VOWt mature

correct the work, but to each child the contents of
the book were new and fresh. It is the fashion of
the present day to exalt the new at the expense of
the old. But the child of today is very much such
as Socrates and Plato studied in Greece. The de-
velopment of the human mind may be more gen-
erally understood than it was then; but it may be
doubted whether the mass of teachers are today wiser
in the results of child-study than were the philoso-
phers of ancient days.  Child nature remains the
same. At a given stage in his upward progress, he
is interested in much the same things. He is led to
think for himself in much the same way, and the
whole end and aim of education is to lead toward
self activity. The readers that deal simply with
facts-information readers-may lodge in the minds
of children some scraps of encyclopedic information
which may in future life become useful. But the
readers that rouse the moral sentiments, that touch
the imagination, that elevate and establish character
by selections chosen from the wisest writers in Eng-
lish in all the centuries that have passed since our
language assumed a comparatively fixed literary
form, have a much more valuable function to per-
form. Character is more valuable than knowledge
and a taste for pure and ennobling literature is a
safeguard for the young that cannot be safely ig-
nored.
  The success of the McGuffey Readers was due
primarily to their adaptation to the general demand
                        [65]