Instead of that method of instruction, care should be taken to educate
children on the natural lines. No idea should ever be established in a
child's mind otherwise than by what the child can see for itself, or
at any rate it should be verified by the same means; and the result of
this would be that the child's ideas, if few, would be well-grounded
and accurate. It would learn how to measure things by its own standard
rather than by another's; and so it would escape a thousand strange
fancies and prejudices, and not need to have them eradicated by the
lessons it will subsequently be taught in the school of life. The
child would, in this way, have its mind once for all habituated
to clear views and thorough-going knowledge; it would use its own
judgment and take an unbiased estimate of things.

And, in general, children should not form their notions of what life
is like from the copy before they have learned it from the original,
to whatever aspect of it their attention may be directed. Instead,
therefore, of hastening to place _books_, and books alone, in their
hands, let them be made acquainted, step by step, with _things_--with
the actual circumstances of human life. And above all let care be
taken to bring them to a clear and objective view of the world as it
is, to educate them always to derive their ideas directly from real
life, and to shape them in conformity with it--not to fetch them from
other sources, such as books, fairy tales, or what people say--then
to apply them ready-made to real life. For this will mean that their
heads are full of wrong notions, and that they will either see things
in a false light or try in vain to _remodel the world_ to suit their
views, and so enter upon false paths; and that, too, whether they are
only constructing theories of life or engaged in the actual business
of it. It is incredible how much harm is done when the seeds of wrong
notions are laid in the mind in those early years, later on to bear a