THE FLOWER OR THE LEAF. 



345 



of cliildren," what danger is there in a " delay " which permits the 

 object to become more deeply graven on the child's mind ? Why is 

 it so "necessary to become familiar with hundreds of specimens" in a 

 given time ? Why not rather with a few, a very few striking and 

 typical forms, around which subsequent knowledge can group itself? 

 The comparison of a multitude of objects in order to abstract their 

 common characters, and thus obtain the generic or class conception, 

 is suited to the scientific but not to the pre-scientitic stage of progress. 

 It does not, therefore, belong to the fruitful moment of first attraction 

 to an object, which, for the adult mind, precedes scientific discovery, 

 and contains the hidden forces which lead to this. Still less does it 

 belong to the first mental efforts of childhood. Early childhood is a 

 period for the differentiation of the details of a universe, which, to the 

 earliest perceptions, appears to consist entirely of homogeneous masses 

 of light and shade. In the first efforts of the mind these masses are 

 broken up and separated from one another, and portions reintegrated 

 into actual individuals. Thus the moon is separated from the window- 

 pane, the child's limbs are integrated into a body, which at last is 

 positively known to be different from other moving forms, etc. It is 

 in accordance with this spontaneous and, indeed, inevitable mode of 

 development of perception that the first educated efforts of perception 

 should be directed toward the more intense individualization of ob- 

 jects, and not to their classification ; toward the thorough appreciation 

 of specific differences rather than to that of generic resemblances. 

 Hence, a second reason for beginning the study of botany — say, rather, 

 the observation of life — with the flower, although more complex, and 

 not with the simpler leaf. It is because the individual differences of 

 the flower are so much more striking, and — as the poets show us — the 

 flower is so much more readily individualized and personified.* 



The period of development with which my " experiment " was 

 concerned may be called the pre-scientific stage of mental existence. 

 It is that during which the mind may be busily occupied in collecting 

 the data for science, but can not itself wield scientific methods. Its 

 efforts should be directed in accordance with scientific principles of 

 psychology, and the knowledge acquired arranged in such orderly se- 

 quence that, when the mind is ripe for them, scientific relations will 

 be readily perceived and understood. But discussion of such relations 

 seems to me entirely premature for the age here considered, and, in- 

 deed, for a much later period. 



Scientific observation is observation of the relations between things. 

 But, before any attempt be made to study these relations, the things 

 themselves should be firmly and clearly apprehended. The different 

 degree of grasp possessed by different minds depends largely upon 



* Trees, however, seem to have occasionally shared the poetic individualization. 

 There is Emerson's *' Pinc-Tree," and " The Pine and the Talm " of Heine, not to speak 

 of " The Fir-Tree " of Hans Andersen ; and who could forget " The Talking Oak " ? 



