SCIENCE IN EDUCATION 



And surely the master-creations of poetry, music, 

 sculpture, and painting, alike in mystery and grandeur, 

 cannot surpass the natural epics and scenes of the heavens 

 above and of the earth beneath, in their power of firing 

 the imagination, which indeed has taken its most daring 

 and enduring flights under the earlier and simpler condi- 

 tions of human life, when men lived in closer contact with 

 Nature, and in greater quiet, free from the deadening 

 rush of modern society. Of supreme value is the exercise 

 of the imagination, that lofty faculty of creating and 

 weaving imagery in the mind, and of giving subjective 

 reality to its own creations, which is the source of the 

 initial impulses to human progress and development, to 

 all inspiration in the arts, and to discovery in science. 



Further, elementary science, taught practically with 

 the aid of experiment during a boy's early years, cannot 

 fail to develop the faculty of observation. However keen 

 in vision, the eyes see little without training in observa- 

 tion by the subtle exercise of the mind behind them. 

 From the humblest weed to the stars in their courses, all 

 Nature is a great object lesson for the acquirement of 

 the power of rapid and accurate noting of minute and 

 quickly changing aspects. Such an early training in the 

 simpler methods of scientific observation confers upon 

 a man for life the possession of an inexhaustible source of 

 interest and delight, and no mean advantage in the keen 

 competitions of the intellectual activities of the present 

 day. 



112 



