sentence from the context; when the wrong word was thus suggested, she was obliged to spell out the real word by sounds, always seeking first the central or predominant sound, and building up the word around it, instead of enumerating the letters in order. Thus in the word scratch she took out the letters a t, as the central nucleus, preceding the first by the sound of r, then of c, then of s; then, when the sound scrat was complete, adding that of ch. She was made to read as much and as rapidly as possible, relying upon constant repetition and association of ideas to secure familiarity. Thus unconsciously the conception was continued, that written as well as spoken language was an outgrowth of thought before the attempt was made to study it as an object of thought. This method is like that of learning to walk before studying the laws of Weber on locomotion.
This method may seem slovenly, but, after all, it is both the natural and scientific method of studying an unknown tongue, which must be deciphered by the context. How else did Champollion read the Rosetta stone, or Eliot find a written language for his Indian Bible? Throughout this period the task of reading was treated as something so easy as to be insignificant, and was so regarded by the child herself.[1] The main intellectual work of the day's lessons (whose duration was never more than an hour and a half) was concentrated upon the arithmetic, map-drawing, analysis of flowers, and the geometrical studies, that she now pursued by the help of Hill's "First Lessons," and Spencer's "Inventional Geometry." She studied angles, vertical and adjacent, the relations of angles and circles, and the measurement of the former by the latter. Exercises in these were practiced daily with compass and ruler; and, when lines drawn with the pencil failed to give a large enough visual impression, they were designed with colored sticks. This enlargement of the material illustration never failed to clear up any obscurities. At the time these notes cease, the child was six and a half years old.
I have tried to make clear in these few notes the outlines of a (single) experiment, which seems to me to show that the mental education of even a very young child may be imbued with scientific methods and even ideas which should furnish suitable preparation for advanced scientific studies. It can not be a matter of indifference that 'such habits of mind are acquired from the beginning, or only after much previous faulty training. What comes first will always remain the most important, will always dominate the rest. Experience in the medical education of women has repeatedly brought home to me the difficulty of teaching such an art as medicine to persons who come to it through the prevailing systems of school discipline, especially those which are applied to girls. Experience with one little girl at least convinces me that the aptitude for vivid and accurate perception, and for
- ↑ What is easy, when taken instinctively, may be incredibly difficult when itself becomes the object of thought and study.
