nted in. But the best teacher is
the one that comes nearest to nature, the one who is most effective in
developing individual wisdom.

To seek knowledge is better than to have knowledge. Precepts of virtue
are useless unless they are built into life. At birth, or before, "the
gate of gifts is closed." It is the art of life, out of variant and
contradictory materials passed down to us from our ancestors, to build
up a coherent and effective individual character.

The essence of character-building lies in action. The chief value of
nature-study in character-building is that, like life itself, it deals
with realities. The experience of living is of itself a form of
nature-study. One must in life make his own observations, frame his
own inductions, and apply them in action as he goes along. The habit
of finding out the best thing to do next, and then doing it, is the
basis of character. A strong character is built up by doing, not by
imitation, nor by feeling, nor by suggestion. Nature-study, if it be
genuine, is essentially doing. This is the basis of its effectiveness
as a moral agent. To deal with truth is necessary, if we are to know
truth when we see it in action. To know truth precedes all sound
morality. There is a great impulse to virtue in knowing something
well. To know it well, is to come into direct contact with its facts
or laws, to feel that its qualities and forces are inevitable. To do
this is the essence of nature-study in all its forms.

The claim has been made that history treats of the actions of men, and
that it therefore gives the student the basis of right conduct. But
neither of these propositions is true. History treats of the records
of the acts of men and nations. But it does not involve the action of
the student himself. The men and women who act in history are not the
boys and girls we are training. Their lives are developed through
their own efforts, not by contemplation of the efforts of others. They
work out their problem of action more surely by dissecting frogs or
hatching butterflies than by what we tell them of Lycurgus or Joan of
Arc. Their reason for virtuous action must lie in their own knowledge
of what is right, not in the fact that Lincoln, or Washington, or
William Tell, or some other half-mythical personage would have done so
and so under like conditions.

The rocks and shells, the frogs and lilies always tell the absolute
truth. Association with these,