there has been hardly an attempt to justify either the physiological
or the psychological reason of a single step in any of these series,
and the cooerdination of the series even with each other, to say
nothing of their adaptation to the stages of the child's development.
This, if as pat and complete as is urged, would indeed constitute on
the whole a paragon of all the harmony, beauty, totality in variety,
etc., which make it so magnificent in the admirer's eyes. But the "45
tools, 72 exercises, 31 models, 15 of which are joints," all learned
by teachers in one school year of daily work and by pupils in four
years, are overmethodic; and such correlation is impossible in so many
series at once. Every dual order, even of work and unfoldment of
powers, is hard enough, since the fall lost us Eden; and woodwork,
could it be upon that of the tree of knowledge itself, incompatible
with enjoying its fruit. Although a philosopher may see the whole
universe in its smallest part, all his theory can not reproduce
educational wholes from fragments of it. The real merits of sloyd have
caused its enthusiastic leaders to magnify its scope and claims far
beyond their modest bounds; and although its field covers the great
transition from childhood to youth, one searches in vain both its
literature and practise for the slightest recognition of the new
motives and methods that puberty suggests. Especially in its partially
acclimatized forms to American conditions, it is all adult and almost
scholastic; and as the most elaborate machinery may sometimes be run
by a poor power-wheel, if the stream be swift and copious enough, so
the mighty rent that sets toward motor education would give it some
degree of success were it worse and less economic of pedagogic
momentum than it is. It holds singularly aloof from other methods of
efferent training and resists cooerdination with them, and its
provisions for other than hand development are slight. It will be one
of the last to accept its true but modest place as contributing