Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/597

Rh must consider the conditions on which the successful study and interpretation of Nature depend.

Of the powers of the mind called into exercise in the investigation of Nature, the most obvious and fundamental is the power of observation. By power of observation is not meant simply the ability to see, to hear, to taste, or to smell with delicacy, but the power of so concentrating the attention on what we observe as to form a definite and lasting impression on the mind. There are undoubtedly great differences among men in the acuteness of their sensations, but successful observation depends far less upon the acuteness of the senses than on the faculty of the mind which clearly distinguishes and remembers what is seen and heard. We say of a man that he walks through the world with his eyes shut, meaning that, although the objects around him produce their normal impression on the retina of his eye, he pays no attention to what he sees. The power of the naturalist to distinguish slight differences of form or feature in natural objects is simply the result of a habit, acquired through long experience, of paying attention to what he sees, and the want of this power in students who have been trained solely by literary studies is most marked.

An assistant who was at the time conducting a class in mineralogy, once said to me: "What am I to do? One of my class can not see the difference between this piece of blend and this piece of quartz" (showing me two specimens which bore a certain superficial resemblance in color and general aspect). My answer was, "Let him look until he can see the difference." And, after a while, he did see the difference. The difficulty was not lack of vision, but want of attention.

The power of observation, then, is simply the power of fixing the attention upon our sensations, and this power of fixing the attention is the one essential condition of scholarship in all departments of learning. It is a power which ought to be cultivated at an early age, and in a system of scientific culture the sciences of mineralogy and botany afford the best field for its culture, and I should therefore place them among the earliest studies of a scientific course. Minerals and plants may be profitably studied in the youngest classes of our secondary schools, but they should be studied solely from specimens, which the scholar should examine until he can distinguish all the characteristics of form, feature, or structure. I am told that in many of our secondary schools both mineralogy and botany are studied with great success and interest in the manner I have indicated. But a mistake is frequently made in attempting to do too much. With mineralogy or botany as classificatory sciences, our secondary schools should have nothing to do. The distinction between many, even of the commonest, species of minerals or plants depends upon delicate distinctions which are quite beyond the grasp of young minds, and the study of botany frequently loses all its value, through the ambition of the teacher