480 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
Mele VD Si Clus IN Cle, 
THE NATURAL SCIENCES: THEIR NEWNESS AND VALUE. 
PROF. T. BERRY SMITH, LOUISIANA COLLEGE, LOUISIANA, MO. 
Science is classified knowledge. We may know never so many isolated facts, 
and yet our knowledge be unscientific. In fact, we all do know a great deal 
about ourselves and our surroundings, and yet, because we do not understand 
the relations existing between the facts with which we are familiar, we cannot say 
we are versed in science. Now, natural science is the classified knowledge of the 
material world—it deals with matter, the phenomena exhibited by and in matter, 
and forces, or the causes of phenomena. Natural science may be discussed from 
several standpoints, but in this paper, the subject of the newness and the value 
of the natural sciences will be considered. 
Knowledge is a thing of growth. The new-born babe is utterly ignorant 
and acts only as impelled by instinct. But within this same infant brain are in- 
finite capacities for acquiring knowledge. Newton, Galileo, Agassiz, all the 
proudest masters of the human race, were once helpless babes. And yet, in the 
course of four score years they comprehended much of the mighty forces of the 
universe, and understood a multitude of the facts and phenomena of matter. 
Now, just as any individual of the human race grows from infancy and igno- 
rance to old age and some degree of knowledge, so the human race itself must 
have had its period of infancy and ignorance, and has been, and is yet, growing 
toward seniority and a wider acquaintance with the universe. If this be true, then 
if we can find the order in which an individual acquires knowledge, we will also 
know the order of the growth of knowledge among the human race. 
During its earliest years the child learns to eat, to laugh, to cry, to walk, to 
talk, to sing, to climb, and to do numerous other acts by imitating the example 
of the elders about it. Ideas of distance, size, surface and other qualities of 
matter are not acquired until several years are past. Proper conceptions as to. 
them must be gotten by personal experience. Then, as years of maturity ap- 
proach, ideas of relation and of laws begin to come to the mind through inductive 
processes Hence knowledge may be classified as (1) Imitative, (2) Experimental, 
(3) Inductive. 
Let us apply this order of advancement to the human race. After the birth 
of the human race, there were long ages which we may term its infancy, during 
which the struggle for existence dominated and curbed all mental advancement. 
Means for defense against savage men and still more savage beasts, and methods 
of procuring sustenance and bodily comfort occupied the entire thoughts of men 
and left them time for nothing else. 
