SCIENTIFIC CULTURE. 581 



must consider the conditions on which the successful study and inter- 

 pretation of Nature depend. 



Of the powers of the mind called into exercise in the investigation 

 of Nature, the most obvious and fundamental is the power of observa- 

 tion. By power of observation is not meant simply the ability to see, 

 to hear, to taste, or to smell with delicacy, but the power of so con- 

 centrating the attention on what we observe as to form a definite and 

 lasting impression on the mind. There are undoubtedly great differ- 

 ences among men in the acuteness of their sensations, but successful 

 observation depends far less upon the acuteness of the senses than on 

 the faculty of the mind which clearly distinguishes and remembers 

 what is seen and heard. We say of a man that he walks through the 

 world with his eyes shut, meaning that, although the objects around 

 him produce their normal impression on the retina of his eye, he pays 

 no attention to what he sees. The power of the naturalist to distin- 

 guish slight differences of form or feature in natural objects is simply 

 the result of a habit, acquired through long experience, of paying atten- 

 tion to what he sees, and the want of this power in students who have 

 been trained solely by literary studies is most marked. 



An assistant who was at the time conducting a class in miner- 

 alogy, once said to me : " \Yhat am I to do ? One of ray class can 

 not see the difference between this piece of blend and this piece of 

 quartz " (showing me two specimens which bore a certain superficial 

 resemblance in color and general aspect). My answer was, "Let him 

 look until he can see the difference." And, after a while, he did see 

 the difference. The difficulty was not lack of vision, but want of atten- 

 tion. 



The power of observation, then, is simply the power of fixing the 

 attention upon our sensations, and this power of fixing the attention 

 is the one essential condition of scholarship in all departments of learn- 

 ing. It is a power which ought to be cultivated at an early age, 

 and in a system of scientific culture the sciences of mineralogy and 

 botany afford the best field for its culture, and I should therefore place 

 them among the earliest studies of a scientific course. Minerals and 

 plants may be profitably studied in the youngest classes of our second- 

 ary schools, but they should be studied solely from specimens, which 

 the scholar should examine until he can distinguish all the character- 

 istics of form, feature, or structure. I am told that in many of our 

 secondary schools both mineralogy and botany are studied with great 

 success and interest in the manner I have indicated. But a mistake is 

 frequently made in attempting to do too much. With mineralogy or 

 botany as classificatory sciences, our secondary schools should have 

 nothing to do. The distinction between many, even of the common- 

 est, species of minerals or plants depends upon delicate distinctions 

 which are quite beyond the grasp of young minds, and the study of 

 botany frequently loses all its value, through the ambition of the teacher 



