the scientific habit of mind, may thus be placed within the reach of every child of nine or ten.

After this preliminary opening of the eyes to the great spectacle of the daily progress of nature, as the reasoning faculties of the child grow, and he becomes familiar with the use of the tools of knowledge, reading, writing, and elementary mathematics,he should pass on to what is, in the more strict sense, physical science. Now, there are two kinds of physical science. The one regards form and the relation of forms to one another; the other deals with causes and effects. In many of what we term our sciences, these two kinds are mixed up together; but systematic botany is a pure example of the former kind, and physics of the latter kind, of science. Every educational advantage which training in physical science can give is obtainable from the proper study of these two; and I should be contented for the present if they, added to physical geography, furnished the whole of the scientific curriculum of schools. Indeed, I conceive it would be one of the greatest boons which could be conferred upon England, if henceforward every child in the country were instructed in the general knowledge of the things about it, in the elements of physics and of botany; but I should be still better pleased if there could be added somewhat of chemistry, and an elementary acquaintance with human physiology.

1

So far as school education is concerned, I want to go no further just now; and I believe that such instruction would make an excellent introduction to that preparatory scientific training which, as I have indicated, is so essential for the successful pursuit of our most important professions. But this modicum of instruction must be so given as to insure real knowledge and practical discipline. If scientific education is to be dealt with as mere book-work, it will be better not to attempt it, but to stick to the Latin Grammar, which makes no pretense to be anything but book-work.

If the great benefits of scientific training are sought, it is essential that such training should be real; that is to say, that the mind

1 from Lat. modicus, moderate; hence, a measured supply

of the scholar should be brought into direct relation with fact, that he should not merely be told a thing, but made to see by the use of his own intellect and ability that the thing is so and no otherwise. The great peculiarity of scientific training, that in virtue of which it can not be replaced by any other discipline whatsoever, is this bringing of the mind directly into contact with fact, and practicing the intellect in the completest form of induction; that is to say, in drawing conclusions from particular facts made known by immediate observation of nature.

The other studies which enter into ordinary education do not discipline the mind in this way. Mathematical training is almost purely deductive. The mathematician starts with a few simple propositions, the proof of which is so obvious that they are called self-evident, and the rest of his work consists of subtile deductions from them. The teaching of languages, at any rate as ordirily practiced, is of the same general nature, authority and tradition furnish the data, and the mental operations of the scholar are deductive.

Again, if history be the subject of study, the facts are still taken upon the evidence of tradition and authority. You can not make a boy see the battle of Thermopylæ for himself, or know, of his own knowledge, that Cromwell once ruled England. There is no getting into direct contact with natural fact by this road; there is no dispensing with authority, but rather a resting upon it.

In all these respects science differs from other educational discipline, and prepares the scholar for common life. What have we to do in every-day life? Most of the business which demands our attention is matter of fact, which needs, in the first place, to be accurately observed or apprehended; in the second, to be interpreted by inductive and deductive reasonings, which are altogether similar in their nature to those employed in science. In the one case, as in the other, whatever is taken for granted is so taken at one's own peril. Fact and reason are the ultimate arbiters, and patience and honesty are the great helpers out of difficulty.

But if scientific training is to yield its most eminent results, it must, I repeat, be made practical. That is to say, in explaining to a child the general phenomena of nature, you must, as far as possible, give reality to your teaching by object-lessons. In teaching him botany, he must handle the plants and dissect the flowers for himself; in teaching him physics and chemistry, you must not be solicitous to fill him with information, but you must be careful that what he learns he knows of his own knowledge. Don't be satisfied with telling him that a magnet attracts iron. Let him see that it does; let him feel the pull of the one upon the other for himself. And, especially, tell him that it is his duty to doubt, until he is compelled by the absolute authority of nature to believe, that which is written in books. Pursue this discipline carefully and conscientiously, and you may make sure that, however scanty may be the measure of information which you have poured into the boy's mind, you have created an intellectual habit of priceless value in practical life.

One is constantly asked, When should this scientific education be commenced? I should say with the dawn of intelligence. As I have already said, a child seeks for information about matters of physical science as soon as it begins to talk. The first teaching it wants is an object-lesson of one sort or another; and as soon as it is fit for systematic instruction of any kind, it is fit for a modicum of science.

People talk of the difficulty of teaching young children such matters, and in the same breath insist upon their learning their Catechism, which contains propositions far harder to comprehend than anything in the educational course I have proposed. Again, I am incessantly told that we who advocate the introduction of science into schools make no allowance for the stupidity of the average boy or girl; but, in my belief, that stupidity, in nine cases out of ten, is unnatural, and is developed by a long process of parental and pedagogic repression of the natural intellectual appetites, accompanied by a persistent attempt to create artificial ones for food which is not only tasteless, but essentially indigestible.

This

Those who urge the difficulty of instructing young people in science are apt to forget another very important condition of success; important in all kinds of teaching, but most essential, I am disposed to think, when the scholars are very young. condition is, that the teacher should himself really and practically know his subject. If he does, he will be able to speak of it in the easy language, and with the completeness of conviction, with which he talks of any ordinary every-day matter. If he does not, he will be afraid to wander beyond the limits of the technical phraseology which he has got up; and a dead dogmatism, which oppresses or raises opposition, will take the place of the lively confidence, born of personal conviction, which cheers and encourages the eminently sympathetic mind of childhood.

AT the period of the Renascence, the few and scattered students of Nature picked up the clew to her secrets exactly as it fell from the hands of the Greeks a thousand years before. The foundations of mathematics were so well laid by them that our children learn their geometry from a book written for the schools of Alexandria two thousand years ago. Modern astronomy is the natural continuation and development of the work of Hipparchus and of Ptolemy; modern physics of that of Democritus and of Archimedes.

We can not know all the best thoughts and sayings of the Greeks unless we know what they thought about natural phenomena. We falsely pretend to be the inheritors of their culture, unless we are penetrated, as the best minds among them were, with an unhesitating faith that the free employment of reason, in accordance with scientific method, is the sole method of reaching truth.

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Two

WO names of great significance in the history of eighteenth-century science are those of Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Thompson, better known as "Count Rumford." Both these men were American by birth and by education. The most important of Franklin's many scientific achievements was his discovery that lightning is merely a manifestation of electricity. Thompson was the first to demonstrate that heat is a mode of motion.

Selections from the works of three American scientists of distinction Agassiz, Gray, and Dana - will be found in the following pages. Among many recent investigators and writers, Alexander Winchell, Spencer F. Baird, Simon Newcomb, Charles A. Young, and Matthew F. Maury are especially noteworthy. Professor Winchell has made original researches into the geology of the Mississippi Basin. His principal works are "Sketches of Creation" and "A Geological Excursion." Baird has published many valuable studies in Zoology. Professors Newcomb and Young are distinguished in the department of Astronomy. Lieutenant Maury is famous for his "Physical Geography of the Sea."

John Fiske, whose historical writings have already been referred to, has even higher claims to lasting repute as the chief American representative of the evolutionary school of philosophy. His principal work, "The Cosmic Philosophy," is in substantial agreement with the system of Synthetic Philosophy of Herbert Spencer. Mr. Fiske has also published two lectures, entitled "The Idea of God," and "The Destiny of Man," that are of a metaphysical and speculative nature.