science in the school curriculum and the position the subject should occupy therein. Let us, then, inquire what those grounds and that position are.

The first point to be seized is that a subject justly claims a place in the school only in so far as it represents a movement of primary importance in the evolution of the human spirit. That criterion is clearly satisfied, for example, by the study of great literatures, of art and of music. It needs no argument to prove that civilization would be enormously poorer if any one of these historic types of activity had perished in its youth or ceased now to be cultivated. There is no question, therefore, that instruction suitably founded on them enriches, enlarges, ennobles-in a word, humanizes—the minds of children and young people. Science claims admission on the same ground. If it were merely useful knowledge it might, like shorthand or "commercial French," rightly be excluded or relegated to an inferior place among the studies of youth. But it is more than useful knowledge. Equally with literature and art, science is one of the grand historic expressions of the human spirit; it is entitled, therefore, to an equally honourable and spacious position in the curriculum.

The spirit in which the subject should be taught follows from the same criterion. We teachers are too ready to think that the educational virtue of a subject lies in some essence that can be distilled from it and administered in regular doses as a mental tonic. This persistent prejudice-a veritable idol of our tribeaccounts for the classical teacher's faith in laborious construing and mechanical verse-making, for the mathematician's belief in the talismanic properties of Euclid. Science-teachers, inheriting the same unfortunate habit,

have thought that the educative power of their subject, too, must reside in some isolable elixir. That is why they have too often focussed their efforts upon cultivating observation" or "inculcating scientific method."

It is true

The defect of these and kindred views is that they attribute to a part what belongs, in reality, only to the whole. The prime contribution of the heroes of science to the world's cultural wealth is not the scientific method but the scientific life. In accordance with our criterion, our business is, then, to teach the realization of the life, not the mastery of the method. that the scientific method is as necessary to the scientific life as breathing to the bodily life; but the scientific method, cultivated as an end in itself, resembles the method of the man of science only as artificial respiration resembles natural breathing. Our proper aim, then, is to make our pupils feel, so far as they may, what it is to be, so to speak, inside the skin of the man of science, looking out through his eyes as well as using his tools, experiencing not only something of his labours, but also something of his sense of joyous intellectual adventure.

Two questions naturally arise at this point: What are the marks of the scientific life, and, In what sense can boys and girls be made to "realize" it? Let us attempt to answer them.

The most obvious and fundamental characteristics of the scientific life are a love for "nature" and a disinterested desire to understand her ways. There are two things here, love and understanding, which God has joined together and man cannot hope to sunder without grievous loss to both. Wordsworth spoke sound philosophy when he said that "Nature never

did betray the heart that loved her."

The comple

mentary proposition is equally true it is only to her lovers that Nature reveals her secrets. She has endless ruses for baffling the inquiries of those who do not approach her in the right spirit. That is why the magician and the medicine-man have contributed so little to scientific knowledge. They have sought to understand Nature not because they loved her but because they feared her, or they have tried to bully her into subservience to their own ends. That is, again, why practical applications of science-even the more clearly beneficent ones, such as the use of anæsthetics, antiseptics, X-rays and wireless telegraphy— have generally been based on the discoveries of men who pursued nature-knowledge for its own sake. It is the plain hard fact that valuable scientific truths are not attainable by the man who seeks them simply for the sake of subsequent dividends. He can gain them only if he is able for a while to put the marriage-portion out of his head and woo Nature as a disinterested lover. Commonly he cannot, and so prudently employs, at an exiguous remuneration, some one who can.

The first aim of the science-teacher must be, then, to make his pupils disinterested lovers of nature. This is uncomfortable doctrine to two very different types of persons. One is the "practical man" who supports the teaching of science in schools and technical institutes because he believes in its cash value. other is the "high-browed" person who assesses all educational effort in terms of "mental discipline." The former will distrust the cultivation of a love of nature as a sentimental aim distracting attention from the real business of the science-teacher. The latter

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may concede that it is not a bad thing so long as too much is not made of it, but will resent a proposal to put it in the forefront of our endeavours. Both must learn unless it is put in the forefront neither will secure what he specially desires. In the long run there is no money or "efficiency" to be got out of scientific studies not motived by genuine scientific impulses, and there is no mental discipline worth having.

Skilful teachers of the subject understand well the cardinal importance of this aim, and contrive, often with great success, to communicate to their pupils a genuine and strong love for scientific investigation and a permanent interest in its fruits. On the other hand, candour must admit that failures are far from infrequent. It is disturbing to discover how many young people, even among those who have a definite scientific bent, find their school science uninspiring and even boring. They will often confess, after leaving school, that their official instruction was unsatisfying, and that they had to feed their scientific appetite from private sources. In too many instances the appetite is even destroyed by the lessons that should have whetted and nourished it. These disasters are generally put down to the account of that much-abused person, the examiner. He must, no doubt, bear a large part of the blame, but the root of the trouble lies in ideas and presuppositions which exercise undue sway over the teacher's mind as well as over the examiner's. In a word, both attach too much importance to the formal and theoretical aspects of science, and too little to those which give the subject value in the eyes of boys and girls. The teacher fresh from the University is especially liable to this fault. He

(or she) has learnt to regard a science as essentially a systematic logical structure. From that standpoint precision in definitions, caution in generalization, and rigour in testing hypotheses appear to be the elementary conditions of scientific thought; indeed, nothing which falls short in these respects seems worthy to be counted as science at all. Science-teaching, conducted in this spirit, is prone to become an austere and even solemn business, singularly unfitted to nourish the enthusiasm of youth.

The teacher who is tempted to adopt this attitude should reflect that he is expecting his pupils to start from a point he himself reached only slowly, and perhaps late in his development as a student. The things in science that now loom most important in his eyes are the things of most significance from the standpoint of theory. For example, a quite unimpressive reaction of some substance hardly to be found outside a laboratory now interests him far more than a brilliant piece of chemical thaumaturgy, if the former throws light on a disputed question of molecular composition, while the latter is merely a pretty or striking experiBut he certainly began his career with a very different scale of values, and where he was then his pupils are now.

These criticisms are not intended to depreciate exact thinking as an aim of scientific training. Every one must admit that science-teaching which does not develop a sense of the value of exact thought has failed in one of its main objects. We seek merely to emphasize two truths of great practical importance. The first is that habits of exact thought and interest in scientific theory must be regarded as goals marking the end of the course, not entrance gates into it.