EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. ix 



Some minds are so full of lumber that there is no 

 space left to set up a workshop. The necessity of 

 uniting both of these directions of intellectual activity 

 in the schools is therefore obvious, but we must not, 

 in this place, fall into the error of supposing that it is 

 the oral instruction in school and the personal influ- 

 ence of the teacher alone that excites the pupil to ac- 

 tivity. Book instruction is not always dry and theo- 

 retical. The very persons who declaim against the 

 book, and praise in such strong terms the seK-activity 

 of the pupil and original research, are mostly persons 

 who have received their practical impulse from read- 

 ing the writings of educational reformers. Very few 

 persons have received an impulse from personal con- 

 tact with inspiring teachers compared with the num- 

 ber that have received an impulse from such books as 

 Herbert Spencer's Treatise on Education, Eousseau's 

 Emile, Pestalozzi's Leonard and Gertrude, Francis 

 W. Parker's Talks about Teaching, G. Stanley 

 Hall's Pedagogical Seminary. Think in this connec- 

 tion, too, of the impulse to observation in natural sci- 

 ence produced by such books as those of Hugh Miller, 

 Faraday, Tyndall, Huxley, Agassiz, and Darwin. 



The new scientific book is different from the old. 

 The old style book of science gave dead results where 

 the new one gives not only the results, but a minute 

 account of the method employed in reaching those re- 

 sults. An insight into the method employed in dis- 

 covery trains the reader into a naturalist, an historian, 

 a sociologist. The books of the writers above named 

 have done more to stimulate original research on the 



