2 4 THE NA TUKE-STUD Y RE VIE W \ 4 



play and kindergarten games; since these are given to the child 

 to furnish him, through his own personal experiences in living 

 them, with concrete pictures of relations which he is to meet in 

 his later life; thus preparing the way for a real comprehension 

 of those relations, and an appreciation of their actuality. Much 

 of the unreality and the emptiness of modern, religious, organized 

 life is doubtless due co the failure of science to have stored the 

 mind of the modern man with suitable concrete pictures of law 

 and order during his early education. 



Hence, in closing, let me urge this newly-born society to define 

 its purpose clearly and with precision, and to take suitable account 

 of the two fundamental principles here set forth. "Science is 

 problem-solving." "The results of scientific work should furnish 

 the mind with a real, ordered, concrete basis for real, organized, 

 abstract thought." These are, for the cohorts of science, the 

 two hands of Moses; and so long as we hold these aloft, we need 

 not fear, in any struggle we may be called upon to enter, lest 

 Israel will not prevail. 



This Nature-Study Society, therefore, has before it a research 

 problem in education to be solved by the methods of science. It 

 should enter the work in true scientific spirit; should inaugurate 

 experiments to test its working hypotheses; should modify these 

 hypotheses, if necessary, by the results of its experiments ; and so 

 should endeavor to organize a unified course of scientific in- 

 struction, extending from the kindergarten to the graduate 

 school, — a course that would preserve as its most valuable asset 

 the research spirit in the students, and would at the same time 

 fill the mind of every one of them with such clear and powerful 

 pictures of the organization and the law-abiding system of 

 Nature that intellectual and ethical chaos would no longer be 

 possible. 



In conclusion it, must be noted that the organization of the 

 science work as here set forth carries with it the solution of the 

 problem of the adequate preparation of the teacher. For if the 

 science work from the kindergarten on is so conducted as to pre- 

 serve the research spirit, all that will be required of a teacher 

 will be that he take enough work in science to have mastered his 

 subject-matter to a sufficient degree. 



