Therefore the race, in its march from savagery to civilization,
may be considered as one man, showing, first, animation; next,
manifesting his objects of attraction; third, displaying his
purposes; and finally putting forth his wisdom in obedience to the
true, the beautiful, and the good.

These principles of natural evolution have been applied by the
writer to the study of oratory. The orator must illustrate in his
art the same steps of progress which govern the growth of other
arts. He may have developed the power of the painter, the
sculptor, the musician, yet if he would unfold the art of the
rhetorician, he must pass through the progressive gradations that
have marked the education of his powers in other departments. In a
single lifetime he may attain the highest art expression, yet he
cannot escape the necessity of cultivating his powers by the same
process of evolution which the race needed centuries to pass
through. It remains for the teacher, therefore, to so arrange the
methods of study as to enable the pupil to pursue the natural
order of education. In all things he must stimulate and not
repress normal growth.

There is an old notion sometimes found among theoretical educators
that the mind of a child is like a piece of paper upon which
anything may be written; a mould of clay upon which any impression
may be made; a block of stone in which the teacher, like the
famous sculptor of old, sees, in his poetic vision, an angel, and
then chips and hacks until that angel stands revealed. The theory
is absurdly and dangerously fallacious. Paper and clay are not
living organisms; the orator is not the statue chiselled from the