360 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dress and extending it toward me exclaimed, " See there, I'm not an 

 animal ! " Absence of clothing was thus a common character which 

 he had generalized into the conception of an animal. 



But if the essential mental processes are exactly the same in nature 

 from first to last, in what then does science consist, and where is it to 

 begin ? There is a current notion that science is something different 

 from common knowledge — something especially difficult to be injected 

 late in courses of study ; and Mrs. Jacobi seems to countenance this 

 view. But we have seen that the process of thought is the same in 

 common knowledge as in science. The difference between them is 

 simply this, that the perceptions of relations in ordinary knowledge are 

 loose, vague, and inaccurate, while it is the office of science to make 

 them more careful, clear, and exact. It is simply a question of degree, 

 and we must assume that science begins at the point where the teach- 

 er intervenes to guide the mental processes of the child, and make them 

 more accurate and truthful. This work should be commenced sooner 

 than has been generally supposed ; and the view that the rudiments of 

 all science are contained in the common knowledge possessed by the 

 child necessitates a much earlier cultivation of the observing powers 

 of children than is currently practiced. To prevent the break which 

 commonly occurs when children enter upon the study of books and 

 begin to substitute words for things, and to continue the processes 

 which Nature has initiated, I sought for the simplest objects by which 

 connected observations can be pursued, and the work of comparing, 

 tracing out relations, and classifying can be continued, and for this 

 purpose the simpler parts of plants are well adapted. Little children 

 have already a large stock of ideas of the relations of concrete things. 

 They know leaves, and stems, and flowers, though in a loose and in- 

 definite way. The first effect of careful observation is to make these 

 ideas more definite and precise. For instance, in place of the vague 

 notion of leaves formed from casual acquaintance with them, the ex- 

 amination of a variety of leaf-forms reveals distinctly different kinds 

 of leaves accordingly as they are made up of blade, stem, and stipule ; 

 of blade and stem ; or of blade only. And each of these three definite 

 classes receives a name with an equally definite meaning. On further 

 observation, the blade turns out to be made up of different parts, 

 which are to be further studied ; the process of discovery and of pre- 

 cise naming goes on till leaves of all sorts fall into a few distinct 

 groups, based upon definite characters and the simple recognition of 

 these groups suffices for the beginning of classification. In the same 

 way, from observation of stems, these fall into groups as round, square, 

 erect, trailing, creeping, etc. Closer observation reveals still minuter 

 characters, and the numerous individuals to be examined and described 

 insure the repetition needful to depth and retention of impressions. 

 In the objective study of plants the intellectual operations range from 

 the simplest recognition of obvious likeness and difference among 



