Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/722

704 seeds you could not have failed to observe that the young plants come up with their cotyledons on their heads. If, in pondering this phenomenon, you arrived at the same conclusion that I did, you must have believed that Nature had made a mistake, and so have pulled up your plants and replanted them upside-down. Men and women are but children of a larger growth. They see the tender intellect shooting up in like manner, with the perceptive faculties all alive at top; and they, too, seem to think that Nature has made a mistake, and so they treat the mind as the child treats his bean-plant, and turn it upside-down to make it grow better. They bury the promising young buds deep in a musty mold formed of the decay of centuries, under the delusion that out of such debris they may gather some wholesome nourishment; when we know all that they want is the light and warmth of the sun to stimulate them, and the free air of heaven in which to unfold themselves. What heartless cruelty pursues the little child-martyr every day and all the day long, at home or at school alike; in this place bidden to mind his book and not to look out of the window in that, told to hold his tongue and to remember that children must not ask questions!...

Among the great promoters of scientific progress, how large is the number who may, in strict propriety, be said to have educated themselves. Take, for illustration, such familiar names as those of William Herschel, and Franklin, and Rumford, and Eittenhouse, and Davy, and Faraday, and Henry. Is it not evident that Nature herself, to those who will follow her teachings, is a better guide to the study of her own phenomena than all the training of our schools? And is not this because Nature invariably begins with the training of the observing faculties? Is it not because the ample page which she spreads out before the learner is written all over, not with words, but with substantial realities? Is it not because her lessons reach beyond the simple understanding and impress the immediate intuition? That what she furnishes is something better than barren information passively received—it is positive knowledge actively gathered?

If, then, in the future we would fit man properly to cultivate Nature, and not leave scientific research, as, to a great extent, we have done heretofore, to the hazard of chance, we must cultivate her own processes. Our earliest teachings must be things, and not words. The objects first presented to the tender mind must be such as address the senses, and such as it can grasp. Store it first abundantly with the material of thought, and the process of thinking will be spontaneous and easy.

This is not to depreciate the value of other subjects, or of other modes of culture. It is only to refer them to their proper place. Grammar, philology, logic, human history, belles-lettres, philosophy—all these things will be seized with avidity and pursued with pleasure by a mind judiciously prepared to receive them. On this point we shall do well to learn, and believe we are beginning to learn something, from contemporary peoples upon the Continent of Europe.

Object-teaching is beginning to be introduced, if only sparingly, into our primary schools. It should be so introduced universally. And in all our schools, but especially in those in which the foundation is laid of what is called a liberal education, the knowledge of visible things should be made to precede the study of the artificial structure of language and the intricacies of grammatical rules and forms.

The knowledge of visible things—I repeat these words that I may emphasize them, and, when I repeat them, observe that I mean knowledge of visible things, and not information about them—knowledge acquired by the learner's own conscious efforts, not crammed into his mind in set forms of words out of books.

But how do our colleges stand as a body in regard to these explicit requirements of educational progress? Their whole power is exerted to defeat them. They force Latin and Greek upon all the preparatory schools; they make grammar and verbal studies, which should belong later in the course, imperative in early years; they supplement the classics by mathematics, and give the go-by to all the natural sciences. There is not the slightest provision in the studies introductory to college for any cultivation of the mind by immediate intercourse with the facts of nature. We have before us "A Comparative View of the Requisitions for Admission to Representative American Colleges, correct to 1880-'81," printed in the prospectus of the Berkeley School of New York city. Latin, Greek, and mathematics are of course the staple studies, and the amount of requirement in these