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EDUCATION OF THE SENSES 217
life about him. (Such defects as deafness and nearsightedness.) This education, therefore, is physiological and prepares directly for intellectual education, perfecting the organs of sense, and the nerve-paths of projection and association.
But the other part of education, the adaptation of the individual to his environment, is indirectly touched. We prepare with our method the infancy of the humanity of our time. The men of the present civilisation are preeminently observers of their environment because they must utilise to the greatest possible extent all the riches of this environment.
The art of to-day bases itself, as in the days of the Greeks, upon observation of the truth.
The progress of positive science is based upon its observations and all its discoveries and their applications, which in the last century have so transformed our civic environment, were made by following the same line — that is, they have come through observation. We must therefore prepare the new generation for this attitude, which has become necessary in our modern civilised life. It is an indispensable means — man must be so armed if he is to continue efficaciously the work of our progress.
We have seen the discovery of the Roentgen Rays born of observation. To the same methods are due the discovery of Hertzian waves, and vibrations of radium, and we await wonderful things from the Marconi telegraph. While there has been no period in which thought has gained so much from positive study as the present century, and this same century promises new light in the field of speculative philosophy and upon spiritual questions, the theories upon the matter have themselves led to most interesting metaphysical concepts. We may say |
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