300 THE EDUCATIONAL CLAIMS OP BOTANY. 



which is best fitted to be generally introduced into primary 

 schools. The work must begin here, if it is to be thoroughly 

 done. 



The system of teaching by object-lessons is an attempt to 

 meet the present requirement in the sphere of primary educa- 

 tion. But these efforts have been rather well-intentioned grop- 

 ings after a desirable result than satisfactory realizations of it. 

 The method is theoretically correct, and some benefit cannot 

 fail to have resulted ; but the practice has proved incoherent, 

 desultory, and totally insufficient as a training of the observing 

 powers. Nor can this be otherwise so long as all sorts of ob- 

 jects are made to serve as " lessons," while the exercises con- 

 sist merely in learning a few obvious and unrelated characters. 

 Although, in infancy, objects are presented at random, yet, if 

 mental growth is to be definitely directed, they must be present- 

 ed in relation. A lesson one day on a bone, the next on a piece 

 of lead, and the next on a flower, may be excellent for impart- 

 ing " information," but the lack of relation among these ob- 

 jects unfits them to be employed for developing connected and 

 dependent thought. This teaching can be thoroughly success- 

 ful only where the "objects" studied are connected together in 

 a large, complex whole, as a part of the order of Nature. The 

 elementary details must be such as children can readily appre- 

 hend, while the characters and relations are so varied and nu- 

 merous as to permit an extended course of acquisition issuing 

 in a large body of scientific principles. Only in a field so broad 

 and inexhaustible as to give play to the mental activities in 

 their continuous expansion can object-studies have that real 

 disciplinary influence which is now so desirable an element of 

 popular education. 



What we most urgently need is an objective course of 

 study which shall train the observing powers as mathematics 

 trains the power of calculation. From the time the child be- 

 gins to count, until the man has mastered the calculus, there 

 is provided an unbroken series of exercises of ever-increasing 

 complexity, suited to unfold the mathematical faculty. We 

 want a parallel course of objective exercises, not to be dis- 

 patched in a term or a year, but running through the whole 



