Note 188 — XIX. HERBERT SPENCER.[185]
Reading edition
Helps, who by taste and talent is eminently literary, put in this claim for science more than 20 [now nearer 50] years ago. “The higher branches of method cannot be taught at first; but you may begin by teaching orderliness of mind. Collecting, classifying, contrasting, and weighing facts are some of the processes by which method is taught.... Scientific method may be acquired without many sciences being learnt; but one or two great branches of science must be accurately known.” (Friends in Council, Education.) Helps, though by his delightful style he never gives the reader any notion of over compression, has told us more truth about education in a few pages than one sometimes meets with in a complete treatise.