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instincts. In post-infantile life, science may be, and often is, 
so taught as to deprive it of its native and inherent advantages ; 
but this is clearly the fault of the teacher or the system of 
teaching ; and it remains certain that the practical teaching of 
Science can be commenced at an earlier period than can pro- 
fitably be attempted with the more ordinary branches of edu- 
cation — if only upon the ground that the senses attain their 
working powers much sooner than do the intellectual faculties. 
Whilst the data of the Sciences have their foundation in the 
senses, the deductions from these data are purely intellectual; 
and hence Science, in this second aspect of its twofold con- 
stitution, stands in precisely the same educational position as 
any non-scientific branch of knowledge. The facts of the 
Sciences can only be discovered, in the first place, through the 
medium of the senses; and even after they have been thus dis- 
covered, and have become common property, they should, 
nevertheless, be mainly handed down from individual to indi- 
vidual through the same channel. On the other hand, the 
generalizations of Science are super-sensual, and are the result 
of purely intellectual operations. The observation of the 
celestial phenomena which constitute the groundwork of the 
science of astronomy can be carried out solely through the 
sense of sight ; but no acuteness of vision, no complexity of 
apparatus, no repetition of investigation or experiment would 
lead to the discovery of the law that the radius vector describes 
equal areas in equal times. We pass here from the region of 
sense into the more ethereal atmosphere of rational mind and 
intellect. The physical properties and phenomena of a thistle 
are presumably as well known to a donkey as the3r are to the 
highest of human beings, in so far, at any rate, as the senses of 
the two are equally efficient ; but the latter can draw certain 
deductions from the facts which he knows about the thistle 
which might perhaps embrace the constitution of the solar 
system in their scope, and which, in their humblest extension, 
are entirely undreamed of in the philosophy of the latter. In 
the alembic of Reason, the lowest facts of the Sciences take 
their proper place as parts of an infinite whole. It may be 
repeated, then, that Science, from an educational point of view, 
is fundamentally a duality, as composed of two distinct but 
closely-related departments. Its facts are most suitably taught 
to the young, in whom the senses are most acute. Its deduc- 
tions, acquired by the working of the mind on the facts pre- 
sented to it by the senses, are rather fitted for later periods of 
life, when the senses may be less active, but the higher intel- 
lectual faculties are more matured. 
