THE FLOWER OR THE LEAF. 343 



first, merely because it is more showy. The sensuous pleasure derived 

 from its contemplation is superficial as compared with the deeper in- 

 tellectual pleasure of tracing the scientific relations of the leaf. 



5. Finally, it is an axiom that can not be disputed, that mental 

 effort should advance from the simple subject to the more complex. 

 The leaf is much simpler than the flower, and is therefore much better 

 suited for beginning the study of botany. 



To consider these propositions in order : 1 and 2. In regard to the 

 first I am substantially in entire agreement with Miss Youmans, as in- 

 deed is shown by the examples given in the " Experiment," No attempt 

 was made to really study the physiology of plants ; while the external 

 and obvious characters of the most conspicuous portions, the parts, 

 namely, of the flower, were studied, or rather submitted to a prolonged 

 contemplation. Only, upon first crossing the threshold of this new 

 world, the most characteristic facts which distinguished it were pointed 

 out in a manner designed to make as profound an impression as possible 

 upon the imagination. These are the facts of life and growth and death, 

 the germination of the seed, the influence of surrounding media, the 

 circumstance that the plant offers a constant succession of changing 

 phenomena, and thus was an entirely different object from a stone, or 

 a mathematical figui-e, or a rainbow. Now, while it is i)erfectly true 

 that the term " evolution " and the vast series of ideas and masses of 

 facts suggested by it can not be rendered comprehensible to a child, 

 and that it would be the grossest pedantry to even mention it to him, 

 yet the great fact of growth and incessant change in living organisms 

 is perfectly appreciable through impressions made on his senses, and is 

 well fitted to arouse in him a lively interest and curiosity. The fact 

 of life — the essential nature of life as a series of incessant changes — is 

 perhaps the most fundamental fact with which the mind will ever be- 

 come acquainted. It is also among the most primitive and earliest 

 encountered ; the mode of impression it makes upon the mind per- 

 manently stamps all the thoughts and systems of thought the mind 

 ever entertains. For, whence spring all religions, and cosmogonies, 

 and even ethical systems, but from the primitive thoughts held upon 

 life and death ? How many immoralities depend upon false estimates 

 of life, of its nature, its values ! How many erroneous theories of 

 life might be corrected by the early habit of direct, unbiased observa- 

 tion of living things ! In the building of a brain, the earliest ideas 

 always remain the most powerful, because upon them the entire men- 

 tal structure is destined to repose ; or, since the mind is a living organ- 

 ism, it were better to compare its primitive ideas, not to the founda- 

 tion-stones of a house, but to the central medullary rings of a tree. 

 What is on the surface while the plant is young soon becomes central 

 by the successive superposition of new impressions, the new circles 

 being constantly intersected by rays prolonged from the central pith. 

 The selection of the earliest ideas and impressions is therefore of the 



