"I wished to intimidate him with my manner, not being able to do so with my glance. I armed myself with a tambourine and struck it lightly whenever he made a mistake. But he mistook this correction for a joke, and his joy became more noisy than ever. I then felt that I must make the correction a little more severe. It was understood, and I saw, with a mixture of pain and pleasure, revealed in the darkened face of this boy the fact that the feeling of injury surpassed the unhappiness of the blow. Tears came from beneath the blindfold, he urged me to take it off, but, whether from embarrassment or fear, or from some inner preoccupation, when freed from the bandage he still kept his eyes tightly closed. I could not laugh at the doleful expression of his face, the closed eyelids from between which trickled an occasional tear! Oh, in this moment, as in many others, ready to renounce my task, and feeling that the time I had consecrated to it was lost, how I regretted ever having known this boy, and bow severely I condemned the barren and inhuman curiosity of the men who in order to make scientific advancement had torn him away from a life, at least innocent and happy!"
Here also is demonstrated the great educative superiority of scientific pedagogy for normal children.
Finally, one particular of the technique consists in the _distribution of the stimuli_. This will be treated more fully in the description of the didactic system (materials) and of the sense education. Here it is enough to say that one should proceed from _few stimuli strongly contrasting, to many stimuli in gradual differentiation always more fine and imperceptible_. So, for example, we first present, together, red and blue; the shortest rod beside the longest; the thinnest beside the thickest, etc., passing from these to the delicately differing tints, and to the discrimination of very slight differences in length and size.
EDUCATION OF THE SENSES AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE DIDACTIC MATERIAL: GENERAL SENSIBILITY; THE TACTILE, THERMIC, BARIC, AND STEREOGNOSTIC SENSES
The education of the tactile and the thermic senses go together, since the warm bath, and heat in general, render the tactile sense more acute. Since to exercise the tactile sense it is necessary to _touch_, bathing the hands in warm water has the additional advantage of teaching the child a principle of cleanliness--that of not touching objects with hands that are not clean. I therefore apply the general notions of practical life, regarding the washing of the hands, care of the nails, to the exercises preparatory to the discrimination of tactile stimuli.