al
responsibility in little things, he can be led to wisdom in large ones.
For the power to do great things in the moral world comes from doing
the right in small things. It is not often that a man who knows that
there is a right does the wrong. Men who do wrong are either ignorant
that there is a right, or else they have failed in their orientation
and look upon right as wrong. It is the clinching of good purposes
with good actions that makes the man. This is the higher heredity that
is not the gift of father or mother, but is the man's own work on
himself.

The impression of realities is the basis of sound morals as well as of
sound judgment. By adding near things to near, the child grows in
knowledge. "Knowledge set in order" is science. Nature-study is the
beginning of science. It is the science of the child. To the child
training in methods of acquiring knowledge is more valuable than
knowledge itself. In general, throughout life sound methods are more
valuable than sound information. Self-direction is more important than
innocence. The fool may be innocent. Only the sane and wise can be
virtuous.

It is the function of science to find out the real nature of the
universe. Its purpose is to eliminate the personal equation and the
human equation in statements of truth. By methods of precision of
thought and instruments of precision in observation, it seeks to make
our knowledge of the small, the distant, the invisible, the mysterious
as accurate as our knowledge of the common things men have handled for
ages. It seeks to make our knowledge of common things exact and
precise, that exactness and precision may be translated into action.
The ultimate end of science, as well as its initial impulse, is the
regulation of human conduct. To make right action possible and
prevalent is the function of science. The "world as it is" is the
province of science. In proportion as our actions conform to the
conditions of the world as it is, do we find the world beautiful,
glorious, divine. The truth of the "world as it is" must be the
ultimate inspiration of art, poetry, and religion. The world as men
have agreed to say it is, is quite another matter. The less our
children hear of this, the less they will have to unlearn in their
future development.

When a child is taken from nature to the schools, he is usually brought
into an atmosphere of conventionality. Here he is not to do, but to
imitate; not to se