INTRODUCTION. 3 



learning, but the realities of Nature find no place at our schools 

 as means of mental unfolding for training in observation, and 

 for working the higher faculties of reason and judgment upon 

 natural things. In short, for calling out the more important 

 powers of the mind, by actual exercise upon the objects of sur- 

 rounding experience, our educational system makes no pro- 

 vision whatever. Neither reading, writing, arithmetic, gram- 

 mar, nor geography, brings the mind into contact with Nature 

 at all ; and even the sciences of physics, chemistry, physiology, 

 and botany, are usually acquired from books, and with so little 

 regard to the real objects of which they treat, that as means 

 of mental improvement they are of very slight service. 



That modern education, in all its gradations, is profoundly 

 deficient in this respect, has long been recognized and de- 

 plored by the most enlightened educators. Dr. Whewell, for 

 example, late Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, in one of 

 his able works upon Education, says: "The period appears 

 now to be arrived when we may venture, or rather, when we 

 are bound to endeavor, to include a new class of fundamental 

 ideas in the elementary discipline of the human intellect. 

 This is indispensable if we wish to educe the powers which we 

 know it possesses." Again, he remarks: "There are perverse 

 intellectual habits very commonly prevalent in the cultivated 

 classes, which ought, ere now, to have been corrected by the 

 general teaching of Natural History. We may detect, among 

 speculative men, many prejudices respecting the nature and 

 rules of reasoning which arise from pure mathematics having 

 been so long and so universally the instrument of intellectual 

 cultivation." And again: "In order that Natural History 

 may produce such an effect, it must be studied by the inspec- 

 tion of the objects themselves, and not by the reading of books 

 only. Its lesson is that we must, in all cases of doubt or ob- 

 scurity, refer, not to words or definitions, but to things. The 

 Book of Nature is its dictionary ; it is there that the natural 

 historian looks to find the meaning of the words which he 

 uses." * 



To gain the mental benefits of the study of Natural History 

 here proposed, the pupil's attention requires to be concen- 

 trated upon a limited portion of it, which is to be thoroughly 



i " Novum Organum Renovatum," p. 170. 



