Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/768

748 is not the label that costs, but the thing labeled. Economy admonishes us to stop with symbols. Phenomena are displayed only as realities; and things real are property and must be paid for. Experimental facilities are expensive, and museum collections represent immense labor. This is a potent reason why there is so much sham in so-called scientific education; or, perhaps, we might more properly say why it falls so far short of what is expected from it. The poor student who cannot get the objects and materials for observation and experiment, is tempted if not compelled to make such shift as he can with books and pictures. This is a difference between the two systems of education which is deep and must continue, and it will operate powerfully to hinder the popular spread of true science. There are, of course, differences in the expensiveness of different branches of scientific study; botany, for example, being cheaper than chemistry. Of the two classes that may be taken generally as most ignorant of the science of their business, cooks and congressmen, it will cost at least ten times more properly to educate the former than the latter.

Yet this difficulty of scientific education is by no means incapable of mitigation, although but comparatively little has thus far been done to overcome it. The training of professional scientific students for the work of research has hitherto engrossed the main attention, and here much has been done to simplify and cheapen operations. Experimental physics is more expensive than chemistry, but efficient efforts are making to reduce the old scales of cost. We notice that, in the scientific school at South Kensington in London, they have adopted the plan of putting the student methodically at work, at the outset, to make his own apparatus. This is an important step, as a short apprenticeship of this kind soon renders him to a very considerable degree independent of instrument-makers, and enables him to go on with his inquiries by utilizing resources that may come to hand in almost any circumstances.

Yet the problem from our point of view is still unresolved. Scientific education, in its popular aspect, does not aim to make investigators or discoverers; it only proposes to acquaint general students with some of the branches of science which may be selected, but to do it by actual familiarity with their subject-matter. What may be now fairly demanded is, that a certain portion of physics, chemistry, botany, or zoölogy, be actually mastered; that is, their phenomena and facts shall be seen, and their principles known by all who take a liberal course of study. This is indispensable to counteract the evils of a purely book education, and to avoid the uncertainty and illusiveness that prevail in the realm of mere words. The importance of this end being admitted, the question remains, how to provide the most economical facilities for this kind of study. It is beyond doubt possible, by the employment of suitable objects that are everywhere available, to give reality and thoroughness to scientific study without great expense; but the method of doing this has yet to be elaborated. Perhaps the only exception to this statement is botany, which can be studied so cheaply that there is no excuse, on the score of cost, for not introducing it forthwith into all common schools. A method has been developed, which is rigidly based upon the principle that the pupil shall study the actual objects at first hand, so that he may "know what he knows" of this interesting subject, and not stop with book representations of it, while the objects of examination are to be had everywhere by merely plucking them. Something like this, as far as it shall prove possible, is yet to be accomplished for the popular study of physics, chemistry, and zoölogy.