Nature has her way of rearing men, as she has of healing their maladies.

The art of education is to follow her dictates, and the art of education is equally to obey her laws.

The ancient inhabitants of the Baleares followed nature in their manner of teaching their children to be good archers, when they hung their dinner aloft by a thread, and left them to bring it down: by their skill in the use of the bow.
The education of nature, without any more human care than is necessary to preserve life, makes a savage.

Human education joined to that of nature, may make a good citizen, a skilful artizan, or a well-bred man; but a higher power is wanting in order to produce a Bacon or a Newton.
The error of the _past_ system (for such I hope I may venture to call it) as to _mental development_ was, that the inferior powers of the mind were called into activity, in preference to its higher faculties.
The effort was to exercise the memory, and store it with information, which, owing to the inactivity of the understanding and the judgment, was seldom or never of use.

To adopt the opinions of others was thought quite enough, without the child being troubled to think for itself, and to form an opinion of its own.