THOUGHTS ON SCIENCE TEACHING, 533 



ative powers, or, more frequently, to the dogmatic enunciations of the teacher. 

 This discrimination cannot possibly be ignored. To insist that all scientific 

 acquisition shall be by the observational method, is to betray ignorance of the 

 material of science. The most important, the most real and the only fundamental 

 part of science is accessible only to rational perception, not to sensible percep- 

 tion. To denounce the didactic or descriptive presentation of facts is to assume 

 that all facts can be brought before the sense of the learner, and this is a baseless 

 assumption. To denounce all dogmatic statement of general principles, is to 

 assume that the tottering intellect of the young learner is capable of drawing the 

 same generalizations as have been framed by the sturdiest efforts of experts, and 

 this is a baseless assumption. To denounce all dogmatic statement of deductive 

 inferences is to confess inability to perceive the cogency of a priori evidence, and 

 thus abdicate the privilege of passing judgment on it ; or, if the validity of deduc- 

 tive science is admitted, it is to assume that the learner is already capable of tak- 

 ing, unsupported, the loftiest flights of scientific speculation — a consequence, the 

 very mention of which annihilates the assumption. There must be sometimes a 

 descriptive statement of facts. There must be a dogmatic delivery of inductive 

 doctrines. There must be, unless we would have our teaching grossly defective, 

 a frequent dogmatic exposition of the necessary consequences of established 

 principles. 



Finally, as to the times and circumstances under which these various methods 

 of teaching may be employed, we have a few words to offer. Let us first consider 

 the learner of tender years. It requires no argument to make it appear that the 

 generalized and deductive principles of science are not appropriate, or, in any 

 event, are less appropriate, than the facts, to the active percipient powers and the 

 late awakened reflective powers of the young. It seems, however, to require argu- 

 ment to establish the belief in the minds of educators, that the learning of the 

 facts of science is positively suitable to the faculties and aptitudes of the young. 

 If the proposition were accepted, we should not see children and youths shut up 

 for years to the abstractions of arithmetic and grammar, the sporofic and compar- 

 atively unproductive details of historical names and dates, or the meaningless 

 and profitless lists of capes and headlands along some remote barbaric shore. 

 We aie not denying the usefulness of these things, nor even their comparative 

 usefulness. We strongly feel, however, that during the stage of childish percep- 

 tivity, there is greater appropriateness and productiveness in the exercise of the 

 faculties upon facts of present interest, and which actually enter into the organi- 

 zation of sciences of transcendent influence and importance. But, whatever 

 finally may be agreed as to the propriety of introducing the natural sciences to 

 the attention of the child, it can hardly be denied that the most rational method 

 of doing this is to bring the child into contact with the facts, and leave his own 

 mind, as far as it is able, to draw the general inferences to which the facts point. 

 It follows that books and teachers which aim at a systematic, synthetic presenta- 

 tion of one of the natural sciences, forget the order of development of mental 

 faculties, and prepare to leave a sense of weariness and disgust where there 



