THE STUDY OF THE RELATION'S OF THINGS. 359 



to the relatively complex. The whole process is one of building 

 simpler elements into moi'e complicated relations, and it goes on just 

 the same in the minds of children as of adults. The increase of 

 knowledge, the increase of faculty, the increase of mental power, all 

 resolve themselves into a finer discrimination, a greater clearness of 

 perception, and a wider grasp of the relations among objects of 

 thought. The mind can not be worked backward because its pro- 

 cesses are organically determined ; and every step of increasing intel- 

 ligence is a step of increasing complication. These considerations are 

 decisive as to the main issue of the present controversy. 



Mrs. Jacobi repeatedly affirms a " pre-scientific stage " of mental 

 development ; and her whole case depends upon the validity of this 

 position, and what she means by it. She indicates her idea of what 

 it is by saying : " Scientific observation is observation of the relations 

 between things ; but before any attempt be made to study these rela- 

 tions the things themselves should be firmly and clearly apprehended." 

 But it has been shovm that this is not possible. Neither children nor 

 anybody else can apprehend things apart from their relations ; they 

 know them either vaguely or clearly, partially or fully, only by per- 

 ceiving their relations. Mrs. Jacobi's distinguishing mark of the " pre- 

 scientific stage " thus disappears, and all the reasoning by which she 

 would put off the study of plants in their relations, or with a view to 

 classification to a late period of study, falls to the ground. She says, 

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

 common character, and thus obtain the generic or class conception, is 

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

 The only meaning that can be given to this statement is that there are 

 stages of classification too complex for children at the outset of study ; 

 but it is a grave error to suppose that the properly guided pupil is to 

 come suddenly upon the formidable work of classification as a new 

 task. The child has been classing things from its birth, and in its ear- 

 liest observations upon the simplest parts of plants it enters upon an 

 easy stage of classification, and it is through these exercises that the 

 higher work is gradually reached. The process is continuous. The 

 child from the first has been comparing objects and abstracting their 

 common characters. It matters nothing that at first this action is au- 

 tomatic ; it leads to conscious classing and is of the same nature with it. 

 Progress in the formation of such general ideas as chair, cat, dog, may 

 be clearly seen by the intelligent observer to consist in the comparison 

 of the members of all such groups of objects and an abstraction of their 

 common characters. Of course, this work is imperfect at first. The 

 failures of children in forming correct general notions of some com- 

 plexity was well illustrated by a little boy under three years of age, 

 when his sympathies were appealed to in behalf of the cat he was 

 teasing by the statement that he too was an animal. This he indig- 

 nantly repelled, and, springing to his feet, he caught the skirt of his 



