128 SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION: V 



information which you have poured into the boy's 

 mind, you have created an intellectual habit of 

 priceless value in practical life. 



One is constantly asked, When should this 

 scientific education be commenced ? I should say 

 with the dawn of intelligence. As I have already 

 said, a child seeks for information about matters 

 of physical science as soon as it begins to talk. The 

 first teaching it wants is an object-lesson of one 

 sort or another ; and as soon as it is fit for 

 systematic instruction of any kind, it is fit for a 

 modicum of science. 



People talk of the difficulty of teaching young 

 children such matters, and in the same breath 

 insist upon their learning their Catechism, which 

 contains propositions far harder to comprehend 

 than anything in the educational course I have 

 proposed. Again : I am incessantly told that we, 

 who advocate the introduction of science in schools, 

 make no allowance for the stupidity of the average 

 boy or girl ; but, in my belief, that stupidity, in 

 nine cases out of ten, "fit, non nascitur" and is 

 developed by a long process of parental and 

 pedagogic repression of the natural intellectual 

 appetites, accompanied by a persistent attempt to 

 create artificial ones for food which is not only 

 tasteless, but essentially indigestible. 



Those who urge the difficulty of instructing 

 young people in science are apt to forget another 

 very important condition of success important in 



