SCIENCE AS AN INSTRUMENT OF EDUCATION 257 



chemistry, should follow. It can not well be given before the 

 period of youth, and should be associated with at least an elemen- 

 tary degree of knowledge of mathematics. Such teaching, prop- 

 erly presented, is adapted in the highest degree to shaping the in- 

 telligence and morals of the young man ; because it furnishes him 

 at once the precise idea of positive truth, that of the fact proved 

 a posteriori, and the most general notion of natural law, or the 

 relation between particular facts, which is determined not by rea- 

 son or dialectics but by observation. Truth thus imposes itself 

 with the irresistible force of an objective necessity, independently 

 of our desires and our will. Nothing is better adapted than such 

 demonstration to give the mind that modesty, seriousness, stead- 

 fastness, and clearness of convictions which raise it above the 

 suggestions of vanity or personal interest, and are closely con- 

 nected with the idea of duty. The habit of reasoning and reflect- 

 ing on things, inflexible respect for the truth, and the obligation 

 of always yielding to the necessary laws of the external world, 

 communicate an indelible stamp to the mind. They accustom it 

 to respect the laws of society as well as those of Nature, and to 

 conceive of the rights of another and respect for him as a form, 

 of one's own duty and of his own personal independence. 



Thus science plays a most important part in the mental and 

 moral education of man. Besides forming useful citizens it 

 makes men free from the prejudices and superstitions of former 

 times. It teaches them how to combat the fatal forces of Nature 

 by labor and will power, resting on the knowledge and direction 

 of the natural laws, rather than by mystic fancies. Hence science 

 forms free spirits, energetic and conscientious, more efficaciously 

 than any literary and rhetorical direction. When scientific edu- 

 cation shall have produced all its effects, politics too will be trans- 

 formed, as industry has already deeply been. Both will become, 

 to use a familiar term, experimental. 



Furthermore, and contemporaneously with this recognition of 

 the laws of phenomena, observation and experiment give power 

 over Nature. Through this fact, more than any other, youth can 

 be engaged and drawn by an unconquerable enthusiasm into a 

 really scientific education. To control physical and moral evil in 

 industrial as well as economical life, to strive to diminish suf- 

 fering, poverty, and misery of every kind, and to make the effort 

 by virtue of the immanent laws of things, was the generous aim 

 of philosophers of the eighteenth century, and they depended upon 

 scientific conceptions, as they unceasingly proclaimed, for the at- 

 tainment of it. The same end should be sought in our new edu- 

 cation, and thereby science will become fully educational. 



Scientific education has therefore its own peculiar virtue, and 

 it is by a deep misconception of its character and effect that the 



TOL. LI. 20 



