STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 189 



due consideration to the best methods for utilizing these faculties. 

 The most important physical question is involved in determining 

 the relative activity and development of the several intellectual 

 powers in the successive periods of life. 



Object lessons learned in childhood are never forgotten. Chil- 

 dren love to study of flowers, and we are but children of larger 

 growth. The capacity or power of the mind is increaaed by its 

 repeated exercise. It is a law that every act of the mind leaves, 

 as a necessary result, an increased power to act in like manner, 

 and to act again. In harmony with the law, the physical feelings 

 may all be cultivated by proper exercise. Applying the definition 

 of education, and the reasonings of psychology, do we find any 

 mental drill in the study of flowers? 



In examining or studying a flower, for instance, the violet or 

 rose, the mind perceives the perfect plan on which it is con- 

 structed. (Nature's plans are always perfect.) Following the 

 law that the mind tends to act again in like manner wherever the 

 same mathematical precision, perfect symmetry of proportion 

 and constant regularity, or exquisite harmony, is presented, in 

 whatever form, the mind instantly perceives it. Hence, not only 

 the student of botany, but of the other sciences, and of mathe- 

 matics, by the laws of association, may find much mental drill in 

 the study of flowers. We are much inclined to view the work- 

 ings of nature from the inside of four walls, and thus to reason 

 and theorize, instead of learning directly from our teacher. 



Over twenty centuries ago, Aristotle instigated this niethod of 

 reasoning. For several hundred years we find this method 

 robbed of its veneration for nature, and perverted by many un- 

 warranted interpretations holding the intellect in thraldom. In 

 the sixteenth century x we find Francis Bacon, with intellect keen 

 enough, with spirit bold enough, to refute the methods taught, 

 to claim it should not be abstract truth, but fruit for which we 

 should aim. We find before Bacon's time scholasticism, like a 

 huge break- water, skirting the sea of thought. For three centuries 

 it had broken the wave of every advancing opinion. But as the 

 fifteenth century drew to its close, the sea gave indications of an 

 approaching storm — the sky was overcast by portentious clouds, 

 wave after wave came rolling shoreward from the ocean of free 

 thought, and at last the surge of the reformation burst with terri- 

 fying roar against this time-worn scholasticism, tumbling it out 

 of the way. Then thought advanced. Why? Because, from 

 henceforth, nature was the teacher. Individually, we need to 

 consider that thought. Goto nature. Study her forms. "Be- 

 hold the lilies of the field ; they toil not, neither do they spin, and 

 yet Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these." 



Is there no moral education in flowers? He who cares for 

 flowers, lives in direct communication with nature. To him she 



