20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



this address because it seems to me to be in the main so perfectly 

 in harmony with our most recent knowledge in brain physiology 

 and in psychology. Just as the child begins life by investigation 

 with its senses and its muscles, so must this method be followed 

 to the end. This is the scientific method — i. e., it is founded on 

 science. The aimless movements of the infant must be gradually 

 replaced by movements with a definite purpose, and its chance 

 sensations by sensations gathered with a definite object. Rightly 

 understood these objects constitute the raison d'etre or purpose of 

 manual training, laboratory work, and all kindred methods. It 

 would appear that we can not follow Nature's method without 

 combining muscular movements and the use of the senses. Nat- 

 urally these develop together, as has already been shown. 



What shall we say, then, of educational methods — a fearful 

 abuse of the term — which, instead of permitting of this free and 

 natural development, directly thwart it ? In the past the whole 

 development of the child has been sacrificed in no small degree 

 to the three Rs. One might be led to suppose that life was made 

 up of reading, writing, and arithmetic. As a matter of fact, they 

 enter but little into it. Life is made up of feeling, thinking, and 

 acting, which only incidentally involve the three Rs. 



The germ or principle of manual training, like that of nearly 

 everything else that is good in education, is found in the kinder- 

 garten. All that we have in our modern laboratories, colleges, 

 workshops, etc., exists in that wonderful method. 



For a beautiful and successful illustration of the natural 

 method applied in a somewhat different way, I refer you to the 

 January and February numbers of The Popular Science Monthly 

 of the present year. 



When once we grasp the true conception of education by realiz- 

 ing that the very object of existence is to attain, as nearly as pos- 

 sible, to a perfect development, which, of course, implies the dis- 

 charge of all duties and obligations, many problems can be speedily 

 solved in a general way. Much judgment and skill will always 

 be required to accomplish the end in view with the means at hand ; 

 or, to put it in a more scientific way, to adapt the organism and 

 the environment to the best advantage. It has been abundantly 

 proved, by the history of education and human affairs as a whole, 

 that with a theory utterly wrong people do not generally fall upon 

 right methods of action; and they never do so when work is to 

 be systematically performed, as in the case of our education in 

 this country for the last thirty years at least. My own element- 

 ary education was conducted in what was at that period consid- 

 ered the best school in one of the most progressive cities educa- 

 tionally in this country, yet in the light in which I now see I 

 would have been a great deal better without much of what was 



