Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/381

Rh to, the pupils were constructing figures and then demonstrating the questions, making the study simply supplementary to ordinary geometry. There was little invention. Nearly all the constructions were noticeable adaptations of what had been drawn for demonstration in the deductive study.

Nor have the advocates of industrial training, with but one exception, so far as the writer has been able to learn, availed themselves of this study, which is not tentative, but directly in the line of what they urge.

Inventional geometry should be given a place in every school; and, if it becomes a question of time between that and demonstrative geometry, assign the time, in nearly every instance, to the former, because it is of far greater practical value, and many times more educative.



OT many months ago we had in a single number of a leading English review—the "Contemporary"—no less than two articles by able writers lamenting the disintegrating action of science on morality and religion. The first of these was from the pen of the eminent Belgian publicist, M. Émile de Laveleye, and was entitled "The Future of Religion"; the second, contributed by Miss Frances Power Cobbe, dealt in a trenchant and aggressive manner with "The Scientific Spirit of the Age." Both writers seem to be strong anti-Darwinians; but both attack the Darwinian doctrine, not on scientific grounds, but on account of its alleged incompatibility with views and sentiments which they regard as of pre-eminent importance. The only relevant criticism, however, that can be directed against a scientific doctrine is one intended to show that it is not what it claims to be—