SCIENCE IN EDUCATION. 679 



science began to be introduced into our schools, it was still taught in 

 the old or literary fashion. Lectures and lessons were given by 

 masters who got up their information from books, but had no prac- 

 tical knowledge of the subjects they taught. Class-books were 

 written by men equally destitute of a personal acquaintance with 

 any department of science. The lessons were learned by rote, and 

 not infrequently afforded opportunities rather for frolic than for in- 

 struction. Happily, this state of things, though not quite extinct, 

 is rapidly passing away. Practical instruction is everywhere coming 

 into use, while the old-fashioned cut-and-dry lesson-book is giving 

 way to the laboratory, the field excursion, and the school museum. 



It is mainly through the eyes that we gain our knowledge and 

 appreciation of the world in which we live. But we are not all 

 equally endowed with the gift of intelligent vision. On the con- 

 trary, in no respect, perhaps, do we differ more from each other than 

 in our powers of observation. Obviously, a man who has a quick 

 eye to note what passes around him must, in the ordinary affairs of 

 life, stand at a considerable advantage over another man who moves 

 unobservantly on his course. We can not create an observing faculty 

 any more than we can create a memory, but we may do much to de- 

 velop both. This is a feature in education of much more practical 

 and national importance than might be supposed. I suspect that it 

 lies closer than might be imagined to the success of our commercial 

 relations abroad. Our prevalent system of instruction has for genera- 

 tions past done nothing to cultivate the habit of observation, and 

 has thus undoubtedly left us at a disadvantage in comparison with 

 nations that have adopted methods of tuition wherein the observing 

 faculty is regularly trained. With our world-wide commerce we 

 have gone on supplying to foreign countries the same manufactured 

 goods for which our fathers found markets in all quarters of the 

 globe. Our traders, however, now find themselves in competition 

 with traders from other nations who have been trained to better use 

 of their powers of observation, and who, taking careful note of the 

 gradually changing tastes and requirements of the races which they 

 visit, have been quick to report these changes and to take means for 

 meeting them. Thus, in our own centers of trade, we find ourselves 

 in danger of being displaced by rivals with sharper eyes and greater 

 powers of adaptation. 



It is the special function of science to cultivate this faculty of 

 observation. Here in Mason College, from the very beginning of 

 your scientific studies you have been taught to use your eyes, to 

 watch the phenomena that appear and disappear around you, to note 

 the sequence and relation of these phenomena, and thus, as it were, 

 to enter beneath the surface into the very soul of things. You can 



