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Excerpt from The Monthly Chronicle, Vol. 3: Of Events, Discoveries, Improvements, and Opinions
Not that we cannot conceive of a natural history adapted to the young, but this is to be taught best at home, in a walk, and with the assistance of some lectures. It continually recalls the child to the idea of God, by showing him God's creatures, but it shows him these creatures living, colored, gentle it does not take the trouble to clas sify or arrange them, or recognize them by the assistance of certain scientific characters, which are better for science, because they are prominent, and belong more to species and genus than to the indi vidual. Science is leased with common characters; the child, by the characteristics olp each individual. Now God is not less visible in the infinite variety of characteristics of each individual, than in the analogy and identity of common characters, which determine the species. Unfortunately this natural history, so familiar and agrees ble, which we all teach our children without hesitation, is not taught in our colleges. When natural history is introduced in the colleges, it is as a science; that is to say, in spite of itself, methodical, barren, dry, in fact opposed to the very spirit of childreh. One cannot ask a professor of natural history, a member of the Academy of Sciences, to return to the patriarchal simplicity of Rollin. Actual science is his imperial mistress, and it does not permit him to cut off any thing from his apparatus of rigorous classification. He classifies, character ises, determines the species and genera. For children, all this science is not equal to Fontaine' s fables. Fontaine's fables are for them the best lesson in natural history.
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