50 THE LIFE OF SCIENCE 



economy. But first of all they want to know "how all that was 

 built up/' and their minds instinctively recoil from a dogmatism 

 that is still arbitrary to them. 



It remains arbitrary indeed so long as the reasons that justify 

 and render natural one arrangement in preference to any other 

 have not been explained. I know that it is not easy to teach be- 

 ginners in this way, but at least the deficiences of the present 

 methods could be tempered, and I do not ask for more. 



Nothing would be more useful from this point of view than to 

 work out some textbooks in which science would be expounded 

 in chronological order; this is indeed a very important task for 

 which Ernst Mach has given us some admirable models. These 

 textbooks would not be employed for elementary study, unless 

 the pupils used them at the same time as others composed along 

 dogmatic lines. Students should be asked to study the latter and 

 read the former. But in my opinion, these historical textbooks 

 would especially stand professors in good stead, by enabling them 

 to illustrate their lessons and make them more intuitive. Oral 

 teaching, more pliable than written teaching, would easily admit 

 of short historical digressions. Would not the students more easily 

 remember the abstract truths that are impressed upon them in 

 ever-increasing quantities, if their memory could lay hold of 

 some live facts? 



But that does not exhaust the pedagogic importance of the 

 history of science. Nothing is better fitted to awaken a pupil's 

 critical sense and to test his vocation than to retrace for him in 

 detail the complete history of a discovery, to show him the tram- 

 mels of all kinds that constantly arise in the inventor's path, to 

 show him also how one surmounts them or evades them, and 

 lastly how one draws closer and closer to the goal without ever 

 reaching it. Besides, this historical initiation would cure the young 

 students of the unfortunate habit of thinking that science began 

 with them. 



Good scientific biographies also have a great educational value; 

 they lead an adolescent's imagination in the best direction. Crit- 



