TEACHING AND LEARNING. 13 



well the mental character of each student, and quietly treats 

 each in the way best for itself. He teaches largely through 

 example, aims for optimum rather than maximum results, and 

 seeks to inspire his students to do rather than to know. He 

 utilizes the good and pleasurable instincts in his students, their 

 curiosity, their pleasure in competition, their artistic sense, 

 their ambition. At each new step in their work he recalls to 

 them what they already know, and from this vantage-point in 

 the known he leads their sorties into the unknown. He tries 

 to create a demand for truth before he provides the supply. 

 He habitually illustrates proper inductive procedure and the 

 scientific use of deduction ; makes clear the true function of 

 observation, hypothesis, experiment; and emphasizes training 

 in the logic of evidence, --the power to distinguish between the 

 practically proven, the degrees of probability, and the merely 

 possible. He does not shrink from discussion with his students, 

 nor refuse to learn from them. Finally, he is not discouraged 

 by the inevitable discrepancy between his ideals and his results, 

 but, remembering that averages and not extremes count in the 

 long run, he presses cheerfully on, profiting by experience and 

 building for the future. 



The successful student in this course recognizes that his 

 teacher's duty is simply to provide opportunities and advice, 

 while his own is to take advantage of them. He studies with 

 care the methods and results of the masters in his subject, tries 

 to see from their point of view, and seeks to acquire their open, 

 judicial, evidential habit of mind, which alone can lead to 

 scientific success. He acquires deliberation and self-reliance, 

 a desire to go always to original sources of information, and a 

 preference for knowledge acquired through his own efforts to 

 that derived from any other source. He comes to admire 

 results founded upon exact evidence and logical reasoning, and 

 to distrust and dislike conclusions based upon insufficient, 

 badly grounded, or emotional data. He believes only when 

 convinced, does his own work, asks for aid only when it is 

 needed, and profits both by his own mistakes and by the sue- 



