays the
splendid ideal which no one except the Great
Teacher ever fully realized, but which every true
teacher must more or less nearly approach. It
defines with scientific certainty the forces with
which the successful teacher must go to his work.
From the mother teaching her child to talk, to the
highest teacher of science, the orator instructing
listening senates, and the preacher teaching great
congregations, this law knows no exceptions and
allows no successful violations. It affirms every-
where, the teacher must know that which he would
teach. Out of this one fundamental law must
arise every practical rule to guide the teacher in
preparing for his work.
Rules for Teachers.
12. Among the rules which arise out of the
Law of the Teacher, the following are the most
important :
(1) Prepare each lesson by fresh study. Last
year's knowledge has necessarily faded somewhat.
Only fresh conceptions warm and inspire us.
(2) Seek in the lesson its analogies and like-
nesses to more familiar truths. In these lie the
illustrations by which it may be taught to others,
24 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
(3) Study the'lesson till its thoughts take shape
in familiar language. The final proof and product
of clear thought is clear speech.
(4) Find the natural order and connection of
the several facts and truths in the lesson. In
every science there is a natural path of ascent,
from its simplest notions to its sublimest outlooks.
So, too, in every lesson. The temple of truth is
not a jumbled mass of disjointed facts.
(5) Seek the relation of the lesson to the
lives and duties of the learners. The practical
value of truth lies in these relations.
(6) Use freely all aids, but never rest till the
truth rises clear before you as a vision seen by
your own eyes.
(7) Ask for #//the facts and views of a subject,
but be sure to master some. Better to know one
truth well than to know a hundred imperfectly.
(8) Have a time for the study of each lesson,
and, if possible, some days in advance of the teach-
ing. All things help the duty done on time, but
all things hinder or hurry the duty out of time.
The mind keeps on studying the lesson learned in
advance, and gathers fresh interest and illustra-
tions.
(9) Have a plan of study, but study beyond the
plan. I once suggested as an artificial but helpful
plan for the study of a Bible lesson the letters of
the word BIBLE. B Book in which the lesson
is found, with its date, author, object, and contents
The Law of the Teacher. 2$
or scope. I Intention of the lesson ; the in-
cluded facts, and the interpretation of those facts.
B Blessings and Benefits to be gained from the
lesson. L Losses likely to follow from a failure
to learn and obey. E Examples, Experiences,
and Exhortation. Let the teacher address each
point as a question to his own mind, and think till
he gets an answer and an answer that is true.
The three questions What ? How ? and Why ?
afford a more perfect mnemonic, calling for more
scientific research and applying to all branches of
knowledge.
(10) Do not deny yourself the help of good
books on the subject of the lessons. Buy, borrow,
or beg, if necessary, but get the help of the best
scholars and thinkers, enough at least to set your
own thoughts going ; but do not read without
deep and original thinking. If possible, talk your
lesson over with an intelligent friend. Collision
often brings light. In the absence of these aids,
write your views. The nib of the pen digs deep
into the mines of truth. Expressing thought
often clears it of its dross and obscurities.
Violations and Mistakes.
1 3. The discussion would be incomplete without
some notice of the frequent violations of the law.
Some one has said : " The secret of success is to
make no mistakes." Certain it is that the best
teacher may spoil his most careful and earnest
work by some small and careless blunder.
26 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
(1) The very ignorance of his pupils often tempts
the teacher to neglect all preparation and study.
He thinks that at any rate he will know much
more of the lesson than the children can, and
counts that he will find something to say about it,
or that at worst his ignorance will pass unnoticed.
A sad mistake, and often costing dear ! Some
bright or studious pupil is almost sure to discover
the cheat, and henceforth that teacher's credit
with his class is gone.
(2) Some teachers assume that it is the pupils'
work, not theirs, to study the lesson ; and that
with the aid of the book in hand, they will easily
enough be able to ascertain if the children have
done their duty. Better let one of the pupils who
knows his lesson examine the others, and sit by as
a learner, rather than discourage study by your
too evident ignorance and indifference.
(3) Others look hastily through the lesson, and
conclude that though they have not mastered it,
nor perhaps one thought in it, they have gathered
enough to fill the brief hour, and they can, if need-
ful, eke out the little they know with random talk
or story. Or, lacking time or heart for any prep-
aration, they carelessly dismiss all thought of
teaching, fill the hour with such exercises as may
occur to them, and hope that, as the Sunday-school
is a good thing, the children will get some good
from mere attendance.
'(4) A more serious fault is that of those who,
failing to find anything in the lesson, try to graft
The Law of the Teacher. 2?
something upon it, and make it a mere cart to
carry their own fancies on.
(5) There is a meaner, if not also a more mis-
chievous, wrong done by the teacher who seeks to
conceal his lazy ignorance by some pompous pre-
tence of learning, hiding his lack of knowledge by
an array of high-sounding words beyond the com-
prehension of his pupils, uttering solemn plati-
tudes in a wise tone, or claiming extensive study
and profound information which he has not the
time to lay properly before them. Who has not
seen or heard all these shams practised upon
children ?
Thus a majority, perhaps, of teachers go to their
work either wholly without the requisite knowl-
edge, or only partly prepared for their task. They
go like messengers without a message, and all
wanting in that power and enthusiasm which fresh
truth alone can give ; and so the grand fruits we
look for from this great army of workers seem
long in coming, if not beyond hope. Let this first
great fundamental law of teaching be thoroughly
obeyed, or even as fully as ,the circumstances of
our teachers will permit, and there will come to
our schools an attractive charm which would at
once increase their numbers and double their use-
fulness. The school-rooms, now so often dark and
dull, would glow as with a living light, and teach-
ers and pupils, instead of dragging to their weary
task, would hasten to their meeting as to a joyous
feast.
CHAPTER III.
THE LAW OF THE LEARNER.
i. Passing from the side of the teacher to the
side of the pupil, our next inquiry is for the Law
of the Learner. Here the search must be for that
one characteristic, if there be such, which divides
and differentiates the learner from other persons
for that essential element which makes the
learner a learner. Let us place before us the suc-
cessful scholar, and note carefully whatever is
peculiar and essential in his action and attributes.
His intent look, his absorbed manner, his face full
of eager action or of profound study, all these
are but so many signs of deep interest and active
attention. This interest and attention, the insep-
arable parts of one mental state, make up the
essential attribute of every true learner. The
very power to learn lies in this interested atten-
tion. It is the one essential condition on which
all learning is possible. It constitutes, therefore,
the natural law of the learner, and may be stated
in preceptive form as follows :
The learner must attend with interest to the fact
or truth to be learned.
The Law of the Learner. 29
2. The law thus stated will seem as trite as a
common truism, but it is as really profound as it is
seemingly simple. The plainest proof of its truth
lies in the readiness with which every one will
admit it. Its real depth can only be found by
careful study.
Attention Described.
3. Avoiding as much as possible all metaphysi-
cal discussion, we may describe attention as a
mental attitude the attitude in which the
thought-power is actively bent toward, or fast-
ened upon, some object of thought or percep-
tion. It is an attitude, not of ease and repose,
but of effort and exertion. It means not merely
position and direction, but action. It is the
will-power marshaling all the faculties of the
mind for some expected onset, or holding them
with steady front in the midst of conflict and
activity. It may be seen in the man who, stand-
ing with idle, vacant stare, gazing at nothing, is
suddenly aroused by some sight or sound. At
once a light comes into the eye, the look becomes
alert, and the mind is put into conscious action.
There is a felt strain of the thinking faculty, as
of an appetite hungering for its food an intent
fastening of the intellect upon its chosen objects.
This aroused activity of the mind this awakened
attitude of mental power, poised and eager for its
work we call ATTENTION.
30 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
Compelled and Attracted Attention.
4. We may somewhat loosely divide attention
into two classes : compelled and attracted. The
first is given by an effort of the will, in obedience
to some command of authority, or call of irksome
duty ; the second springs from desire, and is given
without conscious effort and with eager delight.
The first is cold, mechanical, and powerless ; it is
the child studying its lesson as a task, with slight
interest and no pleasure. The second is living
and full of power, the mind eager to grasp and
possess its object. It is that of the boy reading a
story full of wonder and delight. Compelled
attention in adults is dull and dogged ; in little
children it is partial even when possible. Gener-
ally it is not attention at all. The face may take
on the look of attention, but the mind wanders to
more winsome objects. It learns to hate lessons
as slaves hate labor. Attracted attention is men-
tal power alert with desire and eager for gratifica-
tion. It is mental hunger seeking its food, and
delighting itself as at a feast. Unconscious of
exertion, it gathers strength from its efforts, and
scarcely knows fatigue.
5. Compelled attention is short-lived and easily
exhausted. Its very painfulness wearies the
powers of body and mind. If urged too far, its ten-
sion breaks, and the child yawns and even sleeps
with exhaustion, or cries with pain and anger.
The Law of the Learner. 31
Attracted attention, on the other hand, is full of
power and endurance. Its felt interest calls dor-
mant energies into play, and the pleasure given by
its efforts seems to refresh rather than weary the
mind. The boy forced to study what he does not
like feels thoroughly tired in half an hour. Give
him now a story which he enjoys, and he will read
without a sign of weariness for two or three hours
longer, till the tired body rebels, and will not sit
still any longer.
6. At times in the outset of a lesson or of a
subject, there may seem a need of securing the
attention of the class or of some members of it
by a gentle compulsion, an appeal to the sense of
duty, or other like means ; but the effort in such
case should be made to transform this compelled
attention into that which is fuller of spontaneity
and power. We may be obliged to lift a sleepy child
to his feet by main strength, but unless we can
waken him soon to walk by himself, his progress
will be slow and small. The same holds true in
mental movements.
Degrees of Attention.
7. These two classes of attention melt into each
other by almost insensible degrees. The com-
pelled sometimes rises into true or attracted atten-
tion by some kindling of interest in the subject ;
and not unfrequently the latter sinks into the
former with the disappearance of novelty in the
32 The Seven Laws of TeacJiing.
lesson. Of these degrees or grades in attention,
the first and lowest is that in which the physical
senses, the eye and ear especially, are lent to the
teacher, and the mind almost passively receives
what the teacher is able to impress forcibly upon
it. This grade of attention is too common to need
description. It may be seen in nearly all school-
rooms, and in most classes at the beginning of the
lesson. The pupils sit at ease waiting to be
aroused.
8. From this lowest grade the intellect lifts itself
by successive steps to higher activity and power
under some impulse of duty, of sympathy, of emu-
lation, or of hope of reward, or other motives
addressed to it it by the skillful teacher. But the
highest grade of attention is that in which the sub-
ject interests, the feeling is enlisted, and the whole
nature attends. Eye, ear, intellect, and heart con-
center their powers in a combined effort, and the
soul sends to the task all its faculties roused to
their utmost activity. Such is the attitude of the
true learner, and such is the attention demanded
by this law of the learner in its perfect fulfillment.
Every experienced teacher knows how easy is the
teaching, and how rapid the learning, when the law
is thus fulfilled.
The Philosophy of the Law.
9. However much teachers may neglect it in
practice, they readily admit in theory that without
The Laiv of the Learner. 33
attention the pupil can learn nothing. One may
as well talk to the deaf or the dead as to teach a
child who is wholly inattentive. All this seems
too obvious to need discussion ; but a brief survey
of the psychological facts which underlie this law
will bring out into clearer and more impressive
light its vital force and its irrevocable authority.
10. Knowledge can not be passed, like some
material substance, from one person to another.
Thoughts are not things which may be held and
handled. They are the unseen and silent acts of
the invisible mind. Ideas, the products of thought,
can only be communicated by inducing in the
receiving mind action correspondent to that by
which these ideas were first conceived. In other
words, ideas can only be transmitted by being re-
thought. It is obvious, therefore, that something
more is required than a passive presentation of the
pupil's mind to the teacher's mind as face turns to
face. The pupil must think. His mind must
work, not in a vague way, without object or direc-
tion, but under the control of the will, and with a
fixed aim and purpose ; in other words, with atten-
tion. It is not enough to look and listen. The
learner's mind must work through the senses.
There must be mind in the eye, in the ear, in the
hand. If the mental power is only half aroused
and feeble in its action, the conceptions gained
will be faint and fragmentary, and the knowledge
acquired will be as inaccurate and useless as it will
34 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
be fleeting. Teacher and text-book may be full of
knowledge, but the learner will get from them only
so much as his power of attention, vigorously
exercised, enables him to shape in his own mind.
Knowledge is inseparable from the act of knowing.
If the power of knowing is small, the actual knowl-
edge acquired will also be small.
11. The notion that the mind can be made
merely recipient a bag to be filled with other
people's ideas, a piece of paper on which another
may write, a cake of wax under the seal is
neither safe nor philosophical. The very nature
of mind, as far as we can understand it, is that of
a self-acting power or force a force with a will
within it, and full of attractions and repulsions for
the objects around it. It is among these felt
attractions or repulsions that the self-moving mind
finds its motives. Without motive there is no
will ; without will no attention ; without attention
no perception or intelligence. The striking clock
may sound as loud as ever in the portal of the ear,
and the passing object may paint its image as clear
as light in the open eye, but the absorbed and
inattentive mind hears no voice and sees no vision.
What reader has not sometime read a whole page
with the eyes, and when he reached the bottom
found himself unable to recall a single word or
idea it contained ? The sense had done its work,
but the mind had been busy with other thoughts.
12. The vigor of mental action, like that of
The Law of the Learner. 35
muscular action, is proportioned to the feeling
which inspires it. The powers of the intellect do
not come forth in their full strength at the mere
command of a teacher, nor on the call of some
cold sense of duty. Nor can the mind exert its
full force upon themes which but lightly touch the
feelings. It is only when we " work with a will, "
that is, with a keen and stirring interest in our
work, that we bring our faculties of body or mind
out in their fullest energy. Great occasions make
men great. Unsuspected reserve powers come
forth as soon as the demand is large enough. In
the heat of a great battle, common men become
heroic, and weak men strong. So, with deepen-
ing interest, attention deepens, and the mind's
reserve powers come into work.
Sources of Interest.
13. The sources of interest, which are the
approaches to the attention, are as numerous as
the faculties and desires of man and the different
aspects of the subjects to be studied. Each organ
of sense is the gate-way to the pupil's mind,
though these gate-ways differ much in the ease of
approach and in the volume and variety of ideas
admitted. The hand explores a field limited each
moment by the reach of the arm, and takes in
only the tactual qualities of matter ; but the eye
admits the visible universe to its portals with the
swiftness of light, and takes note of all of its phe-
36 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
nomena of form, size, color, and motion. To com-
mand all these gate-ways of the senses is ordi-
narily to control the mind. Infants in the cradle
may be lured to attention by a bit of bright rib-
bon, and they will cease feeding or crying to gaze
upon some strange object swung before their eyes.
The orator's gesturing hand, his smiling or passion-
laden look, and his many-toned voice, all mere
addresses to the senses, often do more to wake the
minds and hold the attention of his auditors than
all the meanings of his speech. The mind can not
refuse to heed that which appeals with power to
the senses. Whatever is novel and curious, beau-
tiful, grand, or sublime in mass or motion ; what-
ever is brilliant, strange, or charming in color or
combination, the eye fastens and feeds upon
fhese, and the mind comes at its bidding to enjoy
and protract the feast.
14. The teacher has not the orator's opportunity
for free and grand gesticulation, nor for his com-
manding use of the voice ; but within narrower
limits and in finer, because more easy and familiar,
play, he has within his power all that face, voice, or
hand can do to arrest atention ; and has, besides,
all that nature and art can afford to address the
senses and awaken the intelligence. A sudden
pause, with lifted hand, as if listening, will silence
all noise in the class and put the pupils to listen-
ing also. The sudden showing of a picture, or of
some object illustrating the lesson, will attract the
The Law of the Learner. 37
most careless and awaken the most apathetic. It
is the shock of change, as well as the novelty of a
new sensation, which helps to produce the effect.
The sudden raising or dropping of the voice
arouses fresh attention, as also does a quick and
unusual movement of the hands, head, or body. A
person who has fallen asleep amid noise wakes
when the noise suddenly ceases. The shock of
silence awakens the senses put to sleep by monot-
onous sounds. So, on the contrary, the shock of
sudden noise awakens those who are sleeping amid
silence.
Effect of a New Idea.
15. The influence of shock extends also to the
mind. A sudden appeal made to any mental
faculty awakens us like the sudden shaking of a
sleeper by the shoulder. It drives away all dreami-
ness and apathy. When we see a careless and
listless pupil suddenly become alert and attentive,
we say to ourselves : " He has been struck with a
new idea." He rouses like one who has felt a
blow. The shock of a new thought has sometimes
had the power to change the entire course of a
life, as in the story of the Prodigal Son, and as in
less degree all lives change with the changes of
thinking.
Questions that Startle.
16. The awakening and stirring power of a
skillful question lies largely in this principle of
3& The Seven Laws of Teaching.
the shock. It startles the intelligence as with an
impinging blow. The ordinary questions read
from the book, where the pupils have already seen
and answered them, may have their uses, but they
lack all power to startle and stir the mind. They
simply call for the repetition of thoughts already
studied and known. To produce its highest effect,
the question must have the element of the unex-
pected in it. It must surprise the mind with
some fresh and novel v^ew of the subject, and
must call sharply for new thought. The common
style of Sunday-school questions asked with the
book open before the pupil, such as : " What did
Nicodemus say to Jesus ? What did Jesus
answer?" has little power to stir or teach. The
mind feels no shake of the shoulder no stimu-
lating call to wakeful effort. They are sham ques-
tions questions in form only, asking for what is
well known and in plain sight. The true question
implies the uncertain. It asks for the unseen and
unknown. Like bugle blasts, such questions sum-
mon all the faculties into the field of action.
The Mental Appetites.
17. Passing within to the field of the mind's
own powers, other sources of interest and springs
of attention appear. There lurks the imagina-
tion ready to take wing with delight at any pic-
turesque, beautiful, or sublime aspect which the
lesson may present. There sits the intelligence
The Law of the Learner. 39
quick to stir, with its intense curiosity to see and
know the hidden and unknown ; and there stands
the reason, restless till it shall array its facts, con-
struct its theories, collect proofs, and demonstrate
its solutions of the problems and questions which
the lesson involves. These are the mental appe-
tites, and each has its objects of search, its joy in
action, and its pride of achievement.
1 8. Another source of genuine interest may be
found in the connection of the lesson with some-
thing in the past life and studies of the learner ;
and a still richer one in its relations to his future
duties and employments. We may add to these
the sympathetic interest inspired by the teacher's
manifested delight in the theme, and by the gener-
ous emulation of fellow-learners in the same field.
All these touch the pupil's personality. They ap-
peal to his selfhood. They stir the hopes or fears,
which are quick to color every truth with some
bright promise of good to be gained or shade it
with some menace of evil to be escaped. The
mind will brave and undergo the most fatiguing
efforts, and persistently study the most tiresome
lessons, to secure some high advantage or to avoid
some threatened trouble. Self-love, the strongest
and most persistent of human feelings, sways the
scepter of a monarch over all faculties and feelings.
When it bis, they wake and work with sharpest
energies. Such are the great sources of the mind's
interest in its objects, and when the appeal can be
40 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
made to several of them the effect is deep and in-
tense. The teacher who knows how to touch all
these keys whose vibrant chords thrill mind and
heart may command all the resources of his pupil's
soul. But he should note that any one element of
interest felt in its greatest fulness may be stronger
than several only partly awakened.
Interest varies with Age.
19. The sources of interest vary with the ages
of learners and with the advancing stages of growth
and intelligence. This fact is important. The
child of six feels little interest and gives no gen-
uine attention to many of the themes which en-
gross the mind of the youth of sixteen. In general,
the lower motives are felt first ; the nobler and finer
come only with years and culture. The animal
appetites awaken long before the spiritual. Chil-
dren and adults are often indeed interested in the
same scenes and objects, but it does not follow
that they are interested in the same ideas. The
child finds in the object some striking fact of sense
or some personal gratification ; the adult mind
attends to the profounder relations, the causes or
consequences of the fact. As attention follows in-
terest, it is folly to attempt to gain attention to a
lesson in which the pupil can not be led to feel any
genuine interest. The assertion that children
ought to be compelled to pay attention because it
is their duty denies the fundamental condition of
The Law of the Learner. 41
attention. If the duty is felt by the child, it is an
element of interest ; but if it is felt simply in the
teacher's mind it only repels. In the little child,
affection and sympathy take, in part, the place of
conscience, and through these he may be made to
feel the claims of obligations which he can not fully
understand. The mother's horror of wrong-doing
and her delight in well-doing are felt through sym-
pathy in the heart of her boy ; and so, too, the little
pupil may be led to feel an interest in studies
which the teacher loves and praises, before his
intelligence has come to fully appreciate their
importance.
20. The power of attention increases with the
mental development, and is proportioned nearly to
the years of the child. It is one of the most valu-
able products of education. Idiots and infants are
almost destitute of it ; even short lessons wearying
and exhausting the attention of young children.
" Little and often " is the rule for teaching very
young pupils. The power of steady and prolonged
attention belongs only to strong minds, and to
those trained by long education. Said a man of
noted intellectual distinction : " The difference be-
tween me and ordinary men lies in my ability to
maintain my attention to keep on plodding."
21. Attention is not a separate faculty of the
mind, but rather an active attitude of some or all
the faculties. Its power, therefore, must depend
upon the number and strength of the faculties in-
42 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
volved. Attention will be steadiest when the ap-
peal is made to the strongest faculty. One person
can give steady attention to objects of sense, an-
other to objects of the imagination, and a third to
processes of reason. A lawyer reads and remem-
bers law cases with great facility ; a physician is at
once interested in the reports of medical cases, and
a clergyman in a new treatise on theology. These
are fruits of education ; but there are also native
diversities of tastes and powers which appear even
in childhood. Kriisi, the pupil of Pestalozzi, and
himself one of the noblest and most sagacious of
teachers, tells of two children. The one, six years
old, " sees God every where as an omnipresent man
before him. God gives the birds their food ; God
has a thousand hands ; God sits upon all the trees
and flowers." The other child, he says, "has an
entirely different view of God. To him he is a
being afar off, but who from afar sees, hears, and
controls every thing." So differently do the minds
of children work. One student is successful in
mathematics, another in history, a third in lan-
guage. To teach in the line of the strongest facul-
ties is to teach with the highest success. Nature
itself favors such teaching.
Hindrances to Attention.
22. The two chief hindrances to attention are
apathy and distraction. The former may arise from
constitutional inertness, from lack of taste for the
The Law of the Learner. 43
subject under consideration, or from weariness or
other unfavorable bodily condition of the hour.
Distraction is the division of the attention between
several objects. It is the common fault of undis-
ciplined minds, and is the foe of all sound learning.
The quick senses of children are caught so easily
by a great variety of objects, and they find in each
so little to interest them, that their thoughts flit as
with the tireless wing of the butterfly. Memory
holds with loose grasp the lessons learned with
apathy or distraction, and the reason refuses such
poor materials for its work. If the apathy or dis-
traction come from fatigue or illness, the wise
teacher will not attempt to force the lesson. Bet-
ter to let it go for the time, and cheer and lift up
the pupil by a kindly sympathy, diverting and
arousing him by some unexpected talk or story, or
leaving him to rest in quiet.
Rules for Teachers.
Out of this Law of the Learner, thus expounded,
emerge some of the most important rules for
teaching :
1. Never begin a class exercise till the atten-
tion of the class is secured. Study for a moment
in silence, the face of each pupil to see if all are
mentally, as well as bodily, present.
2. Pause whenever the attention is interrupted
or lost, and wait till it is completely regained.
3. Never exhaust wholly the pupil's power of
44 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
attention. Stop when signs of weariness appear,
and either dismiss the class or change the subject
to kindle fresh attention.
4. Fit the length of the exercise to the ages
of the class : the younger the pupils the briefer
the lesson.
5. Arouse, and when needful rest, the atten-
tion by a pleasing variety, but avoid distraction.
Keep the real lesson in view.
6. Kindle and maintain the highest possible
interest in the subject itself. Interest and atten-
tion react upon each other.
7. Present those aspects of the lesson, and use
such illustrations, as fit the ages, characters, and
attainments of the class.
8. Watch to learn the tastes and strongest fac-
ulties of each pupil, and as far as possible ad-
dress the questions to those tastes and faculties.
To do this is to hold the very heart-strings of the
pupil.
9. Find out the favorite stories, songs, and
subjects of each scholar. In these will be found
the keys to their mental powers and habits and
the ready means to arouse their interest and
attention.
10. Watch keenly against all sources of dis-
traction, such as unusual noises and sights, inside
the class and out ; all contacts and motions dis-
comforting or diverting.
11. Prepare beforehand some questions which
The Law of the Learner. 45
will awaken thought, but not beyond the powers
and knowledge of the pupils.
12. Address the instruction to as many of the
senses and faculties as possible, but beware of
drawing the attention from the subject to some
mere illustration.
13. Let the teacher maintain in himself and
exhibit the closest attention and the most genu-
ine interest in the lesson. True enthusiasm is
contagious.
14. Study the best use of the eye and hand.
These are the natural instruments of mental com-
mand. No pupil can help feeling the earnest gaze
fixed upon his face ; and none will fail to watch
and interpret the lifted hand, the working fingers,
the clenched fist, or any of the eloquent move-
ments of these five-fingered monitors.
Violations and Mistakes.
The violations of the Law of the Learner are
many, and they constitute the most fatal class of
errors committed by ordinary teachers.
(1) Lessons are commenced before the atten-
tion of the class is gained, and continued after it
has ceased to be given. As well begin before the
pupils have entered the room, or continue after
they have left. You can not pour water into a jug
while the stopper is in place, nor get sight from
the eye when the lids are closed.
(2) Pupils are urged to listen and learn after
46 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
their limited power of attention is exhausted and
when weariness has sealed their minds against
any further impression. I remember seeing a
teacher of good reputation try to teach a large
class the use of the possessive case. She began
with all eyes fixed upon her ; but, as she went on,
one after another lost interest and ceased to at-
tend, till, at the close of her explanation, only one
pupil was carefully following, and to this one she
addressed her closing question.
(3) Little or no effort is made to discover the
tastes of the pupil or to create a real interest in
the subject studied. The teacher, feeling no fresh
interest in his work, seeks to compel the attention
he is unable to attract, and awakens disgust by
his dulness and dryness where he ought to inspire
delight by his intelligence and active sympathy.
(4) Not a few teachers nearly kill the power of
attention in their pupils by neglecting to call it
out and give it vigorous exercise. They drone on
through dull hours and dreary routine, reading
commonplace questions from the books, without a
single fresh inquiry or startling and interesting
statement ; and without any keen and stirring de-
mand for all the powers of the pupils to rush to
action. The children in such schools seek some
attitude of lazy ease as soon as they enter the
room.
What wonder that through these and other vio-
lations of this law of teaching our schools are often
The Law of the Learner. 47
made unattractive, and their success is so limited
and poor ! If obedience to these rules is so
important in the common schools, where the
attendance of the children is compelled by parents,
and where the professional instructor teaches with
full authority of law, how much more is it neces-
sary in the Sunday-school, where attendance and
teaching are voluntary, and where attraction must
do the work of authority ! Fortunately the Sun-
day-school holds, in the interest of its associations,
in the surpassing sacredness and divine grandeur
of its themes, in the variety and splendor of its
truths and facts, and, above all, in the tender and
immortal relationship which these truths establish
between the Christian teacher and his pupils,
advantages which may amply compensate for the
lack of the authority and of the professional expe-
rience of the common school. But let the Sun-
day-school teacher who would win the richest and
best results of teaching give to this Law of the
Learner his profoundest thought and his most
patient following. Let him master the art of
gaining and keeping attention, and of exciting
genuine and stirring interest, and he will wonder
and rejoice at the fruitfulness of his work."
CHAPTER IV.
THE LAW OF THE LANGUAGE.
1. We have now, confronting each other, the
Teacher with his law of knowledge, and the
Learner with his condition of interested atten-
tion. We are next to study the medium of com-
munication between them and learn the Law of
the Language.
2. Two minds, housed in material bodies which
are at once limiting prisons and living machinery,
are to be brought into intellectual intercourse
the fine commerce of thought and feeling. What-
ever souls may do in other worlds, in this they
nave no known spirit connections. Here the or-
gans of sense are parts of material bodies, and can
be touched and impressed only by matter and ma-
terial phenomena. The two minds must find in
these physical phenomena the means of intercourse.
Out of these they must construct the symbols and
signs by which they can signal to each other the
mental facts which they wish to communicate. A
system of such symbols or signs is language. It
may consist of the picture-writing of the savage
races, the alphabets of civilized peoples, the fin-
ger alphabet or signs of the deaf-mutes, the oral
The Law of the Language. 49
speech of the hearing, or of the objects of sense,
pictures, and gestures ; but, whatever its form, or
to whatever sense it is addressed, it is language
a medium of communication between minds, a
necessary instrument of teaching, and having,
like all other factors in the teaching art, its own
natural law.
3. This law, like those already discussed, is as
simple as an every-day fact. It may be stated as
follows :
The language used in teaching must be common
to teacher and /earner.
In other words, it must be a true language to
each, to him that hears as well as to him that
speaks, with the same meaning to both, clear in
sense and clearly understood.
The Philosophy of the Law.
4. This Law of Language reaches down into
the deepest facts of mind, and runs out to the
widest connections of thought with life and with
the world we live in. The very power of thought
rests largely upon this fabric of speech.
5. Language in its simplest definition is a sys-
tem of artificial signs. Its separate words have
no likeness to the things they signify, and no
meanings except those we give them. A word is
the sign of an idea to him alone who has the idea,
and who has learned the word as its sign or
50 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
symbol. Without the idea in the mind, the
word comes to the ear only as an unmeaning
sound, a sign of nothing at all. No one has
more language than he has learned, and the
acquisition of a large vocabulary is the work of a
lifetime. A teacher may know ten thousand
words ; the child will scarcely know as many hun-
dreds, but these few hundreds of words represent
the child's ideas, and within this narrow circuit of
signs and thoughts the teacher must come if
he would be understood. Outside of these the
teacher's language is as unmeaning to the child as
if it were mere drum-taps. His language may
sometimes be partially and vaguely understood by
reason of the known words scattered through it
but may as frequently mislead as lead aright.
6. Most words have more than one meaning.
In the common expressions " Mind and matter ; "
"What is the matter?" "What matters it?" "It
is a serious matter;" "The subject matter," the
same word is made not only to carry double, but
quadruple. This variety of meanings given to our
words may enrich them for the orator and poet,
but it is a serious defect in language for the young
learner. Having mastered a word as the sign of
a familiar idea, he is suddenly confronted by it
with a new and unknown meaning. He has
learned, perhaps, to fasten a horse to a post, when
he hears the strange text, " My days are swifter
than a post," or reads the warning, " Post no bills
The Law of the Language. 5 1
here," and hears of a " military post." The
teacher knowing all the meanings of his words,
and guided by the context in selecting the one re-
quired by the thought, reads on or talks on, think-
ing that his language is rich in ideas and bright
with intelligence ; but his pupils, knowing only a
single meaning perhaps for each word, are stopped
by great gaps in the sense, bridged only by un-
meaning sounds which puzzle and confuse them.
It would often amuse us if we could know what
ideas our words call up in little children. The boy
who wanted to see "the wicked flea whom no man
pursueth," and the other who said : " Don't view
me with a cricket's eye," have many classmates in
the schools.
The Vehicle of Thought.
/. Language has been called the vehicle of
thought ; but it does not carry thoughts as carts/
carry goods, to fill an empty store-house. It ratlW
conveys them as the wires convey telegrams, as
signals to the receiving operator, who must re-
translate the message from the ticks he hears. Not
what the speaker expresses from his own mind, but
what the hearer understands and reproduces in his
mind, measures the exact communicating power of
the language used. Words that are poor and weak
to the young and ignorant are eloquent with a
hundred rich and impressive meanings to the edu-
cated and intelligent. Thus the simple word art
5 2 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
to the common mind means craft, a mechanic's
trade or a hypocrite's pretence; to a Reynolds or a
Ruskin it is also the expression of all that is grand
and beautiful in human achievement and of all
that is benign and elevating in civilization. It
speaks of paintings, sculptures, and cathedrals, and
of all that is beautiful in nature, in landscape, sky,
and sea all that is noble or picturesque in history
and life all that is hidden in the moral and
aesthetic nature of man. Men's words are ships
freighted with the riches of every shore of knowl-
edge which their owner has visited ; a child's words
are but toy boats on which are loosely loaded the
simple notions he has picked up in his play-
grounds.
8. So, too, words come often to be loved or
hated for the ideas they suggest. Thus the word
religion, to the Christian thinker, is sacred and
sublime with the divinest meanings. It paints on
the dark background of human history, filled with
sin and sorrow, all that is glorious in the character
and government of God, all that is highest in faith
and feeling, and all that is hopeful and bright in
tne immortality of man. To the mere worldling it
is the name of a mass of disagreeable ceremonies
or of more distasteful duties. To the atheist it is
the expression of what he calls degrading supersti-
tions and hateful creeds. In a less marked de-
gree, such variations of significance belong to hun-
dreds of the common words of our language. It is
The Law of the Language. 53
evident that he will teach most and best whose
well-chosen words raise the most and clearest
images, and excite the highest action, in the minds '
of his pupils.
9. The reason goes further. In all true teach-
ing thought passes in both directions -from pupil
to teacher as well as from teacher to pupil. It is
as needful that the man shall clearly understand
the child as it is that the child shall understand
the man. A child often loads a common word with j
some strange, false, or half meaning, and years may /
pass before the mistake is detected and corrected, I
Their very poverty of speech often compels chil-
dren to use words out of the true sense. How
shall the teacher know what to teach till he knows
what the pupil needs to learn ? And how shall he
know the pupil's needs till he learns it from that
pupil's words ?
The Instrument of Thought.
10. But language is the instrument ', as well as
the vehicle, of thought. Words are tools under
whose plastic touch the mind reduces the crude
masses of its impressions into clear and valid prop-
ositions. Ideas become incarnate Injwqrds. They
rise into visible forms in language, and stand ready
to be studied and known, to be marshaled into
the combinations and mechanism of intelligible
thought. Till our conceptions are thus shaped into
expression, they flit as vague phantoms, intangible
\
54 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
and indistinct. Their real character and value,
and their manifold and useful relations, are un-
known, if not also unsuspected. More than half
the work of teaching is that of helping the child to
gain a full and clear expression of what it already
knows imperfectly. It is to aid him to lift up into
full sight, and to round out into plain and adequate
sentences, the dim and fragmentary ideas and per-
ceptions of childhood. No teaching is complete
that does not issue in plain and intelligent expres-
sion of the truth taught ; but it is the most miser-
able of mockeries when, in place of leading the
child to perfect and put into its own simple speech
its own simple conceptions of truth, we impose
upon it the ready-made definitions of some learned
master or teacher, dressed, for the most part,
in words it never heard before. Better David's
simple sling than Saul's kingly armor for the
young warrior seeking the mastery over some
science.
1 1. We may go further, and say that in a large
degree talking is thinking. Ideas__nru precede
wocd^inall but parrot-speech. The most useful,
and sometimes the mosF difficult, processes in
thinking are those in which we fit words to ideas,
and fashion sentences to express thoughts. To
state a question or problem fully and clearly is
often the best part of answering it. Ideas rise be-
fore us at first like the confused mass of objects in
a new landscape. To put them into clear and cor-
The Law of the Language. 55
rect words and sentences is to make the landscape
familiar.
" Thoughts disentangle passing o'er the lip."
12. We master truth by expressing it, and re-
joice when we have clearly expressed our thought
as one who has gained a victory. But to make
talking thinking it must be original, not mere par-
rot-like repetition of other people's words. In this
battle with truth, reluctant to surrender itself, it
is the child's own hand that must grasp and use
the weapon. It is the^^upJLwhojmuslialk. What
teacher has not stood and watched the battle when
a little group of children have attacked some knotty
problem, and each in turn has tried to reduce the
truth to proper speech ? and how proud and hon-
ored the victor when he has forced the thought into
the fitting words which all recognized as the true ex-
pression ! Kriisi tells of one of his pupils who was
set to write a letter to his parents, and complained :
" It is hard for me to write a letter." " Why ! you
are now a year older, and ought to be better able
to do it." " Yes ; but a year ago I could say every-
thing I knew, but now I know more than I can
say." Kriisi adds : "This answer astonished me."
It will astonish all who have not thought deeply of
the difficulty of getting a mastery of language to
express our thoughts.
13. Language has yet another use. It is th<
store-house of our knowledge. All that we know
56 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
of any object, fact, or truth may be found laid up
"\ in the words we use concerning them. Words
are not only the signs of our ideas, but they are
clue lines by which we recover and recognize those
ideas at will, and in the manifold derivative forms
and combinations of these words we store up all
the modifications and relations of the radical fact or
notion of which the simple word is the symbol.
In the group or family of words, act, acted, acting,
actor, actress, action, actionable, active, actively, ac-
tivity, actual, actually, actualize, actuality, actuate,
enact, exact, transact, and the derivatives of these
last forms what a volume of facts and truths
of persons, movements, relations, qualities, and
philosophy lies recorded !
14. The child's language, then, is not only the
measure of its knowledge, but is the virtual em-
bodiment of the elements of that knowledge.
When we employ in our teaching the language of
our pupils, we summon all their acquired intelli-
gence to our aid. Each word flashes its own
familiar light upon the new truth we wish to ex-
hibit. The first new and unknown word intro-
duced breaks the electric chain of thought. A
shadow falls upon the field of view, and the pupils
cease to work or grope in darkness. New words
must be learned when new objects are to be named
or new ideas are to be symbolized ; but if care is
taken that the idea shall go before the word, and
that the word is mastered as a symbol before it is
I
The Law of the Language. 57
used in speech, it will illumine and guide where
otherwise it would but darken and delude.
The Language of Things.
15. Words are not the only medium through
which mind speaks to mind. The thinker has a
hundred ways to express his thoughts. The eye
talks with a various eloquence ; and the skilled
orator finds in lip and brow, in head and hand, in
the shrugging shoulder and the stamping foot,
organs for most intelligible speech. The gestures
of John B. Gough often tell more than the clearest
sentences of other speakers. A German described
him as "the man what talks mit his coat-tails,"
referring to some illustration in which the facile
orator had made a flirt of his coat-tails tell the
idea he wished to express. Deaf-mutes can talk
together by the hour by signs, without spelling out
a single word. Among savage peoples whose lan-
guage is too meager to meet the native needs of
their minds, symbolic actions supply the lack of
words. There is also speech in pictures. From
the rudest chalk sketch on the blackboard to the
highest work of the painter's art, no teaching is
more swift and impressive than that of pictorial
representation. The eye gathers here at a glance
more than the ear could learn from an hour of
verbal description.
1 6. Finally, nature aids human speech. "She
speaks a various language." Her innumerable
\
58 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
forms stand always ready as illustrations, and her
endless analogies throw light upon hundreds of
our deepest and darkest problems. No teaching
was ever more clear or instructive than that of
the parables of Jesus drawn from nature around
him.
17. In ordinary teaching, artificial language
must doubtless be the chief means of communica-
tion between master and learner ; but no wise
teacher will forget or forego the aid of all these
various means of entrance into the chambers of
his pupil's understanding, to take account of the
knowledge there, and to guide to the mastery of
more. Language is at best an imperfect medium
of thought. None know this better than the
experienced teacher who has tried to use it for the
conveyance of the higher truths of science or
religion, and who has found himself forced to seize
upon every available means of illustration to get
himself understood.
1 8. This discussion of language is not to be
interpreted as an encouragement to the teacher to
become a lecturer before his class. The lecture is
useful in its place, but its place is small in a
school for children. It will be shown elsewhere
that a too talkative teacher is rarely a good
teacher. A fine and accurate knowledge of lan-
guage is still of great use, for he who talks but
little should talk well, and he who must teach*
language should know that which he is to teach.
The Law of the Language. 59
Rules for Teachers.
Out of our Law of Language, thus defined and
explained, flow some of the most useful rules for
teaching.
1. Study constantly and carefully the pupil's
language to learn what words he uses and the
meanings he gives them.
2. Secure from him as full a statement as pos-
sible of his knowledge of the subject, to learn both
his ideas and his mode of expressing them, and to
help him to correct his language.
3. Express your thoughts as far as possible in
the pupil's words, carefully correcting any defect
in the meaning he gives them.
4. Use the simplest and fewest words that will
express the idea. Unnecessary words add to the
child's work and increase the danger of misunder-
standing.
5. Use short sentences, and of the simplest con-
struction. Long sentences tire the attention, while
short ones both stimulate and rest the mind. At
each step the foot rests firmly on the ground.
6. If the pupil evidently fails to understand the
thought, repeat it in other language and if possible
with greater simplicity.
7. Help out the meaning of the words by all
available illustrations ; preferring pictures and
natural objects for young children.
, 8. When it is necessary to teach a new word,
60 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
give the idea before the word. This is the order
of nature.
9. Seek to increase the pupil's stock of words,
both in number and in the clearness and extent
of meaning. All true enlargement of a child's
language is increase of his knowledge and of
his capacity for knowing.
10. As the acquisition of language is one of
the most important objects of education, be not
content to have the pupils listen in silence,
however attentive they may seem. That teacher
is succeeding best whose pupils talk most freely
upon the lessons.
11. Here, as everywhere in teaching the
young, make haste slowly. Let each word be
conquered into use before it is displaced by too
many others.
12. Test frequently the pupil's sense of the
words he uses, to make sure that he attaches no
false meaning and that he vividly conceives the
true meaning.
Violations and Mistakes.
This third law of teaching is violated more fre-
quently than even the best teachers suspect.
(i) The interested look and the smiling assent
of the pupil often cheat the teacher into the
belief that his language is understood, and all the
more easily because the pupil himself is deceived
and says he understands, when, in fact, he has
caught only a mere glimpse of the meaning.
The Law of the Language. 61
(2) Children are often entertained with the
manner of the teacher, and seem attentive to his
words when they are only watching his eyes, lips,
or actions. They sometimes profess to understand
simply to please their instructor and to gain his
praise.
(3) The misuse of language is perhaps one of
the most common failures in teaching. Not to
mention those pretended teachers who cover up
their own ignorance or indolence with a cloud of
verbiage which they know the children will not
understand, and omitting also those who are more
anxious to exhibit their own wisdom than to con-
vey knowledge to others, we find still some honest
teachers who labor hard to make the lesson clear,
and then feel that their duty is done. If the chil-
dren do not understand, it must be from hopeless
stupidity or from wilful inattention. They do not
suspect that they have used words which have no
meaning to the class or to which the children give
a meaning differing from the teacher's. I once
heard a legislator, who was also a preacher, in ad-
dressing the pupils of a reform school on the para-
ble of the Prodigal Son, ask the question : " Boys,
are you of the opinion that the customary aliments
of swine are adapted to the digestive apparatus of
the genus homo?" An interrogative grunt was
the only reply.
(4) It may be a single unusual or misunderstood
term that breaks the electric line ; but it does not
62 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
occur to the teacher to hunt up the break and re-
store the connection. Two adults rarely talk five
minutes without having occasion to ask the sense
of some word used or a restatement of some
thought advanced. But children do not ask expla-
nations. Fear of the teacher, or a sense of their
own ignorance, discourages them, and too often
they are charged with stupidity or inattention
when no amount of attention would have helped
them to understand the unknown tongue.
(5) Even those teachers who easily use simple
language to their classes frequently fail in the
higher use of this instrument of teaching. They
do not take care to secure from the child in return
a clear statement of the truth, and they have,
therefore, no test of their success. The children
do not talk back.
(6) Very few teachers appreciate as they ought
the wonderful character and complexity of lan-
guage, this most magnificent product of the
human intelligence, and this mightiest agency of
human advancement and influence. Modern soci-
ety could not exist without speech ; and the rich-
est commerce that is carried on among men and
nations is that which is freighted in words, "the
airy navies of the world." The English language
claims over one hundred thousand words. Few
men understand more than twenty thousand of
these, and the vocabulary of a child of ten rarely
contains more than fifteen hundred. It has been
The Law of the Language. 63
found that the greatest obstacle to the general
enlightenment of the common people lies in their
lack of knowledge of the language through which
they must be addressed. A commission from the
British Parliament was once set to investigate the
language of the coal-miners and other laborers of
England, to ascertain the possibility of diffusing
useful information among them by means of tracts
and books. It was found, as reported, that their
knowledge of language, in a large number of the
cases examined, was too meager to allow of such
means of instruction. How much greater must
be this deficiency among the young, whose expe-
rience is less and whose imperfection of ideas com-
pels vagueness in language ! If we would teach
children successfully, we must deepen and widen
this channel of communication between our minds
and theirs.
(7) Most of the topics studied in school lie out-
side the daily life and language of children ; and
every science has a language of its own which
must be mastered by him who will learn its truths.
And if in common science this need of language
is so great, how much more in those high, spiritual
themes with which the Sunday-school teacher has
to deal ! Religion involves the grandest facts and
the sublimest truths known to the mind of man ;
but how are they dwarfed and distorted by the
^half-understood terms in which they are frequently
told ! The Word of God is the sword of the
64 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
Spirit ; but how shall it make its way to heart and
conscience when wrapped in a mass of half-con-
cealing words ? To the teacher of children in the
schools of Bible learning, more than to any others,
should come the warning to make his words clear
as plate-glass, luminous as light itself, sharp as
polished blades, painting truths as " apples of gold
in pictures of silver," and stirring the depths of
the mind as the bugle stirs an army.
CHAPTER V.
THE LAW OF THE LESSON.
1. Our fourth law takes us at once to the
center of the teaching work. The first three laws
defined the teacher, the learner, and language, the
medium of communication between them. We
come now to the Lesson the truth or fact to be
learned, the process to be mastered, or the problem
to be solved the knowledge which the teacher
seeks to give and the learner studies to gain. To
make the unknown known ; to give knowledge to
the pupil as a personal possession ; to place it as
an active force in his mind ; to plant it as an
inspiring principle in his heart ; to kindle it as
a guiding light in his understanding ; to make it
to him a growing germ of higher knowledge, an
instrument of research, a practical power in his
life and work, this is the very core of the
teacher's work, the condition and instrument, as
well as the crown and fruitage, of all the rest.
2. It is the Law of the Lesson, or of knowl-
edge, we are next to seek. Passing, as too remote,
all discussion of the steps by which an infant
mind obtains its first ideas, and of the mental pro-
cesses by which our sensations ripen into true per-
66 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
ceptions, and these into reflective knowledge, we
go at once to the obvious fact that our pupils
learn new truths by the aid of those that are old
and familiar. The new and unknown can be
explained only by the familiar and the known.
This, then, is the Law of the Lesson :
The truth to be taught must be learned through
truth already known.
3. This law is neither so simple nor so obvious
as those which have preceded it ; but it is no less
certain than they, while its scope is wider and its
relations are more important. It lies linked with
the great system of nature and with the constitu-
tion of the mind.
Truth, Ideal and Actual.
4. Truth in its entirety is but the ideal tran-
script of the universe. It is the mirrored reflec-
tion of all fact and being the thought and will
of the Creator as written and revealed by all that
exists, material and spiritual, with all their laws,
relations, changes, evolutions, and history. More,
the all-truth embraces the being of God him-
self.
Truth in actions, in art, in objects, in conduct,
and in character is only the correlative of truth
in ideas ; it is the conformity of the actual
to the true ideal the fact answering to the
divine law and purpose of things. Truth in
The Law of the Lesson. 67
action that is wisdom, that is the Right and the
Good.
The Known and Unknown.
5. Knowledge is truth discovered and under-
stood. Truth yet hidden in the depths and ocean
of the undiscovered is the Unknown. The Known
is science, learning the revealed. It is the gold
taken from the mines of truth by human hands
and wrought into forms of beauty or of use, or
coined into currency for the markets of the world.
The Unknown is the precious metal lying hidden
under sea and land, seen only by Omniscience.
The Known, to each individual, is that truth which
he has mastered and made his own ; all else is to
him the Unknown. Much which is to the teacher
knowledge is to the child the Unknown, and it is
to this Unknown that our law especially applies.
The path of learning to this must be constructed
through the pupil's knowledge.
Philosophy of the Law.
6. The Law of the Lesson has its reason in the
nature of mind and the nature of human knowl-
edge.
7. All teaching must begin at some point of
the subject or lesson. Where can it begin but at
that which is seen or known by the learner ? If
the subject is wholly new, or the fact to be taught
is entirely strange, then a known point must be
68 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
sought or made by showing some likeness of the
new and unknown to something known and famil-
iar. Even among grown people the skillful con-
verser, narrating a new fact, struggles to find some
comparison with familiar objects, and affirms some
likeness of the unknown to a known thing before
proceeding with his description or story. Till this
starting-point in the familiar is found, he knows it
is useless to go on. As well bid one to follow you
through a winding way in the pitch darkness with-
out first letting him know where you are or put-
ting him in the path. If intelligent men require
this known starting-point in some familiar fact or
truth, how shall the child be expected to proceed
without it ? How often and how justly do children
explain their seeming stupidity by the simple
statement : " I did not know what the teacher was
talking about " ! It is the teacher, and not the
pupil, who is stupid in such a case.
8. All teaching must advance in some direction.
Whitherward shall it march but to that which is to
the pupil new and unknown ? To teach again what
is already known and understood is to mock the
pupil's desire for knowledge, and to deaden his
power of attention by compelling him to walk the
weary round of a treadmill, in place of leading
him forward to the inspiration of new scenes and
the conquest of new truths. No more fatal blow
can be dealt to a child's native love of learning
than to confine its studies too long to familiar
The Law of the Lesson. 69
ground under the fallacious plea of thoroughness.
Old mines may be reworked if you can find ore at
deeper levels, and old lessons may be relearned if
new truth can be dug out or new uses made of old
truth. Properly understood, this does not contra-
dict the law of the review, to be discussed in
another chapter.
9. All learning must proceed by some steps.
By what steps can it advance except by those
which link one fact or truth to another, as simple
facts lead to more general facts, premises conduct
to conclusions, and phenomena come at last to the
explaining laws and reasons ? In all true learning,
each new fact mastered becomes a part of the
known, and serves as a new starting-point for a
fresh advance. It adds its own light to the knowl-
edge that preceded it, and throws increased illum-
ination forward for the next discovery. But each
step must be fully mastered before taking the
next, else at the second step the pupil will be mov-
ing from the unknown to the unknown, and thus
violate the law. It is here that the demand for
true thoroughness arises ; not the thorough mas-
tery which a philosopher might gain of the lesson
and all it contains, but such a clear understanding
as the child may have of so much of the lesson as
a child can comprehend. Thoroughness of this
sort is the essential condition of true teaching.
Imperfect knowledge at any point casts shadow
rather than light. The half-known reveals noth-
/O The Seven Laws of Teaching.
ing. It is simply disturbed ignorance, and soon
settles again into complete ignorance. The pupil
who knows thoroughly one lesson, already half
knows the next. The known explains the nearest
unknown, as the lighted torch drives back dark-
ness. Hence the well-taught class is eager for the
next lesson. They guess already the coming truth.
" It is easy to add to what is already discovered."
This was one of the sayings of Pestalozzi.
10. But the philosophy of this law goes deeper
still. Knowledge is not a mass of simple inde-
pendent facts revealed to the senses ; it is made up
of facts with their laws and relations. Facts stand
linked together in classes, groups, and systems ;
associated by likeness, by causation, by contact and
environment. Each fact is related to innumerable
other facts ; each truth is a part of some larger
truth which includes and explains it. The truths
and facts known are but the seen segments of the
all-fact and all-truth whose grander segments are
still hidden in the vast unknown. Knowledges
are mutually illustrative. Each one leads to, and
explains, another. The old reveals the new ; the
new confirms and corrects the old.
11. All this is as true of children's knowledge
as of riper and larger sciences. Every new fact
or truth must be brought into connection or com-
parison with facts and truths already known before
it will fully reveal itself and take its place in the
widening circle of knowledge. Thus the very
The Law of the Lesson. 71
nature of knowledge compels us to seek the
unknown through the aid of the known. To
know one thing, we must know many. To know
that an object is a flower, the child must know
other flowers ; to know it as a rose he must know
other roses ; to know its petals, calyxes, stamens,
and pistils, and their uses, he must know these
organs in other plants. And so of all other
objects of sense. And so also in a higher degree
of the objects of the spiritual sense, the facts of
mind, of conscience, and of affection. It is the
law of all knowledge whatever. It is probable
that this discussion itself will seem to some readers
dull, obscure, and of little interest or importance
simply from their lack of knowledge of the mental
phenomena and science necessary to understand
the statements and principles here involved.
1 2. The very act of knowing is an act of com-
paring and judging, and one of the terms under
comparison always belongs to the known. We
have no mental power by which we can gain
knowledge otherwise. Even the eye that open-
est of all the avenues of intelligence comes
under the same condition. Every object when first
seen is strange and nondescript. It begins to be
known when we find in it some resemblance to an
object before known, and then we pronounce it a
stick or a stone, or whatever its recognized like-
ness reveals it to be, and we know it better as we
detect by fuller comparison more resemblances. If
72 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
a friend tells us an experience or an adventure, we
interpret his story by a running comparison of it
with whatever has been most like it in our own
experience ; and if he states facts utterly without
likeness to all we have known, we stop him to ask
explanations or illustrations which may bring the
strange facts into connection with our knowledge
of things. Tell a child something utterly novel
and differing entirely from all his former expe-
rience and knowledge, and he will struggle in vain
to understand you. If he does not at once aban-
don the effort as hopeless, he eagerly asks : '' What
is it like? How does it look?" and thus seeks in-
stinctively to bring it under the light of facts
already known to him. The whole system of
figures of speech tropes, metaphors, similes,
comparisons, parables, and illustrative stories
has sprung out of this law. They are but so many
attempts to reach the unknown through the
known they seek to flash some light from
the familiar and well-known upon the strange
or half-known.
The Unknown can not explain the Unknown.
13. It is evident that the unknown can not be
explained by the unknown. The very notion of
explanation is the citation and use of facts or prin-
ciples already familiar, to make clear the nature of
new facts. The knowledge already possessed
must furnish the explanation of all new facts and
The Law of the Lesson. 73
phenomena, or they must remain unexplained.
The difficulty so often felt in answering the ques-
tions of little children lies not so much in the
hardness of the questions themselves, as in the
child's lack of the knowledge required in the expla*
nation. To answer fully a boy's questionings
about the stars, you must first teach him astrono^
my. The lad who has seen a city can easily
understand a description of London or Paris, but
one whose observation has been confined to hia
country home can not picture to himself the inter-
minable net-work of streets, walled in by blocks
of lofty buildings with all the shifting panorama
of life and traffic.
14. The very language with which new
knowledge must be expressed takes all its
meanings from old knowledge. The child with-
out knowledge would be also without words, for
words are but signs of things known of our
ideas or notions of things known to us. An
American traveler in Europe fancied he could
make people understand him by speaking with a
loud, clear, and slow pronunciation, forgetting for
the moment that his words had no meaning
whatever to his listeners. Similar is the blunder
of the teacher who hopes by the mere urgency
of his manner, and by his clear use of words
familiar to himself, to carry his ideas into the very
center of the pupil's understanding without any
reference to that pupil's previous knowledge of
74 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
the subject. He violates a law of nature as
inflexible as that which forbids vision without
light, hearing without sound, or feeling withou';
touch.
15. The mind uses by preference only its clear-
est and most familiar knowledge in the interpreta-
tion of new facts. Each man borrows his illus-
trations from his calling : the soldier from the
camps and marches, the sailor from the ships and
the sea, the merchant from the market, and the
artisan from his craft. And so in the objects of
study, each student is attracted to the qualities
which relate it to his business or experience. To
the chemist, common salt is chloride of sodium, a
binary compound ; to the cook it is a condiment
used to season food and preserve meats. Each
thinks of it in the aspect most familiar to him,
and in this aspect would use it to illustrate any
other truth. Finding a new plant, the botanist
would compare it with known plants, to discover
its class and species ; the farmer would ask after
its use, and the painter after its beauty. This bent
of preference is one of the elements of prejudice
which shuts the eyes to some truths and opens
them wide to others. It is also one of the elements
of strength in intellectual work.
1 6. A fact or truth only partly and imperfectly
known is used rarely and reluctantly as a term in
the judgments by which we seek to discover the
nature and value of new truth ; and if used, it car
The Law of the Lesson. 75
ries its own vagueness and imperfection into the
new knowledge. A cloud left upon the lesson of
yesterday casts its shadow over the lesson of to-day.
On the other hand, the thoroughly mastered lesson
throws its illuminating light over each succeeding
one. Hence the value of that practice of some
able teachers who make the elementary portions
of a new study familiar as household words a
perfectly conquered territory from which the pupil
may go on to new conquests as from an established
base, with the confidence and power of a victor.
17. But it must be carefully noted that such a
conquest of elements, like all thoroughness in
study, is relative. No human knowledge is per-
fect, and the knowledge of childhood is neces-
sarily less complete than that of manhood. What
would be thoroughness in a child would be but
shallowness in a man ; and there are wide differ-
ences between men. The thought-pictures of one
are but sketches in outline ; those of another are
paintings in colors, full of light and shades
minutely representing nature itself. Young teach-
ers, uged on by the constant exhortations to thor-
oughness given them by older educators, and not
reflecting that a child's knowledge is necessarily
less than that of grown men, attempt to hold their
little pupils to each lesson studied till they know it
with the same fulness as the teacher himself. As
well ask the child to walk with a man's stride and
speak with a man's voice. What is wanted is not
76 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
absolute completeness of knowledge as the book
may give it, but clear and correct thinking and
knowing up to the limits within which the child
can know such knowledge as the pupil's pre-
vious knowledge has made possible, and such as
will serve him to learn more. He who knows little
can learn little ; he who knows much can easily
learn much. " To him that hath shall be given,
and he shall have abundantly. From him that
hath not shall be taken away that which he
seemeth to have."
Rules for Teachers.
This law of knowledge, written thus in the very
nature of truth, as also in the nature of mind, and
having therefore a double testimony to its verity
and importance, affords to the thoughtful teacher
rules of the highest practical value. Marking the
sole possible pathway to knowledge, it offers a clue
of clearest guidance to him who will unyieldingly
follow it. The following rules seem self-evident :
1. Find what your pupil knows of the subject
you wish to teach not of some text-book, but of
the facts and elements of the subject. This is his
starting-point.
2. Make the most of the pupil's knowledge.
Let him feel its extent and value as a means of
learning more.
3. Lead him to clear up and freshen his knowL
edge by attempting a clear statement of it. This
will bring him to the border of the unknown.
The Law of the Lesson. 77
4. Begin with facts which lie next, and which
can be reached by a single step from those already
familiar geography with the visible landscape,
or some river or mountain the pupil has visited -
history, with his own memories morals, with his
own conscience.
5. Connect every lesson as much as possible
with former lessons, and with the pupil's knowl-
edge and experience.
6. Study the steps so that one shall lead natu-
rally and easily to the next, the known leading to
the unknown.
7. Proportion the steps to the age and power of
the pupil, and make sure that he understands fully
the new truth. Each additional fact, reason, proof,
and inference may be treated as a step. Do not
discourage the little one with too long lessons, nor
disgust older pupils with lessons too short and
easy.
8. Find illustrations in the most common and
familiar objects and facts suitable for the purpose.
They will carry their own familiarity into the
subject.
9. Lead the pupil to find fresh illustrations of
the lesson in something he has seen or heard.
10. Make every new truth familiar and fix it in
the memory for ready use to explain other truths.
1 1. Incite the pupil to use his knowledge in all
ways practicable, to find or explain other knowl-
edge. Teach him that knowledge gives power to
78 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
know more ; that the known is the key to the
unknown.
12. Make every advance clear and familiar,
else the next step may be from unknown to un-
known a violation of the law.
These rules apply to all kinds of learning : to
arithmetic, grammar, geography, history, and to
both scientific and religious knowledge ; but the
teacher, to apply them wisely, must understand
the nature of the knowledge he would teach. Sci-
ence, history, philosophy, language, and religion,
each has its own kind of facts, its own method of
proof, and its own law of acquisition and use.
Science is learned chiefly through the senses or
by observation ; history is human experience ;
philosophy is the work of reason ; language repre-
sents the forms of thought ; religion belongs to the
conscience, the heart, the faith in the eternal and
the divine. But whatever the kind of truth, be it
science or Scripture, the unknown must be reached
through the known. Some experience may be
required to apply these rules readily ; but the very
effort to use them will reveal to the observant
teacher some of the richest secrets of the teacher's
art.
Mistakes and Violations.
The wide scope and profound reach of this
great Law of the Lesson affords room for many
mistakes and violations. Among the more com-
mon are the following :
The Law of the Lesson. 79
1. Setting young pupils to study strange les-
sons or new subjects for which they have had no
preparation in previous life or studies.
2. The neglect to ascertain with care the
pupil's knowledge of the subject before begin-
ning the advance.
3. The failure to connect the new lesson with
the old in such a way that the pupil shall bring
forward what he knows to explain the new. Les-
sons are too often given hap-hazard and treated as
if each were independent of all others.
4. Treating past acquisitions like goods fin-
ished and stored away, not recognizing that the
knowledge gained is the very instrument of
fresh learning.
5. The common failure to make thoroughly
familiar the elementary facts and definitions.
6. The like failure to make each step thor-
oughly understood before taking the next.
7. The frequent assignment of lessons too
long for the power or time of the pupil, compelling
him to imperfect knowledge, which hinders and
spoils all after-progress, making the pupil feel as if
dragged at a cart-tail rather than as walking erect
on his own feet.
8. The neglect to set the child to the use
of his knowledge to become a discoverer of
new truth.
9. The failure tc show the connections of
knowledge, new and old, and especially- "vith the
unknown sought for.
8o The Seven Laws of Teaching.
As a consequence of these and other violations
of this law, how poor, fragmentary, and fleeting is
much of the knowledge so laboriously studied !
How little of true knowledge is possessed by the
people, and how little their ability to get new
knowledge ! Instead of temples of truth rising
from solid foundations, beautiful in proportions
and noble in use, the knowledge of most men lies
in little scattered heaps, like those which boys
scrape together by the dusty road-side. Such, too
often, is the knowledge of Bible truth, made up of
scattered texts and bits of exegesis. The sacred
volume is never seen by most men as a grand
whole, joined together by deep connections and
having a single divine and mighty purpose run-
ning through it all. Instead of a true revelation
of God, a magnificent mirror reflecting his eter-
nal grace and glory, they find in it only bits of
broken glass which show the divine will and wis-
dom in distorted parts, and often puzzle where
they should instruct and persuade.
CHAPTER VI.
THE LAW OF THE TEACHING PROCESS.
1. Our survey of the teaching art has thus far
taken in the four entities involved in an act of
teaching : the Teacher, the Learner, the Language,
and the Lesson. We are now to contemplate
these in motion, and to study the distinctive action
of the teacher and his pupil. The previous discus-
sions have already brought these partly into view ;
but as each of them has its own natural law, each
demands a more careful discussion than has yet
been given it. In the laws of the teacher and the
learner we found necessarily reflected the func-
tions of both ; but an actor and his act are easily
separated in thought, and each possesses aspects
and characteristics of its own.
Following the natural order, the teaching act or
function comes first before us, and we are now
to seek its law. The law of the teacher was a law
of essential qualification. The law of teaching is
a law of function.
2. Thus far we have considered teaching as the
communication of knowledge ; but this defines the
act by its results. Whether by telling, showing,
explaining, or setting lessons, the teacher seems
82 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
to communicate knowledge. But there is a deeper
and truer view of the teacher's work, a profounder
and more philosophical explanation of his function.
Behind and beyond all the telling, explaining, and
lesson-giving, there lies as the essential aim of it
all, and of all that the teacher does, the awakening
and setting in action the learner's mind, the arous-
ing of his self-activities, as they have been called
those faculties of cognition, imagination, and
reasoning whose action must always be voluntary
and self-impelled. As already shown, knowledge
can not be passed from mind to mind like apples
from one basket to another, but must in every-
case be re-cognized, re-thought by tht^receiving \
mind. All telling, ex|)lami^," pr other acjs of so- ti
called teaching are uselesJfexceJpt as they serve to
excite and direct the pupil's voluntary mental
powers. If these' are not put* in action," nothing'
follows ; the teacher's words fall upon deaf ear^.
3. This may therefore be taken as
The Law oT Teaching : ^
Excite and direct the self-activities of the learner, *
and tell him nothing that he can learn himself.
4. The latter clause is only a limiting caution
whose importance is so great as to require its
statement as part of the law* There are cases in
which this ca%tioia'*rnust^)e disregarded in orde^to
i&ave time, of to favor a weak or discoura^K
pupil, but its violation is always a loss which
The Law of the Teaching Process. 83
should be compensated by some greater gain.
Taken in its affirmative form, this caution would
read : " Leave the pupil to discover the truth for
himself make him a truth-finder." The validity
and value of this law have been too often and too
strongly stated to demand further prooft^ No great
writer on education has failed to notice and enun-
.-* t
ciate it under ^ome form or other; and if we were
seeking for the educational maxim the most widely
received among good teachers, and the most ex-
tensive in its -applications and results, we should
inevitably fix upon this. It is the truth recognized
in such rules^as the following, so often urged by
eminent teachers upon beginners : " Wake up the
mind;" "Set pupils to thinking;" "Arouse the
spirit of inquiry ; " " Get your pupils to work." All
these maxims are but various expressions of one
law.
In tracing the laws of attention, of language,
and of knowledge, the mental faculties acting
under those laws have necessarily come into view,
but they will now demand a fuller and more explicit
discussion ; for it is in the modes of mental action
that we must seek the
Philosophy of the Law.
5. We can learn without a teacher. Children
learn hundreds of facts before they are sent to
school, sometimes with the aid of parents or
others, but often by their own unaided activities.
84 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
In the greater part of our acquisitions we are all
self-taught, and it is generally conceded that the
knowledge is most permanent and best in use
which is dug out by unaided research. All knowl-
edge, at the outset, must be learned by its discov-
erer without an instructor, since no instructor
knows it. If, then, we can learn without teaching,
it follows that the true and only function of a
teacher is to stimulate and help the learner to do
what he might otherwise do by himself and with-
out a teacher. Essentially the acquisition of
knowledge must be made by the same faculties
used in the same methods, whether with or with-
out a teacher.
6. What, then, is the use of schools, and what
the necessity of a teacher ? The question is perti-
nent, the answer plain. Knowledge lies in nature
in scattered facts, mixed and confused ; connected,
it is true, in great systems, but connected by laws
and relations hidden from the tyro's vision, and
learned by mankind only through ages of observa-
tion. The school selects for its curriculum what
it regards as the most useful of nature's truths,
and offers these with all the gathered facilities for
learning them. It secures to the learner leisure
and quiet for study, and offers in its books and
apparatus the results of the labors of other learners,
which may serve as charts of the territories to be
explored, and as beaten paths through the fields of
knowledge. True teaching is not that which gives
The Law of the Teaching Process. 85
knowledge, but that which stimulates pupils to
gain it. It may be said that he teaches best who
teaches least ; or, better still, he teaches most whose
pupils learn most without his teaching.
7. The teacher is a sympathizing guide whose
familiarity with the subjects to be learned enables
him to direct the learner's efforts, to save him
from the waste of time and strength, or needless
or insuperable difficulties, and to keep him from
mistaking truth for error. But no aid of school
or teacher can change nature's modes in mind
work, or take from the learner the lordly prerog-
ative and need for knowing for himself. The eye
must do its own seeing, the ear its own hearing,
and the mind its own thinking, however much
may be done to furnish objects of sight, sounds
for the ear, and ideas for the intelligence. It is
the child's own inward digestion which produces
growth of body or mind. " If childhood is edu-
cated according to the measure of its powers," said
St. Augustine, " they will continually grow and in-
crease ; while if forced beyond their strength,
they decrease instead of increasing." The sooner
the teacher abandons the false notion that he can
make his pupils intelligent by hard work on their
passive receptivity, the sooner he may attain the
true teacher's art, as Socrates expressed it, to as-
sist the mind to shape and put forth its own con-j
ceptions. It was to his skill in this that the great
Athenian owed his power and greatness among his
86 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
contemporaries, and gave him the place he still
holds as next to Jesus of Nazareth, that foremost
among the great teachers of mankind. It is the
"forcing process" in teaching which separates
learning from knowing. A boy having expressed
surprise at the shape of the earth when he was
shown a globe, was asked : " Did you not learn
that in school ? " He replied : " Yes, I learned it,
but I never knew it."
8. The two great coordinate aims of educa-
tion are to acquire knowledge and to develop power.
Our law derives its significance from both of these
aims. The pupil must know for himself, or his
knowledge will be knowledge only in form. The
very effort required in the act of thus learning
and knowing gives both vividness to the knowl-
edge learned and increases the power to learn.
Mental toil gives to the mind both appetite and
digestive power, and he who is taught without
study, like him who is fed without exercise, will
lose both appetite and strength.
9. But the argument goes deeper. Confidence
in our own powers^ is an essential condition of
their successful exercise. This confidence can be
gained only by the self-prompted, voluntary, and
independent use of these powers. We gain con-
fidence to walk by walking, not by seeing others
walk. So the faith we need to feel in our own
intellect must come from the self-controlled
and successful use of that intellect.
The Law of the Teaching Process. 87
10. The self-activities or voluntary mental
powers do not set themselves at work without
some motive or excitant to put them in action.
They sleep as if behind closed doors till some
external object touches the senses or some inter-
nal craving or emotion stirs the thought. Of
these two classes of excitants, the external are
strongest in early life, the internal in riper years.
To the young child the objects of sense bright
colors, live animals, and things in motion are
most attractive and mind-exciting. At the other
end of life, the inner facts of thought and feeling
most stir and engage the powers. The child's
mental life has in it an excess of sensation; the
old man's an excess of reflection.
11. But whatever the excitant which starts the
mental powers, the processes of cognition are
nearly the same. There is tl^e comparison of the
new with the old, the alternating analysis and syn-
thesis of parts, wholes, classes, causes, and effects ;
the reciprocal action of memory and imagination,
the combinations of the judgment and the reason,
and the various excursions of thought controlled
by the tastes, powers, needs, and previous knowl-
edge of each thinker. If this inner and volun-
tary action does not go on, the teacher has applied
his external excitants in vain. He may wonder
that he can not make his pupil understand and
remember, and will perhaps impatiently believe
him stupid and incompetent or idle. The stupid-
88 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
ity is often on the other side, and it sins against
this plain law of teaching in assuming that the
teacher can make the pupil learn by dint of vigor-
ous telling, or teaching as he calls it, whereas true
teaching only brings to bear upon the pupil's mind
nature's various excitants. If some of these fail,
he must find others, and rest not till he reaches
the desired result and sees in full play upon the
lesson the self-activities of the child.
12. Said Comenius, over two hundred years
ago : " Most teachers sow plants instead of seeds
of plants ; instead of proceeding from the simplest
principles, they introduce the scholar at once into
a chaos of books and miscellaneous studies." The
figure of the seed is a good one, and is much
older than Comenius. The greatest of teachers
said : "The seed is the word." The true teacher
does but stir the grgund and sow the seed. It is
the work of the soil through its own forces to
develop the growth and ripen the grain.
13. The difference between the self-acting
pupil and the pupil who only acts when he is acted
on is too obvious to need description. The one
acts as a living and free agent ; the other resem-
bles a machine. The former is attracted by his
work, and, prompted by his own inborn interest,
he works on till he meets some overcoming diffi-
culty or reaches the end of his task. The latter
moves only as he is moved upon. He sees what is
shown him, hears what is told, advances when the
The Law of the Teaching Process. 89
teacher leads, and stops just where and when the
teaching stops. The one moves by self-activities,
the other by a borrowed impulse. The former is
a mountain stream fed by living springs, the latter
a ditch filled from a pump worked by another's
hand.
Knowledge necessary to Thought.
14. The voluntary action of every mind is
limited practically to the field of its acquired
knowledge. He who knows nothing can not
think : he has nothing to think about. In
comparing, imagining, judging, and reasoning,
and in applying knowledge to plan, criticize,
express, or execute one's thoughts, the mind must
necessarily work upon the material it possesses.
Hence the power of any object or truth as a
mental excitant depends in each case upon the
number of related objects or truths which the
mind already knows. A botanist will be aroused
to the keenest interest by the discovery of a new
plant, but will care little for a new stone or star.
The physician studies eagerly new diseases, the
lawyer new decisions, the farmer new crops or
cattle, the mechanic new structures and machines.
15. The infant knows little, and his interest in
any new object is short and slight ; the man knows
many things, and his interest is deeper, wider, and
more persistent. Thoughtfulness deepens and
grows intense with increase of knowledge. He
90 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
who studies mathematics long and deeply never
finds this study dry or tiresome, and the wisest
student of the Bible finds in its pages the highest
delight and gathers there the grandest revelations
of supernal truths. All these varying illustrations
familiarly show the principles which underlie our
law and prove its truth.
Two Excitants of Thought.
1 6. The two chief springs of interest through
which the mind can be aroused to a voluntary ex-
ertion of its powers are the love of knowledge as
a mental satisfaction, and the desire of knowledge
as a means of obtaining other satisfactions. In
the former, or the love of knowledge for its own
sake as it is sometimes called, are mingled the
satisfaction of the native curiosity of the mind
which craves to know the real nature and causes
of the phenomena around us, the solution of the
unquiet questionings which often trouble the
spirit, the relief from apprehensions which igno-
rance feels in the presence of nature's mysteries,
the sense of power and liberty which knowledge
often brings, the feeling of mental elevation and
superiority which each fresh increment of intel-
ligence gives, and the "rejoicing in the truth"
because of its own beauty and sublimity, or its
moral charm and sweetness, its appeals to our
taste for wit and humor, for the wonderful and
the beneficent. All these enter separately or
The Law of the Teaching Process. 91
together into the intellectual appetite to which
the various forms of knowledge appeal, and which
gives to reading and study their highest if not
strongest attraction. Each affords an avenue
through which the mind can be reached and
roused by the skillful teacher.
17. It is evident that this manifold mental ap-
petite must vary in character and intensity with
the tastes and attainments of pupils. Some love
nature and her sciences of observation and experi-
ment ; others love the mathematics and delight in
their problems ; others love languages and litera-
ture, and others still history and the spiritual sci-
ences which deal with the powers, doings, and
destinies of mankind. Each special appetite
grows by feeding, and becomes absorbing as its
acquisitions become great. The great masteries
and achievements in arts, learning, literature, and
science have come from these inborn tastes, and
in all these
" The child is father of the man."
In each little pupil sleep the germs of such
tastes, the coiled springs of such powers,
awaiting the art of the teacher to water the germs
and set in motion the springs. The natural ex-
citant of each appetite is the offered food of each.
1 8. The love of knowledge for its uses includes
the desire for education as a means of livelihood
or as a source of respectability ; the felt or antici-
92 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
pated need of some special knowledge, as artist,
artisan, lawyer, writer, or other brain-worker, as
well as the study made to win reward or to avoid
punishment and disgrace. This indirect desire
for learning varies with the character and aims of
the pupil, but does not increase with attainment
unless it ripens, as it may, into the true love of
knowledge above described. Its strength depends
on the nature and largeness of the need which
impels to study. The self-activities aroused for
such study go to a self-imposed task and are little
likely to continue their work after the task is
done. The rewards and punishments used in
school to promote lesson-getting have just this
force and no more. They inspire no generous ac-
tivity which works for the love of the work and
which pauses not when its appointed lesson is
learned. If the study they induce shall become
transfigured into a true love of knowledge, then
the violence they do to the pupil's mind may be
forgotten ; but in most cases they sow disgust in
place of generous desire and make all high edu-
cation harder, if not impossible. Witness the
spirit that pervades every school so taught
and managed.
The Moral Intellect.
19. Our whole discussion thus far has taken
for granted the intimate and indissoluble connec-
tion of the intellect and the sensibilities the in-
The Law of the Teaching Process. 93
separable union of thought and feeling. To think
without feeling would be thinking with a total in-
difference to the object of thought, which would
be absurd ; and to feel without thinking would be
to feel without knowing that we feel, which is
impossible. Now, as most of the objects of
thought are objects also of desire or dislike, and
therefore objects of choice, it follows that all im-
portant action of the intellect has a moral side or
quality ; and this, too, has been assumed through-
out this volume. This moral side of the intelli-
gence may be called the Moral Intellect, the
intellect working in the field of the moral life.
The love of knowledge for itself or its uses is
moral at bottom, as it implies moral affections
and purposes of good or evil. All motives of
study have a moral character or connection, at
their first or second step ; and hence no education
or teaching can be absolutely divorced from
morals. The affections and conscience always
come to school with the intellect.
20. But the Moral Intellect, or cognitive con-
science as we may call it, finds its fuller sphere in
the recognized domain of duty the higher realm
of the affections, the virtues, and religion. From
these the mind borrows its highest and strongest
incentives to study and its clearest light in under-
standing. Let the teacher constantly address the
moral nature and stimulate the moral sentiments,
if he wishes to achieve the highest success possi-
ble for him.
94 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
21. This moral teaching was the chief excel-
lency of Pestalozzi's work, and it is the leading
characteristic <)f every great teacher of mankind.
He who would get from the mind of his pupil its
highest and most heroic efforts must appeal to its
noblest sentiments, its love of God, of its coun-
try, and its fellows, its personal aspirations for
a noble, useful, and beneficent life, its love for
truth and goodness and its purest hopes of
heaven. If these sentiments are feeble or want-
ing, the teacher must build them up, or he will
fail in his work.
The Power of the Sunday-school.
22. The Sunday-school ought to be the best
and most successful of all schools, because it is
openly, freely, and fearlessly religious. The whole
moral and religious nature of the child is open to
its work. Its education ought therefore to domi-
nate, inspire, and consecrate all other education.
23. Through the Sunday-school, Christianity
is free to pour its faith into all other schools.
Standing as it does on the moral and social hill-top
of the week, it should be able to throw its light
along all the path of the children's daily work
and studies.
24. So soon as the Sunday-school becomes
strong enough and skillful enough in its teach-
ings, it will color and control all learning with its
pwn higher ideas and hopes. The true interests
The Law of the Teaching Process. 95
of mankind, as well as the progress and final suc-
cess of Christianity itself, demand that this shall
be done. Science will cease to be infidel or scep-
tic when its students shall be good Bible scholars.
Witness Newton, Hugh Miller, Agassiz, and Dana,
second to none as scientists, but never sceptic,
because trained in religious knowledge.
The Mind does its Own Work.
25. It follows from all this that only when the
mental powers work free and in their own way
can the product be sure or permanent. No one
can know what any mind contains, or what labor
it performs, save as that mind imperfectly reveals
it by words or acts, or as we conjecture it by
reflecting on our own conscious experience.
Into the sealed workshop of the soul no spectator
enters. What the occupant does there no one but
himself can tell. Working by his own light on
materials furnished by his own senses and gath-
ered by his own intelligence, it is his to mould,
shape, combine, and construct as he will. Just) as
the digestive organs must do their own work,
masticating and digesting whatever food they can
get, selecting, secreting, assimilating, and so build-
ing bone, muscle, brain, nerve, skin, and all the
various tissues and organs of the body; so, too,
in the last resort, the mental faculties must do
theirs, without external aid, building as they
can, opinions, beliefs, purposes, faiths, and all
96 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
the forms of intelligence and character. As
Milton expressed it :
" The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
26. If I thus emphasize the fact of each mind's
autocracy, it is not to belittle the teacher's work,
but to show more clearly the law which gives that
work all its force and dignity. It is the teacher's
mission to stand at the impassable gate-ways of
young souls, a wiser and stronger soul than they,
serving as a herald of science, a guide through
nature, to summon the faculties within to their
work, to place before them the facts to be ob-
served, and to guide them to the paths to be
trodden. It is his by sympathy, by example, and
by every means of influence by objects for the
senses, by facts for the intelligence, by pictures
for the imagination, by stories for the fancy and
the heart, to excite the mind, stir the curiosity,
stimulate the thoughts, and send them forth as
warriors, armed and eager for the conflict. Every
thoughtful and observant teacher has had occa-
sion to note the various and original ways in
which different pupils will reach the answer to
a question, or other mental result, when left to
themselves.
27. The cautionary clause of our law which
forbids giving too much help to pupils will be
needless to the teacher who clearly sees his proper
The Law of the Teaching Process. 97
work, and who is eager only to get his pupil's
mind into free and vigorous action. Like a skill-
ful engineer who knows the power of his engine,
he chooses to stand and watch the play of the
splendid machine and marvel* at the ease and vigor
of its movements. It is only the unskillful and
self-seeking teacher who prefers to hear his own
voice in endless talk, rather than watch the work-
ing of his pupil's thoughts.
28. There is no real disagreement between
this law and the first and third, which so strongly
insist on the teacher's knowledge of his subject
and on his use of familiar language. Only
through his own full knowledge of the subject
can he understand the difficulties met by the
pupil, or be able to determine when the pupil has
mastered the lesson, and to follow it with thorough
drills and reviews. As well insist that a general
need know nothing of a battle-field because he is
not to do the actual fighting, as that a teacher
may get on with slight knowledge because his
pupils must do the studying. Besides, there are
some exceptions to the rule to tell the pupil
nothing which he can discover for himself. There
come occasions when the teacher may, for a few
minutes, turn lecturer or preacher, and before a
class well prepared to receive it may, from the
stores of his own riper studies, give them broader,
richer, and clearer views of the field of their work
He may, for a little, lift the child to his own
98 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
strong shoulders to give it a clearer view of the
path it has traveled, or an inspiring and guiding
glimpse of the roadway yet to come ; only he
must take care not to substitute telling for true
teaching, and thus encourage lazy listening where
he needs to call for earnest work.
Questions as Excitants.
29. The chief excitants which nature uses to
stir the minds of men have already been noticed.
They might all be described as the silent but
ceaseless questions which the universe addresses
to the spirit of man. The strange and endless
questionings which an active child presses upon
its often wearied parents are but the echoes of
those which nature presses upon its young intel-
lect. The true stimulant of the human mind is
a question, and the object or event that does not
raise any question will stir no thought. QuesA
tioning is not, therefore, merely one of the modes )
of teaching, it is the whole of teaching; it is
the excitation of the self-activities to their work
of discovering truth, learning facts, knowing the
unknown. \ Nature always teaches thus. But it
is not necessary that every question shall be in
the interrogative form. The strongest and clear-
est affirmation may have all the effect of the
sharpest interrogation, if the mind be sufficiently
aroused to so receive it. An explanation may be
so given as to raise new questions while it
answers old ones.
The Law of the Teaching Process. 99
30. The explanation that settles every thing
and ends all questions, ends also all thinking ; on
that subject at least for the time and in that direc-
tion. After a truth is clearly understood, or a fact
is established, there still remain its consequences,
applications, and uses to be inquired into. And
each fact and truth thoroughly studied leads us
into the presence of other facts and truths, which
renew the questionings and demand fresh inves-
tigations. The thoroughly alert and scientific
mind is one that never ceases to ask questions
and seek answers. The scientific spirit is the
spirit of tireless inquiry and investigation. The
nineteenth century, which so far excels all its
predecessors in the extent of its sciences and arts,
excels them also in the number and reach of its
questionings. It is above all others the century
of great questions.
31. And as with the world, so with the child:
his intellectual education fairly begins so soon as
he commences earnestly to ask questions. It is
only when the questioning spirit has been fully
awakened, and the power and habit of raising
questions have been largely developed, that the
teaching process may give way to the lecture plan,
and the student may be turned into the listener.
The truth asks its own questions so soon as the
mind is sufficiently awake. The falling apple had
the question of universal gravitation in it for the
mind of Newton ; and the boiling tea-kettle pro-
loo The Seven Laws of Teaching.
pounded to James Watt the problem of a steam-
engine.
Rules for Teachers.
Like our other laws, this one also suggests
some practical rules for teaching.
1. Adapt lessons to the ages and tastes of the
children. Young pupils will be interested in
whatever appeals to the senses ; only the mature
minds will enter heartily into the truths of
reason and reflection.
2. Select lessons which relate to the present
circumstances and wants of pupils. The mind is
already awake for these. The story of Lazarus
will easily engage the attention of one who has
just lost a friend, or been to a funeral.
3. Consider carefully the subject and the
lesson to be taught, and find its points of interest
for your own pupils.
4. Excite the pupil's interest in the lesson
when it is given out, by some question or by
some statement which will awaken inquiry. Hint
that something worth knowing is to be found out
if the lesson is thoroughly studied, and be sure
to ask for the truth discovered.
5. Place yourself frequently in the position
of a pupil among pupils, and join in the search
for some fact or truth, or for the meaning of a
text.
6. Repress the impatience which can not wait
for the pupil to explain himself, and which takes
The Law of the Teaching Process. 101
the words out of his mouth. He will resent it,
and tell his comrades, if not you, that he could
have answered if you had given him time.
7. In all class exercises aim to excite con-
stantly fresh interest and activity. Start ques-
tions for the pupils to investigate out of the class.
The lesson that does not end in fresh questionings
ends wrong.
8. Observe each pupil to see that his mind is
neither so wandering nor weary as to forbid its
activities being bent to the lesson in hand.
9. Count it your chief duty to "wake up
mind," and rest not till each pupil shows his
mental activity by asking questions in turn.
10. Repress the desire to tell all you know
or think upon the lesson or subject; and if you
tell something to illustrate or explain, let it start
a fresh question.
11. Give the pupil time to think, after you are
sure his mind is actively at work, and encourage
him to ask questions when puzzled.
12. Do not answer too promptly the questions
asked, but restate them, to give them greater
force and breadth, and often answer with new
questions to secure deeper thought.
13. Teach pupils to ask What? Why? and
How? the nature, cause, and method of every
fact observed or told them ; also Where ? When ?
By whom? and What of it? the place, time,
actors, and consequences of events.
IO2 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
14. Recitations should not exhaust a subject,
but leave work on hand for the class to think out.
Violations and Mistakes.
Many a teacher neglecting these plain rules
kills all interest in his class, and wonders how
he did it.
(1) The chief and almost constant violation of
this law of teaching is the attempt to force lessons
into pupils' minds by simply telling. " I have told
you ten times, and yet you don't know! " exclaimed
a teacher of this sort. Poor teacher, can you not
remember that knowing comes by thinking, not
by telling ? Better the school tyrant who whips
his pupils into learning their own lessons than
a teacher who tells them all.
(2) It is another mistake to complain of
memory for not keeping what it never fairly held.
The only cure for a bad memory is to mix more
thinking in one's learning. The fact that is seen
or read without thought will be forgotten in an
hour; but think deeply about a fact for ten
minutes, and the chances are that it will be fresh
in memory ten years later.
(3) A third violation of the law comes from the
hurry which leads teachers to require prompt and
rapid recitations in the very words of the book ;
and, if a question is asked in the class, to refuse
the pupils time to think. If the pupil hesitates
and stops for lack of thought, or from fault of
The Law of the Teaching Process. 103
memory, which is also lack of thought, the evil
lies in yesterday's teaching which shows its fruit
to-day ; but if it comes from the slowness of the
pupil's thinking, or from the real difficulty of the
subject, then time should be given for thought ;
and, if the lesson -hour will not allow it, let the
answer go over to the morrow.
It is to this hurried and unthinking lesson-say-
ing that we owe the superficial and impractical
character of so much of our school learning. For
the noble advice of Paul, to "read, mark, learn,
and inwardly digest " the truth, we have substi-
tuted the rule, " Learn so as to recite promptly."
Thus the word remains " unmixed with faith in
those who have it," and it is as the seed sown by
the way-side, which the birds snatch away. If these
are bad faults in our day-schools, how much more
serious in the Bible-schools, where the truths
studied are wider and grander in themselves, and
where the lessons have their great use in theif
applications to the mind, heart, and conscience of
the learner. If it is true that there resides in
God's Word power to convert the soul, to purify
the life, to make wise the simple, and to judge the
world, how inexcusable the folly of the teaching
which leaves its truths unknown, and sheathes its
sharp and glittering blade in the scabbard of a
text familiar to the ear but shut to the understand-
ing and the heart !
How different is the result where this great
1O4 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
law of teaching is understood and obeyed ! The
stimulated activities make the scene radiant as
with flashing light. The school-room is trans-
formed under their power into a busy laboratory
of thought and emotion. The pupils become
thinkers discoverers. They master great
truths, and apply them to the questions of
life and duty. They invade new fields of knowl-
edge. The teacher does but lead the march.
Their reconnoissance becomes a conquest. Skill
and power grow with their exercise. Mind
awakens to its high birthright, and the scholar
of the school-time becomes the student of a
life-time.
CHAPTER VII.
THE LAW OF THE LEARNING
PROCESS.
1. We must now pass again from the side of
the teacher to the side of the learner. It has
been seen that the teacher's work consists essen-
tially in arousing and guiding the self-activities
of the pupil. The pupil's work, which now
demands study, is the use of those self-activities
in getting his lesson. The laws of teaching and
learning may seem at first to be only different
aspects of the same law, but they are quite dis-
tinct the one applying to the work of the
instructor, the other to that of the instructed.
The law of the teaching process involves the means
by which the self-activities are to be awakened ;
the law of the learning process determines the
manner in which these activities shall be em-
ployed.
2. If we watch again a child at his studies, and
mark carefully what he is to do, we shall easily
see that it is not merely an effort of the attention,
nor a vague and aimless exertion of his mental
powers, that is required of him. There is a clear
and distinct act or process which we wish him
to accomplish. It is to form in his own mind,
io6 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
by the use of his own powers, a complete and
truthful conception or notion of the facts and
truths in the lesson, in all their parts, relations,
proofs, and applications. This is the result to
which all efforts of teacher and learner must be
bent. The Law of the Learning Process may
therefore be stated thus :
The learner must reproduce in his own mind the
truth to be acquired.
3. The laws before discussed have addressed
themselves chiefly to the teacher : this comes
home also to the learner. It brings into sight
the principles which must guide the student in
his studies, and which it is the business of the
instructor to emphasize and enforce. While tell-
ing the teacher how to teach, it also tells the
learner how to learn. This will appear more
clearly in the discussion which follows.
The Philosophy of the Law.
4. As that is not true teaching which simply
pours out before the pupil the treasures of the
teacher's knowledge, so that is not true learning
which merely memorizes and repeats the teacher's
words and ideas. Vastly more than is commonly
understood or believed, the work of education,
of acquiring knowledge, is the work of the pupil
and not that of the teacher. This truth has
already been affirmed in other connections. It
The Law of the Learning Process. 107
is reaffirmed here as the fundamental notion in
the present discussion. Learning is the formation
by the learner in his own mind of the conceptions
contained in the lesson learned.
5. We must distinguish between the original
discovery of a truth and the learning it from
others. Discovery is made by processes of inves-
tigation which are commonly slow, tentative, and
laborious. Learning comes by processes of inter-
pretation, which are often easy and rapid. Still
there is much in common. The learner redis-
covers in part the truth he learns. No discovered
truth is wholly new. No true learning is wholly
a repetition of other men's thoughts. The dis-
coverer borrows largely of truths known to others ;
the student must add much to the lesson he
studies. His constant aim should be to rise from
being a learner at other men's feet, to become
an independent searcher of truth for himself.
Both discoverer and learner must alike be truth-
seekers. Both must aim to gain clear and distinct
conceptions of it. Both must needs employ in
their work the truths already familiar to them,
and both must put their learning to use, to find
its full power and value. It is indispensable that
the learner shall become an investigator.
6. Learning has several stages of progress
which need to be carefully noticed in order that
the full meaning of the law shall be seen and
understood. They are the following :
Io8 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
First. A pupil may be said to have learned his
lesson when he has committed it to memory, and
can recite it word for word. This is all that is
attempted by many pupils, or required by those
teachers who count their work well done if they
can secure such verbatim recitations. Education
would be cheap if such learning could be made to
stay; but it passes away like the images from a
mirror, unless fixed by almost endless repetitions.
Second. It is an evident advance over the mem-
orizing of words when the pupil adds a clear
understanding of the thought. So much better is
this learning than the other that thoughtful teach-
ers are tempted to say to their pupils : " I do not
care for the words of the lesson ; give me the
thought." But in many cases, especially in Bible
lessons, it is important to know and remember the
very words.
Third. It is a higher stage in study when the
thought is so mastered and measured, as it were,
that the pupil can translate it accurately into
other words with no loss of meaning. He who
can do this has advanced beyond the mere work of
learning, and has begun the work of discovering.
He is dealing not merely with another's thought
of the truth, but with the truth itself. The wise
teacher will recognize this, and will pardon the
crudeness in expression, while he encourages the
pupil to more accurate thinking as a means to
more correct language.
The Law of the Learning Process. 109
Fourth. The learner shows higher work still
when he begins to seek the evidences of the
statements which he studies. He who can give
a reason for the faith which is in him is a much
better learner, as well as stronger believer, than
the man who believes, he knows not why. The
true investigator seeks proofs, and a large part of
the work of a student of nature is to prove the
truths which he discovers. So also ought the
Bible student to " search the Scriptures" to see
for himself if these things are so. Even the
youngest learner takes a stronger hold of the
truth if he can see a reason for it. In hunting
for proofs, the student comes in sight of a hun-
dred other truths, just as one who climbs a moun-
tain finds the landscape always widening around
him. The little lesson he is learning is seen to be
a part of the great empire of the all-truth ; its
truth grows clearer in the reflected light of other
truths, and the heart, like that of the mountain
traveler, revels in the splendid outlook and in the
consciousness of growing power.
Fifth. But there is a still higher and more
fruitful stage in learning. It is found in the study
of the uses and applications of knowledge. No
lesson is learned to its full and rich ending till it
is traced to its connections with the great working
machinery of nature and of life. Nature is not
an idle show, nor is the Bible a mass of old wives'
fables. Every fact has its uses, and every truth
1 1 o The Seven Laws of Teaching.
its applications, and till these are found the les-
son lies idle and useless as a wheel out of gear
with its fellows "in the busy machinery. The prac-
tical relations of truth, and the forces which lie
hid behind all facts, are never really understood
till we apply our knowledge to some of the practi-
cal purposes of life and thought. The boy who
finds a use for his lesson becomes doubly inter-
ested and successful in his studies. What was
idle knowledge, only half understood, becomes
practical wisdom full of zest and power. Espe-
cially is this true of Bible knowledge, whose
superficial study is of slight effect, but whose pro-
founder learning changes the whole man. " The
letter killeth ; the spirit giveth life."
7. No learning is complete till these five stages
are passed. They are like five windows of increas
ing size, each of which pours its fuller light in
succession upon the lesson. The first shows
it in dim outline only, like an object seen at
twilight without distinctness of form or color.
The others give increasing clearness to the view,
till the gathered illumination of them all makes
the truth to stand forth in all its grandeur and
beauty, a landscape complete and rich, in colors,
forms, and life. Such is the reproduction of the
lesson which our law demands, and to this must
the efforts of teacher and pupil be steadily bent.
8. The earnest student will find in these five
stages of study the clearest directions for the
The Law of the Learning Process. i 1 1
work he has to do. Let him ask himself: (i)
VWhat does the lesson say, word for word? (2)
Exactly what does it mean ? (3) How express
this meaning in my own language ? (4) Is the
lesson true ; in what sense and why ? (5) What
is the good of it how apply and use the knowl-
edge it gives ? It is along these five steps that
the learner must mount, if at all, to a broad and
clear conception of the full significance and value
of the truth learned.
9. It is true that not many lessons are learned
with this comprehensive thoroughness, and it may
be that only the briefest and simplest lessons can
be so mastered at a single sitting ; but this does
not change the fact that no lesson can be counted
as fully learned till so mastered and understood.
Better one subject so learned than a whole curric-
ulum skimmed with lighter study. " Better to
know one thing than not to know a hundred."
"It is worth more," said the wise Seneca, "to be
possessed of but few of the lessons of wisdom, but to
apply these diligently, than to know many but not
to have them at hand." Such knowledge, and
such alone, is power. Truth so studied cleaves
to the memory, quickens the intellect, fires the
heart, shapes the character, and transforms the
life.
The Two Limitations.
10. Two limitations to this law of learning
need to be considered. First. That of the age
1 1 2 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
and powers of the learner. Each of the five
stages may be climbed by the youngest as well
as by the oldest pupil, but on a path answering
to the pupil's active powers, (i) The mental
activity of young children lies close to the senses.
Their thinking is a sort of mental seeing. It
pictures rather than thinks. Their knowledge
of a lesson will be confined chiefly to the facts
in it which appeal to the eye, or which can be
illustrated to the senses. Many subjects are, of
course, beyond their comprehension, but in the
subjects which can be taught to them at all, the
expression, the meaning, the proofs, and the uses
can be shown to their understanding. (2) From
ten to fourteen years of age, the imagination is
the most active power, and the lesson will be best
and most easily learned which can be pictured
to the fancy or turned into a plan for some active
effort or enterprise. (3) Later the reason begins
to assume sway, and the lesson will appeal most
to the mind if it asks reasons and gives conclu-
sions. Each great subject of human knowledge
will be found to have these three stages of truth
in it, and to offer, therefore, some lessons for all
ages of learners.
Second. The other limitation is that which
comes from the kinds of knowledge. Science,
history, art, and Scripture, each has its own
evidences and its own uses and applications. In
each case the law of learning or study varies to
The Law of the Learning Process. 113
meet conditions. Let the intelligent teacher take
a simple example of each sort, and he will easily
note the differences and find the true conditions
of successful study of each. The student whose
powers or methods of study best meet the condi-
tions of learning in any branch of knowledge,
easily excels in that branch. Examples are
common.
ii. Hermann Kriisi, one of the most sagacious
of teachers because one of the most sympathetic
students of childhood, said : " Every child that
I have ever observed, during all my life, has
passed through certain remarkable questioning
periods which seem to originate from his inner
being. After each had passed through the early
time of lisping and stammering, into that of
speaking, and had come to the questioning period,
he repeated at every new phenomenon the ques-
tion, 'What is that-?' If for answer he received
the name of a thing, it completely satisfied him ;
he wished to know no more. After a number
of months, a second state made its appearance,
in which the child followed its first question with
a second: 'What is there in it?' After some
months more, there came of itself the third ques-
tion : ' Who made it ? ' and lastly, the fourth :
'What do they do with it ?' These questions had
much interest for me, and I spent much reflection
upon them. In the end it became clear to me
that the child had struck out the right method for
1 14 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
developing its thinking faculties. In the first
question, ' What is that ? ' he was trying to get
a consciousness of the thing lying before him.
By the second, ' What is there in it ? ' he was
trying to perceive and understand its interior,
and its general and special, marks. The third,
' Who made it ? ' pointed toward the origin and
creation of the thing ; and the fourth, ' What do
they do with it ? ' evidently points at the use and
design of the thing. Thus this series of questions
seemed to me to include in itself the complete
system of mental training. That this originated
with the child is not only no objection to it, but
is a strong indication that the laws of thought are
within the nature of the child, in their simplest
and most ennobling form." Kriisi's questions
belong chiefly to the first period of growth and
education. In the second and third periods other
questions follow.
Practical Rules for Teachers and Learners.
The rules which follow from this law are useful
for both teacher and pupil.
1. Help the pupil to form a clear idea of the
work to be done, in its several parts and stages.
2. Warn him that the words of his lesson
have been carefully chosen ; that they may have
peculiar meanings, which it may be important to
find out.
3. Show him that there are always more
things implied than are said in any lesson.
The Law of the Learning Process. 1 1 5
4. Ask him to express, in simple words of his
own, the meaning as he understands it, and to
persist till he has the whole thought.
5. Let the reason why be perpetually asked
till the pupil is brought to feel that he is expected
to give a reason for his opinions ; but let him also
understand clearly that reasons must vary with
the nature of the truth taught.
6. Aim to make the pupil an independent inves-
tigator a student of nature, a seeker for truth.
Cultivate in him a fixed and constant habit of
research.
7. Help him to test his conceptions to see that
they exactly reproduce the truth taught, in its
widest aspects and relations, as far as his powers
permit.
8. Inculcate constantly a profound regard for
TRUTH as something noble, enduring and divine
something that God loves and all true and good
men revere.
9. Let it be seen and felt that truth in facts,
truth in feeling, truth in words, and truth in action
all come under the same eternal and divine law,
and that the honest truth-seeker will seek them all
alike earnestly.
10. Teach the pupil to hate all falsehoods,
sophistries, and shams as things that are odious,
hurtful, dishonoring, shameful, cowardly, and
intensely mean and wicked. Make him to dread
a false answer to a problem as a lie from the lips.
Ii6 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
Violations and Mistakes.
The violations of this law of the learning
process are perhaps among the most common and
most fatal of any in our school work. Just
because this work of learning is the very center
of the school work, that for which all else is
undertaken, therefore a failure here is a failure
in all. Knowledge may be placed before the
minds of the young in endless profusion and in
the most attractive guise ; teachers may pour out
instruction without stint, and lessons may be
learned and recited under all the pressure of the
most effective discipline and of the strongest
appeals ; but if this law is disobeyed, the teaching
is fruitless and the attainments will be short-lived
and delusive. Some of the more common mis-
takes are these :
(1) The pupil is left in the twilight of an imper-
fect and fragmentary knowledge by a failure to
think it into clearness. The haste to get forward
often precludes time for thinking.
(2) The language of the book is so insisted on
that the pupil is forbidden to try his own power of
expression. Thus the student is taught to feel
that the word is every thing, the meaning nothing.
College students have been known to learn the
demonstrations of geometry by heart, and never
to suspect any meaning in them.
(3) The failure to insist upon original think-
ing by the pupils is one of the most common
The Law of the Learning Process. 1 1 7
faults of our schools. A really thoughtful scholar
is the rare exception in most schools.
(4) Commonly no reason is asked for the state-
ments in the lesson, and none is given. The
pupil is taught to believe what the book says, and
because the book says it. Thus the reason is
dwarfed by disuse, and gives no help in study
except in following the book. Not knowing how
to prove his thought true when it is true, he is
unable to detect its falsehood when false.
(5) The applications of knowledge are persist-
ently neglected. That his lesson has a use, and
that he can apply it to some practical purpose, is
the last thought to enter the minds of many
pupils. The examples of this fault are too many
and too common to need further detail here.
Nowhere are these faults in teaching more fre-
quent or more serious in their consequences than
in the Sunday-school. " Always learning, but
never able to come to a knowledge of the truth,"
tells the sad story of many a Sunday-school class.
Let that class be taught for six months as our law
prescribes ; let the pupils penetrate beyond the
letter to the deep meaning of the texts ; let the
splendid truths of religion in all their breadth of
meaning be pondered, proved, and applied, and its
whole character would be changed. Faith would
follow hearing ; frivolity would give place to
the deepest earnestness, and the truth of God
would vindicate its divine origin by the exhibition
of its transforming power.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE LAW OF REVIEW.
I. Let us suppose the ordinary process of
teaching to be finished. The teacher and pupil
have met and have done their work together.
Language freighted with ideas and aided with
illustrations has been uttered and understood.
Knowledge with its treasures of truth has been
thought into the mind of the learner, and it lies
there in greater or less completeness, to feed
thought, to guide conduct, and to form character.
What more is needed ? The teacher's task seems
ended. But no ! The most delicate, if not also
the most difficult, work remains to be accom-
plished. All that has been done lies hidden in
the learner's mind, and lies there as a potency
rather than a possession. What eye shall pene-
trate the understanding to determine the clearness
and accuracy of the pupil's cognitions ? What
hand shall nurse into larger growth and into per-
manent force the ideas he has been led to conceive ?
What process shall fix into active habits the
thought-potencies which have been evolved ? It
is for this final and finishing work that our seventh
and last law provides. This Law of the Test, of
The Law of Review. 1 19
the confirmation and ripening of results, may be
expressed as follows :
The completion, test, and confirmation of teaching
must be made by reviews.
2. This wording of the law seeks to include
the three chief aims of reviews : (i) To perfect
knowledge. (2) To confirm knowledge. (3) To
render knowledge ready and useful. These three
aims, though distinct in idea, are so connected
in fact as to be secured by the same process. It
would be difficult to overstate the value and
importance of this law of reviews. No time in
teaching is spent more profitably than that spent
in reviewing. Other things being equal, he is the
ablest and most successful teacher who secures
from his pupils the most frequent, thorough, and
interesting reviews.
Philosophy of the Law.
3. A review is something more than a repeti-
tion. A machine may repeat a process, but only
an intelligent agent can review it. The repetition
done by a machine is a second movement pre-
cisely like the first ; a repetition by the mind is
the re-thinking of a thought. It is necessarily
a review. It is more : it involves fresh concep-
tions and new associations, and brings an increase
of facility and power.
4. Reviews are of different grades of complete-
I2O The Seven Laws of Teaching.
ness and thoroughness, from the mere repetition
of the words of by-gone lessons, or a rapid glance
thrown back to some fact or phrase, to the most
careful resurvey of the whole field, the occupancy
in full force of the ground of which the first study
was only a reconnoissance. The first and simplest
reviews are mostly repetitions ; the final and com-
plete reviews should be thorough re-studies of the
lessons.
5. A partial review may embrace a single
lesson, or it may include a single branch of the
subject, the development of a single truth,
the recall of some one fact or event, or of some
difficult point or question. The complete review
may be a cursory reviewing of the whole field in
a few general questions, or it may be a full and
final reconsideration of the whole ground. Each
form of review has its place and use. The value
and real character of a true review will appear
in the discussion. We shall see that no teaching
can be complete without the review, made either
under the teacher's direction, or voluntarily by
the scholar himself.
6. A new lesson or fresh subject never reveals
all its truth on a first study of it. Its novelties
dazzle the mind and distract the attention.
When we enter a strange house, we know not
where to look for its several rooms, and the
attention is drawn to a few of the more singular
and conspicuous features of furniture. We must
The Law of Review. 121
return again and again, and re-survey the scene
with eyes grown familiar to the place and to the
light, before the whole plan of the building and
the uses of all the rooms with their furniture will
stand clearly revealed. So one must return again
and again to a lesson if he would see all there
is in it, and come to a true and vivid understanding
of its meaning. We have all noticed how much
we find that is new and interesting in reading
again some old and familiar volume.
7. Even in the best studied book, we are often
surprised to find fresh truths and new meanings
in passages which we had pondered again and
again without seeing. It is the ripest student
of Shakespeare who finds most of freshness in the
works of the great dramatist. The familiar eye
discovers in any great masterpiece of art or litera-
ture touches of power and beauty which the casual
observer can not see. So a true review always
adds something to the knowledge of the student
making it. The practised mind finds truths which
the first study did not reveal.
8. Especially is this true of the Bible, of which
the last study is always the richest and most
interesting. Nothing more surprises or delights
us in the great preachers than the new meanings
they discover in old and familiar texts meanings
which we are obliged to confess lie clearly there,
but which our careless reading had prevented us
from finding. Sometimes these meanings lie
122 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
hidden in a word, and need only the right empha-
sis to reveal them ; sometimes they lie close by
the path and appear by some sidelight skillfully
thrown upon them from the text. If any one
wishes to try this for himself, let him take some
familiar passage, the first verse of the Bible for
example, and recite it, first in the rapid and care-
less way a child would usually say it, then repeat
it several times slowly and solemnly, with varying
emphasis, and with all the thought and feeling
he can summon; somewhat as here indicated:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Now read with longer pauses and deeper
thinking :
In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth.
Then more slowly, pausing and concentering the
whole power of thought on the words marked for
emphasis :
In the BEGINNING God created the heaven and the
earth.
In the beginning GOD created the heaven and the
earth.
In the beginning God CREATED the heaven and
the earth.
In the beginning God created the HEAVEN and the
EARTH.
IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED THE
HEAVEN AND THE EARTH.
The Law of Review. 123
What a world of meaning at last rolls along
with the resounding words ! How wondrously
in that remote and awful beginning, where the
Deity stands alone with his eternal wisdom,
power, and glory, the peopled heavens and the
green earth move forth from the creating hand
of God, and begin the long march of geologic and
historic time !
9. On one occasion at least, the Great Teacher
himself resorted to this power of repetition, when
three times in succession he asked Peter the ques-
tion : " Lovest thou me ? " The heart of the rock
disciple burned as with fire under this powerful
iteration, and with memory and conscience quick-
ened he appealed to the omniscience of his Master
to witness to the truth of his questioned love.
10. But the repetitions of a review are not
made the same hour. They are spread over days
and weeks, and hence they bring a new element
into play. The lapse of time changes the point
of view. At every review we survey the lesson
from a new standpoint. Its facts rise in a new
order and are seen in new relations. Truths that
stood in the shadow in the first study come forth
into the light. When one climbs a mountain,
from each successive opening and outlook the eye
visits again the same landscape, but the observer's
position is always changed. The features of the
landscape are seen in different perspective, and
each successive view is larger, more comprehen-
sive, and more complete than its predecessor.
124 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
11. The human mind does not achieve its
victories by a single effort. There is a sort of
mental incubation by which frequently, from some
common fact, the eagle form of a splendid dis-
covery springs forth. The physiologists call it
unconscious cerebration, by which they mean that
the brain itself goes on working all unknown to
us, and works out new truths from the facts we
have learned. It is an easier if not also a truer expla-
nation that the ever advancing and growing mind
reaches constantly new positions, and obtains new
light by which the new truth becomes visible.
Some fresh experience or newly acquired idea
serves as a key to the old lesson, and what was
dark in the first study is made clear and bright
in the review. The mind, like an artist, sketches
its pictures at first simply in outline, and in
detached parts. Only after many returns to each
part do its conceptions stand forth in full light
and shade, perfect paintings, lifelike and com-
plete.
12. The old saying, " Beware of the man of
one book," has this in it, that his repeated readings
of his one book give him a mastery of the subject
which makes him a dangerous antagonist on his
chosen field. He but shows the power conferred
by frequent reviews.
13. The memory, too, requires frequent repeti-
tions as the essential condition of its retentive
holding, and its ready recall of its treasures.
The Law of Review. 125
Memory depends wholly on the association of
ideas, the idea in mind recalling the ideas with
which it has been linked by some past association.
Each review establishes new associations, while
it familiarizes and strengthens the old. The
lesson that is studied but once is learned only
to be forgotten. That which is thoroughly and
repeatedly reviewed is woven into the very fabric
of our thoughts, and becomes a part of our perma-
nent knowledge. Not what a pupil has once
learned and recited, but "what he permanently
remembers is the true measure of his advance.
One fact well remembered is of more worth than
a hundred forgotten.
14. Not merely to know, but to have knowledge
for use, to possess it fully, like coin for daily
traffic, or like tools and materials for daily work,
such is the true aim of study. This readiness
of knowledge can never be gained by a single
study. Frequent and thorough reviews can alone
give the mind this firm hold and free handling
of the truth. There is a skill in scholarship as
well as in handicrafts, and this skill in both cases
depends upon habits ; and habit is the child of
repetition.
15. The plastic power of truth in shaping con-
duct and moulding character belongs only to the
truths which have become familiar by repetitions.
Not the scamper of a passing child but the re-
peated tread of going and coming feet beats for
126 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
us the paths of our daily life. If we would have
any great truth sustain and control us, we must
return to it so often that it will at last rise up in
mind as a dictate of conscience, and pour its
steady light upon every act and purpose with
which it is concerned.
1 6. The well-known influence of maxims and
proverbs comes from the readiness with which
they are remembered and recalled, and the power
they gather by repetition. So the texts of Scrip-
ture which most influence us are those that have
become familiar by use, and which arise in mind
as occasions demand. Thousands have been con-
verted by the well-remembered text on whom the
sermon made no impression.
17. From all this it will be seen that the
review is not simply an added excellency in teach-
ing which may be dispensed with if time is lacking,
but it is one of the seven essential conditions of
all true teaching. Not to review is to leave the
work half done, to fade out with the passing hour.
The law of review rests upon the universal and
unchangeable laws of mind. The review may not
always be made formally and with clear design,
but no successful teaching was ever done in which
the review in some form, either by direction of
the teacher or by the private impulse of the
learner, did not take place the revisiting and
repetition of the lesson learned. The " line upon
line and precept upon precept " rule of the Bible
is a recognition of this truth.
The Law of Review. 127
1 8. The processes of review must necessarily
vary with the subject of study, and also with the
age and advancement of the pupils. With very
young pupils the review can be little more than
a simple repetition ; with older students, the
review will be a thoughtful re-study of the ground
to gain deeper understanding.
A principle in mathematics may be reviewed
with fresh applications and problems. A scientific
truth may be fixed by the study or analysis of
a fresh specimen, or by additional facts proving
the same truth. A chapter in history may be
re-studied with fresh questions calling for a fresh
view, or by comparing it with the fresh statements
of another author. A Scripture truth will be
reviewed by a new application to the heart and
conscience or to the judgment of the duties and
events of the life.
19. In the Bible more than in any other book
are reviews needful and valuable. Not only does
the Bible most require and most repay repeated
study, but most of all ought Bible knowledge
to be familiar to us, if it be, as is claimed, the
Word of God. Its great truths ought to dwell
in the heart and in the conscience as a divine
presence ; its very language should haunt the
memory as echoes from the hills of heaven. Its
words and precepts should rest clear and precise
in the thoughts as the dictates of duty and the
prophecies of destiny. Its grand and divine doc-
128 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
trines, its august and vital precepts, its blessed
promises, its sublime histories, and still sublimer
prophecies, ought to inhabit the mind as heavenly
and familiar guests, or rather as divine forces
bearing with a constant and moulding pressure
upon all the acts and decisions of our lives. It
is that part of the Bible which thus lives within
us, not the great volume which lies upon the table
or shelf, which is the true Word of God to us
the daily bread of our God-ward life.
20. Any exercise may serve for a review which
recalls the truth to be reviewed. One of the best
and most practical forms of review is the calling
up of any fact or truth learned and applying it
to some use. Nothing so fixes it in the memory
or gives such a grasp of it to the understanding.
Thus the multiplication table may be learned by
orderly repetitions of its successive factors and
products, but its frequent review and use in daily
computations alone give us that perfect mastery
of it which makes it come, as it were, without call,
and serve us as if a native part of the mind itself.
So in that largest, most wonderful because most
arbitrary, and yet most perfect, acquisition of the
human mind, the thousands of wholly artificial
word-signs and idioms of the mother-tongue,
nothing but the ceaseless repetitions and reviews
of daily use could so bed them in the memory and
so in-work them into the habitudes of the mind
that they come with the ideas they symbolize and
The Lazv of Review. 129
keep pace with the swift movements of thought
itself, as if a natural part of the thinking process.
21. The ready skill of artisans and professional
men in recalling instantaneously the principles
and processes of their arts or professions is the
product of the innumerable repetitions of
daily practice. This kind of review is available
in all cases in which the learner can be called
upon to apply the truths learned to the answer
of common questions, .the solution of problems,
the conduct of any process, or the performance
of any series of acts. The art of the teacher,
in this work, lies in the starting of questions or
finding which shall require the use of the knowl-
edge he wishes to have reviewed.
22. The use of the pen and pencil in review
work ought by no means to be forgotten. Next
to the eye, the hand is the born teacher of the
mind, and no reviews are more effective than those
which the hand helps. Witness the power of the
laboratory work, now so common in all scientific
study. The ingenious teacher will easily find
handwork for pen or pencil in any branch of
learning. The request for the pupils to bring
lists of persons, objects, places, dates, or distances
mentioned in the lessons gone over, for tabular
statements of facts or events, for maps, plans, or
drawings of places or things, or for short written
statements or answers, will set a review in
progress of no mean value.
130 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
23. In Bible lessons these pen and pencil
reviews are peculiarly easy and valuable. Its
biographies, histories, and geography, its doc-
trines, promises, precepts, and duties, its para-
bles, miracles, and prophecies, its patriarchs,
prophets, priests, judges, kings, apostles, sinners,
and saints, and all its marvelous classes and diver-
sities of texts, give endless fields of useful work
for the writing hands.
Practical Rules for Teachers.
Among the many practical rules and methods
for reviews, the following are some of the most
useful :
1. Count reviews as always in order. When-
ever a spare moment occurs while waiting for
other exercises, or when the teacher or class is
unprepared to do anything else, a review may
go on.
2. Have also set times for reviews. At the
opening of each lesson-hour take a brief review
of the preceding lesson, to put the two lessons
in connection that no break may occur in the
work.
3. At the close of each lesson give a glance
backward to the ground gone over, and note the
points to be especially remembered.
4. After five or six lessons are past, start a
review from the beginning, taking the substance
of two or three lessons each day. The order of
The Law of Review. 131
an exercise may be as follows : First > a brief review
of the first two lessons, to be followed the next
day by the second two, and so on ; second, a more
careful review of the last preceding lesson ; third,
the advance lesson of the day. All this must,
of course, be adapted to the time given to the
class work. If that is short, the reviews must also
be brief. The best teachers give about one third
of each lesson-hour to reviews. Thus they make
haste slowly but surely.
5. Whenever a reference can be usefully made
to former lessons, the opportunity should be seized
to bring forward into fresh light and new connec-
tions the old knowledge.
6. All advance lessons may be made to bring
into review truths in former lessons, since the
advance in some way depends upon the be-
ginnings.
7. Make the first review as soon as practicable
after the lesson is first learned, before the memory
has lost its hold. Afterward occasional reviews
will suffice.
8. In order to make reviews easily and rapidly,
the teacher should hold in mind large masses
of the lessons learned, ready for instant use. He
is thus able to begin at any spare minute an
impromptu miscellaneous review on any part
of the field ; and the pupils, seeing that the
teacher thinks it worth while to remember what
they have studied, will be ambitious to be ready
to meet his questions.
132 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
9. New questions started on old lessons, new
illustrations for old texts, new proofs for old state-
ments, will often send the pupil back with fresh
interest to look again into the old lesson, and he
will be thus lured into an unsuspected review.
10. The final review, never to be omitted,
should be searching, comprehensive, and master-
ful, grouping all parts of the subject learned as
on a map, and giving the pupil the feeling of
a familiar mastery of it all.
11. Seek as many applications as possible of
the subject studied. Every thoughtful application
involves a useful and effective review.
12. Forget not the value of pencil and pen
work in reviews. This work can be done out
of class, and it shows for itself.
13. An interesting form of review is to allow
members of the class to ask questions on previous
lessons. If this is a frequent exercise, the pupils
will make volunteer studies both to get questions
and to be ready with answers.
Violations and Mistakes.
The common and almost constant violations
of this last great law of teaching will occur to
every one who reads the foregoing rules and state-
ments. But the disastrous results of these viola-
tions are known only to those who have taken
thoughtful account of the poor and stinted out-
come of all our laborious and costly teaching
The Law of Review. 133
work. When for the time our pupils should have
become teachers they " have need that one teach
them again." Forever learning, they seem "never
able to come to a knowledge of the truth." And
although the lack of reviews is not the sole cause
of failures, their thorough use would go far to
remedy the evils from other sources. We pour
water into broken cisterns : good reviews would
stop the leaks, though they might not increase
at once the quantity poured in.
The first violation of the law is the total neglect
of reviews. This is the folly of the utterly poor
and idle teacher.
Second comes the wholly inadequate reviews.
This is the fault of the hurried and impatient
teacher, who is more anxious to get through the
book than to get the book through the mind of
his pupils.
The third mistake is that of delaying all reviews
till the end of the quarter, when, the lessons being
wholly forgotten, the review amounts to a poor
and hurried re-learning, with little interest and
less profit.
The fourth blunder is that of degrading the
review into a lifeless repetition of the same
questions and answers as those used at first. This
has the form of a review without its power.
The law of reviews in its full force and philoso-
phy requires that there shall be a fresh vision
a clear re-thinking of the truths of the lesson,
134 The Seven Laws of Teaching.
which shall stand related to the first study as the
artist's finishing-touches stand to his first sketches;
or shall be as the final trial and polishing of the
weapons with which the pupil is sent forth to
the battles of life.
Conclusion.
I have now finished the discussion of the Seven
Laws of Teaching. If I have succeeded in my
purpose, I have made to rise up and pass before
the reader, first, the True Teacher richly laden
with the lesson he desires to communicate, inspired
and inspiring by the clear vision he has caught
of the truth ; second, the True Learner with atten-
tion fixed and interest excited, eager to enter and
possess the promised land of the unknown lying
before him ; third, the True Medium of communi-
cation between these two a language clear,
simple, and perfectly understood by both ; fourth,
the True Lesson the knowledge, to the pupil
the unknown standing next to his known, and half
revealed in its light. These four the actors and
machinery of the drama have also been shown
in action, giving, fifth, the True Teaching Process,
the teacher arousing and directing the self-activi-
ties of the pupil, like a chieftain leading his soldiers
into battle ; sixth, the True Learning Process, the
pupil reproducing in thought thinking into
his own mind, step by step first in mere outline
and finally in full and finished conception the
The Law of Review. 135
lesson to be learned ; and seventh, the True Reviews,
testing, correcting, completing, connecting, and
fixing into permanence, power, and use the subject
studied. In all this there has been seen only the
play of the great natural laws of mind and of truth
effecting and governing that complex process by
which a human intelligence gains possession of
any branch of knowledge. The study of these
laws may not make of every reader a perfect
teacher; but the laws themselves, when fully
observed in use, will produce their effects with
the same certainty that the chemic laws generate
the compounds of chemical elements, or that the
laws of life produce the growth of the body.
INDEX.
Page
Action, Mental, proportioned to feeling 35
Appeals, Basis of n
Gushing 12
Appetites, The mental 38
Attention, Description of 29
Compelled and attracted 30
Degrees of 31
Highest grade of 32
Fresh, how aroused 37
Because of duty 40
Power of, increases with mental development 41
An active attitude of faculties 41
Hindrances to 42
Rested by pleasing variety 44
Secured by pertinent illustrations 44
Secured by favorite stories, songs, etc 44
Secured by questions 44
How not secured 45, 46
Bible truth as basis of appeal n
Child, Small vocabulary of 50
Must be understood 53
Questionings of 98
Beginning of education 99
What is required from, in study 105
Mental activity of 112
Questioning period of 113
How to develop thinking faculties of 114
Class, helped by teacher 21
Comenius, saying of 88
Conclusion 134
Earnestness, Secret of 21
Education, Two great coordinate aims of .,..,,.,. 86
138 Index.
Enthusiasm, kindled by skill 10
Kindled by knowledge 20
Secret of 21
Exhortations, Earnest n
Explanations, which end thinking 99
Figures of speech : From what law they spring 72
Idea, New, effect of 37
Ideas incarnated in words 53
Must precede words 54
Illustration, Power of, comes through knowledge 19
Illustrations from nature 57
From what borrowed 74 '
Infant, the : Interest in new objects 89
Intellect, The moral 92
Its fuller sphere 93
Interest, Sources of 35
How increased 35, 36, 39
Varies with age 40
Limited by knowledge 89
Two chief springs of 90
Knowledge : What it may be 2
How taught 2
Necessity of 16
Degrees of 17
The teacher's material 17
Imperfect, makes imperfect teaching 18
Power of illustration comes from 19
Full, necessary to greatest interest 19
Pupils' confidence inspired by 22
How communicated 33
Is truth discovered and understood 67
Not a mass of simple facts 70
By comparing and judging 71
Never perfect 75
Necessary to thought 89
Love of, for its own sake 90
Appetite for, grows by feeding 91
Love of, for its use 91
Ready for use 125
Known and unknown 67
Kriisi, Hermann, saying of 113
Language, Law of 6, 48
Index. 1 39
Language, Stated as a rule 6
The law of, stated 49
Philosophy of the 49
Of what it consists 48, 49
The vehicle of thought 51
The instrument of thought 53
Expressing original thought 55
The storehouse of knowledge 55
The measure of Jcnowledge 56
By signs 57
An imperfect medium of thought 58
Rules for teachers 59
Violations and mistakes 60
Misuse of 61
Complexity of 62
Lack of knowledge of, a great obstacle 63
Takes its meanings froin old knowledge 73
Law, The teacher subject to 15
Reign of universal 15
Laws, Discovery of i
Stated 5
Stated as rules 6
Learner, The law of 5, 28
Stated as a rule 6
Philosophy of 32
The true 28
A rediscoverer 107
How must mount m
Rules for 114
Learning, Law of 6
Stated as a rule 7
Pompous pretence of 27
Its one essential condition 28
How it should proceed 69
Without a teacher 83
Superficial course of 103
What is not true 106
What is true 107
How it comes 107
Its several stages 107
And memorizing 108
And understanding 108
140 Index.
Learning, And mastery of thought 108
And testing statements 109
And application of knowledge 109
Learning process, The law of 105
The law stated 106
Philosophy of the law 106
The two limitations of m
Rules for teachers and learners 114
Violations and mistakes 116
Lecture plan : When justifiable 99
Lesson, Law of 6, 65
Stated as a rule 7
Philosophy of the law of 67
Fresh study of 23
Analogies and likenesses in 23
Natural order and connection of its facts and truths .... 24
Relations to lives and duties 24
All aids to be used 24
Time for study of 24
Plan of study of 24
Good books on 25
Grafting on 26
Connection with the learner 39
Lessons, Thoroughly learned in
Maxims, Influence of 126
Meanings, New, in old texts 121
Memory : Conditions of its retentive holding 124
Dependence on association of ideas 125
Mental powers : Essential condition of their exercise 86
Self-activities of , 87
Processes of cognition of 87
Work in their own way 95
Milton, " the Mind is " 96
Mind : Its laws of thought I
A self-acting power 34
Reserve powers of 35
How controlled 36
Sources of its interest 39
The adult 40
Action of, limited 89
Does its own work 96
Autocracy of ,,,.,,,.,*........ 96
Index. 141
Mind : " The mind is," etc. (Milton) 96
True stimulant of 98
Does not achieve victories by single efforts 124
Powers, Unfettered command and use of 21
Preparation, Lack of 26
Pupil, Confidence of 22
Ability to inspire 22
Ignorance of 26
Must think 33
Resources commanded 40
Needs of, to be learned from his words 53
Taught to make clear statements 59, 62
Seeming attention of 60, 61
Stupidity of, explained 68
The self-acting and acted on 88
Too much help for 96
Philosophy of
The law of the teacher 16
The law of the learner 32
The law of the language 49
The law of the lesson 67
The law of the teaching process 83
The law of the learning process 106
The law of review 119
Questions, that startle 37
Element of the unexpected 38
Sham 38
As excitants 98
Review, The law of 118
Statement of 119
Philosophy of 119
Different grades of 119
Partial 120
Fresh themes discovered by 121
New standpoint of 123
Establishes new associations 125
Gives the mind firm hold 125
And essential conditions of teaching 126
Processes of, vary 127
Needful in Bible study 127
Practical forms of 128
Ready skill produced by 129
142 Index.
Review, Use of pen and pencil in 129
Practical rules for teachers 130
Violations and mistakes 132
Scholar, The successful 28
Senses, Gateways of 36
Sentences, Short and long 59
Signs as a medium of speech 57
Skill and enthusiasm 9
Spirit, Scientific : What it is 99
Success, Secret of 25
Sunday-school, The power of 94
Study of the lesson 24
Time for 24
Temptation to neglect 26
Not the pupil's work only 26
Thoroughness in, relative 75
Talking is thinking 54
Teacher, Law of 5, 15
Stated as a rule 6
Philosophy of 16
Qualifications of 15
Powers of, roused 21
As a helper of the class 21
Confidence of pupil in 22
Loss of credit of 26
What he has within his power 36
The too talkative 58
Necessity of 84
The best 85
The true 88
Mission of 96
The Great 123
Teachers, Enthusiastic versus trained 10
Rules for concerning
The law of the teacher 23
The law of the learner 43
The law of the language 59
The law of the lesson 76
The law of the teaching process 100
The law of the learning process 114
The law of review 130
Enthusiastic from knowledge 20
Index. 143
A word to 12
Teaching, Fixed natural laws of i
Definition of 2
Seven factors of 3
Analysis of 3
Law of, stated as a rule 6
Essentials of successful 7
Real complexity of laws of 8
Laws obeyed by all successful teachers 9
Aim of Sunday-school n
Systematic, objection to n
Laws of: God's own laws of mind 12
Highest success in 42
Helping the child to expression 54
Where it must begin 67
How it must advance 68
Forcing process 86
Teaching process 81
The law stated 82
Philosophy of 83
Rules for teachers 100
Violations and mistakes 102
Test and proof, Law of 6
Stated as a rule 7
Things, The language of 57
Thought, New, shock of 37
The vehicle of . . 51
The instrument of 53
Two excitants of 90
Truth understood through other truths 18
Necessity of understanding 20
Mastered through expression 55
Ideal and actual 66
Imperfectly known 74
Truths, Common, transformed 21
Unknown taught through the known 66
Can not be explained through the unknown 72
Violations and mistakes :
The law of the teacher 25
The law of the learner 45
The law of the language 60
The law of the lesson 78
144 Index.
The law of the teaching process 102
The law of the learning process 116
The law of review 132
Words : Small number in child's vocabulary 50
Different meanings of 50, 51, 52
Loved or hated for their ideas 52
Loaded with false meanings 53
As clue lines 56
Group or family of 56
Not the only medium of speech 57
Unnecessary 59
As signs 73
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW
AN INITIAL FINE^OF 25 CENTS
BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN
BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENAL-TY
INCREASE TO so CENTS ON THE FOURTH
TO SE $ t.oo ON THE SEVENTH DA
APR^UML!
______
-
rtt^H^^a
-
Dt
LD 21-
U.C.BERKELEY LIBRARIES
V
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
