296 THE EDUCATIONAL CLAIMS OF BOTANY. 







culture, and education is emptied of its substantial purpose. 

 In the lower institutions, while the acquisition and organiza- 

 tion of ideas in which education really consists are neglected; 

 to spell accurately, to read fluently, to define promptly, and to 

 write neatly, are the ideals of school-room accomplishment. In 

 the higher institutions, this ideal expands into the proficient 

 command of a multitude of words, and skill in the arts of ex- 

 pression, so that the student piles language upon language 

 until he has tagged half a dozen labels to each of his scanty, 

 and ill-conceived ideas. 



The glaring deficiency of our popular systems of instruc- 

 tion is, that words are not subordinated to their real purposes, 

 but are permitted to usurp that supreme attention which 

 should be given to the formation of ideas by the study of 

 things. It is at this point that true mental growth is checked, 

 and the minds of children are switched off from the main line of 

 natural development into a course of artificial acquisition, in 

 which the semblance of knowledge takes the place of the real- 

 ity of knowledge. 



We have seen that the growth of mind results from the 

 exercise of its powers upon the direct objects of experience, 

 and consists in its recognition of distinctions among the prop- 

 erties and relations of things, and in the classing and organ- 

 ization of ideas thus acquired. These operations can be 

 facilitated by the use of words and books, but only when the 

 ideas themselves are first clearly conceived as the accurate 

 representations of things. But the ordinary word-studies of 

 our schools, which are truly designed to assist these opera- 

 tions, are actually made to exclude them. The child glides 

 into the habit of accepting words for ideas, and thus evades 

 those mental actions which are only to be performed upon the 

 ideas themselves. 



The existing systems of instruction are therefore deficient, 

 by making no adequate provision for cultivating the growth 

 of ideas by the exercise of the observing powers of children. 

 Observation, the capacity of recognizing distinctions, and of 

 being mentally alive to the objects and actions around us, is 

 only to be acquired by practice, and therefore requires to be- 



