THE VESTIBULE TO SCIENTIFIC STUDIES. 671 



EDUCATIONAL. 



THE VESTIBULE TO SCIENTIFIC STUDIES. 



BY PROF. T. B. SMITH, NORTHFIELD, MINNESOTA. 



In all of our teaching, we are too much given to putting a text-book into the 

 pupil's hands and bidding him prepare so many pages for the first lesson. I have 

 become assured that this is not the right course to pursue, and, therefore, at the 

 entrance of each class on any particular branch of learning, I spend a lesson or 

 more, as the case may need, in going as far back as possible and bringing them 

 up to the topic in hand. In this article I shall endeavor to state briefly the 

 method pursued with classes beginning various branches in Natural or Physical 

 Sciences. 



It is easy to start with a single thought and unfold it until it becomes very 

 complex; but, if done in the right way, the whole course will appear easy and 

 plain. But to begin with something far removed from the starting point, and try 

 to go ahead without any knowledge of what is behind, is very difficult indeed. 

 If you start at the front door and proceed to pass through the hall and up the 

 stairway, and through the vestibule and over the threshhold into the audience 

 room, then it will be easy to go ahead or to go backward, and there is no sense 

 of bewilderment; but if you be blindfolded and set down at once in the audience 

 room, then you do feel bewildered, for you know not where you are, nor how you 

 came there, further than that you were brought there, nor what is to come. 



Let us call any particular branch of Natural Science the audience room ; 

 then let us see what constitutes the vestibule through which the pupil must be al- 

 lowed to pass if you would have him understand clearly where he is and what he 

 is doing. 



The first great and fundamental thought is, Our study is to be about matter as it 

 is, as we have been familiar with it all our days. We are not to bother ourselves 

 about its origin or its destiny ; neither are we to concern ourselves with Mind. 

 Matter, and all its form and phenomena — these are to be our study. 



But Matter is not permanent — it is always changing so far as we can see. So 

 the second great thought is Change. 



But there is, as we have learned by experience, always some cause of the 

 change ; and these Causes constitute the third great thought. 



Summing up what we have thus far learned, we find we are to study and 

 learn about these things : 



i. Matter and its Forms. 



2. Changes in Matter. 



3. Causes of these Changes. . 



