Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/381

Rh this study should he pursued by the method of science. The importance of this last requirement cannot be over-estimated. The study of man should be first of all scientific, because that is the only method which aims solely and supremely to arrive at the truth. It is well to study human nature for the sake of professional utility; but it is better to study it for the intrinsic and exalted character of the knowledge itself. It is more important to insist upon this, because on no subject is the bias of prejudice and prepossession so all-disturbing as here. Human beings should be studied exactly as minerals and plants are studied, with the simple purpose of tracing out the laws and relations of the phenomena they present. Men should be analyzed to their last constituents, physiological and mental. They should be observed in their characters and actions, in their general attributes and peculiar traits; they should be apprehended in their growth, in their normal and abnormal manifestations, in their relations to inferior life, in their social and sexual attributes, and in their relations to vocations and institutions, and the whole inquiry should be pursued in that unimpassioned spirit of true science which cares little what the facts may be, but every thing to know what they are.

Human nature is certainly a very comprehensive and complicated subject, and as a science it is, of course, profoundly imperfect. It is by no means to be taken up as one of the ordinary sciences, and pursued separately, like mathematics or electricity. Those branches of science upon which it chiefly depends are to be acquired first as a foundation, and then they are to be combined in the direct and practical study of man himself, in his totality, and as a subject of systematic observation. Human nature, like geology, is dependent upon other sciences for its data, and then it offers large additional questions of its own, which require a scientific training to deal with them. When the geologist has mastered the laws of physics, chemistry, mineralogy, meteorology, zoology, and botany, he then goes out to commence the practical study of the rocky masses which compose the earth's crust. In the same way the scientific student of human nature will first get an acquaintance with the principles of biology, which throw light upon man's physical constitution and relations, and then he must master psychology, or the science of feeling and intellect, as manifested in the grades of life, and these will prepare him to form a right conception of the individual man in his bodily and mental unity. All this, however, is of little account in itself, and is but a preparation for the direct study of human beings, their characters and actions, as matters of habitual and methodical observation. What is required of our enlightened educators is, to arrange the scientific curriculum with a view to this great end, and then to pursue the study into its higher and practical applications. If it be said that we can never know the truth about people, as half of them give their lives to the art of keeping up false appearances, the reply is, then study that fact first, and get a cool scientific expression of the extent, limits, and value of this source of error; a long stride will thus be taken toward the end we propose.

This study is undoubtedly great, complex, and difficult, but it is, nevertheless, intrinsically practicable. Thanks to science, the knowledge exists. An immense body of truth of the character here indicated has been wrought out, but education as yet ignores it. Between the vast system of facts and principles which science has established, and the state of the general mind, there is a gulf wider than the Pacific, and it is still daily widening; for, while there is greater activity now