While he is learning it Nature is his only teacher, and under her tuition he masters the new language without the least strain and with complete success.

But let us suppose that it was possible for a teacher of the conventional type to give minute directions to a child by some other medium of expression than that of language.

And let us suppose that such a teacher made up her mind that she, and not Nature, was to teach the child his mother tongue.

One can readily imagine what would happen.

The teacher would probably have a theory that no child should begin to talk till he was two or even two and a half years old; and if so, the child would be kept in a state of enforced dumbness till he reached that age.