66 



SCIENCE, 



[Vol. VL, No. 129. 



student should next make acquaintance with 

 chemical action. Here the aim should be to 

 show the complication of laws which control 

 the relations of bodies, molecules, and atoms, 

 which entirely elude the senses. Nowhere else 

 can the student so well attain to a conception 

 of the penetrating influence of natural law or 

 the infinite varietj^ of its results. No other 

 department of study will do so much to take 

 away the idea of grossness, of inorganiza- 

 tion, which the untrained mind applies to 

 the world of matter. It is not necessary 

 that the student should make much progress 

 in analytic chemistr}^ : the simpler the phe- 

 nomena chosen for the study, as long as 

 they involve the perception of quantitative re- 

 lations, the better for this task. The main 

 point to be attained is the comprehension of 

 the principles of atomic and molecular rela- 

 tions, and an understanding of the nature of 

 evidence as to causation, which this science, 

 as well as physics, so well affords. Although 

 the field to be gone over in these departments 

 is not wide, it should be patientl}^ and re- 

 peatedly traversed, in order that the mental 

 effect should be clearly and firmly borne in 

 upon the student. 



We now come to the third end which we 

 should seek to attain in our use pf natural 

 science in the work of education. This is the 

 conception of the order and continuity which 

 prevails in nature. In the lower states of 

 human culture, we find the savage and half- 

 civilized peoples looking upon the physical 

 world as a domain which is under the control 

 of superhuman yet essentiall}^ human persons. 

 All the order and much of the apparent disorder 

 of the outer world are accounted for b}^ the con- 

 trol and the contentions of these superhuman 

 powers. The advance towards monotheism 

 gradually did awa}^ with this crude but natural 

 conception of law ; and in its place has come 

 a dull, inert sense of the mere power of the 

 physical universe, which has no educative value 

 whatever, and which is in truth falser to the 

 facts than the conception of nature held by 

 the orthodox Greek of the Periclean age. In 

 place of the old animism which humanized all 

 parts of the universe by giving its control to 

 powers which were akin in nature to, and in 

 sympathy with, man, we have now a set of 

 meaningl'ess terms which cloak our want of 

 understanding. 



The first aim of education should be, if pos- 

 sible, to restore the old sense of close sympa- 

 thetic relation to the outer world which was 

 lost with the death of polytheism. To restore 

 it on the line of our new and higher knowl- 



edge of the universe, man must in some way 

 find himself in the world of physical life. Our 

 monotheistic religion cannot do this work, for 

 it turns the mind towards the infinite alone : it 

 almost necessarily neglects the phenomenal 

 world. Even the theory of design failed to lead 

 men to the stu% of nature. Religion, in the 

 proper sense of the word, concerns the moral 

 side of man too completel}" to aid us in this 

 task : if man is to gain a better reconciliation 

 with the physical world, he must secure it on 

 other lines. 



The only possible way in which a real sense 

 of kinship with the outer world can be aroused 

 is through the sympathies, first by the sense of 

 beaut}^ in nature, next through the kindred 

 sense of order or continuity of action in the 

 physical world. 



There is an instinctive progress towards this 

 reconciliation which is brought about by the 

 growing love of the beautiful in nature. It is 

 hard to prescribe a way in which it can be 

 fostered : it is not easy to do this work in the 

 case of any sj'mpathies ; but the teacher will 

 readity see that it is the most precious of all 

 the means b}' which man can find his way to 

 a more loving relation with the outer world. 

 When the teacher of natural science can create 

 or deepen the sense of the beautiful and the 

 ordered in nature, he has done his work as 

 minister in this great need. 



In close relation to this sense of beauty is 

 the sense of order in physical and organic 

 nature. The teacher should endeavor in all 

 ways to give the pupil a sense of the abso- 

 lute continuity of action in the world. This 

 difficult conception is perhaps best obtained b}' 

 presenting the evidence that man is, at least 

 in his body, the product of a continuous life, 

 which, from the earliest ages to the present 

 da}", has gone step by step upward. Let the 

 student grasp what he can of this overwhelm- 

 ing truth ; let him see how, through all the ac- 

 cidents of this perturbed world, the life which 

 has led to himself — his life, in fact — has gone 

 unfalteringly forward to its end. We thus give 

 him a feeling of his kinship with nature, — a 

 sense of a kindly filial relation to the earth 

 which will widen and deepen all the ways of 

 thought. 



Thus, without going very far beyond the 

 theory of a thoroughly humanized education, 

 without demanding more than one-third the 

 schooling-time between the ages of ten and 

 twenty, it will be possible to give the j^outh all 

 the training which is necessary to secure the 

 best that scientific culture can afford. 



N. S. Shaler. 



