164 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



A CACTUS ELEVEN FEET IN DIAMETER. 



The Truthfulness of Nature. 



The rocks and shells, and the frogs 

 and lilies always tell the absolute truth. 

 Association with these, under right 

 direction, will build up a habit of truth- 

 fulness, which the lying story of the 

 cherry-tree is powerless to effect. If 

 history is to be made an agency for 

 moral training, it must become a nature 

 study. It must be the study of original 

 documents. When it is pursued in this 

 way i: has the value of other nature- 

 studies. But it is carried on under 

 great limitations. Its manuscripts are 

 scarce, while every leaf on the tree is 

 an original document in botany. When 

 a thousand are used, or used up, the 

 archives of nature are just as full as 

 ever. 



From the intimate affinity with the 

 problems of life, the problems of nature- 

 study derive a large part of their value. 

 Because life deals with realities, the 

 visible agencies of the overmastering 

 fates, it is well that our children should 

 study the real, rather than the conven- 

 tional. Let them come in contact with 

 the inevitable, instead of the made-up, 

 with laws and forces that can be traced 

 in objects and forms actually before 

 them, rather than with those which 

 seem arbitrary or which remain inscrut- 

 able. To use concrere illustrations, 

 there is a greater moral value in the 

 study of magnets than in the distinc- 

 tion between shall and will, in the study 

 of birds or rocks than that of diacrit- 



ical marks or postage- stamps, in the 

 development of a frog than in the longer 

 or shorter catechism, in the study of 

 things than in the study of abstrac- 

 tions. There is doubtless a law under- 

 lying abstractions and conventionali- 

 ties, a law of catechisms, or postage- 

 stamps, or grammatical solecisms, but 

 it does not appear to the student. Its 

 consideration does not strengthen his 

 impression of inevitable truth. There 

 is the greatest normal value, as well 

 as intellectual value, in the inde- 

 pendei ce that >.omes from knowing, and 

 knowing that one knows and why one 

 knows. This gives spinal column to 

 character, which is not found in the 

 flabby goodness of imitation or the hys- 

 teric virtue of suggestion. Knowing 

 what is right, and why it is right, before 

 doing it is the basis of greatness of 

 character. — Nature-Study and Moral 

 Culture, by Pres. David Starr Jordan. 



The Natural Scientist a Religious 

 Teacher. 



Truly, he who unfolds to us the way 

 in which God works through the world 

 of phenomena may well be called the best 

 of religious teachers. Tn the study of 

 the organic world, no less than in the 

 study of the starry heavens, is it true 

 that "day unto day uttereth speech, and 

 night unto night showeth knowledge." 

 —John Fiske in a memorial lecture on 

 Charles Darwin. 



