But in this discussion of school libraries and the like, we wander a
little from our immediate topic of mental beginnings.


Sec. 3


At the end of the fifth year, as the natural outcome of its instinctive
effort to experiment and learn, acting amidst wisely ordered
surroundings, the little child should have acquired a certain definite
foundation for the educational structure. It should have a vast variety
of perceptions stored in its mind, and a vocabulary of three or four
thousand words, and among these, and holding them together, there
should be certain structural and cardinal ideas. They are ideas that
will have been gradually and imperceptibly instilled, and they are
necessary as the basis of a sound mental existence. There must be, to
begin with, a developing sense and feeling for truth and for duty as
something distinct and occasionally conflicting with immediate impulse
and desire, and there must be certain clear intellectual elements
established already almost impregnably in the mind, certain primary
distinctions and classifications. Many children are called stupid, and
begin their educational career with needless difficulty through an
unsoundness of these fundamental intellectual elements, an unsoundness
in no way inherent, but the result of accident and neglect. And a
starting handicap of this sort may go on increasing right through the
whole life.

The child at five, unless it is colour blind, should know the range of
colours by name, and distinguish them easily, blue and green not