servation and in recording discoveries; to give appreciation of the
way in which all the second-hand facts have been reached; to give
taste and enthusiasm for asking questions and confidence and
persistence in finding answers for them. Anything more than this is
waste of time. These results are not gained by mere quantity of work,
but only through constant and intelligent guidance of the student's
attitude in the process of dealing with facts.

2. A feeling that the laboratory or scientific method consists
primarily of observation of facts and their record. In reality these
are three great steps instead of one in this method, which the student
of biology should master: (1) the getting of facts, one device for
doing which is observation; (2) the appraisal and discrimination of
these facts to find which are important; and (3) the drawing of the
conclusions which these facts seem to warrant. There are two practical
corollaries of this truth. One is that the laboratory should be so
administered that the pupil shall appreciate the full scope of the
scientific method, its tremendous historic value to the race, and the
necessity of using _all_ the steps of it faithfully in all future
progress as well as in the sound solution of our individual problems
and the guidance of conduct. The second is that we may make errors in
our scientific conclusions and in life conclusions, through failure to
discriminate among our facts, quite as fatally as through lack of
facts. Indeed, my personal conviction is that more failures are due to
lack of discrimination than to lack of observation. The power to weigh
evidence is at least as important as the power to collect it.

3. A disposition to deny the student the right to reach conclusions in
the laboratory,--or, as we flamboyantly say, to "generalize." Now in
reality the only earthly value of _facts_ is to get _truth_,--that is,
conclusions or generalizations. To deny this privilege is taxation
without representation in respect to personality. The purpose of the
laboratory is to enable students to think, to think accurately and
with purpose, to reach their own conclusions. The getting of facts by
observation is only a minor detail. In reality, the data the student
can get from books are much more reliable than his own observations
are likely to be. Our laboratory training should add gradually to the
accuracy of his observations, but particularly it should enable him to
use his own and other p