Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/430

414 that can easily be remedied; and, by the aid of a little reflection and experience, scientific instruction in girls' schools can be so organized as to produce the best results as regards not only the direct imparting of scientific knowledge, but also the infusing of new life and significance into other branches of study.

We quite agree with our contributor when she says that scientific teaching unaccompanied by practical work on the part of the student is a very ineffectual, not to say wholly useless, thing. Mere oral instruction or the study of text-books will never impart any adequate sense of the need for evidence or of the nature of verification; far from weakening, it can only tend to strengthen the habit of dependence on authority. But set young minds to make their own observations and draw their own conclusions, to verify experimentally the theories contained in the text-books, instead of simply taking them on trust, and the intellectual benefit will be lasting and far-reaching. Lessons of patience and exactness will be taught that can not fail to be of value in after life; and the highest purely intellectual result of education will be achieved in the acquisition of a true conception of the manner in which knowledge is built up and rational certitude acquired in all matters accessible to the human mind. The difference is vast between a mind which knows what verification is, what an experiment is, and one that wholly lacks such knowledge. The one can take a more or less accurate measure of the facts of life and of any given situation, while the other is to a great extent at the mercy of haphazard impressions. The one sails a definite course, making the best use of every wind; the other is apt to change its course with every change of wind.

In girls' schools the study of science assumes a specially important function. The fashionable doctrine to-day in some quarters is that there is no sex in mind; but, for our own part, we incline to think that even in these latter times there is sufficient difference in the mental habits of men and women to render instruction in the facts and methods of science of more pressing need from the point of view of individual development in the case of the latter than in the case of the former. Writers who are not open to the suspicion of prejudice dwell on the greater "instinctiveness" of women as compared with men. Instinctiveness may be a valuable quality, but it has the drawback of dictating a very summary and personal manner of deciding questions which really depend wholly on external evidence. It is common enough among men for the wish to be father to the thought; but in the case of women we may use with considerable appropriateness the ponderous paraphrase of Dr. Johnson, and say that "desire superinduces conviction." Not merely a thought, be it remarked, but conviction: and how convinced a woman may be on the side of her desires perhaps most people have experienced.

Some one may say that this is an interesting condition of mind, a kind of sweet unreasonableness, which no one should seek to interfere with. Banter of this kind may at times be amusing, but it does not decide any serious question. The study of science affords precisely the intellectual exercise best adapted to check waywardness of thought and bring the mind into a right relation to the questions which have to be faced in everyday life. It shows one clear road, one well-established highway, to true conclusions, and reveals the danger of short cuts and hasty