id="id00092">2. Utility, or the study of things in nature that are directly useful or hurtful to man. Whatever fruits or animals or herbs are of plain service to man, as well as things poisonous or dangerous, were studied because such information would be of future service. It was a purely practical aim, at first very narrow, but in an enlarged and liberal sense of much importance.

3. Training of the senses and of the observing power. By a study and description of natural objects, sense perception was to be sharpened and a habit of close observation formed. Among science teachers today no aim is more emphasized than this. It also stores away a body of useful ideas of great future value. This is an intellectual aim that accords better with the purpose of the school than the preceding.

4. Analysis and determination of specimens. To examine and trace a plant, mineral, or insect, to its true classification and name, has occupied much of the time of students. It requires nice discrimination, a comprehensive grasp of relations, and a power to seize and hold common characteristics. Many of our text-books and courses of study are based chiefly upon this idea.

5. System-making, or the reduction of all things in nature to a systematic whole, with a place for everything. Some of the greatest scientists, Linnaeus, for example, looked upon scientific classification as the chief aim of nature study. It has had a great influence upon schools and teachers. The attempt to compress everything into a system has led to many text-books which are but brief summaries of sciences like zoology, botany, and physics. Scientific classification is very important, but the attempt to make it a leading aim in teaching children is a mistake.

We may add that nature study is felt by all to offer abundant scope to the exercise of the esthetic faculty. There is great variety of beauty and gracefulness in natural forms in plant and animal; the rich or delicate coloring of the clouds, of birds, of insects, and of plants, gives constant pleasure. Then there are grand and impressive scenery and phenomena in nature, and melody and harmony in nature's voices.

These various aims of science study are valuable to the teacher as showing him the scope of his work. But a higher and more comprehensive standpoint has been reached. We now realize that the great purpose of this study is insight into nature, into this whole physical environment, with a view to a better appreciation of her objects, forces, and laws, and of their bearing on human life and progress.

All these purposes thus far developed in schools are to be considered as valuable subsidiary aims, leading up to the central purpose of the study of natural sciences, which is, "An understanding of life and of the powers and of the unity which express themselves in nature;" or, as Kraepelin says: "Nature should not appear to man as an inextricable chaos, but as a well-ordered mechanism, the parts fitting exactly to each other, controlled by unchanging laws, and in perpetual action and production." Humboldt is further quoted: "Nature to the mature mind is unity in variety, unity of the manifold in form and combination, the content or sum total of natural things and natural forces as a living whole. The weightiest result, therefore, of deep physical study is, by beginning with the individual, to grasp all that the discoveries of recent times reveal to us, to separate single things critically and yet not be overcome by the mass of details, mindful of the high destiny of man, to comprehend the mind of nature, which lies concealed under the mantle of phenomena." This sounds visionary and impracticable for children of the common school, especially when we know that much lower aims have not been successfully reached. In fact it cannot be said that the natural sciences have any recognized standing in the common school course. But it is worth the while to inquire whether natural sciences will ever be taught as they should be until the best attainable aims become the dominant principles for guiding teachers. Stripped of its rhetoric, the above mentioned aim, "an understanding of life and of the unity in nature," may prove a practical and inspiring guide to the teacher.

If we look upon nature as a field of observation and study which can be grasped as a whole both as a work of creation and as contributing in multiplied ways to man's needs, its proper study gives a many-sided culture to the mind. This leading purpose will bring into relation and unity all the subordinate aims of science teaching, such as information, utility, training of the senses and judgment, and of the power to compare and classify.

For the accomplishment of this great purpose of gaining insight into nature's many-sided activities, there are several simple means not yet mentioned. Running through nature are great principles and laws which can be studied upon concrete examples, plain and interesting to a child. The study of the squirrel in its home, habits, organs, and natural activities in the woods, will show how strangely adapted it is to its surroundings. But an observation of birds in the air and of fishes in water reveals the same curious fitness to surrounding nature. The study of plants and animals in their adaptation to environment, of the relation between organ and function; between organs, mode of life, and environment, leads up to a general law which applies to all plants and animals. The law of growth and development from the simple germ to the mature life form can be seen in the butterfly, the frog, and the sunflower. These laws and others in biology, if developed on concrete specimens, give much insight into the whole realm of nature, more stimulating by far than that based on scientific classifications, as orders, families and species. The great and simple outlines of nature's work begin to appear out of such laws.

Again the study of the whole life history of a plant or animal, in its relations to the inorganic world and to other plants and animals, is always a cross-section in the sciences and shows how all the natural sciences are knit together into a causal unity. Take the life history of a hickory tree. As it germinates and grows from the seed how it draws from the earth and air; the effect of storms, seasons, and lightning upon it; how it later furnishes nuts to the squirrels and boys; its branches may be the nesting place for birds and its bark for insects. Finally, the uses of its tough wood for man are seen. The life of a squirrel or of a honey-bee furnishes also a cross-section through all the sciences from the inorganic world up to man.

If in tracing life histories we take care to select typical subjects which exemplify perhaps thousands of similar cases, we shall materially shorten the road leading toward insight into nature. These types are concrete and have all the interest and attractiveness of individual life, but they also bring out characteristics which explain myriads of similar phenomena. A careful and detailed study of a single tree like the maple, with the circulation of the sap and the function of roots, bark, leaves, and woody fiber, will give an insight into the processes of growth upon which the life of the tree depends and these processes will easily appear to be true of all tree and plant forms.

In nature as it shows itself in the woods or in the pond, there is such a mingling and interdependence of the natural sciences upon each other that the book of nature seems totally different from books of botany, physics, and zoology as made by men. In the forest we find close together trees of many kinds, shrubs, flowering plants, vines, mosses, and ferns; grasses, beetles, worms, and birds; squirrels, owls and sunshine; rocks, soil, and springs; summer and winter; storms, frost, and drouth.