Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



in the external world. I look back with a kind 

 of shame when I think that I studied the mathema- 

 tical side of Astronomy for three or four years 

 at Cambridge and absolutely at the time hardly 

 knew one star from another in the sky. But 

 such are the methods of teaching that have been 

 in use. They ought however to be reversed, 

 and practical acquaintance with the facts should 

 come a long way first, and then be succeeded by 

 inductive and deductive reasoning when the diffi- 

 culties of the subject have forced themselves on 

 the student's mind. 



Then in Natural History and Botany I think 

 that we have hitherto not only neglected the 

 perceptive side, but also what may be called the 

 intuitive and emotional aspects. If any one will 

 attend to the subject, I believe they will perceive 

 that there are dormant in the mind the finest in- 

 tuitions and instincts of relationship to the various 

 animals and plants — intuitions which have played 

 a far more important part in the life of barbaric 

 races than they do to-day. ^ Primitive peoples 

 have a remarkable instinct of the medicinal and 

 dietetic uses of herbs and plants — an instinct 

 which we also find well developed among animals 

 — and I believe that this kind of knowledge would 

 grow largely if, so to speak, it were given a chance. 



' Elisee Reclus, in his remarkable paper, La Grande Famille, 

 points out the wide-reaching Friendship, and free alliance for 

 various purposes, of primitive man with the animals, existing 

 long before the so-called " domestication " of the latter. See 

 Humane Reviezv, January, 1906. 



238 



