236 Nature Study. [Sess. 
widens his intellectual horizon. Nature study accustoms us to 
look at things in the solid, and not in diagrammatic form as 
they are sketched for us by others. In nature study the 
acquiring of numberless facts is not aimed at so much as the 
cultivation of the power of observing facts within our imme- 
diate experience, and of building conclusions on that solid 
ground. . 
There are two ways of teaching, just as there are two ways 
of building houses. We may begin at the bottom,—that has — 
been the way the race has all but universally followed to 
shelter itself from wind and rain; or we may begin at the top, 
if a well-devised, sufficiently rigid framework is prepared be- 
forehand. In America they do that: they construct a sort of 
Eiffel Tower, put a roof over it, and then build downward. Some 
of us here, I daresay, made our early acquaintance with the 
Latin tongue through a venerable grammar written in Latin; 
and many of us were supposed to know a good deal about 
aorists and perfects before we knew a couple of hundred 
words of Greek. That was on the Eiffel Tower system; and, | 
as in the immense majority of cases the metallic framework 
was never filled in, there remains in after life a mental 
structure as valueless as so much old iron and old bricks. 
To continue my illustration from the study of languages: if 
we begin to learn a language new to us as a child does,—as, 
for example, is done in the so-called Gouin system,—we 
learn a great many words linked in natural associations, and 
we connect a word with an action, and so the action leaves its” 
trace on the brain, and this becomes deeper and deeper by 
repetition. Naturally to get good results, whether in nature 
study or in the study of languages, our course must be 
arranged systematically, progressively, logically, to economise 
time. 
The psychological basis of nature study is inquisitiveness. | 
It is natural for every child to be inquisitive, and to wish 
to find out the reasons of things around it. Systematic, care- 
fully thought-out nature study —the so-called heuristic* 
method—is an attempt to gratify intelligently this curiosity, — 
1 From the exclamation of Archimedes when he discovered the specific density — 
of gold, “ Heureka,” “I have found it!” The word has been adopted by the 
Education Department. 4 
