58 NATURE STUDY AND AGRICULTURE 



appeal to reexamination is more immediate. To recog- 

 nize the fact that other people may be right even though 

 they seem to differ from one is making progress. Disputes 

 may be frequently heard among adults which children, 

 trained in comparisons as just indicated, would make short 

 work of. Herein lies a way to the attainment of the 

 scientific spirit, which is more important in education 

 than ten thousand mere facts of science. 



The crowning result of this exercise, when repeated 

 often enough, is to teach the need and nature of adequate 

 proof before a statement can be insisted upon very strenu- 

 ously. For example, a boy claimed that oak leaves have 

 five lobes; he knew it because he had seen an oak leaf and 

 counted its lobes. Another boy, who has been through the 

 mill described above, knows that this is not proof; that 

 many more oak leaves must be examined; and that very 

 likely the lobes will be found to vary in number. Yet 

 the statement of the first boy represents by far the most 

 common form of statement, and many people even base 

 important beliefs upon testimony no more critically ex- 

 amined than the testimony of the oak leaves by the con- 

 fident boy who examined one. 



This tendency to confidence in conclusion based upon 

 few or even single observations is so general that it needs 

 serious attention, and any exercise that helps to correct it 

 cannot be repeated too frequently. One of the hardest 

 things in teaching experience has been to check the tend- 

 ency of many students to use one fact for a starting point 

 for a flight of fancy that is surprising. Such a tendency 

 is corrected when facts accumulate somewhat, and flight 

 in one direction is checked by a pull in some other direction. 



