120 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with which its elements unite. Unless he is brought into actual con- 

 tact with the facts, and taught to observe and bring them into relation 

 with the science evolved from them, it were better that instruction in 

 science should be left alone, for one of the first lessons he must learn 

 from science is not to trust in authority, but to demand proof for each 

 asseveration. . . . Such education," he added, " cannot be begun too 

 early. The whole yearnings of a child are for the natural phenomena 

 around, until they are smothered by the ignorance of the parent, 

 lie is a young Linnajus, roaming over the fields in search of flowers. 

 He is a young conchologist or mineralogist, gathering shells or pebbles 

 on the sea-shore. He is an ornithologist, and goes bird-nesting ; an 

 ichthyologist, and catches fish. Glorious education in nature all this, 

 if the teacher knew how to direct and utilize it. . . . Do not suppose 

 that I wish the primary school to be a lecture-theatre for all or any of 

 the 'ologies.' All the science which would be necessary to give a 

 boy a taste of the principles involved in his calling, and an incitement 

 to pursue them in his future life, might be given in illustration of 

 other subjects. ... I deny that the utilitarian view of primary edu- 

 cation is ignoble. The present system is truly ignoble, for it sends 

 the working-man into the world in gross ignorance of everything he 

 is to do in it. The utilitarian system is noble, in so far as it treats 

 him as an intelligent being, who ought to understand the nature of his 

 occupation and the principles involved in it. The great advantage of 

 directing education toward the pursuits and occupations of the people, 

 instead of wasting it on dismal verbalism, is that, while it elevates 

 the individual, it at the same time gives security for the future pros- 

 perity of the nation." 



In another address, delivered a few days afterward, he spoke of the 

 " Inosculation of the Arts and Sciences," or how they mutually grow 

 out of and build w.'^ one another, and of the intimate union between 

 science and labor. " It is not science," he said, " which creates labor 

 or the industries flowing from it. On the contrary, science is the 

 progeny of the industrial arts on the one side, and on the other of 

 the experiences and perceptions which gradually attach themselves to 

 these arts, so that the evolution of science from the arts is the first 

 circumstance of human progress, which, however, quickly receives de- 

 velopment and impulse from the science thus evolved. Industrial 

 Labor, then, is one of the parents, and Science the child ; but, as often 

 happens in the world, the son becomes richer than the father, and 

 raises his position. . . . Science does not depend upon facts alone, but 

 upon the increase of mental conceptions which can be brought to bear 

 upon them ; these conceptions increase as slowly as the common knowl- 

 edge derived from experience — they both descend by inheritance from 

 one generation to another, until science in its progress becomes a pre- 

 vision of new knowledge by light reflected from the accumulated com- 

 mon knowledge of the past. In the progress of time common knowl- 



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