Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/185

Rh to be studying, yet in the above paragraph he presents us with an argument which would be amusing had it come from the pen of a mere literary man, but which it is almost impossible to believe a cultivator of science could advance in sober earnest. What would have been the thoughts and feelings of the professor had one of his pupils, when asked to demonstrate the pons asinorum, returned answer:

"Sir, my tutor was the Rev. Mr. Jones, of Westbury; he is a clergyman of mature knowledge, recognized ability, and blameless character. Now, he assured me that he had examined Euclid's proof of this proposition, and had found it to be correct, and as to doubt his word would be to manifest irrational suspicion, and a want of power to properly appreciate evidence, I accepted his testimony, and I now offer it to you as my proof."

I suspect that that pupil's ideas of proof would have received a clearing up. He would have learned that there are other kinds of evidence besides oral testimony, and that it is as necessary to be able to judge of the validity in each case, of these other kinds of evidence, as it is to be able to judge of the value of testimony. He would learn that, unless he were to be a professed mathematician, a knowledge of the bare truth of the pons asinorum was a matter of no moment, the important thing was to see how that truth was arrived at, and how it was demonstrated; the educative factor present in the study was the exercise of the reasoning faculties, and of the powers of orderly arranging and of clearly presenting all the parts of a somewhat long argument.

So in the experiment with the sovereign and the feather, the mere testing of the truth or the falsehood of the statement that, if the resistance of the air be got rid of, a feather will fall earthward as fast as a sovereign, is not the chief thing aimed at. In fact, this statement should not be advanced prior to the performance of the experiment, but the fact stated in it should be discovered by the pupils for themselves from the experiment; and I beg to add that, had Professor Todhunter ever actually tried the experiment with the common apparatus, he would possibly have found the discovery of the fact not quite so simple a matter for a boy as he evidently imagined it to be.

But Professor Todhunter, while admitting that a boy takes more interest in seeing an experiment performed or in performing it for himself than in merely hearing a statement of its truth, doubts the educational value of the appeal to the senses. Any teacher of natural science worthy of the name of teacher would from his experience be able instantly to explain why this increase of interest, and instantly to set all doubts regarding the matter to rest. There seems in many minds to he an almost total separation between words and the things they represent, except as regards constantly recurring incidents of their daily life. Hence words seem to have no power in such cases to call