INQUIRIES 139 



This charge of superficiality is usually only the 

 opinion of a different point of view. This is well 

 illustrated in the critical reviews of elementary 

 text-books of science. Books that have been 

 criticized severely by the scientist have been 

 accepted with enthusiasm by the schoolmaster. 

 The primary merit of a school-book lies in its 

 pedagogy rather than in its science. Statements 

 in such books have two values the teaching value 

 and the science value. Too often the reviewer 

 thinks only of the science value. 



Of course there is danger of superficiality. 

 There is this danger in everything; but the danger 

 is inherent in the person, not in the subject. Solid 

 work is as necessary in nature-study as in anything 

 else. It is not play. Professor E. B. Tichener 

 writes as follows of what he considers to be the 

 three dangers in nature-study: "The first is that, 

 in striving for sympathy with nature, we run into 

 sentimentality. The second is that, in avoiding 

 fairy tales, we run into something ten times worse 

 if indeed fairy tales are bad at all ; I mean a 

 pseudo-psychology of the lower animals. And the 

 third is that, in trying to be exceedingly simple, we 

 become exceedingly inaccurate." 



*But do you think that this nature-study 'will make 

 investigators ? 



That depends on what you mean by an investi- 

 gator. If you mean an inquirer, then I say that 

 nature-study will develop the trait to perfection. 

 If you mean one who shall discover and record new 

 truth by means of painstaking investigation, then I 



