CHAPTER XXXI 

 KNOWING HOW TO KNOW HOW 



NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR BIOLOGICAL INSTRUCTION 

 AND RESEARCH 



I do not know what I may appear to the world ; but to myself I seem to 

 have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in 

 now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, 

 whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. SIR ISAAC 

 NEWTON 



It's easy enough to do it if you only know how. It's easy enough to 

 do everything, if you if you only know how. SMALL BOY (overheard 

 on the street) 



Conclusion of the whole matter.. The best " knowing how " 

 there is in the world is none too good for the humblest child 

 of the nation to try to live and to work by. If there were 

 one wish that the writers of this book could have granted 

 for the asking, it would not be that everybody should know 

 everything, but that every child of the nation should know 

 how to learn only the best truth there is to help him with 

 each day's life and work. The doing may be easy and cheap ; 

 the knowing how is very precious and may have cost years 

 or centuries of trying, thinking, and experimenting. Still the 

 knowing how may be easy, too, if we really know how to 

 know how. Is it not being continually baffled by false, 

 wrong, bad knowing how that makes all learning hard and 

 work futile ? It is easy to keep well and strong if we know 

 how, but the knowing how must be right. It would be easy 

 to exterminate tubercle bacilli if everybody knew how, but 

 we cannot do this as long as even a few think they know 



346 



