THE STUDY OF THE RELATIONS OF THINGS. 361 



leaves, stems, flowers, etc., to the perception of contrasts and resem- 

 blances among multitudes of plants, by which they are separated into 

 genera, tribes, orders, classes, series, and various intermediate groups. 

 But here, as everywhere, the simple leads to the complex. The limits 

 of these groups are determined by the presence or absence of features 

 that have been made familiar in the course of earlier study. 



By the title of her article Mrs. Jacobi gives prominence to the 

 question of precedence between the leaf and the flower with reference 

 to the plan of my little text-book. Obviously a school-book can only 

 imperfectly conform to the various grades of capacity it addresses. 

 If its aim is to reach the lowest grade that can begin the work of sys- 

 tematic and accurate observation ; and if, as the result of experience 

 in the present case, it has been found that there is a stage of child-life 

 when the attention may be successfully given to the study of leaf- 

 characters, and can not be so held to the study of the flower, it would 

 seem reasonable that the leaf should come first in the order of study. 

 But one might not need to follow the same order with a child ten 

 years old as with a child of six, because the former has greater capac- 

 ity, and can do what the latter can not. An average child of ten 

 years might perhaps begin observation anywhere, so far as his ability 

 is concerned, while with an average child of five or six this could not 

 be done. As stated in my previous article, it was necessary to begin 

 somewhere, and the book is therefore apparently rigid in method ; but 

 I have repeatedly recommended in it that teachers exercise judgment, 

 and skip about and choose what is most timely and appropriate to the 

 circumstances and varying capacity of their pupils. Of course, for 

 those teachers who think it a duty in all cases to begin at the begin- 

 ning and go straight to the end, there is no help. 



If, as in the present case, the dominant idea be that of self -educa- 

 tion, if the pupil is to do his own thinking and discovering with the least 

 possible guidance, it will be abundantly found that a young child will 

 do this pleasurably and profitably with leaves before he can do it with 

 flowers ; for, in the case of the leaf, the mind passes more gradually 

 from the looseness of common observation and language to the care- 

 fulness and accuracy required in the initiation of scientific study. 

 The parts to be at first noted are more differentiated and fewer, and the 

 number of new precise terms to mark them is smaller, and these may 

 hence be firmly associated with the objects before fresh ones are 

 brought forward. And, even if the method of study be purely in- 

 structional, if we point out the characters of the object to the child, 

 and explain all about it, while he passively looks on and remembers 

 what he may, we shall still find that the similarity and number of the 

 different parts of the flower, and the cluster of new terms that at once 

 crowd upon the attention, confuse and hinder, if they do not positively 

 repel, these youngest beginners. 



