Nor were these material helps of education
merely mechanical. There were in that collection vivid representations
of places and objects; models which often preserved their actual forms
and proportions, not to speak of maps and of books. No one who is aware
how much in schools, and indeed everywhere else, depends on what
apparently is slight and external, would lightly esteem the helps and
hints which such a collection would furnish. And yet it would be well
for us to remember that even if we were to obtain all this apparatus in
its completest form, at the same time possessing the most perfect skill
in its application, so that it should never encumber but always assist
us, we should yet have obtained very little compared with that which,
as a help to education, is already ours. When we stand face to face
with a child, that spoken or unspoken word which the child possesses in
common with ourselves is a far more potent implement and aid of
education than all these external helps, even though they should be
accumulated and multiplied a thousandfold. A reassuring thought for
those who may not have many of these helps within their reach, a
warning thought for those who might be tempted to put their trust in
them. On the occasion of that Exhibition to which I have referred, it
was well said, 'On the structure of language are impressed the most
distinct and durable records of the habitual operations of the human
powers. In the full possession of language each man has a vast, almost
an inexhaustible, treasure of examples of the most subtle and varied
processes of human thought.
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