268 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [i, 6, nov. 1905 



I remember some years ago meeting a pupil of Agassiz's (a man 

 now noted) who said to me '' I gave up teaching by the Agassiz 

 method when I began my own work because it was too expensive for 

 average men. The world hears of the brilHant ones who succeeded 

 under Agassiz — they would have succeeded anywhere. It never heard 

 of the scores of average men who fell by the way-side — the men who 

 needed to feel ground under their feet, to know that they know as 

 they go along. I have seen good fellows in my class give up in 

 despair with Agassiz — they did well everywhere else." 



What, in the long run, is self-dependence worth that is bought at 

 the price of arrogance on the one hand or despair on the other? 

 What, in the long run, will it do for the advancement of science? 

 Not enough to make the game worth the candle. 



But the touch-stone of the whole problem is this : Scientific knowl- 

 edge is corroborable experience. There are many kinds of experi- 

 ence, but science cuts out for her own that which is corroborable, 

 and that element is the basis, the inalienable essence of a " scientific 

 fact." If I say " I see a horse," it is supposable on the instant that 

 you and that every other person with eyesight can see that horse 

 by looking where I see him. But, if you or they look and do not 

 see my horse, then my seeing is an hallucination. 



Hence it follows that your pedagogical procedure is laid out with 

 almost mathematical precision: You must work for the deepest 

 possible sense and feeling of corroboration if you mean to build a 

 solid and advancing mind. Then, and then only, will you have 

 created a self-dependence as a sense of knowing that I know on 

 which every vital nature will build its own original contribution 

 with assured touch when the time is ripe. 



I ought perhaps to add that in my early years I taught by the 

 Agassiz method exclusively. One day I awoke to the fact that 

 my poor and average pupils had dropped out of the running while the 

 best had but the flimsiest mental stuff in them. After that for years 

 I experimented to find a method which should build for the ulti- 

 mates, not for the hour, and " Nature-Study with Common Things " 

 was the result — tried with a thousand pupils — in one small field. 



BOOK REVIEWS 



Special Method in Elementary Science. By Charles A. McMurry. 

 New York: Macmillan. 1904. Pp. 275. 75 cents. 

 This well known writer on methods has come forward in the 

 present volume to help lighten the burden of the teacher of nature- 

 study or " elementary science." Professor McMurry, in common with 



