Liberal Education. 273 



they believed it because it was so written in the 

 book. Here is the fatal vice of our common 

 methods of education. They appeal to faith, and 

 not to reason. It is supposed that children are 

 properly instructed if they are told that certain 

 things are so and so, and understand what is told 

 them sufficiently to repeat the words of it. Noth- 

 ing can be more erroneous. No mental discipline, 

 worthy of the name, can be secured in this way. 

 We are benefited, not by the truths which we 

 passively accept, but by those which we actively 

 find out. It makes little difference whether a 

 child is told that " a plant consists of root, stem, 

 and leaves," or that "a verb must agree with its 

 nominative case in number and person." The 

 former proposition is the more intelligible ; but in 

 either case the child is taught to accept on author- 

 ity a generalization which he should be taught to 

 make for himself from a due comparison of in- 

 stances. With the traditional let us now contrast 

 the rational method of studying botany. We 

 cannot possibly do this better than in Mr. Wil- 

 son's own words : 



Suppose, then, your class of thirty or forty boys 



before you, as they sit at their first botanical lesson : 



some curious to know what is going to happen, some re- 



signed-to anything, some convinced that it is all a folly. 



18 



