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if our teachers trusted less to the abounding merits of their sub- 

 jects, and more to the qualities which personally influence young- 

 people — the sympathetic qualities involving interest in their pur- 

 suits, the diplomatic qualities involving the utilization for good 

 purposes of the peculiarities of human nature, the perfecting qual- 

 ities involving the amenities and even the graces of life. There 

 is no inconsistency between these things and the preservation of 

 the scientific quality of the teaching. It is simply a question of 

 the presentation of science in a manner which is humanistic. It 

 is the gloving of the iron hand of the scientific method by the 

 soft velvet of gentle human intercourse. Science is the skeleton 

 of knowledge, but it need lose nothing of its strength and flexi- 

 bility if clothed by a living mantle of the human graces. It is 

 idealism with realism which is demanded of the science teacher,., 

 and if some one would rise to say that this union is logically im- 

 possible I would answer, that many a problem of this life unsolv- 

 able by the subtleties of logic can be settled by robust common- 

 sense. 



Of our over-neglect of the personal peculiarities of our students 

 I know several illustrations, but have space only for one. Young 

 people appear to have in them some measure of Nageli's innate 

 perfecting principle, which leads them upon the whole to respect 

 and like those things which are good and clean and dignified, a 

 feeling which manifests itself in their strivings after good clothes,, 

 good society and things supposedly artistic, not to mention innum- 

 erable longings after the lofty unattainable. Now a dirty or care- 

 lessly-managed laboratory is a direct shock to this feeling, and 

 most scientific laboratories sin in these features, I believe there 

 is no part of a college or school equipment which ought to be 

 prepared and managed with more care than a scientific laboratory. 

 Efficiency for its purpose is of course the first requisite of any 

 laboratory, but in college or high school that efficiency should be 

 secured with attention to the utmost of pleasing effect, in the 

 direction of a large simplicity, evidence of care for each feature,, 

 and an atmosphere of spacious and even artistic deliberation. As- 

 an example of what can be done by good taste to give a pleasing- 

 setting to the most unpromising objects, I commend the New 



