772 Science-Teaching in the Schools. 
children usually die of precocious genius or early piety on the brain, 
and may therefore be disregarded in any discussion of general 
education. Young children in process of normal development are 
what some one has called the Buddhists—“ unconscious material- 
ists.” They do not disbelieve in aspiritual world; they ignore it. 
The early development of the perceptive faculties produces in 
the young child’s mind a natural curiosity in regard to sensible 
objects, and therefore a natural aptitude for their study. There 
are three ways in which we may deal with this mental tendency. 
First, we may leave the child’s curiosity about the external world 
to unrestrained and unguided indulgence. We may let the child 
run wild through field and forest, chase butterflies, rob birds’ nests, 
and fill his pockets with caterpillars. He will grow up a young 
savage, with somewhat of a savage’s field-craft and wood-craft, but 
with very little of valuable intellectual development. Secondly, 
we may repress the child’s natural curiosity. And, in fact, that 1s 
about what is usually done. The child is taught to read as early 
as possible, and then the idea is sedulously inculcated that reading 
is the straight and narrow way that leadeth unto intellectual life. 
The story of Sir William Jones’s mother answering all her son’s 
questions with the words, “ Read, and you will know,” is told with 
express and implied enconiums upon her wisdom and her son’s 
consequent vast erudition. Verily, the ghost of that good woman 
haunts our schools like a malignant spirit. The climax of success 
is reached when the little monk is snugly cloistered with his books, 
oblivious of the very existence of a world of light and music around 
him. And if he grows up to be one of the favored few who are 
permitted to enter the sacred precincts of the college, and there take 
up the long-deferred study of nature, he finds too often his powers 
of observation well-nigh atrophied by long disuse. I speak strongly , 
because I speak from experience. I feel daily that the efficiency 
of my work as a student and teacher of science is impaired by that 
vice of early education which repressed, rather than developed, what- 
ever powers of observation nature had given. My professional life 
has been a perpetual struggle to rid myself of some of the ment 
habitudes induced by an unnatural education. I have not yet quite 
freed myself from the influence of Sir William Jones’s mother. 
And what I have felt in myself I have seen in my students. It 1s 
