Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/657

Rh the exercise. To be able to express accurately with a pencil point what is observed is a power of inestimable value. However, the power to observe accurately is not necessarily accompanied by the power to express accurately, but the former must precede the latter. No one can draw accurately what he has not seen accurately. And along with this mental development must also go a moral development. Seeing accurately is only seeing the thing as it actually is—that is, seeing the truth; and drawing and describing are only stating the facts, or telling the truth. Here is where the temptations lie. An indolent or careless pupil finds telling the exact truth with his pencil point to be arduous, and is tempted to distort or only partially represent the truth. But accuracy of expression must be a constant drill in truthfulness.

But, along with the seeing and expressing, pupils must be led to think, if the work is to be of much value. What is the relation between this observed fact and that observed fact? What must be the use of this organ? Why is it so constructed? Why why? why? These are questions that should be continually brought before them. This is the shore upon which many are at first stranded. They may see fairly well, they may draw and describe fairly well; but to answer such "whys" is something to which they are not accustomed. However, they launch out little by little, and eventually become bold explorers on the ocean of truth. But besides being able to answer "whys," they should learn to deduce laws from observed facts, and to make predictions as to future processes. Here the power of imagination, that is so important in all school work, must be exercised. Without this power few "whys" can be answered, few deductions made, and no processes predicted. If a pupil can build up in his mind a plant or animal, with or without this or that organ or set of organs, and can then imagine what functions could or could not be performed by his creation, he has a power that will aid him in any work to which the duties of life may call him.

But as yet I have said little concerning the value of the facts learned in pursuing such a course of study. The value of the information gained was formerly the chief reason for studying natural history, as it was called. But now the best educators know that the power to discover truth, to acquire knowledge, is of far greater value than simple possession of knowledge. However, the information obtained from the study is of great value to any one. For example, in studying progressively the structure and use of the organs of the animals below man, they get accurate ideas concerning their own bodies. I make a special effort to have them get correct ideas concerning sexual organs and processes, that subject concerning which there is such a wide spread ignorance and such a lamentable amount of false modesty and