Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV TEACHING A SPIEITUAL, NOT A MECHANICAL, ART Oftentimes the best instruction is that which is merely suggestive. It commends some theme for reflection, and leaves each mind free to do its own thinking and to come to its own conclusions. This mode of procedure is particularly necessary when mature minds are dealing with those complex and many-sided questions which are connected with practical education. However long and patient our thinking may have been, it is not very probable that any of us have looked through and entirely around even the simplest question involved in the educating art. It is by a division of labor that these problems are finally compassed. Men severally look at the different phases of a complex question, and thus by discussion, comparison and ultimate agreement, there results a composite view of the truth more or less perfect as the thought has been catholic, penetrating and judicial. It is worth while to remind ourselves that the problem of human education is one of the very earliestthat taxed the ingenuity and wisdom of thinking men; and that this theme has been a favorite topic of discussion by the most learned and the most saintly men in all ages of the world. The most interesting and the most instructive chapter in the general history of the world is that which relates to the rise, progress and fate of those countless systems which have been devised for the education and training of the young. This is no less than the history of civilization itself, and exhibits man's power, by deliberate thinking, over the destiny of the race to which he belongs. Family pride, based on noble living and virtuous achievement, is one of the most wholesome and inspiring emotions of the soul. It puts a precious heritage in the keeping of each new generation and r...