48 Education through Nature 



who succeeds well in developing such original appre- 

 ciation of the beautiful in nature may find further 

 assurance of her worth in the following words of 

 Thomas Carlyle: "He who shows us more clearly than 

 we knew before that a lily of the field is beautiful, 

 has sung for us, made us sing with him, a little verse 

 of a sacred psalm." 



Ethical Function of Nature Study. 



The study of science is the surest means to the 

 development of scientific culture. This culture is 

 essentially ethical, and, for that reason, must be the 

 safest foundation of social culture. It is true that it 

 is not favorable to the development of useless senti- 

 mentalism; but, by the strengthening of the judgment, 

 the development of sane ideas, and the training of the 

 scientific imagination, it must tend to enforce the 

 golden rule and the dictates of a clear and discerning 

 conscience. What is right and what is duty will be 

 revealed, as it has been revealed, by practical experi- 

 ence, if a sound judgment interprets that experience. 

 The child's practical experiences with human beings 

 and with the animate and inanimate things about him 

 are his first and most enduring lessons in right conduct. 



The motive to successful scientific endeavor is a 

 natural or acquired thirst for truth, to be satisfied only 

 by the exercise of the will under the guidance of a 

 clear perception and a sound judgment. A wise 

 discrimination between the false and the true is not 

 only essential to any permanent social structure, but 

 is the basic element in the sanity of the human mind. 



Nature study cannot be made a science, nor should 

 it be; for science is the ripest fruit of development. 

 Its methods, however, when gradually introduced into 

 school work, jnust have a wholesome effect, inas- 

 mush as it places the pupil's mind and activities into 

 proper relation to reality and truth. The indifference 



