Professor Morgan's Address 143 



mation conveyed through the medium of language. 

 The danger is, however, that what should be a sup- 

 plement should become a substitute. One cannot too 

 strongly emphasize the fact that the only means, in 

 the early stages of education, by which things acquire 

 real and valid meaning in primary experience is 

 actual investigation, using this term as inclusive of 

 the employment of all the senses through which 

 experience is gained. Description, as the supplement 

 of this investigation, is in adaptation to the needs of 

 social beings who communicate with their fellows. 

 But information as merely a substitute for investi- 

 gation is of little, if any, educational value. I take it 

 that our advocacy of Nature-study embodies a protest 

 against mere information; but we must none the less 

 be alive to the fact that there is a real danger of its 

 degenerating into mere talk about natural objects on 

 the part of the teacher and an attitude of passive 

 receptivity on the part of the pupil. That we should 

 regard as not the substance but the shadow of genuine 

 Nature-study. 



The movement which we are here met to foster and 

 develop forms part of that reform of educational pro- 

 cedure which has now been in progress for many 

 years. The introduction of the teaching of science 

 has been the new leaven. But Nature-study, though it 

 should afford an introduction to science, and though 

 it should be under scientific guidance, must be re- 

 garded as independent of, or at most preparatory 

 to, the generalizations of science which the youthful 

 mind cannot as yet grasp. We have to realize the 

 patchiness of the child-mind; not only its limited store 

 of experience, but the fact that the several items of 



