forms, so far as they could be deduced immediately from actual observation of them; but showed a want of facility in mastering the pure mathematics of the subject, and a dislike for it.

Some pupils showed similar tendencies toward particular groups of minerals, and dislikes for others; and they mastered more easily a knowledge of those they liked, even when they seemed, to one free from any prepossession on the subject, much more difficult than the others.

These and other peculiarities of pupils, which I can not fully describe without giving an account of each individual pupil, became the cause of my opinion that teaching exclusively in one general method is quite impossible.

IX. INSTRUCTION IN BOTANY.

In the private school at Nuremberg, where I instructed for three years, I also taught botany. The plants used were found in the neighborhood of the city, or in the garden of the institution. The most common garden-plants, as being best known and most useful, were made most prominent-as domestic animals were in zoology. When the boys returned from their excursions, the plants they had collected were laid fresh together on a table, examined, and named. At the end of the lesson, each pupil entered the names on a paper, and afterward in a book, divided as follows:

The pupils might write under "Remarks" whatever they chose; and each, of course, inserted what had struck him most in looking at the plant. I have already observed that I considered it a very great error to require from beginners a complete and exhaustive description; inasmuch as this must be based upon a previous analysis of a total conception, which they have not yet attained.

These registers of plants served afterward as botanical calendars, from which could be seen where and at what time certain plants could be found; as, saxifrage at Mögeldorf, in May, &c. They also now began, of their own accord, to classify the species into genera. A boy brought in a plant, and was told that it was a speedwell, and after a few days he brought in another, and very correctly said, "Here is another sort of speedwell." So simple and natural, in stronglymarked plants, is the arrangement into genera of species.

It will be found judicious, lest this scientific examination should make them indifferent to the beauty of the flowers, and make them too exclusively occupied with the use of the intellect alone, to employ such as show sufficient taste for it, in drawing flowers.

During the first summer my pupils acquired a knowledge of between three and four hundred varieties. This is rather too great a number than too small; it is better to get a thorough and permanent acquaintance with a few plants than an indistinct and superficial one of many.

X. NECESSARY INCONSISTENCY.

Bacon says, "There is scarce any entrance to the domain of human science than to the kingdom of heaven, into which one can not enter unless he become as a little child."

The poett makes a similar demand upon the public, at the representation of his dramatized plays; where he demands that the spectators shall for a time forget their education and their knowledge, and "become children again." But the people answer him, “We thank God that we are no longer children; our education cost us pains and sweat enough."

I have before complained that the pupils at our schools of learning dive so entirely among books and lectures-in a world of words, and so entirely shut out from any active intercourse with nature and lifethat they have usually, by the time that they enter the university, forgotten the first impressions of nature which they received in childhood, and seem even to have lost the child's capacity of receiving them. Their minds, in this case, must now be first awakened anew to nature, and brought back to their former childlike condition, not exclusively by actual observation, but chiefly by words-by the stimulus of properly-directed oral lectures.

It was from this point of view that I endeavored to perform my task of lecturing on general natural history. And even in my lectures on mineralogy, I accommodated myself to the necessities of the case. That is, although I regularly instructed my younger scholars in the manner I have described, yet in the subsequent academical lectures I varied, in one respect, from it. In order to render oral instruction possible, I was forced, whether I would or no, to begin with instruction in external marks; with a practical explanation of the technical mineralogical terms. In other respects I remained quite true to my earlier method.

ΧΙ. MYSTERIOUSLY REVEALED."

Instruction in mineralogy, botany, and zoology leads, as we have seen, from actual inspection to the development of the ideas of species, genera, &c., which are component parts of created beings, and are revealed by examining their appearances. These ideas connect what are of like kinds, and separate them from those unlike them.

*Nov. Org., I., 68.

Tieck, in "Puss in Boots," (Phantasus,) 2, 247.

"Thou stand'st mysteriously revealed." Goethe's "Winter Journey to the Harz." (Harzreife im Winter.)

But when we have correctly learned and expressed these generic ideas, have we thus arrived at the actuality of their existence?-have we learned what is the essence of their being and life?

Haller, who all his long life unweariedly and honestly investigated nature, may answer:

"No spirit, however creative, can pierce the secrets of nature."

No created spirit he meant, of course; the Creator is to be excepted. And the great Bacon agrees with Haller:* "It is falsely claimed that the senses of man are the measure of things; on the other hand, all the apprehensions, both of the senses and of the intellect, correspond to the essential nature of man, not to that of the universe. The human understanding is like an uneven mirror in reflecting objectsit mingles up its own nature with their nature, and confuses and colors them." And Newton's doctrine is the same, when he says, "We see only the forms and colors of bodies, hear only their sounds, feel only their outer surfaces, smell only their perfume, taste only their flavor; the essence of their being we can perceive by no sense and by no reflection."

Goethe at one time controverted Haller's assertion, but afterward agreed with it. He says, "The true, identical with the divine, will never permit itself to be directly perceived by us; we discern it only in reflections, examples, symbols; in single and related phenomena; we become aware of its existence as an incomprehensible life, and yet can not escape the desire of comprehending it."

Cuvier repeatedly admits that there are incomprehensible mysteries in his science. Thus he says, "The operation of external things upon the consciousness, the awakening of a perception, a conception, is a secret impenetrable to our reason." The great zoölogist, who has surpassed all in investigating the laws of the animal creation, comes upon the question-what is life? and how does it exist? and he confesses that these important questions can not be answered; that life is a profound mystery.§

We often hear the confession, "How vast is that of which we are ignorant!" We readily admit that we know nothing of the interior of Africa, or of the lands near the poles; that probably many new plants, animals, and minerals may be discovered there, and the like;

Nov. Org., I., 41.

Principia, 3, 1, 675. (Le Seur's ed., 1760) "Their essence we can perceive by no sense, no reflection; and much less have we any idea of the essential substance of God." Works, 51, 254.

$ Cuvier's "Animal Kingdom." translated by Voigt. vol. 1. 9, 10. "All the endeavors of physicists have been unable to inform us how life is organized; whether of itself, or from some external son.ce. The existence of organized bodies is therefore the greatest secret of organic economy, and of all nature."

but what if we are convicted of universal ignorance of every thing included in the domain of science? I repeat: Have we effected a perfectly exhaustive investigation of any single existence or fact in nature? Is it not rather the case that every such fact has both its comprehensible and incomprehensible side, and, like the moon, turns one side toward us, sometimes lighter and sometimes darker, but keeps the other always turned from us?*

Did not Cuvier, so mighty in investigating the laws of the animal creation, yet find each animal a riddle, and was he not thus brought to confess that life was a riddle to him?

When the mineralogist measures and computes, with his utmost accuracy, the primitive rhomboids of calcareous spar, and determines mathematically its relation to the many hundreds of crystallized forms which that mineral offers, does he, for all this, understand these rhomboids? Can he tell how it is that it becomes possible to split them in three directions, parallel to the three parts of rhombic surfaces, so that each surface of cleavage shall be a perfect plane-polished, and with angles mathematically true? We shall look to him in vain for answers to these questions.

same rate.

The astronomer, of all men, claims to be the most scientific. He computes with accuracy the movements of planets, and comets, and moons, at vast distances of time and place, and demonstrates the most delicate observation in his astronomical prophecy as the correctness of a problem is demonstrated by the proof. Is there here also room for ignorance? I reply: Count one hundred while the minute-hand of a watch is going from twelve to one, and go on counting at the You can then predict with certainty that when you have counted six hundred the hand will stand at six, and when you have counted twelve hundred it will have completed its circuit. But notwithstanding this prediction, you may perhaps never have opened the watch, and may know nothing whatever of its construction or mechanism. Even so is it with the astronomer. However accurately he can compute the path of Jupiter, can he for that reason tell what are the essential qualities of Jupiter? What man can even answer "Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them." "For we know in but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known."

part done away † Newton, who, as we have seen, considered the real essence of all bodies entirely incom prehensible to man, would of course reply that such requirements could not be satisfied. The originator of the theory of gravitation, he repeatedly declared that he knew only quali ties of gravity, not its essence. Thus he says, "I have explained the phenomena of the heaven and of the sea by the power of gravity, but I have not assigned any cause for gravity." Again, having stated the qualities of gravity, he says, "But I have not been able to deduce from the phenomena the cause of these properties of gravity, and I offer no hypothesis." (Princip., 1. c., p 66.) And in like manner in the " Optics." (Clarke's ed, 1740, p. 326.) There are efficient principles, such as gravity, whose existence is testified to by natural phenomena; but what are the causes of these principles has never been explained. Every

the question, What is the essential nature of the earth-of this very earth on which you live? And if any one should pretend to have an answer to it, he may be replied to with the reply of the EarthSpirit in Goethe's Faust:

"Thou art equal to the spirit which thou comprehendest

Not to me."

Such considerations should not, however, lead to an apathetic despair of understanding any understanding of nature, but should only counteract the illusive notion that man can understand created things in the way in which only God, their creator, can understand them.* To us nature is "mysteriously revealed."

But, it may be inquired, what is the value of this discussion in a work on pedagogy!

I reply: A recognition of the wonderful union of revelation and mystery in nature, and the clearest possible perception of the boundary between them, will exercise a most important influence upon the character of the teacher and upon his study of nature.

The mysteries of nature will direct him in humility and earnestness toward eternity; while he will investigate what is susceptible of being known with conscientious and persevering industry, thanking God for every pleasure which he receives from discovering the beautiful and invariable divine laws.t

And how can this state of feeling and this knowledge in the teacher fail to have the greatest and most excellent influence upon his methods of instruction?

Any one doubtful as to the goodness of this influence will be convinced of it, if he will examine the bad influence exerted on their scholars by such teachers as are destitute of the knowledge and feeling which give it; who live in a narrow circle of overestimation of themselves. For them there are no mysteries; they can comprehend every thing. And then it most commonly happens that they fail to observe and learn what is really attainable, while they weary themselves in vain over the incomprehensible; and thus, instead of ascertaining divine laws, they hatch out a parcel of chimeras, which in their presumptuous blindness they set up as being those laws. The proverb may well be applied to them, that they make fools of themselves by thinking themselves so wise. And they make their scholars fools.

where the qualities are manifest, but their causes are hidden." And again, "There are originating causes (principia) of motion, as gravity. But the causes of these I leave to be investigated."

"By universal analogy."-(Bacon.)

t As Kepler repeatedly does.