August 19, 1S98.] 



SCIENCE. 



211 



well grounded in the languages, history and 

 mathematics as it is for the other class to 

 have a knowledge of the methods of scien- 

 tific thought. In other words, I would 

 have every high school pupil take work of 

 both kinds, and I greatly deprecate the 

 tendency to divide the secondary school 

 curriculum into ' classical,' ' scientific ' and 

 ' English ' from so-called ' practical ' mo- 

 tives, for, as I have already said, these mo- 

 tives seem to me in reality the most un- 

 practical. Some diiferentiation, no doubt, 

 may be allowed, but none should be toler- 

 ated that will in any way be detrimental 

 to a well balanced growth of the pupil's 

 mind. The high schools will do good only 

 in so far as they develop reasoning, think- 

 ing and normal citizens. 



Coming to that topic which more nearly 

 concerns us, the teaching of the sciences, 

 it goes without saying that a smattering of 

 a number of sciences is of no value what- 

 ever. No high school pupil can hope to 

 become a scientist in the limited time dur- 

 ing which he studies, nor even if time 

 allowed is his mind sufficiently matured to 

 enable him to have the proper point of 

 view. As a consequence, it is of very little 

 importance, with certain reservations, what 

 sciences he studies, so long as he learns 

 something of the methods of reasoning and 

 the habits of thought which apply alike to 

 all. Of course, it must always be borne in 

 mind that certain sciences are fundamental 

 to others, a considerable m'athematical 

 knowledge being necessary for physics, 

 and undoubtedly a certain familiarity with 

 physics is requisite before beginning the 

 study of chemistry. Such subjects cannot 

 be placed out of their regular order without 

 doing violence to all ; they must be kept so 

 if the object aimed at, familiarity with the 

 methods of scientific reasoning, is to be 

 attained. 



No one can hope to become conversant 

 with all of the fundamental principles in 



any one science in any one year, or even 

 in many years, and that this is so is evi- 

 dent when we pause to consider the num- 

 ber of lives which during the last two or 

 three centuries have been devoted exclu- 

 sively to the task of bringing our methods 

 in the sciences up to their present stand- 

 point. Take the atomic theory alone. 

 How many years of toil, how many hard- 

 fought battles, how many great names, have 

 during the past century been devoted to its 

 perfection! Dalton, Berzelius, Guy-Lussac, 

 Wohler, Dumas, Stas, Avogadro, Canniz- 

 zaro, Clausius, Clerk-Maxwell, Thomson, 

 Mendeleef and hosts of others have given 

 their best years to it — and what it has 

 taken such minds to develop we expect the 

 high school student to grasp in a day! 

 The same with all of the great theories of 

 modern science; all represent the present 

 convergence of many and often diverse 

 views, held by numerous men who honestly 

 fought and toiled in their chosen fields and 

 whose names will live for all time. Shall 

 subjects which represent so large a share of 

 human thought be treated lightly as mere 

 collections of shibboleths and signs, as mere 

 accumulations of data, just as we remember 

 how many pounds there are in a ton, or 

 how many inches in a foot? Shall we 

 value them simply for the applications 

 which they may have in the obtaining of 

 food and drink, and in the manufacture of 

 clothing and machinery ? Indeed, can we 

 make any so-called ' practical applications ' 

 of them without comprehending the main 

 theories on which they are based, and of 

 which the application is only an offshoot ? 

 All valuable theories in science must be, 

 and are, founded on facts and facts only; 

 their adoption has often been the result of 

 the accumulation of a multitude of these, 

 but their comprehension may be brought 

 about by a careful selection of any one 

 series, the members of which are so logic- 

 ally connected in the pupil's mind that the 



