A Portable Historical Museum

THE inductive method has revolutionized the practice of teaching in biology, chemistry, and physics. It has substituted the laboratory and experiment by the student for the textbook and the experiment by the master, and the old museum, arranged to catch the eye and excite curiosity, has given place to one of orderly types, arranged to show the evolutionary process. There are signs that the change has gone too far, and that more cautious scientific men are embarrassed by the empiricism which creeps in under the name of science. Manipulation has its place, and no one will dispute the accepted doctrine that a boy will do better work in science if his eye and hand have been trained by early practice ; but there comes a time, extending through the latter part of his secondary and the former part of his collegiate training, when it is indispensable that he should acquaint himself with the results of scientific investigation and master the formulas of its laws by mental exercises which are largely independent of manipulation; later, there comes the period when, as a special investigator, he resorts to the laboratory once more for the greater part of his time.

The new method of teaching has found eager followers in other departments of knowledge. How strongly has been felt the example of science will be recognized by any one who notes the change in teaching in law, where cases form the laboratory; in history, where original documents are resorted to; in literature, where texts take the place of textbooks; and in psychology, which sends its students to the dissecting-table. There can be no question that a great impetus has been given by the natural sciences, as they used to be called, to the mental sciences in all grades of educational work. The need for caution here is not so great. Yet in one field, that of history, there are even now indications of waste of energy and misdirected zeal, springing from an undiscriminating appeal to the inductive method with its laboratory and its typical museums. Students of history in college are bidden make special investigations, and are sent to hunt up original authorities, with the view to becoming acquainted with history at first hand and working out their own philosophy. The masters of secondary and even of grammar schools are caught by the same spirit. They are for discarding a single textbook, and set their pupils at topical study, picking out their facts from a library of books, and constructing their historic wholes out of a miscellaneous assortment of materials.

Now and then a student of marked aptitude for such work will succeed in finding his way, and now and then a teacher with a genius for stimulating a class will carry his boys and girls with hint, and give them a genuine faculty for intelligent search after causes in the development of civilization ; but such a method as we have referred to really belongs in the advanced stage of intellectual activity. It may not begin with graduate work, but it ought to become most serious and definite there ; it has a subordinate place in undergraduate work ; it is attended with great risks in secondary schools, and it degenerates into a farce in schools of lower grade.

There is a true analogy in the process which goes on in the study of history with that which belongs to the most effective study of science. Of course, the number of objects to be handled or experimented with is greater and more accessible to the young student in science than in history, but the pedagogical principle is the same. The boy who visits historical sites in his neighborhood is using the same method as when he is becoming familiar with plants and birds or making his first experiments in physics. But as the textbook in science may early deposit specific facts and laws in his mind which he has no means of verifying by observation, and as, through his secondary school and college course, he may continue to acquire his knowledge of science through systematic presentation of these facts and laws, qualifying himself thereby for a return to manipulation with expanded faculties, so in history his course, in his earlier years, must manifestly be mainly a dependence on authorities who have themselves made first-hand investigation, and he will issue into the field of original research all the better equipped for having done faithful, obedient work in the humble capacity of a learner.

It is in the earlier stages of his historical study that what may be called the museum, as distinguished from the laboratory, plays an important part. The real start of a student in history is in an attachment to some actual place or person, and the business of a good teacher is, not to set his boys and girls to investigating, but to give them something to admire. The best of our school historical textbooks are not too much alive, and the worst of them are infectiously dead. The child is interested in the story of history, and that is where teaching should begin. Now, every relic in a museum, every good historical picture, has a story attached to it, and the story is the starting-point of history.

We have been led into this train of thought by glancing at the new illustrated edition of Dr. John Fiske’s American Revolution.¹ Museums of history are not as frequent as we wish they were, yet libraries throughout the country almost always collect in their balls some objects of local interest. But just as wellordered museums of natural history supply the lack of real objects by casts of those objects, so the photograph and the plaster cast are making it possible for schools and homes to have most serviceable museums of history. After all, however, the most convenient and possible historical museum is the illustrated book, and when any book dealing with history is as well equipped as this edition of The American Revolution, it is a distinct reinforcement of teacher and student ; for the important characteristic of this book is the absence of merely imaginative and so far fictitious illustrations. It is true there are compositions like Trumbull’s historical paintings here reproduced, but these have the value of portraiture by a painter close to the time. The only exception we note is in the copy of Leutze’s preposterous picture of Washington Crossing the Delaware, which has no excuse for presence in the book save the feeble one of long association in the public mind. The positive gain is in the definite representation of actual places, persons, and objects.

The portraits, especially, are of great value. They vivify the men and women of history, and they have been chosen with great care. We see the same portraits of our heroes so often that a fresh one has a singular power of enlarging our notion of the person. The portrait of Franklin at a table reading at once gives a new aspect, and any one who has been accustomed to the benevolent full face, as in Duplessis’s familiar picture, will be delighted at this unexpected revelation. The photogravures, moreover, are so rich in tone that such wellknown portraits as those given of Sam Adams and Patrick Henry have almost the effect of novelty. The method employed throughout of putting before the eye really interesting pictures, and making them distinctly throw light on the text, is made more effective by the admirable notes to the illustrations supplied by the author in the List of Illustrations. This list is, in fact, the catalogue of the museum.

We have singled out this work because it so clearly points the way to what may be done in reinforcing historical study in a rational spirit. Such a book as this and the illustrated edition of Green’s Short History of the English People, which appears to have been its exemplar, bring the true sort of aid to historical reading. They give what the historian cannot give, the appeal to the eye, and they serve to make more real to the imagination the figures of the past with which the historian is engaged. We have no fear that American history will be uninviting to young Americans so long as Dr. John Fiske tells the story, and is able to lead the reader at the same time through a gallery of portraits and a historical museum.