126 SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION : V 



ability that the thing is so and no otherwise. 

 The great peculiarity of scientific training, that in 

 virtue of which it cannot be replaced by any 

 other discipline whatsoever, is this bringing of the 

 mind directly into contact with fact, and practising 

 the intellect in the completest form of induction ; 

 that is to say, in drawing conclusions from par- 

 ticular facts made known by immediate observation 

 of Nature. 



The other studies which enter into ordinary 

 education do not discipline the mind in this way. 

 Mathematical training is almost purely deductive. 

 The matlijimatician starts with a few simple pro- 

 positions, the proof of which is so obvious that they 

 are called self-evident, and the rest of his work 

 consists of subtle deductions from them. The 

 teaching of languages, at any rate as ordinarily 

 practised, is of the same general nature, authority 

 and tradition furnish the data, and the mental 

 operations of the scholar are deductive. 



Again : if history be the subject of study, the 

 facts are still taken upon the evidence of tradition 

 and authority. You cannot make a boy see the 

 battle of Thermopylae for himself, or know, of his 

 own knowledge, that Cromwell once ruled England. 

 There is no getting into direct contact with natural 

 fact by this road ; there is no dispensing with 

 authority, but rather a resting upon it. 



In all these respects, science differs from other 

 educational discipline, and prepares the scholar for 



