128 SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION: v 



carefully and conscientiously, and yon may make 

 sure that, however scanty may be the measure of 

 information which you have poured into the boy's 

 mind, you have created an intellectual habit of 

 priceless value in practical life. 



One is constantly asked. When should this 

 scientific education be commenced? I should say 

 with the dawn of intelligence. As I have already 

 said, a child seeks for information about matters of 

 physical science as soon as it begins to talk. The 

 first teaching it wants is an object-lesson of one 

 sort or another; and as soon as it is fit for syste- 

 matic instruction of any kind, it is fit for a modi- 

 cum of science. 



People talk of the difficulty of teaching young 

 children such matters, and in the same breath 

 insist upon their learning their Catechism, which 

 contains propositions far harder to comprehend 

 than anything in the educational course I have 

 proposed. Again: I am incessantly told that we, 

 who advocate the introduction of science in 

 schools, make no allowance for the stupidity of the 

 average boy or girl; but, in my belief, that stupid- 

 ity, in nine cases out of ten, " ^/, non nascitur,'' 

 and is developed by a long process of parental and 

 pedagogic repression of the natural intellectual 

 appetites, accompanied by a persistent attempt to 

 create artificial ones for food which is not only 

 tasteless, but essentially indigestil)le. 



Those who urge the difficulty of instructing 



