General Aims of Nature Study 37 



Exclusive development of the body has such an effect, 

 because it lowers the individual's power to meet the 

 demands of culture, in which the mind is so largely 

 concerned. Similarly with the exclusive develop- 

 ment of the mind, for it lessens the individual's capacity 

 to bear the strain and stress of the highest culture and 

 the struggle involved in the attainment of aims. 



The Senses in Nature Study. 



All the special senses, hearing, seeing, taste, smell, 

 touch, including the muscular sense, may be used in 

 the study of nature. These senses are evidently de- 

 veloped for that very purpose, or (if we choose to 

 avoid the teleological conception) are developed 

 through those agencies of which they take cognizance. 

 It is difficult to conceive of any mind whatsoever in 

 the absence of these senses. We may well doubt 

 whether one devoid of all of them could really be con- 

 scious of his own existence. Imagine all the avenues 

 to the external world closed in a child at birth! Could 

 even innate ideas, so called, manifest themselves ? 



Our knowledge of the early stages of development 

 does not tend to strengthen our belief in the existence 

 of innate ideas. The existence of such ideas has been 

 affirmed on metaphysical grounds, by those usually 

 who are devoid of scientific training. Transcendental- 

 ism of that kind may be left to find its own way in 

 the senseless limbo of metaphysical abstractions. It 

 has little or no use for nature study except as it may 

 minister to physical wants; but it may be doubted 

 whether even transcendentalism could maintain itself 

 without those sense-organs which it professes to de- 

 preciate. 



The possibility of ideas certainly exists in the normal 

 nervous system developed through physiological pro- 

 cesses; but it is hardly probable that this possibility 

 can be realized except through external stimuli. It 



