AIMS OF THE PRESENT WOEK. 309 



Having become familar with those general features of plants 

 which can be seen with the unassisted eye, and begun to form 

 a babit of observation, the pupil passes to the Second Book. 

 The microscope is now called in ; the work becomes more care- 

 ful and minute, and the discipline of observation, comparison, 

 and judgment, more close. All the characters of plants are now 

 to be considered, and each specimen begins to be regarded as 

 a whole. As the learner is able to deal with more complex 

 ideas, he compares them with each other by contrasting the/ 

 entire assemblage of characters presented in the different cases. 

 This leads to the exercise of judgment in determining the de- 

 grees of resemblance, and the contrasts they exhibit. When 

 a considerable number of plants have been carefully studied, 

 so that the minute features of their flowers are familiar, they 

 begin to be arranged by these characters. The more com- 

 plex work of classification is entered upon, and the scholar is 

 able to see that plants may be associated in groups of different 

 grades, or values ; some characters being general and constant, 

 and others limited and variable. All the facts that the pupil 

 has accumulated from the beginning of study now become 

 available, as they are organized into systematic knowledge upon 

 the basis of data that are positively known. The pupil is not 

 merely cramming verbal statements, he is assimilating actual 

 truths. He passes from the acquisition of a multitude of special 

 particulars to the grasp of general ideas, after the method by 

 which all inductive science is formed. He knows by his own 

 direct experience that flowering plants range themselves into 

 vast companies called classes by characters of large generality, 

 and that these classes break up into orders based chiefly upon 

 the more constant features of floral structure. The orders again 

 are divided into lesser groups resembling each other in the at- 

 tributes of the stem, leaf, inflorescence, etc., all of which were 

 made familiar in the first stages of Botanical study. 



Thus the mental process in which intelligence begins is car- 

 ried on by increasing complication to its highest results. Com- 

 mencing with the simplest discriminations and comparisons, and 

 the rudimentary act of classing, the pupil at first arranges the 

 facts observed into small groups in accordance with their re- 



