298 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 110:8— Nov., 1914 



In nature all about us, however, we have thousands of things of 

 more vital interest to us than the discovery of the sources of the 

 Nile. Why not tell our children that we wish they would find them 

 out and give us all they are able to discover? This attitude and 

 spirit would mean the ver}^ breath of life to our whole system of 

 public education. Why is it that Louis Agassiz is the intellectual 

 father or grandfather of every biologist in America? Because he 

 told his students what he did not know and asked them to find out 

 and tell him. And then: 



"His magic was not far to seek, he was so human." 



If there was just one element in preparation of teachers for this 

 work that I could have each one possess for the asking it ould 

 not be, that they wear themselves to the bone trying to learn every- 

 thing in creation, but that they become "as little children," satu- 

 rated with the spirit of little children and come to heartily enjoy 

 studying and learning together with their pupils. Of such, verily, 

 is the kindom of the heaven of nature-study. From what a burden 

 of cram and sham, pretence and bluff would this not set us free, if 

 every teacher in the land could be glad to say: "I do not know. 

 Does anyone in the class know just the best way to plant a grape 

 vine? Who will volunteer to find out all about it and tell us?" 

 Comfortable and vital honesty between teacher and pupil will be 

 the instant result; they will be truly and sincerely working out 

 their problems together, and not until this blessed condition is se- 

 cured can we hope to have the best teaching of science. 



The definition of "Science" as classified and arranged knowl- 

 edge, cut and dried hay of the mind, baled and mowed away in 

 books — may have some meaning to the adult who works with it; 

 but it is utterly dead to the child. Lessing's definition of Science 

 as" The eternal struggle of the human mind after truth" is the only 

 one a child can understand. The quest, the hunting, the "strug- 

 gle" is the thing. We rack our poor brains to invent puzzles, arti- 

 ficial and trifling, while here all about us are the "Riddles of the 

 universe" — all tingling with vital significance. To solve them is 

 what we are here on this earth for^-lessons set us to learn in three 

 score years and ten. Lessing saw the point clearly when he defined 

 science, and he says, as you know: "If God were to hold before 

 me the truth itself in His right hand and the struggle to find it out 

 in His left, and ask me to choose, I would humbly bow before the 

 left hand and say, O Lord, for Thee alone is truth, give me rather 



