Liberal Education. 277 



that nothing in the plant, however minute, is unimpor- 

 tant ; that he owes only temporary allegiance to the doc- 

 trines of his master, and not a perpetual faith. 



Only contrast this with the common practice of 

 loading a boy's memory with cellules and paren- 

 chyma, protoplasm and chlorophyll, rhizomes and 

 bulbs, endosmose and exosmose, before he has any 

 definite and abiding conception of how a plant is 

 put together ! 



Mr. Wilson's method carries with it its own 

 recommendation ; and his method of teaching bot- 

 any is the method upon which all teaching, if it is 

 to discipline the intelligence, should be conducted. 

 First the facts, then the generalization, lastly the 

 nomenclature. All the knowledge which in the 

 conduct of life we are able to use to any good 

 purpose is necessarily acquired in this way. If 

 we had no knowledge of human nature save what 

 might be gained by the memorizing of abstract 

 ethical formulas, we should never acquire the 

 knack of dealing sensibly with our fellow-crea- 

 tures. But we notice how men act under given 

 circumstances ; day by day, and year by year, we 

 gather and collate such facts of observation into 

 general opinions, crude indeed as compared with 

 the exhaustive generalizations of physical science, 

 yet as far as they go embodying the results of 



