Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 23.djvu/226

214 President Barnard, of Columbia College, in a public address reprobating in severe terms the common method of teaching science as being an inversion of the true order of cultivating the mental faculties, referred to the great benefits which must arise "when our systems of education shall have been remodeled from top to bottom." That result may come about in the fullness of time, but it is wise to expect only a slow and gradual improvement. Vice-President Grote, in his St. Louis address, pointed out the guiding principle in this case as a substitution of real knowledge for second-hand information by a necessary law of mental advancement. In obedience to this principle, the cultivators of original science should do what they may to raise the standard of our prevalent science-teaching; and we respectfully ask that the Association will assign to a committee the duty of reporting at our next meeting on the best modes of improving the teaching of science in our public schools.



HE philosopher who first perceived and announced the fact that all the physical doings of man consist simply in changing the places of things made a very profound generalization, and one that is worthy of more serious consideration than it has received.

All our handicraft, however great may be the skill employed, amounts to no more than this. The miner moves the ore and the fuel from their subterranean resting-places, then they are moved into the furnace, and by another moving of combustibles the working of the furnace is started; then the metals are moved to the foundries and forges, then under hammers, or squeezers, or into melting-pots, and thence to molds. The workman shapes the bars, or plates, or castings, by removing a part of their substance, and by more and more movings of material produces the engine, which does its work when fuel and water are moved into its fireplace and boiler.

The statue is within the rough block of marble; the sculptor merely removes the outer portions, and thereby renders his artistic conception visible to his fellow-men.

The agriculturist merely moves the soil in order that it may receive 