PRINCIPLES DETERMINING METHOD. 181 



living plant, its development from seed to maturity, and 

 growth or adaptation to environment; and living ani- 

 mals, caterpillars and butterflies, frogs' eggs, tadpoles 

 and frogs, living birds or kittens or fish, they learn to 

 relate parts to wholes, to recognize the unity between 

 plant or animal and its environment ; and thus the uni- 

 fying tendency of the mind is recognized and developed. 

 After such preliminary work the mind more readily, 

 and oftentimes necessarily or automatically, unifies what 

 is not presented to it as units ; relates the leaves or 

 flowers to the plant, thinks of them, not as mere forms, 

 but as parts of a whole, depending on and working for 

 the whole plant. 



The child who has studied the life of the dandelion, 

 the development and work of root and leaves and 

 flowers, the ripening of seeds, and the preparation and 

 arrangement for their dissemination, the co-operation 

 of plant and wind in scattering the seeds, who has com- 

 pared the life and adaptations of the dandelion with 

 those of two or three similar plants having similar adap- 

 tations, is much better prepared to unify or reduce to 

 unity, and therefore much better educated, than the 

 child who has simply described the form and gross 

 structure of fifty isolated leaves or of a score of roots 

 or flowers, or has dissected or analyzed and grouped 

 by mere structural or morphological features a dozen 

 plants. 



In the same law of unity we see the reason for the 

 greater educational value of the questions " why " and 

 "how" as compared with " what." "What" is mere 



