Basic Step by Step

Basic Step By Step

Part II.

1 . The Body 2 . Food 3 . Work 4 . The Weather 5 . The Family 6 . A Building 7 . Fire 8 . The Country 9 . The Sea 10. Time	11. The Machine 12. Business 13. Money 14. Noise 15. News 16. Amusement 17. Education 18. Reading 19. The Earth 20. History	21 . Invention 22 . Feeling - 23 . Art 24 . Trade 25 . Transport 26 . Peace 27 . Language 28 . Society 29 . Government 30 . Science
Notes for the Teacher		-- 40 pages

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26 . PEACE

- - - Things - - -		Qualities
harmony (peace) war	army attack attempt church connection death destruction fight flag gun hate hospital lead relation religion waste wound	living -— dead military violent wrong

Other Words :

friend , government , love , order
agreement (e) ;
cause (e).

26 . PEACE

Even in very early times, when it was almost as common for two countries to have a war as for two men to have a fight there were some who had the feeling that this condition was not right. The love of peace has been a part of the teaching of almost every great religion, and it is clear from this that the men of the past were conscious of the value of working in harmony with one another.
But till only a short time back, almost no one, not even those who had belief in religion, had any hope that we would ever be able to put an end to war, and no serious attempt was made to take steps against it. One reason was that war seemed to be a necessary outcome of the competition between countries. Though every war was clearly bad for one side, it seemed to be good for the other ; and it did not seem possible that man would ever give up this violent way of getting profit. So even those who saw that war was bad had the opinion that it was necessary, and that they would have to put up with it. And in the eyes of most men it seemed not only necessary but natural, and their great hope was to see their country’s flag waving over other countries.
But there has been a great change in the relation of war to trade, and so in the feeling about war. In present conditions no country gets any profit from the use of arms, though when a war has been started hate and fear will keep it going. The connection between the trade of all countries is so complex that damage to one is damage to all, and the loss to a country in this way is much greater than anything it may have a hope of getting by making an attack on another. Dead men and burned towns are only a small part of the price of war today. The had conditions which come after it seem to have no end, and it is not possible for anyone who has had experience of them not to see that the old view of war as good business is quite wrong.
Another point we have to take into account is that the invention of new machines for the destruction of men has made the fear of war greater than it has ever been before. In a present-day war, violent death comes not to hundreds but to thousands, and not only to those in the army, but to persons taking no part in the fight. No one in a country which is at war is safe, even in a hospital or a church. With the help of these new inventions the destruction of every building and every living thing in a town would be quite possible. And in comparison with the forms of death which are the work of these latest military instruments, a wound from a gun gives little pain. Not only lead and steel, hut even crueller instruments of destruction, are now used in war.
All these things have made men conscious that wax is not only bad, but completely against reason. War has at all times been a shocking waste of time. of money, and of men. It is now clearly seen to be so, and that gives the greatest hope for peace which there has ever been in history.

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27 . LANGUAGE

- - - Things - - -		Qualities
discussion fiction (language) list prose talk verse	error fact idea mind order purpose rhythm rule sign statement tendency thought trick	true -— false material natural regular

Other Words :

answer, argument, cry, letter, name,
question, reading, voice, word, writing ;
observation (e), sense (e)
ear, education, mouth, society, song, sound;
sign (s).

27 . LANGUAGE

The chief purpose of language is the exchange of thought or feeling. Every Word which a man says is a sign to other men of something which is in his mind. There are other signs by which he may give them an idea of his thoughts or feelings. He may give cries, make motions with his hands or body, or make pictures ; and when these things are done for the purpose of giving knowledge to others, they may do the work of language. But the language of words is the most important form of language, because cries and motions and pictures, though they are sometimes used as signs, may at other times have a different purpose.
We give the name ‘ word ’ to two things : first, to any sound of the voice which has been given a separate sense ; and second, to the letters in writing which are the sign of such a sound. Talk came before writing, and men were saying words before they had any idea of how to put them on paper or any other material substance.
A language is not only a list of words. It is, in addition, a number of fixed ways of putting them together. One important rule in every language is the rule about the order of the words. In English, if we say "You have come," putting ' you ' before ' have,' the words have not the same sense as if we say “Have you come ?", putting ' you ' after ' have.' The first is a statement and the second is a question. And if we say " Have come you," we are saying something which has no sense. It is very important to get the trick of putting the words in the right order when we are learning a new language.
Some words have more than one sense. In a discussion with others it is best to be certain that we are all giving the same sense to the same words.
Any event or thing of which we have certain knowledge is a fact, and when we put that knowledge in a statement we make a true statement. When we are talking or writing about facts our purpose normally is to say what is true. We may make an error, but we do not make false statements consciously.
But there is a sort of writing which has not the purpose of recording facts, but only that of giving pleasure or moving our feelings. When this sort of writing has the form of a story, the story is not necessarily true. We give it the name of ' fiction ', because a fiction is an invention of the mind. Fiction is not true, but we do not say that it is false, because the writer of it is not attempting to make any statement about facts.
The first fiction was probably in the form of verse. We see in very small boys and girls the natural tendency to make songs about anything which is pleasing to them. Early man had this same tendency. He made his stories different from common talk by giving them a different rhythm. This was the start of the process which gave us verse and prose as separate forms, though before the invention of writing there was no verse or prose, there was only song and talk. Not all verse at the present time has a regular rhythm, but the rhythm is more marked than it is in prose.

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28 . SOCIETY

- - - Things - - -		Qualities
crime property punishment (society)	act adjustment ant bee behaviour development example group offer organization prison respect reward self system unit	wise -— foolish private —- public free

Other Words :

business, family, friend, government, nation, trade;
authority (e), church (e), company (e), industry (e), position (s), society (s);
authority, hospital, library, person, school
meeting (s) and (e), society (e).

28 . SOCIETY

The early history of man on earth is the history of the growth of society. Men have a natural impulse to take care of their young, and we have no record of a time when they were not living in families. The family is the unit on which society is based; but it is a long way from this first simple group to the system of society which we have today, and the process of development took a long time.
The first groups wider than the family may have been formed for helping one another in times of danger, or they may have come simply from the natural impulse to get together. But when men had the experience of a united existence, its value was made clear to them. They saw that by keeping together they were safer from animals and other dangers, and that living in a group made possible new and better ways of getting food and doing work. Later, different persons came to be expert at different sorts of work, and so society slowly became the complex organization which it is now.
Men did not get all this good from society without giving something in exchange. A person living with other persons is not completely free. He may not do everything which is pleasing to him, because frequently an act which is pleasing to one does damage to others. The impulses of the self sometimes have a tendency to the destruction of the group, and so an adjustment of the self to society is necessary.
There are some persons who have naturally a kind feeling for all men, and who are ready to make an offer of help whenever they see anyone in need of it. Others are wise enough to be conscious of the value of peace and order, and to see that respect for society is the way to a better existence for themselves. Adjustment to society is not hard for persons like these. But there are some foolish persons who have no thought for others and no true knowledge of what is good for themselves, and it is necessary to keep such persons from acting against society. This is the purpose of public punishment.
An act which is clearly against society is a crime, and the person who does such an act is taken before a judge and given a punishment. He may be put in a prison, or if the crime is very serious, the punishment may even be death. In most countries it is a crime to take, or to do damage to, another person’s property.
An act may be wrong without being a crime. Any sort of cruel behaviour is wrong, but only those forms of it which are seen to be a danger to society are put on the list of crimes. But though there is no fixed punishment for certain sorts of wrong behaviour, fear of public opinion keeps a number of men from doing wrong
The organization of society among men is not the only example of such a thing Other animals have societies, and some of them, like the ant and the bee, have very complex ones. But in the societies of insects, organization has gone much farther than in the society of man. Every ant and every bee is living only for the group and has no private existence. It does nothing but the work of the group. and seems more like a part of a machine than a living thing. The only reward which it has is the necessary food and a safe place for sleep, and even these are only given to it while it is a good worker.

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29 . GOVERNMENT

- - - Things - - -		Qualities
authority (government) law nation tax	agreement approval argument committee control decision detail division force protest representative secretary selection sex trouble	male -— female equal political responsible

Other Words :

power (e)
country, group, history, order, organization, society, system
order (e).

29 . GOVERNMENT

Wherever there is society there is government, but all society is not under one government. The earth has still a great number of separate governments. A division of the earth which has a separate government is a political division, and if it Is a country we give it the name nation.
A very simple form of government is the rule of one person who has complete authority, and in early times such governments were common. But today most political organizations are very much more complex than that.
We give the name ‘ government ’ not only to the system of rule which a nation or other political unit has, but to the persons who have control of it. So we say that the government of a country makes a law for those living in it, or makes an agreement with another country.
Laws and agreements are not the only work of a government. It keeps order in the country; it takes care of education and trade ; it makes war and peace.
Money is necessary for all this work, and every person living in a country makes payments to the government in one way or another. Any payment which is ordered by the government is a tax.
There are different sorts of taxes. One sort of tax is taken every year from persons who have land, another is put on goods coming into the country.
If any law or tax is very much against the desire of the public, a protest may be made to the government. Sometimes the force of public opinion is so strong that a committee is formed for the purpose of going into the question. A committee has a secretary who keeps the records of its meetings.
In most countries today the selection of the government, or of a part of it, is in the hands of the public. In some countries the selection is made by all persons, male and female, who are old enough : a man and a woman have equal power in the business of political selection. But in others there is a division based on sex. The British government is a representative of the first sort of political system.
Every person who gets a place in the government by this selection, is the representative of a number of other persons who have given him their approval. Before the government makes a decision about anything, all the representatives have a chance of giving their opinions, and there is frequently much argument, in the process of which every detail of the question is made dear.
In the early days of political organization, men had no such control over their government. Those who were strong made themselves rulers, and if their rule was cruel or unwise, the only way of getting a change was by the use of force. This condition was responsible for much trouble. If those who were against the government were feeble, they were crushed, and if they were strong there was sometimes a long and bitter fight.
For a long time representative government seemed to be the only way out of these dangers. But today, in some countries where the workers or the military have taken control, new forms of government have come into existence, and the value of the representative system is the great question of the future.

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30 . SCIENCE

- - - Things - - -		Qualities
disease (science) theory	apparatus blood cause degree digestion discovery effect expansion heat limit liquid memory note observation operation scale test	general -— special boiling chemical medical

Other Words :

law (e), mass (e), order (e) ;
behaviour, change, comparison, event, example, experience,
form, instrument, knowledge, measure, motion, number, process,
rule, reaction, relation, sense, space, structure, system, tendency ;
property (e), question (e), range (e), structure (e).

30 . SCIENCE

In the time before The Greeks there was no science in the West. Men had knowledge of a number of things, but they had little idea of how to put their knowledge in order, and little impulse to make it wider and deeper for the general purpose of getting more knowledge. But the Greeks had a love for knowledge itself. They put questions to themselves about everything. and made an attempt to put the answers together and see the connections between them. This was the birth of science, which is The conscious attempt to give men greater and clearer knowledge.
The Greeks made the discovery that questions might be grouped in relation to the things They were about. These groups are the special sciences, and are given special names, such as chemical science, physical science, and medical science. They are all branches of general science.
A number of these special sciences were given their start by the Greeks. In the field of medical science one man made the important observation That the blood in our bodies was in some way controlled by the heart. Other medical experts got knowledge of The process of digestion by cutting open the stomachs of dead animals. Without such knowledge of the body’s normal processes, medical science would have no power over disease.
From the Greeks' time there has been a great development in The art of discovery. Today, if the simple observation of a thing does not give us the desired knowledge about it, we make a test. Very complex forms of apparatus are needed for some of These tests, and a note is made of every detail of the process. The knowledge of what tests are of use, and how They may be made, is possibly the chief thing which makes the science of our day different from That of the Greeks.
When a man has made a number of tests, he may put forward a theory about the relation between the events which he has seen. But sometimes different theories may be based on the same facts, and the only way of seeing which is the true one is by making more tests.
One of the important discoveries of physical science is the fact That when a bit of metal is warm its size is greater than when it is cold. The general statement of this fact has the form : Heat is the cause of expansion in metals. When enough heat is given to a liquid, the liquid is put in violent motion. It is Then said to be boiling. The amount of heat which is necessary for this effect may be measured on a scale, and the degree at which it takes place is said to be the boiling-point of the liquid.
Science is interested not only in bodies. but in minds. The operation of heat is a very different thing from the operation of memory, but these two questions are equally representative of the work of science. There seems to be no limit to its range.

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