Page:Preparation of the Child for Science.djvu/79

whether he really understood the laws of evolution, or whether he was only 'showing off'; every one would know that he neither made the cress, nor thought he made it, nor pretended to make it; by sowing seeds as directed and watering them at due times he summoned to his aid forces of growth which he could not understand, and they responded to his call and they made the cress grow. Why had he not as good a right to summon to his aid the forces which make a curve? The cress grew even while he slept; and the curve grew while his conscious brain slept. And if the one thing is not as simple, as restful, and as unpretentious as the other, it must be because some one is making a needless muddle about what might be a perfectly normal element of child life.