122 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



As a rule uew studies are introduced iuto courses of study on 

 the ground of their practical value, and they maintain their 

 ground therein unquestioned so far as they prove efficient as 

 means of culture. Passing over for the present the discussion of 

 the practical value of the study of horticulture, I will crave your 

 forbearance for a brief discussion, somewhat technical — I fear 

 somewhat drj' — of the s^jecial culture to be gained from the study, 

 and of its true place in a system of education. 



In libraries we have the garnered results of the wisdom of the 

 ages. If Roseukrantz be right in his statement that it is the 

 end of education to build up in the mind of the pupil a picture of 

 the universe as mature minds have painted it, the library may 

 suffice ; if it be the true expression, as I must believe, that the 

 aim should be to build up a picture of the universe as God has 

 made it, we must supplement the study of the word by the study 

 of the thing — the library by the universe itself. It is not the fixed 

 forms of things alone which must be studied, but the powers by 

 which things are produced and maintained, and the processes 

 through which these powers work. If the thing is a pause in the 

 Divine thought, the process is the Divine thought in working. 



It is but a low type of mental exercise, yet an essential one, 

 which consists in the mere transference to the memory of words 

 and of notions of things. Real thinking is a more complex 

 process, and knowledge is the result of thinking in a larger sense. 

 The mind grows only hy exercise, and care must be taken that it 

 be exercised in the right way and in all essential ways. All 

 processes of thought consist in the separation of wholes into their 

 constituent parts, or the combination of parts into a whole. 

 Since all thinking deals with real things or with previously 

 acquired ideas, we have, as the essential forms of thought, analy- 

 sis and synthesis, dealing directly with real things or with previously 

 acquired ideas, or, in other words, real and ideal analysis and 

 s^'nthesis. To illustrate from your own special field: — in passing 

 from the real plant as a whole to the observation of its parts, the 

 process is one of real analysis ; in following the development of 

 the plant from the seed, the process is one of real synthesis. If 

 the mind, reproducing previouslj- acquired ideas of similar plants, 

 drops specific differences and combines common features to form 

 ideas of genus, order, etc., it is engaged in ideal analysis, as 

 soins: from the concrete thins: to the abstract idea ; if the mind. 



