on; but it does not follow that therefore "Dodd" was not ready to move
on. This did follow, however, according to Miss Stone's teaching, and
according to the system adopted by multitudes of teachers East, West,
North, and South.

I am well aware that there are teachers, plenty of them, whose spirits
will rebel against the above insinuation, so, a word with you, ladies
and gentlemen.

The system used by Miss Stone may have worked well enough in some other
hands, but it should be remembered that it is not a system that can
educate our children. Nor is it a system--any set of rules and
formularies--that can make our schools, any more than it is forms and
ceremonies that make our churches. These may all be well enough in
their proper places, but there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in them,
per se. It is the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees in the
one case, and the dry bones of pedagogy in the other,

The evil arises, in the schools as in the churches, from believing and
acting as if there were something in the system itself.

If human nature were a fixed quantity, if any two children were alike,
or anywhere nearly alike, if a certain act done for a child always
brought forth the same result, then it might be possible to form an
absolute system of pedagogy, as, with fixed elements, there is formed
the science of chemistry. But the quick atoms of spirit that manifest
their affinities under the eye of that alchemist, the teacher, are far
more subtle than the elements that go into the crucible in any other of
Nature's laboratories.