relations of different classes of facts and their bearing upon 

 each other, and without an orderly arrangement or classification 

 of the whole, there is no science. A lack of this knowledge 

 distinguishes the artisan from the scientist, and an appreciation 

 of this distinction is essential to those who desire to become 

 proficient in any branch of science. You are here chiefly to 

 pursue your studies from this scientific side, and with some of 

 vou it will be but a beginning and with others the continuation 

 of a course which, in the very nature of things, can never be 

 completed. The domain of the unknown is, to the wisest, so 

 vast, and of the known, to most of us, so small that although we 

 are never to be discouraged by the extent of the former, and 

 thus tempted to neglect the opportunities presented to us for 

 extending the latter, it nevertheless behooves us to place a 

 modest estimate upon our powers, and not to be discouraged if 

 in our eagerness and haste we fail to reach the goal that our too 

 enthusiastic fancy may have set before us. 



Knowledge is acquired chiefly in two ways. From the first 

 dawning of intelligence the child gains his by observation and 

 experiment, and this we may call the experimental method. 

 Didactic instruction has no place in the education of the young 

 child who acquires his knowledge by the exercise of his own 

 faculties and through the sensations, directly conveyed to his 

 mind, which he experiences. Gradually the child comes under 

 the care of tutors and governors, and by too many educators a 

 systematic course of teaching by means of books and verbal 

 precepts is substituted, early in life, for a more natural and ra- 

 tional method. The child is required to reason at an age when 

 the reasoning faculties naturally lie, and should be allowed to 

 lie, dormant, and the quick perceptions, ready intuitions, natural 

 observations and retentive memory of the young pupil are 

 neither trained as they should be nor directed in any useful 

 channel. Rousseau perceived this most clearly more than a 

 century ago, and in his "Emile," a book of great originality, 

 abounding in good sense and deep insight, though mixed with 

 much that is exaggerated and meretricious, he depicts with 

 great force the evils resulting from the then universal methods 

 of instruction, and shows us in the person of Emile how he 

 would have a child educated. Nothing is to be taken on faith ; 

 the pupil is to be told nothing that he can discover for himself; 

 he is to accept nothing as truth on the mere say-so of another 



