V IN HUMAN SOCIETY 221 



The plant is not expensive ; and there is this 

 excellent quality about drawing of the kind 

 indicated, that it can be tested almost as easily 

 and severely as arithmetic. Such drawings are 

 either right or wrong, and if they are wrong the 

 pupil can be made to see that they are wrong. 

 From the industrial point of view, drawing has 

 the further merit that there is hardly any trade 

 in which the power of drawing is not of daily and 

 hourly utility. In the next place, no good reason, 

 except the want of capable teachers, can be 

 assigned why elementary notions of science should 

 not be an element in general instruction. In 

 this case, again, no expensive or elaborate ap- 

 paratus is necessary. The commonest thing — 

 a candle, a boy's squirt, a piece of chalk — in the 

 hands of a teacher who knows his business, may 

 be made the starting-points whence children may 

 be led into the regions of science as far as their 

 capacity permits, with efficient exercise of their 

 observational and reasoning faculties on the road. 

 If object lessons often prove trivial failures, it is 

 not the fault of object lessons, but that of the 

 teacher, who has not found out how much the 

 power of teaching a little depends on knowing a 

 great deal, and that thoroughly ; and that he has 

 not made that discovery is not the fault of the 

 teachers, but of the detestable system of training 

 them which is widely prevalent.^ 

 ^ Training in the use of simple tools is no doubt very desir- 



