Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/864

844. Instead of presenting a large number of facts, and thus overburdening the student's mind, I have presented a smaller number than is usual in elementary courses in chemistry; but I have been careful to select for treatment such substances and such phenomena as seemed to me best suited to give an insight into the nature of chemical action. Usually the mind is not allowed to dwell for any length of time upon any one thing, and thus to become really acquainted with it, but is hurried on and is soon bewildered in the effort to comprehend what is presented. I can not but believe that it is much better to dwell longer on a few subjects, provided these subjects are properly selected.

"The charge is frequently made that our elementary text-books on chemistry are not scientific, that is to say, that not enough stress is laid upon the relations which exist between the phenomena considered—the treatment is not systematic. The student is taught a little about oxygen, a little about hydrogen, a little about nitrogen, etc.; and then a little about potassium, a little about calcium, etc., and he is left simply to wonder whether there is any connection between the numerous facts offered for study. It must be acknowledged that there are serious difficulties in the way of a purely scientific treatment of chemistry, but I think that it is quite possible to treat the subject more scientifically than is customary, and thus to make it easier of comprehension to the student. I have made an effort in this direction in the book here offered to the public."

Professor Remsen's remark about the difficulty in the way of a purely scientific treatment of chemistry here applies, as we suppose, to the difficulty of presenting it to beginners in the study, and is, of course, true; but we have considerable doubt whether the difficulty is to be met by any attempt to make the work of the beginner more scientific. From the quality of his book we must infer that Professor Remsen's "beginner" is a pupil advanced to considerable maturity of mind, sufficient to deal with conceptions of some complexity and comprehensiveness. It is assumed that he enters the laboratory, goes to work himself, and has such strength of thought that a few examples would be sufficient to familiarize him with the established interpretations and principles of the science. But the real "difficulty" in the case, we think, is, that a stage of mental growth has been jumped when more elementary conceptions of the subject could have been assimilated, and some preparation afforded for that scientific treatment upon which the professor proposes to enter. The child is, in reality, already familiar with many chemical phenomena, as facts of observation and experience, although he does not know that they are chemistry. The more rational method seems to us to begin considerally further back, and occupy the pupil at first with a range of simpler observations and experiments that shall acquaint him to a certain degree with the properties of substances and their simpler reactions, without attempting to grasp principles that can be better handled at a later stage. This would imply, of course, a grading of the subject, and an introduction to it as a part of primary education.

we may regard the conclusions of the anonymous author of the present book, one thing is to be said in his favor—his views have only been reached by deliberate and comprehensive study. His volume is, at any rate, not to be classed with those products of hasty speculation on social subjects which are now so abundant. He began well at the beginning of philosophical inquiry, by writing an original volume on those necessary conflicts and antagonisms in nature and life which put limits to what can be accomplished in the various spheres of action in which men are engaged. It was a most wholesome and needed investigation, and that it excited so little attention and interest is painful evidence of that shallowness of thought and foolish extravagance of expectation with which political and social subjects are treated in Legislatures and by the press. The author's book on "Reforms: their Difficulties and