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INTRODUCTION.

with the same punishment as crime. Nature's discipline is
not even a word and a blow, and the blow first, but the
blow without the word. It is left to you to find out why
your ears are boxed.’
“The object of what we commonly call education—that
education in which man intervenes, and which I shall dislinguish
 ag artificial education—is to make good these defects
in nature's methods; to prepare the child to receive
nature’s education, neither incapably nor ignorantly, nor
with wilful disobedience ; and to understand the preliminary
symptoms of her displeasure without waiting for the box on
the ear, in short, all artificial education ought to be an
anticipation of natural education. And a liberal education
is an artificial education which has not only prepared a man
to escape the great evils of disobedience to natural laws, but
has trained him to appreciate and to seize upon the rewards
which Nature scatters with as free a hand as her penalties.”
What is the Nature which here occupies so strange a
relationship to Man? Can it be a living intelligence,
with its ‘harsh and wasteful operations and defective
methods ¥ It is, indeed, a strange relationship which
is here suggested; Man, who it would appear is intellectually
 the superior of Nature, and who, as such, is
obliged to intervene and put right Nature's defective
methods, is nevertheless subject to Nature's laws, and
the great evils of disobedience to those laws it is the
object of education to teach him. The reckless manner,
moreover, in which Nature is supposed to distribute
rewards and punishments by no means clears up the
mystery.
To suppose an electrical machine deliberately setting
itself to work to educate an intelligent child, would be