1 72 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



To attain the best results of study one must become a docile pupil, 

 learning with precision and thoroughness exactly that which the words 

 and language present to him. Taking statements exactly as they are 

 formulated and using words exactly as others have used them before 

 us — only so may be laid the solid foundation on which genuine research 

 can be securely built. 



Investigation Distinct from Study. — Investigation is distinctly an- 

 other mental process from pure study. Its results are different from 

 learning, as different as digestion is from eating, and for its best exer- 

 cise a difference should be made in the training process, and in the 

 objects to which the attention is given. 



Learning has to do with words and language. Investigation deals 

 with meaning, ideas and conceptions. One of the first acts of the 

 investigator, after he has learned to know the thing or phenomenon by 

 its description, consists in transforming the description into new 

 terms. It is like taking a crystal and turning it into a new light in 

 one's hand to see the new reflections due to changed position. 



The attempt to express the conception in different language leads 

 to a fuller realization of that which is contained in the description, as 

 distinguished from the description itself. This result is more easily 

 gained when an actual physical object before the investigator is im- 

 pressing his senses, than when words alone are used. In the field of 

 philosophy and in mathematics, the process of investigation may be car- 

 ried on without a physical object being present, except in imagination. 

 In this case the discipline of the mental faculties is more direct, and 

 for discipline alone it may possibly be better than the laboratory- 

 method. The rudiments of investigation are found in the classical 

 mode of education, as in translating Greek or Latin into English. But 

 investigation methods may be exercised and trained, certainly more 

 easily and with greater pleasure to young minds, when the visible 

 object is before one, as in the laboratory, where it remains constant and 

 can be tested over and over again, while the terms of expressing one's 

 own view of it are gradually perfected. The laboratory is the special 

 place of investigation. 



Pure investigation deals with knowledge already attained; as with 

 study the acquisition of the investigator is an acquirement of facts of 

 common knowledge and is not yet research. Experiments are made 

 not to advance knowledge, only to advance the knowledge of the experi- 

 menter in fields already familiar to the teacher. In the fields of science, 

 with which I am particularly concerned in this discussion, there is this 

 difference between study and investigation, that investigation deals with 

 the objective things as distinguished from the words describing them. 

 Phenomena are but phases of things, and are included within the gen- 

 eral term things, as being together experienced by our senses, inde- 



