152 
TENTH REPORT. 
It may be urged that type study fails to evoke interest and some other 
form of botany does. This is a good example of the suppressed minor pre- 
mise. Any subject and any device in teaching will evoke interest if employed 
in the proper way. Interest resides not in the subject of instruction but 
depends upon the perception of relations between the thing taught and the 
pupil. Hence it cannot be used as a criterion of the. value of the subject, but 
rather as a test of the effectiveness of the teacher. The first question the 
child asks is, “ What is it? ” It is an eminently proper question and demands 
an answer. When the thing studied has been labeled, the student has a 
power over it impossible to one who is not so taught. To know a thing is 
to know its relations. A thing really is the sum of all its relations. All 
subsequent study is merely an extension of a knowledge of relations the 
thing manifests. So the final question of the philosopher is the first question 
of the child, and the difference is represented by the number of relations 
in which philosopher’s knowledge exceeds the childs’. So Tennyson expresses 
the profoundest truth when he says: 
Flower in the crannied wall 
I pick you out of the crannies; 
I hold you in my hand. 
Little flower, if I could understand 
What you are, root and all 
And all in all, 
I should know what God is and what man is. 
