28 NATURE STUDY AND LIFE 



all the years of school life. To do this we shall need 

 nature at every turn, and the result will be a living, 

 active, creating mind instead of a helpless parasite. 



Again : I am incessantly told that we, who advocate the introduc- 

 tion of science in schools, make no allowance for the stupidity of the 

 average boy or girl ; but, in my belief, that stupidity, in nine cases 

 out of ten, fit, non nascitur, and is developed by a long process of 

 parental and pedagogic repression of the natural intellectual appetites, 

 accompanied by a persistent attempt to create artificial ones for food 

 which is not only tasteless, but essentially indigestible. Huxley, 

 Science and Education Essays, p. 128. 



Ethical and Social. — As to the ethical values of nature 

 study, an active, vigorous mind will find something to do, 

 some way of expressing itself. Whether such a person 

 does good or evil must depend largely on " the love of right 

 and the hatred of wrong." Much evil is done through 

 pure ignorance. A boy has little idea how much harm he 

 may be doing when he kills birds or destroys their nests, 

 because he has never been taught how much good they 

 are capable of doing ; and further, he has no basis of 

 knowledge to tell him how much pain and distress he 

 may be causing ; and finally, he has no realization of 

 the greater pleasure that he himself would derive from 

 an intelligent study of the same birds. No one can esti- 

 mate the damage that the introduction of certain insects to 

 new continents has wrought and may cause, but we must 

 know these things in order to take proper precautions in 

 the future. To do our duty by our neighbors we need 

 a large body of knowledge of the common things that 

 surround the home. No one, if he knew what he were 

 doing, would breed about his premises noxious insects 



