Page:Preparation of the Child for Science.djvu/65

Rh a mile of rope while this makes a yard.' If a child is left to his natural instincts he will prefer to be able to follow what is going on. The love of very rapidly whirring machinery is an acquired taste, and, for a child, an essentially unhealthy one. It is bad for nerves and eyesight; and if a child does like it, it is in the kind of mood in which, if he got into the same later on, he would not be likely to make a scientific discovery; he would be more likely to take to drink, or gambling, or sensationalism in politics, or to startling the public with violent attacks on sacred things, or, in short, to anything in the world which is most emphatically not science.

A modern child must of course acquire some sympathy with the desire for rapid achievement; but there are better ways of introducing him to it than stunning him with the racket of rapidly whirring wheels. Choose, if possible, some machine which makes little whirr, bustle, or dust; which causes no vicious tremor to eyes or nerves; and in which the large amount of work got through in proportion to the amount of force exerted by the operator is due not to any piece of the machine moving quickly, but to the fact that every touch of the operator's finger sets a great variety of parts moving, each one at a moderate pace but exactly in harmony