THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK - BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD TORONTO ^ u-s ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE A .S7Y7>F OF THE ATTEMPT TO EDUCATE EVERYBODY BY WILLIAM HAWLEY SMITH AUTHOR OF "THE EVOLUTION OF DODD " THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1912 All rigAts reserved LB/083 COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1912. NortaoolJ J. 8. Cushing Co. Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. v, A TO THE READER HOWEVER reluctant one may be to acknowledge the fact, it is none the less certain that the task of trying to educate everybody, which our public schools are engaged in, has proved to be far more difficult than the originators of the idea of such a possibility thought it would be when they set out upon the undertaking. This is a mild way of stating a most important truth. Moreover, this truth is steadily forcing its way into general recognition among all classes and conditions of modern society. All people who are interested in educational affairs are thinking about the situation, and are talking about it constantly, both in private and in public. Every educational meeting, from a local Teachers' Institute to the annual gathering of the National Edu- cational Association, now makes this condition of affairs the chief subject of its attention, its addresses and dis- cussions. These facts all prove that the issue of attempting to universalize education is just now one of most intense interest and importance. It follows that, since the whole subject is yet in an unsettled, not to say ferment- ing, condition, it is open and ready for the most careful study and consideration. It is because all these things are so that I have written this book, which I hope may help at least a little toward the successful solution of the most momen- tous problem of the age. WILLIAM HAWLEY SMITH. CONTENTS PAGE To THE READER v CHAPTER I. "BORN SHORT" i II. "BORN LONG" n III. SOME COMPARISONS AND CONCLUSIONS ... 20 IV. NASCITUR NON FIT . . . ... .28 V. HOW CAN THESE THINGS BE ? . . . .38 VI. SOME CASES IN POINT 48 VII. UNDER THE THRESHOLD 58 VIII. SOME DARKER STUDIES 67 IX. WHAT FOLLOWS? 78 X. AGAIN THE BODY 88 XI. STRICTLY BETWEEN OURSELVES .... 99 XII. SOME WHYS AND WHEREFORES .... 109 XIII. BITS OF HISTORY 112 XIV. MORE BITS OF HISTORY 118 XV. SOME RESULTS 127 XVI. WHAT is WRONG IN ALL THIS? .... 139 XVII. CAN ANYTHING BE DONE TO HELP THESE MATTERS? 146 XVIII. THE LAW OF THE INDIVIDUAL . . . .152 XIX. WHAT is EDUCATION? WHO ARE EDUCATED MEN? . -159 XX. WHAT EDUCATION MUST DO FOR THE CHILD . 169 XXI. SYMPATHETIC VIBRATION 176 XXII. EDUCATIONAL VALUES 186 XXIII. CONCERNING COURSES OF STUDY, DIPLOMAS, ETC. 196 XXIV. SOME OTHER CHANGES 209 Vlll CONTENTS XXV. EXAMINATIONS . XXVI. SHOOTING TO HIT XXVII. JUST A LITTLE ABOUT TEACHERS XXVIII. THE PARENTAL FACTOR XXIX. CONCERNING INSTITUTIONS . XXX. "MAKING AN ACT" . XXXI. MANIPULATION .... XXXII. READING AND LITERATURE . XXXIII. SOME THINGS ABOUT METHODS . XXXIV. MORALS AND RELIGION XXXV. THE COMMON SENSE OF IT ALL . PAGE 216 228 237 251 261 277 287 294 306 315 328 "THE GREAT PROBLEM OF THE PRESENT DAY IS TO RECONCILE THE TRADITIONS OF THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE CULT OF THE HUMANITIES WITH THE GROWTH OF THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT." M. MaUriCC Steeg. "EDUCATION is GROWTH, DEVELOPMENT; IT is NOT CREATION." From Wise Sayings. "I NEVER SAW A HEN YET COULD HATCH OUT OF AN EGG ANYTHING DIFFERENT FROM WHAT WAS IN IT WHEN IT WAS LAID." Old Irish Woman. " No MAN IS REALLY WELL EDUCATED WHO IS NOT ' ONTO HIS JOB.' " From Sayings of an Engineer. "ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING THAT ANY INDIVIDUAL CHILD NATU- RALLY 'HUMS TO' is EDUCATIVE FOR THAT CHILD." From Sym- pathetic Vibration. IX ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE CHAPTER I "BORN SHORT" Prefatory Remark Babies not " all alike " The Myth of the "Wholly Normal" and the "Perfectly Rounded" Child or Adult Our Own Instinctive Feeling vs. the Popular Notion in the Premises Everybody " Born Short " somewhere Range of the Condition Brief List of Cases in Point Color-Blind and Tone- Deaf People The Phenomena of " Shortage " in Lower Grade Pupils in the Public Schools Pupil who could read to himself, but not aloud Pupil who could not learn Multiplication Tables Author's Experience regarding Inability to memorize Dates or master Classical Languages Teacher and Judge who could not "tell Time" People who cannot tell Right Hand from Left Eminent Men who cannot spell Julia Ward Howe on Charles Sumner Shaler on Agassiz General Grant The Meaning of these Data. IN considering the practicability of the attempt to educate all the children of all the people, the whole issue turns on the natures of the children themselves, their inherent powers and capabilities, individually and de novo. These elemental factors in the make-up of all children I have carefully investigated for many years, and it is specifically on the strength of the data thus col- lected that I begin these studies of the subject of popu- lar education. 2 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE There is a certain type of man who is wont to remark, on occasion : " All babies look alike to me." Yet the first mother he meets will tell him that what he says is based on the most superficial observation, and that he "doesn't know what he is talking about." All my own observations have forced me to acknowl- edge the fact that there is a marked difference in chil- dren, even at the time of their birth, a difference so pronounced that it is perfectly safe to say that no two of them are exactly alike. And just as soon as these bits of infantile humanity begin to show their mental efficiencies or inefficiencies, these differences become more and more manifest. As infancy advances into childhood, childhood into youth, and youth into maturity, these primal qualities intensify their distinguishing marks upon each soul, and brand it as itself and not any other in all the world. This is the core of all individuality. That is, it is not uniformity, but diversity, that constitutes the fundamental element which makes a human being what he is. A moment's thought upon this proposition will re- sult in the conclusion that the " wholly normal " individ- ual, one who tallies exactly and at all points to uniform specifications made and provided, does not exist, and that the " perfectly rounded " child or adult is a myth, and so cannot be figured with definitely. So far as we are ourselves concerned, we each one instinctively feel and positively know that these things are as I have stated them; but the popular theory re- garding them is quite the reverse of the way I have put them, so much so as to obscure, almost entirely, the facts in the case. At least this is true, that their sig- nificance, as they stand related to individual possibilities "BORN SHORT" 3 in the affairs of life, is not recognized as it should be in the theories and practices for human development that prevail to-day. Stated in another way, for I wish to emphasize this point from the beginning, we are all aware, in our inmost hearts, that we are not equally strong in every part of our make-up, and that we were born that way. That is, as I have phrased it at the heading of this chapter, we all know that we are "born short" some- where; that in some spheres in the mental plane we do not function as readily as we do in some others. We all know this. And because we all know this because I know it, and everybody I have ever known or known about or have heard of knows it I feel fully warranted in mak- ing the inductive conclusion that everybody in all the world is " born short " somewhere. Such shortage may be so slight in some individuals as to escape the notice of all but the expert, or it may be so much in evidence in other cases as to be noticed by everybody at a glance. It may vary all the way from a minor idiosyncrasy to blank idiocy. But in its manifestations in these two ex- tremes, and all the way between them, the phenomena belong in the same category ; they are but quantitative exploitations of one and the same psychological con- dition. These facts, and their complements, which will be considered later, form the very "central heart" of the possibility of educating everybody. To analyze and make a list of such shortages, as they appear in all the varieties of humanity that the world holds, would be an endless task, and volumes could not contain the record, though it would all be germane to 4 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE the issue I am considering. All I care to do here, how- ever, is to note enough of the phenomena to form a base for the educational theory I have in mind to stand upon. Cases in point are as thick as blackberries, whichever way one looks, if only he has eyes to see ; and one such list, which any one might make, would be as good as another for all practical purposes. I claim no special merit for the list I am about to give. But since I must have such data to start with, I submit what follows. Most of the cases cited have come under my own per- sonal observation, and all the others are vouched for by the most reliable witnesses. Here then is my list the data on which the first part of my argument is based : My attention was first called to the fact that there is such a condition as lack of ability to function in some mental plane that all human beings are not alike in what they can do with their minds when I was little more than a child, through my association with two of my youthful mates, one of whom was color-blind and the other tone-deaf. The first was a neighbor boy who could not distinguish red from green. He could per- ceive no difference between the color of a red rose and the green foliage of the bush on which it grew. The second was a little girl who could not "rise and fall her eight notes " at singing school. She sat near me in the class, and I suffered the tortures of the lost (for I have a very keen musical ear) from being compelled to hear her monotone droning through the songs the rest of us could sing as they were written. These two cases made a great impression upon me, and I have never for- gotten them. "BORN SHORT" 5 Later in life, as a teacher in the public schools, I found " shortages" or " lacks " cropping out, to a greater or less degree, in all the pupils who came under my tuition. The phenomena began to show in the first year's work, and there were signs of the same qualities, more or less pronounced, in each several pupil, till he or she dropped out of school or graduated. Thus, I found pupils who required several terms to learn to read the simplest lessons. These children were not idiots, in the ordinary use of that word, though it would not be at variance with what I consider to be the truth to say that they were idiotic in spots on the read- ing spot, as it were. I have known of pupils who never could learn to read, though they were normally able on some other lines. The late Supt. E. A. Gastman, of Decatur, 111., once reported to me the case of a boy of twelve in one of his ward schools, who, though he was neither deaf nor dumb, yet never could learn to read aloud ; though his teacher discovered one day, much to her surprise, that the lad could read quite well to him- self, and that he was specially fond of reading history, in which he was much more than usually proficient for one of his years. As this boy appeared among his mates, there was nothing in looks or actions to indicate this particular shortage; that is, he could talk well enough, and would pass for what is called a normal child to the casual observer. And yet this is his record. Granted that this case is exceptional. Indeed it is one of the most peculiar I have ever had knowledge of. But that does not remove it from a legitimate place in the list I am making up. Nor do I think that this case is really as remarkable as it at first seemed to me, and 6 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE may seem to the reader to be. Doubtless there are a great many primary teachers in this country who could cite cases from their own experiences with pupils under their care that would equal or surpass this one in strangeness. I once had a pupil who could not learn the multipli- cation tables, though he was remarkably able in some other studies. When he grew to manhood he became an inventor and business promoter, in which capacity he amassed a fortune. But he never learned the multipli- cation tables. I met him when he was a man of wealth, at the head of a large manufacturing establishment, and asked him if he had learned the multiplication tables yet, and he replied : " No ! Why should I learn the multiplication tables ? I can hire girls at six dollars a week who can do that work for me ! Life is too short for me to waste it in trying to master what I have no head for ! " His remark is worth serious consideration. This case is also rare, but there are multitudes of teachers in the grades who could duplicate it out of their own record books. There is a story, which those who surely ought to know declare to be well founded, that no less a personage than Dean Stanley had this particular shortage, and that, in the prime of his life, he once said, in the presence of a gentleman with whom he was doing business : " seven times three are twenty- three," and that he knew no better till his friend cor- rected him ! But I must not continue the list in just this line. Time and space would fail me to tell of the pupils I have had who were " short " in spelling ! (Please don't all exclaim at once !) In lack of ability to memorize dates I have had many cases. I myself could never learn "BORN SHORT" 7 to draw a map, or anything else but my salary. And yet I strove hard, with all my might and main indeed, to do such work. I was equally a failure in my attempts to master Latin and Greek, though I virtually sweat blood in trying to obtain a knowledge of these languages. I used to sit up till late at night to dig out my translations, and was up and at work again in the very early morning, But it was a rare thing for me to make a recitation on which I could get a record of 7 on a scale of marking in which 10 meant correct. The men and women are yet living who could testify to the truth of these statements. I record them now at this time of my life, not with shame or any feeling of dis- grace, though in school I was more than once put to a mental torture that was akin to crucifixion because of my "shortage" on these counts! And I think these terrible experiences of my schoolboy days are not nearly as exceptional among the pupils of to-day as they ought to be. If the reader is a teacher, please pause and think a moment just here ! Any teacher of experience can extend this list of " short " pupils ad infinitum. I turn, then, from this part of the record of children to that of grown-ups. Perhaps I ought to explain that these adult cases are given for the sake of showing the persistence of " born so" lacks or excesses. It is this fact that makes them germane to my chief contention, of vital interest in the issue in hand. I once knew a school teacher, a good one, too, she was, who could not tell the time of day on a watch or clock. I mentioned this fact once, at a public educational meeting, and at its close a judge of the court in that district, who 8 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE happened to be present and so heard my remarks, came to me and said : " Mr. Smith, I did not suppose that any other human being in all this world ever was afflicted as I have always been. But the case of the teacher who could not tell time is exactly like my own. I have never been able to tell the time of day on a watch or clock. I carry a watch because that is counted the proper thing for a judge to do ; but if I want to know, for certain, what time it is, I ask some one who knows! " I after- wards inquired of lawyers who practiced before this judge's court, and was told that he always asked some one what time it was before he adjourned court. They said he would squint at the clock, as if he could not see its face clearly, and would then inquire what time it was and wait till some one told him ! None of the lawyers knew positively that the judge could not "tell time," he concealed his defect so cleverly, but one of them said to me : " It always seemed curious to us that he could see our faces, anyhow well enough to tell us apart, and could not see the face of the clock." I know a primary teacher, of national reputation, who cannot tell her right hand from her left except by a special mental effort and the use of a particular method she has for determining which hand is which. I also know a leading college president, who is at the head of one of the best institutions of its class in this country, who is " short " in the same way. I know a State Commissioner of Education, who is among the foremost of educational leaders in the United States, who never writes a letter with his own hand. He cannot spell has never been able to learn to do so. A leading bishop of one of the strongest denomina- tions in this country once said to me : " It would be a "BORN SHORT" 9 notable day when I would not spell which in at least three different ways in writing a single page." In her autobiography Julia Ward Howe states that Charles Sumner had so little mathematical ability that Professor Pierce, of Harvard College, once said to him : " Charles, I never expect to get the simplest mathemati- cal proposition whittled down to so fine a point that even the tip of it could enter your mind." The late N. S. Shaler, in his autobiography, said, in speaking of the examination that Professor Agassiz gave him, when he became the pupil of that noted scientist : " He did not probe me in my weakest place, mathe- matics, for the good reason that, badly off as I was on that subject, he was in a worse plight." I know an actress of such wonderful tragic ability that she can thrill an audience to the point of frenzy (the real thing), and yet she could not "make change for a dollar " to save her life. Every reader of General Grant's Memoirs will recall the story he tells of his financial "shortage" as shown in buying a colt when he was a boy ; and the story of the Grant- Ward failure shows how his youthful trait remained with him to the close of his life. Similar cases, showing the general distribution of "shortage" among men and women whose names are honored throughout the world could easily be given, but these are enough to establish all I am contending for here. All these and multitudes besides have demon- strated that they had a lack of ability to function in certain spheres of the mental plane that they were " short " on some counts. It is equally true that these " shortages " manifested themselves in the early life of the individuals concerned, that they were " born short " 10 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE in each and every case, and that such " shortage " cut a considerable figure in their lives and acts, both in their youth and in their adult life. This point is so clear that I can rest the further presentation of the testimony that upholds it right here. The facts I have stated are undeniable, and they all mean something. I shall refer to them again and again when I come to argue the case in full. CHAPTER II "BORN LONG" Partial List of "Longs" Mathematical Boy of Six Primary Pupils who could " always " read or draw Case of Robert Gardenhire " Absolute Pitch " possessed by Boy of Ten Idiot Girl a Crochet Genius Juvenile Prodigies The "Pro- nounced " vs. the " Exceptional " General Distribution of the Phenomena of " Longage " in Some Form Found among All Classes of People Author's Ability to memorize Prose and Poetry Similar Cases noted Examples from Other Walks of Life The Little Engine The Gardener The Cook The Significance of these Facts. TURNING now to the other side of the shield, I give herewith a limited list of people I have known who were " long," or here or there, who had an excess of ability to function in certain spheres of the mental plane. Here, also, my observations began when I was quite young ; and while I did not philosophize upon the data at that time of my life, yet they made a marked impression upon me as peculiar mental phenomena, which has continued even to this day. I remember a boy of six who was always " making up problems " which he delighted to spring upon his elders. One, I remember, was as follows : If a quarter of a dollar is fifteen sixteenths of an inch in diameter, and it is 25,000 miles around the earth, how many quarters laid side by side would it take to reach around the world? He would make up and solve "mentally" the most intricate problems in interest, and when asked how he got the results, he would reply, " At first I 12 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE thought it was so much ; but when I thought about it I knew it was so much." This was all he could tell of how he obtained his results, which were always correct. Surely a six-year-old boy who could make up and mentally solve problems like this might be counted as having an excess of ability to function in the mathe- matical plane. He had never been to school when he did this work, and had had no instruction in arithmetic to amount to anything. As a teacher, I had pupils who could not remember when they learned to read, they acquired the art so early in life. All primary teachers are familiar with similar cases. I have had pupils in the lower grades who, unaided, could draw pictures in correct perspec- tive, and who " had always done so." I have also known grade pupils who were walking cyclopedias of dates and events, but who did not have to make any special effort to acquire such proficiency. But I need not multiply instances of this sort in these strata of human life. All teachers of experience are familiar with them, and most parents know something of them. So, leaving these, I turn to similar phe- nomena in older people. One of the most remarkable cases of this sort that I have ever had personal knowledge of is that of Robert Gardenhire, a full-blooded negro, of Augusta, Ga. I became acquainted with this case through a classmate of mine, a former teacher, and so one well able to judge in the premises, and with his assistance I was enabled to make a thorough examination of the young man and to verify the remarkable phenomena his mental func- tioning exhibited. "BORN LONG" 13 At the time of our examination, this man was about twenty years old. He had been to school less than a year, all told. He could read and write a little, but was "wholly uneducated," in the ordinary meaning of those words. He was working in an oil mill, shoveling cotton seed at seventy-five cents a day, and that appeared to be as much as he could earn at such work seemed about his limit of value in that direction. In a word, he was a very ordinary negro, so far as his general ability was concerned. When he was about seventeen years old people dis- covered that he was "bright in figures," and began to ask him questions. The result was that he soon ac- quired local fame, and almost every one he met would test his ability, till in a short time he became wonderfully expert in solving certain kinds of mathematical prob- lems. He was especially strong in multiplication. Give him two factors to be taken together, and he would promptly give you the correct result. If the factors were only " two-placed " numbers, each, he would an- nounce the product instantly. If they were "three- placed " numbers, he would hesitate just a little before replying. The work was all done " mentally," that is, he never wrote the figures down. He could work a little with written numbers, but in such work he was very slow. This way of working was very distasteful to him. He hated it. To this unlettered negro my friend dictated thirty- three problems in multiplication. The gentleman him- self wrote the factors upon a sheet of paper, as he announced them, and then immediately set down, after each set, seriatim, the answers, as the young man gave them to him. In no case was there a delay of more 14 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE than a second or two in giving these answers. The list of problems thus given and solved is as follows : 27 x 35 = 945 49 * 349 = 91 x 86 = 7826 169 x 337 = 38553+ 57 x 81 = 4617 17 x 15 = 255 97x197=19109 19 x 19= 361 76 x 751 = 57076 96 x 78 = 7488 71 x 91 = 6461 42 x 37 = 1554 71 x 87 = 6177 37 x 91 = 3367 67 x 88 = 5896 67 x 77 = 5159 76 x 78 = 5928 57 x 791 = 45087 96 x 17= 1632 71 x 851=60421 27 x 187 = 5049 69 x 546 = 37674 97 x 998 = 96806 99 x 999 = 97801+ 78 x 87 = 7836+ 4 x 1870 = 7480 87 x 97= 8439 1 7 x IIO = 1870 72 x 101 = 7272 15 x 12 = 180 32 x 13= 416 72 x 110= 7920 24 x 72 = 1728 I have verified these problems, and find there are three mistakes in the answers. ( You would smile should I tell how many mistakes I made in my calculations, in doing this proof work! Suppose you try it yourself, and see how you come out ! ) And this case, wonderful as it is, is only one of many. The similar case of Zerah Colburn has been well known to psychologists and professors of pedagogy for many years, and "lightning calculators" are as thick as side shows, the country over. Nor are such cases confined to mathematics alone. They crop out in nearly every other line of life that is known to humanity. Again, I know a blind boy who has the gift of " abso- lute pitch " in music. Strike any key on the piano and he will name the tone produced. Strike as many as you "BORN LONG" 15 will, even if that means every key on the board, and all at once, and he will name for you every key you have hit. Professor Frank Hall, of Aurora, 111., brought this case to my notice. I once met a girl of twelve who had such a poor sense of number that she could not count at all, and yet she was so skillful with a crochet hook that she could duplicate any pattern of crochet work that might be given her. She would even take a printed pattern of a piece of lace, as it appears in a needlework book or magazine, and produce the work perfectly with her hook and thread, though wholly unable to count a stitch, or to read a word of the printed directions. She also made original pat- terns which were of rare beauty. I have a record of a boy who was ready to enter college at nine years of age. He read Latin well at five, and a little later mastered French and German. He took de- light in differential calculus at eight, and was very fond of chemistry. The remarkable record made by William James Sidis is a similar case that all the world has recently been made familiar with. I have a young lady friend who was born blind. When she was about three years old, a skillful doctor removed the cause of her blindness, and she could see. As soon as she could use her eyes she began to read. She never had to be taught how to read, but read al- most everything fluently from the first. Before she was five, I put a copy of " Sartor Resartus " into her hands one evening, just to see what she could do, and she read page after page without a halt. But I need not multiply cases of this class. Time and space would fail me to tell of Mozart, and Millais, and Blind Tom, and Lope de Vega, and Tasso, and 1 6 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE Webster, and hundreds of others, whose names and records are well known, and all of whom were notably "long " in some lines were "born so," and were so as long as they lived. All these people and their similars are " long " in their ability to function in certain spheres of the mental plane. But, some one says, these cases are nearly all excep- tional ; they are taken from the unusual walks of life ; and hence their experience and records are not a fair measure to use on the rank and file. To which I reply these cases are phenomenal rather than exceptional. And I am impressed with the fact that there is no need of making even such a concession. For, when I note my own ability to function on some mental planes, I find myself as pronounced and exceptional as the rest, and the same is doubtless true in your own case, whoever you are. And when I look about amongst my neigh- bors, right here at home, I find that every one of them, even the humblest, is about as pronounced and excep- tional as you, or I, or any one. Thus, not to draw aside the veil of my own personality too far, and surely not to boast, I have always been " long " in the matter of remembering certain pieces of literature so that I could quote them. This memorizing at pleasure has never cost me any effort, nor does it do so to this day, provided the selection takes my fancy strikes me right. If it does that, I can master it without trying to do so at all. I can repeat, as I would my alphabet, the nursery rhymes learned in my infancy ; and it is only a few days since I memorized a poem of sixty-four lines by hearing a public reader recite it a single time before an audience. Pieces memor- "BORN LONG" 17 ized in that way I retain well, without any particular effort. It all depends on " how they strike me." If they " hit me hard," they stay with me. More than twenty-five years ago I heard Henry Ward Beecher deliver a lecture that greatly pleased me, and I could write several columns of it to-day, though I have never tried to memorize a word of it. This is a power that I have always had, from my earliest recollection, this ability to memorize certain things without effort. I was "born so," and that is the way I am to this day. And again some one says " exceptional." Well, two doors south of where I am writing, I had, for years, a neighbor who could discount me in this sort of "exception." He is a dry goods merchant, and a successful one too. I remember his coming over to my study one evening and quoting the whole of the " New Locksley Hall," when that poem first came out, after a single reading, and I am sure he could quote it to-day, with equal ease and accuracy. Two doors north of where I am writing lives a woman who can quote seven of Shakespeare's plays, verbatim et literatim, and she never spent an hour in trying to mem- orize them. She will also repeat Browning by the thou- sands of lines, and is equally able to recite Walt Whitman, page after page. She is the wife of a bookkeeper and was for years a commercial stenographer. And again some one says " exceptional," and adds : " Take some instances from the commoner walks of life." Well, dry goods merchants and commercial stenographers are not regularly counted as among the intellectual " Four Hundred," but my experience is that this trait of excess of ability to function in some mental l8 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE plane extends through all the social strata and covers all sorts of mental ground. Thus, a street car conductor on the line that runs in front of my door has just com- pleted a steam engine that is so small that it can be entirely covered with a lady's thimble. He has built it at odd times, and "just for fun." He is not a pro- fessional mechanic. The man who takes care of my " home place " is of Irish extraction, born and reared on the " East Side " in New York City. Until he was sixteen, all the green and growing things he had ever seen or knew about were such as he saw in the City Hall Park. Yet I never met his equal as a gardener. He will coax the finest of vegetables, such as would baffle my very best efforts to produce, out of a soil and environment that I could get little or nothing out of. And yet I grew up on a farm, and was taught to do these things, while this man was reared on cobblestone pavements, in the region of Five Points. He and a weed cannot exist on the same acre, and he would sit up nights to nurse a drooping plant to vigor again. I would not, and the chances are that the plant would die if I did. For years we had in our kitchen (I'm surely within the range of the common walks of life now) a woman who was " long " on cooking. She had had no particular training in the art, but she " loved to cook." This she could do to perfection, practically without any special effort or application, but because it was the joy of her life. She used to say it "just came natural" to her. I am sure it did. But I need not make this list longer. The truth is, I have rarely met a man, woman, or child who was not "long" somewhere. And if you, dear reader, will look "BORN LONG" 19 within and about yourself, you will find that your expe- rience and mine are very much alike. The cases you have seen and know about are not identical with those I have noted, but they exhibit the same principle. And that is enough. CHAPTER III SOME COMPARISONS AND CONCLUSIONS Common Opinions regarding "Shorts" and "Longs'" How "Shorts" regard "Longs" and "Longs" regard "Shorts" Why both are wrong Sumner and Gardenhire compared Wendell Phillips on Sumner Gardenhire and Heredity Zerah Colburn Blind Tom Grant as Soldier, Statesman, and Finan- cier Similar Cases The very " Long " apt to be very " Short " in some Places, and vice versa Applications drawn from these Comparisons " Shorts " not " Fools " Why Names of People who are " Short " cannot be given Wrong Opinions regarding " Longs " Personal Applications of the Principle. AND now, having given these lists of " shorts " and " longs," having shown that there are such phenomena as lack and excess of ability to function in certain spheres of the mental plane in human experience, I wish to make a few comparisons in the premises and to note some conclusions that are very apt to follow naturally, though I think wrongfully, in cases such as I have noted. In the first place, I wish to emphasize the fact that it is a very common conclusion that, if any given person is pronouncedly "short" or "long" in some particular line of ability to function mentally, he or she is also equally short or long in all other ways. Such conclu- sions are especially prominent with all of us when we compare other people with ourselves. If you, dear reader, are a good mathematician, if arithmetic was always the delight of your life, and 20 SOME COMPARISONS AND CONCLUSIONS 21 algebra likewise, and you learn, in some way, that a neighbor or an acquaintance of yours can hardly add a short column of figures correctly, the chances are many to one that your opinion of that neighbor or acquaint- ance will be lowered not a little by such discovery. Or, if you are a good speller, naturally so, and you get a letter from some correspondent in which there are mis- spelled words, the probabilities are that you will set the writer down as an " ignorant person," to say the least. But if you are " short " on mathematics and come across some one else who cannot add, you do not look down on such a one. You sympathize with him you know just how it is yourself. The same is true if you are a poor speller. You are " drawn to " any one in like case. Again, if you have no " knack " in some line of work, if you are " short " in some particular way, and you come across some one who is "handy" or "long" just there, the probabilities are that you will be filled with wonder and amazement that such person can do what he does so easily, and you will be very apt to leap to the con- clusion that he can do everything else just as readily ! Before you read further, please stop, just an instant, and think out how these things are in your own particu- lar case. Such brief introspection will help you to comprehend better all that I say hereafter. What I wish to urge is, that all such conclusions, and such feelings of disgust or amazement, are wrong, though they are as natural as that water should run downhill. The sympathetic feelings of like for like are all right, but not the others. To make this point clear, I am going to make a few comparisons from some of the cases I have noted. To make one of the most startling comparisons first, 22 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE put the cases of Charles Sumner and Robert Gardenhire side by side. Sumner had no mathematical ability that was worthy the name. Gardenhire could solve, " men- tally" and instantly, problems that it would have taken Sumner hours to " figure out," with the chances that even then they would be wrong. Judged mathematically, and by that ability alone, the colored man would be ranked as far the mental superior of the statesman. And yet ! The point I wish to make is that it would be unfair to either party to judge him wholly by his lack or excess, by his "short" or "long" ability. Sumner was little more than imbecile, mathematically; but I remember hearing Wendell Phillips, in his lecture on Charles Sum- ner, tell how, just after he had graduated from Harvard, he made a trip to London ; and though at that time he was only " a briefless lawyer," yet his fame as one skilled in the knowledge of the law had so preceded him that the Supreme Judges in England invited him to sit with them as they heard cases in court. And when a very unusual case came before these judges, one of them turned to Sumner and asked him if he knew any similar case in point. To whom young Sumner replied : " Your honor, in such a volume of your own reports, on such a page, you will find a like case ! " Think of this reply, and then compare it with what Professor Pierce said to Sumner about his mathematical inability ! As a matter of fact, it will be difficult for the reader to believe this story which Phillips tells of Sumner. It is so far beyond the experience of the most of us that we can hardly realize that it can be true. But I have no doubt of its truth. On his "long" side Charles Sumner was a most remarkable man. On his " short " side we like to draw the veil. So do we all like to hide SOME COMPARISONS AND CONCLUSIONS 23 our own " short " places ! What we ought to do is to be fair in both and in all cases. In the case of Robert Gardenhire, I have already said that he was a person of very ordinary ability, out- side his special characteristic of unusual mathematical strength. Here is his signature, and it shows that he can barely write his name. As a day laborer, in the simplest sort of work, he could be only moderately suc- cessful. Yet is it not true that " one would naturally expect great things " of one who was so " mathematically bright " ? Most assuredly this is so. (There is another point, in this particular case, which, while not germane just here, I cannot refrain from men- tioning as of interest from an evolutionary standpoint, and that is, that this young man is a full-blooded negro; at least, he shows not a trace of white blood in his phys- ical appearance. The puzzling question is, from what ancestry did his " longage " come ? This is something to ponder over !) So much was expected from Zerah Colburn that he was sent across the water to appear before the savants of Europe, in the hope that he might reveal something entirely new in mathematical methods. But in this he entirely failed. He could give no account of how he obtained his results, and he was of very limited ability, outside his specialty. The little girl I have mentioned, who could work such marvels with her crochet hook, was in an idiot asylum, though on the line on which she was " long " she could do what not one woman in a million could ever learn to do. She could not read, and she could not count. And 24 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE yet she could crochet an intricate lace pattern from a picture of the piece. I never saw any other human being who could do this without " reading the direc- tions " and " counting the stitches," as the work was done. But this girl could make the lace without read- ing or counting, though she had never been taught how. She was " born long " on that side. That was the way she was. And everybody knows that Blind Tom was entirely limited in his mentality, outside of his musical accom- plishments. Where he was " born long " he never had an equal. As a child, he showed signs of his rare ability. It was the way he was. But it was useless to try to get much of anything else into him or out of him, to develop him, to any extent, in any other direc- tion than in music. Here, he grew and grew. Here, but not elsewhere. Did you ever stop to think of the significance of the final chapter in the life of General Ulysses S. Grant? There is no question but that, as a soldier, he was one of the greatest this world has ever seen. There is no need of eulogizing him on that score. But outside of his military attainments, he was a man of very ordinary ability. As a farmer he was a failure, as a statesman he was mediocre, and as a financier he stood at the bottom of the ladder. There is no more pathetic story in all history than the record of the Grant- Ward failure. But it is pity and not blame that one feels towards the great general as the details of that tragedy become known. It is easy to see now that he was a mere child in the hands of an unscrupulous promoter. If he had possessed even ordinary financial insight, he would have known, from the start, that nothing but ruin could result SOME COMPARISONS AND CONCLUSIONS 25 from the course the firm he was a member of pursued. But, on that side, he was so short that he could not see that King Lear was right when he said, " Nothing can come from nothing." He was a great general. He was weakness itself as a financier. Or, take some others of the particular cases that I have reported. The woman who could not tell time was a most successful teacher; and the judge who was likewise short was remarkably able in his profession. He was one of the best Greek scholars I ever knew, and as a logician he was invincible. His decisions while upon the bench were almost never reversed, so perfect was his grasp of every point in any case he was called to pass upon. But now, truly, if you were a school director, and a teacher should make application to you for a position, and you should happen to find out that she could not tell time, would not that fact tend to make you reject her application ; would it not almost force you to con- clude that she could not possibly be a good teacher ? Or, if you had a case in court, would you not hesitate to have it come before a judge who had to ask some one else when it was time to adjourn ? You would be far above the average of humanity if you did not brand both these people as " fools." Yet this teacher was not a fool, nor was the judge a fool, nor was Charles Sumner, nor was General Grant, nor was Louis Agassiz, or any of the rest. They were simply " short " where others are " long," and it would be entirely unfair and unjust to them to judge them from their " short " sides. The fact is, we are all both "born long "and "born short " on some lines. 26 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE And beyond doubt this also is true, that, where one is born very " long " on some one line, such a person is quite apt to be very "short" on some other line, and vice versa. This is true of all the cases I have just been considering in detail. But it is equally true that the great bulk of humanity have, each and all, their " long " places and their " short " places, their natural bents of mind. To emphasize what I have just said, I cannot help noting some further details of the cases mentioned. I want to make it very plain that people who are very "short" in some regards are by no means weak in others ; and also to prove that they have a right in the procession, often in the front rank. I wish I could give you the name of the teacher who cannot tell her right hand from her left without special mental effort. She is a woman who has made a na- tional reputation in her primary work, and in that line she has no superior, anywhere. And so of the college president who has a touch of the same shortage. Should I write his name here, you would recognize it at once as that of a man who has been honored by the teachers of this country as only a very few men have ever been. He worthily stands in the front rank among the educational leaders of America. So, too, of the LL.D. who cannot spell. His name is famous on more than one continent. Why is it, then, that I must not mention the names of the people spoken of in this last paragraph ? The answer is easy. They are all living, and if their names were told it would greatly lower them in the esteem of many people who know them. If I were speaking of where they are " long," I might sound their names with SOME COMPARISONS AND CONCLUSIONS 27 a trumpet, and the chances are that all who heard would hasten to conclude that they were " intellectual giants," every one, and in every way. But if I tell of where they are " short," their names must be concealed. I shall return to this fact later and note its further sig- nificance. Meantime, let the reader note it well, and be cautious as to the conclusions he forms from the com- parisons he makes when considering the "shortages" and " longages " in his fellow men and in himself ! CHAPTER IV NASCITUR NON FIT The Maxim too Narrow The Universality of Congenital Gifts and Deprivations The Way we are Genius -vs. Hard Work "Winners" must have Native Ability The Real Basis of Suc- cess in any Given Calling Cases in Point Locomotive Fire- men Merchants Square Pegs and Round Holes Training vs. Creation Real Estate and Grammar Virtue and Persever- ance Lincoln's Advice to a Young Man Endeavor without Comprehension Practical Application of the Principle Omnes Nascuntur, nonfiunt! HE was doubtless a wise and observing man who first wrote the words poeta nascitur non fit, which, being interpreted, tells us that a poet is born, not made. The only criticism one can make on this remark is that it is too narrow. It not only does not tell half of the story, but it simply mentions a somewhat minor fact which is a part of a general law. For the fact is that all men are born and not made / So far as I have been able to observe, every one who was ever born can do some things much more easily than he can do some other things, and he "always could." Or, to put it the other way about, it is more difficult for him to do some things than it is for him to do some other things, and it was "always so." That is, to every individual there are given, from birth, cer- tain abilities to function in certain mental planes ; from every individual, from birth, there are denied or with- held certain abilities to function in certain mental planes, and to do the things thereunto related. 28 NASCITUR NON FIT 29 Does this proposition seem startling ? It surely is so. But the issue is not there. It is really irrelevant whether it be astounding or commonplace. The only question worth while is, what are the facts in the case ? These established, the next question is what to do, these things being as they are ? Now I am well aware that it is a popular theory, especially in this " land of the free," that any man can do anything he undertakes to do whether he " has any head " for it or not, if he tries hard enough and keeps trying long enough. This idea has been carried so far as to elicit the statement that even " genius is only an appetite for hard work." This sentiment may be popular, but the experiences of humanity prove to every thoughtful individual that it is not true. Ask yourself if it has proved true in your own case. Then look about among your neighbors and acquaintances, and see if it has proved true in their cases. Never mind about what "some one says!" The evidences that you and I are aware of are as good as any ! Consider these well, and then give an honest verdict. My opinion is that the net result of your observations will establish the conclusion in you that, while hard work and devotion to business are among the best means in the world for securing success; yet, even they will not bring that result unless the striver and worker has some sort of "head" for what he is trying to do. At least, this is true, that, if one has a head for what he is work- ing for, his chances for succeeding are many fold better than they would otherwise be. Even the admission of so much is all that is necessary is enough to establish my point. 30 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE Now the fact is that if you will go into any walk of life and talk with people who know about the details of that especial way of living and doing what are the require- ments for success therein, and who are worthy to be reckoned as worth while and at the fore, you will be told by such people who know, that "winners in our line must be born and not made ! " There is not a single exception to this statement. I have tested it a thousand times, and it always comes out the same way. Try it, and my conclusion will be yours. And yet, the popular theory is that these things are not so. Every successful man knows that in his special line of work those who are "the real thing" must be born and not made ; but he has a theory that the same principle does not hold true in other spheres of labor. Every successful doctor, engineer, architect, farmer, teacher, stock breeder, brick maker, hotel keeper, chicken raiser, rat catcher, musician, cook, sea captain, general, preacher, inventor, author, financier, bookseller, insurance agent, and so on to the end of the line, up or down all of them who know the details of their business and who are successful therein, to a man, will say, when speaking of their own line of work: "The winners in our line must be born and not made." In investigating these phenomena, I have been sur- prised beyond telling to find how far-reaching this prin- ciple is. There are lines of life that have seemed to me so simple and elementary that any one could master their requirements, especially if he tried hard to do so. But even here I have found the " born and not made " principle positively in evidence. I was talking once with a railroad manager whom I overheard telling one of his "traveling engineers" to NASCITUR NON FIT 31 look after a certain fireman on his division, and I heard him say : " If he can't learn to do it, you'll have to let him go." And I said : " Can't learn to do what ? " To which the manager replied: "To shovel coal into the fire box ! " " Do you mean to say," I asked, " that it is possible that a man can be found who can't learn to shovel coal into a locomotive furnace ? " And this is the answer I got : " Sure ! It is only about one in four who try to do it that can learn to do it right." And then he added: "A fireman has to be born, he can't be made ! " I had no idea that so apparently simple a matter as shoveling coal into a fire box demanded initial aptitude for such work, and I am quite certain that many who read these lines will pooh-pooh the statement. But if they will inquire of the men who know about such things, they will find it is only a plain, unvarnished tale that I have unfolded. And so it is in any line of work that may be named. The universal complaint amongst all classes of employers is that they cannot find people who have initial ability to do the work required of them. (I know a merchant who hunted the country over before he found a man who could do up packages to suit him.) It is said that only about four in one hundred who enter the mercantile pro- fession succeed in that calling. Ask any successful merchant why these fail, and he will tell you that they have no "head" for such work. The chances are that he will add : " A merchant must be born, he can't be made." And it is true. And so it is everywhere. The born-and-not-made principle is universal. 32 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE Of course, there are many people, probably a large majority, who can do more than one thing well. There are not a few who are exceedingly versatile. But even the best of these have their "short" places; there are things they cannot do well, things they have no initial ability to do, and which, if they are wise and are aware of their " shortage," they will not try to do. Think how it is with you. Under which circumstances, I beg to submit that I believe it to be universally true that any individual will succeed best in doing work that he has a natural " head " for, that he was " born long " on, that he has initial ability to do. On the other hand, no individual can successfully competed any calling in which he is "born short," is not apt in, has no " knack " in pursuing. All of which is only saying that a square peg will not fit and fill a round hole as well as a round one will. But, it is contended, if the hole is round and the peg is square, make the peg round ! To which I answer, it all depends on the nature of the peg as to how successfully this can be done. And I might add that many a good square peg has been ruined in trying to make it round, and vice versa. The truth is, that, so far as human nature is concerned, it is far harder to make a natural shortage long than is generally conceded ; especially is it very much harder than some teachers and most professors of pedagogy generally will admit. There are reasons for this, which will be considered later. It is true, of course, that training can do much to in- crease efficiency, that culture can augment native power. What is not true is the claim that training and culture can create, de novo, abilities that are not inborn. Here is a fundamental psychological fact whose truth is NASCITUR NON FIT 33 generally denied in the pedagogical profession. And yet, so far as each individual who reads these lines is concerned, each one knows that the experiences I have stated are true in his or her case. Think, here, of your own experiences in this regard. I was talking, only last evening, with a very success- ful real estate agent of my acquaintance. We were speaking of " shorts " and " longs," and he said : " I think I was ' short ' on grammar. I graduated from the high school, but I didn't know a thing about gram- mar then, and I don't know now. I couldn't tell a verb from a noun now, to save my life. I was a good guesser, and I guessed my way through that study, from start to finish, so that they passed me, somehow. But I believe I could have been made to learn grammar if my teacher had gone at me hard enough," he went on to say, " and I'll tell you why. One evening my teacher made me stay after school to learn the list of pronominal adjec- tives. Now I have no more idea what a pronominal adjective is than the man in the moon. I hadn't then, and I haven't now. But there was a game of ball called for half-past four that evening, and I had to pitch it, and I knew that my teacher meant business and that that list of words had to be learned before I could get out. The result was that I learned the list in twenty minutes, and I can repeat it to this day, though that was thirty years ago." And then he repeated the list to prove his words. And I said : " Have you ever made any use of this list of words in the thirty years you have been able to repeat them ? " And he replied: " No, but I learned 'em ! And if I could be made to learn them, why not the rest of the grammar 34 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE Upon which I thought, cui bono ? but I said not a word. Silence is sometimes golden. Later, this same man told me that, in the hundreds of deeds he had written in connection with his real estate business, not once had he ever gone to a record to find out the description of any piece of land he was deeding. He said : " Whenever I handle a piece of land, the first thing I do is to get my foot on it, to see just where it is ; and, after that, I can always remember the description of it. In the hundreds of deeds I have written I have never looked up a record, and I have never made a mistake." Then I asked him if he thought he could write a grammar in a similar way, and with equal accuracy ? Whereupon he laughed me to scorn, and said : "If I should live to the age of Methuselah, and study grammar all the time, I don't think I should ever know enough about it to give an intelligent opinion on the subject." I asked him if he thought he could have competed successfully as a grammar maker or teacher, and then he was silent. There are times when " only silence is fully expressive." I have taken space and time to report this case fully, because it is so perfect a type of a widely distributed feeling and belief amongst multitudes of people. To this man it seemed an easy thing to write deeds as he did, to remember the exact description of every piece of land he had ever handled. He told me he believed I could do it, that I surely ought to be able to, since I could repeat a poem of sixty-four lines from hearing it once ! But when I asked him why he did not remem- ber poetry as well as he did descriptions of land, he replied : " I wasn't born that way ! " And I said : "The argument is closed." NASCITUR NON FIT 35 This man is a successful real estate agent because he can utilize, in that business, his excess of ability to function in a mental plane that fits his business per- fectly. In such a line of work I should have failed ignominiously. I could not, to-day, give a description of the piece of land I have lived on, though I have paid taxes on it for a quarter of a century, and so have seen a written description of it at least once a year for that length of time. I was not born to remember data of that sort, and no amount of training could fit me to compete in the real estate business with a man who has such a head for that sort of thing as my friend has. Here, then, is my conclusion, namely, that experience proves that it is not wise for any man to base the motive of his life work on the theory that he can do one thing just as well as he can another, if he only tries hard enough and keeps trying long enough. The sane thing to do, in every case, is for each individual to take ac- count of his own initial abilities and inabilities, where he is "short," and where he is "long," and plan his life work accordingly just as far as his environment will permit him to do so. The fact is, there has been any amount of false teach- ing on this point, to the effect that the harder it is for one to do any particular thing the more virtue there is in doing just that thing, and the greater will be the returns to the doer in the way of added strength and increased ability. It is true that added strength comes from overcoming resistance, to a certain degree; but there is a limit to the principle, and that limit is reached when the person attempting to overcome such resistance has not enough understanding of the situation to attack intelligently the forces against which he strives. 36 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE There was great sense in the words Mr. Lincoln once wrote to a young ' man who asked him to map out his life's work for him. Lincoln wrote : " An intelligent perseverance is the surest guarantee to success in life." That tells the whole story. It is not only essential to persevere, but to do so intelligently. And when a per- son is born so short in a given line that he has no intel- ligence to bring to bear on the issue, his struggles to succeed lead only to disgust and despair. Such a per- son simply strikes blindly, and he is just as liable to wound himself as he is to break down the barriers he is trying to hurl himself against. The pity of it all is beyond telling, and we have all seen such cases, time and again. Fortunate are we if we have not had many such experiences ourselves. Most of us have had them, to a greater or less degree. So it turns out that the best results will come to any individual by having him move out strongly, resolutely, in lines of life on which he is " born long," for which he has innate aptitude, where he has an excess of ability to function in the particular mental plane involved. The world has no use for blunderers; and he who tries to run without eyes to see where he is going will surely fall into the ditch. The wise thing to do is to test one's vision before beginning the race, and to be willing to accept the verdict of such bringing to the proof. If that shows you are blind, then do not try ways that require eyesight as a requisite for success therein. Test ears, hands, voice, everything find out where you are "short" and where "long," and then true your life work by your native ability, just as far as it is possible for you to do so. The color-blind boy of my youthful acquaintance NASCITUR NON FIT 37 never made an artist. He could not. Neither did the little monotone girl become a singer. She could not. General Grant did not become a financier. He could not. Sumner did not become a mathematician. He could not. My real estate friend did not become a grammarian. He could not. I have never glistened as a Latin and Greek scholar. I could not. You have never - (fill this line out to suit your own case). You could not. You were not born that way. Neither were any of the rest of us born to do the things we have not native wit enough to work at intelligently. And so the man who wrote poeta nascitur, non fit wrote too small. He should have written Omnes nas- cuntur, non fiunt. (I got a friend who is "long" on Latin to universalize this sentence for me, so I think it is right, though I cannot say it is, of my own knowledge.) I shall return to some of the issues involved in this chapter, in a later part of this book, but I have said enough here to serve present purposes. CHAPTER V HOW CAN THESE THINGS BE? Pertinence of this Query Glass and Copper as Electric Conduc- tors How, not Why, the Issue A Tentative Hypothesis Mental Functional Ability determined by Bodily Conditions What is the Human Mind ? The Mind one Thing, and the Body another Thing The Body a Means through which the Mind functions The Brain a Machine which the Mind uses An Analogy Musician and Piano Mind and Body The Nervous System and other Bodily Organs Relative Value of these as Factors in Mental Functioning. PERHAPS some of my pragmatic readers may remark as they note the heading of this chapter : " Never mind how it is that these things are. If they are, they are, and that settles it. What is the use of speculating as to the modus operandi in the premises ? " To which I reply that a study into the way things work has resulted in great good in this world. It is true that no one ever has, or ever can arrive at the absolute ultimate cause of any phenomenon, physical or otherwise. No one can tell why it is that copper is a good medium for conducting a current of electricity while glass is not. Yet a knowledge of these facts is really worth while, and to ignore them is worse than folly. One would hardly sin should he say that any man is a fool who should attempt to force an electric current through glass, or who should try to insulate himself with a casing of copper ! If we can find out how things are, how the forces that do things work, there is a possibility of our con- 38 HOW CAN THESE THINGS BE? 39 trolling the action of such forces, in a measure, at least, and of utilizing for good what might otherwise be harm- ful or fatal. Franklin's fundamental discoveries as to how lightning behaved have led to great results. No one has ever found out why lightning does as it does, but the knowledge of how it does is of value. It is not impossible that a speculation regarding the phenomena of " shorts " and " longs," as exhibited in humanity, may also lead towards something worth while. It is for such reason that I present this and the immediately following chapters. In doing so, I am not claiming that I am a second Franklin. All I am anx- ious to do is to seek for the truth as Franklin sought for the truth. Now, I am not much given to speculation, and yet, as the years have gone on, and as I have observed so many hundreds of these "long" and "short" cases, I have been forced to formulate some theory as to the how and wherefore of these widespread phenomena. And while, frankly, I have not as yet arrived at any positive conclusion in the premises, yet I have a ten- tative hypothesis which I am going to set down here, with the hope that the reader will help to verify or to disprove it. In a word, then, I am very strongly inclined to the belief that these wide variations in individual make-up are, for the most part, at least to an extent far beyond what has generally been supposed, seated in the body that they are the result, in most cases, if not in every one of them, of body differences, and not of ultimate mental differences, in the individuals in which they manifest themselves. I am not yet prepared to say, positively, that this is so ; but I do say, quite emphati- 40 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE cally, that I very strongly suspect it is so, and that the longer I live, and the more generally and closely I ob- serve the phenomena involved, the more I am confirmed in the correctness of my surmise. Some of my reasons for so thinking are as follows : Of course, the whole issue turns on the basic question as to what the human mind really is, and this is not an easy thing to find out. The wisest men of all the ages have had their theories about it, and they have differed on this point as far as the poles are sundered. I have neither the time, space, strength, nor patience to attempt here any resume" of what all these have thought, written, and said ; still less do I flatter myself that I am wiser than any one or all of these ; or that I can make as clear as daylight that which so many before my time have only succeeded in making cloudy. But I have a few ideas to submit for you to think about, and to have you bring to the proof, to the best of your ability. For, as has been well said, " a theory, to be of any account, must tally with the amplitude of the whole earth " ; and you and I and the facts that we can present are a part of that amplitude. In the first place, then, my own experience with my- self (and that is a good place for us all to begin) and my observations of my fellow men lead me to believe that the body is one thing and that the mind is another, and a wholly different thing. How do you feel about that, dear reader? How does it tally with your own experience in the premises ? I don't care even to ask how it tallies with what you may have been taught, or have learned from books, or have been led to think, from any other source than your own ultimate self. All I am anxious about is, how it squares with your own HOW CAN THESE THINGS BE? 41 experiences and observation. Settle that, and then we will move on. I, personally, am fully convinced that the body and the mind are not one and the same thing. They are different things, and each plays its separate part in the phenomena in question. To me, the body is merely a means through which the mind expresses itself in time and space. It is a machine which the mind energizes and causes to act. It is a medium through which the mind functions ; and the lack or excess of ability of the mind to function in any given plane depends upon the perfection of the medium as a means of transmitting the mind force in that particular field. I am not a materialist. I do not even believe that " the liver secretes bile " ; much less do I believe that "the brain secretes thought." I would rather say that the brain is the means through which the mind makes thought manifest, just as the liver is the organ through which bile is made manifest. In either case it is a force other than the organ itself which functions through the organ, or causes the organ to function. The best guess that I can make about the combina- tion is, that the thinker, the mind, the ego, or what- ever else you may choose to call it, that which is the real self, that this is the power behind the throne, as it were, and so is the ultimate cause of all those manifestations that come to the surface through the human body. These things make me believe that the body is only the machine through which the mind acts. It is the medium by means of which the ego can express itself in time and space. I know that analogy is a dangerous guide to go by, but I use one here at a venture, not for the sake of 42 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE trying to force a point, nor insisting that it is wholly conclusive, but in the hope of more clearly illustrating, perhaps, what I am trying to say. A musician and a piano are not one and the same thing. Each uses the other, each is of value to the other. But the piano is only the machine through which the musician expresses himself, makes himself, his art, manifest in time and space. There is no music in the piano, per se. The music is all in the musician who sits at the instrument. But, no matter how good the musician who sits at the piano may be, if the instrument be imperfect or unstrung, he can get no music out of it. You may say, "turn your figure around, and then see what comes of it ; namely, no matter how good the piano may be, if the player is a fool he will make no music." You have a right to ask me to turn the figure around, and I will do so. But first, let me take it my way, for a while. I will consider it the other way around later on. I have come, then, to think of the mind and the body as related to each other something after the manner of the musician and the piano. The mind plays upon the body, uses it, makes itself manifest through it And, just as the strings and keys of the piano are nearest in touch to the musician, are the parts of the machine that he is most in contact with, so the brain and the nervous system of the body are nearest to the mind, and most directly connected with it. It is through these physical organs that the mind acts. All the other parts of the piano sustain the strings and the keys, and make them available for their especial work. All the other parts of the body sustain the brain and HOW CAN THESE THINGS BE? 43 the nervous system, and make them available for their especial work. I do not wish to carry the analogy too far, but I be- lieve that it can be pushed safely one point farther. For instance, some of the comparatively less essential parts of the piano may be in bad shape, or altogether wanting, and still the piano may be made to discourse fairly good music. A leg may be broken, or the cover cracked, or the ivory from a key altogether gone, and still the essentials of the instrument may not be much affected. But if the peg, or hammer of a key be wanting; or, worse than this, if a string be run down or broken then there can be no music gotten from that piano, so far as that key or that string is concerned. You may use other keys and other strings, on this same instru- ment, and get as beautiful tones as ever came from a musical machine ; but as soon as you touch the broken key, or the untuned string, you get only discord, or no response whatever for your stimulative effort, which, under right conditions in the instrument, would produce harmony. Good people, so far as my own experience goes, and so far as my observation among my fellow men extends, the analogy holds good, so good that I feel almost as though there could be little need of saying anything further upon the subject. To me it seems clear that this relation between the musician and the piano is al- most perfectly typical of that which exists between the mind and the body. And yet, to make myself thor- oughly understood, I shall have to go somewhat more into detail in considering the human side of the com- parison. In the first place, it is now a well-known fact that 44 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE the brain and the nervous system of the body are the especial organs through which the mind more immedi- ately acts. This is particularly true of the brain, and to a large extent of the nervous system. More than this, the most recent discoveries regarding the functions of the brain have proved that certain parts of this organism are especially related to, or have specially to do with the reception and translation of stimulative forces that affect the body from without. That is, there is a cer- tain part of the brain that has to do with the sense of hearing, another with the sense of sight, another with the taste, another with smell, and so forth. If you remove one of these special parts of the brain (and such often have been removed, or made ineffective by acci- dent, or knife, or disease), it is no longer possible for the sensation which that part of the brain has to do with to be experienced at all. Thus, if the part of the brain which has to do with sight is removed, or rendered inoperative in a given individual, it is no longer possible to see. No matter how perfect the eye of that person may be, he cannot see. And so of any part of the brain having to do with the other bodily sensations. If any part is wanting, or imperfect, it is impossible for normal results to be obtained for the individual, wherever these faulty places appear. Further, not only may imperfect results come from bad brain conditions, but the same unfortunate experi- ences may arise from the failure of the nerves and nerve centers to do their appointed tasks. Thus, a nerve may be diseased, or paralyzed, or its proper blood supply interfered with, so that it cannot work normally, and under such conditions it is impossible for the indi- vidual suffering from such malady to do what could HOW CAN THESE THINGS BE? 45 easily be done but for these obstructions. If, in a given case, the nerves of the eye are in bad condition, the person who tries to use the eye cannot do so success- fully ; his sight will be more or less affected, according to the degree of the imperfection in the nerve system involved. No matter how perfect the eye itself may be, if the nerves are imperfect there can be no clear sight. The whole body will be full of darkness. And so of any other organ ; if its nerves are bad, it is impossible for it to do what it could do under normal conditions. Or, go a step farther. If other parts of the body, the bones or the muscles which support the nerves and brain, if these be imperfect, or interfered with to a sufficient degree, such disturbance will affect the nor- mal working of the mind through its medium. If the skull be crushed, the brain is made inoperative. If the muscles that make the heart beat should be cut, or made powerless in any way, it is needless to say that the effect of such physical injury would be at once manifest in the mental functioning power of the person suffering from such a cause. Of course both these illustrations are at the extreme of possibilities in their respective directions ; but I have purposely chosen them, so that there could be no chance for doubt or question in the premises. No one will dispute that a person with a broken head or a still heart will be unable to do very much clear and definite thinking. And that is the point I am after just now. I take it that so much is settled. But now note that all the organs that I have men- tioned the brain, the nerves, the bones, the muscles, etc. are all of the body. They all correspond to the various parts of the piano the strings, keys, sounding 46 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE board, framework of the instrument, etc. My point is that, just as, when some essential part of a piano is imperfect, or what it should not be, or altogether want- ing, it is impossible for the musician to get good music from the instrument; just so, when some essential part of the human body is imperfect, or what it should not be, or altogether wanting, it is impossible for the mind to get good mental results through such a body. Having said which, my readers may ask: "Yes, but how does it happen that we have imperfect bodies to begin with ? Why are bodies brought into this world only partly made up ? " And the only answer I can make to such a legitimate question is that I don't know ! Neither do I know of any one who does know ! As I have said at the begin- ning of this chapter, there are limits to human knowl- edge, and a veil of mystery always closes down beyond the limits of finite vision. True, this obscure and tan- talizing barrier has been cleared away by modern sci- entific research at many points that were once counted as impenetrable; and the enthusiastic labors of those who are now engaged upon the problem of eugenics give promise of doing something towards helping hu- manity to be better bodied from the outset some time. Let us hope that this may be the outcome of such endeavors. Meantime, it is only fair to say that, so far as this treatise is concerned, all this " related matter " is " an- other story," as Mr. Kipling says ; and, being so, it is beyond the province of the issue I am discussing to consider it at all. I would begin and go forward from the point where the eugenic researcher begins and goes backward. He HOW CAN THESE THINGS BE? 47 strives to discover how bodies may be made better be- fore they come into this world. I would try to find the best ways of handling such bodies as we now have in stock, at this present now, so as to get the best results for those who inhabit them, through the already fur- nished physical media for mental functioning. The two problems are entirely distinct, and they must be worked out each in its own way. My theory is that bodily conditions, especially such as obtain at birth, greatly modify, limit, and determine mental functionings. I have already given some proofs to substantiate this position ; but more evidence, espe- cially on certain points, is needed to carry the argument to the point of positive conviction. I believe that I have such evidence in hand, plenty of it, and shall pro- duce it in the following chapters. Then I shall proceed to consider what such facts and conditions as I have established have to do with our attempts to educate all the children of all the people. CHAPTER VI SOME CASES IN POINT Localization of Functional Parts of the Brain The Emotions The Spiritual Powers Idiots not "Feeble-Minded" Limit- lessness of the Ego in All Mankind The Ability to function mentally limited by the Body Proofs of the Proposition Con- genital and Adult Cases Why Eyeglasses are worn The Tangled Telephone Conditions of Insanity Dr. Bucke's Ex- periments upon Insane Women. WE can now safely take the next step in this study, namely, that not only is it true that certain definite parts of the brain have specially to do with receiving and transmitting the bodily sensations of hearing, sight, taste, and the rest, as noted in the last chapter, but that it is probably equally true that the same conditions exist with regard to the subtler phenomena that have to do more particularly with the mind itself the emotions and all the higher forms of mental expression. Thus, it is now a thoroughly established fact that a certain part of the brain has specially to do with the faculty of speech ; or, perhaps better, that speech is given expression through the use of a certain part of the brain. If this part of the brain be injured or diseased, the faculty of speech will be affected to a greater or less degree thereby. If it be entirely removed or paralyzed, speech becomes utterly impossible. And it has been demon- strated that such a part of the brain can be removed, and still the patient may live. It is impossible to go as fully into details on this part 4 8 SOME CASES IN POINT 49 of my theme as its importance really demands and as I should be glad to do if space permitted. There are volumes to be written on this branch of the subject alone. Several such have already been written, and more are coming, all the time. There are undis- covered countries, and unmapped regions, right here, that it is to be hoped will be found out and exploited in the not distant future. But the illustration just given puts us on the track of what we are pursuing. Entering a higher and still more subtle field of mental activity, it has now become a very general conviction among psychologists that 'there are parts of the brain that have to do especially with memory, particularly with some phases of memory. These convictions are based upon well-established cases of people who have suffered complete loss of memory, or of some particular memories, as the result of injury or disease of the brain. Such cases are not uncommon ; and often, where there has been such loss or eclipse of memory for a time, it has been made good again upon the restora- tion of the affected parts of the brain to normal con- ditions. Reasoning on the inductive basis from the facts just recited, it is surely a most natural inference that still other parts of the brain have to do with yet higher mental functionings the feelings, the emotions, the spiritual sensibilities, and all the more subtle activities of the mind. For here, also, brain injury has often resulted in a change of mental expression in these particulars. It is a matter of common knowledge that hope has been stimulated or depressed, jealousy aroused, despair produced, devotion or worship incited or in- hibited, and so following, by some physical change SO ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE made in some part or parts of the brain. Certainly this is true, that there must be cerebral action in con- nection with these mental activities or we should not be conscious of them ; and while the brain centers which have to do particularly with such phenomena have not as yet been definitely localized, the presumption is all in favor of their existence. Just as the atom and the electron have never yet been seen by human eye, but their reality can nevertheless be safely predicated ; so the fact of the control of all mental expression by cer- tain parts of the brain, all in due order, may, with equal saneness, be at least inferred. Anyhow, I am so well convinced of the probability of the truth of this theory that I have based a mental hypothesis upon it; and the more generally I have observed the phenomena that this supposition is set to explain, the more I am convinced that my position is solid and sound. Now, with this theory as a basis, namely, that the ability to function mentally is largely determined by bodily conditions, in particular those that the thinker has been born with, it follows, first, that we have no use for the word " feeble-minded." It is a misnomer. Mind is never feeble; but bodies are poor, or half made up, or sometimes almost altogether bad. The word "idiot" is a good word, in its original sense. It is the Greek word for "peculiar"; and, as primarily applied to a human being, meant a peculiar person, and that was all. And the fact is, we are all more or less peculiar. It seems to me this way : The ego, the ultimate self in each one of us in you, whoever you are, in me, in any and all, I leave out none this ego is absolutely limitless. I believe that in you, whoever you are, in SOME CASES IN POINT 51 your ultimate self, there are limitless powers and abili- ties, latent but none the less real, ready and waiting to express themselves, if only the bodily organs are suffi- ciently perfect to permit of their functioning through them. But While all these qualities and powers are resident in every human mind and are a part of it, yet it by no means follows that they can all be expressed by each and every individual who possesses them. On the contrary, only such of them can find expression, in any given individual, as the brain, the nervous organism, and the other physical apparatus render possible in that particular person. There is the sum and substance of the whole issue, to the utmost limit. Because, you see, whatever may be true regarding the freedom of the abstract, or the ultimate human mind, this is certain and sure : That, conditioned in the human body, that mind is limited in its expression by the body in which it lives. It can only function in such mental planes as the physical organs through which it must act render possible. Drive a good stake there, and you can safely tie to it, I am very sure. If you have no eyes, you cannot see. But the ability to see, if you had eyes that is an inherent power that you possess, and that you cannot be robbed of. If you cannot see, the fault lies in your body. At least, that is the way it seems to me. Take the case of the girl mentioned, who was born blind. For the first few years of her life she was wholly unable to see, not because she was not possessed of the innate ability to see, but because the physical organ of sight was imperfect in her case. A skillful physician remedied this defect, and just as soon as her eye was 52 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE made single, her whole body was made full of light Does it not seem clear, in this case at least, that she had the ability to see, from the first, and that the only reason why she could not exercise that ability was be- cause an imperfection in her body interposed a barrier which this ability could not pass ? In further considering this phase of my theory I shall not confine myself to "born so" cases, but shall extend my observations to the variations in mental phenomena and inability to function mentally that appear when bodily changes come to, or are made in, adults. All these cases are germane, in that they all tend to establish the truth of my main contention, that " these things are in the body." This is my reason for extending the field of my observations into the adult realm. Thus, to begin at home, as I sit here writing I have a pair of glasses astride my nose. I have to have them, or I cannot see the marks I make on the paper under my hand. But now, why is it that I cannot see without the glasses, and can see with them ? Have I myself, in my inmost essential being have I lost the ability to see when these glasses are in their case ? Not at all. I have as much ability to see now as I ever had, prob- ably more. But these eyes of mine have been so much used that they are getting worn out and have to be repaired, artificially reenforced, or I cannot see. The trouble is in my eyes, not in me at all. And so it is wrong to say I can no longer see well. That is not the way to put it. I should say that my eyes have so changed that I can no longer use them, that I cannot function through them, that they fail to convey to me true sensations of what they once correctly reported. It is a physical organ, and not a mental lack, that is at fault. SOME CASES IN POINT 53 And sometimes eyes are, from the first, much worse than mine are now. Sometimes they are altogether wanting. But the ability to use eyes, when they and their physical belongings are all present and in good working order, is never wanting in a human being. You take down the receiver of the telephone some morning and put it to your ear, and you get no response. What is wrong ? Has electricity ceased to be, and has magnetism lost the power of attraction ? Not at all. These forces are as potent as they ever have been, or as they ever will be ; but there is something wrong with the instrument through which they are set to work, in this given case. There is a bad connection a break, a crossed wire somewhere. The current cannot function through the medium as at present adjusted. That is all. Put the instrument right, and your telephone will work as perfectly as ever again. So in a case of adult insanity. Here is a person who has been rational for years, but one day he becomes insane. What is the matter ? Is there anything wrong with his mind ? Not at all. The man himself, the es- sential mind of the man, is all right ; but something has happened to the body through which the man has to make himself manifest. The nervous wires are crossed somewhere, or a brain connection is broken, and the mind force can no longer come through. If these breaks could be mended, the man would be sane again; he would " come to himself " once more. To any one who has studied the phenomena of in- sanity, it seems to me there can be no doubt that this malady is seated wholly in the body. I knew a woman who was hopelessly insane for twelve years. At the birth of her second child she had puerperal fever, and 54 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE this resulted in insanity. For twelve years she was in an asylum, and for a considerable portion of that time she was a raving maniac. By a change in the manage- ment of the hospital a new physician was placed in charge of her case, and his diagnosis was to the effect that her trouble all lay in some abnormal condition of the reproductive organs. Pursuant to this theory, he caused the patient to be submitted to a surgical opera- tion, out of which she came sane, and she has remained sane ever since, a period of some fifteen years. Can anything be clearer than that, in this case, the whole trouble was seated in the body ? Here was a woman who had been sane, who had a " brilliant mind," as the phrase goes, and who had been able to use it satisfactorily till she was twenty-five years old. Then she became insane, and for twelve years she was wholly unable to use her mind in any normal way. Then came a bodily change, caused by a surgeon's knife. As soon as the woman came out from under the influence of the chloroform which rendered her unconscious during the operation, she was as sane as she ever was. Do you think a case like this proves nothing ? It seems to me it proves something. At least it is wonderfully sug- gestive, so far as my theory is concerned. Of course this case just quoted is by no means an isolated one, as all who are familiar with the subject are well aware. I must not dwell on this phase of the subject too long, but I must push it a little further. There lies before me an essay on this exceedingly suggestive theme, prepared by the late Dr. R. M. Bucke, who was for years in charge of the Insane Asylum at London, Ontario, Canada. This essay is entitled, " Re- sults of Two Hundred Surgical Operations on Insane SOME CASES IN POINT 55 Women." It was originally published in the Medical News for August, 1900. Dr. Bucke was one of the pioneers in physiological psychology, as especially re- lated to insanity, and his essay is a wonderful record of his achievements in that line. I cannot give even a resume" of the essay here, but I commend it to any and all who are interested in that subject. In brief, he tells, in this essay, how eighty-three out of these two hun- dred women recovered from their insanity after under- going a surgical operation at his hands. Is not that something in point? Do not facts like these lead us at least very strongly to surmise that what we have been accustomed to call mental troubles are, as a matter of fact, really caused by bodily ills ? Do they not tend to prove that it is a bad condition of the instrument, and not the musician's fault, that there are discords [in the musical world ? Another very significant fact brought out by Dr. Bucke's essay is this : that where the trouble lay in the diseased condition of some exceedingly vital and highly sensitive organ, which was intimately associated with the mental and spiritual life of the patient, and this ill could be remedied, then, in such case, the chances of recovery of sanity were much greater than when some grosser, less vital, and less sensitive organ was involved. That is to say, if the trouble in a piano lies in a string, or key, and these can be put right, the chances of get- ting good music from the instrument because of such rectification are much greater than they would be if the source of the evil was located in some grosser part of the combination, and this should be more or less suc- cessfully repaired. The analogy may not be perfect, but it is at least suggestive. 56 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE And this last stated fact from Dr. Bucke's essay leads me to conclude that the more highly sensitive the bodily organ may be whose abnormal condition causes insanity, in any given case, the greater the probability of recovery if the organ can be put right. All of which means that if surgery of the brain and higher nervous system can be wrought out as successfully as this same art has been developed in dealing with other parts of the body, much may be hoped for in the recovery of insane people, from this source. Indeed, great strides have already been made in this same direction, as there is ample tes- timony to prove. It is but recently that a case of in- sane jealousy that ran to the extreme of attempted murder was entirely cured by the removal of a tumor that was pressing upon the brain of the patient. There are many other cases on record, of a similar nature, where some brain trouble has been set right, and the patient who was insane was thereby restored to sanity. This field is comparatively new, as yet, but it is exceed- ingly interesting and suggestive, and the discoveries thus far made all tend to establish the truth of the theory that insanity is primarily caused by bad bodily conditions, rather than by direct trouble in the mind itself. This is not an essay on insanity, but I bring this phase of the subject in, just here, because it seems to me to point directly towards the truth of the theory that the varied expressions of individuality in humanity arise from bodily conditions; that the inharmonious conditions of human life result from imperfect instru- ments, rather than from mental disturbance, as such. The case is not yet fully proved, but there are a great many things that point towards such conclusion. These SOME CASES IN POINT 57 adult cases cited all tend to prove that my theory holds good in congenital cases as well. All the difference is that in one set of cases the hampering bodily condi- tions came before birth, in the other after that event The cause is the same always. CHAPTER VII UNDER THE THRESHOLD The Subliminal Self Origin of the Theory and Name Myers 1 " Human Personality " The Ability to " come through " Cases reviewed from this Standpoint What are the Conditions of Genius Conditions of Idiocy "A Fool for a Player " Idiots All Bad-bodied All can " come through " on Some Lines Cranks Definition of Genius Geniuses Poor Teachers Ulti- mate Mentality vs. Ability to Function Mentally. THIS may be getting into pretty deep water for the lay reader, but I am going a little farther along the way I have been traveling for the last two chapters, at a venture. The late Dr. F. W. H. Myers, of London, England, who was for years a leader among the mental philoso- phers and psychologists of Europe, gave to the world the phrase " the subliminal self," which, being inter- preted, means the self that is under the threshold, or below the plane of one's normal consciousness. His idea was that there is a great part of one's real self that never, or, at best, but seldom, or in spots, as it were, ever rises into the realm of our conscious being. He made a special study of what he held to be this veritable part of every man's mental make-up, as it manifests it- self in dreams, visions, hypnotic phenomena, trance con- ditions, and the like. The theory he promulgated has since been largely exploited in the line of suggestive therapeutics and mental healing. I wish to direct atten- tion to it in some other realms of human life, especially 58 UNDER THE THRESHOLD 59 such as have to do with the subject I have in hand, namely, education. Dr. Myers' idea was that all these mental phenomena are produced by an up-rush, so to speak, of the sub- liminal self, which, for good and sufficient reasons, that cannot be stated here for lack of space, rises into the realm of normal consciousness. Once in that plane, sometimes we can cut under what has appeared from below, and so retain in the normal memory a record of what has come to us in this way. Thus, according to this theory, a dream is only the working out of the part of one's self that is usually below the threshold of normal consciousness, but that, for the time being, wells up above that line. We are more or less conscious of what this part of our- selves does, in any given case, in proportion as we have more or less definite recognition of any particular dream. Sometimes this up-rush is so pronounced that it leaves a strong impression upon the consciousness, so strong that it will remain in the memory, and in such cases we can tell, on waking, what our dream was. But if the issue from below is less strong, we only remember that we have dreamed. His theory is exceedingly interest- ing, and he has recorded great numbers of instances to substantiate his position. If you are interested in this sort of thing, get and read his great work on " Human Personality." Now it seems to me that, in large degree, this theory of Dr. Myers' makes for the hypothesis I have espoused. In any event, it has led me to make some educational speculations. And here is the possibility that has sug- gested itself to me : Experience leads me to believe that it is highly prob- 60 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE able, to say the least, that this subliminal conscious- ness of ours, which Dr. Myers holds to be by far the greater part of our ultimate selves, of everybody's ulti- mate self, exists in measureless supply in each one of us; and that it is unceasingly striving for expression in time and space through the medium of the body " the round of flesh that walls us in," as Browning has it. Here, in a given case, it acts upon a mechanism of the body that is suited to its needs, and so can come through. There, in the same body, it comes up against an impassable barrier, in the shape of an imperfect or altogether wanting physical organism, and so has no means of making itself manifest. This occurs to me as being at least possible (and I think a good deal more than that), and for some years I have been observing mental phenomena and trying to make out how nearly this theory will account for them. And the more I observe and ponder, the more I am inclined to believe that this theory is headed in the right direction. For instance, to recur again to the case of the girl who was born blind. This child had, from the first, the innate ability to see, this being a constituent part of her essential self. But as that power strove to exercise itself, through her body, as it was at her birth, it came up against an impassable barrier in the shape of imperfect eye nerves. The result was that that part of herself which would normally gain expression through sight was made of none effect, and was, as it were, blotted out of existence. This case is a very simple one, but it stands for a great deal. This same theory holds good in the cases of insanity that I have noted. The fact seems to be that these people were no longer able to "come through," because UNDER THE THRESHOLD 6l of some physical imperfection in their bodies that their minds could not overcome. It also accounts for such phenomena as Robert Gardenhire exhibited. In his case, the physical organism that has to do with the expression of the mathematical part of himself is prob- ably in a most perfect condition ; and so, on that side, his subliminal mathematical self can come through without let or hindrance. In the case of Charles Sumner, the probabilities are that this condition was reversed, and the result was that he was able to func- tion but very little on the mathematical side, though it would seem, to the ordinary observer, that he had as much yes, far more innate mathematical ability than had this unlettered negro. Does it not look that way ? I believe that the fact was that Mr. Sumner's brain was faulty in the part that has to do with mathematical ex- pression, and so he could not come through there, to any considerable degree. He was " born short" there; he was born wonderfully " long " in other ways. The question is often asked, What are the conditions of genius ? According to this theory, we will always have a genius whenever, in a given case, the brain and the nervous organism in the individual are so perfect, on special lines, that the infiniteness of the mind, on these lines, can express itself fully through the media fur- nished. In these cases there is no hindrance whatever to the complete expression of certain parts of the sub- liminal self through the physical make-up of the individ- ual body in which that particular ego is conditioned. It goes without saying that absolutely perfect illustrations of this condition are very rare, but most wonderful ones will readily come to mind. Mr. Edison is a most re- markable example, a marvelous one, in his particular 62 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE lines of mental functioning. The list might be extended to great length, and in great variety, and I believe the theory would hold good in every case. Turn now to the other side of the picture, to those people who are the very reverse of geniuses, and whom we call idiots. The theory holds equally well with them. These people are all faulty in body, every one of them ; and I have no doubt that if their peculiar phys- ical faults and weaknesses could be traced closely and definitely enough, it would be found that they were all of such nature as to prevent certain functionings of the mind. It is their bad bodies and not their alleged feeble minds that cause their inability to express their real selves to any greater extent. I will say more about this later, but right here I want to answer the question proposed, some pages back, in which I was asked to turn my piano figure around, and tell what would happen if we had a good instrument, but a fool for a player. Discord and bad music would result, in the case of such a piano and such a player, surely. But, so far as humanity is concerned, no such condition has ever arisen or ever can arise. I challenge the whole world to disprove that statement. No one ever saw an idiot who had a normally con- structed body ! In all these cases, the instrument is bad, and where it is bad, bad mental functioning results. On the other hand, not infrequently, and in many ways, there are not wanting pronounced signs that the player is very far from being a fool. Here and there, there is a good string, and on such the musician can play. But so many parts of the instrument may be out of repair or altogether wanting that but little music can be made. But that the player can produce harmony at UNDER THE THRESHOLD 63 all shows that it is the instrument and not he that is at fault. For instance, take the case of the idiot girl who could do such marvelous work in making lace with a crochet hook. Does this ability on her part suggest a weak mind ? a fool for a player ? Not one woman in a mil- lion could ever learn, with the help of the best teaching, to do what this girl did, with perfect ease, without any instruction whatever. She was an idiot on some lines. She was a genius in one way. She was a wonderful player where her instrument was perfect enough to per- mit her to come through. She was terribly hedged in at nearly every other point of her being points on which most people can come through with at least so much success that they are not particularly notice- able among the general run of humanity. And what is true of this girl is true of the majority of idiotic people. In almost every case, there will be found some expression of mental functioning which goes to prove that there is no lack of mental ability, in one or more directions. Did you ever know of such a case where it was not often said of the afflicted one, " Oh, he's sharp enough, in some ways ? " That is the whole story. These people are not feeble-minded. They are bad-bodied. This girl who could make lace had a queer- shaped head, and every idiot has a bad body, somewhere. Of course there are cases of this kind where there is almost no expression of mentality whatever, and in these cases the bodies are always bad in the extreme, espe- cially on the brain and nervous-system sides. These very bad bodies almost completely cut the mind off from any possibility of expressing itself ; and hence we have, in rare cases, complete idiocy. But I believe that even 64 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE these cases are all caused by imperfect bodies, and not by feeble minds. And what is true of the bodily condition of idiots is very largely true concerning geniuses. Such people are always "peculiar looking." If their genius takes an outr6 form, so much so that they are called " cranks," you will nearly always find them very peculiar-looking persons, a fact which points towards the correctness of the theory that I am trying to show the reasonable- ness of. As I have already remarked, it is sometimes said that genius is merely an appetite for hard work. The state- ment will not hold. It does not tally with the basic facts in the case. Any attainment that is gained by such a method is very far from being genius, in the true sense of that word. Some of the results reached in this way may resemble those of genius, but the process of their realization is a different thing entirely from the ways of genius itself. Genius knows its own without direction, in and of itself ; and it has ways of arriving at its destination that the common lot of us know little or nothing about, and of which the genius himself can give no account. Zerah Colburn could not tell to any one how he arrived at the wonderful mathematical results which he obtained with- out effort, nor could Blind Tom explain how it was that he could reproduce a piano selection, half an hour long, after hearing it once played through. All that can be said is, that these people were both "born long," each in his own particular way. They were both true geniuses, of the genuine sort ; and I believe it to be a fact that the reason they could do as they did was, not because they were mentally stronger than the rest of us, but be- UNDER THE THRESHOLD 65 cause their brain and nervous organisms were so perfect on the lines in which they gave their special expressions of power that there they could come through without a halt. The best definition of genius that I ever came across is this: "Genius is the unconscious wisdom of people who are otherwise ignorant." To me that states the whole case, perfectly. When genius, the real thing, shows itself in an individual, the most we can say about it is that "that is the way he is." And that the bodily machinery through which such remarkable abilities ex- press themselves determines the extent, or the limita- tions, of such expression of this there seems to be little doubt. (I can't help remarking, just here, because the truth of it is so evident from what I have just said, that a genius, or a person who is " exceedingly bright " in any particular line, is always the poorest kind of teacher, because he can never tell, or explain to another, how he arrives at results. And to be able to show the way to obtain correct results is the very essence of successful teaching. Colburn could not teach mathematics, nor could Blind Tom teach music. I merely note the fact, in passing, for it is such a good one for teachers and for people who have to pick out teachers to remember, and one that is so often believed to be true in the very re- verse order of its actuality.) And so this is my theory regarding geniuses and their antipodes, and all of us who are between these two extremes. The way we are does not depend on our ultimate mentality, which is limitless in each and all, but on our ability to function mentally, to get the stream of mentality through the medium it must use if it reveals 66 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE itself in time and space. And the range of this ability is determined by the more or less perfect condition of the bodily organ through which such functioning alone can be done. At least, this is how "it seems to me." CHAPTER VIII SOME DARKER STUDIES Widening the Field of Observation Why Adult Cases are studied Their Bearing on the Issues involved Mental Errancy and Crime related Phenomena " Free Agency " and Human Respon- sibility A Case of Gambling Mania History of the Case Insane Jealousy rectified by Brain Surgery Criminals "Herds of Incompetents " Treatment of Criminals and the Insane Children and their Crimes Smuggling Criminals' Views of their Own Crimes A Lawyer's Testimony Jesus's View of These Relative Power to " come through " of Desire and Will Some Authorities on these Points. IT is curious how fast, how far, and into what un- looked-for regions a theory once started may lead one. And so I find myself just here irresistibly compelled to push at least a little way into a realm that I had not thought of exploring when I first set out. The cases I am about to note are again more of the adult order than of the " born so " variety ; but they are strongly in point as regards the main issue. Perhaps they might be counted as acute or temporary instances of condi- tions that are chronic in congenital cases. My chief reason for presenting them is because they multiply and intensify the proofs that " these things are in the body." Besides that, they will have a direct bearing on the main issue of this book when I reach that part of my story. And so it is that my investigations and theories as to what is the truth regarding the real, basic causes of genius, idiocy, insanity, and of all similar variations 67 68 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE from what we are wont to consider as normality in humanity, suggest the possibility that the same prin- ciples hold equally true regarding the causes of vice and crime, as these are manifest in mankind. That may appear, at first sight, as a very dangerous doctrine to announce, but this is riot an issue of danger, or its opposite. The question is, What is the truth in the premises ? Anent which, let it not be forgotten that it is but a few years since insanity was looked upon as a crime, and insane men and women were strapped to the wall and lashed, as a penalty for what was counted as their deliberate wrongdoing. We talk about human responsibility, man's "free agency," and the like. Such themes are worthy to be considered, but well, here are some cases that have made me think a great deal regarding such things. Read them, and then see what you think. And be sure that you think, and that you think for yourself. I once had a friend who served a term in the peniten- tiary for embezzlement. I make no scruple in saying that he was my friend, my very dear friend, both be- fore and after his incarceration. In many respects he was one of the best men I ever knew. He was truly generous and nobly self-sacrificing ; and he was truth- ful, and thoroughly reliable in most ways. But all the time I knew him he was a gambler. On that side of his make-up he was not to be trusted for an instant. He would gamble on anything, anywhere, at any time. On that point he had no conscience, no prudence, no any- thing, but an uncontrollable desire to try his luck on the game. He would risk all he had himself, and all that anybody else had that he could lay hands on, on the SOME DARKER STUDIES 69 turn of a card or a throw of dice. That was how he got into the penitentiary. He happened to have a large amount of his employer's money in his pocket one day, and he risked it all, and lost. So he was "sent up." What about this case? To me the man was insane on that side of his being. There, he could not see things as they really were. He had a mania for taking chances. He was as mad, on the line of gambling, as any patient in an insane asylum is crazy in any other direction. And I believe this unfortunate condition of his was seated in his body, just as much as is the case in any other kind of insanity. So far as I could learn his early history, he showed no sign of his madness in his earlier years. He was the son of a clergyman who was a man of great ability and of sterling worth. But, as a young man, he suddenly began to gamble. It became an un- controllable passion with him, and it is not putting the case any too strongly to say that he became gambling mad. Well, you say, what about it ? Was this man not re- sponsible for what he did ? Ought he not to be punished for his misdeeds ? To which I reply, most assuredly he ought to be kept from injuring himself and other people by the exercise of his mania, just as other insane people have to be kept from injuring themselves and others by reason of their insanity. As things now are, we " punish " such as him ; we brand them as criminals, we heap indignities upon them and expect, by so doing, to rid them of their sins. I blame no one for this ; but, to my way of thinking, the day is not so very far distant when we shall look back upon our present way of treating crime and criminals 70 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE with as much horror as we would now shudder at strap- ping the insane to a wall and lashing them till the blood came. I may be wrong in this, but I don't think I am. Let me tell a little more of this friend of mine. After he came out of prison, he went to work for me (I was in a manufacturing business then) and he held his place as long as he was able to work at all. He died three years after his term of sentence expired. He was the best salesman I ever knew. In three years he legitimately earned more than ten thousand dollars, all of which he gave to a brother of his who, at my friend's request, acted as his trustee. That was the way he put himself out of the way of temptation. He would never allow himself to handle a cent of my money. We both knew it would not be safe for him to do so. It would have been unfair and unjust, both to him and to me, to have him try to do so. That way his weakness, his madness lay; and it would have been little short of a crime should a strain have been put on him where we both knew he was not strong. He gambled, off and on, almost to the day of his death. Sometimes months would pass, during which he would not play ; and then, again, he would have days of gaming. But because he kept very little money with him, he held his madness within such bounds that well, he kept himself out of prison, anyhow. After his death, an autopsy revealed the fact that for years he had suffered from a tumor on his brain ! I may be wrong in my surmise, but I am strongly in- clined to believe that this physical disturbance of his nervous system was the real cause of his gambling mania. There are many reasons that lead me to this SOME DARKER STUDIES 71 conclusion, but space will not permit me to state them here. Similar cases have already been noted by eminent authorities who have made a life study of the psychology of vice and crime, and new light in this direction is shining through every day. I recently read a well-authenticated account of a bookkeeper who suddenly lost his ability to add figures, an art in which he had for years been an expert. A little later he became insane, to such a degree that he was committed to an asylum. There, a tumor was re- moved from his brain, and he returned to his normal condition, resuming his former position, where he was able to work as well as ever. Another case was that of a man who suddenly be- came brutally jealous of his wife without any cause on her part for his being so. This condition continued till he tried to murder her, after which his friends were obliged to have him taken to an insane hospital. There, being relieved from an abnormal pressure upon a part of his brain, caused by some subtle disease, his jealousy vanished, and he regained his former condition of do- mestic happiness and love. Now all this does not mean that corps of surgeons could start out with saws, knives, scissors, and scoops, and in a few minutes so trim up mankind, within and without, that there would be no more sin, misery, vice, and crime in the world. But these cases, and scores of others that we all know about, lead one to think that, in large degree, if not altogether, the ills and crimes of humanity are seated in the body, which is my original contention. And, if these things are so, or even so to a considerable extent, they are things for parents and teachers to know about, and to regulate their actions 72 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE in accordance with, in attempting to educate all the children of all the people. This friend of whom I have spoken used to talk to me about his prison experience. He was a remarkably able and intelligent man, keenly observant, and exceed- ingly wise in his conclusions on nearly all affairs. And he assured me that a very large percentage of the in- mates of the prison he was in were incapable of taking care of themselves. " They were simply a herd of in- competents," is the way he put it. I have never for- gotten that phrase. It is a statement to remember and never to forget, as one looks at children and thinks of the future. Can you remember some act or acts of yours, that you did without the least thought that they were wrong, when you were doing them, but which acts were really bad, perhaps very bad ? Maybe you say : " But I was too young to know." Count it so. Then remember that there are many people who are always young, or who never can come through on certain lines. Call it " arrested development," or what you will, the fact remains that many people do not, yes, cannot, see clearly the ways in which they go wrong. It may not be so always, but it is so sometimes, is it not ? At least you have found it so in your own experience, haven't you ? I have. Read Stanley Hall's book on Adolescence for cases on this point. I am inclined to think that few children have any real- ization whatever of the enormity of their deeds when they rob birds' nests, or pull the legs off grasshoppers, or the wings from butterflies. Did you ever pluck watermelons that you had never planted, but which you took by the light of the moon with great delight, and which you de- SOME DARKER STUDIES 73 voured without a qualm ? And did you feel so very bad about it at the time ? Have you ever been abroad and returned with trunks full of things that were dutiable, and then did you feel so very bad about what you did ? Did you look the officer in the eye as you walked past him with the tucks in your skirt stuffed full of undeclared laces as full as they could be and not show ? And did you feel very bad about it, when, relying on the steadiness of your gaze, that same official passed you without a word ? Did you feel that you had done anything so very wrong, after all this ? Who is it that says, " All women are born smugglers " ? But it is a sin to smuggle, to deliberately break the law of one's country. All people who can see clearly on this side of their being, who can come through there, know that this is so. But there are multitudes of peo- ple in this country, both men and women, who do not see it, and who, from the evidence in the case, it would seem cannot see it that way. All of which means that there are many persons in this country who are practi- cally children, or insane, on that side of their lives. They exhibit well marked cases of arrested develop- ment, or insanity, in this part of their make-up. They do not deliberately do wrong. Their failure is in being unable to realize that what they do is really wrong. They will acknowledge that they have broken a law; but, to them, it is a law, and not themselves, that is wrong. They are " short " in that part of their make- up. Their ultimate moral sense cannot " come through " at these places. Their moral eyes are blind. They can- not see things as they are. I believe that, as a rule, all thieves feel that way about their robberies. They know that they break laws by 74 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE doing as they do ; but, to them, the laws are wrong, and not they themselves. For reasons which seem to them sufficient, they, at the time of their misdeeds, feel that they are only doing what they have a right to do, all things considered. This, if they think at all. Many of the worst cases cannot think clearly at all can- not "come through," or function in these mental places. A lawyer who had had an experience of twenty-five years at the bar to base his statement on once told me that he had never been called on to defend a criminal who would acknowledge that he was guilty of the crime with which he was charged, no matter what that crime might be. Such might confess to having done certain deeds, but they would never acknowledge that such doing was wrong. They always had some reason to offer which justified their action, allowing them to be their own judge. In the presence of such testimony, can one doubt that these people have eyes and see not, that there are spots where they cannot " come through " ? Of course they are wrong in all this, when viewed from a social standpoint; and, being so, not seeing things as they are, they cannot be left free to prey upon their fellows; but their attitudes of mind should, of right, be taken into account in the way society deals with such in the manner in which it makes " the pen- alty fit the crime." Nor do I think that all these have tumor on the brain. In most cases the trouble goes further back than that they are born so. But I do believe that, in every case, the trouble lies, basically, in the imperfect bodies of these wrongdoers rather than elsewhere. If the brain and nervous organism of each one of these derelicts SOME DARKER STUDIES 75 could be made normal, there is small doubt that their actions would tally with right, and not with wrong. It is doubtless true that Jesus had such as these in mind when he said : " Seeing, they see and do not per- ceive; hearing, they hear and do not understand." How wonderfully well the Great Teacher knew human- ity. Surely, the noblest prayer that was ever prayed came from his lips, when he said, " Father, forgive them ; they know not what they do." The real foundation trouble with us, and with all, always, when we go wrong, is that we do not really know what we are doing. Therefore, let us be charitable, both to ourselves and to our neighbors, all over the world. "For such is the kingdom of heaven." When my wife had read the manuscript of this chap- ter, she said to me, " I think it must be true that when- ever the chance of a desire to come through is stronger than the power of the will to keep it from doing so, then the individual becomes insane!" I think she is right. Which leads me to add that, as I write these words, there comes to me the report of the suicide of a young man who has been my neighbor for years. He was one of the noblest men I have ever known. He was happily married. His wife is a lovely woman and they have two beautiful children. He was in excellent financial circumstances, and was loved and honored by all who knew him, yet he took his own life. His mother died by her own hand, a few years ago. " The taint is in the blood," we say. And we say well. The physical organ- ism was, I believe, in each of these cases, so faulty, on certain lines, that the desire to die came through stronger than the will to live. The victims were insane, and so 76 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE they did as they did. At the coroner's inquest over the death of this young man, the fact was disclosed that his heart-beat rate had always been less than fifty to the minute was so from birth. Truly, such fact is sig- nificant, and in line with my theory. Surely, for teachers and parents who have to deal with children who go wrong, these cases, and their likes, must give us pause. For so many of us and ours, and the rest, are wont to go wrong to have desire come through stronger than will comes through, to be in- sane, at least in spots. I am well aware that I have only skimmed the surface of the vital themes touched upon in these latest chapters. The literature that discusses them in detail is very volu- minous ; but it has, so far, reached only specialists, and they, largely, are medical men and not parents and teachers. But because the mental and moral issues in- volved are so closely linked to the subject I am consid- ering, I have deemed it wise to introduce as much of this related matter as I have in these pages. No teacher is thoroughly equipped for first-class professional work who is not fairly well posted in this particular field of psychological investigation. Its complete mastery is, of course, possible only for the specialist, the subject is so far-reaching. Thus, Havelock Ellis, in his " Studies in the Psychology of Sex," on which he labored thirty years, quotes from more than one thousand authors, ancient and modern, who have made a more or less thorough study of this theme, and it is safe to say that there is scarce an observation in all the mass of testi- mony which these experts have brought together through the years that is not vitally related to the problem we are now considering. My presentation of SOME DARKER STUDIES 77 the subject is suggestive and not exhaustive, especially in these last chapters. If enough has been said, how- ever, to set the readers to thinking, to have aroused an interest in the theme which will lead to further study of the issues involved, I am satisfied. Let the experts tell you the details through their books and essays which are within the reach of all who care to hunt them out. Read any one of the many Stanley Hall, Boris Sidis, William James, Havelock Ellis, or a dozen others to start on, and then follow the trail they begin for you, and you will arrive. They all produce testimony that is of the highest value for use by any and all who are engaged on the problem of trying to educate all the children of all the people. CHAPTER IX WHAT FOLLOWS ? A New View of Humanity Criminals not to be left to Themselves Sources of Help towards Better Conditions A Realization of the Facts in Each Case Check "Shortages" by making the Most of "Longages" Love the Chief Factor in Bettering Con- ditions Punish but not Kill McKinley's Assassin " Criminal Classes" a Misnomer Lombroso's Theories and Conclusions Parents and Teachers should specially recognize these Facts Haste in forming Final Conclusions regarding " Shorts " and "Longs" to be guarded Against The Qualities may change with Time Dr. Sperry's Story The Case of W. J. Stillman. I AM well aware that this view of ourselves and of our fellow men, of our being "born long" or "born short," here or there, and of our being twisted out of the straight line of right by our bodily conditions, which may be congenital or which may be imposed upon us by accident or disease I know very well that this way of looking at humanity has not always been foremost in the minds of men, in days gone by ; and that, for this reason, very little provision so far has been made for dealing with humanity on this basis. I believe, though, that Jesus saw the truth in the premises, and that he treated mankind and womankind on the basis of their wrong-goings being seated in the body. If you do not see it that way, read the story of the Thief on the Cross, and of the woman who " was taken in the act," and then see how it seems to you. But we cannot let these people who are blind and 78 WHAT FOLLOWS? 79 deaf to the right, who are insane and criminal, go where they will and do as they please. Surely not; for so would the blind lead the blind, and all would fall into the ditch. There are such things as right and wrong, and let none ever forget or disregard the fact. Truth is eternal, and it never swerves. And right and truth must be taken into account in all righteous living. For righteous living is what all the experiences of life are for. The question is : How can these people who are " born short " in one way or an- other, or who are idiotic, or insane, or vicious, or crimi- nal because of disease, or accident, or physical harm of any kind how can these people who are out of the line of righteousness how can such be brought into line and led to tally with right and truth ? That is the chief question of all time. To help solve this question Christ gave his life, and it is only by the giving of life that you, or I, or anybody, can in any way help on its solution. That is the first thing to remember. But it will help us all, oh so much, if we, first of all, realize the situation; if we have a realizing sense of things as they are, and especially if we keep in mind the way we are ourselves, and by the same token the way our brothers and sisters, and especially our children, are also. That is the true beginning point. Without such a basis to start on, such a foundation under our feet, there can be no progress in the work undertaken. And so I believe that the first thing for us all to do is, to try to bring ourselves to a clear and full understanding of the fact that we are all of us " born long " on some lines and " short " on some other lines, or that we have been rendered short by accident or disease ; and that our possibilities of mental functioning and resultant 8o ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE doing, in one direction or another, are in very large measure determined by our bodily excellences or in- firmities ; and, further, that the greatest good will come to each and every one of us by permitting us to move out strongly on the lines of our natural abilities our " longages " when these are on the line of right ; and, beyond this, where we are weak, or short, or idiotic, or insane, or criminal, all that can be done should be done to help us to overcome our infirmities and difficulties, and to bring us into line with right and truth, all these things being taken into the account. But, to do this last, let us never be held back where we are naturally and righteously long and strong, in an effort to make us " symmetrical," that is, equally long and strong everywhere else. That is the whole issue. There is where we have all gone wrong, time and time again, in our treatment of ourselves and of those with whom we have had to do, especially the children. There is where our public schools have sinned terribly. There is where they must stop sinning, if they ever educate all the children of all the people. What, then, shall we do with these shorts, these idiots, these insane, these vicious ones, these criminals ? Well, we shall do the best we can with them and for them, things being as they are. But, first of all, we shall love them, every one, " not with allowance, but with genuine love" ; and we shall despise none of them, not even the meanest and lowest. That is, we shall almost entirely change our mental attitude towards any and all such people. Things being as they are, we shall have to " punish " many of them, especially those who exhibit the most pronounced cases of waywardness, for a good while WHAT FOLLOWS? 8l yet; we shall have to shut a good many of them up, and keep them where they cannot harm themselves or others. I do not believe we shall always " punish " in many of the ways we now use, and we ought never to kill any of them. (It brought my heart into my throat when I read the last words of President McKinley's assassin: "I thought what I did would help the poor people." Could any sane man ever have thought that ? Is it not clear that this man who took the President's life was blind on that side of his being; that there he could not see things as they really were ; that there he was idiotic, or insane ? Of course he and his like cannot be permitted to go about shooting Presidents, or Kings, or Emperors. They must be kept from such exercise of their crazed purposes. But I believe the time will come when such erratics will not be killed. I believe the hour will strike when even such as these will be loved and pitied, rather than cursed and hated ; when the way they are will be taken into the account, in passing judgment upon them. I believe that, in his inmost soul, Presi- dent McKinley had no desire that his assassin's life should be taken. But, as things were, he could only say: " Suffer it to be so now." There are better days ahead of us than have ever yet been.) Again, it will help us greatly if we can bring our- selves to realize that these variations in humanity that tend towards unrighteousness, these "shorts" of one kind or another, are not confined to any one class of people, to any one stratum of society, or to any one realm of life. In other words, if we are wise we shall come to understand, for one thing, that there is no such 82 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE thing as a " criminal class " of people, in the ordinary sense of that phrase. Doubtless Lombroso and his coadjutors are in large measure right in the things they have written about criminals. But very many of the conclusions that have been drawn from their investigations and writings are altogether wrong. Many of the physical signs of criminality that they have noted are true to the line ; but the conclusion that these signs manifest themselves wholly, or in any considerable majority, in any particu- lar class, or branch, of human society this is entirely wrong. Criminality knows no such thing as class, or rank, or station in life. Such " shorts " are in evidence on every round of the social ladder, in every grade of human life. History gives ample proof that kings there have been who were not exempt, and that beg- gars have lived who were in like case. Some of the clergy, of the highest rank, have suffered from the same cause, and there have been unbelievers who showed signs of lack in the same direction. In many of these the physical signs of errancy may have showed in much the same way, and in this respect Lombroso is right. The faults were in their bodies, and Lombroso translated the outward showings correctly. But the conclusion that is often drawn, that there is a criminal class that springs from, or is chiefly recruited from, some particular class of society this is not true. If this fact is kept in mind, it will clear away a lot of rubbish that often appears in the form of misunderstand- ing, prejudice, and injustice, in the practical work of parents and teachers who have to deal with all sorts of " shorts " in the family and schoolroom. Again, it will help greatly, in a general way, to under- WHAT FOLLOWS? 83 stand that we must not be too hasty in making up our minds as to the " longs " and " shorts " of any given in- dividual, ourselves included. There are hard and fast lines in these premises, boundaries that cannot be broken over or passed, in every one of us ; but we should never be hasty in thinking that we have dis- covered such as these in ourselves, or in our children, or in our pupils. Good hard common sense, and a diligent, faithful, intelligent study of these things as they really are, in any given individual, will keep us from going wrong here. Only this : keep in mind that we are always to seek for the natural ways of the individual, those that are in the line of righteousness, and to help, to the uttermost, in these directions, knowing that such movement, free and joyous, will always tend to the best interest of all parties concerned. And where there is weakness in any given case, we will do the best we can to help overcome such condition, but never at the ex- pense of retarding what is already strong. If I have one bad leg, it can never be made good by my being prohibited from using my good leg till the bad one is equally sound and usable. That is a fundamental prin- ciple, one never to be forgotten. But, while there are hard and fast lines and impass- able boundaries in the make-up of all of us, yet, in large measure, the great bulk of humanity can move out in many like directions, most of which are so common to mankind that we count them as normal. Thus, most children can learn to read, though some can master this ac- complishment much more easily than others. As I have already said, I have known cases where the art of read- ing came so naturally to the child that he never had to be taught at all. I have known other cases where it was 84 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE exceedingly difficult to get the pupil to read very much, or very well, even at the expense of a great amount of teaching. In some of these latter cases the pupils were normally strong in other directions ; in a few they were exceedingly able in one or more other ways. I have a record of a few instances where pupils could not learn to read at all, and yet they were thoroughly nor- mal in several other ways. The range is almost infinite, here and otherwhere. But, in each and every case, the child should be cared for according to the way he natu- rally is, and not according to some fixed plan that some- body has laid down as the regular thing for all children to attain to. And, above all, as I have said more than once, the child should never be hindered where he is strong, to make good where he is weak. Again, it sometimes happens in a marked degree, and in most children it is true to a considerable extent, that possibilities, "longs" and "shorts," vary as the child grows. A child is an undeveloped quantity, and its capabilities are not all " worn on its sleeve " from the first. It is for this reason that one should not be too much in a hurry in declaring that a given child is " long " or "short," here or there. But if we keep our eyes open, there is small danger of our going wrong here. There are no Mede-and-Persian laws that will universally apply to the individual soul. Each case must be studied by itself, and action determined according to needs, every time and continually. And it sometimes happens that very marked changes in the possibilities of a given child may suddenly appear, for good and sufficient reasons. Dr. Sperry, of Oberlin, Ohio, tells of a boy whose case came under his observa- tion, which well illustrates this point. WHAT FOLLOWS? 85 This boy had been cared for by a charitable institution for some years, but had never been able to learn to read. Finally the manager of the institution came to the con- clusion that it was unwise to keep him any longer, as there were no scholarly possibilities for him, and he was filling a place that some more promising child might occupy. So he called the boy and told him that he would have to leave the institution. It nearly broke the poor fellow's heart, and he cried all night about it. In the morning he came down to breakfast with his reading book in his hand, and, going to his teacher, he said : " I can read ! " And he could. The doctor says that from that time on the boy learned to read rapidly, and that he afterwards pursued an extended course of study success- fully. The case is surely rare, at least few such have ever been reported, but it is very significant, and well worth noting. One of the most remarkable cases of this sudden change in the possibilities and impossibilities of a child that has ever met my attention is that of the late Dr. W. J. Stillman, as he reports it in his autobiography, which was published in the Atlantic Monthly for 1900, and which, I think, has since appeared in book form. In the first chapter of the story of his life he relates that he was a wonderfully precocious child. He says : " My mother taught me my letters before I could articulate them, and when I was two I could read, and at three I was put on a high stool to read the Bible for visitors, so that I can- not remember when I could not read." He then goes on to tell how he held this pace, so to speak, till he was seven years of age, being counted a prodigy by all the community in which he lived. He read everything that he could lay hands on, and could relate with great 86 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE fluency all that he read. But he had a severe attack of typhoid fever when he was seven, " out of which," he says, " I came a model of stupidity, and so remained till I was fourteen, my thinking powers being so completely sus- pended, that at the dame's school to which I was sent, I was repeatedly flogged for not comprehending the sim- plest things." (Think of it!) "I got through simple arithmetic as far as long division, and there I had to be turned back to the beginning three times, before I could be made to understand the principle of division by more than one number." The " intellectual slowness," he says, " continued year after year." He was kept in school (for his parents were anxious that he should become a clergyman), in spite of his mental disabilities. He studied hard, but made little progress worth mentioning. The story he tells of his life for seven years is one of the most pathetic I have ever read. At times it is little short of a tragedy, as witness the following : " It often happened that when a question that had passed the other pupils came to me, the teacher used to address me, ' Well, stupid, what do you say ? " If that is not tragedy, I don't know what is. And yet, I have heard teachers do the like, and so have you. What follows in his story is so remarkable that I am sure I shall be excused for quoting it at length. The year that he was fourteen he was placed in a boarding school, and of his experience there he writes : " The persistent apathy which had oppressed me for so many years still refused to lift, and my stupidity in learning was such that my brother threatened to send me home as a disgrace to the family. I had taken up Latin again, algebra and geometry ; and though I was up by candle WHAT FOLLOWS? 87 light in the morning, and rarely put my books away till after ten at night, except for meals, it was impossible for me to construe half the lesson in Virgil, and geometry was learned by rote. I gave up exercise in order to gain time for study, and my despairing struggles were misery. I was then fourteen, in the seventh year of this dark- ness, and it seemed to me hopeless. " What happened I know not, but about the middle of the first term the mental fog broke away suddenly, and before the term ended I could construe the Latin in less time than it took to recite it, and the demonstrations of Euclid were as clear to me as a fairy story. My memory came back so completely that I could recite poems after a single reading, and no member of the class passed a more brilliant examination at the close of the term than I. At the end of the second term I could recite the whole of Legendre's Geometry, plane and spherical, without a question, and the class examination was recorded as the most brilliant which the academy had witnessed for many years. I have never been able to conceive an explanation of this curious phenomenon, which I only record as of possible interest to some student of psychology." Such is this most remarkable record, and it surely is of interest to every teacher and parent, even if they have never heard the word " psychology." And it is of still more significance to all who are engaged in trying to educate all the children of all the people. CHAPTER X AGAIN THE BODY Theory regarding Dr. Stillman's Case Questions suggested by such Phenomena Records of Boy with Crushed Skull Pupil Blind in one Eye Other Similar Cases Persistence of Pro- nounced Congenital Shortage Colonel Parker's Protest Pos- sibilities regarding Idiocy Whitman on such Manifestations Erroneous Impressions regarding the extremely ''Short" Schools for Imbeciles to Blame for this How such " Shorts " should be Considered and Treated No Great Advancement probable along Lines of Extreme "Shortage" Value of Prog- ress on " Long " Capabilities in such Cases. HAVE you any theory as to the cause that underlay this most remarkable case of Dr. Stillman ? There must have been a cause, and the case must be accounted for, by any theory that is at all worthy of consideration. Nor does it seem to me that such cause is far to seek. To me it appears more than probable that the variation in the possibilities of this individual, as they appeared, so widely different, from time to time, were all the re- sult of changed bodily conditions that they were all seated in the body and not in the mind. For, see! First, we have a child who is able to ex- press himself, to come through, to a remarkable degree, far beyond the average. At seven he is sick unto death with a disease that is noted for the changes it makes in the bodily condition of those who recover from its malignant attacks. Here, surely, is a change of the body, rather than of the mind. Out of this ex- -AGAIN THE BODY 89 perience he came wholly unable to express himself (to come through) as he had formerly done. This condi- tion continued till he was fourteen years old, or, in other words, till he came to puberty ! Then his former pos- sibilities again appeared with wonderful suddenness, and they remained with him the rest of his long and useful life. (Perhaps I ought to say, right here, to save the read- er's "looking up," that Dr. Stillman became famous in more than one continent, and that, as a scholar, diplo- mat, and statesman, he ranked among the first. He represented the United States at Rome for many years ; he was the friend and comrade of Ruskin, and was closely associated with Browning and Emerson, as well as with others of the leading minds of his day.) But from seven to fourteen this individual was so nearly imbecile that his teachers used to address him as " stupid," and it took him three terms of school to master long division. These are things for all of us to remember, and there is no question as to the facts in the case. And, as said before, let it never be forgotten that a fact, once established, is something that must be accounted for, and that can never be gotten over. It seems strange that Dr. Stillman should not have observed that his recovery of his lost abilities came at the time of his entering into manhood ; and that he should not have at least suspected that there was a close relation between these two facts, that one was the cause of the other. But, be that as it may, it is quite evident that this is the true explanation of what happened. At puberty wonderful changes take place in the human body, as Stanley Hall has so ably shown in his studies of Adolescence, and these open up the way for new 90 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE possibilities of expression for the human mind, of new abilities to function in the mental plane. This is true, in large degree, in the case of nearly every individual. The results are rarely as remarkable as in this case, but the causes are the same in the whole human family. My theory is that, in the case of Dr. Stillman, the severe sickness that he had when he was seven left him with some clog upon certain portions of his brain or nervous organism, the parts that had to do with his power to express himself before he was sick, but which he was unable to use when he got well again. Here he was stopped off, so to speak, for seven long years. Here he could not come through as he had once done. Perhaps there was a stoppage in the proper supply of blood for these parts of the brain, while other parts were not so affected. I do not know. I do not know that any one knows just exactly what happened ; but I think it is clear that the trouble was all in the body of the boy, and not in his mind. My reason for thinking so is that suddenly he was restored to a former condition, was able to express him- self as aforetime, and that just when great bodily changes came to him. I have an idea that these bodily changes, which came at puberty, broke down the clogs that had interrupted the coming through of this lad on so many lines for so many years ; and that, these bar- riers being removed, he could again express himself as he had formerly done could function in certain men- tal planes as aforetime. I ought to add that young Stillman was not " stopped off " in all his abilities to function in mental planes dur- ing these seven lean years. His knowledge of nature, plants, flowers, and animals, and his love for studying AGAIN THE BODY gi them were as great as ever, and constantly grew to more and more. But all these points on which he could still function were relegated to disuse by his parents and teachers in order that he might gain book knowledge, where he had become " short." Nor do I believe that " keeping him everlastingly at " these studies was the cause of his mastering them. The denouement was too sudden to make this theory account for such result. In such case, his progress would have been gradual. He did make some gradual progress in his studies during the years of his affliction. But the relief came in an instant, and without effort on his part. Such is not the way of plodding. It was not steady progress as a result of persistent effort that caused him to arrive, but a sudden illumination that came unlocked for and unsought. Think on this for a minute, teacher or parent or other reader. But was there anything the matter with this boy's mind, with his inmost self, during these seven strange years ? Surely not. He was all right, all the time. The instrument he had to play on was out of repair in some places for a time, and so he could then make no music on these keys some hammer was unglued or peg broken, for the time being. When these bad places were made good, then he could play again as he had once done. And do not the facts that he had played once, and then could not play for a while, and then could play again after great bodily changes had come to him, do not these things all prove that the trouble was entirely in the instrument and not at all in the player that it was the body and not the mind of this individual that 92 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE was at fault ? It seems to me that there can be small question as to the truth of such surmise ; indeed, that the facts cannot be accounted for in any other way. And if these things are so (and I firmly believe they are), what rows on rows of interrogation marks they set upon end, to question many of our acts as parents and teachers ? And how are these question marks followed by rows on rows of marks of command, declaring that we must mend our ways in these regards ! If the bodily conditions of our children and pupils are as fundamental and important as all these things indicate, what are we going to do about it ? And again I say, we must do the best we can. But first of all we must have regard to the facts in the case, and act accordingly, to the best of our ability, things being as they are. (Just here I received a report of a most suggestive case in point from a teacher of " short " children in the public schools of New York City. She has among her pupils a boy of twelve who is now very limited in his possibilities. And yet this same boy had a most excellent school record up to the time he was ten years of age. But at that time of his life he had his skull fractured by falling from a fire escape in trying to get out of a burning apartment building. The injury was so severe that his life hung by a thread for weeks, but he finally lived. But he lives as only a part of his former mental self. He is now able to do almost nothing at all with books, and is almost entirely imbecile regarding subjects on which he was once able to express himself well. Can any one say that this boy's mind was dashed out on a curbstone ? It was not his mind, but his body, that was broken. And the possibility of AGAIN THE BODY 93 his mind using his body was thereby limited. The hurt is probably of a sort that the changes that come at puberty will never rectify that nothing can modify; but the case furnishes one more proof that "these things are in the body." So I note it here.) And so we must learn to esteem the bodies of our children and pupils as of far more importance than they were once considered to be, and give attention to them accordingly. As fast as we can attain to it, we must have these bodies examined by those who are competent to pass judgment upon them ; and, as far as possible, thus learn what their condition is, in each and every case. Especially should this be done with children who show signs of variation from normal lines. I am no expert, but I once found, in a school I visited, a boy twelve years old who was blind in one eye ; and yet neither his teachers nor his parents had ever discovered the fact ! He was two grades below where he should have been, in the natural order of things, and his bad eye was the cause of it. Both his parents and his teachers considered him stupid, and there we are again. And this case of carelessness and neglect is not nearly as rare as it may seem to be. But I need not take time to speak in detail of near- sightedness, partial deafness, semi-paralysis of one organ or another, and many other bodily defects which hamper pupils in their progress in school. Thank Heaven, some teachers are beginning to recognize them as factors in the work attempted in the schoolroom, and now and then they modify what they attempt to do for one pupil or another, accordingly. But far too largely, as yet, these things are as idle tales to many teachers, both of high and low degree. Yet the light is coming 94 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE through, all along the line. I shall say more about this later. And now a word or two as to what can probably be done with these poor, or bad-bodied pupils the " shorts," in one way or another. In the first place, I am convinced that, where the shortage is decidedly pronounced, there is not nearly the percentage of possibility for advancement, on the lines of the shortage, that has generally been supposed. This may seem a hard saying, but the truth must be told, and I believe this to be true. Colonel Parker once said to me, " Oh, Mr. Smith, your doctrine is so hope- less!" To which I replied, "That all depends." But I will return to this later, also. Where the shortage in the child is so pronounced that it amounts to idiocy, let it be said, once for all, that there is small chance for such a child ever advancing very far along its idiotic lines. It may progress, some- times far beyond a normal child, in some other direc- tions, but rarely along the lines of its shortage. Where the idiocy includes a large number of the faculties of the child, there is little use of even hoping that such a child can be brought to the standard of normality. I need not say that such cases are uncommon, but they exist ; and where they do exist, they prove the truth of what I have said. There are human bodies that are in such bad shape, that were so from the beginning (they were born so), or that have been made so by accident (as in the case of the boy who fell from the ladder and broke his skull), or by disease of some sort, that the imprisoned minds that live in them can come through but very little sometimes not at all. Yet these bodies live, sometimes for years. AGAIN THE BODY 95 But I do not call even these cases hopeless. These are the ones Walt Whitman has in mind, when he says : u I saw the face of the most smeared and slobbering idiot in the asylum, And I knew for my consolation what they did not know. I know the agents that emptied and broke my brother, And I know that the same Power waits, calm and patient, to clear away the rubbish ; And one of these days I shall meet the real landlord, Perfect and unharmed, and every whit as good as myself. The Lord advances, and ever advances. Always the shadow in front, But ever the reached hand of the Almighty, moving up the laggards." And that is not hopeless ! I believe there is a very wrong impression extant about what can be done for idiotic children in institu- tions which are provided for their care. Time and again I have heard stories about the wonderful things that have been done for children in these schools. But when I have brought these stories to the test, I have found that, whatever may have been the intentions of those who told them, they have conveyed a very wrong impression to the community at large. And here is the reason : These stories about the wonderful advancement of pupils in schools for idiots (they should never be called institutions for the feeble-minded; such children are not feeble-minded, but only bad-bodied, and so idiotic or peculiar), are most of them true, in a way. But the progress made by those children that are told about is never, or at least rarely, if ever, along the lines of their natural idiocy. Such children are " born short " to the extent of 96 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE idiocy, on some lines, while they are born normal, or often " long," sometimes to an extent little short of genius, on other lines. Their idiocies are so numerous and pronounced that they constitute the leading features of the children's make-up, and so they are sent to an institution. Here, their " long " sides are brought to the front, and they are sometimes permitted to move out on the lines on which they can come through. This work on their long sides is reported, and the conclusion reached by the outside world is, that such children have been brought to the standard of normality, all along the line. But this is so rarely the case that it is not worth taking into account. Once in a while, as hi the case of Dr. Stillman, a child that is idiotic on some lines, for the time being, because of something that happened to him after he was born, may come to normality on those lines ; but where the child is born idiotic, there is very little prob- ability that he will ever become normal to any great degree in the places where he is "born short." Those who have had experience with such children will unani- mously sustain these statements. This principle holds true in all cases where a child is really " born short," be the shortages many or few. Where the shortage is genuine and congenital, it is rarely ever overcome. Charles Sumner never attained to any mathematical ability worth mentioning; and General Grant was helpless, as a financier, to the day of his death. To be sure, he wrote his memoirs when he was dying by inches. But others had to " finance " them for him. The principle stands in his case and in all others. It seems hard, when looked at from some standpoints ; but that is neither here nor there, so far AGAIN THE BODY 97 as the facts are concerned. The question here, as always, is what is the truth in the premises ? I firmly believe it will always be found just as I have stated it. And I am also sure that it is not nearly as bad as it seems, if it is only thoroughly understood, and the edu- cation of each child is provided for accordingly that is, in harmony with the way he is, that he is brought to his best with what he has to do with, if his " one talent " is made the most of. And so, for you, teachers or parents who have idiotic children in your schools or in your families, be not cast down overmuch, and do not torment either yourselves or the children in trying to bring them to normality all along the line. Rather be content to take them as they are, and do the most you can for them along the lines of their possibilities. Jesus said : " Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the glory of God might be made manifest " ; and if you will help such children to move out on the line of their native abilities, to the limit of their powers, you will glorify God as greatly as the greatest ! See it that way, which is the right way, I believe, and be comforted, ye who are weighed down with this sort of burden. And there are many such. And if you send a child of yours to an " institution," don't expect too much to come of it. Many people go broken-hearted on this score. They have heard such wondrous tales about what has been done for children who they supposed were like theirs that their hopes mount high as they imagine what may be done for their own afflicted one. And then the months go by, and the change they hope for comes not; whereupon they sink down in despair ! The cause of this unfortunate outcome is a failure to realize the truth of what I have 98 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE told in these last pages. True your hopes to the line of the possible in such cases, to what can be done for such children, they being as they are, and you will not then be disappointed; always remembering that there is small hope of making any child normally " long " where he is abnormally " short." Let the educational work for such children be done along the lines of their longages, and then helpful and satisfactory results, viewed from that standpoint, can be obtained. It is further true that the more these children are suc- cessfully moved up along the lines of their possibilities, the more probability there is that they may move up, in some measure, along the lines of their so-far-indicated im- possibilities. They gather strength, to a degree, all along the line, by the exercise of what faculties they can suc- cessfully use. This is a point never to be forgotten in the education of such children. But growth must come, if it comes at all, by starting the child along the lines in which he has at least some natural ability to move. If a start can be made there, there is hope for some prog- ress elsewhere. Some of these children are the most lovable in the world, and they are all "provided for." Our duty is to do the best we can for them, they being what they are. They form a part of all the children of all the people, and as such they should be educated to the limit of their several possibilities. CHAPTER XI STRICTLY BETWEEN OURSELVES Reasons for writing this Chapter Doubts caused by the Phenom- ena of Extreme " Shortage " Despair Resulting A Founda- tion of Assurance Needful " The Maker of All Things " Everything is Looked After Fatalism Denied Workers with God Life and Death the Constant Factors of all Change Death has as much Purport as Life Universality of Protecting Power Definition of Hell "All a Procession " Monarchy and Democracy Contrasted The Basic Law of Evolution The Mission of the Seemingly Bad Difficulty of making Uniform Regulations for All Mankind Personal Conclusions A Link binding the Parts of the Book together. IN justice to all parties concerned, and especially to you who have so patiently lent me your eyes and given me your attention through the preceding pages, it seems to me that, before we go farther, it is only fair, in view of some of the things I have said in the last few chapters, I should open my heart to you a good way deeper down than I have yet done, and let you see the foundation I stand on, holding the theories and beliefs which I do regarding the various and sundry " shorts " in humanity that I have tried to set forth in what I have written thus far. For, the truth is that no one can honestly look these shortage facts in the face without having great questions rise in his mind as to the why of it all ; and, beyond that, the outcome of it all. It is such considerations that sometimes force us to the verge of despair, that hurl us into a sea of doubt where we shall perish miserably if we have not a rock of im- movable faith to cling to. 99 100 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE Of course I hesitate to say what I am going to say, for reasons that you can well understand. You have only to think how it would be if the case were your own, and then you will know all about it. And in saying what I do I make no claim that I have found the absolutely immovable and fundamentally basic rock on which all can at once rest and be at peace. I may not have found such a place for any one else, not even for you. But of this you may be assured, I have found it for myself, and there is a chance that I may have found it for some one else perhaps for you. Anyhow, I feel that the rock under my feet is broad enough, and solid enough, to sustain your weight as well as mine, and with us the weight of all humanity, for all time and eternity, if once the brethren and sisters can settle down on such a basis. I cannot go into details as I should like to, but all at once and without apology I state that the rock I am based on is found in the words, " God made the heavens and the earth." That sentence tells what I stand on ; and, up to date, nothing has been able to move me therefrom. I accept that as the rock-bottom, St. Peter Sandstone foundation that sustains me now, and that I believe will sustain me continually. For if God made the heavens and the earth, I reckon he has made all that has ever been made. (In another place the Book says, " And without him was not any- thing made that was made," and that is a good way to tell it.) And if God made all these, that takes in you, and me, and all the rest of everything everywhere. And that is enough ! And all the evidence I can get at goes to show that STRICTLY BETWEEN OURSELVES 101 the Power that has made all these things (which is only another name for what I and many others call God), takes care of them, and will forever keep doing so. And that brings you, and me, and all the rest of every- thing under shelter. And, being under shelter, you, and I, and all the rest of everything are safe. And if we are all safe, that is enough ! And so I rest secure; and so can you, and so can all, and everybody. I grant that I see a good many things about me which, now and then, it seems to me, might be better looked after. But the older I grow the fewer such things I see, and the better I know that even these things are cared for, in a way that I once knew not of. I have had experiences in my own life, a good many of them, that, at the time, I thought were not looked after by the Power behind them as I thought they should have been. But the years have proved that even these were " provided for." It has been the same way with you, has it not ? And so, as I look out upon the great multitudes of my brothers and sisters, of all classes and conditions of men, women, and children, all the world over, and see the way they are, I cannot be troubled. For I believe that God made them all, and that what he has made he will care for, to the utmost limit. I find corroborative evidence of this, every way I look. The stars are cared for, and the stuff that the stars and all things else are made of is cared for, and all in between and about them all is cared for. And you, and I, and all the rest, are somewhere in between or about all these things. And when I see some things that seem to me not cared for, I have come to understand that my reasons 102 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE for thinking so are because I do not see far enough, or deep enough, or wide enough. Then I become patient and " willing to wait." And this does not mean fatalism. Anything but that. For, in my inmost soul, I feel that if I have been made, I also am a maker. The Book has it that " we are all workers together with God," and my experience teaches me that the Book is right about it. And this completes the circle covers the whole ground. The Power that made all things works, and we work, and so things get on. And the object of all work God's, yours, mine, everybody's is to make new and higher combinations out of things that are now combined in some other way than as we would henceforth have them. When I found that out, it made a great change in the way I looked at things, past, present, and to come ! It took the edge off my blame of people and things as they are, and led me to see that there was a reason why, in every case. It made me understand that a great many conditions should be changed, and gave me zeal to try to help change them, as the Great Worker is helping to change things, all the time. But, meantime, it filled me with charity instead of hatred, and it taught me to wait patiently for outcomes. This discovery also compelled me to see that all change must be from something that now is into some- thing which is yet to be ; and that it is life and death which make such change possible which bring such change about ! Neither of these can do the work alone. It always takes them both, death and life, whenever a change in anything is made. And neither of these STRICTLY BETWEEN OURSELVES 103 comes first in the order of their doing. They work in absolute unity. The only difference between them is that one is positive and the other negative. Life pushes, and death gives way ; but the push and the yielding are a part of one and the same single performance of the change from what is into what is to be. When I found that out, then I saw that " death has just as much purport as life has," and so I ceased to be any more afraid of death than of life. I also learned that it is not wise to pass blame upon present conditions, no matter what they may be, or to waste time mourning over them ; but that it is my business, as a positive factor in the problem, always to be " up and doing," always busy making changes bringing death to the unworthy and life to that which is better. And then I saw what is true for me must be true for everybody else, absolutely. For, who am I, or who are you, that we and ours should be well looked after and the rest be left uncared for ? I used to think that happiness would come if I and mine were specially cared for. But I was mis- taken ! I think you will come to the same conclusion if you will think these things over for a while. Some one has said that hell is the pursuit of happiness for its own sake, and for one's own selfish interest. And if only we and ours are cared for, that is selfishness supreme that is hell at its utmost. No, it must be all or nothing ! Some is not enough ! And it cannot be nothing ! Because, we know that we are cared for. And because we know that we are each only one in the great procession, therefore the whole procession is cared for. And will you think for a minute what that means ? 104 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE Will you try to think of something that is not cared for ? The great is cared for, and the small is cared for, and all in between is cared for. I have said that in another way, a few lines back, but it is so important that it will bear saying many ways, and many times. All is cared for, all is " provided for." And so I look upon these " shorts," here and there the shortages in myself and in all the rest I have ever seen, anywhere, and I realize that we are all only be- coming. We are changing from what we now are to something other than we now are. That "all is in a procession," and that all is going forward. Some are far up the line, some lag away in the rear, and there are crowds all in between. But all came from the same Source, and all move in the same direction forward ! And the Maker of the procession helps us to move forward, and we help ourselves to move forward, and it is also our business to help those who are about us to move forward, and so we all get on. Here and there I see what sometimes seems to me a turning back, but I find that, if I can only keep such appearances under my eye long enough, I shall find that this also ultimately makes for progress. You can think of a thousand such experiences in your own line of growth, and in the line of growth of others that you know about. And then it came to me that it doesn't make so very much difference just where we are in the procession, at a given time ; for we shall all arrive far up the line, in due season, and then still keep on, going up. The only essential thmg is that we keep going. And we shall do that. The pace may vary, but we shall all always advance ! STRICTLY BETWEEN OURSELVES 105 And then I thought that whoever is in advance has no cause to despise those who are behind, or to look down upon them, or to boast over his own position in the line. He may be glad that he has attained, but the sole result of his joy will be to increase his effort to help another to come to where he is. It will cause him to count himself the servant of all in his rear, and not their boss. It will make him their brother and not their king. He will become genuinely democratic, and will be im- bued with the true spirit of mutualness. For the compelling force of monarchy is always self- ishness, while the animating spirit of genuine democ- racy is always self-sacrifice. The Power that has made all things, and which sustains all things, and which cares for all things, and which provides for all things this Power is an Internal Animating Spirit and not an Ex- ternal Compelling Force. It has mutualness and not monarchy for its essential principle. And then I learned to know that the fundamental law for each individual is that he must be permitted to go his own way, so long as such going does not interfere with any one else ; and this is only another version of the Golden Rule, as a moment's reflection will show. All of which means that I have a right to go my own way, and you have an equal right to go your own way, so long as we harm no one else by the way we go ; and that I have no right to compel you to go my particular way, neither have you a right to compel me to go your particular way ; neither does it become either of us to imperiously declare that our way is the only way, and that he is anathema who says otherwise. I need not say that this is really the basic law of evo- lution, which proceeds always from the simple to the 106 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE complex, from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous and the infinitely diversified. And so I see a place in the procession for all the " longs" and a place for all the " shorts," and I know that the present conditions of both are but temporary ; that the " longs " have an endless road over which they can go, and that the " shorts " have an endless road over which they can come ; and that neither need say to the other, " What doest thou ? " but that, in the true spirit of mutualness we will all tramp on together, and keep doing so. Then I also saw that each in his own place is suffi- cient, and that there is small need of making compari- sons, one to the detriment of another ; but that the main item in the count of each is to fill his own place full to the utmost, his ability being what it is. I also saw that each has a place and a way of his own, and that all the experiences of life that come to any in- dividual are for his best good ; and that, sometime, each will come to see it that way. That what at first seems good may prove good altogether, and that what at first seems to be bad, this also will prove to be for good, in the long run. So I quit quarreling with the seemingly bad, and instead, set myself to work to find out " What He would have this evil do for me ? What is its mission ? what its ministry ? What golden fruit lies hidden in this husk ? How shall it nurse my virtue, nerve my will, Chasten my passions, purify my love, And make me in some goodly sense like Him Who bore the cross of evil while He lived And hung and bled upon it when He died ? " And things looked differently to me after this revela- tion came. STRICTLY BETWEEN OURSELVES 107 Then it was revealed to me why it is so hard to make rules and regulations (laws, and courses of study) that shall work equally well in all parts of the procession. The line is so long, and there are so many kinds in it ! And so the Power behind all has, as a matter of fact, made rules and regulations for each individual in es- pecial, to the effect that each man, woman, or child shall go his or her own gait, so long as such going does not in- terfere with the going of any one else ! That is basic, and the true progress of each individual can come only from its observance. The spirit of genuine democracy, of true mutualness, always has regard for such law. The right arm of monarchy cares for it not a pin's fee ! The spirit that animates modern progress is grounded in democracy, in mutualness. The exploiting of this idea has been too much along monarchical lines in nearly all the ways of life. A change is bound to take place in what has been attained. Death will get in its work, and life will get in its work. The unfit and mistaken will pass away, and the fit and right will take their places. It was not till I got this view of things that I found anything like rest and peace. But now I can rest and be at peace. Not that I will sit down and do nothing, saying that it will all come out right, anyhow. Not that at all. But, knowing that I have a place in the procession, and that it is my business to keep moving ; and seeing, too, that if I lag, I shall pay for my in- difference, and get prodded on ; and having come to understand that what is true of myself is true to any- body else, in that we are all in the procession, and so are all honorable and to be wondered at having learned this, I march with my brothers and sisters, proud of them all, watching with equal joy the strong 108 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE walking of those who are before me and the feeble and limping steps of those who may be far behind, as we all travel onward, forever and forever. Be comforted, then, my brother, my sister, whoever you are. Cease fretting about yourself in the procession, or the place occupied by those who are near and dear to you. If you are " long " in certain ways, be thankful and not proud. If you or yours are "short" (and no matter how " short ") in certain ways, be not ashamed or cast down, but make the best you can out of what you have ; realizing that " that which fills its own period or place is the equal of any," and that it is a thousand times better to do a simple thing well than it is to try to do something that is too much for you, and fail in the undertaking. Keep moving, keep working with God, and so you will keep on arriving continually. The fact is that the only real joy of life comes from working with God, and in helping to keep things moving. Some one has said that heaven is a constant endeavor on one's part to help to the attainment of its possible best every life form that one comes in contact with. I believe this is absolutely true. And I believe that, in your inmost soul, dear reader, my experience in this regard is yours. All of which is strictly between ourselves. I have said it hesitatingly, and because I could not help saying it. My hope is that it may serve as a sort of confiden- tial link between us, as we pass from what I have so far said into the more positive part of what I had in mind to say when I began writing this book. If this heart to heart talk between us can put us en rapport for what all I have so far said leads up to, then it will have filled its mission, and we shall be in good shape to enter upon the consideration of the following chapters. CHAPTER XII SOME WHYS AND WHEREFORES A Foundation Constructed Brief Review of Points Made The Purpose of Education Relation of the Phenomena of "Short" and " Long " to Public School Issues Newness of the Attempt to educate Everybody Author's Recollection of its Early His- tory Great Results not to be too soon looked for Review of History of Public Schools essential to Full Comprehension of their Present and Future Needs and Possibilities Outline of Further Investigations and Studies Proposed Some Suggestions to follow. Now, as a matter of fact, all I have said, so far, is merely preliminary, a sort of preface to what I have yet to say. I admit that this preface is long, for in volume it makes nearly one third of the book I am submitting to the reader ; but I could not make it shorter in view of the importance which the base it forms bears to what I propose to build upon it. There is many a lighthouse whose foundation is the chief part of the structure that shows where danger lies and points the way of deliverance therefrom. , I believe that I have demonstrated that there are such phenomena as are defined by the words " born short " and "born long," in all materialized humanity, and that such primal characteristics have a marked tendency to persist in each individual life that they are manifest in ; and, further, that such conditions are positive factors that ought to be taken into account in any righteous effort to bring each individual to his or her possible best. 109 HO ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE And now, since it is the avowed aim and purpose of all education to bring humanity, individually and col- lectively, to its possible best ; and since, in carrying out such purpose it is essential that all the factors that have to do with the problem should be taken into ac- count, it is strictly logical and practical to consider the relation that exists between the phenomena I have put in the foreground and an attempt to educate all the children of all the people. These statements square us around and set our faces forward along the road that we shall travel for the rest of the journey. Anent which, I beg first to call the attention of the reader to the newness or comparative recency of any attempt to educate all the children of all the people. I am only a trifle past my threescore years, and yet my memory reaches back to the time when there was no such possibility generally thought of in this country, much less attempted. I can well remember hearing the feasibility of such an undertaking discussed at a " teachers' meeting," in western Massachusetts, when I was a boy of ten. Horace Mann was the speaker of the occasion, and though I was but a child when I heard him, he spoke so forcibly that he not only kept me awake all through his talk, but I remember much of what he said, and I shall use a part of it before I am done with this writing. About a half century, then, is the measure of all the time we have really been working at the problem of universalizing education, and that is practically but a few minutes in the stretch of years which it takes to fully universalize anything. So we must be as patient here as we are when dealing with any other evolutionary SOME WHYS AND WHEREFORES m process. These all work slowly and take their own time for effecting results. Before any attempt is made to suggest what ought to be done in any given situation, it is not only fair, but absolutely essential to justice, that there should be a thorough and comprehensive knowledge of what the situation really is, and of how it came to be so. And so, before proceeding with any suggestions that this treatise may have to make regarding our efforts to educate all the children of all the people, it is necessary that we review, quite thoroughly, the history of our attempts in that direction to date; how such attempts came to be made ; what the conditions, intellectual, social, and economic, were at the time the undertaking began ; what ideas prevailed at the outset of the attempt regarding what constituted an education; what means and methods were reckoned as competent to produce the ends aimed at ; how these means and methods were applied, and why just these means and methods were used just as they were, with some survey of the results all these things have produced. And so I shall honestly try to find out somewhere near where we are in our thus-far attempts to educate all the children of all the people, and how we have come to be in our present status, before I make any suggestions as to what the future may have in store for us by way of marvel or surprise on these counts. And having done so much, I hope to be able to point out some of the things it would seem wise to do, all these conditions being as they are. All of which will make up the sum and substance of what the following pages will contain. CHAPTER XIII BITS OF HISTORY The Spirit of Democracy the Origin of the Attempt to universalize Education Pioneers in the Cause Caution to be used in criti- cizing These Horace Mann His Purposes and Theories Their Effect upon the System of Schools he Inaugurated "Academies" and High Schools How Public High Schools became " College Feeders." BEYOND all question the attempt to educate all the children of all the people was grounded in a genuine spirit of democracy. Or, perhaps mutualness would be a better word to express just what the animating idea was that took form in the effort to universalize educa- tion, though I do not find that word in the dictionary. In any event, the movement was only one of many manifestations of an attempt to make general things which, so far in the history of the world, had been special ; to have all share in what, up to that time, only a few had been permitted to have. It was an honest effort to convey to the masses what had heretofore been the prerogative of classes only. The men who fathered this idea and who were the immediate factors in its objective embodiment were among the most noble souls the world has ever produced. Their ideals were God-born, and their efforts to realize them are among the highest that human endeavor has ever put forth. Let these facts never be forgotten, for they are worthy of immortal acknowledgment. On the other hand, experience in all lines of life 112 BITS OF HISTORY 113 proves that the pioneers in any given enterprise seldom, if ever, succeed in putting into operation the best pos- sible methods of reaching their ideals. So many in- stances which go to prove the truth of this statement will readily occur to the reader that none need be quoted here. Again, it is not finding fault with pioneers, much less condemning them, if those who come after them ques- tion the wisdom of some of the primary methods used in their first experimentations. We live in a world of progress and not of finalities ; and this is specially true with regard to all means and methods that are used by mankind to obtain results. These principles are as true in matters educational as they are elsewhere. I make these remarks just here because, as a matter of fact, conservatism is a little more pronounced in the educational world than in any other sphere of life that I know about, unless it be in the realm of theology. " Tis true, 'tis pity ; pity 'tis 'tis true." And there are not wanting many good men and true women who feel that if any move is made to change anything that ever has been, educationally, such effort is a slur upon the past, and an attempt at defamation of the characters of the originators of the things whose change is afterwards sought. All of which is wrong. I reverence the fathers of the attempt to educate all the children of all the people as much as any one can. So far as the real, essential results they desired to ac- complish are concerned, there is nothing left to be wished for. Their purpose was to bring every indi- vidual to his or her possible best. If there was a fault anywhere, it lay in their conception of what was the possible best for each individual, and of what was the best way to attain such result. 114 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE Now, look for a moment, first at the conception of what constituted an education, or an educated man, as it obtained in the days when the idea of popular education first came into vogue and the first efforts were made to materialize that idea. Horace Mann may well be counted as among one of the best of the fathers of the original scheme, and he had more to do with its early exploitation than any other one individual in this country. And so, in considering what he was, what educational ideas he held, and how he tried to ,'establish ways and means that would carry out what he believed to be for the best in the issues at stake, we are studying the whole group of his coadju- tors ; and from his single case we may practically learn the truth regarding all his colaborers. Let no one say that I am attacking Horace Mann in what I am about to say. I only use his name and cite his work because they are especially in point, and are fair specimens of all the beliefs and doings of all the fathers of the efforts to achieve popular education. Horace Mann was a classically educated scholar, and the ideas of what constituted an educated man in the age in which he lived were all of the classical sort, as that word was interpreted, educationally, at that time. To say, then, that a man was an educated man was virtually to say that he was a classical college graduate. I do not complain of this, but I beg to call special attention to it as an undeniable fact, for it is the very corner stone of what all this is leading up to. Such, then, were the ideas of what constituted an education, and of who were educated men. Now there is no denying the fact (nor is it strange that the fact should be as it was) that, with these ideas BITS OF HISTORY H 5 as to what constituted an education and as to who were educated men, the attempt to universalize education was exploited with these ideas as a basis. That is, the attempt, as originally made, was to classically educate all tJie children of all the people. Right there is the very beginning, the primal germ of what afterwards grew to be the material form of our public school system of what these schools stood for, and of the particular nature of the output they strove to produce. It goes without saying that, for the most part, this original con- ception on these fundamental points, remains, to this day, practically where it started. I well remember hearing Mr. Mann say, in the ad- dress I have referred to: "We will make a system of schools which will render it possible for every child, rich or poor, to go to college." (The reader will recall the fact that I have already stated that I was "born long " on remembering and quoting. I would stake all I am worth on the accuracy of the above quotation, though it is more than half a century since I heard it.) In that same address, the speaker went on to explain how they would change all the "Academies," which were then very numerous all through Massachusetts and in some others of the Eastern and Middle States, into " High Schools," which all the children should be per- mitted to attend, free. He then told how all the public schools would have their work fashioned relative to the work which would later be done in these High Schools, so that the whole education of all the children, from entrance day to graduation, should be fashioned with a classical college education as the ultimate goal to be reached by all the children of all the people. Then he dwelt upon the result of all this, as he saw Il6 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE it, namely, that all these children, all uniformly educated as he had been educated, would be thoroughly capable of informing themselves well on all questions and issues of public importance; how judicially minded they would all be, because of the training they had all received in the higher realms of culture which all would have had the benefits of, and so forth, and so following. It was a glorious picture, and I well remember how my father, who was an Amherst man, glowed with enthusiasm about it as he talked all these things over with Mr. Mann, who took supper at our house with the minister and a few teacher friends after the lecture. I ought to add, too, that it was because of all these great and good civic results, which the speaker said would follow this universal dissemination of classical learning, that he claimed it was right and just to tax all the people for the support of the schools which were to put our entire population into such prime condition for good citizenship. This point, I remember, he urged strongly, owing to the fact that it was a rural New England audience he was addressing, and some of his hearers were quite wealthy men, without children, and these rather objected to being taxed to pay for the edu- cation of other people's offspring. The whole address made a lasting impression upon me, as these excerpts duly prove. Now it is a matter of common knowledge to all who are even fairly well posted upon the subject, that the lines Mr. Mann laid down, more than fifty years ago in that New England village, have practically been followed in the rise and progress of our public school system, throughout this entire nation. These schools were all exploited upon a classical college idea of what consti- BITS OF HISTORY 117 tutes an education, and the possible entrance to a classi- cal college was made the end and aim of all the work that was done in them, from turret to foundation stone, or vice versa. As such the work of our public schools was fashioned, and as such it has been pursued, for the most part, even unto this day. And so it was that our public schools, all of them, from primary to high school, were exploited with the idea that their chief function was that of being classical "college feeders." This was the first step in the par- ticular way in which the attempt to educate all the children of all the people was made. That it was honestly made there can be no doubt. That those who exploited the idea in this particular fashion fully be- lieved that the method used would yield the fruits prophesied is equally certain. The whole story is only a bit of history that everybody should know is true. CHAPTER XIV MORE BITS OF HISTORY First Factors combined to solve the Universal Education Problem Declaration of Independence Locke's Tabula Rasa Theory What Man has done Man can do The Military Spirit and Methods Formulated Courses of Study Times and Seasons for Given Parts of the Same Penalties for Failures to Tally Classroom Methods used Memory Culture and Memory Tests Commencement Accredited Schools. THERE were certain other factors in the early efforts to educate all the children of all the people that must be noted just here. Among these were the generally accepted psychological theories of the period regarding the mental possibilities of humanity ; and these were backed up and buttressed by the basic sociological pro- nouncement of the Declaration of Independence, which, as popularly translated, aided and abetted these theories perfectly. All these elements were unified and woven together into a compact whole, and in this shape they were utilized as a philosophic basis for the cause of popular education to rest upon. And here is how the popular argument ran: The Declaration of Independence asserted that all men were created equal. The word "equal" meant alike the dictionary said so, and a dictionary is the court from which there is no appeal when it comes to telling what words mean! Then follows Locke's tabida rasa theory, to the effect that the mind of a child is like a white piece of paper 118 MORE BITS OF HISTORY 119 on which can be marked whatever we wish. These two formulas were then logically joined, as follows: Since all children are born alike, and their minds are all like blank sheets of paper on which we can mark whatever we will, it follows that all we have to do is to mark the same things on all children's minds, in exactly the same way, and a uniform result must be inevitable. Then followed another dogma which was in harmony with the foregoing philosophy, and which was formu- lated in this way : " What man has done man can do." This was translated to mean that what any man ever had done, any other man (and, therefore, every other man) could do if he tried hard enough and worked at it long enough. (My father was anxious that I should be a good Latin and Greek scholar, and when I was sweating blood to get my lessons and keep up with my classes in these studies, as I have related, in response to my tearful ap- peals for surcease from such sorrow, he used to say to me : " Persevere, Willie ! Edward Everett mastered a score of languages, and if he did, you can. Your mind is just as strong as his, if you will only exercise it as he did. Don't ever forget that what man has done man can do ! " And my father is not the only man who has quoted this phrase under similar circumstances !) There is another factor that had to do with the ex- ploiting of this first attempt to generally disseminate classical college education among the masses, which has not been generally recognized, but which was none the less potent. This is the prevalence, among all our people, of the military spirit, at just the formative period of our public graded school system on the basis outlined by its founders. 120 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE This formative period came just at the close of our Civil War. For four years our whole population had been soaked in militarism till its spirit had permeated our entire body politic. This is one of the effects of war which is doubtless slow in manifesting itself, but which is the most abiding of all the evils that lurk in its trail. The essence of the military spirit is compulsion. "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die" tells the whole story. And now see what follows, as does the night the day, putting all these facts and conditions together : The founders of our public graded school system had a theory for its propagation which was absolutely fault- less, from a logical standpoint. They were so convinced of its efficiency, when once it should be established, that they did not hesitate to guarantee the results that would surely follow. These results were such as the whole spirit of democracy had long looked forward to eagerly ; our people were behind the purpose to a man, and what remained but to put it into operation ? And, in the spirit of that age, if it was a good thing (and everybody believed it was), why not establish it by compulsion ? So the attempt was made to work the plan by military methods and in that way to compel its uniform accept- ance by all the children of all the people. In accordance with such military methods and usages, therefore, a plan of campaign was designed and put into operation which was systematic in the utmost degree. The work to be done by each and every pupil was out- lined with perfect minuteness and accuracy, from enter- ing day to graduation. This work was divided into regular portions and sections, and a certain amount was MORE BITS OF HISTORY 121 to be acquired by the pupil in certain times, this allot- ment sometimes descending to the details of days and hours of the day. The plan was to enter a class of a certain age in a primary grade, have them all take a prescribed amount of work in a definitely fixed time, and all come out, at the end of each and every term, possessed of exactly the same attainments. To compel such results, in regular military fashion, penalties were fixed for all pupils who failed to reach the required standards in the times named. Several studies were included in each period of time, and if a pupil failed to " pass " in any one of these studies, as a penalty he was compelled to go over the work again, not only in the study in which he had failed, but in all the others which were included in that particular period ! He must stay in each " grade " till all the work of that grade was well and thoroughly done, before he could be permitted to proceed with any other work, further on in the uniform prescribed " Course of Study." In this way pupils were not infrequently kept for several terms in the same room, going over the same work again and again, until the required uniformity in all the required studies was reached. It was held that by this method only could symmetry in scholarship and character be attained. If pupils failed beyond a certain fixed limit, they were dropped out of school or expelled. And the chief aim of all this work was to fit pupils to enter classical colleges. These institutions practically formulated the courses of study which all the children were compelled to take if they continued in the public schools at all. In a word, the whole system was faced classical-collegeward, and it was manipulated almost entirely in the interest of these institutions which really 122 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE dominated all the public schools of all the people in this country. Again, the technical classroom methods that were used for giving pupils an education at the time the public schools came into being were almost entirely of the sort used in the days when whatever was learned had to be "committed to memory." From what dim past this practice came can only be surmised; but it probably began as far back as the time when there were no books, when the memory was the only storehouse for the preservation of the record of past events and of knowledge previously obtained. In any event, in the early days of public school exploitation the memory was counted as the chief factor to be utilized and cultivated in all educational processes ; and the selection of studies to be pursued and all the methods used in classrooms were aimed in the direction of cultivating the memory. As a result of this, the ability to reproduce, by the sole aid of memory, whatever had been once learned came to be the test of scholarship, and the pupil who could best relate or write out what his teacher had asked him to " commit to memory " was counted the best scholar. To all this were added, most naturally, frequent written examination tests, in which each pupil's work was proved up by his ability to reproduce, at the arm's length of memory alone, any or all the things which had once been given into the charge of this omnicapacious receptacle. And this was only in harmony with the then accepted psychological theories regarding the memory. The memory was then regarded as a storehouse which would safely keep anything and everything that was well packed into it, and it was universally held by the peda- MORE BITS OF HISTORY 123 gogical theorists of that time that from such storehouse its keeper could reproduce any or all of the things com- mitted to it, instantly, on call. It was further held that the capacity of this storehouse could be increased indefi- nitely, in all directions, by proper exercise and training, and the chief end and aim of all educational methods was to augment its holding area and the amount of stuff it contained. All of which it was claimed would develop the individual to his possible best in every way, make him a good citizen, soldier, father, or what not. More than this, since it was the aim of all the work done in all the schools through all the grades as these things were first formulated to finally fit all their products for future classical college work ; and since it was neces- sary, before pupils could enter such classical colleges, that their attainments at the time of entrance be verified ; and since memory tests of what had been done were the sole proofs relied on as evidence of proficiency in the attainments required, since all these things were so, the ability to stand a classical college entrance exam- ination was made the unswerving requirement for graduation from a public high school. And all of this was only in harmony with the original plan, which was to make the public "high schools" take the place of the old " Academies " (whose sole business it was to fit pupils for classical college entrance by a written memory-examination test of fitness), and to make all the grade schools below the high schools tribu- tary to this ultimate end; which same it was at first supposed all the children of all the people could attain to, according to the logic which was based on the mental theories of that time. Thus the whole scheme went together as nicely as the House that Jack Built. There 124 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE is not a break in the logic of the entire process, the fun- damental premises being admitted. Once more (for we must trace this thread of events to the very end it finally attained), the burden of memory-test written examinations for classical college entrance finally became too hard to bear, and so Mother Necessity went to work to find a way of escape from its hardships ; and she found it, in the shape of " Ac- credited Schools." Dare I pause, just here, to trace the way this came about ? Bear with me a minute, I will be brief. Did you ever stop to think why it is that the last day of a year's school work is called " Commencement " ? There's a reason ! As things used to be in classical colleges, where the name and custom originated, this was the day for the examination of new pupils for the coming term, the en- trance day for the "freshman class" for the next year. To attract as many new students as possible (for students had to be drummed up when there were only the tuition academies to furnish them) the college graduating class of the just-ending year was brought out and exploited and paraded to a degree, so that the on-coming youngsters might see what they themselves might some day become. And on this day all the new students were examined for college entrance ! It was a day of joy for the out-goers, of dread for the in-comers. And very shrewd all this was this examination of freshmen from the academies just at this time; because college commencement time came just at the time the academies closed their season's work ! These academy pupils were all fresh from the studies they had been at work memorizing through the previous fall, winter, and spring ; and the time to examine them and not have them MORE BITS OF HISTORY 125 "flunk" was before they "got rusty"! Many of our fathers were very wise men ! And then, after a while, the colleges became anxious to draw pupils from greater distances. It costs money to travel far, and many pupils were too poor to make a special trip over a long way just to " enter college," and then go back home again and wait three months when they must make another long journey to take up their college work. All of which resulted in the colleges delegating to certain schools the right to examine pupils for entrance to their institutions and of certifying the same, these colleges agreeing to take such certificates in lieu of their own entrance examinations. This way of doing worked for a while, till, finally, the colleges agreed to take the diplomas of certain high schools as evidence of the fitness of the pupils who held them to enter upon collegiate work. High schools whose diplomas will be so accepted by colleges are now called " Accredited Schools," and for several years it has been the highest ambition of practi- cally all the high schools in this country to become accredited schools with as large a number of colleges as possible. For so are their graduates relieved from the terrors of a written memory-test examination of fitness to enter college. And the high school which can present the largest list of colleges which will accept its diplomas in lieu of entrance examination is counted the best high school, the country over. And that is that story. Then came the increased demands of the colleges for larger and more comprehensive "entrance require- ments." These have been augmented, from time to time, till both high school teachers and pupils have been extra-heavily loaded by burdens they have been asked 126 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE to bear for this cause. Sometimes these demands have been exceedingly dictatorial and exacting. It is only a few days since the principal of one of the best high schools in our state showed me a letter from a college which read, " If we continue longer to accept your diplomas as certificates for admission to our insti- tution, you must add so and so to your course." And the principal said he should have to stand for it ; that his patrons would never permit him to lower the stand- ard of their high school ; that they were too proud to admit that there could be any better high school than theirs ; that their sons and daughters must have a right to the best, no matter how hard it had to be worked for, or what conditions were made for its attainment ! With which statement of facts that are almost uni- versal in this country to-day, I close the second bit of history. CHAPTER XV SOME RESULTS Original Methods still used in Most Public Schools Some Excep- tions noted Graduation Day Experiences Small Graduating Classes Reasons for this Over-age Pupils in Lower Grades Attendance in First and Second Year High School Classes compared Latin and Algebra as " Knockouts " for Crowds of Children Statistics in point " Laggards in our Schools " Leonard P. Ayres' Conclusions Report of United States Bureau of Education Illinois Reports Galesburg, Illinois, Report Some Deductions Some Conclusions. SUCH, then, is a brief review of what and how the at- tempt has been made in this country to educate all the children of all the people. For about half a century the enterprise has been exploited almost wholly on the original lines, and for the most part the work is still carried on as it was primarily undertaken. Here and there, in a few large cities and in an occasional town or rural school, efforts have been made to improve some- what on the original plan ; but the vast majority of our public schools, as they are conducted at this moment, are still moving on the lines of their primal projection. This is specially true of the schools in towns and cities of moderate size, those of say 5000 inhabitants or below. In almost every one of these the ambition still is to have their high school " accredited " ; Latin, always, and sometimes Greek, ancient history, algebra, geometry, classical literature, and a few terms in the sciences, which are chiefly taught by memoriter methods 127 128 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE these, in the great majority of cases, constitute the uniform and inflexible course of study of these schools, and all graduates are required to qualify in these studies if they receive diplomas. In these schools the rule is, "take these studies if you stay in school at all." In saying this, I speak from a large experience which I have gathered from visiting schools of this class in a great majority of states in the Union. For the past fifteen years I have had occasion to travel through these states, and to visit cities and towns of the classes referred to, and wherever I have gone I have made it a point to visit the schools and carefully observe the work done in them. Add to this the fact that for the past ten years I have made from a dozen to twenty " graduating addresses " every season, and that these have been given in all parts of the country east of the Rocky Mountains, a fact that has put me in close touch with the actual output of these schools, and the reader will see that I have had a good opportunity to know what I am talking about. Further, everywhere that I have made a graduating address, I have made it a point to inquire about the di- plomas that were granted, what requirements they called for, and what purpose they would serve. And it has been a rare thing for me to find an exception to the " regular rule " I have noted in this chapter. In nearly every case, the high school was " accredited " ; the diploma would admit to one or more colleges, all diplomas were uniform, and no pupils were permitted to graduate who had not met their requirements. Occasionally I have found a school where this rigorous method did not obtain, but such have been rare. I recall one school, where diplomas of two or more kinds SOME RESULTS 129 were awarded, one sort to the regular classical students, and another to those who had taken a " mixed course." In this school the students who received classical diplomas were dressed in cap and gown, and sat on the platform during the graduation exercises. The other graduates were clad in their best clothes only, and sat at the side of the platform, apparently as a sign that they were not worthy of the high calling to which their classical mates had attained. I merely mention this case in passing. Let the reader think of what it stands for, and form his own conclusions. As I review these various " commencements " which I have attended, and think of the size of the classes that have been graduated on these occasions, and compared these with the entering classes of which these graduates were a part, I have been struck, time and again, with a fact that is exceedingly significant when viewed from the standpoint of an attempt to educate all the children of all the people. This is what these schools have been honestly trying to do, and it is not unfair to look upon these graduating classes as a just measure of how well they have succeeded in this endeavor. The original plan, as outlined by Horace Mann, was to have all who entered these schools graduate therefrom. Because it was supposed this could be done, it was claimed that it was right to tax all the people, that all their children might compass this greatly-to-be-desired accomplish- ment. I doubt if the classes I have seen graduate would average ten per cent of the enrollment of their entering classes in the primary rooms. And the question is, Where are the other ninety per cent? Why are they not in their places on graduation day? What is the cause of this great falling off in the membership of the 130 ALL THE CHILDREN OF ALL THE PEOPLE classes as the years of school- life have passed by ? These are fair questions, and pertinent as well. Of course, some of each original class are dead. Some have moved away ; but the towns in which the members of these classes lived have been growing towns, and where some have moved away, others have come to take their places, enough to make the loss from this cause good, if that were the real reason for the decline in class numbers. But there is no need of beating about the bush, when the real reason for this decline is well known by all who are acquainted with the facts in the case. The simple truth is that the vast majority of the pupils who have dropped out of school as the years of school life came and went, have done so because they could not, or at least did not, do the work which it was required they should do if they stayed in school at all. At every grade examination there have been numbers of failures to "pass," with consequent stay-where-you-are-and-do-it-