IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
23 
concentrated itself on less important details and ignored 
broader principles. While it can not be said of many of our 
colleges, as was recently said of a leading American univer- 
sity, that its zoological department had all run to scales and 
tail feathers, yet it is true that we are burying relationships 
under a bewildering mass of details. It must be confessed that 
some of our latest and most improved methods, notably of 
those biological studies included under the term morphology, 
have a tendency to increase rather than dimmish this evil. 
There is always the danger of mistaking the means for the end. 
The fault of science teaching in our public schools lies in the 
fact that the student gains little or no conception of the bear- 
ing of scientific study on his life. The facts of science are pre- 
sented as so many isolated entities, interesting or uninteresting 
as the case may be. The high school must not be looked at 
and judged as a preparatory school for college train! og, but 
as a finishing school for a large part of our school population. 
The studies should be arranged not as leading to a college cur- 
riculum, but as preparing pupils for active life, not by loading 
their brains with facts, but by training their mental activities. 
In this latter respect high school science makes a lamentable 
failure. 
I make no tirade against public schools. The fault lies 
largely and chiefly with the schools that prepare our teachers 
for science teaching, i. e., our colleges and universities. We 
may say the public schools are behind the times in this respect, 
and they are merely following the lead of publishers of anti- 
quated text-books. This may be true, but nevertheless the 
evils of science teaching in our high schools are only minia- 
tures of those that exist so frequently in our colleges. 
What do I consider the pre eminent good to be obtained from^ 
the study of the inductive sciences? To enable the mind to 
detect the living truths; to perceive that every effect may be 
referred to an appropriate cause; to see that nothing is inde- 
pendent of relationships; to see that human activities are inti- 
mately bound up with other activities; and that the individual 
is but part of a whole. In other words, to adjust the mind to 
the sum total of its environment. When we can once establish 
our scientific training on such a basis, empiricism, charlatanism, 
and all the frauds that prey on human credulity must beat a 
retreat. 
