their skill in the use of the bow.

The education of nature, without any more human care than is necessary
to preserve life, makes a savage. Human education joined to that of
nature, may make a good citizen, a skilful artizan, or a well-bred
man; but a higher power is wanting in order to produce a Bacon or a
Newton.

The error of the _past_ system (for such I hope I may venture to call
it) as to _mental development_ was, that the inferior powers of the
mind were called into activity, in preference to its higher faculties.
The effort was to exercise the memory, and store it with information,
which, owing to the inactivity of the understanding and the judgment,
was seldom or never of use. To adopt the opinions of others was
thought quite enough, without the child being troubled to think for
itself, and to form an opinion of its own. But this is not as it
should be. Such a system is neither likely to produce great nor wise
men; and is much better adapted to parrots than children. Hence, the
first thing attempted in an infant school is, to set the children
thinking,--to induce them to examine, compare, and judge, in reference
to all those matters which their dawning intellects are capable of
mastering. It is of no use to tell a child, in the first place, _what
it should think_,--this is at once inducing mental indolence, which
is but too generally prevalent among adults; owing to this erroneous
method having been adopted by those who had the charge of their early
years. Were a child left to its own resources, to discover and judge
of things exclusively by itself, though the opposite evil would be
the consequence, namely, a state of comparative ignorance, yet I am
doubtful whether it would be greater or more lamentable than that
issuing from the injudicious system of giving children dogmas instead