SCHOOL-CULTURE OF OBSERVING FACULTIES. 171 



servatioas as they may have correctly made. When their course is 

 not taken at utter random, too often it is guided by blind empiricism, 

 or else is only a prolonged game of " follow your leader." The boy 

 was not trained to observe and to think for himself when the subjects 

 he had to examine and to think about were comparatively simple, and 

 BOW the grown man will not or can not do it, or, if he does actually 

 try, he is as likely to go astray as to go right, for he now must begin 

 on what is extremely complex. 



If, then, our school instruction aims at preparing pupils for the 

 duties of after-life, however important we may deem those forms of 

 hearing and speaking which we call reading and writing, even more 

 important ought we to consider observation and inference and rea- 

 soning therefrom. That man is best equipped for the mental work 

 which is more or less the business of every one from the cradle to the 

 grave, who is able to use all his senses aright, who best knows all the 

 precautions that must be taken to guard against misinterpreting the evi- 

 dence of those senses, and against wrong reasoning from that evidence ; 

 who best knows how to trace thought backward to the grounds of 

 belief and forward to discovery and verification. That is the best 

 education that fosters the mother of freedom — independence of 

 thought. 



I have spoken of the insufficiency of reading and writing as a means 

 of education, because there are still among us some who declare that 

 these arts, with a little knowledge of ciphering, are all that should be 

 taught in our public schools, are all the education that should be given 

 to the children of the people ; all the training for the battle of life, for 

 the " struggle for existence," that should be provided for those who 

 will have to bear the brunt of that battle, who will have to wage the 

 fiercest contests in that strife. By all means, teach the children to 

 read, teach them to write, teach them to cipher, but also train them 

 in those mental processes which all men have to employ somehow or 

 other every hour of their waking life, in every transaction of their 

 daily business. Train them to do well and to know that they are do- 

 ing well what they must do if they are to live at all. 



But how is a child to be trained in these mental processes ? In 

 exactly the same way that he is trained in any art, in any handicraft. 

 A man learns to play on the violin by playing on the violin, and no 

 amount of directions without actual practice will make him proficient. 

 So a child must be taught to observe by observing, to draw inferences 

 by inferring, and to reason correctly by reasoning correctly ; but if he 

 is to do these things well he must practice them at first under the 

 guidance of a master in these arts, and must have before him models 

 of perfection in them. Now, Science presents us with the very best 

 examples of accurate and discriminative observation, and of inference 

 therefrom ; it begins with the study of the very simplest phenomena, 

 and advances its investigations step by step to a complete and exhaust- 



