198 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



chew, the stronger grows the eater. Canned science as a steady diet 

 is as unwholesome for the growing mind as canned fruits and vegeta- 

 bles for the growing body. The wise teacher imitates the method of 

 Nature, who has but one answer for all questions : " Find it out for 

 yourself, and you will then know it better than if I were to tell you 

 beforehand." 



But who can be a wise teacher who has not been wisely taught ? 

 The spirit of this scientific age favors a universal manufacture of con- 

 densed milk to ease and cheapen the toil of bringing up its infants. It 

 finds the bottle of literature more convenient than the breast of Nature. 

 It prefers a large family of puny children to a few young heroes. The 

 stalwart ancients exposed their unfit oflFspring to the wolves ; we mod- 

 erns exhaust the resources of art to preserve their worthless and pain- 

 ful lives. 



This is the spirit which invents a thousand futile plans for com- 

 pacting the universe to a size so small, and a shape so simple, that it 

 can be grasped without much effort by the tiniest and feeblest hands. 

 Will it be an unpardonable crime for me to say that I recognize the 

 same spirit in the present popular rage for an over-classification, unifi- 

 cation, and simj^lification of science ; for ultra-symmetrical formulae 

 and excessive uniformity in nomenclature ; with an avowed reference 

 to ease of learning and convenience of teaching, the saving of time in 

 the acquisition of facts, and the diminution of brain-waste in collating 

 them for use ; in one word, to the making of science easy, despite 

 the inexorable decree of Nature, that it always shall be and always 

 ought to be diflicult ? For the genius of the creation is visibly hostile 

 to that uniformity, symmetry, and orderly simplicity which the text- 

 book endeavors to establish. No logical consistency for her ! No 

 stiffening of the fact-producing energies into fact formularies Avill she 

 endure. Hardly has a manual issued from the press, but it is mutilated 

 by her Puckish fingers. No sooner has some school of theorists erected 

 a stately structure in simple grandeur, than it is shattered by the light- 

 ning of a new revelation. There is no rest, no peace, in our believing. 

 Our libraries contain little else than such spoiled palimpsests. The 

 broad fields of science are covered with such ruins ; and those who 

 have grown old in traveling far and wide across them would find little 

 cause for singing paeans to the exploits of science were it not for the 

 fact that the function of science is not to organize Nature, but by the 

 laborious study of Nature to organize the human mind and inform it 

 with the very genius of Nature, original, unsymmetrical, indefinable, 

 unclassifiable, changing its attitudes and operations every instant, and 

 escaping easily from all the toils of scholastic unification which we 

 spread for it. The work of the student can not be simplified, can not 

 be made easy, if it is not to fail in its great purpose, the production of 

 a genuine man of science. The foolish nurse thinks it her duty to 

 carry the child always in her arms ; but the test of a good education 



