Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/458

418 his pupils, yet either is certainly better fitted to judge what shall be taught as physiology than the indifferent legislator or the reckless reformer.

From the point of view of the temperance cause itself the case seems little better. The false notions of physiology that this kind of instruction is calculated to foster are sure sooner or later to react. The child learns the pseudo facts. They are so striking and so frequently reiterated that he remembers them. But at a later period he discovers that some of them are doubtful, that others were greatly exaggerated, and that not a few were wholly erroneous. Further study will only confirm this conclusion, when it is not unlikely that he will go to the other extreme and reject all he has learned on the subject as unworthy of respect—a state of mind the very opposite of the one intended. But this is not the worst of it. The discredit into which it tends to bring the study of physiology itself is still more unfortunate. The widespread ignorance of this subject is responsible for a vast amount of suffering and disease, much of which might be avoided and some perhaps removed were a knowledge of physiology more generally diffused. To convey such knowledge uncolored and without exaggeration is a worthy object; but to falsify it, calling the falsification science, and compel its acceptance as such by authority of law, is very much like causing the state to join hands with the counterfeiter, and is scarcely entitled to more respect.



three consecutive volumes of the International Education Series an abundant supply of material is furnished to the kindergartner or the mother who would use kindergarten methods. The first consists of fifteen of Froebel's essays which, in the original tongue, were collected into a volume by Dr. Wichard Lange. From these essays may be learned Froebel's own ideas of the significance of the first five "gifts" of the kindergarten. The ball, he says, gives the child a welcome opportunity to contemplate, to grasp, and to possess a whole; it develops the muscular sense and the control of the muscles of the hand and arm: and the various plays with the ball in which the mother may lead the child tend to awakening and fostering the powers of its mind to compare, to conclude, to judge, and to think. The contrast between the sphere and the cube is highly instructive: the one having each part of its surface of the same form as every other part, standing on a point, and easily movable, the other with sharp edges and corners, resting on a broad base, and requiring some force to move it. From the cube, variously divided, the child learns the ideas of parts making up a whole, of one form appearing in different sizes,