Hence the suitableness of flowers for making large, forcible, indelible impressions on the imagination and the memory, and for storing the mind at the outset with the most vivid and beautiful conceptions of Nature.
The leaf offers, indeed, a variety of beautiful forms and outlines, which are not, however, either so numerous or so conspicuous as those displayed by the various organs of the flower. Leaves contrast less conspicuously with one another; their sensible differences are much less striking, and the eye of the child is not sufficiently trained to adequately appreciate the subtile differences of color which really exist. To him leaves can scarcely fail to present the vast monotony of green which the primitive vegetation of the earth is said to have exhibited before variegated corollas appeared. It is certainly desirable to repeat for the individual mind the experience of the race; but is it necessary for that to go back to the ages which antedated even the prehistoric man?
In a word, the differences of flowers resembles the "legend writ in large letters" which Plato advised should be first studied; the differences of leaves make the same legend repeated in the "small letters," and therefore more difficult to decipher.[1]
4. Miss Youmans's reason derived from botanical systems of classification I scarcely understand. It is very true that classification by the corolla is abandoned, and indeed never could have been carried very far. But the natural system, which sums up the total characters of the plant, certainly derives a much larger number of its data from the flower than from any other part of the plant. The great function of the plant is reproduction, and around the organs of reproduction contained in the flower center all its peculiarities. The mutual relations of stamens and pistils have been found inadequate for classification; but the extension of the class lines has still been chiefly in the direction of other parts of the flower, especially the fruit, ovule, and embryo.
Toward the flower converge all the forces of the plant; it is the culmination, the perfection of the entire vegetable organism. It should therefore be contemplated first, because, as it seems to me, it is eminently desirable that the child should, whenever possible, see the principal thing first; since whatever comes first is always liable to remain for him the most important. The habit of ranking things in the order of their real relative importance is certainly a most valuable habit to cultivate, both morally and intellectually. As has already been pointed out, the mind in its growth closely resembles that of a tree; for it, primary facts constantly tend to become central facts, and due organic proportions are only maintained between ideas when the principal, by being placed first, is enabled to become really central, a vitalized center of fitly organized knowledge. For
- ↑ "Republic," book ii, 308 (Jowett's translation).
