22 MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



the bodily organs of the sense.s. His means of learning are: first, his 

 own observations; second, inductions from them; third, the testing of 

 these b}- experience; fourth, deductions from approved inductions; 

 fifth, queries from others — and well do we know his insatiable curiosity. 

 From him nothing is hid and nothing is too high, nothing too deep for his 

 search. It is always "How?" and "AVhy?" The '•\Muit?'" he usually an- 

 swers for himself. 



Observation is a means of education that is insufficiently appreciated. 

 The tendency of our educational methods has l»een to discount it and 

 to i^ut the i>remium upon verbal reproduction. I do not refer to 

 memoriter work. That is happily becoming extinct, but the repro- 

 duction of ideas not our own, though in our own language, is but a step 

 removed. Only as w^e learn to see and to interpret the impressions borne 

 in upon us by our senses do we really best gain in power of thought. 

 Observation is in itself good, but when to this is added (rather not taken 

 awajj the inquiring mind, its value becomes many times multiplied. 



Careful observation and careful develoi)menf of the power of obser- 

 vation affords a tool of priceless worth. This it is that stimulates rapid 

 thought, that trains one to meet the unexpected emergency, that relates 

 the wh(»le to its parts and its parts to the whole. It is said that Robert 

 Houdin had so trained himself that after a single sweeping glance he 

 could name all the articles in a shop window. This jwwer it is that 

 enables the wily antagonist to foresee and meet the attack of his op- 

 ponent on the football field. 



How many of us "see" the letters in a printed word? Yet the trained 

 proof reader will detect a misplaced letter in the most cursory scan- 

 ning of a word. The days of "a, b, c," as intellectual food for babes 

 seems to have passed, yet the substitution of the present fad, the "word 

 method" presents the same difficulties, many of them in an aggravated 

 form, and though progress may be apparently faster, as by absorbing 

 more highly concentrated foods, the mental digestion is not thereby 

 strengthened. It has been a source of anuizement and of sorrow to 

 me that so many students come up to college unable to spell. Many 

 pronounce words without any adequate idea of their par-ts, and in this 

 we see the defects of the system, if system it may be called. It is 

 wrongly based, as it demands a more complex observation and that with- 

 out an adequate and necessary training. 



With observation and as an aid and test should go representation 

 of the thing observed. Careful study attended by careful drawing 

 weld the idea and the form together. Let no one be discouraged at 

 fancied inability to draw. The trouble is not Avitli the hand, but the 

 eye. One can draw anything that he can accurately see. A thing half 

 seen is a thing virtually unseen. A thing observed in its entirety and 

 in its relations is of abiding worth. The wdiole in parts and the parts 

 in relation to the whole is the key to accurate knowledge. Improve 

 the observation and the manual dexterity will follow fast. Slij)shod 

 observation and slipshod rei)roduction lead inevitably to slipshod modes 

 of thought and slack modes of thought to deteriorated mentality and 

 I)erverted morality. 



Thus it is that in our laboratories we continually dwell on repre- 

 sentation of the object which is studied. Not that our pupils may learn 

 to draw, but that thev mav surelv see. Onlv as definite observations 



