Science- Teaching in the Schools. 905 
of science or in different periods of the educational course. The study 
of botany has been advocated especially for its disciplinary value, 
that of physiology especially for the utility of the knowledge 
which is acquired. It has been maintained that in the primary 
school the main objects of the science lessons must be to culti- 
vate a habit of accurate observation and intelligent appreziation 
of nature, while in the high school each science should be taught 
as a systematic body of fact and theory. This leads us to notice 
the unfortunate truth that the two objects of scientific study are 
to a certain degree incompatible with each other—that the best 
methods for mental discipline are not the best methods for the 
acquisition of information. Undoubtedly the method by which 
the characteristic mental discipline of scientific study can be most 
effectively secured, is to put ihe student as nearly as possible in 
the attitude of the original investigator—to lead him to infer 
laws and principles from the observations and experiments which 
he has made himself. But the path taken by the original explorer 
of a country is often not the most convenient route for subsequent 
travelers. And a knowledge of laws and principles in science once 
ascertained can often be taught in ways far more expeditious and 
convenient than the method of their original discovery. More- 
over, many of the most important conclusions rest upon observa- 
tions only possible in exceptional conditions of time, place, and 
circumstance. Every student should learn the laws of definite 
and multiple proportions, which form the foundation of chemical 
theory ; but the ordinary student has no time to perform such a 
number of experiments in quantitative analysis and synthesis as 
would make a sound inductive basis for those laws. Every student 
should learn something of the phenomena and laws of earthquakes. 
and volcanoes; but it is impossible to get up an earthquake or a 
volcanic eruption for a laboratory experiment. It is well for every 
student to learn something of the conclusions in regard to the action 
of the stomach reached by the classical observations on poor Alexis. 
St. Martin; but it is hardly desirable to repeat St. Martin’s acci- 
dent and injury for the benefit of every class in physiology. The 
right method of scientific education must be a compromise. The 
most important facts and principles must be taught by text-books 
and lectures, in such way as to secure most effectively their being 
understood and remembered. But, so far as the nature of the sub- 
