THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the natural or scientific method in 

 Education.* 



Br WESLEY MILLS, M. A., M. D., F. K. S. C, 



PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY IN MC GILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL. 



EDUCATIONAL methods seem to have been devised in the 

 past more to meet the real or fancied requirements of prac- 

 tical life than with any clear reference to the constitution of the 

 human mind, and this has been owing in no small measure to the 

 reflex influence of public opinion. The school was, and by many 

 still is, regarded as a place where that is to be learned, and pretty 

 much that only, which it is thought will enable the pupil to earn a 

 livelihood or prove successful in the struggle for material things ; 

 and of course, so far as it goes, this view is of vital importance. 

 Unhappily, it overlooked the highest purpose of life, and so re- 

 garded it is a severe commentary on the character of our age. 

 It has proved a short-sighted policy. It has defeated even its 

 own ends. That can only be a sound theory of education which 

 takes into account, what Nature herself always does, the organism 

 and the environment. Why is our age so advanced in science ? 

 The human brain is essentially the same sort of a mechanism it 

 always was, within the knowledge of men. The change is due to 

 difference in method. The moderns have achieved their great 

 results by the scientific method, the Baconian method of induc- 

 tion, or, as we usually say now, the experimental method. 



Education has given us the results of a series of experiments, 

 and we are trying others to-day ; and at this point I would like to 

 insist that educational questions can only be settled by experi- 

 ment. Many theories that looked fair have proved delusive when 

 actually tested by experience. But one thing is perfectly certain : 

 any theory or any practice which does not square with the organi- 

 zation of man and the nature of his surroundings or environment, 

 will be a failure just in so far as it falls short of meeting both. 

 The difficulty is to know the nature of our own organization, and 

 knowing that, to adapt it to our environment, or, as we usually 

 say, to our circumstances. Allow me to use the term environ- 

 ment because it applies to other animals than man, and I desire 

 to give my treatment of the subject as broad a basis as possible. 

 From the time that men began to think they studied themselves, 

 and long ago the Greek wisely asserted that to know one's self 

 was the sum of all wisdom ; and, of course, in the widest sense, 

 for a man to know himself is to comprehend his relations to the 

 entire universe. 



* The main portions of an address delivered under the auspices of the Royal Society of 

 Canada, at its annual meeting in Ottawa, in May, 1892. 



