7 o 4 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nous seeds you could not have failed to ob- 

 serve that the young plants come up with 

 their cotyledons ou their heads. If, in pon- 

 dering this phenomenon, you arrived at the 

 same conclusion that I did, you must have 

 believed that Nature had made a mistake, 

 and so have pulled up your plants and re- 

 planted them upside-down. Men and women 

 are but children of a larger growth. They 

 see the tender intellect shooting up in like 

 manner, with the perceptive faculties all alive 

 at top ; and they, too, seem to think that 

 Nature has made a mistake, and so they treat 

 the mind as the child treats his bean-plant, 

 and turn it upside-down to make it grow bet- 

 ter. They bury the promising young buds 

 deep in a musty mold formed of the decay of 

 centuries, under the delusion that out of such 

 debris they may gather some wholesome nour- 

 ishment ; when we know all that they want 

 is the light and warmth of the sun to stimu- 

 late them, and the free air of heaven in which 

 to unfold themselves. What heartless cruelty 

 pursues the little child-martyr every day and 

 all the day long, at home or at school alike ; 

 in this place bidden to mind his book and 

 not to look out of the window in that, told 

 to hold his tongue and to remember that chil- 

 dren must not ask questions ! . . . 



Among the great promoters of scientific 

 progress, how large is the number who may, 

 in strict propriety, be said to have educated 

 themselves. Take, for illustration, such fa- 

 miliar names as those of William Herschel, 

 and Franklin, and Rumford, and Eitten- 

 house, and Davy, and Faraday, and Henry. 

 Is it not evident that Nature herself, to those 

 who will follow her teachings, is a better 

 guide to the study of her own phenomena 

 than all the training of our schools ? And is 

 not this because Nature invariably begins 

 with the training of the observing faculties % 

 Is it not because the ample page which she 

 spreads out before the learner is written all 

 over, not with words, but with substantial 

 realities ? Is it not because her lessons reach 

 beyond the simple understanding and im- 

 press the immediate intuition? That what 

 she furnishes is something better than barren 

 information passively received it is positive 

 knowledge actively gathered ? 



If, then, in the future we would fit man 

 properly to cultivate Nature, and not leave 

 scientific research, as, to a great extent, we 

 have done heretofore, to the hazard of chance, 

 we must cultivate her own processes. Our 

 earliest teachings must be things, and not 

 words. The objects first presented to the 

 tender mind must be such as address the 

 senses, and such as it can grasp. Store it 



first abundantly with the material of thought, 

 and the process of thinking will be sponta- 

 neous and easy. 



This is not to depreciate the value of oth- 

 er subjects, or of other modes of culture. It 

 is only to refer them to their proper place. 

 Grammar, philology, logic, human history, 

 belles-lettres, philosophy all these things will 

 be seized with avidity and pursued with pleas- 

 ure by a mind judiciously prepared to receive 

 them. On this point we shall do well to learn, 

 and believe we are beginning to learn some- 

 thing, from contemporary peoples upon the 

 Continent of Europe. 



Object-teaching is beginning to be intro- 

 duced, if only sparingly, into our primary 

 schools. It should be so introduced universal- 

 ly. And in all our schools, but especially in 

 those in which the foundation is laid of what 

 is called a liberal education, the knowledge 

 of visible things should be made to precede 

 the study of the artificial structure of lan- 

 guage and the intricacies of grammatical rules 

 and forms. 



The knowledge of visible things I repeat 

 these words that I may emphasize them, and, 

 when I repeat them, observe that I mean 

 knowledge of visible things, and not informa- 

 tion about them knowledge acquired by the 

 learner's own conscious efforts, not crammed 

 into his mind in set forms of words out of 

 books. 



But how do onr colleges stand as a 

 body in regard to these explicit require- 

 ments of educational progress ? Their 

 whole power is exerted to defeat them. 

 They force Latin and Greek upon all the 

 preparatory schools; they make gram- 

 mar and verbal studies, which should 

 belong later in the course, imperative in 

 early years ; they supplement the clas- 

 sics by mathematics, and give the go-by 

 to all the natural sciences. There is not 

 the slightest provision in the studies in- 

 troductory to college for any cultiva- 

 tion of the mind by immediate inter- 

 course with the facts of nature. We 

 have before us " A Comparative View of 

 the Requisitions for Admission to Rep- 

 resentative American Colleges, correct 

 to 1880-'81," printed in the prospectus 

 of the Berkeley School of New York 

 city. Latin, Greek, and mathematics 

 are of course the staple studies, and the 

 amount of requirement in these sub- 



