Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/372

360 dress and extending it toward me exclaimed, "See there, I'm not an animal!" Absence of clothing was thus a common character which he had generalized into the conception of an animal.

But if the essential mental processes are exactly the same in nature from first to last, in what then does science consist, and where is it to begin? There is a current notion that science is something different from common knowledge—something especially difficult to be injected late in courses of study; and Mrs. Jacobi seems to countenance this view. But we have seen that the process of thought is the same in common knowledge as in science. The difference between them is simply this, that the perceptions of relations in ordinary knowledge are loose, vague, and inaccurate, while it is the office of science to make them more careful, clear, and exact. It is simply a question of degree, and we must assume that science begins at the point where the teacher intervenes to guide the mental processes of the child, and make them more accurate and truthful. This work should be commenced sooner than has been generally supposed; and the view that the rudiments of all science are contained in the common knowledge possessed by the child necessitates a much earlier cultivation of the observing powers of children than is currently practiced. To prevent the break which commonly occurs when children enter upon the study of books and begin to substitute words for things, and to continue the processes which Nature has initiated, I sought for the simplest objects by which connected observations can be pursued, and the work of comparing, tracing out relations, and classifying can be continued, and for this purpose the simpler parts of plants are well adapted. Little children have already a large stock of ideas of the relations of concrete things. They know leaves, and stems, and flowers, though in a loose and indefinite way. The first effect of careful observation is to make these ideas more definite and precise. For instance, in place of the vague notion of leaves formed from casual acquaintance with them, the examination of a variety of leaf-forms reveals distinctly different kinds of leaves accordingly as they are made up of blade, stem, and stipule; of blade and stem; or of blade only. And each of these three definite classes receives a name with an equally definite meaning. On further observation, the blade turns out to be made up of different parts, which are to be further studied; the process of discovery and of precise naming goes on till leaves of all sorts fall into a few distinct groups, based upon definite characters and the simple recognition of these groups suffices for the beginning of classification. In the same way, from observation of stems, these fall into groups as round, square, erect, trailing, creeping, etc. Closer observation reveals still minuter characters, and the numerous individuals to be examined and described insure the repetition needful to depth and retention of impressions. In the objective study of plants the intellectual operations range from the simplest recognition of obvious likeness and difference among