THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION 507 



to other subjects? What is so tremendously important about natural 

 science laboratory work is that a student must be thinking all the time 

 about the same matters, not from one but from ten interesting points 

 of view. He is not merely observing, he is measuring, he is computing, 

 he is reasoning; he has to write out descriptions of what he sees and 

 does, and he thinks then of his spelling and grammar; he has to sketch; 

 he has to read books about what other people have done before him on 

 the same subject, and also for statistics. He learns the value of a bit 

 of work done in a clean honest way, and when he gets some more 

 experience he glows with the feeling that he has really added to the 

 knowledge of the world. He is a discoverer, and he feels the emotion of 

 Cortez ! It is marvelous the alteration which has occurred in the 

 mental attitude of the common average boy. Instead of feeling that he 

 is a degraded slave he feels the emotion of his childhood returning to 

 him. He once made the great discovery at the age of six that the back 

 garden was inhabited by fairies and lions and Indians and pirates. He 

 was the Caliph Haroun Alraschid for a while. And now, after a 

 wretched life at Latin and Euclid, a new revelation is vouchsafed to him, 

 and as he gathers years he finds that nature is placidly willing to let 

 him steal her secrets little by little, one by one, secrets that are gradually 

 changing men from the bewilderment and spirit possession of the Middle 

 Ages ; so that at length he enters into complete communion with nature 

 and rollicks with her, and quarrels with her, and loves her more and 

 more until he dies. And his reasoning power has been growing all the 

 time, so that more and more he understands complex things, for, after 

 an experimental study of story-books, he probably entered the kingdom 

 of Shakespeare at the age of fourteen. Things requiring memory can 

 be learned only in early life — weights and measures, the multiplication 

 table, languages. He knows games involving spelling. But, over and 

 above all these, he has from infancy repeated all sorts of poetry long 

 before he could enjoy much more of it than the jingle of its rhyme. 



Education consists in the development of a man from his earliest 

 day, and does not cease till he dies. Any thoughtful man must see that 

 there is no science so important as that of education, the preparation 

 of children of this generation to be the citizens, the rulers of the country, 

 in the next generation. The whole future of our Empire depends upon 

 the education of the children. By the study of this science we hope to 

 improve teaching so as to make future citizens not only to have more 

 knowledge and more skill, but to make them wiser than the people of 

 the present or the past. 



Early training determines what later training ought to be. Let us 

 consider what the early training of a boy ought to be. In his very 

 early days nature has provided that his education shall proceed very 

 rapidly by observation and experiment, and the only teaching needed is 

 through careful nursing and affection. He teaches himself, and he loves 



