YIRCEOW ON THE TEACHING OF SCIENCE. 



81 



The doctrine of atomicities depends upon the 

 various combinations of the same set of elements 

 with one another. The facts on which it is based 

 may be described without introducing any totally 

 new conceptions ; the nature of the evidence for 

 it may therefore be understood by a pupil at this 

 stage, without any further experiment. I am not, 

 of course, speaking of the training of a specialist, 

 but of that which should form a part of general 

 culture. 



Of these two methods of teaching there can 

 be no doubt that the latter will commend itself 

 to the common-sense of every reasonable man. 

 It insures that the pupil shall learn to do things 

 — that is, either to deal practically with certain 

 objects, or to use in thinking certain concep- 

 tions ; not to think he knows things of which he 

 is really ignorant. And all the time it cultivates 

 a habit of accepting beliefs on the strength of 

 the evidence for them, of preferring true and 

 honest knowledge to sham knowledge. And it 

 secures us against the teaching, as known fact, 

 of that which is not known fact. The only dan- 

 ger in this respect is in the doctrine of molecules ; 

 and here we must impress very carefully on our 

 teachers that they should not miss the important 

 lesson in logic and in scientific procedure involved 

 in the conception of an hypothesis, and in rec- 

 ognizing the imperfection of the evidence which 

 fails to exclude all other hypotheses. 



Now let us go back from this chemical doc- 

 trine of atomicities to the doctrine of evolution. 

 In what form shall we have the doctrine of evo- 

 lution taught to our children ? Certainly not as 

 a dogma to be accepted on the authority of the 

 teacher, evidence for which may be forthcoming 

 afterward. Certainly not at all until our children 

 are competent to understand the nature of the evi- 

 dence for it. Certainly not, therefore, first in its 

 most general form, and afterward in special ap- 

 plications ; but first in those special cases where 

 the evidence is of the simplest kind, most closely 

 related to the facts ; and then, as a consequence 

 of the comparison of these cases, the general 

 doctrine may suggest itself. 



Nevertheless, the teacher, knowing what is to 

 come in the end, may so select the portions of 

 various subjects which he teaches at an earlier 

 stage, that they shall supply in a later stage a 

 means of understanding and estimating the evi- 

 dence on some question of evolution. He may, 

 for instance, pay special attention to hands and 

 feet when he is teaching biology, because these 

 parts are of great importance in the questions of 

 the evolution of the horse and of the relationship 



78 



of man with the apes. Or in teaching sociology, 

 which is all about papa and mamma, clothes, 

 houses, shops, policemen, halfpence, and such 

 like, he may specially single out those points in 

 which civilized folk differ from barbaric and sav- 

 age folk, in order to prepare the way for the his- 

 toric and prehistoric evidence which proves that 

 we are a risen race and not a fallen one. In 

 other cases the doctrine of evolution may guide 

 the teacher in his methods. So much as the psy- 

 chologist may already infer with safety about the 

 evolution of mind will lead him to found all ab- 

 stract notions on previously - formed concrete 

 ones ; to build his houses out of carefully-made 

 bricks, instead of trying to pull bricks out of 

 castles in the air. And he will endeavor to give 

 clearness and solidity to the dawning moral sense 

 by leading to the easy observation that the af- 

 fairs of the nursery or the Kindergarten cannot 

 go on unless we tell the truth and let alone other 

 folk's things. The affairs should, of course, be 

 such that a failure in them would seem to the 

 child a calamity too portentous to be thought 

 about. 



In fact, as Haeckel says, the effect of the doc- 

 trine of evolution upon teaching and the methods 

 of teaching cannot fail to be enormous and wide- 

 spread, quite independently of the direct teach- 

 ing of any portions of the doctrine itself. 



Let us now go on to examine, in respect of 

 their fitness for education, certain other doctrines 

 mentioned by Virchow, taking next the doctrine 

 of spontaneous generation. 



" If you ask me," says Tyndall, " whether 

 there exists the least evidence to prove that any 

 form of life can be developed out of matter inde- 

 pendently of antecedent life, my reply is, that evi- 

 dence considered directly conclusive by many has 

 been adduced, and that, were we to follow a com- 

 mon example, and accept testimony because it falls 

 in with our belief, we should eagerly close with 

 the evidence referred to. But there is in the true 

 man of science a desire stronger than the wish to 

 have his beliefs upheld — namely, the desire to have 

 them true. And this stronger wish causes him to 

 reject the most plausible support, if he has reason 

 to suspect that it is vitiated by error. Those to 

 whom I refer as having studied this question, be- 

 lieving the evidence offered in favor of ' sponta- 

 neous generation ' to be thus vitiated, cannot ac- 

 cept it. They know full well that the chemist now 

 prepares from inorganic matter a vast array of sub- 

 stances which were some time ago regarded as the 

 sole products of vitality. They are intimately ac- 

 quainted with the structural power of matter, as 

 evidenced in the phenomena of crystallization. 

 They can justify scientificallytheir belief 'in its po- 



