In 1847 I gave an address at Newton, Massachusetts, before a Teachers' Institute conducted by Horace Mann. My subject was grasshoppers. I passed around a large jar of these insects, and made every teacher take one and hold it while I was speaking. If any one dropped the insect, I stopped till he picked it up. This was at that time a great innovation, and excited much laughter and derision. There can be no true progress in the teaching of natural science until such methods become general.
There is no part of the country where, in the summer, you cannot get a sufficient supply of the best specimens. Teach your children to bring them in themselves. Take your text from the brooks, not from the book -sellers. It is better to have a few forms well known than to teach a little about many hundred species. Better a dozen specimens thoroughly studied as the result of the first year's work, than to have two thousand dollars' worth of shells and corals bought from a curiosity -shop. The dozen animals would be your own.
The study of nature is an intercourse with the highest mind. You should never trifle with nature. At the lowest her works are the works of the highest powers—the highest something, in whatever way we may look at it.
It is much more important for a naturalist to understand the structure of a few animals than to command the whole field of scientific nomenclature.
Methods may determine the result.
The only true scientific system must be one in which the thought, the intellectual structure, rises out of, and is based upon, facts.
He is lost, as an observer, who believes that he can, with impunity, affirm that for which he can adduce no evidence.
Have the courage to say: 'I do not know.'
Since the ability of combining facts is a much rarer gift than that of discerning them, many students lost sight of the unity of structural design in the multiplicity of structural detail. [Footnote: Atlantic Monthly 33. 93.]
It cannot be too soon understood that science is one, and that whether we investigate language, philosophy, theology, history, or physics, we are dealing with the same problem, culminating in the knowledge of ourselves. Speech is known only in connection with the organs of man, thought in connection with his brain, religion as the expression of his aspirations, history as the record of his deeds, and physical sciences as the laws under which he lives. [Footnote: Atlantic Monthly 33. 95.]