this system cannot be pursued beyond certain bounds without many inconveniences. The habit of being amused not only increases the desire for amusement, but it lessens even the relish for pleasure; so that the mind becomes passive and indolent, and a course of perpetually increasing stimulus is necessary to awaken attention. When dissipated habits are required, the pupil loses power over his own mind, and, instead of vigorous voluntary exertion, which he should be able to command, he shows that wayward imbecility, which can think successfully only by fits and starts: this paralytic state of mind has been found to be one of the greatest calamities attendant on what is called genius; and injudicious education creates or increases this disease. Let us not therefore humour children in this capricious temper, especially if they have quick abilities: let us give rewards proportioned to their exertions with uniform justice, but let us not grant bounties in education, which, however they may appear to succeed in effecting partial and temporary purposes, are not calculated to ensure any consequences permanently beneficial. The truth is, that useful knowledge cannot be obtained without labour; that attention long continued is laborious, but that without this labour nothing excellent can be accomplished. Excite a child to attend in earnest for a short time, his mind will be less fatigued, and his understanding more improved, than if he had exerted but half the energy twice as long: the degree of pain which he may have felt will be amply and properly compensated by his success; this will not be an arbitrary, variable reward, but one within his own power, and that can be ascertained by his own feelings. Here is no deceit practised, no illusion; the same course of conduct may be regularly pursued through the whole of his education, and his confidence in his tutor will progressively increase. On the contrary, if, to entice him to enter the paths of knowledge, we strew them with flowers, how will he feel when he must force his way through thorns and briars!
There is a material difference between teaching children in play, and making learning a task; in the one case we associate factitious pleasure, in the other factitious pain, with the object: both produce pernicious effects upon the temper, and retard the natural progress of the understanding. The advocates in favour of "scholastic badinage" have urged, that it excites an interest in the minds of children similar to that which makes them endure a considerable degree of labour in the pursuit of their amusements. Children, it is said, work hard at play, therefore we should let them play at work. Would not this produce effects the very reverse of what we desire? The whole question must at last depend upon the meaning of the word play: if by play be meant every thing that is not usually called a task, then undoubtedly much may be learned at play: if, on the contrary, we mean by the expression to describe that state of fidgeting idleness, or of boisterous activity, in which the intellectual powers are torpid, or stunned with unmeaning noise, the assertion contradicts itself. At play so defined, children can learn nothing but bodily activity; it is certainly true, that when children are interested about any thing, whether it be about what we call a trifle, or a matter of consequence, they will exert themselves in order to succeed; but from the moment the attention is fixed, no matter on what, children are no longer at idle play, they are at active work.
S – , a little boy of nine years old, was standing without any book in his hand, and seemingly idle; he was amusing himself with looking at what he called a rainbow upon the floor; he begged his sister M – to look at it; then he said he wondered what could make it; how it came there. The sun shone bright through the window; the boy moved several things in the room, so as to place them sometimes between the light and the colours which he saw upon the floor, and sometimes in a corner of the room where the sun did not shine. As he moved the things, he said, "This is not it;" "nor this;" "this has'n't any thing to do with it." At last he found, that when he moved a tumbler of water out of the place where it stood, his rainbow vanished. Some violets were in the tumbler; S – thought they might be the cause of the colours which he saw upon the floor, or, as he expressed it, "Perhaps these may be the thing." He took the violets out of the water; the colours remained upon the floor. He then thought that "it might be the water." He emptied the glass; the colours remained, but they were fainter. S – immediately observed, that it was the water and glass together that made the rainbow. "But," said he, "there is no glass in the sky, yet there is a rainbow, so that I think the water alone would do, if we could but hold it together without the glass. Oh I know how I can manage." He poured the water slowly out of the tumbler into a basin, which he placed where the sun shone, and he saw the colours on the floor twinkling behind the water as it fell: this delighted him much; but he asked why it would not do when the sun did not shine. The sun went behind a cloud whilst he was trying his experiments: "There was light," said he, "though there was no sunshine." He then said he thought that the different thickness of the glass was the cause of the variety of colours: afterwards he said he thought that the clearness or muddiness of the different drops of water was the cause of the different colours.
A rigid preceptor, who thinks that every boy must be idle who has not a Latin book constantly in his hand, would perhaps have reprimanded S – for wasting his time at play, and would have summoned him from his rainbow to his task; but it is very obvious to any person free from prejudices, that this child was not idle whilst he was meditating upon the rainbow on the floor; his attention was fixed; he was reasoning; he was trying experiments. We may call this play if we please, and we may say that Descartes was at play, when he first verified Antonio de Dominis bishop of Spalatro's treatise of the rainbow, by an experiment with a glass Globe:8 and we may say that Buffon was idle, when his pleased attention was first caught with a landscape of green shadows, when one evening at sunset he first observed that the shadows of trees, which fell upon a white wall, were green. He was first delighted with the exact representation of a green arbour, which seemed as if it had been newly painted on the wall. Certainly the boy with his rainbow on the floor was as much amused as the philosopher with his coloured shadows; and, however high sounding the name of Antonio de Dominis, bishop of Spalatro, it does not alter the business in the least; he could have exerted only his utmost attention upon the theory of the rainbow, and the child did the same. We do not mean to compare the powers of reasoning, or the abilities of the child and the philosopher; we would only show that the same species of attention was exerted by both.
To fix the attention of children, or, in other words, to interest them about those subjects to which we wish them to apply, must be our first object in the early cultivation of the understanding. This we shall not find a difficult undertaking if we have no false associations, no painful recollections to contend with. We can connect any species of knowledge with those occupations which are immediately agreeable to young people: for instance, if a child is building a house, we may take that opportunity to teach him how bricks are made, how the arches over doors and windows are made, the nature of the keystone and butments of an arch, the manner in which all the different parts of the roof of a house are put together, &c.; whilst he is learning all this he is eagerly and seriously attentive, and we educate his understanding in the best possible method. But if, mistaking the application of the principle, that literature should be made agreeable to children, we should entice a child to learn his letters by a promise of a gilt coach, or by telling him that he would be the cleverest boy in the world if he could but learn the letter A, we use false and foolish motives; we may possibly, by such means, effect the immediate purpose, but we shall assuredly have reason to repent of such imprudent deceit. If the child reasons at all, he will be content after his first lesson with being "the cleverest boy in the world," and he will not, on a future occasion, hazard his fame, having much to lose, and nothing to gain; besides, he is now master of a gilt coach, and some new and larger reward must be proffered to excite his industry. Besides the disadvantage of early exhausting our stock of incitements, it is dangerous in teaching to humour pupils with a variety of objects by way of relieving their attention. The pleasure of thinking, and much of the profit, must frequently depend upon our preserving the greatest possible connection between our ideas. Those who allow themselves to start from one object to another, acquire such dissipated habits of mind, that they cannot, without extreme difficulty and reluctance, follow any connected train of thought. You cannot teach those who will not follow the chain of your reasons; upon the connection of our ideas, useful memory and reasoning must depend. We will give you an instance: arithmetic is one of the first things that we attempt to teach children. In the following dialogue, which passed between a boy of five years old and his father, we may
See Priestley's History of Vision, vol. i. p. 51.
