IDEALISM IN EDUCATION 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 KW VORK BOSTON CHICAGO 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN ft CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
IDEALISM IN EDUCATION 
 
 OR 
 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES IN THE MAKING OF 
 MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 BY 
 
 HERMAN HARRELL HORNE, PH.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AND OF THE HISTORY 
 
 OF EDUCATION, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY; AUTHOR OF "THE 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION " AND " THE PSYCHOLOGICAL 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION" 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1910 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
ConrwcHT, 1910, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Setupmndelectrotyped. Publuhed November, 9 x, 
 
 .. ........ 
 
 .. . 
 
 ...... . . . . 
 
 .......*. 
 
 . _ . Kortooot 
 J. 8. Owhlng Co.-B^rlck A Smith Co. 
 Horwood, IM^ U.8^. 
 
TO 
 B. W. H. 
 
 224443 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IDEALISM finds ideas and purposes to be the reali- 
 ties of existence ; and personality, which is the union 
 of ideas and purposes, to be the ultimate reality. 
 These views are in contrast with all forms of mate- 
 rialism which would reduce ideas and purposes to 
 some form of physical existence. 
 
 Educating is the purposeful providing of an envi- 
 ronment ; at bottom it is personality in and behind 
 the environment that counts most; so educating is 
 really a relation between personalities of different 
 degrees of maturity. 
 
 If these views are correct, it is evident that idealism 
 is the true philosophy in educating. The relation 
 between teachers and pupils, being personal and recip- 
 rocal, is something more than materialism can either 
 allow or explain, than the commercialism of trade 
 can understand, than any form of egoism can attain. 
 It is instructive for us in an age of material progress 
 and salary questions to remember that Thoreau wrote 
 down in " Walden " : "I have thoroughly tried school- 
 keeping, and found that my expenses were in pro- 
 portion, or rather out of proportion, to my income, 
 for I was obliged to dress and train, not to say think 
 and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into the 
 bargain. As I did not teach for the good of my 
 
 vii 
 
via Preface 
 
 fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a 
 failure." 
 
 In the pages of this book, idealism in educating 
 is pictured as combining both science and philosophy 
 in the practical aim of man-making. In the first 
 chapters, on a scientific basis, we have ethical idealism, 
 in which men and women as unfolding personalities 
 are viewed as the worthiest objects of human en- 
 deavor. In the last chapter we have philosophical 
 idealism, in which human personalities are viewed 
 as the indistinct but developing images of the Divine 
 Personality. 
 
 Two persons who have lately left us rich educa- 
 tional legacies in their writings have stated, the one, 
 on a scientific basis, our practical aim, the other, on 
 a philosophical basis, our idealistic interpretation. 
 
 At the conclusion of his "System of Synthetic 
 Philosophy," Herbert Spencer, the agnostic altruist, 
 wrote : " Hereafter, the highest ambition of the be- 
 neficent will be to have a share even though an 
 utterly inappreciable and unknown share in the 
 ' Making of Man/ Experience occasionally shows 
 that there may arise extreme interest in pursuing 
 entirely unselfish ends; and as time goes on, there 
 will be more and more of those whose unselfish end 
 will be the further evolution of Humanity. While 
 contemplating from the heights of thought that far- 
 off life of the race never to be enjoyed by them, but 
 only by a remote posterity, they will feel a calm 
 pleasure in the consciousness of having aided the 
 advance towards it." 
 
 America has recently lost an idealist in education. 
 
Preface 
 
 IX 
 
 Dr. W. T. Harris died November 5, 1909. Toward 
 the conclusion of his " Psychologic Foundations of 
 Education" (p. 38.3), he wrote: "According to the 
 current evolutionary view, all nature is a struggle for 
 survival of forms. Of the organic forms, the plant 
 serves the animal and yields to him. The animal 
 in turn yields to man. Man, in fact, conquers all 
 nature. Here the law of the survival of the fittest 
 comes to mean the survival of individuals that have 
 most intelligence. All nature, it would seem, is a 
 process for originating individuality and developing 
 it into rational being. Looked at theologically, this 
 is satisfactory. Nature is the creation of souls. It 
 implies, of course, the supremacy of mind, since all 
 its lower processes exist for the production of spirit- 
 ual beings they depend on mind, so to speak, and 
 demonstrate the substantiality of mind. Mind is the 
 final cause and purpose of nature. This again im- 
 plies that mind creates nature to reflect it. God 
 creates nature, and through nature creates spiritual 
 beings who participate in his blessedness. Hence 
 nature presupposes a God of grace and good will 
 toward his creatures. " 
 
 In the spirit of these quotations from two great 
 but very different educators, this book is written. 
 It would combine the practical aim of Spencer to 
 assist in the evolution of humanity with the ideal- 
 istic philosophy of Harris. The aim of Spencer is 
 new, it being characteristic only of the biological 
 nineteenth century, and after, to assign man's "Golden 
 Age " to the future ; the philosophy of Harris is in 
 line with the traditions of Hegel and Plato. 
 
x Preface 
 
 / The forces that make men and women I find to be 
 heredity, environment, and will. Education is not 
 a fourth elemental force, but it does its work in 
 cooperation with these three. Education, through 
 public opinion, influences, and may come to control, 
 the force of heredity; it is itself a part of the physi- 
 cal and social environment ; it assists in the for- 
 mation of will. By consciously directing, through 
 education and otherwise, these forces, we shall in 
 time have the true superman of our modern dreams, 
 as well as the ideal people of Plato's Republic. 
 But, unlike Plato and Shaw, we shall have to work 
 through, not without, the family as an institu- 
 tion. 
 
 Since Sir Francis Galton a generation ago began 
 to work on this question, the art of securing good 
 heredity has come to be known as eugenics. For 
 "good environments" J. A. Thomson uses the term 
 "eutopia"; not the Utopia (no-where) of Sir Thomas 
 More, but the "good-where." To complete the trio, 
 for the " good will " I have ventured to use "eunoia," 
 a classical and also New Testament Greek word 
 (Plat " Gorg. M 486 A ; Eph. 6:7, et al.\ whose root 
 reminds us of Anaxagoras and his ordering principle, 
 jx>fc, and also appears in certain English derivatives, 
 as noetic, noology, etc. The term "eunoia" suggests 
 feeling and acting in accord with knowledge, and 
 thus continues the traditions of Socratic intellectual- 
 / ism. We can agree with the Greeks that there is no 
 virtue without knowledge, though we have to add 
 there may be knowledge without virtue. But in the 
 latter case the eunoia has not been formed. These 
 
Preface 
 
 XI 
 
 three " eu's " together constitute the empirical first 
 principles in the making of men and women. 
 
 The third element, that of will, is the one least 
 regarded in such discussions as this tries to be, as so 
 much of our science manages its explanations only 
 in physical terms. For this reason I have paid 
 especial attention to it, representing as it does the 
 really indispensable element of individuality in man- 
 making. Though I have rarely been able to discuss 
 the matter of will with teachers and students without 
 having questions concerning " free-will " naturally 
 arise, it seemed after much reflection best on the 
 whole to reserve the treatment of this large problem 
 till another occasion. Our argument indeed implies 
 human freedom, but its adequate discussion would 
 have taken us too far afield from the main line of 
 thought. This I discovered after having written on 
 this problem as briefly as possible. 
 
 Really it requires a biologist, such as I am not, 
 as well as a psychologist and philosopher, such as I 
 try to be, to discuss these topics in an ultimate way. 
 But I have sat gratefully at the feet of the biologists 
 and have sought to secure the larger doctrines at least 
 that they teach concerning the life-problem. For a 
 review and criticism of the somewhat technical pages 
 1 6- 1 8, on heredity, I am indebted to Professor W. E. 
 Castle, of Harvard. 
 
 That the conclusions of this book go beyond the 
 forces of heredity and environment into the region 
 of individual will in the explanation of men and 
 women is to be credited rather to the philosophy 
 of life that I hold than to the science I have learned. 
 
xii Preface 
 
 " Freedom is the truth of necessity," said Hegel ; 
 "mechanism is universal but secondary to teleology," 
 said Lotze; and in philosophy I find the freedom 
 and the purpose of the existence whose necessity and 
 mechanism science lays bare. We need to-day a 
 popular philosophy that shows how the mechanism 
 of science is itself a product of the free inquiring 
 spirit of man. To me it is a sad spectacle to see 
 keenly intelligent men throwing themselves as a mass 
 of mere matter before the Juggernaut of scientific 
 necessity which they themselves have constructed. 
 
 The following pages are not such a popular phi- 
 losophy ; perhaps they can claim, however, to be an 
 application of such a philosophy. Please let no 
 expert in these subjects of heredity, environment, 
 will, mechanism, and teleology suppose that I have 
 contemplated an addition to our human knowledge 
 in these pages. My more modest and less conspicu- 
 ous purpose has been to help make available for 
 those who love children and the race what the experts 
 already know. 
 
 But there is one thing I have had in mind. Our 
 educational procedure in America has been what the 
 philosopher Kant would call " dogmatic, 1 ' that is, we 
 have gone on somewhat blindly believing in educa- 
 tion and in its ability to make men and women, as 
 Kant himself indeed did, without once thoroughly rais- 
 ing the question whether and to what extent educa- 
 tion could make a man. There are many signs 
 today that "A Critique of Education" would be 
 welcome. Its problem would be to mark out the 
 limits of education. The following pages by making 
 
Preface xiii 
 
 us aware of such limits may at least serve, I trust, 
 as prolegomena to such an educational criticism. 
 
 Concerning the origin of the work, " Please come 
 and tell us some of the things we all believe and 
 work for without having the time to formulate or 
 even think about," is the message between the lines 
 that I have read in many invitations to address gath- 
 erings of teachers, high-school commencement audi- 
 ences, women's clubs, church conferences, and similar 
 bodies. Upon many such occasions in different 
 places, I have spoken in a free and informal way 
 upon "The Making of Men and Women." Each 
 time my auditors have encouraged me to return to 
 the theme with greater zest, and each return has 
 emphasized in my own mind the greatness, the time- 
 liness, and the endlessness of this topic. In more 
 systematic form the material has been presented in 
 the classroom to my former Dartmouth students; 
 also at the summer session of the University of Cali- 
 fornia, 1909; also, during the past winter, in the 
 Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, as one of 
 the extra-mural courses of New York University. 
 Should this volume fall into the hands of a reader 
 who finds it in places already familiar, I hope it will 
 remind him pleasantly of the time we discussed these 
 matters of our common interest face to face. And 
 should students of my "Philosophy of Education" 
 find only an expansion here of certain views there 
 briefly expressed on pages 252-254, they would be 
 correct in considering this but the " sequel " to that, 
 and they would be following the line of development 
 my own thought has taken in the past few years. 
 
xiv Preface 
 
 It is always hazardous to anticipate what place a 
 book may make for itself. Our colleges and univer- 
 sities, normal schools and teachers' reading circles, 
 are studying what has come to be called " the princi- 
 ples of education." Several excellent recent texts on 
 this general subject have appeared ; some of these 
 texts, however, purposely omit any account of the 
 philosophical foundations of school work. There is 
 an almost universal need for clear views, if they may 
 be had, on the first principles, practical and theoretical, 
 in the science and in the philosophy of educating and 
 man-making. This book tries to supply this need ; it 
 could be used in the courses above indicated either as i 
 a main, or as a supplementary, text And if all those 
 parents, teachers, and social workers who have the 
 will to help the present generation and the future 
 race should find here some light, guidance, and in- 
 spiration, it would be very gratifying to the author. 
 
 For the busy person who reads prefaces and dips 
 into pages here and there, the scope of this discus- 
 sion will be evident from a glance at the Table of 
 Contents. First, we must try to state the problem I 
 of education in man-making (Chap. I). Then we 
 must treat of education in its relation to each of the 
 elements of man-making ; viz., heredity, environment, 
 and will (Chaps. II, III, IV). Finally, having reached j 
 the limits of our knowledge, we can exercise the 
 human privilege of following our thoughts into the ^ 
 speculative region beyond knowledge and inquire , 
 what the philosophy of these processes of man- 
 making may be (Chap. V). 
 
 As I write these final words, the earth's atmosphere, 
 
Preface xv 
 
 laden with the smoke and dust of the day's work, 
 catches in splendor the rays of the summer sun de- 
 clining toward the west; so do even the tokens of 
 toil add new glories to the evening of rest. 
 
 LEONIA, NEW JERSEY, 
 June 30, 1910. 
 
ANALYTIC TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION IN MAN-MAKING 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 . Man-making the Occupation of the Ages i 
 
 2. Mind in our Universe 2 
 
 3. From Unconscious to Conscious Evolution ... 3 
 
 4. Man's Dream of Self-improvement .... 3 
 
 5. Knowledge and Use of Life Forces Demanded . . 5 
 
 6. The Forces of Man-making 5 
 
 7. Statement of our Problem 6 
 
 8. The Greatness of this Problem 8 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 HEREDITY AND EDUCATION 
 
 i. The Fundamental Place of Heredity in Life 10 
 
 (1) The Witness of Biology 10 
 
 (2) Illustrations of Heredity . . . . .11 
 
 (3) Inheritance of Criminality .... 13 
 
 (4) Heredity in Literature 14 
 
 The Nature of Heredity 15 
 
 (1) The Two Meanings of the Term ... 15 
 
 (2) The Nature of Physical Heredity . . 15 
 
 (3) The Law of Heredity 16 
 
 (4) Its Application to the Physique . .16 
 
 (5) The Work of Mendel 17 
 
 (6) The Law of Sir Francis Galton 18 
 
 (7) Application of the Law of Heredity to Mind . 19 
 
 xvii 
 
xviii Analytic Table of Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 (8) Inheritance of Mental and Moral Traits . . 20 
 
 (9) Reversion to the Normal 22 
 
 (10) Inbreeding 22 
 
 (u) Gradual Appearance of Heredity ... 23 
 
 3. The Inheritance of Acquired Characters ... 24 
 
 (1) The Nature of Acquired Characters ... 24 
 
 (2) Are they Inherited ? 24 
 
 (3) The Affirmative 25 
 
 (4) The Negative Vj 
 
 (5) Conclusion 29 
 
 4. Capacity as an Inheritance 30 
 
 (1) What we Inherit 30 
 
 (2) Capacity 30 
 
 (3) The Capacity is General 31 
 
 We inherit Capacity, not Character ... 32 
 
 5. The Use of Heredity in making Progress ... 32 
 
 1 i ) The Possibility of Progress in Evolution . . 32 
 
 (2) Division of Responsibility . . . . 33 
 
 (3) Heredity the Truth of Predestination . . 33 
 
 6. The Practical Bearings of this Discussion 35 
 
 (1) The Relation of Education to Heredity . . 35 
 
 (2) The Elementary Way to improve the Race . 35 
 
 (3) A Duty of Parents and Teachers ... 36 
 
 (4) Rational Sexual Selection .... 38 
 
 (5) "Race Suicide" 39 
 
 (6) Segregation of the Unfit 41 
 
 (7) Develop the Strong Points of Heredity . . 43 
 
 (8) Arouse Dormant Heredity . 44 
 
 (9) Study the Individual Child .... 45 
 (10) The Theory of Recapitulation .... 46 
 (u) Right Immigration 47 
 
 (12) Marriage Tests 48 
 
 (13) The Rights of Women 48 
 
 (14) Outdoor Life for Women .... 50 
 
 (15) Prenatal Influence 5 1 
 
 (16) Universal Peace 52 
 
Analytic Table of Contents xix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 (17) Is Philanthropy Misguided? 53 
 
 (18) The First Principle of Man-making . . 55 
 
 The Abuse of the Law of Heredity . . . 55 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 ENVIRONMENT AND EDUCATION 
 
 The Nature of Environment 61 
 
 (1) Meaning of the Term 61 
 
 (2) The Kinds of Environment .... 62 
 
 The General Influence of Environment ... 64 
 
 (1) The Law of Environment .... 64 
 
 (2) Modification of Organism by Environment . 64 
 
 (3) Modification of Environment by the Organism . 65 
 
 (4) Resulting Likeness between Organism and En- 
 
 vironment 65 
 
 (5) Illustrations of Adaptation to Environment . 66 
 
 (6) Explanation of the Law of Adaptation . . 67 
 
 (7) The Provision of Opportunity by Environment 67 
 
 The Influence of the Physical Environment ... 68 
 
 (1 ) The Development of Latent Heredity . . 68 
 
 (2) Atrophy through Disuse 68 
 
 (3) Selection, not Production 69 
 
 (4) The Exertion of Pressure ..... 70 
 
 (5) The Effects of Nutrition 70 
 
 (6) The Explanation of Variation . . . .71 
 
 (7) Geography and Man 71 
 
 The Influence of the Social Environment 73 
 
 (1) Contrast with the Physical Environment . . 73 
 
 (2) Competition 74 
 
 (3) Imitation 74 
 
 (4) Suggestion 75 
 
 (5) Instruction 77 
 
 (6) Home, School, and Community ... 77 
 
 Personal Variations in the Social Environment . . 79 
 
 (i) The Genius 79 
 
xx Analytic Table of Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 (2) The Outcast 80 
 
 (3) The Average 80 
 
 6. The Practical Bearings of this Discussion ... 80 
 
 (1) Our Duty to Environment . . . .81 
 
 (2) The Problem of handling Environment . . 82 
 
 (3) Evils in the American Environment ... 83 
 
 (4) Suggestions toward controlling Environment . 84 
 
 (5) Tuberculosis and the School . . . .91 
 
 (6) The Second Principle of Man-making . . 92 
 
 7. The Abuse of the Law of Environment ... 92 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 WILL AND EDUCATION 
 
 1. The Meaning of Will 96 
 
 2. The Historic Recognition of the Individual ... 97 
 
 (1 ) The Social vs. the Individual .... 97 
 
 (2) Among Primitive Peoples 99 
 
 (3) Among Oriental Peoples 100 
 
 (4) Among the Greeks 101 
 
 (5) Among the Romans 102 
 
 (6) Among the Teutons 103 
 
 (7) In Christianity 105 
 
 3. Modern Estimates of the Individual .... 109 
 
 (1) The Renaissance 109 
 
 (2) The Reformation 109 
 
 (3) The French Revolution no 
 
 (4) Anarchism vs. Socialism no 
 
 (5) Eighteenth Century Exaggeration of Will . in 
 
 (6) Nineteenth Century Minimizing of Will . .112 
 
 4. Future Reconciliation of Universalism and Individualism 1 1 5 
 
 (1 ) The Meeting of Extremes . . . .115 
 
 (2) Illustrations 116 
 
 (3) The Goal of Human Development . . 
 
 (4) Summary of the Recognition of Individuality . 117 
 
Analytic Table of Contents xxi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 5. Anticipations of Will in the Discussions of Heredity 
 
 and Environment . . . . . .118 
 
 6. The Contribution of Will to Man-making . . .119 
 
 (1) Development or Neglect of Inherited Capacity . 120 
 
 (2) Use or Abuse of Environing Opportunity . .120 
 
 (3) The Law of Will in Man-making . . .122 
 
 (4) The Essence of Will 123 
 
 (5) From Thought to Destiny . . . .123 
 
 7. The Practical Bearings of this Discussion . . .125 
 
 (i) The Aim in Educating the Will . . .126 
 *-""~(2) Education as socializing the Individual and in- 
 dividualizing Society 126 
 
 (3) Principles in educating the Will . . 127 
 
 (4) The Third Principle of Man-making . . 140 
 
 8. Theoretical and Practical Summary of Man-making . 140 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MAN-MAKING 
 
 1. The Nature and Method of Philosophy . . . 145 
 
 2. Typical Philosophies 146 
 
 3. A Review of Racial Progress 149 
 
 4. How the Race might Progress ..... 162 
 
 5 . The Nature of Progress . . . . . . 1 64 
 
 6. The Philosophy of the Man-making Forces . . 168 
 
 (1) Of Heredity 168 
 
 (2) Of Environment 169 
 
 (3) Of Will 169 
 
 (4) Of their Cooperation . . . . .171 
 
 7. Resulting Conception of Nature 173 
 
 8. Resulting Conception of God 174 
 
 9. Idealism in Educating . . . . . .176 
 
 10. The Last Principle of Man-making . . . . 177 
 
IDEALISM IN EDUCATION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION IN MAN-MAKING 
 
 THE making of men and women, this is the Man-making 
 occupation of the ages. The world has been busy \ 
 these aeons in bringing forth a man. By what A s es ' 
 method the world has worked, whether by the Lapla- 
 cian nebular hypothesis or by the new Chamberlain 
 planitesimal hypothesis, we are not sure. What 
 other products, higher or lower than man, whether 
 on Mars as surmised by Professor Lowell or on 
 other planets, the world has produced, we cannot 
 say. Our ignorance as to nature's vaster processes 
 and products is full, and we see but a little way. 
 But out of the fulness of our ignorance and the 
 emptiness of our knowledge, we are able to assert 
 that man is what the labor of the heavens and the 
 earth has brought forth. He stands at the summit of 
 the evolutionary process as so far unfolded. What 
 greater beings may later arise we can only surmise. 
 But whatever they may be, man is on the way 
 toward them. The universe of the past has pro- 
 duced man as its highest product, so far as his 
 knowledge can discover, and the universe of the 
 future will use man in any greater work it may have 
 
 B I 
 
2 : /Idealism in Education 
 
 in hand on our planet Small wonder that Professor 
 Fiske l saw that in the light of his great origin man 
 might anticipate a great destiny. Otherwise we 
 should have to write "unreason" at the heart of 
 the universe, which was able to begin but not able 
 to complete a masterpiece. This, however, we are 
 loath to do in view of what man's poor reason has 
 already been able to see of rationality in the universe 
 at large. 
 
 There is Man must beware of easily assuming that all 
 
 \j l ^cne lT na ture is unconscious, that the animals alone share 
 consciousness with him, that he alone is self-con- 
 scious. It may be true, but we do not know enough 
 as yet to assert it. Rather our minds must be open 
 to the possibility of consciousness in both directions, 
 toward the infinitely small and toward the infinitely 
 large. The electron may turn out to be, as Leibniz 
 might have supposed, a point of conscious force, 
 and the whole stellar universe may be only the body 
 of a wondrously beautiful spirit. We do not know 
 enough to deny the possibility of these things ; and 
 some think, Fechner for one, we know enough to 
 affirm their actuality. In any event we live in a 
 universe where mind is, whether its limits must be 
 drawn far or near. 
 
 The Gremi- Man may exalt himself, for he is the highest self- 
 consc * ous creature he knows; he must also humble 
 himself, for he lives in a universe of which he is 
 very ignorant, and whose confines it is easy for his 
 imagination to people with beings superior to hiii 
 Man must not be Philistine enough to suppose his 
 1 John Fiskc, "The Dcitiny of Man," Boston, 1892. 
 
Problem of Education in Man-making 3 
 
 existence is the centre of spiritual gravity, nor must 
 he be abject enough to suppose his existence does 
 not weigh in the general balance of things.. ., 
 
 Now the natural processes by which this exalted FromUncon- 
 and humble creature, man, was produced we suppose, conscious 
 without knowing, to have been unconscious. The Evolution, 
 nebula or the planitesimals were, but knew not that 
 they were. So we suppose. And through the action 
 of laws inherent in this world-evolving stuff, living 
 matter, plants, animals, and man, came about. The 
 evolution of a conscious being was by unconscious 
 processes. So science commonly supposes ; but 
 whether philosophy may be compelled to revise this 
 conclusion we may later inquire in our final chapter. 
 But man, the conscious being, studies out the un- 
 conscious processes whereby he was produced. Thus 
 he becomes informed as to the forces that made him. 
 Through understanding these forces, he can to an 
 extent control them. Thus he begins to assist in 
 his own future making. So what was unconscious 
 evolution produces a conscious man who begins to 
 take part in his own making. Thus the progress 
 is from unconscious evolution through man to con- 
 scious evolution. 
 
 We of this generation are just realizing that hu- Man's 
 manity is a process of conscious evolution. This J 
 thought we have from the handling of the Darwinian provement. 
 conclusions by the students of mind. Man by his in- 
 telligence has won the information from the universe 
 concerning the processes whereby it made him ; these 
 processes he can partly control ; thus he becomes a 
 conscious partner with his mother nature in his own 
 
4 Idealism in Education 
 
 future making. So we catch the vision in fact of the 
 greater man which Plato in his " Republic " caught in 
 fancy. Our times are charged with the sense of the 
 potencies of future manhood. Burbank, working em- 
 pirically, and De Vries, working scientifically, have 
 wrought wonders in producing new specimens of 
 beautiful and useful flowers and plants. The breeders 
 of animals of superior blood and pedigree have for 
 ages pointed the way toward the improvement of the 
 human stock. Galton and Pearson have founded the 
 new science of eugenics to provide the starting-point 
 for a new race of men. Nietzsche and Shaw put the 
 longings of the time for the superman into prose and 
 poetry. The dream of a new manhood seems realiz- 
 able. Nature by processes now known to us produced 
 man in a long period of time; why may not the 
 greater man be produced by controlling these pro- 
 cesses in a shorter period of time ? Where conscious- 
 ness comes in to control unconscious processes, the 
 evolution and mutation may be by leaps and bounds. 
 Human society contains now many variations from 
 highest leader to lowest follower. By the conscious 
 manipulation of the force which produced the highest, 
 why may not the level of the lowest be indefinitely 
 raised, and the general average of humanity be lifted ? 
 So at least runs the dream at present concerning the 
 improvement of the human species. 
 
 And it is possible really to increase the ability of 
 the human stock. Reason, observation, experience, 
 and the possibility of progress, all indicate that the 
 conscious effort of man can so second the unconscious 
 labors of nature that time may be abridged and that 
 
Problem of Education in Man-making 5 
 
 human powers may be multiplied. In any case men- 
 tal endowments already present may be raised to the 
 ?zth power, and at best we know not what surprises 
 to anticipate in the way of new mental attainments. 
 
 The realization of the dream concerning the im- Knowledge 
 provement of man demands a wide understanding on ^fe i^rcef 
 the part of the people of those processes whereby we demanded, 
 have come to be what we are, and the use of such 
 knowledge. The people in the community most con- 
 cerned in the making of the new type of men and 
 women, this most promising and practical of all human 
 endeavors, are naturally the parents, the citizens, and 
 the teachers. To them is committed, if they only 
 knew it, the conscious manipulation of those forces 
 which determine the human character. They are 
 answering the question in fact, whether they know 
 it or not, concerning the men and women of the 
 coming ages. 
 
 But what are the forces that make men and women ? The Forces 
 As the chemist by electrolysis dissolves the complex 
 liquid we call water into its constituent elements, so 
 our question by the analysis of thought would separate 
 complex human nature into its constituent elements. 
 Let us recall an utterance of Shakespeare. " Some 
 men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some 
 have greatness thrust upon them." " Some men are 
 born great," this is the element of heredity. " Some 
 have greatness thrust upon them," this is the ele- 
 ment of environment. "Some achieve greatness," 
 this is the element of individual will. Only, as a 
 matter of fact, each of these elements helps to consti- 
 tute every man. Heredity, environment, and will are 
 
Idealism in Education 
 
 
 the names by which we call the elements that in their 
 mixing make men and women. 
 
 Our Problem. At this point we catch sight of our problem, viz., 
 what are the first principles in the making of men and 
 women ? How much can education aid in this process ? 
 To what extent are the forces of heredity, environ- 
 ment, and will subject to the influence of education ? 
 What can teachers, parents, and citizens do in the 
 way of controlling these forces through educational 
 insight and direction, and otherwise ? And particu- 
 larly, at the end, is it possible to unify and spiritualize 
 the processes of man-making? In the following 
 chapters it is our purpose, first, to consider the main 
 facts concerning heredity, environment, and will; in 
 each case to suggest how far education can utilize these 
 forces in producing upon the earth a greater race of 
 dwellers ; and in the last chapter to find, if we can, the 
 philosophy of the processes of man-making. 
 
 Thomion The grip of our problem is so manifest in the fol- 
 
 lowing passage from Thomson, and as it is so helpful 
 to us to see a problem whole, I will transcribe his words 
 here: "Since the issues of the individual life are in 
 great part determined by what the living creature is 
 or has to start with, in virtue of its hereditary rel 
 to parents and ancestors, we cannot disregard the facts 
 of heredity in our interpretation of the past, our con- 
 duct in the present, or our forecasting of the future. 
 Great importance undoubtedly attaches to Environ- 
 ment in the widest sense, food, climate, housing, 
 scenery, and the animate milieu ; and to Function in 
 the widest sense, exercise, education, occupation, or 
 the lack of these ; but all these potent influences act 
 
Problem of Education in Man-making 7 
 
 upon an organism whose fundamental nature is deter- 
 mined, but not rigidly fixed, by its Heredity, that is, 
 we repeat, by its genetic relation to its forebears." 1 
 
 The recent notable eugenic work of Dr. Saleeby saieeby 
 shows a similar grasp of the elements involved in the <i uoted ' 
 problem, if only we will bring together passages from 
 different places, as his tendency is to stress heredity 
 and environment to the practical exclusion of will, ex- 
 cept when incidentally it forces its way unobserved 
 into the discussion. He writes: "Granted that the 
 highest of all objects is the making of worthy human 
 beings, it is quite evident that we must attend equally 
 to the two factors which determine all human life 
 heredity and environment. . . . The incomparable 
 superiority of intelligence depends upon its limitless 
 and creative character, in virtue of which, as Disraeli 
 puts it, 'men are not the creatures of circumstances; 
 circumstances are the creatures of men.' . . . We 
 may also dismiss, as based upon nothing better, the 
 idea that the great [national] tragedies of history 
 were necessary events at all. We must look else- 
 where than amongst the inherent and necessary fac- 
 tors of racial life for the causes which determine these 
 tragedies ; and we shall be entitled to assume as con- 
 ceivable the proposition that, notwithstanding the con- 
 sistent fall of all our predecessors, the causes are not 
 inevitable, but, being external and environmental, may 
 possibly be controlled : man being not only creature 
 but creator also." 2 No advocate of will as a men- 
 
 1 Thomson, " Heredity," N. Y., 1908. 
 
 2 Saleeby, " Parenthood and Race-Culture," N. Y., 1909, pp. 29, 149, 
 257-258. 
 
8 Idealism in Education 
 
 tionable force in the making of individuals and of 
 nations would ask for more than the two last passages 
 give, while the first passage grants a little more than 
 sufficient emphasis to the other two factors. 
 
 The solution of this problem, theoretically and 
 practically, is worth all the time we can give to it, 
 and more. It is the problem that underlies all 
 problems. How to assist nature in making the 
 greater man is the fundamental question that faces 
 men in the present stage of their evolution. Man 
 is the most valuable thing we know, far more 
 valuable than any or all of his possessions. Ours is 
 a commercial age, they say. But the man is greater 
 than a sheep. Ours is a machine age, they also 
 say. But the man that runs the machine possesses 
 the value. Both the practical captains and the theo- 
 retical students of industry and machinery put the 
 emphasis on the man. It is still the greater type of 
 man for whom society waits and longs, the more 
 efficient man both to protect and to serve, the man 
 of the prophetic conception who shall be " as a hiding 
 place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest ; 
 as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a 
 great rock in a weary land." 
 
 REFERENCES ON CHAPTER I 
 
 CALDERWOOD, H., Evolution and Man's Place in Nature, Lon- 
 don, 1893. 
 
 DARWIN, C, The Descent of Man, N. Y., 2d Ed., Rep. 1906. 
 DRUMMOND, H. f The Ascent of Man, N. Y., 1894. 
 FISKE, J., The Destiny of Man, Boston, 1892. 
 
Problem of Education in Man-making 9 
 
 HAECKEL, E., The Evolution of Man (Tr. McCabe), 5th Ed., 
 
 N.Y., 1910. 
 HIBBEN, J. G., "The Philosophical Aspects of Evolution," 
 
 Philosophical Review, March, 1910. 
 HUXLEY, T. H., Man's Place in Nature, N. Y., 1896. 
 JORDAN AND KELLOGG, Evolution and Animal Life, Chap. XXI, 
 
 N. Y., 1907. 
 
 SALEEBY, C. W., Parenthood and Race Culture, N. Y., 1909. 
 TYLER, J. M., The Whence and Whither of Man, N. Y., 1897. 
 
 Man in the Light of Evolution, Boston, 1899. 
 
 WELLS, H. G., A Modern Utopia, London, 1905. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The Wimett 
 
 :. 
 
 HEREDITY AND EDUCATION 
 
 LEST we get lost in the many details of this 
 chapter, I propose that we follow this general out- 
 line, the stages in which will be indicated in the 
 discussion as we proceed. First, we must consider 
 the fundamental place of heredity in life ; then, the 
 nature of heredity ; then, the mooted question of 
 the inheritance of acquired characteristics ; then, 
 capacity as an inheritance ; then, the use of heredity 
 in making progress ; then, the practical bearings 
 of heredity on education ; and finally, lest heredity 
 be unduly magnified, the abuse of the law of heredity. 
 If any remain undaunted after this outlay, we will 
 proceed. The general reader will of course exercise 
 his privilege in electing his courses. 
 
 The first in time and importance of the elements 
 of man-making is heredity. Biology indeed ordina- 
 rily teaches that heredity and environment made the 
 organism, animal and human. It abstracts from any 
 influence the individual will may exert in the develop- 
 ment of the organism. So far as education is con- 
 cerned, biology sees in it but one of the many 
 influences of the environment exerted upon the 
 organism ; and further, biology commonly teaches 
 that the education of this generation exerts no in- 
 fluence by means of physical heredity upon the 
 
 10 
 
Heredity and Education n 
 
 next generation ; the education of one individual is so 
 external an addition to his nervous make-up that his 
 offspring show no traces of it in their physique. 
 Consequently biology believes that the influence of 
 education in the making of man is limited in two 
 very important respects, viz., first, by the other in- 
 fluential elements of the environment, and second, 
 through the stoppage of educational results with 
 the generation upon which teachers work. Some 
 students of the subject find a certain grim pleasure 
 in thinking that the succeeding generations are not 
 burdened by the educational and other failures of 
 this generation, that we start fresh with nature's 
 handiwork in each new generation unencumbered by 
 man's past bungling. This latter question will con- 
 cern us later when we come to discuss the so-called 
 " inheritance of acquired characters." Meanwhile 
 it is important to hold in mind the fundamental place 
 biology assigns to heredity in the production of new 
 organisms, and the two respects in which biology 
 considers the influence of education to be limited. 
 
 A base illustrating the influence of heredity as illustrations 
 against that of education is furnished by the Filipino of Heredit y- 
 Pedrito, a member of the Negrito tribe, who was Pedrito. 
 thoroughly educated in the languages by an interested 
 Bostonian. Pedrito travelled extensively, but finally 
 disappeared, only to be accidentally discovered later 
 by a German scientist among his native tribesmen. 
 One is reminded of Carlyle's saying, "Civilization 
 is only an envelope under which the savage nature 
 of man can burn forever with an infernal fire." 
 
 A similar instance is that of Meme, an Eskimo Memo. 
 
12 Idealism in Education 
 
 youth, who was brought to New York by Commander 
 Peary in 1896, together with a small party of Eskimos. 
 The others all died of tuberculosis. Meme came from 
 the region of the Humboldt Glacier on the northwest 
 coast of Greenland; his people live within two hundred 
 and eighty miles of the pole, being the most northerly 
 race. His father, who made one of the party, also 
 died, his body was embalmed, and his skeleton is now 
 on exhibition in the Museum of Natural History in 
 New York. The superintendent of the museum 
 adopted Meme, and sent him to Manhattan College. 
 Here it was that he decided to renounce civilization, 
 which he did, expressing his reasons in the following 
 letter to a friend : 
 
 " When this reaches you I will be well on my way, 
 as it will not be mailed for three days. No matter 
 what happens, I won't forget you or what you have 
 done for me, my good old friend. You made a 
 brother of me when all the others that were responsi- 
 ble for my being stolen from my own country failed. 
 
 " There was no reason why you should have been 
 so kind to me when you just happened to meet me, 
 but you have a big heart and understand what the 
 others can't. I don't see any chance in New York, 
 and I don't want to be a burden to you any longer. 
 You would go on helping me always, and I feel ter- 
 rible about it, so I am going away to give you a 
 chance. They won't give me my father's body out 
 of the museum and they never keep their promise, 
 so I am disgusted and will leave it all if I can. You 
 and Mr. Wallace have been true friends and I would 
 die for you, but I won't stay and bother you. 
 
Heredity and Education 13 
 
 " Never mind where I am ; I am just working north. 
 I am homesick and disgusted, and when Commander 
 Peary, who brought me to New York, told me he 
 had no room for me on his ship, I lost hope; and 
 then when Professor Bumpus, of the museum, re- 
 fused to give me my father's body so that I could 
 bury it, or give me even his sled and gun, I gave up 
 believing that your Christian belief which you taught 
 me was meant for a poor Eskimo. After all, my 
 own. people are more human and kind, and I am go- 
 ing home ; your civilization has done nothing but 
 harm for me and my people. Good-by." 
 
 A case of a different kind, equally illustrating the D'Aiembert. 
 power of heredity, is that of a certain gamin in Paris, 
 without known parentage or open opportunity, de- 
 veloping a genius in mathematics and philosophy, 
 who was finally on his merit elected to membership 
 by the French Academy. It was D'Aiembert. 
 
 A special case of heredity is the transmission of inheritance 
 the criminal type, as indicated by the study of criminal f riminalit 
 anthropology. In 1850 Broca founded the Anthro- 
 pological Society in Paris, and referred to certain 
 characteristics of the skulls of criminals, starting thus 
 a new kind of phrenology. In 1868 in his work, 
 " Variations of Animals and Plants under Domesti- 
 cation," Darwin developed the concept of " atavism/' 
 or reversion to earlier types. Modern students of 
 the criminal, like the Italian Lombroso and the English- 
 man Havelock Ellis, establish the criminal type an- 
 atomically, physiologically, and psychically. The 
 criminal is a case of atavism ; he has the feelings and 
 instincts of primitive man. He has a receding fore- 
 
14 Idealism in Education 
 
 head, poor senses except eyesight, and shows " prog- 
 nathismus," that is, projection of the jaws. And the 
 characteristics of the criminal type are transmitted by 
 heredity, as the family of the Jukes in New York State 
 strikingly illustrates. In this connection it is impor- 
 tant to note that environment cooperates greatly with 
 heredity in the making of a criminal. There is not 
 so much an inheritance of criminality as of those 
 weaknesses of character, that lack of inhibition in the 
 nervous system, which are the fertile soil in which the 
 seeds of crime sown by an evil environment flourish 
 rankly. Probably "no specific tendencies to crime are 
 inherited. Certain general mental conditions may 
 be inherited which serve as good soil for criminal tend- 
 encies to grow in. But the training is the real de- 
 cisive factor." l A criminal father transmits those 
 weaknesses to his child which lead the child c 
 into the temptation of following the father's example. 
 As in other cases of scientific doctrine, for example, 
 of double personality, so also here, literature has taken 
 up these notions of heredity and used them for its 
 own purposes. The Hebrew laws already recognized 
 the visitation of sins of parents on children. Ibsen's 
 " Ghosts " shows we are the walking embodiments of 
 past ancestors. Zola's " Human Beast," ranging 
 wider, indicates the impossibility of our escape from 
 the animal inheritance within us. Mrs. Wharton, in 
 "The House of Mirth," represents Lily Bart as the 
 theatre of greater than individual forces that finally 
 destroy her life and all but destroy her soul. In May 
 Byron's poem, "At Bay," one stanza runs as follows: 
 
 1 E. L. Thorndike, " Human Nature dub," N. Y., 1901, p. 194. 
 
Heredity and Education 15 
 
 "My child is mine. 
 
 Yet all his gray forefathers of the past 
 Challenge the dear possession : they o'ercast 
 His soul's clear purity with dregs and lees 
 Of vile unknown ancestral impulses: 
 
 And viewless hands from shadowy regions groping, 
 
 With dim negation frustrate all my hoping." 
 
 The French writer M. J. Guyau gathers these and 
 other things about heredity together and shows the 
 limits they establish to the influence of education in 
 his volume, "Education and Heredity " (London, 
 1891). 
 
 t 
 
 The term " heredity " has two distinct uses that must 2. The Na- 
 be held apart in our minds if we would avoid confu- ^credit 
 sion. There is a physical heredity and there is a 
 social heredity. By social heredity is meant the in- 
 fluence of tradition, passing down from generation The TWO 
 to generation by word of mouth, example, and imita- ^ i-erm 
 tion. This great influence in moulding us belongs Heredity, 
 with the other influences exerted by environment 
 which will be discussed in the succeeding chapter. In 
 the present connection physical heredity alone is 
 under consideration. 
 
 Physical heredity is the transmission from parent The Nature 
 to offspring of certain distinguishing characters of 
 structure and function. It is the result of the union 
 of two germ cells. By this process of the transmis- 
 sion of distinguishing characteristics, physical heredity 
 introduces a certain unity into the living organisms of 
 past, present, and future. At the same time a certain 
 variety is secured through the fact that all the higher 
 organisms have two parents, and also through the so- 
 
16 Idealism in Education 
 
 called tendency of " natural variation," which is not 
 very well understood. 
 
 Now the action of the forces of heredity may be 
 stated roughly in the form of a law, viz., like begets 
 like. It is a very simple and elementary law whose 
 action does not surprise us in the plant, lower animal, 
 and physical portion of the human world. We take 
 as a matter of course the unexceptionable phenomena 
 of resemblance between offspring and parents in 
 species, form, and function. It is also true for reasons 
 indicated above that like begets unlike, no child re- 
 sembling either parent exactly. Only where birth 
 was by partition of the parental cell could such resem- 
 blance exist. Unlikenesses between offspring and 
 parent must always appear where there are two 
 parents. Still, the deeper law is that like begets like, 
 for it is in accord with this law that the dissimilari- 
 ties between the offspring and a given parent appear. 
 In the vegetable world we expect every seed to bear 
 after its kind, we expect to reap what we sow, we do 
 not expect to gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. 
 In the animal world likewise we are accustomed to 
 the offspring being like the parents. The appearance 
 of mongrels and hybrids among plants and animals 
 only emphasizes in our mind the fact that the pos- 
 terity is the conjoined characteristics of the ancestry. 
 Th AppHcm- And the same law, like begets like, does not sur- 
 ilw < of lh< P risc us e tner m tne human world, so long as we 
 Heredity to read it merely in a physical sense. Of course chil- 
 [JjuJ^ dren resemble their parents in face, form, height, 
 color of hair, and eyes. It is to be noted that the re- 
 semblance to parents shows three types of variation. 
 
Heredity and Education 17 
 
 Sometimes the resemblance to one parent rather than 
 to the other is striking, this is " predominant " in- 
 heritance. Sometimes there appears a fusion of 
 characteristics, as the mixing of the white and black 
 race giving the mulatto, this is " blended" inherit- 
 ance. Still again, sometimes the child is like his 
 father in some respects and like his mother in other 
 respects, this is " particulate " inheritance. 
 
 In one respect the child not simply is like, but is, The work 
 his father; in another, is his mother. The child may ofMendel - 
 have the color of his eyes from his father and a gentle 
 disposition, or musical ability from his mother. The 
 color of his eyes is not some color between the brown 
 eyes of his father and the blue eyes of his mother. 
 There seem to be certain "unit-characters," as the 
 flower-loving Austrian abbot, Gregor Mendel, called 
 them half a century ago, which are received in their 
 integrity by the offspring from the parents. It is 
 further remarkable that among these characters some 
 give way to others; the " recessive " ones give way to 
 the " dominant " ones, and in a certain definite ratio. 
 Where one parent is brunette and the other blonde, 
 the application of the law of Mendel leads us to ex- 
 pect in the large three times as many brunette children 
 as blonde. The brunette characters are dominant over 
 the blonde ones. It is commonly supposed that 
 " opposites attract " in mating, which would be a 
 kind of instinctive way nature would have of secur- 
 ing variety in mixing characters. This, however, 
 like many other common suppositions, is a mistake. 
 It is also true that " opposites repel." There is no 
 law in the case. Blondes and brunettes, tall and short 
 c 
 
l8 Idealism in Education 
 
 people, mate with their like as well as with their un- 
 like. But, however the mating, the law of physical 
 heredity shows the offspring to be the union of 
 " unit-characters " received from the parents. 
 
 But we have to note also that our inheritance is 
 also from earlier ancestors. We inherit not simply 
 from, but also through, our parents. Children often 
 strikingly resemble other relatives than their parents. 
 The color of the hair, red for example, may have 
 skipped a generation. When children resemble an 
 aunt or an uncle, it is because these two have 
 inherited from a common ancestor. When children 
 resemble their grandparents, it is a case of direct 
 heredity through the parental organism. In fact, 
 we must greatly enlarge our ordinary notions of 
 physical heredity. By no means is it to be limited 
 to the influence of parents on children. The whole 
 line of past ancestors have had their share* in the 
 making of any family of children. Sir Francis 
 Galton has formulated this wider law of physical 
 heredity in this form: "The two parents between 
 them contribute on the average one-half of each 
 inherited faculty, each of them contributing one- 
 quarter of it; the four grandparents contribute be- 
 tween them one-quarter, or each of them one- 
 sixteenth, and so on." That is to say, one-half that 
 we inherit comes from our parents, one-quarter 
 from our grandparents, one-eighth from our great- 
 grandparents, and so on back to the first man. The 
 fraction, of course, soon becomes negligibly small, 
 but in a sense it is true that we are all thus the 
 walking embodiments of the selves of our ancestors. 
 
Heredity and Education 19 
 
 They live in us as we too shall live so long as our 
 posterity survives, according to the familiar saying, 
 "The dead rule the living." The stream of life 
 flows on; its origin we do not exactly know; its 
 conclusion we cannot exactly foresee; the stream 
 is too long for us to scan either its source or its 
 mouth: but this we know, once to have received 
 and transmitted it ourselves gives to each parent a 
 kind of physical immortality. 
 
 But the action of the law of heredity does begin The Appii- 
 to surprise us when we extend its application beyond L^wof ^ 6 
 the physical into the region of the intellectual, the Heredity to 
 emotional, and the moral. But just as we have 
 physical heredity so do we have intellectual, emo- 
 tional, and moral heredity. Just how the living 
 cells from the parental loins that constitute the body 
 of the new child also convey to him his soul, we can- 
 not say. It is the old puzzle of the relation of brain 
 and mind. But about the soul of the new-born child 
 we must say as we say of his body : he has it from 
 the souls of his parents. As the union of bodies 
 gives a new body, so the union of souls gives a 
 new soul. The material elements here, as doubtless 
 everywhere, are the bearers of a psychical life. The 
 new individual, body and soul, is the product of his 
 ancestry, particularly of his parents. We do not 
 need to suppose that God created so many souls 
 in the beginning, one for each individual who should 
 be born into the world ; nor that He now creates a 
 new soul for each individual, at the moment of con- 
 ception, or quickening, or birth. All that we need 
 to suppose is that creating is really a process of 
 
2O Idealism in Education 
 
 change of what exists ; and, as the new body is the 
 union of parental germ cells, so the new soul is the 
 union of the psychical elements which those germ 
 cells convey. How they convey any psychical 
 elements at all is a part of the same problem as to 
 how the brain of any one of us permits our conscious- 
 ness to continue. The wonder and the mystery of 
 the physical transmission of mental characters led 
 Professor Shaler to argue for the immortality of the 
 soul. 1 
 
 Th inhcn- We have next, then, to note that the resemblance of 
 
 Men' und P ost crity to ancestry is mental and moral as well as 
 
 Moral Trait*, physical. In the fourth annual Huxley Memorial 
 
 Lecture Professor Karl Pearson made his famous 
 
 address on "The Inheritance in Man of Moral and 
 
 Mental Character." The following is a summary of 
 
 his results : 
 
 "The irresistible conclusion was that if man's 
 physical characters were inherited even as those of the 
 horse, the greyhound, or the water-flea, what reason 
 was there for demanding a special evolution for man's 
 mental and moral side? If the relation of the psy- 
 chical characters to the physical characters was estab- 
 lished, what was its lesson? Simply that geniality 
 and probity and ability might be fostered by home 
 environment and by provision of good schools and 
 well-equipped institutions for research, but that their 
 origin, like health and muscle, was deeper down than 
 those things. They were bred and not created. It 
 was the stock itself that made its home environment, 
 and the education was of small service unless it were 
 1 N. S. Shalcr, "The Individual," Oup. XV., N. Y., 1901. 
 
Heredity and Education 21 
 
 applied to an intelligent race of men. . . . No scheme 
 of wider or more thorough education would bring up 
 in the scale of intelligence hereditary weakness to 
 the level of hereditary strength. The only remedy, 
 if one were possible at all, was to alter the relative 
 fertility of the good and bad stocks in the community." 1 
 
 Similarly Thorndike writes, " Eminent mental ability, 
 then, and presumably mental ability in general, is 
 mainly the result of germ inheritance, not of nurture 
 or education, so far as we can at present see." 2 Also, 
 the same author, as follows : " In the same way and 
 for the same reason that tall parents have tall children 
 or dark-haired parents dark-haired children, so also 
 stupid parents have stupid children, hot-tempered 
 parents have hot-tempered children, and musical par- 
 ents musical children." 3 
 
 Ourmental and moral gifts and defects, the emotional 
 tendencies toward grave or gay, the moral inclination 
 toward right and wrong, the peculiar little mental 
 twists and turns that charm or frighten our associates, 
 all these we inherit from our ancestors as truly as 
 we inherit their blood, race, and nationality. True, 
 these mental traits show their little variations from 
 generation to generation, due to the mixture of two 
 parents in each child, and due also to the tendency of 
 all living structure to vary in time. But these varia- 
 tions, as we shall later observe, are our opportunity of 
 conscious progress. The intellectual child, then, is 
 not a happen-so, nor the lazy child, nor the weakly, 
 
 1 Science, Vol. XVIII, 635-636. 
 
 2 " Human Nature Club," p. 184. 
 
 8 " Elements of Psychology," N. Y., 1905, p. 195. 
 
22 
 
 Idealism in Education 
 
 Reversion to 
 the Normal 
 
 emotional child, nor the industrious child, nor the 
 honest child. These, and all the other mental traits 
 which together constitute that psychic complex we 
 call his soul, are really the equivalent on the mental 
 side of certain definite elements in his nervous system 
 inherited from his ancestors. 
 
 There is a tendency in heredity to return to the 
 normal type. The son of a genius is not himself a 
 genius, though probably he is above the average. The 
 son of a great man may in some respects consider 
 himself unfortunate ; people expect from him so much 
 more than is in him. The sons of Lincoln, Darwin, 
 and Tennyson are well-known men, but their variation 
 from the normal is less than that of their fathers. Sim- 
 ilarly the son of a man of small capacity tends to be 
 more intelligent than his father, though probably he 
 is below the average. The son of a diseased man tends 
 to be more healthy than his father. The son of a 
 short man is likely to be taller than his father, of a 
 tall man is likely to be shorter than his father. The 
 same principles, of course, are true of inheritance from 
 the mother. The fact of two parents helps to explain 
 this tendency of reversion to the normal, but especially 
 is this tendency due to our inheritance from the remote 
 ancestry. Really our inheritance is not dual, but 
 multiple. It is our multiple inheritance that explains 
 the tendency to reversion. 
 
 The case of inbreeding deserves special mention. 
 It is commonly supposed that inbreeding causes 
 weakness. The fact seems to be rather that the in- 
 breeding is not the cause of the weakness, but simply 
 brings to the surface any inherent weakness. It is a 
 
Heredity and Education 23 
 
 popular notion that the royal lines through much in- 
 breeding have become degenerate. The facts are that 
 the royal lines are not so degenerate as reputed, that 
 the inbreeding has brought out any latent weakness, 
 and also that the inbreeding has preserved the in- 
 herent strength of the line. 1 Of course too close 
 inbreeding among relatives is fraught with danger to 
 sanity through bringing out native instabilities in the 
 nervous system. But the strength of a race is pre- 
 served by inbreeding among its own members. A 
 notable illustration of this is the wonderful purity 
 through a long period of time of the Jewish race. 
 Because of the fact that some native weaknesses are 
 common, which inbreeding would bring out of their 
 latent condition, it is customary in the artificial 
 evolution of a stock to alternate periods of inbreeding 
 with periods of cross-breeding. 
 
 Another significant fact about the action of heredity The Gradual 
 is that inherited qualities do not all appear at birth, 
 but develop as the offspring grows. This is natural. 
 The organism has notable periods of unfolding, from 
 childhood, through youth, to manhood. The inherited 
 qualities come out especially during the adolescent 
 period. This is the time when blood tells most. It 
 is not possible for any parent or teacher to say what 
 is in a boy or girl until adolescence brings it out. 
 This is one reason why no boy or girl should have 
 quit school before or during the adolescent period. 
 This is the time when the school can do most in dis- 
 covering to each individual his bent, and in assisting 
 
 *F. A. Woods, " Recent Studies in Human Heredity," The Ameri- 
 can Naturalist, Vol. 42, No. 502. 
 
Idealism in Education 
 
 3. Are Ac- 
 quired Char- 
 acters 
 inherited? 
 
 him into the line of work and usefulness where his 
 greatest capacity lies. 
 
 It is quite true that any given individual during 
 his own lifetime may acquire new characteristics 
 which he himself did not inherit. He may learn to 
 do things for which he had inherited no tendency. 
 He may learn to speak the English, rather than the 
 French, language; to smoke, to drink, to be pro- 
 fane ; he may lose a limb or an eye ; he may receive 
 a wound that leaves a scar for life ; he may be dread- 
 fully sunburned ; his skin may become callous 
 through use at certain points ; his occupation may 
 deform his skeleton; overexertion may bring on 
 heart disease; a muscle may be atrophied through 
 disuse. He may become a Protestant, turn Catholic, 
 give up his bad habits, learn a new trade, or change 
 his citizenship. Such like new acquisitions of the 
 individual during his own lifetime are called "acquired 
 characters." An acquired character, speaking techni- 
 cally, is a somatogenic modification, not a blastogcnic 
 variation ; that is, it is due to a change in a function 
 of the organism or to the influence of environment 
 rather than to constitutional inheritance. 
 
 Now a question of very great racial importance 
 arises, viz., are acquired characters inherited ? The 
 popular opinion is that they are; the scientific opinion 
 seems to be that some acquired characters may be in- 
 herited. It is a very old question. As in so many 
 other instances, Plato has anticipated this question 
 and has suggested an answer, as follows : 
 
 " Also, I said, the State, if once started well, moves 
 
Heredity and Education 25 
 
 with accumulating force like a wheel. For good 
 nurture and education implant good constitutions, and 
 these good constitutions, taking root in a good educa- 
 tion, improve more and more, and this improvement 
 affects the breed in man as in other animals. 
 
 "Very possibly, he said." 1 
 
 This is clearly the doctrine of the inheritance of 
 the good effects of education, of improving the stock 
 by nurture. 
 
 So the matter stood in general until the scientific 
 nineteenth century. During the fifty years succeeding 
 Darwin the question has been warmly discussed on 
 both sides. 2 The real question, technically stated, is, 
 do functional or environmental modifications of a 
 parent's body so affect the gametes or germ cells that 
 the offspring shows the original modification or its 
 representative ? Darwin seems to have defended the 
 affirmative, though the question was not very clearly 
 formulated in his time. Haeckel, Spencer, Eimer, 
 Cope, and especially Lamarck, say yes. Sir Francis 
 Galton, Karl Pearson, perhaps the rank and file of 
 biologists, led especially by Weissman, say no. In 
 the present state of our knowledge, no categorical 
 answer seems possible either way. The facts are not 
 all on one side. Some acquired characters may be 
 inherited, others certainly are not. 
 
 Among acquired characters that may be inherited, The Affirma- 
 I do not say, are inherited, should be mentioned the 
 atrophy of useless or unused organs; the blindness 
 
 1 " Republic," IV, 424 A (Jowett, Tr.). 
 
 2 For the history of this problem, cf. J. A. Thomson, " The Science 
 of Life," 1899. 
 
26 Idealism in Education 
 
 of creatures living in caverns and underground, as 
 the fish in the Mammoth Cave or the burrowing moles ; 
 the domestication of wild animals ; the acquisition of | 
 new instincts or the loss of old ones, as certain birds 
 in the state of nature once trusting man and now fear- 
 ing him ; the decrease of the size of the jaw among 
 civilized men ; the inferiority of the senses among the 
 Europeans; bad eyes among watchmakers and en- 
 gravers; near-sightedness of city children; and the 
 transmission of nervosity and madness. According 
 to some recent experiments it appears that if the i 
 ovaries of one hen are transferred to the body of an- 
 other, the young chicks will show the markings of the 
 second hen. This would seem to show that the germ 1 
 cells are influenced by the body of the parent that 
 ries them, as Lamarck says, and not that the germ evils 
 are independent of all somatic influences, as \Y 
 mann's theory of continuity of germ-plasm claims. 
 The hen here seems to come before the egg rather 
 than the egg before the hen. Further, if wild ducks 
 with long wings and small legs are confined a few 
 generations, it appears that the wings are shortened 
 and the legs grow stout Here the effects of use and 
 disuse seem to appear in the later generations, as La- 
 marck said. 
 
 The history of the development of the horse shows 
 a similar result. In the words of Conn : " For ex- 
 ample, as we study the history of the horse family, 
 we find that an originally five-toed animal began to 
 walk more and more on its middle toe, in such a 
 way that this toe received more and more use, while 
 the outer toes were used less and less. Now that 
 
Heredity and Education 27 
 
 such a habit would produce an effect upon the toes 
 in any generation is evident; but apparently this in- 
 fluence extended from generation to generation, for, 
 as the history of the animals is followed, it is found 
 that the outer toes became smaller and smaller with 
 the lapse of ages, while the middle one became corre- 
 spondingly larger, until there was finally produced the 
 horse with its one toe only on each foot. Now here 
 is a line of descent or machine building in the direct 
 line of the effects of use and disuse, and it seems very 
 natural to suppose that the modification has been pro- 
 duced by the direct effect of the use of the organs. 
 There are many other similar instances where the 
 line of machine building has been quite parallel to 
 the effects of use and disuse." 1 
 
 The theory of the inheritance of acquired characters 
 emphasizes the influence of the environment of the 
 germ cells, and the doctrine that the effects of use 
 and disuse are inherited emphasizes, by anticipation in 
 this discussion, the part played by the individual. 
 
 Among the acquired characters that are certainly The Neg- 
 not inherited should be mentioned : savage perforations ^ of the 
 of lips, nose, and ears ; savage removal of incisors or Question, 
 filings of the teeth ; the rite of circumcision among 
 Mussulmen and Jews ; the thickened skin of the hu- 
 man heel ; the compressed feet of Chinese women ; 
 and the mutilation of animals, for example, cutting 
 off the tails of rats. The boy of English parents in- 
 herits no tendency to speak English ; he would learn 
 German like a native, if brought up by Germans. 
 
 !H. W. Conn, "The Story of the Living Machine," N.Y., 1899, 
 p. 172. 
 
28 Idealism in Education 
 
 The child of a father with only one arm, leg, or eye 
 is born intact. The vices of the parents do not 
 descend as such upon the children by physical 
 heredity. If the vices have undermined the nervous 
 system of the parents, then the children show 
 not the specific vices, but general degeneracy, mak- 
 ing them an easy prey to all bad influences. Like- 
 wise the virtues of the parents do not descend as 
 such upon the children by physical heredity; the 
 parental virtues have preserved the health of the 
 nervous system unimpaired; the children are born 
 with strong bodies; they are capable of high resist- 
 ance to physical and moral evil. 
 
 This is the process by which the iniquities of the 
 parents are visited on the children unto the third and 
 fourth generation, and this the process whereby mercy 
 is shown unto thousands of generations of them that 
 love God. My child cannot inherit my virtues, but 
 his greater strength is their witness, and through 
 social heredity he can imitate them. Neither does 
 he inherit my vices, but his greater weakness is their 
 witness, and through social heredity again he r;m 
 imitate them. "The effect of alcoholic excess is not 
 an increased tendency to drink alcoholic beverages 
 the tendency itself shown in the children is accounted 
 for as already congenital to the parent but certain 
 general deteriorating or degenerative changes in 
 the nervous system or constitution of the offspring, as 
 in hysteria, scurvy, idiocy, malformation, etc., which 
 the parent did not have at all." This looks as though 
 acquired characters are not inherited as such, though 
 their effects may be. The view that acquired charac- 
 
Heredity and Education 29 
 
 ters are not inherited emphasizes the influence of 
 heredity as against that of environment. 
 
 In his great work on " Psychological Heredity," Ribot's 
 Ribot concludes on this question : " In general, acci- 
 dental deformities and mutilations are not transmitted; 
 we are not surprised that the child of a man with one 
 eye or one arm has two eyes or two arms. Even the 
 transmission of scars is not always established on 
 very sure proof. But, apart from the modifications 
 due to local, partial, or brutal causes, there are those 
 which result from slow action, which intimately affect 
 the living organism by nutrition and even by education. 
 The experiences of teachers are not calculated to 
 weaken the belief in a transmission of certain acquired 
 characters/' 1 This last is a precious passage for 
 those teachers who believe they are working for the 
 easier education of the future race as well as for the 
 education of the present generation. If certain 
 acquired characters may be inherited, we may suppose 
 that the education of this generation makes more 
 educable the nervous system of the succeeding gen- 
 erations. 
 
 At some near-by future time we may know better Conclusion, 
 just what influence the life-history of the individual ^jj 8 " 
 parent has upon the child, but at present it seems Heredity 
 safe to say that specific acquired characters are not ourHeredlt y' 
 transmitted to the offspring, though, on the other 
 hand, the offspring does show the effects of use and 
 disuse, and of any influences that have permeated 
 or poisoned in any way the physical life of the par- 
 ents. A short way of stating the doctrine would 
 1 Preface to the eighth French edition, p. vi, Paris, 1906. 
 
3O Idealism in Education 
 
 be, we transmit by heredity only our heredity, not 
 our acquisitions; but any effects of our acquisitions 
 upon the vital forces, for good or bad, are transmitted. 
 Suppose a man inherits money from his father and 
 from his mother; suppose he also marries a girl who 
 has money in her own name ; suppose he now lives on 
 the interest of the capital he inherits, and also by engag- 
 ing in business earns more capital ; the son of the match 
 will inherit the joint capital of father and mother, 
 plus what his father has earned, but he will not in- 
 herit necessarily the tendency toward a business life. 
 
 Just what, then, does heredity contribute to man- 
 making ? More specific things than we can enumer- 
 ate, but there would notably appear in the list these 
 four things, viz., instincts, temperament, constitution, 
 and capacity. The greatest of these is capacity. I n- 
 stinrts are inherited nervous mechanisms which enable 
 us to act usefully without having learned, as the in- 
 stinct of acquisition. Temperament defines our gen- 
 eral emotional and practical attitude toward the world, 
 whether strong and quick (" choleric"), strong and 
 slow (" melancholic "), weak and quick (" sanguine M ), 
 or weak and slow (" phlegmatic"). Our physical con- 
 stitutions, whether strong or weak, with the attendant 
 train of consequences, are likewise the fruits of inheri- 
 tance. And most significant of all for the man, ca- 
 pacity, which is the limit of possible attainment, is an 
 inheritance. 
 
 What we are capable of becoming in body, in 
 intellect, in morality, in art, in religion, with our ut- 
 most effort, this is our capacity. Perhaps the word 
 
Heredity and Education 31 
 
 " capacities " would be better, as we differ so in our 
 ability in different lines. Every potentiality of de- 
 velopment is an inheritance. We cannot by taking 
 thought add a cubit to our physical or mental stature, 
 or to the physical or mental stature of any other 
 being. Teachers cannot develop a ninety per cent 
 mathematical ability where only a seventy-five per cent 
 is the limit of the inherited capacity. A mark indi- 
 cating attainment may be given, but not the ability 
 that .deserves the mark. In the same way inheritance 
 sets limits to the possible development of morals and 
 of physique. Of course we must beware of suppos- 
 ing we have reached the absolute limit of inherited 
 capacity before we really have. Just what the 
 physical formation of nerve-cells and connecting 
 fibres is in the brain that conditions the different 
 degrees of capacity we, of course, are in no position 
 at present even to conjecture. But limit there is, as 
 effects have causes and nothing happens without a 
 cause. The cerebral elements represent the union of 
 preexisting elements. 
 
 It is to be remarked at this point that heredity is The Ca- 
 rather of general capacity than specific ability. The 
 daughter of a strong woman intellectually or morally 
 may not be strong in her mother's way, but in some 
 other way. So of the son. President Eliot is a great 
 educator; a lamented son was a notable landscape 
 gardener. This distinction is easily noted in the 
 cases of famous sons descended from noble mothers, 
 and of notable women whose fathers were strong 
 men. In these cases the child has inherited a gen- 
 eral capacity but not a specific ability. This latter 
 
32 Idealism in Education 
 
 turns more on training. At this point the influence 
 
 of environment appears. 
 
 rit Further, it is to be remarked that we inherit capac- 
 . not j tv> not character. We inherit certain limits to our 
 
 '. m ..... . . 
 
 attainment, certain dispositions, tendencies, inclina- 
 tions, impulses, temperaments, temptations ; we do not 
 inherit our actual attainment, our thoughts, deeds, 
 habits, and the conscious life of man. The son of an 
 inebriate will be weak physically ; he does not inherit 
 the appetite for liquor, unless perchance such a craving 
 was already congenital in his ancestry; least of all 
 does he inherit what he will do with such craving. 
 At this point the influence of the third element, the 
 personal will, appears. Character is an acquisition, not 
 an inheritance ; capacity is an inheritance, not an ac- 
 quisition. The moral attainments of civilized man are 
 a product of his will, not of his inheritance. Our char- 
 acter is what we become within our inherited limits. 
 
 In case capacities are inherited, in case specific ac- 
 quisitions are not inherited, what is the possibility of 
 any progress in the evolution of human capacity ? By 
 way of illustration I will report the story of a little 
 girl who was learning to count. " Papa," she said, 
 11 how much can anybody count ? " " Oh, little girl, 
 you can just count on and on, and there isn't any 
 end." "Papa," said she, "there is one end, isn't 
 there ? that's the end you start at." So with heredity. 
 It seems endless behind us, it seems endless in front 
 of us, but we of this generation are at the point where 
 the two ends meet. We are in the position of deter- 
 mining the future race, as we are in the position of be- 
 
Heredity and Education 33 
 
 ing determined by the past race. It takes two parents 
 to produce a new life. The union of strength with 
 strength gives greater strength in the offspring, and the 
 union of weakness with weakness gives greater weak- 
 ness in the offspring, and there are all possible degrees 
 in between. The fundamental method of improving 
 the human species is by the right selection of life part- 
 ners. This much at least of heredity young people 
 ought to know, that they may marry indeed for love, 
 but that they may be sure to love where the brains 
 are. The combination of head and heart in love- 
 making by the young people of this generation would 
 alone appreciably lift the level of human efficiency. 
 These are the lessons to teach young people, as they 
 love themselves, as they love their kind, as they are 
 called by the highest sanctions of nature to the 
 perpetuation of the human species. 
 
 When once we grasp the full import of the doctrine The Division 
 of heredity, we see the responsibility for the future ^ es ^ e r 
 race is divided between the present and the past ; tween Past 
 we realize how much of ourselves is not due to our- and Present> 
 selves; we realize also that as acquired characters,, 
 as such, are probably not inherited, our ability to add 
 to and take from the destiny of the race is some- 
 what diminished. Parents and children are partakers 
 of the same vast enduring stream of life ; the child 
 and the parent are both the offspring of the com- 
 mon stream ; parents and children are really brothers 
 and sisters, with the life stream the universal mother. 
 
 There is a venerable theological doctrine known as Heredity is 
 predestination. Jonathan Edwards, John Calvin, St. 
 Augustine, and originally St. Paul, have declared it to tion. 
 
34 Idealism in Education 
 
 be the true explanation of human destiny. The first 
 morn of creation saw what the last day should reveal 
 The eternal counsels of the Most High have set to 
 each man his part to play, both here and hereafter, which 
 in no way can he escape. We will not discuss this the- 
 ological doctrine as such. But I like to take these older 
 views down out of the heaven of abstraction and consider 
 what facts on the earth they can possibly mean. 
 
 Now to my mind the facts of heredity are the truth 
 for which the doctrine of predestination can really 
 stand. This generation was actually predestined in 
 capacity by all the past generations, and the present 
 generation is actually in a position to predestinate the 
 capacity of the next This view both keeps and 
 destroys the rigidity of the old predestination ; keeps 
 it, for the past cannot be undone, and we are what 
 we are in capacity; destroys it, for the future is 
 unmade, but is in process of making by the present. 
 One generation largely, not entirely, predestines 
 the next Parents are the co-workers with God 
 in the making of a better human race. Through all 
 the generations the thread of heredity runs, giving 
 unity and solidarity to the human race. Herein is 
 hope for human progress in that each individual 
 may purify the life stream to a certain extent ; here is 
 a freedom of individual action for or against the wel- 
 fare of the race in relation to the necessary laws of 
 heredity ; here is individual choice between polluting 
 or cleansing the waters of racial life. Every parent 
 has a share in the universal* plan of predestinating the 
 future results in terms of present causes. The gifts 
 we have the power to bestow are life and its capacities 
 
Heredity and Education 35 
 
 in the germ, good nutrition and care before birth, and 
 the best rearing after birth. 
 
 The influence of heredity in the making of men and 6. T e Prac- 
 women is so profound and yet so subject to human gg El rin f 
 control that at this point we must inquire concerning Heredity on 
 the practical ways of bettering the human stock by Educatlon - 
 the right handling of this force. To sum up briefly 
 what we now think we know about heredity and 
 human improvement: The elemental way of improv- 
 ing the race is through the right union of parental The Relation 
 germ cells. The chronological beginning of the ele- J Heredity 11 
 vation of human efficiency is in the union of life 
 partners. Education cannot change capacity given 
 by heredity ; it can only develop it. There is no democ- 
 racy in education in the sense that the school can 
 turn out equal minds. Some minds have ten talents, 
 others five, still others one. / As Ruskin has it, " But 
 apricot out of currant, great man out of small, 
 did never yet art or effort make." The business of the 
 school is to enable each type of mind to put its own 
 inherited talent out to usury. What education does 
 for this generation, the next generation probably does 
 not physically inherit. Education develops, not 
 endows, this generation ; it also permits the acquisi- 
 tion of certain desirable characteristics. Of course, 
 we are not speaking here of " social inheritance " 
 through the influence of environment, which antici- 
 pates the next chapter. 
 
 Even then if there should turn out to be no inheri- The Eiemen- 
 tance of acquired characters, an advantageous mixture Improve the 
 of the parental stocks can breed a stronger race of Race. 
 
36 Idealism in Education 
 
 men. Plato long ago observed that dogs and horses 
 of superior pedigree and blood could be bred by arti- 
 ficial selection of the parents, and in his ideal and im- 
 practical " Republic" made a similar provision through 
 the control of marriage for a better human stock. In 
 our day by crossing stocks Luther Burbank has worked 
 marvels with fruits and flowers ; in his little readable 
 and valuable book, " The Training of the Human 
 Plant," he thinks that the capacity of men may be 
 similarly enlarged, and that America, with its diversity 
 of stock, is a fit field for the experiment in i;uc 
 making. The practical difficulty of improving the 
 human stock in this way in a free society is that men 
 and women have liberty of marital choices. But as 
 the animal shows us natural selection of parentage, 
 as the stock farm shows us artificial selection of 
 parentage, may we not look to education in home 
 and school so to form the judgment of growing 
 young men and women that society shall show us the 
 rational, though individual, selection of parentage ? 
 A Duty of Passing then at this point from principles to appli- 
 cat * on P arents an ^ teachers must acquaint young people 
 with the fundamental facts of heredity. They must 
 also inform themselves as to what these facts are. 
 Especially must the sources of life be kept pure and 
 sweet. A sound education in matters of sex is indis- 
 pensable, the emphasis being laid on the use to the 
 race of this most important of the physical functions. 
 We do not so much need a course in sexology and 
 heredity as we need personal words on appropriate 
 occasions from fathers and male teachers to the hoys 
 and from mothers and female teachers to the girls. 
 
Heredity and Education 37 
 
 The school and the home can teach the value of 
 heredity to those who are to make the future. He- 
 redity and the mighty influence it exerts in the making 
 of men and women can be controlled by instructing 
 the new generation in the right choice of life partners. 
 A man or woman with a weakened and diseased con- 
 stitution ought not to marry. Love alone is not a 
 sufficient foundation for the home, though no home 
 is rightly founded without love ; the health, endow- 
 ments, and character of the one loved are equally to 
 be considered. Anticipate in the children what you 
 now see in their possible father or mother. 
 
 When the conditions permit, marriage is a social Good Birth, 
 duty, especially for the more gifted. The talent of this 
 generation should be invested in the children of the next. 
 Every child, unasked as to the origin of its being, has 
 the right to be well born ; its parents owe it health. 
 A child is well born who comes of clean and sturdy 
 stock, who has in the fibres of his being no hereditary 
 taint of inebriety, scrofula, insanity, or other disease, 
 and who begins his earthly existence with vitality and 
 the promise of health. Parents should be neither 
 too young to be themselves mature nor too old to be 
 still vigorous, nor for any reason enfeebled. The 
 child's first cry on entering this life is his natural 
 response to the cold world in which his existence 
 becomes independent ; it is his inalienable right to be 
 so well born that existence is to him a pleasure and 
 not a painful struggle through life. The trouble is, 
 parents think of these things too late ; laying prudish- 
 ness aside, these things should be definitely taught 
 to young people by the appropriate persons. Girls 
 
38 Idealism in Education 
 
 especially must be taught the sacred truth, which their 
 own natural instincts confirm, that no personal career 
 in life is comparable in value or satisfaction to being 
 the mother of well-born, truly nurtured children. 
 Rational Especially should heredity be controlled also by 
 
 instructing the new generation in the right principles 
 for selecting the home mate. " Sexual selection," as 
 Darwin called it, works naturally and advantageously, 
 but slowly, in the animals. It can never be made to 
 work by legal prescription in man ; this mistake Plato 
 made in destroying the choice of mates in the " Repul 
 lie." An enlightened individual judgment and a com- 
 pelling public opinion are the true means for securing 
 right selections among men and women. It is not 
 too much to hope that rational selection can do for 
 man in a shorter time what natural selection does for 
 the animals in the longer time, that is, breed the better 
 type. In the following quotations the best present 
 wisdom in the guidance of marital selection is cm- 
 bodied : " The clear lesson of Mendelian studies to 
 human society is this: that when two parents with 
 the same defect marry and there is none of us with- 
 out some defect all of the progeny must have the 
 same defect, and there is no remedy for the defect 
 by education, but only, at the most in a few cases, 
 by a surgical operation. . . . The only rule, a very 
 general one, that can be given at present is that a 
 person should select as consort one who is strong 
 in those desirable qualities in which he is himself 
 weak, but may be weak where he is strong." l 
 
 1 C. B. Davenport, "Influence of Heredity on Human Society," in 
 "Race ImproTcmcnt in the United SUtet," Phihu, 1909, pp. 19, 21. 
 
si 
 
 Heredity and Education 39 
 
 It is alarming to students of human progess like "Race 
 Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, President Eliot, Presi- S 
 dent Roosevelt, that those members of society whose 
 offspring would be most efficient are not reproducing 
 their kind. The most fit are the least fertile. The 
 primal mandate to the most highly endowed needs to 
 be heard and obeyed again, " multiply and replenish 
 the earth." Teachers and parents must help create 
 a public sentiment in favor of children in the home. 
 Our first Federal census was made in 1790, the next 
 preceding the present one in 1900 ; during this period 
 the American family has shrunk from an average of 
 5.8 persons to an average of 4.6. In the colonial days 
 the number of children under sixteen years of age to 
 each family was 2.8, as compared with 1.5 to-day. Of 
 course it is true that the movement of the population 
 from the country into the cites does not encourage 
 the having of large families ; babies are not welcome 
 in " flats." But the decrease in the size of the family 
 in America is not in itself so alarming; one might 
 argue with some justice that the fewer the children 
 1 the better the chance each one has. Such an argu- 
 ment has been made for France, where to every child 
 under sixteen years there are 2.6 adults of self-support- 
 ing age. The main trouble is that the large families 
 continue with the people on the whole least fit to mul- 
 tiply, and the small families are found most among 
 those most fit. 
 
 Professor Karl Pearson has studied this question of 
 "race suicide" among the British upper classes par- 
 ticularly. He says : " Our merchants declare that we 
 are no longer strong enough to compete with the 
 
40 Idealism in Education 
 
 Germans or the Americans. Our scientists, when they 
 have seen what is going on in foreign lands, proclaim 
 the glory of foreign universities and advocate the de- 
 velopment of technical instruction. Our politicians, 
 stricken with fear, demand heroic remedies. 
 
 " There is something at the bottom of all this ; it 
 is not simple literature, or the fantastic sociology of 
 uncultivated people. There is a lack of men of supe- 
 rior intelligence ; there is a lack of intelligence in the 
 British merchant, workman, and professional man. 
 There is poverty of great directing minds and of 
 average dirigible minds. This must come from the 
 fact that the superior breeds or families of the nation, 
 intellectually, are not reproducing in sufficient quan- 
 tity. It is the mediocre and inferior breeds that 
 propagate like rabbits. The least fit are the most 
 fertile. If this is the case, it will be vain to introduce 
 better educational methods. They will not raise the 
 hereditarily feeble intellect to the level of that which 
 is hereditarily strong. Education cannot take the 
 place of breed; it cannot put into the blood what 
 has not been placed there by those who alone have 
 the power to do so. It is therefore necessary that 
 reproduction in the superior stocks should be more 
 abundant than it is ; otherwise the proportion of s 
 rior to inferior individuals will rapidly change in favor 
 of the latter ; the worthless elements will gain enor- 
 mously on the valuable ones unless we find the means 
 cither to diminish the fertility of the former which 
 is impracticable or to increase that of the latter, 
 which is practicable, for it depends on themselves, 
 their relative sterility being certainly voluntary." 
 
Heredity and Education 41 
 
 These views of Pearson indicate the clear duty to 
 their kind of those upon whom nature in her bounty 
 has conferred the higher gifts. The Registrar-General 
 of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in England and 
 Wales shows in his seventieth report that, in the 
 period 1876-80, the annual rate of increase by excess 
 of births over deaths was 14.56 for 1000; in 1907, it 
 had fallen to 11.27. Commenting upon this decrease 
 he says: " There can be little doubt that much of it is 
 due to deliberate restriction of child-bearing. The 
 fact is also significant that at the last census period, 
 1900-02, the fertility of English wives was lower 
 than that recorded in any European country except 
 France/ 1 
 
 These and other similar investigations into " race- 
 suicide " and eugenics show at least these two things: 
 that the more fit should become more fertile; and 
 that heredity sets very definite limits to what education 
 can accomplish, directly contravening, in fact, a widely 
 accepted opinion which finds expression in the Japan- 
 ese proverb : " Education is more than birth.'' 
 
 Some persons are unfit to be parents ; the offspring Segregation 
 of such are doomed from the womb to belong to the c e unfit * 
 deficient classes. Society is gradually coming to 
 recognize that, if the race is to be bettered, indeed, if 
 the race is to be protected, these people must be 
 segregated. A nation of individualists, as America 
 j mostly is, does not relish such an extension of social 
 j authority. But thirty or more states have already 
 taken action looking in this direction. Those persons 
 unfit for parentage should be isolated in celibate in- 
 dustrial communities. The list includes the insane, 
 
42 Idealism in Education 
 
 the idiotic, the feeble-minded, the epileptic, the con- 
 genitally deaf, the congenitally blind, the inebriate, 1 
 the syphilitic, and the incurable drug fiends. Espe- 1 
 daily should the feeble-minded be segregated ; in the 
 case of women their weakness makes them easy 
 victims of unbridled passion, their children are regu- 
 larly half-witted ; and the trouble we would avoid is | 
 spreading itself in geometrical ratio. In vain does so- 
 ciety establish philanthropic institutions for the educa- j 
 tion of the deficient classes when it permits the feedersl 
 of such institutions freedom of social intercourse. 
 Society is very slow in learning that a railing about I 
 the top of a precipice is better than a hospital at the 
 bottom. Social prevention is more economical in 
 money and in racial vitality, which is true wealth, 
 than social cure. We have been content to prune off 
 the branches of the tree of evil instead of digging it 
 up by the roots. 
 
 Other Pro- It is estimated that two-fifths of one per cent of 
 I 
 
 P^^trc the population are feeble-minded and epileptic ; that 
 two per cent of the school population are so. The 
 figures are not alarming in themselves, but we do not 
 want them increasing by marriage. Segregation 
 not unkind to the afflicted individuals, and it is 
 mercy to the race. Other less satisfactory rcmedic 
 have been proposed, such as more restrictive marrin 
 laws, sterilization, or even death. Restrictive ma 
 riage laws will but lightly affect the unfit, tending 
 rather through the denial of the marriage sanction 1 
 add illegitimacy to the imbecility of the offsprir 
 Sterilization would be effective, but it disregards 
 much the springs of life, and reduces its objects to 1 
 
 
Heredity and Education 43 
 
 social disesteem of eunuchs. As for the death penalty 
 for such misfortune, humanity would lose in its essen- 
 tial spirit of humaneness more than it gained in 
 increased physical efficiency by such a return to the 
 subhuman standard of murder that prevails in nature. 
 On the whole, social detention is both effective and 
 considerate. 
 
 Ought education to seek to develop the strongest Develop the 
 or the weakest point in heredity ? If we could count 
 on the transmission of an acquired character, and 
 were aiming at the elevation of the racial capacity, 
 we should have to develop the weakest point, as sup- 
 posedly it could be more easily improved upon than 
 the strongest. But we are perplexed at present in 
 our answer to this practical question because we do 
 not know precisely the effect of training on heredity. 
 So the question can be only tentatively answered and 
 only in reference to the individual. In the gymna- 
 sium the body is brought to its best estate by develop- 
 ing the weak points up to the standard of the strong, 
 that general harmony may ensue. The same plan is 
 a pretty ideal in the school, especially if the school is 
 regarded as the gymnasium of the mind. But the 
 analogy does not hold very well in the case of mind. 
 Where heredity has left us weak we are likely to 
 remain weak, as, for example, in common sense, 
 humor, or temperament, despite much effort. It 
 therefore pays in the case of the individual to develop 
 him most in the forte in which he is strongest ; this 
 will be his contribution to society. This method is 
 attended with the risk of narrowness, eccentricity, 
 and specialization, but it accomplishes highest indi- 
 
44 Idealism in Education 
 
 vidual achievement and greatest social progress. 
 The risk is to be run, minimized indeed by some at- 
 tentive effort to the weak points, while the strongest 
 points, however, are receiving the greatest emphasis. 
 The notion of a well-balanced, all-around, harmoni- 
 ously developed human mind is a fictitious ideal; we 
 are strong in some points and weak in others ; our 
 general ability is really an average of varying abilities 
 in different directions. As nature endows us this 
 way, educational effort should be similarly propor- 
 tioned, giving most time to the strongest points. A 
 genius in a given line may actually be handicapped 
 by being compelled to follow alien interests. Society 
 has many men who can do the things we do poorly; 
 we are fortunate if society has not many men who 
 can do the things we do best. While the strong 
 points are to be emphasized, the weak points are not 
 to be neglected. And both strong and weak points 
 may need stimuli to awaken them. 
 
 Arouv It is important to recognize with fair-mindedness 
 
 that heredity is good as well as bad, that there is 
 good in the worst of us as well as bad in the best of 
 us, that it is one-sided to excuse evil-doing on the 
 score of bad heredity without at the same time also 
 condemning it on the score of good heredity. Also it 
 is important to recognize that, though by heredity boys 
 and girls are dull in some lines, they also by heredity 
 are capable in other lines. We must arouse the 
 dormant heredity, both the moral and the intellectual. 
 There is something good in the worst child to which 
 to appeal if we can but find it ; there are some lines 
 of capacity in the stupidest child if we can but clis- 
 
Heredity and Education 45 
 
 cover them. In the search for the elements of good 
 heredity we must utilize various stimuli, patiently try- 
 ing many appeals, trusting that finally some one of 
 them will strike the responsive chord in the child's 
 inherited constitution. 
 
 The child to be reared and taught, though small, study the 
 though but recently born, is as old as the race. chtiT^ 
 Education cannot begin at the beginning; it must 
 Itake account of a foundation that is already laid. 
 jThe great claim of children upon their educators is 
 jthat they be understood. Watch for the appearances 
 |of heredity. Treat with them. The child's nature 
 is not a sheet of white paper to be written upon, nor 
 a block of wood to be carved into any form, nor 
 molten brass to be cast into any image, nor rough 
 stuff to be built up in accord with an architect's 
 plan ; none of these time-honored images are reli- 
 able : the child's nature is a seed of life with an 
 immanent design, perhaps a whole flower garden, 
 weeds and all. To educate a child is to comprehend 
 the plan of its soul and to assist this plan toward its 
 full realization. Study to know, then, your individual 
 child, and use your knowledge. No two souls are 
 precisely alike, not even of twins. Least of all, then, 
 is education the recasting of all souls in the same 
 mould. 
 
 It will help some in understanding individual chil- and the 
 dren to know their parents. We usually feel that Parents 
 ve are in closer touch with children after meeting 
 heir parents, and we are. Not that we can induce 
 he child from the parents, for the mixture of them 
 >oth is unique in him, and, after all, he goes back 
 
Idealism in Education 
 
 and the 
 
 Races of 
 Men. 
 
 Recapitula- 
 tion Theory. 
 
 behind them too in the matter of inheritance. But 
 to understand parents sharpens our expectant atten- 
 tion. 
 
 In the same way, but to a lesser degree, it will 
 help us to study race characteristics. Then, know- 
 ing the race of the child, his little oddities and 
 variations are more significant to us. And so we 
 know better what to do next in guiding his develop- 
 ment. 
 
 Perhaps the chief claim to greatness of Ernst 
 Haeckel as a biologist is his formulation and defence 
 of the so-called " biogenetic law." It is his main 
 argument for the evolution of man from lower organ- 
 isms. This is the law in its technical form : " The 
 evolution of the foetus (or ontogenesis) is a condensed 
 and abbreviated recapitulation of the evolution of the 
 stem (or phylogenesis); and this recapitulation is the 
 more complete in proportion as the original develop- 
 ment (or palingenesis) is preserved by a constant 
 heredity ; on the other hand, it becomes less com- 
 plete in proportion as a varying adaptation to new 
 conditions increases the disturbing factors in the 
 development (or cenogenesis)." 
 
 The heredity of the child according to this law 
 is from all his ancestry, though the fraction becomes 
 infinitesimal long before the animal ancestor of man 
 is reached. The recapitulation theory holds that 
 man in his physical and mental growth repeats the 
 stages of the racial history. In a general way th 
 formula is demonstrably correct At a certain period 
 in its prenatal development the human embryo shows i 
 the analogue of the gills of the fish. The love of chil- 
 
Heredity and Education 47 
 
 dren for playing in water may be traceable to man's 
 aquatic ancestry. This theory helps us to under- 
 stand the animal instincts of children and to treat 
 with them. But it is not necessary to conclude from 
 it that we must let young children be savages before 
 we can civilize them. For, in their cases, the racial 
 development may be abridged, as the law itself 
 allows, by a single lesson in manners and morals. 
 And, further, the influence of a civilized social 
 environment is constantly at work against the out- 
 croppings of the animal nature. The recapitulation 
 theory is a light, but not a guide. 
 
 In order to avoid developing latent weaknesses in Right 
 a race, it must intermarry with other races. Inbreed- Immi s ratlon 
 ing is good to fix prepotent qualities ; cross-breeding 
 is good to prevent inherent weaknesses coming out. 
 To cross breeds between a stronger and weaker 
 race is doubtless good for the weaker but bad for 
 the stronger. For the weaker members of a given 
 race to multiply breeds inferiority. These things 
 mean two conclusions for the American people on 
 the immigration question, so far as racial improve- 
 ment here is concerned ; viz., that inferior races who- 
 would intermarry with the native stock should be 
 excluded from our shores; and that of all inferior 
 races only the superior members who might inter- 
 marry with each other should be admitted. Physical, 
 educational, and property tests are none too many 
 to apply. The African slaves and immigration from 
 the Orient and from southern Europe have injured 
 our native stock; the immigration from northern 
 Europe is beneficial. Immigrants are now flocking 
 
48 Idealism in Education 
 
 to our shores at the rate of a million a year. They 
 need to be both better selected before they come and 
 better protected after their arrival. 
 
 Marriage Persons who marry should be physically fit. There 
 
 1 Cil5> is no way of determining whether they are so without 
 
 medical examination. Many right-minded persons 
 voluntarily undergo such examination, out of respect 
 for their possible mate and for their posterity. It is 
 a safe precaution to encourage. Some states are 
 requiring medical tests of all candidates for the 
 marriage license. Such requirements once again 
 emphasize the gradual extension of social right over 
 personal liberty. In the interest of the race a per- 
 son physically unfit has no right to marry. Theoret- 
 ically marriage tests are correct; practically, they 
 may make the marriage relation more attractive 
 through forbidding it to the unfit, and so encourage 
 illegitimacy. Such an outcome could be avoided 
 only by a stronger individual sentiment than exists 
 against "elective affinities" and cohabitation, and 
 by social detention of the worst cases. 
 
 Woman*! The physically fit woman has no right not to marry 
 
 **&* under appropriate conditions. Most women intui- 
 tively recognize their duty to the race through the 
 leading of nature. College women are most apt not 
 to do so; a smaller percentage of these as a class 
 marry, these marry later in life, and they have fewer 
 children. The reasons are social as well as personal. 
 A college woman is likely to be independent eco- 
 nomically and she likes her freedom ; in view of her 
 years in school she is older when it is convenient to 
 marry ; she has ideas of her own and is more careful 
 
Heredity and Education 49 
 
 in bestowing her affections ; she does not find a poorly 
 educated man congenial; having many interests already 
 established, children are either unwelcome, or else 
 must not be so numerous as to engage all her time ; 
 and society is continually offering her more opportu- 
 nities to earn her own living. Recent economic and 
 social changes are putting the woman forward. Under 
 our present system of ideals of womanhood and of 
 female education, these conditions must be regarded 
 as logical and proper conclusions. 
 
 It is certainly too much to say, " In the United 
 States the so-called higher education of girls has 
 been proved in effect to sterilize them and these 
 the flower of the nation's girlhood, and therefore, the 
 very elect for motherhood." l On the contrary, the 
 college woman, being in the position she is, is prob- 
 ably doing as nearly her full duty to society as any 
 social class. She does marry, she does bear children, 
 she raises them well, and she is responsive to social 
 needs. 
 
 In general, the American ideal, in contrast with the 
 continental ideal of woman, is that she must be edu- 
 cated for herself and not for man, that she must be 
 educated in subject-matter and method as a man is 
 educated. Perhaps Bryn Mawr best typifies these 
 conceptions. 
 
 Without entering into the complex and world-old 
 question of woman's place in society and her appro- 
 priate education therefor, I simply record my view 
 that woman should be educated both for herself and 
 for man; that she should be educated for the pri- 
 
 1 Saleeby, " Parenthood and Race Culture," p. 89. 
 
 
50 Idealism in Education 
 
 vate rather than the public types of service, for the 
 home and school, rather than for the pulpit and bar ; 
 that her education should not be modelled after that 
 of the man's college, but in matter and method should 
 take account of woman's distinct nature and function 
 in society; that domestic economy and training for 
 motherhood are essential in her education ; that these 
 views are in accord with the obvious intent of nature 
 and so will in the end prevail ; that when they do pre- 
 vail, the college woman, trained for society, teaching, 
 home, and motherhood, will be the main reliance of the 
 race for self-improvement; that this service, though 
 disguised below masculine occupations in some cases, 
 really constitutes the highest happiness of woman. 
 
 But college-bred or not, a woman who is to marry 
 has certain rights. She has the right to refuse an un- 
 welcome proffer of marriage ; she has the right, 
 whether she cares to exercise it or no, to choose as 
 well as wait to be chosen ; and when married, she has 
 the right to select the periods of gestation. Where 
 woman is properly regarded by man, in society and 
 the home, her rights will take care of themselves. 
 
 It is unfortunate that "to be feminine" and "to 
 be weak" have been almost synonyms for so long a 
 time. It is not necessarily so. In primitive societies 
 the woman is the outdoor worker and is strong. The 
 Orient shut her up in a harem. Even the Greeks 
 kept her at home. The Roman matron likewise was 
 a home body. Mediaevalism enclosed her in con- 
 vents or chivalry assigned her those delicate qualities 
 still considered feminine. The Renaissance ought to 
 have brought woman out into the open air, but it did 
 
Heredity and Education 51 
 
 not. Modern " society " still keeps her in vitiated 
 and artificial atmospheres. But the outdoor era is 
 dawning. Biology has taught both men and women 
 to regard physical vigor with favor. The physical 
 emancipation of woman is a part of her general 
 modern emancipation. Outdoor games and sports 
 distinguish the strong from the weak. According to 
 present preferences, and fortunately for the new gen- 
 eration, the strong, vigorous woman is at a premium. 
 Physical training and gymnastics in the schools have 
 helped. Even fashion has played a beneficial part 
 in getting women out of doors. Exercises in which 
 they now freely participate include golf, tennis, swim- 
 ming, motoring, horseback riding, rowing, and basket- 
 ball. These things have increased both beauty and 
 health. They have not made women as strong as men, 
 but they have made them stronger. In the race for 
 strength woman as a class has one decided advantage, 
 freedom from the habit of smoking. It is to be hoped 
 their new-found freedom will not lead women to con- 
 tract this habit, signs of which, however, have ap- 
 peared. Smoking is indeed not so much a racial as 
 an individual enemy, weakening appetite, hindering 
 growth, and, withal, being an economic extravagance. 
 
 For the good both of mother and child the con- Prenatal 
 ditions of gestation should be comfortable, agreeable, Influence ' 
 and free from anxiety. Either no conception should 
 have occurred, or else the little visitor from the be- 
 ginning should be welcome. Before birth the physi- 
 cal life of the child is one with that of the mother 
 through the placental connection. Since the mind 
 influences the body, both the mind and body of the 
 
52 Idealism in Education 
 
 mother should be free from strain and sudden fright. 
 The influence certainly extends to the body of the 
 child, and so conditions in a general way his mental 
 efficiency. Cases are dubious, however, of the physi- 
 cal markings of the child from the mother's frightful 
 experiences. Her general mental condition, through 
 influencing her body, influences the child's body and 
 so in a general way his mental strength. But it is 
 idle to suppose that the mother by wishing it can en- 
 dow her child with qualities, musical, oratorical, etc., 
 he does not inherit During the prenatal period the 
 life of the mother should go on very much as usual, 
 with a few modifications. Under healthy conditions 
 there is only a minimum of risk and discomfort The 
 things to be avoided are overexertion, sudden efforts, 
 unhygienic acts of whatsoever kind, tight or insufficient 
 clothing, too little or too rich food, indulgence of 
 craving for indigestible articles of diet, the use of 
 alcohol, coffee, and tea, and too much indoor life-. 
 A normal amount of activity about the house and 
 walking in the open air are beneficial. It would be 
 well if all mothers could hear the voice of the annun- 
 ciating angel with religious joy. 
 
 Universal The peace of a nation improves its stock. War 
 
 appeals to the spirit of patriotism and to manly cour- 
 /\ age- College men especially heard its call in our 
 Civil War. Frederick the Great and Napoleon pre- 
 ferred the tall soldier. War selects the physically and 
 morally fit and leaves them upon the battlefield. The 
 wars of Rome, though usually successful, left the 
 city in the control of a mob. It is claimed that Na^ 
 poleon reduced the stature of the French people. The 
 
Heredity and Education 53 
 
 army is a serious drain upon the vital energies of the 
 nations with great standing armies. War leaves the 
 least fit men behind to repopulate the country. Peace 
 is a condition of race improvement. One condition 
 favoring universal peace is a universal speech, leading 
 to better comprehension, to more sympathy, to the 
 establishment of a universal republic of letters. 
 
 It is true that rational selection often interferes isPhiian- 
 with the action of natural selection. Civilization is 
 characterized by insanity, bad eyes, poor teeth, indi- 
 gestion, etc. The oculists make unfit eyes to suffer 
 no disadvantage in social competition, the dentists 
 preserve unfit teeth and the next generation has teeth 
 still less fit. Society by philanthropy seeks to make 
 the unfit fit. Weak animals fall out of the race, but 
 weak men have their burdens borne for them. The 
 hungry are fed, the poor are clothed, the outcast is given 
 another chance, the fatally sick are kept alive, the illiter- 
 ate are educated. Philanthropy does for unsuccessful 
 adults what nature in the animal kingdom does only for 
 the young. Would we be better off to imitate nature 
 more ? Is our philanthropy misguided ? So think 
 Spencer, Nietzsche, and Bernard Shaw. Thoreau 
 says, " Still we live meanly, like ants ; though the fable 
 tells us we were long ago changed into men; like 
 pygmies we fight with cranes ; it is error upon error, 
 and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its 
 occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness." 
 
 The veteran founder of eugenics has written in his 
 last work : 
 
 " It is known that a considerable part of the huge 
 stream of British charity furthers by indirect and un- 
 

 54 Idealism in Education 
 
 suspected ways the production of the unfit. It is most 
 desirable that the money and other forms of attention 
 bestowed on harmful forms of charity should be di- 
 verted to the production and well-being of the fit. 
 For clearness of explanation, we may divide the newly 
 married couples into three classes, with respect to the 
 probable civic worth of the offspring. There would 
 be a small class of " desirables," a large class of " \ 
 ables," of whom nothing more need be said here, and 
 a small class of " undesirables." It would clearly be 
 advantageous to the country if social and moral sup- 
 port, as well as timely, material help, were extended 
 to the desirables and not monopolized as it is now apt 
 to be by the "undesirables." l 
 
 But while philanthropy, in so far as it is devoted 
 to the unfit, does weaken the race, it also brings a 
 most valuable compensating feature in its sympathy 
 and sense of humanity. On the whole the gain by 
 philanthropy is greater than the loss. The note of 
 humanity is worth all it costs the race. With it are 
 bound up the finer social feelings which one day will 
 make the world at peace; meanwhile philanthropy is 
 learning to benefit the unfit individual at the s 
 time that it prevents him from propagating his kind 
 to injure the race. If the sense of humanity gave 
 way before the process of natural selection, it would 
 reinstate the war of all against all, the doctrine of 
 might is right, and the physical would usurp the place 
 of the moral. Meantime it is important to remember 
 that natural selection brought about just that rise of 
 intellect which to-day favors philanthropy among men. 
 
 1 FrtncU Galton, " Memories of My Life," N. Y. 1908. 
 
Heredity and Education 55 
 
 These and other practical methods that will occur to The First 
 the reflective reader are our dependence for applying Frinci P le of 
 our knowledge of heredity in raising the level of making, 
 human capacity. An old Scotch lady came late to 
 service. " What, is the sermon done ? " she inquired 
 of the sexton at the door. He replied, " It is said, 
 Madam, not done.' 1 Or, as Benjamin Franklin puts 
 it in his discourse on " The Way to Wealth " : " Thus 
 the old gentleman ended his harangue. The people 
 heard it and approved the doctrine, and immediately 
 practised the contrary, just as if it had been a common 
 sermon." But we are learning with Franklin how 
 true it is of nations and societies, as well as of in- 
 dividuals, " that, if you will not hear reason she'll rap 
 your knuckles." Meanwhile it is something to know 
 as a guide to possible conduct that the first of the 
 first principles in the making of men and women is 
 that of eugenics ; reduce the multiplication of the un- 
 fit and increase the multiplication of the fit. 
 
 Though great, passing great, the influence of 7- The Abuse 
 heredity in the making of men and women, still it is Heredity W 
 possible to abuse this law. We abuse the law of 
 heredity, by overstating the case, when we say, with- 
 out qualification, "Men are born, not made." Strong 
 and true as it otherwise is, the following statement of 
 a student of the Mendelian principles of heredity errs 
 by omission. Punnet writes : 
 
 " Speaking broadly, our present policy aims at rais- 
 ing the standard of the less fit ; at attempting to bring 
 them closer by such means to those who are richer in 
 natural endowment. Has suc,h a line of endeavor any 
 
56 Idealism in Education 
 
 hope of permanent success ? Or is it based upon a 
 misconception of the nature of living things ? Some 
 there are, doubtless, already, who question whether 
 the general policy pursued with regard to the lowest 
 classes of the nation is a sound policy; who are 
 troubled with the suspicion that Hygiene and Educa- 
 tion are fleeting palliatives at best, which, in post- 
 poning, but augment the difficulties they profess to 
 solve. To them the facts of heredity may speak \\ith 
 no uncertain voice. Education is to man what ma- 
 nure is to the pea. The educated are in themselves 
 x the better for it, but their experience will alter not 
 one jot the irrevocable nature of their offspring. 
 Permanent progress is a question of breeding rather 
 than of pedagogics ; a matter of gametes [germ cells], 
 aot of training. As our knowledge of heredity cl 
 and the mists of superstition are dispelled, there grows 
 upon us with ever increasing and relentless force the 
 conviction that the creature is not made but born/' 1 
 The creature is born in part, he is made in part, 
 and in part he makes himself, especially in the case 
 of man. Heredity alone is insufficient to explain 
 man. Even the poet is made as well as born; so 
 also the surgeon, the doctor, the teacher, the lawyer, 
 the minister, the mother, the merchant. Give 
 good environment, hardly ten per cent of the populace, 
 if so much, would prove to be born irremediably unfit 
 Life's failures are in most instances traceable to 
 the heaven of infancy being spoiled by the hell 
 of environment. As George Macdonald write 
 "Baby": 
 
 1 R. C Punnctt, " Mendeliim," Cambridge, 1905, pp. 80-81. 
 
Heredity and Education 57 
 
 Where did you get that little tear ? 
 I found it waiting when I got here." 
 
 Through the non-inheritance of acquired characters 
 each new generation is given practically a fresh start, 
 which it would have entirely but for the racial 
 poisons and the effects of long use and disuse. Two 
 children of the same hereditary endowment, if such 
 were possible, would under different circumstances 
 result in different persons. 
 
 The use of heredity alone in explaining men has 
 been called "the grandfather" theory, in allusion 
 doubtless to the famous witticism of Dr. Holmes. 
 But as a certain New England educator once dryly 
 remarked, it is difficult to explain the difference be- 
 tween the brothers Cain and Abel on the grandfather 
 theory. 
 
 Another illustration of the abuse of the law of 
 heredity is the proverb coined by the children of 
 Israel in captivity to explain their national calamity : 
 " The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's 
 teeth are set on edge." A great prophet of individ- 
 ualism, Ezekiel, arose to dispel such fatalism with 
 the principle : " The son shall not die for the father's 
 sin ; the soul that sinneth it shall die." 
 
 We abuse the law of heredity when we assert it is 
 the only law at work in the making of a man ; when 
 we say, if a child is born wrong, all is wrong, if well, 
 all is well ; when we are unduly depressed by a bad 
 heredity, or made unduly confident by a good he- 
 redity. We must not forget the " sports " with which 
 nature provides us; they are the remarkable varia- 
 tions from their ancestry. So a good nature may 
 
58 Idealism in Education 
 
 come out of what seemed unpromising heredity, and 
 a bad nature may come out of what seemed a promis- 
 ing heredity. A very slight bruise from the environ- ; 
 ment may notably affect the growth of a living 
 organism. The Alpha of man-making is heredity, 
 but there is also an Omega. The laws of environ- 
 ment and will work in conjunction with the law of 
 heredity. 
 
 In order, therefore, to free ourselves from the over- 
 whelming sense of the weight of heredity resting 
 upon us from out the irrevocable past, and in order | 
 to see the processes of education and man-making in] 
 their integrity, it is necessary at this point to turn to 1 
 the discussion of the other elements that go into the 
 production of our complex human nature. 
 
 REFERENCES OR CHAPTER II 
 
 ALLEN, W. H., Civics and Health, N. Y., 1909. 
 
 ALLIN, ARTHUR, " Social Recapitulation,* 1 Ed. Rev., Vol. XVIII, 
 
 PP- 344-3S*. 
 BALDWIN, J. M., Social and Ethical Interpretations, Cha 
 
 N. Y., 1906. 
 BALL, W. P., Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? 
 
 N. Y, 1891. 
 BATESON, W., Materials for the Study of Variation, London, ', 
 
 1894. 
 
 Mendel's Principles of Heredity, Cambridge, 1909. 
 
 BjdRKMAN, "What Health is Worth to Us," World's Work\ 
 
 March, 1909. 
 BREWSTER, ** Breeding Plants and Animals to Order," 
 
 Work, December, 1907. 
 
 BROOKS, W. K., Law of Heredity, Baltimore, 1883. 
 Foundations of Zoology, N. Y., 1899. 
 
Heredity and Education 59 
 
 CARVER, T. M., Sociology and Social Progress, Boston, 1905, 
 
 Selection XXV (Galton). 
 COPE, E. D., Primary Factors of Organic Evolution, Chicago, 
 
 1896. 
 
 DARWIN, CHARLES, Origin of Species, N. Y., 1859. 
 Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication, 
 
 N. Y., 1868. 
 
 Descent of Man, N. Y., 1871. f 
 
 DAVENPORT, C. B., Eugenics, N. Y., 1910. 
 DOCK, L. L., Hygiene and Morality, N. Y., 1910. 
 DUGDALE, R. L., The Jukes, N. Y., 1888. 
 EIGENMANN, C. H., "The Physical Basis of Heredity," Pop. Sc. 
 
 Mo., Vol. LXI, pp. 32-44. 
 
 EIMER, G. H. T., Organic Evolution, London, 1890. 
 EWART, J. C., The Penicuik Experiments, London, 1899. 
 " The Experimental Study of Variation," Nature, Vol. LXIV, 
 
 pp. 482-488. 
 
 FOREL, A., The Sexual Question, 1908, 
 GALTON, FRANCIS, Hereditary Genius, London, 1892. 
 
 English Men of Science, London, 1874. 
 
 Inquiries into Human Faculty, N. Y., 1883. 
 
 Natural Inheritance, London, 1889. 
 
 "A Diagram of Heredity," Nature, Vol. LVII, 1898, 
 
 P- 2 93- 
 
 Memories of My Life, N. Y., 1909. 
 
 GEDDES AND THOMSON, The Evolution of Sex, 4th Ed., London, 
 
 1901. 
 
 GUYAU, M. J., Heredity and Education, 1891. 
 HAYWARD, F. H., Education and the Heredity Spectre, London, 
 
 1908. 
 JORDAN AND KELLOGG, Evolution and Animal Life, Chaps. 
 
 X-XI, N. Y., 1907. 
 
 JORDAN, D. S., The Blood of the Nation, Boston, 1903. 
 M'KiM, W. D., Heredity and Human Progress, N. Y., 1900. 
 MUNRO, M. F., Three Years in the Life of a Child," Ed. Rev., 
 
 Vol. XVI, pp. 367-377- 
 
 MORGAN, C. L., Habit and Instinct, London, 1896. 
 Animal Behavior, London, 1900. 
 
60 Idealism in Education 
 
 NISBET, J. F., Marriage and Heredity, 1889. 
 
 OPPENHEIM, The Development of the Child, Chap. IV, N. Y., I 
 
 1898. 
 
 PEARL, R., " Eugenics," World's Work, January, 1908. 
 PEARSON, K., The Grammar of Science, 2d Ed., London, 1900. 
 PUNNETT, R. C., " Applied Heredity," Harper s> December, 1908. 
 
 Mendelism, Cambridge, 1905. 
 RIBOT, TH., Heredity, London, 1875. 
 ROMANES, G. J., Darwin and After Darwin, Chicago, 1895. 
 SALEEBY, C. W., Parenthood and Race Culture, N. Y., 1909. 
 [Several Authors], Race Improvement in the United States, 
 
 (Am. Acad. Pol. and Soc. Sc.), Philadelphia, 1909. 
 SPENCER, H., Principles of Biology, London, 1864-1867. 
 THOMSON, J. A., " History and Theory of Heredity," 1 
 
 Roy. Soc., Edinburgh, 1888-1889. 
 
 Science of Life, Chicago, 1899. 
 
 Heredity, N. Y., 1905. 
 
 THORNDIKE, E. L., Heredity, Correlation, and Sex Differences, 
 
 N. Y., 1903 
 Educational Psychology, Chaps. IV-V, 2d Ed., New York, 
 
 1910. 
 
 WALLACE, A. R., Darwinism, Chap. XIV, N. Y., 1890. 
 DE VRIES, H., Plant Breeding, Chicago, 1907. 
 
 The Mutation Theory, Chicago, 1910. 
 WEISMANN, A., Essays on Heredity, Oxford, 1891-2* 
 - The Germ-Plasm, London, 1893. 
 
 On Germinal Selection, 1896. 
 
 WILSON, E. B., The Cell, 2d Ed., N. Y., 1900. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 ENVIRONMENT AND EDUCATION 
 
 AT the beginning of our discussion of this second Outline of 
 element in man-making let us note in advance the thlsCha P ter - 
 main, points to engage our attention. First, we want 
 to know the nature of environment ; then its general 
 influence; then the influence of the physical environ- 
 ment ; then the influence of the social environment ; 
 then certain personal variations from the average of 
 the social environment ; then the practical bearings of 
 the discussion ; followed finally by an account of the 
 abuse of the law of environment. These successive 
 steps in the argument will be made clear to us as 
 we proceed. 
 
 By the much-used term " environment," we mean i. The Na- 
 the natural circumstances under which an organism Environment 
 develops. And these circumstances contribute some- 
 thing to the character of the organism, so much, The Mean- 
 indeed, that the influence of environment is one of ^frm " En- 
 the elemental forces in the growth of an organism, vironment." 
 The environment is the stage and the scenery of the 
 drama of evolution. It is possible to consider the 
 lower types of organisms as all but sufficiently ex- 
 plained by reference to their heredity and environ- 
 ment. These two influences in relation to the 
 organism are like the parallelogram of forces which 
 
 61 
 
62 Idealism in Education 
 
 physics describes ; the movement of the body is ex- 
 plicable in terms of these forces. Even when con- 
 sciousness is sufficiently developed in the scale of an- 
 imal ascent to have its presence remarked, as in the 
 earthworm, still the theory of "determination" in 
 biology would say that the later evolving forms 
 are still explicable in terms of heredity and en- 
 vironment, without reference to any consciousness 
 that may be present. Many biologists to-day, how- 
 ever, notably Baldwin and Conn, are recognizing the 
 presence and the usefulness of consciousness in 
 organic evolution, especially of the higher forms. 
 When the theory of evolution comes to be finally 
 written, it will be a psycho-physical theory. The fact 
 itself of the nature and influence of consciousness 
 must concern us later in the discussion of the contri- 
 bution of individual effort to the making of the race. 
 Meanwhile it is enough for us to note that the term 
 environment means the surroundings of a developing 
 organism. 
 Kindiof There are two kinds of environment that influence 
 
 Envuon- living organisms; viz., the physical, sometimes called- 
 the socionomic, and the social. Plants and animals 
 are more subject to the physical than to the social en- 
 vironment; perhaps man is quite as much subject to 
 his living social environment as to his physical. 
 
 PhyiicmL The physical environment includes such elements 
 
 as soil, air, light, heat, climate, water, food, salinity, 
 electricity, gravity, scenery, and even the body, as en- 
 vironing the germ cells. The references on environ- 
 ment at the end of this chapter discuss in detail for 
 those interested the specific effects of each of these 
 
Environment and Education 63 
 
 environing physical elements. In a general way we 
 know from observation the influences upon life of 
 these physical agents and find ourselves sympathizing 
 with the early Greek philosophers who said earth, air, 
 fire, and water were the four elements of all things. 
 
 The social environment, responsible for " social Social, 
 heredity/* influences those animals actuated by the 
 group impulse, including man. It includes all forms 
 of association, the use of language, the expression of 
 the emotions in the crowd, habits, customs, conven- 
 tions, fads, fashions, and moral standards. The 
 greatest element in the social environment of man, 
 not appearing among the animals, is ideas, public 
 opinion. Men adjust themselves to the ideas of 
 other men, to what society on the whole approves. 
 Public opinion is the main reliance of social progress. 
 It is subject to rapid change with correspondingly 
 rapid social improvement. Public opinion may come 
 to condemn the methods of nature, which preserve 
 the race, and favor the methods of philanthropy, 
 which preserve the individual. Its scope is greatest 
 in a democratic form of government. Education, too, 
 is made possible by the social environment ; educat- 
 ing, in fact, is purposely directing social heredity for 
 the benefit of the young. John Stuart Mill illustrates 
 this point of view in defining education as "the 
 culture which each generation purposely gives to 
 those who are to be its successors, in order to qualify 
 them for at least keeping up, and, if possible, for rais- 
 ing, the level of improvement which has been 
 attained. " 
 
 It is possible to analyze the complex social environ- 
 
64 Idealism in Education 
 
 ment into its elements, and some sociologists have 
 done so. 1 For our present purpose it is sufficient to 
 consider the social environment in its unity as con- 
 trasting with the physical environment 
 
 a. The Gen- Having now seen the nature and kinds of environ- 
 on^vton - 05 ment > we must next inquire concerning its influence, 
 ment. The influence of environment may be stated in the 
 
 form of a law, which is one of the fundamental laws 
 The Law in biology, viz., " The living organism must be adapted , 
 toits environment."* The famous definition of life 
 given by Herbert Spencer conveys the same idea: 
 " Life is the continuous adjustment of internal rela- 
 tions to external relations." This process of adapta- 
 tion means that the environment modifies the organ- 
 ism, that the organisni in turn modifies to some extent 
 the environment, resulting in the outcome that the 
 organism often becomes physically and socially like 
 its environment 
 
 The Environ- The environment modifies the organism from its 
 Modifies the conception till its death. As evolution advances the 
 Organism. organisms become more differentiated, in order to 
 adjust themselves better to their complex environ- 
 ment In the simplest organism all the cells are 
 alike; they are homogeneous. In more complex 
 organisms; the cells become differentiated from each 
 other in function, the outside cells serve for protection 
 and food capture, the inside cells for digestion ; the 
 cells become heterogeneous. Yet the unity of the 
 organism is not impaired; there is still integration. 
 
 1 Cf., for example, L. F. Ward, " Applied Sociology," Boston, 1906. 
 1 Sedgwick and Wilson, " Biology," p. 103 (italics theirs). 
 
Environment and Education 65 
 
 This procedure from the homogeneous through the 
 differentiated to the integrated characterizes all or- 
 ganic development and is conditioned by the multiform 
 environment in adjustment to which survival becomes 
 possible. Specific examples of the modification of the 
 organism by the environment may be given. " Slight 
 changes in conditions, such as turning an embyro over, 
 putting it in a new medium, subjecting it to a different 
 temperature, or supplying it with food differing in 
 kind and amount from the normal, greatly modify its 
 development." l There is in fact just one life through 
 all plants, animals, and men ; it is the life of the pri- 
 mordial protoplasm, the life of the cell ; all the varieties 
 of individuals and species of all living things have 
 sprung from the union of parental cells on the one 
 hand and the influences of environment on the other. 
 
 The organism modifies its environment, as when The Organ- 
 a plant takes in carbon dioxide from the air and M difiesthe 
 gives forth oxygen, as when a crab selects its Environ- 
 home and digs its bed, as when a bird constructs its 
 nest, as when a man disfigures the face of nature 
 with factory smoke. These things again anticipate 
 the part the individual play$. 
 
 As a part of the process of adaptation, the environ- The Organ- 
 ment influencing the organism and the organism re- ^^ mes 
 influencing the environment, it eventuates that the Environ- 
 organism becomes physically and socially like its envi- 
 ronment. This result is particularly obvious among 
 the lower animals. The birds grow feathers similar 
 in color to their natural habitat ; when they are quiet, 
 such coloration protects them from their enemies. 
 
 1 Kirkpatrick, " Fundamentals of Child Study," p. 294. 
 
66 Idealism in Education 
 
 The fur-bearing animals are likewise colored similarly 
 to their environment ; some, like the rabbits, changing 
 from brown to white and from white to brown with 
 the coming and the going of the snow. This principle 
 of resemblance in appearance to the native environ- 
 ment, which serves to shield the creature from its 
 preying enemies, is known in biology as " protective 
 mimicry." It is very easy to overdo this principle as 
 an explanation ; in each case it is necessary to know 
 that the organism supposed to show " protective 
 mimicry " does really occur in the environment to 
 which it is similar, that its enemy is really deceived 
 or warned by its appearance, and that the resem- 
 blance is actual, having been brought about, not by co- 
 incidence, but by the elimination of the creatures not 
 possessing it. . Many butterflies, for example, when 
 stationary are almost indistinguishable from the 
 flowers or leaves about them. 
 
 Illustrations of the law of environment will occur 
 , to the observant upon reflection. The roots of the 
 plant adjust it to the soil, its leaves to the air. 
 Through the mechanical influence of heat, plants 
 turn to the light " phototropism." In cold climates, 
 desert regions, places of scant food, and high altitudes, 
 the growth is stuntedT. The water animal has gills 
 and the land animal lungs. Kansas wheat in Cali- 
 fornia loses some of its gluten. Hot and cold climates 
 make the skin of man dark and light respectively. 
 The eye of man is adapted to ether vibrations, his 
 ear to air vibrations, his skin is sensitive to contact, 
 pain, pressure, and temperature, etc. Thus the struc- 
 tures of an organism are usually, not always, adapta- 
 
Environment and Education 67 
 
 tions to environment ; some structures are survivals of 
 old adaptations, as the muscles with which some people 
 can move the ears. The very fact of the great com- 
 plexity of environment permits life to be more multi- 
 form, the creatures fitting into each other's waste 
 places. 
 
 It is thoroughly natural that animals should end TheExpiana- 
 by resembling their environment. Those that varied 
 conspicuously from their environment were easily de- 
 tected by their enemies, and were killed off, and their 
 posterity with them. Those, however, that by for- 
 tunate variation more closely resembled their envi- 
 ronment escaped their enemies, and their favorable 
 characteristics were transmitted to their offspring. 
 This is a very crude and simplified form of stating 
 the method by which resemblance to environment 
 came about through the struggle for existence and the 
 survival of the fit, the so-called principle of " natural 
 selection. " Similarity to environment is one condi- 
 tion of survival. One may naturally object that such 
 an explanation is only relative and mechanical, not 
 absolute and teleological. This objection will receive 
 consideration in the final chapter of our discussion, 
 where the philosophy of these processes described by 
 science will be suggested. 
 
 The greatest thing that environment can do for Environment 
 any organism is to provide it opportunity. The 
 adaptations to environment show what the inherent 
 capacities were. To provide opportunity for capacity 
 isjthe prime function of environment. What a soul 
 once born most needs is just opportunity. The 
 grain of wheat has life in itself, but soil and sun- 
 
68 Idealism in Education 
 
 shine, the dew and the rain, are its opportune envi- 
 ronment. So the soul has life in itself, but the home 
 and school, the church and society, are its opportu- 
 nities. The environment must invest the capital that 
 heredity has bestowed ; without investment, the cap- 
 ital cannot grow; without the capital, investment is 
 impossible. In the home and the school parents 
 and teachers provide those opportunities that in- 
 herited capacities must have for their realization. 
 
 3. The in- Having now seen the general influence of environ- 
 UuTphysicai ment * we must next inquire concerning the specific 
 Environ- influences of the physical and social environment 
 
 And first the physical. 
 
 CaiboutL*- The physical environment calls out the latent 
 "* heredity. It leads to the development of inner i 
 qualities through use. Thus the botanist Nageli 
 took small Alpine plants to Munich ; they grew 
 large; their descendants taken back to the Alps 
 grew small again. If the descendants had rema 
 large in the Alps, it would have been the keeping of 
 a developed power which had been latent rather than 
 the inbreeding of a new power. Two people with the 
 same complex heredity (if such were possible) under 
 different environments would become different, be- 
 cause different inherent elements would be brought 
 to the fore. 
 
 Lads to Reversely, the physical environment represses cer- 
 
 tein functions through giving them no opportunity 
 to act Through such disuse the function atrophies. 
 The horses living for years underground in the dark 
 Treadwell mines in Alaska go blind. Similarly, the 
 
Environment and Education 69 
 
 burrowing mole loses his sight, and the unused mus- 
 cle shrinks in size. 
 
 Thus the function of environment is rather a selec- Selects, not 
 tive than a productive one. Lamarck assumed that Produces - 
 the influence of the environment was capable of 
 changing the characters of the organism, thus fitting 
 them to their life conditions; but the fact seems 
 rather to be that changes in physical conditions may 
 vary the degree of the quality, but not the quality 
 itself. The environment does not produce qualities, 
 but provides opportunity for qualities to show them- 
 selves. The origin of an organism and its characters is 
 due to heredity ; the survival of an organism, the promi- 
 nence of certain qualities, the repression of others, is 
 due to... environment. Not the existence of plants and 
 animals, but theifwell-defined distribution over land 
 and sea is due to environment. True, if we go back 
 far enough, we find the very appearance of cell-life 
 conditioned by an environment that permits life to 
 survive. The following passage from De Vries will 
 illustrate the general principle that environment se- 
 lects, but does not produce, as applied to desert plants. 
 " They [desert plants] all prefer more favorable con- 
 ditions to those which are given them. They endure 
 the desert, but only with difficulty. Their life is 
 nearer starvation than enjoyment. They are multi- 
 plying themselves in a prodigious manner, not, how- 
 ever, from luxuriance, but on account of the absence 
 of competition. They do not thrive, nor do they 
 unfold their full stature and qualities as they might 
 under better conditions. They greatly prefer irri- 
 gated grounds or the moist air of the forest, and 
 
Idealism in Education 
 
 Exerts 
 Pressure 
 leading to 
 Selection. 
 
 Effects of 
 
 Nutrition. 
 
 only here display their real nature. Even cacti are ' 
 originally forest plants, and may be seen stoutly 
 growing between densely thronging shrubs. Thus 
 the conviction is forced upon us, that desert plants 
 are not, as a rule, the product of aridity." 1 
 
 The physical environment exerts constant pressure 
 upon living organisms. It is probably true that a 
 stable equilibrium between organism and environ- 
 ment is never attained. Progress is through antag- i 
 onism. There is discorcfwith the environment. 
 Severe cold, for example, kills off many weak ani- 
 mals, others it drives into hibernation, still others 
 into growing adequate covering, still others into mi- 
 gration, and man it leads to the exercise of Promethean 
 genius in the discovery of fire. The discord with the | 
 social environment is also a potent factor, as we shall 
 presently see. It is the pressure of environment 
 that selects the most fit. 
 
 We might study with profit the specific effects of 
 each one of the enumerated elements of the physical 
 environment. For purposes of illustration, take the 
 effects of nutrition. Queen bees are the result of 
 much feeding; the workers are underfed. If the 
 embryos are richly fed, ninety per cent of frogs' eggs 
 may develop into females. Well-fed and healthy 
 individuals develop the most potent germ cells. Star- 
 vation, disease, and hardship during the prenatal 
 period will affect the offspring. Physical strain with 
 poor nourishment of the young means puny growth 
 and weak maturity. Anticipating the influence of 
 will, many people have found by experiment that 
 
 1 De Vries, " Plant Breeding," p. 350. 
 
Environment and Education 71 
 
 Mr. Horace Fletcher is right in saying human effi- 
 ciency is improved when less food is taken, when it is 
 better chewed, when we stop with the satisfaction of 
 appetite, and when the "fear-thoughts" are elim- 
 inated. 
 
 Physical environment helps to explain variation. Helps to ex- 
 One source of variation, as we have seen, is the fact variation, 
 that in higher forms where variation is greatest it 
 takes two parents to produce one offspring; this is 
 heredity. The other source is a change in the physi- 
 cal conditions about the organism. This leads the 
 organism to seek to survive under the changed con- 
 ditions; this leads some parts of the organism to 
 function more, others to function less ; this leads to 
 change in the parts. Thus changes in the depth of 
 water have affected aquatic animals through the 
 changes in hydrostatic pressure and the amount of 
 light received. In deepest sea-water the fish becomes 
 tiny, the body is hard, and a special light apparatus 
 I is developed. The fresh-water fish differs from the 
 salt-water fish, and in the Great Salt Lake, nine times 
 saltier than the sea, only a small shrimp survives. 
 Darwin says, " I am strongly inclined to suspect that 
 the most frequent cause of variability may be attrib- 
 uted to the male and female reproductive elements 
 having been affected prior to the act of conception." 
 
 The full understanding of man involves the geo- Geography 
 graphical relation. In a truly wonderful way the and 
 earth permits man to live. The configuration of its 
 surface, its thin layer of atmosphere, like a ribbon in 
 universal space, its seas and land, its soils and cli- 
 mates, its days and nights, its rhythmic seasons, just 
 
72 Idealism in Education 
 
 allow such plants, animals, and human beings as we 
 know to arise and flourish. Small wonder that some 
 sociologists have made the leap and declared that 
 geography makes the man. Similarly Mr. Percival 
 Lowell describes the physical, intellectual, and moral 
 characteristics of the hypothetical dwellers upon Mars 
 from the geography of that planet The history of 
 Europe is indeed divided by the Alps ; the imagina- 
 tion of Greece is indeed one with its mountains, sky, 
 and sea ; the commercial success of America is indeed 
 conditioned by its navigable rivers and its rich re- 
 sources. But the geography still remains, though 
 " the glory that was Greece " is no more. It is correct 
 to say that geography helps to make the man. And 
 the teaching of history demands the geographical 
 setting. The passive East Indian and the stirring 
 European came from the same Indo-European stock; 
 the difference can hardly be explained without refer- 
 ence to the enervating climate of India. The use of 
 geography in explaining racial differences appca 
 the following quotation, which perhaps, however, does 
 not take sufficient account of heredity: "The con- 
 trast between the narrow, intense, bigoted Jews of 
 New Testament times, and the fickle, self-induh 
 generous Samaritans is explained when we compare 
 the rocky, unproductive, sombre hills of Judea \vith 
 the open, rolling, richly fruitful fields of Samari 
 In explaining national characteristics, account must 
 be taken of the social environment and of heredity as 
 well as of physical environment. 
 
 *G F. Kent, "The Use of Geography in Religious Instruction," 
 in " Principles of Religious Education/' N. Y., 1901, p. 218. 
 
Environment and Education 73 
 
 When we contrast the action of nature and of man, 4 . The in- 
 mteresting results appear. " Nature," says Professor fl uen ce of the 
 
 Metcalf, " is socialistic, not individualistic, in the ronment. 
 
 processes of evolution." 1 This means nature pre- 
 serves the type, not the individual. Man, on the The Physi- 
 other hand, by philanthropy, works for the individual 
 rather than for the race, though the newer forms of ronment. 
 
 Dhilanthropy, such as inebriate colonies, contemplate 
 the race as well as the individual. It is also true 
 
 :hat nature's socialistic methods, preserving the strong 
 
 :or the sake of the race at the expense of the weak, 
 make individuals selfish, each one fighting for sur- 
 vival; while man's individualistic methods, caring 
 
 :or the unfit, make society unselfish, since the strong 
 come to bear the burdens of the weak. The general 
 
 nfluence of the physical environment is to cultivate 
 
 ntense selfishness in the interest of a strong surviv- 
 
 ng race ; the general influence of the social environ- 
 ment is to cultivate sympathetic unselfishness in the 
 
 nterest of a surviving individual. Nature is rough 
 and far-sighted; man is tender and near-sighted. 
 The two working together provide that antagonism 
 (whose finest fruit is human character. 
 
 The specific influences of the social environment The General 
 are summed up in the comprehensive terms, com- {^Social 8 of 
 
 Envi- 
 
74 Idealism in Education 
 
 Competition. Competition is struggle between the individual and 
 the social environment. It is one of the laws of life. 
 This discord with the social environment most re- 
 sembles the pressure of the physical environment 
 Among plants crowding prevents growth. Among 
 animals and men there is rivalry between individuals 
 to secure food, to possess the female, to win success 
 The result is that the fighting qualities come out, the 
 others fall back. There is universal war in the anima 
 kingdom. Hobbes thought he found the same among 
 primitive societies of men. In gregarious communities 
 members of the same species compete with each other 
 for place and food. The progeny of one pair of parents 
 likewise exhibit instinctive jealousy. The phenomena 
 of social opposition lead to the development of greater 
 individuality, and to greater achievement, especially in 
 the fields of investigation and invention. Imagination 
 and competition do more than necessity as the mother 
 of discoveries and inventions. This matter of com* 
 petition is stimulated by the environment, but it is also 
 a phenomenon of will as well. It is to be noted tha 
 competition is between members of the same species 
 as well as between species. 
 
 imitation. Imitation is doing as another does. It presupj 
 
 the presence of enough consciousness to note the 
 action of others, and it obviously tends to bring the 
 individual into conformity with his social environ 
 ment To imitate is instinctive, the presence in con 
 sciousness of another's deed being a sufficient stimulus 
 to start the imitative reflex, unless there is inhibition 
 somewhere. Such instinctive imitation goes on with 
 out intention, as when we drop into the manners of 
 
Environment and Education 75 
 
 expression of a new community without realizing it. 
 There may be also intentional imitation, as when we 
 consciously follow the fashions of society in dress. 
 We are comfortable so long as we conform to the 
 social environment constituted by our group, and we 
 become uncomfortable when unlike in any noticeable 
 way the fashions prevailing in our set. Imitation 
 works reciprocally, society influencing the individual, 
 and the individual, if he be in any way notable, also 
 influencing society. . Imitation also works with both 
 bad and good models. Plutarch observes, " It is a 
 true proverb that if you live with a lame man you 
 will learn to limp." One of the Hindu wise sayings 
 is: "What man is there whom contact- with a great 
 soul will not exalt? A drop of water upon the petal 
 of a lotus glistens with the splendors. of a pearl." 
 The instinct of imitation is one of the means by 
 which the influence -of environment brings us into 
 conformity with itself. 
 
 Suggestion is doing as another says. In auto-sug- Suggestion, 
 gestion the individual plays both roles. Our social 
 environment calls upon us not simply to imitate its 
 copies, but also to follow out its ideas. Ideas have an 
 inherent impulsive power. Were there but one idea 
 in consciousness, we should invariably act upon it, as 
 hypnotic subjects do. The presence of several ideas 
 in consciousness at once introduces mutual inhibitions. 
 Suggestion rightly handled is a powerful influence in 
 shaping character. - According to a Bengali proverb, 
 "Blackness leaves the coal when the fire enters." 
 Would you create the reading and study habit among 
 people ? Then you must have an attractive library, 
 
76 Idealism in Education 
 
 both in exterior appearance and in interior equipment, 
 to impress the idea. Would you cultivate the better 
 social habits among men ? Then you must have an at- 
 tractive meeting-place, with the amusements that inter- 
 est without degrading. Would you develop the sense 
 of religious reverence among young people ? Then 
 you must have chapels and churches whose interior 
 atmospheres suggest the divine presence. And so 
 on with all the great environing institutions of man. 
 Put into the environment of the young what you want 
 their souls to incorporate, and the laws of survival, of 
 imitation, and of the power of impression will effect 
 such incorporation. 
 
 Crime is due to social, quite as truly as to physical, 
 heredity. In the case of the Jukes family the de- 
 scendants were isolated from a proper social environ- 
 ment, and imitated each other. The children of one 
 couple that moved out of the Jukes influence grew up 
 much as others. " The records of charitable soci 
 show that about eighty-five per cent of the children of 
 paupers and criminals who are placed in good homes 
 at an early age become good citizens." 1 We are a 
 part of the good as well as of the bad we meet 
 Thomson asks, "Are we not apt to underrate the 
 plasticity of human nature and the ready repressibil- 
 ity of hereditary items ? " 2 The unclean environment 
 can hardly produce the clean thing. Evil compan- 
 ionships corrupt good manners, and good companion- 
 ships shame ill manners. The laws of environment 
 hold, independent of the moral quality. 
 
 1 Kirkpmtrick, M FundamenUli of ChUd Study," p. 299. 
 Thomson, - Heredity," p. 531. 
 
Environment and Education 77 
 
 /The influence of the social environment is con- instruction, 
 sciously brought to bear in instruction. By instruc- 
 tion the lessons of the past are orally transmitted; 
 by instruction new ideas are disengaged in society ; 
 by instruction elders and teachers definitely plan to 
 bring the young generation into conformity with 
 their social and spiritual environment. The advan- 
 tages of instruction over the other social influences 
 are that it is consciously directed and so may be 
 systematically given with a view to reaching any 
 chosen end. A large element of educational work 
 is just this systematic and well-planned instruction, 
 and the whole of education is a combination of such 
 conscious tuition with the unconscious influences of 
 association The whole of the social environment, 
 by assimilating us to itself, educates us in the 
 broadest sense of the term. 
 
 The surpassing influence of the home is justly Social En- 
 celebrated. The reason that the home is so influ- 
 ential is that in it social heredity reenforces physical 
 heredity, each of them being tremendous forces. 
 The very things that the parents have put into the 
 blood of the child they themselves also are by 
 example and instruction, as a rule. A child born 
 of artistic parents grows up also in an artistic 
 environment. A child born of stupid parents grows 
 up also in an unstimulating environment. The 
 natural respect of children for parents leads even 
 the wrong deeds of parents to appear right to the 
 children. As are the parents so do the children tend 
 to become, in language, dress, manners, and morals. 
 Language is not a birthright but an acquisition; it 
 
78 Idealism in Education 
 
 comes from imitating the sounds we hear. There 
 was a Chinese student in the University of California 
 who was born of Americanized Chinese parents, and 
 did not know the Chinese language. He decided 
 to study Chinese, and seemed to find as much diffi- 
 culty in learning it as did the American students. 
 A sparrow raised with canaries will approximate 
 their song. Dress is wholly conventional, passed 
 on by imitation or " social heredity," and varying 
 with stocks and climes. The manners of the child 
 are those borrowed from or taught by the parents. 
 And the morals likewise. How hardly shall the 
 school improve upon the standards of the home! 
 In the home both heredity and environment centre ; 
 it all but makes the man. 
 
 But the same forces of survival, imitation, and 
 suggestion are at work in the school, tending to 
 bring the pupils into conformity with the environ- 
 mental standards. Pupils can remain in the school 
 society only on condition of conforming to its stand- 
 ards. Teachers supply the constant models for 
 imitation. And the school atmosphere is ever sug- 
 gesting indifferent or uplifting ideas to the susceptible 
 spirit of youth. 
 
 Similarly the social standards of the community at 
 large influence the young generation. The example 
 of a single person is multiplied many times in a 
 community ; thus community standards are far more 
 compelling in influence than individual standards. 
 Such emotions as patriotism, respect for the aged, 
 love of pleasure, of social prominence, or of service, 
 are reflections in individuals of the standards of the 
 
Environment and Education 79 
 
 social environment. G. Lowes Dickinson says in 
 America we are educating our children intellectually 
 while all the time they are growing up in unaesthetic 
 surroundings. And these surroundings in which we 
 live are all the while influencing us unconsciously. 
 The atmosphere of material success also characterizes 
 us as Americans, and our children grow like that 
 they feed on. 
 
 He is the rare man, even the genius, who can 5. Personal 
 proyide^his own opportunities, who_can select or ^"^sociai 
 make his own environment, who can do for him- Environ- 
 self what nature and society do for others. The me > n ' 
 genius may rise above his environment, but, even so, The Genius, 
 the law of conformity in order to survive is still at 
 work, and he does so at the risk of envy from his 
 fellows or even at the peril of his life. Socrates rose 
 above the moral standards of Athens, and the patient 
 Athenians, after enduring his ethical criticisms for a 
 generation, finally caused him to drink the fatal 
 hemlock. Jesus rose above the religious standards 
 of his environment in Jerusalem, and those high in 
 authority, unable to accept in their sacerdotalism 
 the simplicity of his hill side gospel, caused him to 
 be nailed to the cross. Bruno rose above the scien- 
 tific standards of his environment, and the powerful 
 church, unable to admit the discovery of any truth 
 beyond its revealed and transmitted doctrines, caused 
 him to be burned alive. Every other martyr, too, in 
 the world's progress illustrates the action of the same 
 law, that to survive in comfort we must conform to the 
 standards of our environment. To conform is to follow 
 
8o Idealism in Education 
 
 the line of least resistance, and is safe ; to rise above is 
 to invite opposition, and, at the worst, martyrdom. 
 
 The Outcast. The law operates also on the lower as well as on 
 the higher level. Those who rise above their environ- 
 ment are geniuses, and may become martyrs. Those 
 who sink below their environment are the social out- 
 casts. Our reformatories and jails exist for those 
 who refuse to conform to environment on the lower side. 
 These institutions are filled with inmates who would 
 rank with the best in more primitive types of society. 
 The criminal is the man with the standards of the sav- 
 age in the company of the civilized. In the home 
 the refusal to conform to its standards is followed by 
 punishment ; in the school such refusal is visited by 
 punishment, or, in extremis, by separation from the 
 school body ; in society such refusal in the lighter 
 cases brands one as odd, eccentric, of a lower social 
 clique or caste, and hi the extreme cases as an unde- 
 sirable member of a free society. 
 
 The Avenge However it may be with the genius in providing 
 his own environment for himself, perhaps even a 
 future ideal one, the most of us will limit ourselves to 
 that opportunity which our environment brings with 
 it. By giving our capacities a chance, by setting 
 bounds to the field of our endeavor, environment con- 
 tributes its quota to man-making. The average per- 
 son conforms to the prevailing standards of the social 
 environment in which he moves. 
 
 6. The Prao- But ought he to conform ? With this question we 
 rmgl enter the field of the practical bearings of this thco- 
 l)is.uv,;un. rctical discussion of environment. 
 
Environment and Education 81 
 
 The answer is not easy. He must follow his moral Our Duty to 
 sense ; in cases where the moral sense is not quick 
 for any reason, the person will be content to conform ; 
 where it is quick enough to rebel at existing practices 
 and to demand something better, a true man will not 
 conform. The operation of the law of conformity to 
 the customary standards of the environment in order 
 to survive comfortably does not militate against the 
 duty of every man to rise above those standards when 
 he feels they are wrong. Our duty to environment 
 is to follow it in so far as it is right, and to rise above 
 it and seek in patient tolerance to change it when it 
 is wrong. The only light to guide us in thus adjust- 
 ing ourselves to the environment or in readjusting 
 the environment to our higher selves is the personal 
 moral sense. As Martin Luther said, in one of the 
 emancipating moments of human history, refusing to 
 conform, " It is neither safe nor advisable to do any- 
 thing against conscience." The Jesuits, who organized 
 to defend the existing order against encroachments, 
 saw the issue clearly enough when they agreed to 
 subject even conscience to the will of the superior, in 
 the words : " There can be rio obligation to sinful acts 
 of greater or less importance, except when enjoined 
 by the superior in the name of Jesus Christ." The 
 assertion of individuality can go no higher than Luther, 
 the subjection of individuality no lower than the 
 Jesuits. That the Jesuit order came to be dissolved 
 by the papal power that had first sanctioned it is 
 the dialectic of history against the subjection of an 
 enlightened conscience. Social progress, morally 
 viewed, consists in following the liberator of con- 
 
82 Idealism in Education 
 
 science, whether he revise an old practice or establish 
 a new one ; it consists in becoming, if need be, such 
 a leader one's self. If one's cause be great enough, to 
 do so may mean martyrdom in politics or religion, but 
 the stone that the builders of one generation reject is 
 likely to become the head of the corner in the next. 
 The fathers stone the prophets, and the children erect 
 expiating monuments. This is as true of Bruno as 
 of Servetus. 
 
 The Prob- The problem of handling environment aright in the 
 Handiin En- ma ^ n S ' greater men and women is simple in theory 
 *m. but difficult in practice. The problem is to equip the 
 environment of the young aright. You must put into 
 | tHe^ environment what you want in the child. The 
 environment must be equipped to give health to the 
 body, truth to the intellect, beauty to the feelings, good- 
 ness to the will, and God to the whole man ; and this 
 in home, school, and community alike. The ultimate 
 of wisdom in the matter of environment is, as 1 
 ident King says, "Stay persistently in the presence of 
 the best," or, as Professor Thomson suggests, provide 
 eutopias in which to live. So to do is to fall in with 
 the currents that bear the soul upward ; to do other- 
 wise is to sink by the action of the same laws of en 
 vironment. All the social workers know how a good 
 heredity avails little in a bad environment, and h 
 bad heredity lies dormant in a good environment. 
 Jacob Riis estimates environment at nths. It 
 
 is enough for us at present to recognize that environ- 
 ment is one of the indispensable elements in m:m- 
 making, and that, in contrast with heredity, environ- 
 ment serves the individual as heredity serves tfie race. 
 
Environment and Education 83 
 
 It is always better in building character to empha- Menaces to 
 size the good rather than the bad, and to overcome 
 the bad with the good. But it is also necessary to 
 see the bad and understand it in order to fight it. It 
 helps us to define our problem of handling the envi- 
 ronment when we realize the evils in the environment. 
 The Americans are becoming self-critical ; this stage 
 had to come in the development of a free people; it 
 is one of the conditions of further progress in self- 
 development. Some of the many evils that infest 
 American society, or dangers that become evils when 
 not avoided, about which the social reformers are talk- 
 ing, are : the rapid increase of wealth, the fast pace, 
 the indulgence in display, the urbanizatign^ of ^popula- 
 tion, only about half the people still living in the coun- 
 try, the growth of special privilege, the readiness 
 to enact, coupled with the unreadiness to enforce, laws; 
 mob-violence ; a growing reliance upon militarism ; 
 the use of a public trust as a source of private gain, 
 " graft " ; the divorce evil, one marriage in ten now 
 being later annulled ; the social evil, it being estimated 
 now that half a million women in fhe country are vic- 
 tims of this vice of man ; child-labor ; alcoholism ; tu- 
 berculosis ; gambling ; the waste of natural resources, 
 and other similar things. The array is long enough 
 and alarming enough. Some of these dangers to the 
 state have belonged to every age of man, others are 
 natural but not necessary in the development of a new 
 country. The situation is far from hopeless, but both 
 intelligence and skill on the part of many people will be \1 
 necessary to control the environment aright in the inter- \ 
 est of present and future manhood and womanhood. 
 
Idealism in Education 
 
 Suggestions 
 toward COD- 
 trolling En- 
 
 Many 
 
 Stimuli. 
 
 It will not be possible for us to consider in much de- 
 tail either the specific evils in the American environ- 
 ment or their respective remedies. But in a' general 
 way we must indicate how education may contribute 
 its part toward improving and controlling the situa- 
 tion. 
 
 (i) Utilize many stimuli. As teachers and parents 
 we do not know what all the inherited capacities are. i 
 Bring them out by using many stimuli. Change the 
 stimuli from one set to another. The interests of chil- 
 dren as they arise should be given free play to develop 
 until they are exhausted ; they may in succession be 
 such discrepant things as playing at nursing or running 
 a menagerie. These appetites of the soul feed uponj 
 little, are quickly satisfied, and leave the soul some- J 
 what more developed than before. A given home, 
 school, and community will afford many sources of such 
 interests to children if a little freedom, encourage*] 
 ment, and help are provided. When it is evident that 
 a given environment is exhausted in its resources to 
 stimulate the child's growth, it is necessary to change 
 the environment, to go on a visit, to travel, to attend 
 another school, even to move elsewhere. A change] 
 of environment is stimulating in itself, and in unex- 
 pected ways, as grown people also find as they seek] 
 to keep their reactions fresh. It is particularly <1 
 able that such contrasts as the city and the country, 
 the mountains and the sea, should divide the time of 
 growing souls. Perhaps at some unexpected moment 
 some unanticipated stimulus out of the many the \ 
 changing environment yields will discover to the soul 
 its real bent ; meanwhile all the other temporary in- 
 
Environment and Education 85 
 
 terests will have enlarged the powers of appreciation ; 
 the many stimuli will have helped the soul become 
 what its inherited nature allows. 
 
 (2) Associate with Nature. This is a true principle Nature 
 of human development, because the physical environ- Associatlons - 
 ment so influences man. Those persons who have 
 made Nature an associate, like Wordsworth, Bryant, 
 Emerson, and Thoreau, have had their personal re- 
 ward, and have also been enabled to transmit mes- 
 sages to their fellows. 1 The souls that assimilate the 
 teachings of Nature become like their teacher in a 
 character that is constant, firm, true, consistent, law- 
 ful, quieting, and vast. The growth of city life, the 
 urgent demands of business, and the spoliation of 
 the forests, as well as the legitimate clearings of a 
 spreading population, have rendered Nature well-nigh 
 a stranger to many whose ancestors were, once her 
 denizens. For the sake of the economic future, and 
 especially for the sake of the spiritual present and 
 future of man, it is essential that the face of Nature 
 be preserved, in certain places at least, in its original 
 aspect. But further, by reformation in elementary 
 education in rural districts, the people must be edu- 
 cated for the country, instead of, as hitherto, for the 
 town. The increasing attractiveness of farm and 
 country life is a welcome sign in our generation. 
 Through the use of science it is to be anticipated 
 that the profit as well as the pleasure of farming will 
 be enhanced. Meanwhile it is desirable that the city 
 dwellers go to the country for outings and refresh- 
 
 1 Cf. MacCunn, The Making of Character," Pt. II, Chap. Ill, N. Y., 
 1907. 
 
86 Idealism in Education 
 
 ment, and that some of the country be imported to the 
 city in the form of parks, playgrounds, and school 
 gardens. We have not yet realized in the West the 
 Oriental benefits of living and teaching in the open, 
 especially as an aid to the quieter mental virtues of 
 contemplation, meditation, and reflection; our relig- 
 ious worship has particularly suffered thereby, be- 
 coming both narrow and artificial. It takes more 
 time to feel the inspiration of Nature than most busy 
 Americans think they have to give, but it remains 
 true that few things so balance artificial lives as mak- 
 ing friends with Nature. 
 Personal (3) Associate with the best persons. And this 
 
 because of the influence of the social environment j 
 in man-making. Persons, after all, are the clearest ! 
 revelations of the meanings of existence. These mean* i 
 ings are many, according to the way in which life is 
 taken. The best persons help us to take life in the 
 right way. We should find the great persons, living 
 and dead, in science, literature, history, and religion, 
 and learn their secrets. Young people in college are 
 often told and easily come to think that they learn 
 most of later value in associating with each other; 
 that they learn much is unquestionable; but they 
 must also know that their present circle is both small 
 and immature in comparison with what the world has 
 produced of persons accessible to them by reading. 
 That benefits should ensue from one's personal asso- 
 ciations, it is necessary that one himself be something. 
 As the Hindu wisdom has it, "Though he roam to 
 sacred Concan, no dog will turn into a lion ; going to 
 holy Benares will make no pig an elephant ; and no 
 
Environment and Education 87 
 
 pilgrimage will make a saint of one whose nature is 
 different." This involves the third element in man- 
 making, that of the individual himself. That asso- 
 ciations with great personalities be beneficial, one 
 must himself have some greatness in him, some un- 
 derstanding, and some responsiveness. But given 
 these, the great associate reveals in reality what we 
 ourselves may in a measure become. 
 
 (4) Emphasize the cooperative rather than the Cooperation 
 competitive methods of teaching. Nature is compet- competition. 
 itive. Our whole industrial system is founded on 
 competition rather than on cooperation, whence arise 
 many of the gravest problems of an industrial de- 
 mocracy. The old teaching used the methods of 
 competition, emulation, and rivalry. The spirit of 
 Christianity, that of helping rather than hindering 
 one's fellows, has not permeated the mass of society. 
 The existing industrial monopolies which stifle com- 
 petition are the product of the competitive system, 
 the weaker competitors having been eliminated in the 
 struggle. Industrial society has fairly well imitated 
 the methods of survival characteristic of nature. 
 Herbert Spencer, with all his study of altruism, re- 
 mained an individualist always ; competition was his 
 fundamental principle; originality in his writings 
 was such a hobby that he was unwilling to appear 
 as having ever borrowed anything. Competition has 
 indeed its place, as we saw in studying the influences 
 jof the social environment, but the individuality and 
 jselfishness it breeds must be supplemented by the 
 jbreeding in some way of sociality and unselfishness. 
 The schools can help by training pupils in the 
 
88 Idealism in Education 
 
 methods^ of cooperation. The next generation can 
 solve the problems of the social democracy somewhat 
 easier if this generation trains the young to work with 
 each other instead of against each other. Social edu- 
 cation fits for social living. 1 School tasks may prop- 
 erly be assigned to groups of pupils, each one doing 
 his part. Athletic teams subject the action of the 
 individual to the good of the whole. Older pupils 
 should help younger ones, and the strong should 
 assist the weak. The school should be a miniature 
 cooperative society, typifying the coming ideal hu- 
 man society. 
 
 (5) Be one alone, if necessary, to initiate a needed 
 spcial reform. Like other people, social reformers 
 are partly born and partly made. They need sanity, 
 tact, patience, and wisdom. Individual initiative has 
 wrought the greatest moral reforms of the world ; in 
 many instances the forward movement has taken the 
 name of its initiator, Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, 
 Christ, Mohammed. These men had vision ami 
 energy, the imaginative vision to see things as they 
 ought to be and the practical energy to set about 
 their accomplishment. In our own day the examples! 
 of such social workers as Jane Addams and Jacob Riis 
 have stimulated many to help them. When history 
 writes its chapter on Roosevelt, though it may dis- 
 credit him for fastening the ideas of strenuosity and 
 militarism upon America, it will surely credit him for 
 introducing the standards of morality into political 
 life. Many vacillators have at the thought of him 
 stood upright Every reader of the public prints is 
 
 1 CC Scott, " Social Education, 11 Boston, 1908. 
 
Environment and Education 89 
 
 aware of the mighty contemporary turmoil in our 
 social life; one investigation of dishonesty follows 
 another in continuous succession ; political reputa- 
 tions years in building are unmade in a day ; and the 
 people reward their courageous moral leaders with 
 the best offices of the land. It all signifies, not that 
 we have fallen on evil days, but that we see the bet- 
 ter days that ought to be; the public conscience is 
 awakened; the purpose of social existence is being 
 realized, viz., the establishment of a moral order 
 among men. It is incumbent upon every individual 
 to cultivate morality in his own garden, however 
 small it may be, that the environment which moulds 
 man into its own likeness may be improved. 
 
 (6) Make_the ^chooLan .ideal physical and social The School 
 environment. On the physical side the school-build- J^ 10 * 
 ing should be of good architecture, of some solid ma- 
 terial, in an attractive location, with well-kept grounds, 
 with class-rooms well lighted, ventilated, and comfort- 
 ably furnished, with walls appropriately decorated, 
 with_each room suggesting the topic discussed there, 
 with texts aesthetic in printing, illustrations, binding, 
 and color, with a well-equipped gymnasium, and scru- 
 pulously kept sanitary arrangements. The school 
 should be the most attractive place in town, the demo- 
 cratic unifying agent of the community, the centre for 
 social gatherings and improvement societies. As for 
 the social environment provided by the school, it rests 
 mainly with the teachfcrs. They should make of them- 
 selves as admirable persons as they can for the sake 
 of their pupils and their own self-respect. Patrons 
 expect the teachers of their children to be models ; 
 
90 Idealism in Education 
 
 unfortunately they are sometimes disappointed. The 
 corps of teachers of any community, as a matter of fact, 
 is a fair reflection of the standards of the community ; 
 it ought to be somewhat higher; teachers should be 
 active uplifting social forces in the community. The 
 atmosphere of a school is constituted by its geiu i al 
 personnel ; it is the most pervasive of all the school 
 forces; it is something that a visitor quickly feels, 
 something that constantly shapes the lives of the pupils. 
 This atmosphere should be sane, wholesome, idealistic, 
 in which money shrinks from end to means, in which 
 spiritual values are the end of living, in which fictitious] 
 social distinctions have no place, in which the single] 
 standard of social morality is taught and practised, in 
 which the adolescent instinct of chivalry is truly 
 directed, in which vital economy, the truest economy; 
 of all, preserves from destructive personal habit 
 which the virtue of thrift and financial independence] 
 is inculcated, in which interests of the deeper and truer 
 sort exclude all forms of low and vulgar amusement, 
 in which the preservation of the body undefiled by 
 disease or impurity 4s second only to the zealous 
 guarding of white souls, in which all together, children,] 
 young men, and maidens become what future members 
 of society ought to be. The school, though it takes a] 
 generation for its results to show, is one of the main 
 agents of social redemption. Victories of the battle- 
 field have been credited to the school ; it will be a 
 greater day when the victories of social peace may be 
 so credited. 
 
 Out of many evils in the American life enumerated 
 above, let us select for specific mention only one, 
 
Environment and Education 91 
 
 which the school may do much to combat. Tubercu- Tuberculosis 
 losis is the great white scourge of humanity ; yet it school! 
 is due to environment rather than to heredity ; and it 
 is both preventable and curable. A commission 
 recently appointed to report to the Boston School 
 Committee on conditions among the school children 
 estimated the total number affected at the present 
 time at five thousand. It is an easy thing to distribute 
 among school children for themselves and their par- 
 ents .circulars describing how tuberculosis , may be 
 prevented, may be cured, and, when present, may be 
 kept from spreading. From one such, prepared by 
 the associated charities of Oakland, I quote the benef- 
 icent information that " a careful and clean consump- 
 tive is dangerous neither to himself nor to others." 
 Tuberculosis has proved so dreadful because it was 
 so dreaded. Best of all, school buildings and children 
 should be handled so as to reduce the possibilities of 
 infection to a minimum, through equable temperature 
 not above 68, through abundant fresh air, through the 
 reduction of dust to a minimum, through the more 
 thorough cleaning of schoolrooms, and especially 
 through the out-of-door school. This is one illustration 
 of how the school may be the ally of medical and social 
 prophylaxis. In similar ways, by enlarging its mission 
 to society, the school can contribute its part to the 
 solution of all the social problems, especially the re- 
 lated problems of the divorce and social evils. After 
 ! all, just as " guilt is personal/' so social problems must 
 i be solved ultimately only in individual terms: And 
 j the school has the individuals in their plastic period. 
 Thus we have tried to trace the influences upon 
 
92 Idealism in Education 
 
 The Second men and women of their environment, both physical 
 anc * s 00 ^!, and have also tried to see the practical 
 
 bearings of the discussion on education. Perhaps 
 the reader carries the conviction that environment 
 deserves to rank as one of the fundamental ele- 
 ments in man-making, and that consequently to 
 improve man we must improve his environment. 
 Heredity bestows capacities ; environment affords 
 opportunities. If then the first of the first principles 
 of man-making is eugenics, the second is eutopias : 
 put into the environment wliat you want in the man, 
 
 7.TheAboM Though appreciating the greatness of the influence 
 of environment, though realizing that not even hered- 
 ity would be possible without the body that environs 
 the gametes, still it is possible to abuse this law. We 
 do tend to become adapted to our environment, but 
 we abuse, by exaggerating, this law when we say that 
 men are made, that they are creatures of circum- 
 stance, that they are the products of environment, 
 that they are like pieces of bark floating upon the 
 surface of the current of social influence, that no 
 man can be better than his environment. Job abused 
 this law when he asked, "Can a clean thing c<>me 
 out of an unclean ? " Nathanael abused this law 
 when he asked, " Can any good thing come out of 
 Nazareth?" The record of any school or college a 
 hundred years old will show that its later environ- 
 ment was better, but that its earlier, poorer environ- 
 ment also produced some of its greatest alumni. 
 Those who suppose a man can be no worse than 
 his social environment should study the character 
 
Environment and Education 93 
 
 of Judas, and those who suppose a soul can be no 
 better than its social environment may remember 
 Jesus. In our consideration above of the relation of 
 geography to man we saw that the physical envi- 
 ronment alone was not able to explain man and his 
 history. It is very evident to reflection that there 
 could be no progress whatsoever in humanity, not even 
 any evolution of species, unless here and there indi- 
 viduals rose above the prevailing standards, were 
 followed by others, and perpetuated their strain. 
 The environment is a condition of man's being made ; 
 it does not alone make him. In a true sense any 
 great soul is superior to any event that can happen 
 to it. 
 
 That the individual counts for something in relation 
 to his environment is very deftly illustrated by Plato 
 as follows : " Themistocles answered the Seriphian 
 who was abusing him and saying that he was famous, 
 not for his own merits but because he was an Athe- 
 nian, ' If you had been an Athenian and I a Seriphian, 
 neither of us would have been famous.' " l 
 
 And great as are the combined influences of heredity 
 
 and environment, the element of individuality still 
 
 counts. We may abuse these joint laws, and do so, 
 
 indeed, when we say that combined they are the ade- 
 
 . quate explanation of a man. We have explained the 
 
 man by leaving the man himself out. This may be 
 
 ! an adequate way of explaining any organism, like a 
 
 i , plant, whose consciousness may not be able to take 
 
 note of its inherited inclinations and its environing 
 
 opportunities, but it is inadequate for all the higher 
 
 l Rep. 330 A (Jowett, Tr.). 
 
94 Idealism in Education 
 
 conscious animals. When the theory of evolution is 
 finally written, it will be, as we have seen, some form i 
 of a psycho-physical theory. The animal, the child, 
 the youth, especially the man, take a share in de- 
 veloping their own being. They react characteris- 
 tically and sometimes voluntarily upon their inherited 
 capacity and their environing opportunity. Such 
 reaction is due to the organism itself, to its will, as 
 we say, to whose influence in man-making we now 
 come. 
 
 REFERENCES ON CHAPTER III 
 
 BRADFORD, A. H., Heredity and Christian Problems, N. Y., 
 
 1895, Chap. V. 
 BRINTON, D. G., " Factors of Heredity and Environment in Man," 
 
 Amir. Anthropologist^ XI, 271-277, Washington, 1898. 
 CALDERWOOD, H., Evolution and Man's Place in Nature, Chap. 
 
 IV, London, 1893. 
 CONN, H. W., The Story of the Living Machine, Chap. Ill, 
 
 N. Y, 1899. 
 CRAWLEY, " Education and Evolution, 11 Rep. Brit. Ass. Adv. \ 
 
 Sc^ 1907, pp. 7I&-7I9- 
 DUDLEY AND KELLOR, Athletic Games in the Education of ] 
 
 Women, N. Y., 1909. 
 FYNN, A. J., The American Indian as a Product of Environment, 
 
 Boston, 1907. 
 JAMES, "Great Men and their Environment, 11 in The Will to 
 
 Believe, N. Y., 1897. 
 HAECKEL, The Natural History of Creation, Chap. X, N 
 
 1876. 
 LOCK, R. H., Recent Progress in the Study of Variation, II 
 
 ity, and Evolution, N. Y., 1910. 
 MAcDouGALL, D. T., "Heredity and Environic Forces," j 
 
 ScUncc, N. S., 1908, pp. 121-127. 
 -^"The Direct Influence of Environment, 11 in Fifty Years < 
 
 Darwinism, N. Y. 
 
Environment and Education 95 
 
 METCALF, Organic Evolution, pp. 163-188, N. Y., 1904. 
 MORGAN, T. H., Experimental Zoology, Chaps. XVI, XXV; 
 
 also pp. 315-320, N. Y., 1910. 
 
 Evolution and Adaptation, Chap. IX, N. Y., 1903. 
 ORR, H. B., Theory of Development and Heredity, Chaps. 
 
 Ill and IV, N. Y., 1893. 
 POULTON, E. B., Essays on Evolution, Oxford, 1908. 
 ROMANES, G. J., Darwin and After Darwin, Vol. II, Chaps. 
 
 VII-X, Chicago, 1895. 
 SEDGWICK AND WILSON, Biology, pp. 102-110, N. Y., 1895. 
 [Several Authors], Modern School Buildings, N. Y., 1910. 
 SPENCER, H., Principles of Biology, 2 vols. See Index under 
 
 "Environment," N. Y., 1864-1867. 
 SUTTON, Evolution and Disease, Chaps. I and II. 
 THOMSON, J. ARTHUR, "Synthetic Summary of the Influence of 
 
 the Environment upon the Organism," Proc. Roy. Phys. Soc., 
 
 Edinburgh, IX, 446-499. 
 TYLER, J. M., The Whence and Whither of Man, Chap. VII, 
 
 N. Y. 1897. 
 
 Man in the Light of Evolution, Boston, 1899. 
 
 VERNON, H. M., Variation in Animals and Plants, Chaps. VI-X, 
 
 N. Y., 1903. 
 WARD, L. F., Applied Sociology, Boston, 1906. 
 WEISMANN, A., The Effect of External Influences upon Develop- 
 ment, London, 1894. 
 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 WILL AND EDUCATION 
 
 i. The Bv "will" in this connection we mean the part 
 
 o! Will* the individual himself plays in his own making and in 
 the making of society. Our preceding discussions 
 have regarded men and women as products, prod- 
 ucts of heredity and environment ; we have now to 
 regard them as producing, producing to a degree 
 both themselves and others. Hitherto we have lost 
 sight of the man himself we were seeking to make ; 
 now we have to recognize him as contributing to his 
 own making. The term " individuality " would thus I 
 be a synonym for " will " as one of the three elemental ] 
 processes in man-making. Especially are we to avoid 
 the idea that "the will " is "a faculty " of mind dis- 
 tinct from other so-called " faculties," such as intel- 
 lect, memory, reason, and emotion. All the functions 
 of consciousness are interrelated ; they constitute one 
 organic unity, one conscious personality, and "the : 
 will" is the name for the fact that consciousness is an 1 
 agent. Consciousness is a knowing, sensitive agent. 
 It is this agency phase of consciousness that consti- 
 tutes our unique individuality; we are individuated 
 in space by our bodies, in character by our purposes 
 and deeds. Knowledge may be shared ; one's deed 
 remains his very own. Thus it is the active aspect i 
 of consciousness that we call "will," and it is this will 
 
 96 
 
Will and Education, 97 
 
 which constitutes our individuality, and it is this in- 
 dividuality whose influence in man-making we are 
 now to consider. 
 
 It may help some in this preliminary classification individuality 
 of terms to distinguish " personality " from " indi- aiity. 
 viduality." The person is the complete consciousness, 
 including the various cognitive, emotive, and motive 
 phases ; the individuality is the motive or will phase of 
 the person. Personality is a concrete term ; individu- 
 ality is an abstract term. In common usage the terms 
 "person " and " individual" are synonymous, but by 
 " individuality " one means particularly the purposes, 
 deeds, and character of the person. These logical 
 distinctions, tiresome perhaps at the beginning, may 
 serve us well in the end. 
 
 It will give background to our later discussion of 2. Historical 
 the part played by will in man-making if at this point J 
 
 we take a brief survey of man's development in tkmofthe 
 society with this question in mind : what recognition 
 has been accorded the individual in the past ? 
 
 The history of civilization and of its mirror, educa- The Social 
 tion, shows a constant conflict between the interests 
 of society, the big individual, and of its members, the 
 small individuals. Theoretically, there should be no 
 such conflict ; the best society is highly individualized, 
 and the best individual is highly socialized. But this 
 theoretical ideal is itself the product of centuries of 
 practical and sometimes groping travail. The reali- 
 zation of this ideal is the true goal of individual and 
 social human development. Meanwhile human his- 
 tory shows a very painful and slow progress toward 
 
98 
 
 Idealism in Education 
 
 The General 
 
 Has History 
 
 this happy, nay, blessed, state. In some cases the 
 social interests have crushed individuality ; in other 
 cases individual interests have shattered old social 
 values. 
 
 The course of the progress in general has been 
 * rom ^ e socia ^ to the individual, to some reconcilia- 
 tion of the two. Then after a lapse of time, through 
 the reentrenchment of the social, the same dialectic 
 again, with perhaps a better reconciliation. And 
 then, the same again and again. The histories of 
 individual nations show repeatedly this movement 
 from arbitrary power, to revolution, to a temp* 
 harmony. The history of universal mankind shows 
 the same immanent dialectic, from absolutism, to 
 successful rebellion which is revolution, to democ- 
 racy, or the synthesis of the universal and individual < 
 wills. This formula is indeed abstract and sche- 
 matic ; it may remind one of the Hegelian thesis, an 
 tithesis and synthesis; it certainly does not do full 
 justice to the concrete facts involved in this social- 
 individual phase of the human movement ; and other 
 formulations are without doubt possible. I think 
 there is no single cipher to the mystery of human 
 evolution. 
 
 But given such a broad generalization, however 
 inadequate, it unavoidably raises the question as to \ 
 the philosophy of history. Is the description of 
 human evolution suggestive of the nature of being ? 
 It certainly is to some historians, the philosophically 
 minded ones. Bancroft says of the American de- 
 mocracy that it " proceeded as uniformly and ma 
 cally as the laws of being, and was as certain as the 
 
Will and Education 99 
 
 decrees of eternity." It is possible to reject or 
 accept this idea. 1 My present point is that there is 
 some philosophy of human history, whether we have 
 it, or are ready for it, or can ever hope to get it, or 
 not. And I am constantly surprised that men who 
 are interested enough in man to discover the facts 
 concerning him are not more interested in consider- 
 ing their possible meaning. Facts are worth while 
 only as their significance is appreciated. So I am 
 ready to encourage any students of history to accept 
 and improve upon the most general descriptive for- 
 mulas and then seek for the ultimate meaning behind 
 them. In the case of our own generalizations con- 
 cerning heredity, environment, and will, we shall have 
 something to say in our last chapter on their possible 
 philosophical significance. 
 
 But we must seek to illustrate the recurring con- illustrations, 
 flict between the social and individual human interests. 
 Among primitive peoples the social interests, as em- Primitive 
 bodied in the will of the chief for the whole clan or J 
 tribe, predominate. The chief is free and rules, the 
 others are his subjects. He is the single tribute-taker; 
 they are the tribute-givers. The emphasis . is on 
 tribal custom, not on individual initiative. The 
 woman particularly is the burden-bearer in primitive 
 communities. Were her burdens put upon her or 
 self-imposed? " Bebel says that 'woman was the 
 first human being that tasted bondage. Woman was 
 a slave before the slave existed/ But this expression 
 takes all the aroma from her fragrant life. She made 
 a servant of herself, and willingly, before there was 
 1 Cf. Matthew Arnold, "A Final Word on America." 
 
ioo Idealism in Education 
 
 any slavery. The emancipation of woman is from a 
 self-imposed bondage, as everybody knows." 1 The 
 bondage may have been self-imposed at the outset; it 
 has not always remained so. Test it where you will, 
 the position of woman in society is a measure of the 
 recognition of individuality. 
 
 Oriental In the Orient, again, the social interests predomi- 
 
 p__ i^_ 
 
 nate, this time as embodied in the universal will of the 
 despotic ruler. The despotism is absolute; the ruler 
 alone is free, the others have their lot in life pre- 
 determined for them. The emphasis is on the social 
 institutions, the castes of India, the family in China, 
 the priestly religion in Egypt. In this life the soul 
 is suffering the penalties of misdeeds in a preexistent 
 life ; the law of Karma is exacting, individual effort is 
 unavailing. A representative passage is the follow- 
 ing, from the Hindu " Panchatantra ": " A gazelle that 
 had broken the noose, had tossed aside the trap laid 
 for him, had broken with ease through the net, had 
 escaped far away from the forest in which he was 
 encircled with a ring of flame, and by his wonderful 
 fleetness had outrun the reach of the hunter's arrows, 
 in his swift flight fell into a well. What avails the 
 utmost exertion of man when the fates are against 
 him ? " As for woman in Oriental life, her position 
 is represented in a passage from the Code of Manu 
 (V, 17): "A female child, a young girl, a wife, shall 
 never do anything according to their own will, not 
 even in their own house. While a child she shall 
 depend on her father; during her youth on her 
 husband; and, when a widow, on her sons." 
 * Mason, " Woman's Share in Primitive Culture," p. 284, N. Y., 1900. 
 
Will and Education 101 
 
 The development of the national consciousness to the 
 point of negating individuality appears in the soldier- 
 consciousness of modern Japan, in the virtue named 
 Bushido, or self-forgetful loyalty, which played 
 so large a r61e in the late Russo-Japanese war. 
 
 In Greece, the interests of the city-states dominated Greece, 
 individuality. Sparta is the best illustration. But 
 the city-states were smaller than the vast Oriental 
 empires, and, though there were many slaves, there 
 were also some freemen. Under Pericles for a short 
 while the social and individual interests were so 
 well harmonized that his Athens represents the first 
 of the several historic approaches to the coming 
 golden age of man. The rise of the Sophists in 
 Greece is the first illustration, after centuries of 
 Oriental universalism, of extreme individualism. 
 Theoretically, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle adjusted 
 in their teachings the social and individual interests, 
 giving the world ideal models of the solution of the 
 problem; practically, Greek national life went to 
 wreck on the rock of individualism and fell an easy 
 prey, first to the conquering Alexander, then to the 
 Roman eagles. Greece is the transition from 
 Oriental absolutism to Western individualism; in 
 Greece, in the tragedies of ^schylus, Sophocles, and 
 Euripides, fate is still the power behind the throne of 
 Zeus; yet in Aristotle's Ethics man is assigned 
 power over his deeds ; the elements of the problem 
 of fate and freedom were at last juxtaposed. In 
 ^Eschylus, 1 Zeus himself "may not avoid what is 
 destined," and Sophocles makes the Chorus in 
 
 1 " Prometheus Bound." 
 
IO2 Idealism in Education 
 
 "Antigone" say, "Pray no more now. From his 
 appointed woe man cannot fly." In contrast with 
 these views of gods and men as effects of fate, Aris- 
 totle presents us with the view of man as himself a 
 cause, saying, in the third book of his Ethics, " Man, 
 then, as has been said, appears to be the efficient 
 cause of his actions." 
 
 As for the place of woman in Greek society, the 
 older view is represented by a saying of Ismene, one 
 of the female characters in Sophocles' " Antigone " : 
 " Nay, rather let us bear in mind that we are women, 
 so not fit to strive with men." And Pericles himself, 
 in his wonderful Funeral Oration, observes : " And, 
 if I am to speak of womanly virtues to those of you 
 who will henceforth be widows, let me sum them up 
 in one short admonition : To a woman not to show 
 more weakness than is natural to her sex is a great 
 glory, and not to be talked about for good or for evil 
 among men." But the Greek regard for individual- 
 ity passed on to woman to such a degree that the con- 
 servative Aristophanes could satirize the movement 
 in his comedy, "The Women's Festival." 
 
 In Rome the social interests again, in the form of 
 the state-consciousness, dominate the individual. 
 Rome did not produce as great individuals as Greece, 
 but she produced a greater state. In conformity 
 with Roman law public officers at times condemned 
 their own sons to death. The rights of the husband 
 and father over wife and children were all but abso- 
 lute. Though noble matrons here and there rose to 
 prominence, the Roman law, strictly speaking, 
 applicable to men only, the woman requiring a male 
 
Will and Education 103 
 
 sponsor in her legal transactions. The individual 
 rested in security in the consciousness of the power 
 of state to which he belonged ; " I am a Roman 
 citizen " was the Open Sesame to justice before im- 
 perial magistrates even in distant provinces. The 
 consciousness of the state as opposed to the individu- 
 alism that would destroy it is clearly seen in the con- 
 flict between Cicero and Catiline; in the First 
 Oration against Catiline appear the words : " Now, 
 your country, which is the common parent of all of us, 
 hates and fears you, and has no other opinion of you, 
 than that you are meditating parricide in her case ; 
 and will you feel neither awe of her authority, nor 
 deference for her judgment, nor fear of her power?" 
 That the sense of individuality was present, though 
 subordinate, among Roman matrons is shown by 
 their opposition to the Appian Law, enacted during 
 the heat of the wars with Carthage, to the effect that 
 " no woman should possess more than half an ounce 
 of gold, or wear a garment of various colors, or ride 
 in a carriage drawn by horses in a city, or in a town, 
 or any place nearer thereto than one mile, except on 
 occasion of some public religious assembly/' After 
 twenty years, and a vigorous, though not militant, 
 campaign of persuasion, the law was repealed, despite 
 the opposition of even Cato the Censor. On the 
 whole in republican Rome the welfare of the individ- 
 ual was merged in the public goopl. The presence 
 of centralized power caused Rome to rise; the absence 
 of moralized individuality caused Rome to fall. 
 
 The sense of individuality is keenest among the The Teutons. 
 Teutons of all the peoples of the world. Man as man 
 
IO4 Idealism in Education 
 
 is free. The towering Alps divide Europe between 
 those who love authority, in the South, and those who 
 love freedom, in the North. Among the Teutonic 
 peoples the finest fruits of individuality have appeared 
 in local self-government, representative government, 
 the rule of the majority, individual initiative, and the 
 greatest modern states. The Renaissance began to 
 develop individuality in the South, but the movement 
 was early checked by the terrors of the Inquisition 
 and the system of the Jesuits, and passed instead into 
 the Reformation of the North, freeing private con- 
 science and judgment France has been a central 
 battle-ground between the forces of absolutism and 
 individualism, the acme of the former appearing in 
 Louis XIV, of the latter in the French Revolution. 
 The individualism of France is imported ; the blood of 
 France naturally is imperial, not democratic. It is the 
 Teutons who have best shown their inherent capacity for 
 self-government It is beside our purpose to trace this 
 principle in its gradual development from the primitive 
 Germans of the Black Forest to the modern Americans. 
 The clear vision of Tacitus already saw and desci 
 the salient traits of Germanic character, so contrasting 
 with Roman corruption. Of the Germanic coum-ils 
 he writes: " About minor matters the chiefs deliber- 
 ate, about the more important the whole tribe. . . . 
 The king or the chief according to age, birth, dis- 
 tinction in war, or eloquence is heard, more because 
 he has influence to persuade than because he has 
 power to command. If his sentiments displease them, 
 they reject them with murmurs ; if they are satisfied, 
 they brandish their spears/' And concerning the 
 
Will and Education 105 
 
 lofty recognition of woman by these warlike tribes 
 Tacitus says : " They even believe that the sex has a 
 certain sanctity and prescience ; and they do not de- 
 spise their counsels or make light of their answers. 
 In Vespasian's days we saw Veleda, long regarded by 
 many as a divinity. In former times too they ven- 
 erated Aurinia, and many other women ; but not with 
 servile flatteries or with sham deification. " It is no 
 accident but racial logic that modern movements for 
 a wider emancipation of women arise among the 
 Teutonic peoples, however those movements do or 
 ought to eventuate. 
 
 Modern Western civilization is a stream with four Christianity, 
 main composing tributaries, the Greek, the Roman, 
 the Teuton, as stocks, and Christianity as an adopted 
 religion. All the world's great religions have orig- 
 inated in the East Of these religions Christianity 
 is the only one fully to recognize individuality, Zoro- 
 astrianism in Persia coming next to Christianity in 
 this respect ; and Christianity is the only Eastern re- 
 ligion to make headway in the West. This again is 
 ino accident, but a case of racial apperception ; Chris- 
 jtianity provided that individuality which the West, 
 (especially the Teuton, demanded. It is significant of 
 jracial traits that the primitive individualism of Chris- 
 jtianity was overlaid by universal authority in Rome, 
 I only to be revived again by Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, 
 IKnox, and others of the North. Luther did for 
 ! Christianity what Jesus did for Judaism, emancipated 
 |it from external and material form and power. 
 
 But was primitive Christianity characterized by the 
 recognition of individuality? According to the teach- 
 
io6 Idealism in Education 
 
 Early Chris- ings that have come down to us the individual soul is 
 * su P reme value, its loss for the possession of the ' 
 earth is a poor sacrifice, its repentance causes heavenly 
 joy. The Heavenly Father marks the sparrow's fall, 
 and man is of more value than many sparrows; even! 
 the hairs of the head are numbered. Women, both ! 
 the good and the bad, both Mary, and Martha, and! 
 the Magdalen, shared equally with men the blessings] 
 of the kingdom, and the great apostle to the Gentiles! 
 eliminated the distinction in Christ between the male] 
 and female. Children, hitherto uncounted, if girls, 1 
 and little regarded till youth, if boys, were chosen as] 
 object-lessons of the new Kingdom. 
 
 Christianity Christianity is fulfilled Judaism. This is true inj 
 and Judaism. g enera j f an j ft j s ^5 particularly as regards individu- 
 alism. The eighth-century prophets, beginning with 
 Amos, were moral individualists. The extreme of indi- 
 vidualism appears in Ezekiel: "The soul that sinncth, 
 it shall die." A suffering individual is Jeremiah, and] 
 a healing, self-sacrificing individual is described by 
 Isaiah. Jesus was a religious individualist, a prophet] 
 rejecting the priestlincss of his times, a pure soul im- 
 mediately sensing God and proclaiming the religion! 
 of spirit against the religion of materialism and for- ! 
 malism. His soul had grown under the tutelage of the 
 old prophets. He solved the problem of the clash] 
 between authority and freedom by yielding obedience] 
 in things temporal to the powers that be, even unto 
 death, and by emancipating the human spirit in things] 
 eternal. God is spirit, not local; and the service duel 
 Him is different from that due Caesar. In the tem-j 
 poral world of power without, the individual is sub- ; 
 
Will and Education 107 
 
 jected; in the eternal world of spirit within, the indi- 
 vidual is free before God. The Kingdom of Jesus 
 is not of this outward world, it is within. Jesus is 
 the emancipator of the spiritual individual; it is a 
 great mistake to regard him as a social agitator; but 
 he trusted the new spirit, like leaven, to leaven nat- 
 urally in time the whole social lump. And this ex- 
 pectation of his the centuries are realizing. 
 
 The history of Christianity has not always left the individual- 
 individual spiritually free. Paul rejected the require- Hfetory of 
 ments of Jewish legalism. Also he closely followed Christianity. 
 Jesus in preaching obedience to the higher powers, 
 but he departed from Jesus in introducing formal, 
 even fixed, relations between God and the human 
 Isoul, in such doctrines as foreknowledge and foreor- 
 Idination. Jesus had been at pains to connect human 
 suffering with God's glory in its relief and to discon- 
 nect human suffering and past sins; he rejected the 
 Oriental idea that this blind man's sin in some pre- 
 existent state might have caused him to be born blind 
 (cf. John 9 : 2); in Paul, consciously or unconsciously, 
 the Eastern ideas of the subjection of the soul to 
 the heavenly powers parallel to the subjection of the 
 body to the temporal powers come into the Christian 
 tradition. 
 
 In St. Augustine, following Paul, the doctrine of 
 election is perfected. In the popes temporal and 
 spiritual powers are united, and the body and soul of 
 the individual yield obedience to the Church. 
 
 The Middle Ages, not felt as "dark" to themselves, The Middle 
 nor deserving to be so called by us, witness to the Ages * 
 domination of individuality by the system of the 
 
lo8 Idealism in Education 
 
 Church. Rome did not become Christian so much 
 as Christianity became Roman. 
 
 Protestant- The significance of the Renaissance and the Refor- 
 mation for individuality we shall see briefly later. 
 Here it is important to note that authority, temporal 
 and spiritual, outlived the Reformation. Geneva be- 
 came "the Rome of Protestantism." The paradox 
 in Calvin is that as a reformer he was an individualist, 
 and as a reviver of the Augustinian tradition of elec- 
 tion he was a predestinationist. The Presbyterians 
 have likewise in their history on the one hand been 
 the parents of human democracy and on the other 
 hand advocates of the Divine autocracy. In most 
 Protestantism, though born in the right of private 
 conscience, reason, and the personal interpretation of 
 the Scriptures, non-conforming individualism i 
 heretical as in Catholicism. " Arminianism," affirming 
 among other things the power of the individual to 
 resist Divine Grace, and even to fall from it, was con- 
 demned in the land of its birth, though the Weslcyan 
 Methodists have continued these views. 
 
 The Protest- A paradox, similar to that in Calvin's case, runs 
 ior * through most Protestantism ; it defends private judg- 
 ment, but all must believe in foreordination. The 
 reason for this paradox is that Protestantism went 
 only a part of the way toward individualism ; by pri- 
 vate conscience it changed authorities ; it substituted 
 for the authority of Rome the authority of Scripture; 
 its principle was that Scripture should be personally in- 
 terpreted ; its practice usually was that Scripture was 
 authoritatively interpreted. 
 
 So the matter stands to-day in the Christian world. 
 
Will and Education 109 
 
 The spirit of Jesus and of individualism and of toler- 
 ance is leavening still both Protestantism and Cathol- 
 icism; but the leaven works slowly and the lump is 
 large. It will probably be felt, without having to be 
 said, that our purpose in this review of Christian 
 history on the question of " the system against the 
 man " is simply to understand, not to estimate, least 
 of all to condemn. 
 
 These views, then, represent the fortunes of will in 
 the long past. Our ultimate question is, what is the 
 place of will in man-making ? To help us still further 
 in answering this question, let us review the general 
 estimates of will in the just past. 
 
 The period of history since the European Renais- 3. Modem 
 sance has witnessed the assertion of the individual ^f 5 ^^! 
 will against established institutions, also the recog- dividual, 
 nition of the fatuity of mere individualism, and finally 
 the demand for proper adjustment between the indi- 
 vidual and society. The Renaissance was the upris- The Renais- 
 ing of suppressed individuality ; the interests of this 
 world asserted themselves against the interests of the 
 other world ; men began to discover old manuscripts 
 and new continents, they invented the compass and 
 gunpowder, they set up printing-presses and began to 
 make books. 
 
 The Protestant Reformation was the Renaissance The Refor- 
 of the North ; it was the rise of individuality in re- mation - 
 ligion. The Renaissance and the Reformation, ex- 
 pressing individuality, destroyed for all time that unity 
 of life which characterized the Middle Ages. Modern 
 life is characterized by variety. Against the principle 
 
no 
 
 Idealism in Education 
 
 The French 
 Revolution. 
 
 w. Social 
 
 of individuality in religion, which was the Reformation 
 of Protestantism, came the reaction of the mediaeval 
 principle of authority in religion, which was the 
 Counter-Reformation of Catholicism. The warfare 
 between these two parties and principles has been 
 long and bitter, though signs of its abatement are 
 plentiful ; it divided Europe into two, mainly with the 
 line of the Alps. 
 
 From the spheres of learning and religion the prin- 
 ciple of individuality passed into the sphere of politics. 
 Its extreme recognition appears in the emotional phi- 
 losophy of Rousseau and its extreme application in the 
 French Revolution. The destructiveness of mere in- 
 dividualism is here apparent to all, whether friends 
 or foes of individuality. It became evident to all 
 sober minds that mediaeval authority was one extreme 
 and the individualism of the Revolutionists was an- 
 other, and that the need was for the golden mean of 
 reconciliation of these two extremes. The great 
 modern states, Germany, France, England, and 
 America, are the vast practical illustrations of the po- 
 litical supply of this need. 
 
 It is characteristic of minds ignorant of history to 
 propose solutions of modern questions in terms of 
 either extreme. The anarchists, for example, are 
 extreme individualists. The Socialists are, as thrir 
 name implies, at the opposite extreme. To the an- 
 archist the government is nothing and the individual 
 is everything ; to the Socialist, the individual is i 
 ing and the government is everything. To the 
 toric type of thinker, government and individuality 
 arc two extremes of one reality; true government 
 
Will and Education in 
 
 must express individuality, and true individuality must 
 embody the laws of the government. Modern in- 
 dustrial conflicts between labor and capital are really 
 illustrations of the effort of the two principles of the 
 individual and the organization to live together. 
 Trade unionism is the effort to preserve individuality 
 by organization. The social turmoil of our times, so 
 confusing to the casual observer, is really the effect 
 of the efforts of adjustment between the forces that 
 make and crush individuality. The solution will be 
 neither anarchistic nor socialistic, but humane, and, in 
 the broadest sense, Christian. 
 
 Passing now from the estimate of will in society Exaggera- 
 at large to the estimate of will in the person, it t] 3ns of WllL 
 was natural that the modern period first saw an 
 exaggeration of the power of will. Under the spell 
 of the social momentum disengaged by Renaissance, 
 Reformation, and Revolution alike, it was natural 
 that all things seemed possible to the individual. 
 He came to exaggerate the power of his own will. 
 The whole of the eighteenth and the first half 
 of the nineteenth century revealed a tendency to 
 magnify unduly the influence of the individual will. 
 We see an illustration of this in the exaggerated 
 faith in education of the period of the Enlighten- 
 ment, illustrated in the sayings of Leibnitz and Kant. 
 We see the same illustrated in such sayings of this 
 period as : man is the arbiter of his own destiny, the 
 architect of his own fortune, the maker of his own 
 future, and the like. Such sayings attain a certain 
 popularity, as they appeal to the personal powers. 
 Emerson, quite inconsistently with his doctrine of 
 
112 
 
 Idealism in Education 
 
 the transcendental Over-Soul, became in some of 
 passages the American mouthpiece of this doctrine 
 as when he says, " Man is everything, environme 
 is nothing " ; " Hitch your wagon to a star " ; " The 
 youth replies, I can," etc. Lincoln has commonly 
 been cited as an illustration of the view that the 
 will is the sole essential thing in achievement, it 
 being forgotten that he himself said, with some 
 degree of truth certainly, " All that I am, or ever 
 expect to become, is due to my mother." 
 
 But during the latter half of the nineteenth century 
 this tendency to exaggerate the power of the individ- 
 ual will was offset by an opposite tendency, equally 
 extreme probably, to minimize it. This tendency 
 was due to the recognition of the fact that man is 
 a very small part of a very vast whole and that 
 the part is determined by the whole. Biology, for 
 example, began to explain animals in terms of 
 heredity and environment and to claim that man, 
 as an erected animal, was no exception. He was 
 made by the general forces that produced other 
 animal life and had no part in his own making. 
 
 With the rise of biology came also sociology, the 
 study of men in groups and masses, this being the 
 natural state of man. From the sociological stand- 
 point the actions of the individual are largely, if not 
 entirely, explicable in terms of certain social and 
 mental forces named imitation and suggestion and 
 the like. "The individual is a social deposit/' as 
 I heard one sociologist observe. Such a view does 
 not intimate that the individual has anything to do 
 with depositing himself. 
 
Will and Education 113 
 
 To the influence of the biological and sociological An Age of 
 viewpoints in helping to explain the recent minimiz- Machmer y- 
 ing of the will of the individual may be added that 
 of a machine-age. Modern achievements have been 
 realized by machines, the cotton-gin, the sewing- 
 machine, the type-setting machine, the war-vessel, 
 steam-engine, the flying-machine, etc. Each ma- 
 chine has displaced some type of individual laborer. 
 Machines have also displaced the apprentice system 
 that made the laborer an individual, and prepared 
 the way for the specialized system that reduces the 
 laborer to a part of a man and in some cases almost 
 to a part of the machine. The work of the modern 
 world is done by grinding machinery destructive 
 of individuality. The workman finds no freedom 
 in his work, but only from his work. We must have 
 machines; they will continue to supplant, and, in 
 some instances, to degrade, the laborer, diminish- 
 ing our sense of what man can do. But, if we regard 
 them rightly, we shall see they are but expressions of 
 the will of man, fulfilling his larger purposes. The 
 more wonderful the machine, the greater its inventor, 
 and the more skilled its manipulator. It is not neces- 
 sary that an age of machinery crush the sense of per- 
 sonality, but it is necessary that the modern workman 
 have some resources other than his work. 
 
 To all these explanatory influences may be added A Mechani- 
 yet another, that of a mechanical philosophy. The ^ h 
 tendency to eliminate will in the explanation of the 
 individual is closely associated with the tendency to 
 eliminate will and personality in the explanation of 
 the world. A mechanical explanation is the ideal of 
 
114 Idealism in Education 
 
 all scientific endeavor. Physics, chemistry, biology, 
 physiology, in fact, all the modern physical and nat- 
 ural sciences, tend to explain one material phenom- 
 enon in terms of an antecedent and equivalent 
 material phenomenon, known as its cause. Thus all 
 causes are viewed as material in nature. Physiolog- 
 ical psychology adopts a similar scientific standpoint, 
 and explains mental states in terms of brain-states, 
 said to " correspond " with the mental states. The 
 soul of man is thus viewed by science as a mechanism, 
 part and parcel indeed of the vast mechanism we 
 name the universe. Later we shall have occasion to 
 criticise this view. For the present it is enough to 
 observe that this view of the soul exists, that it is 
 part of a current mechanical, in some instances also 
 materialistic philosophy, and that it is one of the in- 
 fluences tending to minimize the importance of the 
 human will in the making of men and women. 
 
 Thus we have tried to describe both the enlarged 
 and the diminished estimates of the individual will 
 that have prevailed since the rise of individuality in 
 the modern period of the world's history. On the 
 face of it, it is too much to say that the human will 
 can do anything it undertakes this is an exaggera- 
 tion. Is it not also too much to say that the human 
 will can do nothing? It evidently is to those who 
 observe that man's machinery, however crushing in 
 instances to man's individuality, is nevertheless the 
 product of man's will to invent and the fulfilment of 
 man's purposes to produce economically and on a 
 vast scale and to master the forces of nature. It is 
 really surprising that man will sacrifice himself under 
 
Will and Education 115 
 
 the wheels of the Juggernaut of mechanism he has 
 himself constructed. 
 
 After so much review of past and present esti- 4. The Future 
 
 of Indi- 
 vidualism. 
 
 mates of will, seeing particularly the swing of action c 
 
 and reaction between a magnified and minimized view 
 of will, the question naturally arises, what of the fu- 
 ture? Let us then clearly raise the question, after 
 seeing as we have the slow movement of the whole 
 world in the direction of individualism, with many a 
 back-stroke, however, what the end of this develop- 
 ment is or ought to be. 
 
 Utmost individualism in politics is anarchy ; in re- Extremes 
 ligion is private devotions only; in philosophy, which must 
 we did not review, would be some form of pluralism 
 for the world and " the liberty of indifference " for 
 man. It is easy to see that on the basis of mere 
 individualism, no church, no state, and, we may add, 
 no cosmos, is possible. On the other hand, utmost 
 universalism is absolutism in politics, quietism in re- 
 ligion, and Pantheism in philosophy and religion, all 
 of which have characterized the East. Under these 
 conditions human society is stable, but stationary. 
 Change in politics is treason, in religion is heresy, in 
 the world is illusion. The ideal for man is dream- 
 less sleep on earth and absorption in heaven. The 
 thesis of the East is permanence; the antithesis is 
 that individualism, which has appeared in the West 
 in Greek sophistry, the origin of Christianity, the 
 Renaissance, the Reformation, the French Revolu- 
 tion and modern democracies, is change ; the synthesis 
 is certainly to be some adjustment of the claims of per- 
 manence and change, of authority and freedom. 
 
u6 
 
 Idealism in Education 
 
 Illustrations. 
 
 The God of 
 
 Social 
 
 Evolution. 
 
 When authority ceases to represent individuality 
 there has been and will be revolution ; when individ- 
 uals win their freedom, there has been and there must 
 be organization and authority to preserve what has 
 been gained. The absolutism of George III caused 
 the American colonies to assert their freedom ; to pre- 
 serve this dearly bought possession as a heritage they 
 organized, first loosely into a confederation and then 
 more compactly into a union. Whei> the central 
 government assumed powers over the states not ex- 
 pressly delegated by the Constitution of the Union, 
 the Southern States, in defence of their rights as states, 
 fought for independence ; the war failing, a still more 
 compact union resulted, and centralization was ad- 
 vanced. Perhaps the pendulum of progress will con- 
 tinue to swing between the extremes of universalism 
 and individualism in all man's affairs, but the ideal 
 evidently is a human society whose laws are just and 
 authoritative and whose individual members are free, 
 a society of individual liberty and social union, of 
 freedom under law, of change and permanence. 
 Authority must be tolerant of individual change and 
 provide for it within the system ; individualism must 
 patiently submit to being controlled by an authorita- 
 tive system that is the true expression of its own 
 rational will. Particularly are law and authority for 
 children, and liberty and reason for adults, both 
 among men and nations and races. 
 
 Our review of historic human development indicates 
 the goal of the process to be an individualized society 
 and a socialized individual. This is a unity of greatest 
 variety and a variety with greatest unity. Had we 
 
Will and Education 117 
 
 taken a wider sweep and considered the evolution of 
 organic forms, or a still wider sweep and considered 
 the evolution of the inorganic universe, the same con- 
 clusion would have been indicated. Everywhere the 
 progress has been from the universal, to the individual, 
 to their concrete unity ; from the homogeneous, to the 
 heterogeneous, to their closer unity ; from the undif- 
 ferentiated, through differentiation, into integration; 
 from immediacy, through mediation, to concreteness. 
 The formulas of science and philosophy, of Darwin, 
 Spencer, and Hegel, are all at one here. Human 
 society, the human body, the human mind, the animal 
 body, the material universe, each and all are concrete 
 unities of diverse elements. Universal evolution has 
 moved in the direction of individual differentiation, 
 but the individual so differentiated embodies the type 
 in himself. 
 
 All this is abstract enough, perhaps too abstract for Summary of 
 clear understanding. The next point will be more ^^f ! ^ 
 concrete. Our initial question was, what recognition dividuaiity. 
 has been accorded individuality in the world's prog- 
 ress; our general answer is a constantly enlarging 
 recognition of the rational, not eccentric, individual. 
 This suggests that the will of man has been more 
 and more recognized as contributing to his making or 
 unmaking. The Oriental will isparalyzed ; the Greek 
 will was very active in support of the city-state ; the 
 modern will demands self-expression, and modern states 
 are the best illustrations so far forthcoming of the 
 objectified will of all the people. 
 
 We have now reviewed the recognition of individu- 
 ality in the long past and the near present, and have 
 
u8 
 
 Idealism in Education 
 
 5. Anticipa- 
 tions of Will 
 in the Pre- 
 ceding 
 Discussions 
 of Heredity 
 and En- 
 vironment 
 
 In 
 
 -Heredity. 
 
 In "En- 
 vironment." 
 
 anticipated what the future may reveal. This is all 
 preliminary to the question as to the golden mean in 
 estimating the influence of the individual will. What 
 does will contribute to the making of men and women ? 
 
 Still briefly delaying our answer for the sake of a 
 better one perhaps when we reach it, it may be well 
 for us to note as a further preliminary the anticipations 
 of will in the preceding discussions of heredity and 
 environment. We could not describe the action of 
 these forces in making man without also involving 
 man's reaction to these forces, which is the first form 
 of his will. In discussing heredity, for instance, such 
 matters came up as " tropisms," "selection/ 1 "sexual 
 selection," "organic selection," and the like, all in- 
 dicating the r61e played by the individual itself in 
 making both itself and its race. " Sexual selection " 
 particularly indicates the big r61e mind through its 
 tastes and preferences has played in evolution. Like- 
 wise we had to point out that character is not inher- 
 ited, though inherent characteristics may be ; neither is 
 character a product of environment; it is peculiarly 
 the acquisition of the individual through his reactions 
 upon heredity and environment. 
 
 In discussing environment too we came upon will, 
 by anticipation. The effects of use and disuse upon 
 the organism, and also upon its offspring, if we adopt 
 the Lamarckian hypothesis, suggest will, for it is the 
 part of the individual to use or not to use. The very 
 term " natural selection " implies a kind of unconscious 
 purpose in Nature, choosing the fit and rejecting the 
 unfit. The "adjustment" of the individual to its en- 
 
Will and Education 119 
 
 vironment, which is the essential condition of its sur- 
 vival, is a reciprocal process; the environment weeds 
 out the unfit, and the fit find propitious places in the 
 environment. The environment modifies the organ- 
 ism, and the organism, in turn, modifies the environ- 
 ment. Without meaning to imply will as a third 
 element in the process, in addition to heredity and en- 
 vironment, the scientist yet naturally adopts the lan- 
 guage of will, as when De Vries says : " Each plant must 
 have sought out the conditions where it could thrive 
 best on account of its given peculiarities." l Also we 
 had to speak of the modifications of environment by 
 will, as in irrigation and fertilization of soils. Even 
 our "duty to environment" had to be discussed, but 
 " duty " clearly is a category of will. Such influential 
 forces of the social environment as " imitation " and 
 " suggestion " also imply the conscious response of the 
 individual to certain stimuli, which is a phenomenon 
 of will. Other instances may likewise be recalled of 
 the way in which the recognition of will forced itself 
 upon us in our discussions of heredity and environment 
 that tried to leave will out. Thus, in sum, our discus- 
 sions both of the historic and scientific bearings of our 
 question prepare us for a statement, though no extrav- 
 agant one, asserting individual initiative as one of the 
 man-producing forces. 
 
 What, then, at length, is the contribution of will to 6. The Con 
 man-making? In the first place, it is through will wnf 
 that we develop or neglect the capacity bestowed by Making. 
 heredity. A gifted person may idle away his time; 
 
 1 De Vries, " Plant-Breeding," p. 335. 
 
120 
 
 Idealism in Education 
 
 Dcrelop- 
 ment of 
 Capacity. 
 
 An 
 Objection. 
 
 Uieof 
 
 Opportunity. 
 
 an average person may improve himself as best he 
 can. It is for the man himself to say whether he will 
 strive to be all that Nature intended him to be or not. 
 A capacity undeveloped is as fruitless as no capacity 
 at all, as a seed unsown is as barren as a dead seed. 
 It is by will that we realize capacities, that we neglect 
 capacities, that we choose to be or not to be what our 
 inherent potentialities allow. 
 
 If one objects that our handling of capacities is it- 
 self a product of heredity and that no element of will 
 is involved, the answer is the appeal to the conscious 
 choice of personal experience. We experience the fact 
 that we consciously choose to do or not to do what lies 
 within our power. We do not choose our capacities, 
 they are ours by heredity without choice; but we do 
 choose to realize or slight them, we do feel such choice 
 is in our power, and corresponding feelings of satis 
 faction or reproach accompany such choices. Such 
 feedings would not be appropriate if the choice itself 
 were inherited; nor would the feeling of tire power to 
 choose be present if the choice were inherited, for con- 
 cerning our mental inheritances we feel contrariwise 
 that they could not have been nor could they be differ- 
 ent We must then conclude that the individual has 
 some power in dealing with his inheritance which is not 
 predetermined in its operation by his inheritance. 
 
 Secondly, will uses or abuses the opportunities of 
 environment Such use or abuse makes a vast differ- 
 ence in the outcome of the individual. An unused 
 opportunity is as fruitless as no opportunity at all. 
 By the use of opportunity capacities are realized 
 and one is prepared for larger opportunities just 
 
Will and Education 121 
 
 ahead. The opportunity is the gift of the envi- 
 ronment. It cannot be said in any strict sense that 
 a man makes his opportunities ; he can use them as 
 they arise to more or less advantage. Further, if 
 those that the present environment affords do not 
 suit him and give him the chance he needs, he can 
 select another and more suitable environment, as 
 when he leaves his home-town and school to go off to 
 college. Still further, to some extent a man can re- 
 make a present environment which he does not like, 
 as when a citizen provides a public library for his 
 home-town. By will too we may refuse to imitate the 
 morals of our social environment ; we may refuse to 
 act upon the suggestive ideas that captivate so many 
 of our fellows. We may be independents and do our 
 own thinking ; we may be radical in the midst of con- 
 servatives, or conservative in the midst of radicals. 
 We may refuse to shape our opinions by the edito- 
 rials of our favorite newspaper. In all these ways the 
 element of individuality is expressing itself in relation 
 to the environing opportunities. Whether we yield to 
 or resist the social stimuli to action, we are express- 
 ing our individuality. In this connection it should be 
 remarked that the highest mental power of the indi- 
 vidual is that of critical judgment, making of him a 
 full person and inducing social progress. 
 
 If one here objects that the environment not An 
 simply presents the opportunity but also determines Ob J ectlon - 
 our response to it, thereby eliminating the personal 
 element of will, the answer again is the appeal to the 
 personal experience of conscious choice. We feel it 
 is in our power to work or to loaf during the morning 
 
122 Idealism in Education 
 
 hours of vacation days, and that the double oppor- 
 tunity does not itself determine our specific reaction ; 
 we ourselves determine that. Here again, then, in 
 relation to the situations provided by circumstance, 
 the power of the will in the making of the man shows 
 itself. 
 
 In his first Baccalaureate, President Lowell told 
 the Harvard seniors that environment is not master. 
 " It is also true," he said, " that a man creates to a 
 great extent his own environment. He is not 
 affected equally by everything that surrounds him. 
 He is mainly influenced by, and conversely his per- 
 sonality reacts upon, those things of which he is con- 
 scious, which he perceives. . . . The differences in 
 men's careers are often based not so much on the op- 
 portunities they have had, as upon the use they have 
 made of them. M A man's real environment is the 
 things of which he is conscious, over which he has 
 some power through his selective attention and in- 
 terests. 
 The Law of We were able to state the forces of heredity and 
 
 to ***" environment in the making of men and women in the 
 form of laws ; can we not do the same for will ? It 
 would be as follows: within the limitations of in- 
 herited capacities and environing opportunities, man 
 becomes what he will. This is the long-sought an- 
 swer to our fundamental question as to the relative 
 place of will in man-making. It clearly means that 
 we cannot become what we will ; it equally clearly 
 means that, given certain limits, within these we can 
 become what we will. We cannot by willing enlarge 
 our boundaries ; we can by willing cultivate and im- 
 
Will and Education 123 
 
 prove our soil. We cannot by willing enlarge our 
 capacities, but only develop them. We cannot by will- 
 ing create opportunities, but only utilize them and 
 help them arise. 
 
 The practical question may naturally arise as to The Essence 
 how will acts in developing capacities and using op- of Wlil * 
 portunities. The answer is that the essence of will 
 consists in attention to thoughts. We have already 
 had occasion to observe that the will is not an abstract 
 entity separate in existence from the stream of con- 
 sciousness itself, but that it is the energetic or respon- 
 sive element in the consciousness itself ; further, that 
 there is no will apart from the presence both of ideas 
 and of feelings. Now when the conscious organism 
 by its own will influences its own making and that of 
 its kind, the process is that of attention to ideas. 
 The attention in some cases is involuntary; in critical 
 cases of highest import to man and his future, the at- 
 tention is voluntary. Exclusive attention to an idea 
 means corresponding conduct. The control of one's 
 thoughts is the secret of all individual attainment. 
 
 M 
 
 Ihe deeds of conscious men are the expressions in 
 the outward world of the thoughts to which they 
 inwardly consent.^Otherwise they are not in a re- 
 sponsible condition, not themselves, though indeed 
 they may be responsible for not being themselves, as 
 a drunken man is irresponsible in conduct, but he is 
 responsible for being drunk. 
 
 Thoughts then lead to deeds, and deeds through From 
 repetition lead to habits, and our habits taken together * 1 * 
 
 are our character, and our character leads by cause 
 and effect to our destiny. Character is what we are ; 
 
124 Idealism in Education 
 
 destiny is what we are becoming ; it is not fixed for 
 each individual, but is in process of being fixed by 
 himself in relation to his inheritance and his circum- 
 stances. The trouble is not in our stars, but in our- 
 selves, if we are total failures ; partial failures may 
 be blamed on heredity or circumstance. Where there 
 is no will there is no way, however great the capacity, 
 however inviting the opportunity. Even where there 
 is a will, heredity may have blocked the way. These 
 are the links in the chain of life from simplest begin- 
 ning in thought to sublimest conclusion or utmost fail- 
 ure in destiny. And we have power over our thoughts. 
 The in- I would not have it appear that all human conduct 
 
 LO"~SU^ is traceable to conscious decisions, only the highest 
 of win. and best is so traceable; perhaps the most of human 
 conduct is rooted in such lower stages of will as in- 
 stinct, impulse, imitation, suggestion, and the like , in 
 which response is indeed present, but not much self- 
 control and self-direction. Our concern here is not 
 so much to show the nature and development of will, 1 
 as its place in man-making. 
 
 Titcheoer In view of the strategic importance attached to at- 
 
 onAttendon. tent j on ' m t h e preceding discussion, let me refer to 
 the judgment of a specialist in this subject. Pro- 
 fessor Titchener in his notable contribution writes: 
 " It seems to me that the doctrine of attention is of 
 fundamental importance. And I believe that the 
 strength of Wundt's system lies and will lie, his- 
 torically in the fact of its being an attentional sys- 
 tem, whether its special teaching is right or wrong. 
 A system which makes little of attention is, in my 
 1 CL my Psychological Principle! of Education," Part IV. 
 
Will and Education 125 
 
 judgment, foredoomed to failure." 1 The present dis- 
 cussion is in full agreement with this point of view. 
 But Professor Titchener, in truly scientific fashion, 
 finds the nature of attention to be "sensory clear- 
 ness," and this mental quality to be itself conditioned 
 by the nervous system. He says, " I will only sug- 
 gest, then, that the common element which, empiri- 
 cally, holds all the conditions together the ultimate 
 condition of clearness at large may be designated 
 as nervous disposition, predisposition of the nervous 
 system and its sensory attachments. " 2 Professor 
 Titchener is writing entirely without pedagogical in- 
 terests and from the parallelistic standpoint that ex- 
 cludes mental causation. I differ from Titchener, 
 first of all, in standpoint, having both pedagogy and 
 idealism at heart. This standpoint does not require 
 me to explain away the nature of attention in its first 
 intent. "Sensory clearness " is to me an effect of 
 attention, not its nature. Attention is a strain in con- 
 sciousness, not the consciousness of a strain. In- 
 voluntary attention, consciousness, puts the strain upon 
 itself. It is just here that human destinies hinge. 
 
 Our ultimate aim is to find the practical first princi- 7. The Prac- 
 ples of man-making. To this end we have analyzed gearings of 
 heredity, environment, and now will. We want to thisDis- 
 control these forces, so far as we can, by education, 
 and otherwise, in the interest of present individuals 
 and the future race. In the two preceding chapters 
 
 1 Titchener, "The Psychology of Feeling and Attention," N. Y., 1908, 
 P- 353- 
 
 2 Op. cit.> p. 206. 
 
126 
 
 Idealism in Education 
 
 The Edu- 
 cation of the 
 Will. 
 
 The Aim in 
 Educating 
 the Will 
 
 Sonalmng 
 the In- 
 dividual. 
 
 I TV; ITIOUaJ- 
 
 Uing Society. 
 
 we have seen how education may control heredity 
 and environment through eugenics and eutopias. We 
 have now to inquire how, in Huxley's phrase, we may 
 make " volition count for something as a condition of 
 the course of events." Education can help to make 
 men and women by building good wills. How can 
 this be done ? 
 
 In considering the right way to educate the will, 
 first of all the aim must be had in mind. The aim in 
 educating the will is twofold, to socialize it and to 
 effectualize it. Socializing the will makes it rii;ht, 
 and effectualizing it makes it capable. Many good 
 people are inefficient, and many efficient people 
 not good. We need good people who are efficient 
 and efficient people who are good. Education should 
 aim to build the right will and the capable will. As 
 Ruskin says, "Education does not mean teaching 
 people to know what they do not know. It means 
 teaching them to behave as they do not behave.' 1 1 
 
 It is very common in educational theory to-day to 
 emphasize the socializing of the individual, and, what 
 amounts to the same thing, the adjustment of the 
 individual to his social inheritance from the racial 
 past This process makes men fit members of 
 present society, and it is necessary to emphasize it. 
 
 But we need to recognize that education is the 
 individualizing of society as well as the socializing 
 of the individual. The individualizing of society 
 makes men efficient, as the socializing of the individ- 
 ual makes men good. The individualizing of so 
 makes leaders of society, as the socializing of the 
 
 i Ruskin, "The Future of England," 144, in "The Crown of Wild 
 
Will and Education 127 
 
 individual makes fit members of society. To adjust 
 the individual to society is a stabilizing process, 
 tending to preserve the ancient social institutions ; to 
 adjust society to the efficient leader is a process 
 making for progress, tending to increase the social 
 values. For education simply to adjust men to 
 society would be indeed valuable conservation, but 
 for education also to adjust society to the capable 
 individual means progress. It is the business of 
 education to make capable leaders as well as good 
 followers, to make the will efficient as well as right. 
 It is the leaders of the race who have set the pace of 
 progress, Socrates, Jesus, Paul, Savonarola, Luther. 
 
 We must next inquire concerning the principles Principles in 
 that are to guide us as we seek by education to ^wm^ 
 socialize individuals, and to individualize society. 
 How shall we educate the will ? 
 
 (i) The first education of the will should be The indirect 
 indirect, i.e., it should reach the will by action rather 011 
 
 than by ideas. The emphasis belongs on action rather 
 than on ideas certainly till adolescence; Aristotle 
 said till thirty. The reason for this is that the emo- 
 tional and volitional parts of the nature of children 
 predominate over the intellectual, if indeed this be 
 not true throughout life for most people. Adequate 
 foundations must be laid by the indirect methods. 
 Study instincts, learn to recognize their presence, give 
 them proper material upon which to develop, bring 
 them out and direct them aright ; it means happiness 
 to children. Study impulses, associating pleasure with 
 the good ones and pain with the bad ones. In life 
 both good and bad things give pleasure at times, and 
 
128 Idealism in Education 
 
 also pain at times. In young life pleasure and pain 
 are the dominant motives. It is therefore all-important 
 in the moral education of children that parents and 
 teachers indissolubly associate pleasure with good 
 and pain with bad. Even then duties will sometimes 
 be painful and evils pleasurable, owing to human 
 imperfection. The ideal moral character finds its 
 highest pleasure in doing the right and its sharpest 
 pain in doing the wrong. Nothing is more confusing 
 in moral education than to reward evil and punish 
 good. In later years children can be taught that the 
 highest virtue is always its own reward and sometimes 
 involves sacrificing lesser goods. 
 
 Aristotle on ^ n connection with this thought of associating 
 Moral pleasure and pain with good and evil respectively, I , 
 
 cannot do better than transcribe a paragraph from 
 the second book of Aristotle's Ethics, as follows : 
 , "We must take the pleasures and pains that 
 
 supervene upon our actions as symptoms of our 
 condition. The man who abstains from bodily 
 pleasures and actually enjoys doing so^ temperate, 
 while the man who does so but dislik^k is intem- 
 perate. The man who faces danger and enjoys it, 
 or at any rate is not pained by it, is brave ; but the 
 man who faces it with pain is a coward. For goodness 
 of character has to do with pleasures and pains. It 
 is pleasure that makes us do what is bad, and ]> tin 
 that makes us abstain from what is right. That is 
 why we require to be trained from our earliest youth, 
 as Plato has it, to feel pleasure and pain at the right 
 things. True education is just that." 1 
 
 1 Bur net, " Aristotle on Education," Cambridge, 1905, pp. 48-49. 
 
Will and Education 129 
 
 Upon this passage the comment of the editor is : 
 " This is the best account of the training of character 
 that has ever been given and should be engraved in 
 the heart of every educator." * 
 
 In this indirect education provide good models at Models. 
 all times, material and personal, for unconscious and 
 conscious imitation. Children learn more from what 
 we are than from what we say. We teach them more 
 by our deeds than in our creeds. 
 
 Fill the mind with uplifting suggestions, 2 with Suggestions. ' 
 ideas and deeds so deftly presented that the following 
 of them is effortless, while avoiding those suggestions 
 that like poison rankle and spread in the system till 
 all be contaminated. Suggestions that bear fruit 
 touch such subjects as where to go, what to do, how 
 and what to read, what to see and hear, with what 
 and whom to associate, and the like, avoiding the 
 while negative suggestions. M 
 
 Form the right habits from the outset. Do the Habits, 
 deeds one by one that mean the virtues. Only so 
 can the virtues be formed. The virtues are an ac- 
 quisition ;.1^y can be acquired only by doing the 
 very deeds that flow from the virtues. To quote 
 Aristotle again, "... it is by doing just acts that 
 we become just, by doing temperate acts that we 
 become temperate, and by doing brave deeds that we 
 become brave." 3 It is neither desirable nor necessary 
 that the basis of habit should be reasoned into before 
 the habits are formed. It is enough in all these 
 efforts at the indirect education of the will that the 
 
 1 Burnet, " Aristotle on Education," p. 49, note. 
 
 2 Cf. Keatinge, " Suggestion in Education." 8 Op. cit., p. 45. 
 
 K 
 
130 Idealism in Education 
 
 questions of children be answered as simply and in- 
 telligibly as possible without feeling constrained to 
 raise ethical questionings one's self. Morals are con- 
 duct ; ethics the science of conduct ; morals should pre- 
 cede ethics. He who is moral either understands eth- 
 ics or can easily come to do so ; he whose morals are 
 not yet habits cannot intellectually realize ethics. 
 To teach ethics systematically to children is likely to 
 rub the bloom off of moral issues and to induce that 
 precocity in the deep things of the spirit so disastrous 
 everywhere in later years. 
 
 The Use of (2) Use the object-lesson method in morals. 
 Such instruction is to be occasional, as the suitable 
 object-lesson naturally arises, not systematic. The 
 object-lesson justifies its use in moral as well as in 
 other types of instruction ; it is concrete, simple, sen- 
 sible, obvious, actual. Praise the good act when and 
 where it occurred. Say little about the bad, except as a 
 rare warning. Praise is a great stimulus to children ; 
 indifference leaves them indifferent; and blame consid- 
 erably hinders best work. The atmosphere of pleasure 
 increases efficiency in every line. Perhaps all the vir- 
 tues may be started through some appropriate object- 
 lesson, if we will but watch for it : sanitation, cleanliness 
 of body, hands, face, teeth, purity of thought, speech, 
 and act, courtesy, honor, chivalry, and respect for age. 1 ] 
 The happy use of the story in realizing the virtues 
 concretely is closely associated with the object-lesson. 
 (3) Suggest the power of the will. Particularly 
 if you believe that effort is a variable quantity, mid 
 
 ! Cf. J. T. White, "Character- Lessons in American Biogra; 
 N.Y., 1909. 
 
Will and Education 131 
 
 not once for all fixed as each occasion for its use suggest the 
 arises. Pupils often can, if they only will, and many ?.?j er of 
 times they can will. Effort is something to be put 
 forth. You do not know what you can do in a new 
 field till you really try, and try hard, and try long. 
 Practice counts for much in mastery. It is good to 
 believe you can do what it is your duty to do ; you 
 will do better for believing in yourself. Auto-sug- 
 gestion plays a large r61e in success ; tell yourself 
 that you can succeed, and make the necessary prep- 
 aration for doing so. Not that by auto-suggestion 
 we are to blind ourselves to our own limits, but that we 
 may approximate our limits. No one knows in ad- 
 vance of the actual strain what he can really do. 1 
 
 (4) Insist on effort from the beginning. If effort insist on 
 means what our preceding analysis has indicated, Effort - 
 that it finally counts in the making of the characters 
 and destinies of people, we are justified in acquainting 
 our children and pupils with effort, even under com- 
 pulsion, if necessary. Effort is not a popular word 
 in the interest-loving, deterministic, Herbartian tradi- 
 tions in educational theory and practice, but we can 
 never outgrow effort so long as duties sometimes prove 
 disagreeable. It is too ideal for our present world to 
 discard all effort and be what one's pleasures allow. 
 Children must be restrained and commanded as well as 
 enticed. To do otherwise is to follow blindly the deep 
 intimations of " the century of the" child/' 2 and put 
 children over parents and parents under children. 
 
 1 Cf. James, "The Powers of Men," American Magazine, Nov., 
 1907; and Payot, "The Education of the Will," N. Y., 1909. 
 
 2 Cf. Miss Key, "The Education of the Child," N. Y., 1910. 
 
Idealism in Education 
 
 Effort and 
 
 Pleasure not 
 
 In- 
 
 consistent. 
 
 Discipline. 
 
 Even the kindergarten is none too early for initial 
 efforts, in order both to achieve and to refrain. 
 There is no accomplishment and no self-control with- 
 out effort Schools must indeed be as pleasurable as 
 we can make them, but highest pleasures result from 
 mastering difficulties. To do as one pleases gives 
 indeed a selfish pleasure, but to do as one ought, 
 even at the cost of effort and the sacrifice of lesser 
 goods, gives worthy pleasure. Even if we want 
 homes and schools to be pleasurable, they must be 
 places of effortful wrestling. Children may do what 
 they want to do so long as what they want to do is 
 right, but it will sometimes be right for them to do 
 what they do not want to do ; then they must. In 
 the rearing of children it is fatal to dispense with the 
 " must " ; if you will recollect the cases where it was 
 tried you will agree with me, beginning perhaps with 
 Emile. Nor will even adults ever outgrow entirely 
 effort and duty ; by great drops of sweat as of blood 
 must they at times save themselves and others. Per- 
 haps we, on first thought at least, should not have 
 made costly effort a precondition of worthy character, 
 but this is the unalterable constitution of things as 
 we find them. Tasks then must be assigned and 
 done, without the sense of effort, if indeed the chil- 
 dren so love their duties, but with it, if necessary. A 
 critic of Eliot's " five-foot shelf of books" remarked : 
 " A weary task for aspiring youth " ; to which another 
 replied : " If aspiring youth is not ready for weary 
 tasks, it had better stop aspiring." 
 
 (5) Right discipline. If you have children that 
 are well born and are placed in appropriate surround- 
 
Will and Education 133 
 
 ings, it is easy to manage them, if you know how, 
 and are born with a will of your own. The secret in 
 managing children in home and school is to know 
 exactly what you want ; that this thing should be 
 right in itself ; that you should make it very plain 
 to the children ; that you should be gentle but firm, 
 consistent, and insistent ; that finally, in case of need, 
 you show and even use power. Perhaps in the 
 school it is not necessary that the " power " make use 
 of the rod ; in the home, with most children, physical 
 force of some kind will be necessary. Those who 
 were themselves so fortunate as to be raised in this 
 way will know how well it works in securing the 
 indispensable virtue of obedience among children. 
 Right discipline is for the good of the individual 
 concerned primarily ; for the good of others second- 
 arily. Historically we have homes and schools be- 
 cause of children, not children because of homes and 
 schools. The child brought the institutions into being. 
 They exist for him. But they exist for him in his 
 ideal, universal, rational, potential selfhood, not in 
 his unorganized, whimsical, capricious, and chaotic 
 individuality, except indeed to bring order by right 
 training out of such chaos. We are enthroning 
 children to-day, not in the name of what they are, 
 but in the name of what by right treatment they may 
 become and may enable the race to become. The 
 children are our hope. 
 
 (6) The curriculum. The purpose of any subject The 
 in the curriculum is, first, to acquaint pupils with Cumculum - 
 some set of naturalistic or social facts, and, second, 
 to give some ideas rightly regulative of conduct. It 
 
134 Idealism in Education 
 
 is the second purpose of any subject in the curriculum 
 that we have in mind here. Any subject serves the 
 first purpose, but subjects serve unequally the second 
 purpose. The subjects that serve it best are naturally 
 the social, in distinction from the naturalistic. His- 
 tory, for example, is, from one standpoint at least, a 
 series of vast experiments in living. Through its 
 study we may learn the ways of failure and of suc- 
 cess. Nations, as a rule, have shown us the ways of 
 failure; some individuals the ways of success. Thus 
 through history, in addition to the facts, one may 
 learn what he may safely imitate, and what he must 
 reject Also nations may learn the broad ways of 
 failure and the narrow way of success. Biographies 
 and autobiographies quicken our admiration, arouse 
 our sympathy, stir our indignation, stimulate our am- 
 bition. History primarily is a record of the do 
 of man, but secondarily it is moral philosophy teach- 
 ing by example. The practical influence of the study 
 of history touches the will particularly. 1 
 
 Literature is a product mainly of the emotions and 
 the imagination. Since the emotions and the will are 
 so intimately related, the study of literature also helps 
 to form the character. In literature we see types and 
 ideals, not actual occurrences. Fiction is less strange 
 than truth because it represents the universal, not the 
 individual, human nature. Poetry is truer than his- 
 tory, in the sense that it expresses the feelings of 
 man, not of men ; it is general, not local. For these 
 
 l Cf. Bourne, "The Teaching of History and Civics," N. Y., 1902. 
 Keatinge, M. W., " Studies in the Teaching of History," London, 1910. 
 Lamprecht, What is History? " N. Y., 1905. 
 
Will and Education 135 
 
 very reasons literature exerts a beneficial influence on 
 character, revealing human nature in its broad outlines 
 and in its ideality. To compass in one's appreciation 
 the characters in literature and the sentiments of the 
 poets is to enlarge one's personality to truly human 
 dimensions. To exclude literature and think only the 
 thoughts of the moment, suggested only by the prosaic 
 routine of earning one's living, is to drop below the 
 line of human privilege and become but little above the 
 creatures whose eyes see only the earth. 
 
 Of the subjects requiring the use of the body and Manual 
 bearing on the development of character, let me refer Jrawinf. and 
 particularly to manual training and drawing. In these 
 subjects the ideas of honesty and accuracy are realized 
 in concrete instances ; likewise the value of these at- 
 tainments. Perhaps the habits of honesty and ac- 
 curacy in expressing one's self in material ways are 
 formed, though such habits may not take possession 
 of other ways of self-expression. Best of all, per- 
 haps, jstudents fall in love /with the ideas of honesty 
 and accuracy, making of 'them ideals, and as such 
 finding them universally regulative. People who 
 deal exclusively with words, such as language-stu- 
 dents and philologists, tend to become unreal and 
 unpractical persons ; on the other hand, people who 
 handle things, and who, though grown, still play, are 
 very real, life-like, and human personalities. 
 
 To the Herbartians we are indebted for the insight 
 that every subject studied can and should influence 
 moral character, but we must leave to the reader at 
 this point the task of applying his own subject, what- 
 ever it be, to the building of the will. 
 
136 
 
 Idealism in Education 
 
 Direct 
 
 Ethical 
 Instruc- 
 tion. 
 
 Its Weak- 
 
 ness. 
 
 (7) Direct ethical instruction. In our country, 
 where the truths of religion cannot be taught system- 
 atically in the public schools, for good and sufficient 
 reasons, as we think, it is the more important that ethics 
 be taught But this recommendation is no simple 
 matter. The fact that we are discussing it so late in 
 this series shows it is not the thing to begin with in 
 developing character. Furthermore, we cannot rely 
 upon it implicitly ; if pupils have been rightly trained 
 before studying ethics, they will hardly need ethics to 
 make them do right ; on the other hand, if pupils are not 
 good, ethics will hardly make them so. The fact is 
 that ethics is a science; it reaches the intellect, but the 
 springs of character are the emotions and the will. If 
 ethics degenerates into exhortation, the net is being 
 spread in the sight of the bird ; Christianity has dis- 
 covered how hard it is to reform the world by preach- 
 ing. France has been teaching ethics in its schools 
 for a generation, with the avowed purpose of thereby 
 forming the moral character, but crime has continued 
 to increase and the birth-rate has continued to decrease, 
 while one French teacher was able to report in answer 
 to a question concerning the influence of ethics on 
 character, " My best scholar in ethics is the greatest 
 knave in the lot." The world is filled with people 
 who know what is right and do what is wrong. The 
 ignorant may be vicious on a small scale; the know- 
 ing are wicked on a vast scale. The ignorant harbor 
 the vices that destroy the individual ; the knowing the 
 sins that destroy society. The brutish man attacks 
 your person directly ; the cunning man attacks you 
 indirectly by preying on the social structure. It is 
 
Will and Education 137 
 
 not enough that men shall know what is right ; they 
 must also will to do it. Ethics gives the former ; it 
 does not always give the latter. 
 
 Why then teach ethics? Because, though knowl- its strength, 
 edge does not insure right action, there can be no 
 right action without knowledge. Because, too, know- 
 ing the right, through the motor-tendency of ideas, is at 
 least a temptation to do it. That man is actively bad, 
 morally depraved, who sins against the light he has. 
 Ethics turns the light on ; it cannot make men prefer 
 darkness to light. 
 
 Professor Palmer, a life-time college teacher of Professor 
 ethics, is our best critic of direct ethical instruction. 1 
 He taught me to disagree with him. I cannot go 
 all the way with him in his rejection of ethical 
 instruction below the college; firstly, because of 
 that characteristic of the teacher he himself has 
 both exemplified and described, viz., the ability to 
 transmute ideas into life ; secondly, because the 
 doubting period of adolescence demands some sys- 
 tematic enlightenment ; thirdly, the high school, as the 
 people's college, must do what it can for the people's 
 morals. 
 
 As already suggested in discussing the object- How Ethics 
 lesson in morals, a bit of ethical instruction may 
 be given at appropriate occasions as they arise 
 anywhere, in the home, on the street, in the school. 
 Particularly may an elective course be given in the 
 senior year of the high school. By this time pupils 
 have some habits of right conduct, some experience 
 
 1 Palmer, G. H., "The Teacher," Boston, 1908. "Ethical and 
 Moral Instruction in Schools," Boston, 1909. 
 
138 Idealism in Education 
 
 of conscience, and some feelings of duty. This is 
 the concrete material to use. The familiar social 
 situations give opportunity for applying new ethical 
 insights. Ethics should be taught in closest relation 
 to the moral situations in life ; any resolutions formed 
 should straightway act themselves out, not be stored 
 for future reference. One teacher of ethics to adoles- 
 cents I know is heartily committed to the idea of 
 direct ethical instruction. It is a difficult feat to 
 tell young people what they ought to do and why 
 they ought to do it, in such a way that they " receive 
 with meekness the engrafted word," and, as in so 
 many other instances, the worth of the issue depends 
 on who the teacher is. In any case he will do well 
 to heed, and to admonish his pupils to heed, the 
 words of Clough : 
 
 " Play no tricks upon thy soul, O Man, 
 Let fact be (act and life the thing it can." 
 
 Allow (8) Allow choices. If choice plays the determin- 
 
 Cboices. * n g r j c j n character-formation we have assigned it, 
 young people should be allowed to make choices 
 for themselves. Of course, older people usually 
 know better, but many young people do not think 
 so; older people would save their children and 
 pupils from foolish choices ; in order to do so, they 
 practically exclude choice from the lives of their 
 charges. This is a mistake. Beginning with tender 
 years, children should be allowed to choose for them- 
 selves in some matters, under parental advice, but 
 not under parental compulsion. It trains in the 
 sense of responsibility and in self-control. Neither 
 
Will and Education 139 
 
 home nor school should assume all responsibility 
 for children. To a degree they should be permitted 
 to rely upon themselves. Children really enjoy little 
 responsibilities and being trusted to do important v 
 things. The private boarding-school, keeping boys 
 or girls day and night, and usually under supervision, 
 is in particular danger of breeding irresponsibility. 
 Important matters in which children and young 
 people should be allowed some freedom of choice 
 are,, how to apportion one's time, how to spend 
 one's earnings, what studies to pursue, how to show 
 friendship for one's associates, etc. The spontaneous 
 interests of children, their real preferences, may well 
 be allowed free play for development, so long as the 
 rights of others are not infringed. 
 
 This brings me to the particular matter of " break- Never Break 
 ing a child's will." This usually means compelling WIIL 
 him to follow the parent's choice rather than his own. 
 It is better not to join this issue, not to conquer a 
 child. Anticipate the issue ; if the matter be impor- 
 tant, decide it yourself in advance before allowing the 
 child to reach or state his decision ; if the matter is 
 not over-important, leave him to decide for himself, 
 even at some risk. If in an important matter the 
 child's will is fixed, do not so much cross as circum- 
 vent him. Children raised in abject submission to 
 parents become tyrants as adults ; those whose wills 
 were never broken, whose spirits were never crushed 
 within them, make forceful and resolute characters. 
 If you would make weak and irresolute men and 
 women, break their wills as children. 
 
 There are many things about educating wills that 
 
140 
 
 Idealism in Education 
 
 The Third 
 Principle of 
 Man-Mak- 
 ing. 
 
 Summary of 
 th<: Ele- 
 ments of 
 Man-Making. 
 
 we must leave to the literature at the end of this 
 chapter to discuss. Perhaps enough has been said to 
 prove that wills help to make men and women, that 
 these wills are fashionable by education during the 
 susceptible years, that they are ever subject to self- 
 culture, and that, in the last analysis, we are worthy 
 or unworthy characters, not according to our gifts, or 
 to our circumstances, but according to our wills. Our 
 talents may be five, two, or one ; this is heredity ; the 
 market-place is there in the environment for all alike ; 
 our reward or condemnation depends on the use we 
 will to make of our talents. 
 
 We have found the individual will to be the third 
 of the great trio of forces that make men and women. 
 This on the theoretical side. On the practical side, 
 we have already seen how education can possess it- 
 self of the influence of heredity, in eugenics ; also how 
 education can possess itself of the influence of envi- 
 ronment, in eutopias. We have just seen how edu- 
 cation can form the will. This result gives us the 
 third of the first principles in the making of men and 
 women, which we may name, borrowing a Greek word, 
 eunoias: make the will good. The good will is right 
 in its motivation and efficient in its execution. And, 
 as Kant said, it is the only thing of absolute valu 
 this world. 
 
 In brief, at this point we may summarize the i 
 ments of man-making as follows : Heredity bestows 
 capacity, unchangeable in the individual, but subject 
 to improvement in the race by the right selection of 
 life- partners. Environment provides opportunity. 
 Will by effort realizes the inherited capacity and 
 
Will and Education 141 
 
 utilizes the environing opportunity. If we think of 
 the unconceived generation, it is fitting to emphasize 
 heredity ; if we think of the children of to-day, it is 
 fitting to emphasize environment ; if we think of ado- 
 lescents and adults, it is fitting to emphasize will. 
 
 Is it possible to reduce to two or even to one these A Problem : 
 elements of man-making ? If our implications con- 
 
 cerning effort be accepted, it is impossible to eliminate Reduced in 
 will. By making the living cell a product of inani- 
 mate forces, some have reduced heredity to environ- 
 ment; but the best biological opinion to-day seems to 
 know no origin of the cell but the cell, giving a kind of 
 past immortality to cell-life, and retaining heredity as 
 a primary factor in the making of organisms. Others, 
 by denying the permanent influence of environment 
 on the later generations, allowing only its temporary 
 influence on the passing generation, that is, by deny- 
 ing the inheritance of acquired characters, have mini- 
 mized environment and magnified heredity ; but again 
 the best present biological opinion seems to allow that 
 the effects of use and disuse are passed on to the later 
 generations, though the specific modifications are not, 
 thus retaining environment as a permanent factor in 
 producing living creatures. On the basis of science, 
 therefore, we are hardly able to eliminate either 
 heredity or environment. Whether in our last chap- 
 ter these irreducible three can be considered as ele- 
 ments in one synthetic whole remains to be seen. 
 
 Which of the three is most influential? Where Another 
 each appears as essential, the answer is most difficult The 
 
 and perhaps not important. Without heredity, no influential 
 
 ,.... , . . Element? 
 
 beginning; without environment, no continuing; 
 
142 Idealism in Education 
 
 without will, no individuality. The lower organisms 
 have little individuality ; with them heredity and 
 environment explain most With man individuality 
 is striking; will is prominent, but can only in part 
 explain him. I am inclined to attach most importance 
 to heredity and least to will ; but the importance I 
 attach to will is crucial, particularly as regards what 
 will can do in shaping future heredity by eugenics. 
 The R6te The school is our most usable institution in race- 
 
 in R&?* l building, but it has not been much used. It receives 
 Building. children coming with all kinds of heredity and from 
 all kinds of environment But protoplasm is unstable, 
 and the nervous system of the young is plastic. The 
 work of the school in building a better race of men 
 and women is, first, to give instruction in, and to 
 illustrate in the examples of school officers and 
 teachers, the principles of eugenics ; second, to pro- 
 vide the best possible environment in which children 
 may learn and grow, in short, eutopias ; and third, 
 to cultivate good wills, ready to follow true leaders or 
 lead distressed followers, in short, eunoias. . 
 
 We have now considered the phenomenal elements 
 entering into the constitution of human nature, that 
 is, the factors that appear to us as heredity, environ- 
 ment, and will. These forces make men and women. 
 But some one of a reflective turn of mind will say, 
 Does not God make men and women ? Are not these 
 three but secondary causes after all ? Is not God the 
 primary cause ? Where does God come into the pro- 
 cess of man-making ? These are philosophical ques- 
 tions that would penetrate below seemings to reality. 
 For their answer we must turn to our last chapter. 
 
Will and Education 143 
 
 But in accord with our general point of view hitherto, 
 we must expect to find that God comes in, not by way 
 of exception, but everywhere ; and we shall find Him 
 where we are, or not at all. 
 
 REFERENCES ON CHAPTER IV 
 
 ARNOLD, F., School and Class Management, Chap. XII, N. Y., 
 
 1908. 
 
 BAGLEY, W. C., The Educative Process, Chap. Ill, N. Y., 1908. 
 BAIN, A., Education as a Science, London, 1889, Chap. XII. 
 BARNETT, P. A., Common Sense in Education and Teaching, 
 
 N. Y., 1899, Chap. II. 
 CALDERWOOD, H., On Teaching, Chaps. IV and V, 4th Ed., 
 
 London, 1885. 
 CHAMBERLAIN, A. H., Standards in Education, Chap. V, N. Y., 
 
 1908. 
 
 COE, G. A., Education in Religion and Morals, N. Y., 1904. 
 COMPAYRE, G., Psychology applied to Education, Chaps. XI-XV, 
 
 Boston, 1899. 
 
 Lectures on Pedagogy, Chap. X, Boston, 1890. 
 
 CONOVER, J. P., Personality in Education, N. Y., 1908. 
 COPE, E. D., The Origin of the Fittest, Chap. XXI, N. Y., 1887. 
 DEWEY, J., Moral Principles in Education, N. Y., 1909. 
 DEWEY and TUFTS, Ethics, Chaps. XVI and XVII, N.Y., 1908. 
 DEXTER AND GARLICK, Psychology in the Schoolroom, Chap. 
 
 XXIII, N. Y., 1901. 
 BUTTON AND SNEDDEN, Administration of Public Education in 
 
 the U. S., Chap. XXVIII, N. Y., 1908. 
 FITCH, J., Lectures on Teaching, pp. 429 ff., N. Y., 1885. 
 HORNE, H. H., The Psychological Principles of Education, Part 
 
 IV, N. Y., 1906. 
 ROWLAND, G., Practical Hints for Teachers, Chaps. V and VI, 
 
 N. Y., 1889. 
 
 JAMES, W., Talks to Teachers, Chap. XV, N. Y., 1899. 
 JENKS, J. W., Citizenship and the Schools, N. Y., 1906. 
 JOHONNOT, J., Principles and Practice of Teaching, Chap. XIII, 
 
 N. Y., 1896. 
 
144 Idealism in Education 
 
 KIRKPATRICK, E. A., Fundamentals of Child Study, Chap. XVI, 
 
 N. Y., 1903. 
 
 LAURIE, S. S., Institutes of Education, 4th Part, N. Y., 1909. 
 MACCUNN, J., The Making of Character, N. Y., 1900. 
 PALMER, G. H., Ethical and Moral Instruction in Schools, N. Y., 
 
 1909. 
 
 PALMER, G. H., The Teacher, II and III, Boston, 1908. 
 PARKER, F. W., Talks on Pedagogics, Chap. XIV, Chicago, 
 
 1894. 
 Problems of Secondary Education, Northwestern Univ., pp. 
 
 144-182. 
 
 PAYOT, J., The Education of the Will, N. Y., 1909. 
 RUGH, C. E., and others, Moral Training in the Public Schools, 
 
 N. Y., 1908. 
 SADLER, M. E., Moral Instruction and Training in Schools, 
 
 London, 1908. 
 
 SCOTT, C. A., Social Education, Chap. XII, Boston, 1908. 
 SEELEY, L., A New School Management, Appendix, N. Y., 1903. 
 SPENCER, H., Education, IV, N. Y., 1900. 
 SULLY, J., Teachers* Handbook of Psychology, Chap. XX. 
 SWIFT, E. J., "Man's Educational Reconstruction of Nat 
 
 Popular ScUnc* Monthly, March, 1908. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MAN-MAKING 
 
 PHILOSOPHY means a larger and unproven view of i.TheNa- 
 facts. In the preceding pages we have been con- JS^ h 
 cerned at some length with facts. Many readers will 
 not care to go beyond the factual view. But man 
 has imagination, faith, appreciation, and vision, as 
 well as observation, explanation, generalization, and 
 application. The former set of endowments give us 
 poetry, religion, and philosophy; the latter, science 
 and history. If possible, we ought to see our subject, 
 education in man-making, in terms of philosophy as 
 well as in terms of science. 
 
 Philosophy tries to see all the facts in their unity and The Method 
 implication. It would read the matter in hand in terms OS o p L 
 of its meaning. Facts are a kind of language, the 
 language of concrete realities, used by the universe in 
 its processes of unfoldment and self-realization. Just 
 as the old Babylonians used their cuneiform, or wedge- 
 shaped, symbols to express their thoughts, so we may 
 suppose the universe itself uses facts to express mean- 
 ings. Facts at bottom are Nature's symbols of inner 
 meanings. Now science studies the symbols them- 
 selves, and philosophy studies their meanings. The 
 problem of philosophy is to read truly the universal 
 meaning of facts, and the method of philosophy is 
 guessing with reason. Through the discovery of the 
 L 145 
 
146 Idealism in Education 
 
 Rosetta stone, with the same meaning expressed in 
 both Greek, which they knew, and the Egyptian hier- 
 oglyphs, which they wanted to know, philologists 
 deciphered the meaning of the hieroglyphs. It is 
 possible that mind, which we know, and matter, which 
 we do not know, are two languages expressing the 
 same meaning, and that what Greek was to the phi- 
 lologists mind is to the philosophers. At any rate, 
 matter to us is symbolic of meanings we do not fully 
 grasp, while mind to us is meaning itself. But to be 
 a philosopher one must have good reason to make the 
 guess he does concerning the inner secrets of Nature. 
 
 The perplexing thing is that the philosophers make 
 such different guesses. Not agreeing that in their 
 own minds they have the clue to the meaning of the 
 facts of Nature, they try other clues, which work in 
 each case with some degree of success. Whereupon 
 it does not occur to all the philosophers to observe 
 that any reasonable guess partly succeeds because of 
 the element of reason in it, and if they would use 
 reason itself as the ultimate explanatory principle, 
 perhaps they might succeed best of all. The Etrus- 
 can dialect has long baffled the efforts of the classical 
 philologists to read it ; many solutions have been pro- 
 posed ; in this case no parallel translation in a known 
 tongue has been discovered ; each reasonable guess 
 has made clear some passages; the best guess, when 
 it comes, will make clear the most passages in the 
 easiest manner. So, in the absence of the known 
 translation, philosophers have sought many clues to 
 the riddle of existence, with varying successes. But 
 
The Philosophy of Man-making 147 
 
 they have always, knowingly or unknowingly, used 
 their own minds in applying their solution ; they have 
 guessed not blindly but with reason. 
 
 Some have guessed that facts are facts and noth- Materialism. 
 ing more, that they convey no meaning whatsoever, 
 that they are blind brute facts. This is the guess of 
 the materialists. The trouble with this guess is that 
 man himself is a fact, and in his own case he knows 
 that some meaning exists. It is too much, therefore, 
 to find the meaning of existence by denying that it 
 has any. 
 
 Others have guessed that the meaning is unguess- Agnosticism, 
 able. Meaning there must be, of some sort, they say, 
 since we find it in ourselves, but what the meaning is, 
 in part and whole, we cannot truly suppose. It is 
 there, but we cannot know it. These are the 
 agnostics. The trouble with this guess is, it asserts 
 by implication what it denies. It denies that the 
 meaning is guessable, but it asserts that it has truly 
 guessed its character as unguessable. Whereas, of 
 course, if the riddles of the world were truly unguess- 
 able, we could not so much as guess they were so. 
 To know the unknowable is inconsistent ; even to 
 know that it is unknowable is to know all there is to 
 know about it. The agnostics may truly know they 
 do not know, but they cannot know that the meaning 
 of the world is unknowable. This would be a very 
 exalted form of gnosticism. 
 
 Others have guessed that some facts have meaning Dualism, 
 and some have none, that the mental facts have 
 meaning, but the material facts have none. These 
 are the dualists, asserting meaning wherever there is 
 
148 
 
 Idealism in Education 
 
 Pluralism. 
 
 Parallelism. 
 
 mind, but finding matter opaque to meaning and to 
 mind. The trouble with this guess is that half the 
 facts remain unread. Blinded by the light of mind, 
 they see only darkness in matter. The best guess 
 will read all the facts in the easiest manner. 
 
 Still others have guessed that the meanings are 
 many and the no-meanings are many, and the whole 
 is disconnected and fragmentary. No unitary story is 
 being told, but the universe is like a badly bound 
 magazine in several languages, with some pages mis- 
 placed and some missing. This is the guess of the 
 pluralists. It perhaps has least of ordering reason 
 in it, finding most of disordered chaos in our world of 
 experience. It is also one of the guesses of the 
 childhood of the race when there were gods, many 
 warring at cross-purposes with each other. 
 
 A nineteenth-century guess was that the meanings 
 and no-meanings were equal in number, correspond- 
 ent to each other, and parallel in character. Wher- 
 ever there is mind there is matter, and wherever there 
 is matter there also is mind, but these two have no 
 dealings with each other. The psychical series does 
 not affect the physical series, nor the physical s 
 the psychical series, but the parallelism is universal. 
 These are the parallelists. The trouble with this 
 guess is that it denies relations between things that 
 seem most intimately related. John Stuart Mill 
 teaches us to hold as causally related two things that 
 vary concomitantly with each other, as para 11 
 says the psychical and physical series do. Then, too, 
 parallelism seems to be clearer in denying the fact 
 of interrelation than in asserting its positive position. 
 
The Philosophy of Man-making 149 
 
 We cannot review guesses of secondary importance ; idealism, 
 the above represent the main guesses, together with 
 the following one. There is but one vast meaning 
 running through all the facts of existence, like the 
 mind through the body. Mental facts are both facts 
 and meanings, while physical facts also have their 
 mental meanings. As all Nature fills one space and 
 all events one time, so all existence is one unity 
 "whose body Nature is, and God the Soul." This 
 is the guess of the idealists. In no fact is meaning 
 absent, nor is it unknown entirely to us who know 
 our significant selves, nor is it absent from half ex- 
 istence, nor is it confused in itself, nor is it the coun- 
 terpart of a no-meaning. It appears fragmentary to 
 us because we see in part, but the whole nevertheless 
 is there giving significance to the parts. The trouble 
 with this guess is that it is not demonstrable. It 
 reads all the facts and in a very simple way, but you 
 cannot prove that the guess is correct. This is of 
 course because the philosopher is not himself the 
 whole meaning. From the nature of the case the 
 guess of the part concerning the whole is not verifi- 
 able. Because it seems to have most rfeason in it, 
 we adopt this last guess of idealism. 
 
 Now the question is, how shall we re^d the facts 
 of man-making ? What meaning do they yield ? It 
 is not our plan to read idealism into the facts, but, if 
 we can, to read the true meaning out of the facts. 
 
 Before attempting to formulate a philosophy of 
 man-making we ought to take stock as to how man 
 is progressing. On the whole there is no ground for 
 
150 Idealism in Education 
 
 discouragement But it takes the view of a wide 
 sweep of time to assure us of this. Historic time is 
 very short in comparison with even that past time 
 which has affected man ; no final conclusions for or 
 against man's progress in mental endowment can be 
 drawn from the moment of time we know as recorded 
 history. We may in fact entertain grave doubt about 
 * the increase of mental capacity during historic time. 
 Our view of man's progress must include also the 
 scope of prehistoric time, the length of which we 
 cannot adequately conceive. Some geologists have 
 estimated by measuring the present rate of recession 
 that Niagara Falls have been thirty-nine thousand 
 years in making the seven-mile gorge. Allowing the 
 immense stretches of prehistoric time to come into 
 our view, and comparing the modern man with his 
 primitive forbears, all doubt as to his progress in 
 mental capacity vanishes. And this progress was 
 made by "natural selection," without any compre- 
 hension on man's part of the end from the be- 
 ginning, and without his conscious cooperation in this 
 large way. If such progress was made in man's ig- 
 norance, it staggers and exalts us to conceive what 
 progress may be made by the aid of man's knowledge 
 and use of the creative forces. 
 Progress ia We distinguish between capacity and acquisition. 
 While capacity has increased during all past time, 
 we cannot trace its increase during historic past time ; 
 this does not discourage the thought of its increase 
 in future time, for the simple reason that in historic 
 time no conscious effort has been made to increase 
 man's capacity, and conscious effort works wonders 
 
The Philosophy of Man-making 151 
 
 in comparatively short intervals. But there has been 
 progress in acquisition within historic time. This is 
 because man's acquisition in religion, literature, art, 
 science, and history is transmitted by social heredity, 
 so that each generation receives all the past achieve- 
 ments, adds to them, and passes all on. Thus during 
 historic time progress has been rather through social 
 than physiological heredity. Physiological heredity, 
 unlike social heredity, cannot transmit individual 
 acquisitions, but only those inherent variations arising 
 in the union of two germ cells ; this union hitherto in 
 man's case has never been consciously directed toward 
 improving racial capacity, though man has directed 
 the union for improving animals and plants. 
 
 Concerning the lines of progress in acquisition Material 
 during historic time some doubt has been expressed. 1 l 
 The one clear line of progress to Bryce is the mate- 
 rial. We shall easily admit this if we think of the 
 steam-engine, the telegraph, the sewing-machine, the 
 cotton-gin, the cablegraph, the telephone, wireless 
 telegraphy, the steel war-vessel, the submarine craft, 
 the airship, huge fortunes, etc., remembering that 
 very few of man's past arts and inventions have been 
 lost to the world. The fact is, the material luxu- 
 ries of one generation become the necessities of the 
 next. 
 
 Concerning intellectual progress, that is, the ad- intellectual 
 vance of knowledge, there can be no reasonable doubt. l 
 It is really a pre-condition of material progress, for 
 material progress is due to the application of hard- 
 won knowledge. The modern world particularly has 
 
 l Cf. Bryce, " What is Progress?" Atlantic Monthly > 100, pp. 145-156. 
 
152 Idealism in Education 
 
 followed the trumpet-call of Bacon to master Nature 
 by understanding her. Illustrations of the advance- 
 ment of learning within historic time would be the 
 transitions from astrology to modern astronomy, from 
 alchemy to modern chemistry, from phrenology to 
 physiological psychology. The reduction to pi me 
 and topographical maps of the surface of our planet ; 
 the classification of the races of men ; the story of 
 the earth's history; physiology; the conquest of 
 disease, etc.; other equally noted illustrations will 
 occur to the reader. This progress in knowledge 
 has taken place by the joint use of the a priori and 
 a posteriori methods. 
 
 ^Efthedc Concerning progress in aesthetic acquisition, we 
 
 may have no doubt if we contrast the art of primitive 
 and modern man in drawing, music, the crafts, song, 
 building, carving, painting, and decorating. The 
 primitive man may have had the aesthetic capai 
 of such late products as Myron, Virgil, Angelo, da 
 Vinci, and Beethoven; we cannot disprove it; but he 
 certainly lacked their development and productivity. 
 ^Esthetic arts in which primitive peoples may have 
 excelled moderns are story-telling and myth-making. 
 It is interesting to note that progress in art has not 
 been so continuous as progress in knowledge, 
 ferent periods having excelled in particular artistic 
 achievements, as the primitive period in epic narra- ; 
 tion, the Egyptian in mammoth construction, the 
 Greek in statuary, the mediaeval in aspiring architec- 
 ture, the Renaissance in painting, and the modern in 
 music. Other arts have perhaps equally flourished 
 at different periods, e.g. comedy and tragedy during 
 
The Philosophy of Man-making 153 
 
 the Greek and Renaissance periods. These facts 
 indicate that art is more dependent upon the indi- 
 vidual genius and is less communicable to the rank \ 
 and file than knowledge. In discussing progress in 
 art it is common to contrast the Greek and modern 
 periods to the detriment of the latter ; but the historic 
 perspective is entirely too short to show anything 
 concerning the loss of artistic capacity ; as for artistic 
 productions, about all that can be said is, we cannot 
 repeat their excellence in marble, and they did not 
 achieve our excellence in music; these are differ- 
 ences, but hardly grounds for odious comparisons. 
 
 As for moral progress, make the time-sweep broad Moral 
 enough, and you are sure of it. The primitive code Pr s ress 
 of morals is, love your friends, those of your clan, 
 and hate your enemies, those of all other clans. The 
 unit is social, not individual. In modern times we 
 have the theory, and sometimes the practice, love 
 your enemies. The unit is here individual as well as 
 social. In fact, progress in morality has been rather 
 for the individual than for the nation. The average 
 moral standard of the individuals of a nation surpasses 
 that of the nation acting as a nation. Nations will 
 still in primitive fashion fight out their differences, 
 though individuals will sometimes arbitrate. There 
 has been moral progress too in recognizing, theo- 
 retically at least, the unity of mankind, the conse- 
 quent anachronism of warfare, and the consequent 
 rise of demands for an international tribunal of arbi- 
 tration. This world-movement toward unity 1 is 
 
 1 Cf. Tucker, W. J., "The New Movement of Humanity." Roose- 
 velt, T., "The World Movement," Outlook, May 14, 1910. 
 
154 Idealism in Education 
 
 slowly in process, is a tremendous moral gain, and 
 is being rapidly forwarded by modern facilities for 
 transportation and communication. Also there has 
 come to be greater consideration for women and chil- 
 dren as human beings with rights and privileges as 
 well as duties. The modern moral sense rebels against 
 the state exposure of weak or female infants, against 
 child-wives, harems, and Mormonism. There has 
 been at the same time a growth in humaneness, lead- 
 ing to the establishment of hospitals and asylums 
 and to the separation of the insane and the criminal. 
 This spirit of fellow-feeling has passed on to the 
 animals ; we try to prevent cruelty to animals as 
 as to children ; we study and heal the diseases of the 
 domestic animals. In so far as the " anti-vivisection " 
 movement is a witness to sympathy for animals, it is 
 good; in so far as, by saving the dogs, it would in 
 ignorance of their diseases sacrifice the children, it 
 is short-sighted. The widening of fellow-feeling to 
 include the animals is associated with the modern in- 
 terest in animal habits, intelligence, and life. When* 
 we test moral progress by violations of the moral 
 law, that is, one's sense of right, there is no telling 
 whether the race has progressed morally or not. If 
 we subject savages and barbarians to our code of 
 morals, there has evidently been progress. A modern 
 man subjected to their code would not be a " good " 
 clansman. In view of the many artificial as well as 
 the natural penalties in primitive life, it is probable 
 that savages do as nearly, if not more nearly, what is 
 right to them as do the civilized. Moral progress 
 has consisted rather in substituting one code for an- 
 
The Philosophy of Man-making 155 
 
 other than in following the code one has. On the 
 latter basis, " Crump, with all his devils," would prob- 
 ably be the better man. The moral sense, viz., that 
 there is a right, seems to characterize man as man; 
 what that right is depends on education, in the broad 
 sense of the term. 1 
 
 Parallel to the uniting of humanity in sympathy Humanity 
 has gone the disuniting of humanity in races. Thus p^^e" 
 on the one hand we have human sympathy and on 
 the other hand race-prejudice. These interests some, 
 times clash. The solution of the conflict will hardly 
 be the elimination of either human sympathy or race- 
 prejudice, but a division of the field, and this in the 
 interest of mankind. Sympathy is fellow-feeling be- 
 tween man and man, it is a human bond, and may 
 well unite all men with each other. Race-prejudice 
 means the refusal to intermarry and mix breeds, 
 which is so destructive to race-loyalty. Race-preju- x 
 dice in this form protects us against loss of racial 
 individuality, while human sympathy should insure to 
 each man his best chance. 
 
 How about religious progress ? The question is Religious 
 very difficult, because people are less agreed about rogres 
 religion than about anything except philosophy. 
 But the exception is a minor one, because religion 
 and philosophy are so closely related and because 
 there are so few conscious philosophers. The ques- 
 tion is very closely related to the preceding one 
 on moral progress, the two lines running along to- 
 gether, and the greatest gains in religion resulting 
 from the improving moral code. 
 
 Ki On moral progress, cf. Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, Part I, N. Y., 1908. 
 
156 
 
 Idealism in Education 
 
 Monotheism. First of all, parallel to, and perhaps consequent 
 upon, the growth in the sense of the unity of man- 
 kind has come the gradual unification of deity. 
 The steps in the progress are, perhaps, naturism, the 
 worship of natural objects, as fire and water, as living ; 
 animism, the worship of the spirits supposed to 
 reside in such natural objects, as Agni and Indra; 
 polytheism, the worship of many mutually indepen- 
 dent deities, separable from objects ; henotheism, 
 the worship of each of several gods for the time 
 being as the sole god ; finally, monotheism, the 
 worship of one god. This progress toward unity 
 in religion is paralleled by the scientific progress 
 toward the conception of unity in Nature, as well 
 as by the moral progress toward unity in man. 
 
 Further, there has been progress in the moral i- 
 zation of deity. Religion began independently of 
 morality, perhaps in the desire of man to propitiate 
 the living forces in his environment, which sometimes 
 he feared, which however he must control to succeed. 
 Religion is man's instrument of adjustment to the 
 unseen, as science has come to be his instrument of 
 adjustment to the seen. Man pictured these deities 
 in his own moral image, subject to caprice, passions, 
 anger, and revenge. As man's moral stature grew, 
 so also did his god's, until the complete moralization 
 of deity took place, as in such an utterance as, 
 " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? " 1 
 These two lines of progress are in the theologi 
 element of religion. On the emotional side there 
 has been progress from such states of feeling as 
 
 1 Gen. 18 : 25. 
 
The Philosophy of Man-making 157 
 
 terror, fear, hatred, suspicion, subjection, to awe, 
 reverence, love, trust, and humility. Both religion 
 and science have agreed in eliminating all fear, 
 except of broken law. 
 
 On the practical side in religion men bring now Progress in 
 to their worship not the fruit of the field, nor animals wofshi 15 
 to the sacrifice, nor the fruit of their own bodies, as 
 acts of propitiation, but themselves in consecration 
 to noble ends. The gift of money without the giver 
 is bare. Men have ceased, in theory at least, Jacob- 
 like, to bargain with Jehovah. The sacrifice to God 
 is now the devoted life. 
 
 Withal, too, there has been progress in religious Progress in 
 toleration. This has rested mainly upon progress 
 in the knowledge of religions. Men found elements 
 of similarity in all religions, that the essential genius 
 of religion is one, that the distinction is not between 
 revealed and non-revealed religions, but between 
 lower and higher revelations, that the measure of 
 the revelation is not so much the Spirit of God as 
 the incapacity of man. Religious conquest by the 
 sword is in disfavor. The fires of the Inquisition 
 are out, the torturous racks of religious persecution 
 are preserved in historic museums. No one man, 
 no one church, no one religion, has grasped all the 
 infinite truth of God; hence religious toleration is 
 a necessity. The phenomenon of the study of com- 
 parative religion is a witness to religious progress 
 in toleration. 
 
 The higher religions have, as a rule, and later, Missions. 
 if not sooner, considered their privilege also an 
 obligation. The wonderful nineteenth century, the 
 
158 
 
 Idealism in Education 
 
 century of unification, saw the launching of great 
 Christian missionary enterprises. Their animating 
 motive a> first was narrow, to save the souls of 
 the heathen from hell through the only efficacious 
 plan of salvation ; it was a narrow theological motive. 
 The spirit of missions shifted rapidly, as things go 
 in this world, to the use of such additional agencies 
 as the school, the hospital, and the social settlement. 
 The motive shifted from the theological to the educa- 
 tional. To-day among the best fruits of Christian 
 missions is the general awakening of the East which 
 its whole communication with the West has accom- 
 plished. Christian nations are most unchristian in 
 quelling by violence the rise of the spirit of individu- 
 ality and nationalism in Oriental countries; these 
 very things it is our western mission to teach, not 
 to destroy. 
 
 Along with these several lines of religious progress 
 must be remarked one Ifoe of religious decline; there 
 is a decline in advancing civilization in the extent of 
 the social influence of religion. I do not say that 
 this decline is necessary; it probably depends upon 
 the character of the religion ; but it is an observable 
 fact Primitive life is entirely dominated by relijj 
 the medicine man, the shaman, the priest, are the most 
 influential men of the tribe ; the religious sanctions 
 and taboos compass the whole life all the days. Even 
 in the Greek days religion permeated life in a way 
 unknown to-day ; the great Olympian and other 
 games were religious festivals, and the Greek tragedy 
 originated in religious rites. Something similar in the 
 extent of the social influence of religion is seen in the 
 
The Philosophy of Man-making 159 
 
 mediaeval days, when the church as an institution 
 was the dominating influence of the whole life, polit- 
 ical, social, scientific, and aesthetic. All the Oriental 
 nations are still supremely shaped by their religions, 
 except Japan. In the modern West the story is dif- 
 ferent. The minister is not the leading figure in his 
 community he once was, and the church does not in- 
 fluence all the life as it once did. Many people are 
 born, marry, raise families, and die without relation- 
 ship to the church. 
 
 There are several sources of explanation for the its Ex- 
 fact that modern society is not influenced by religion P lanatlon - 
 as it once was, such as the rise of the modern demo- 
 cratic state as the seat of political power, the rise of 
 the public press as moulding public opinion, the rise of 
 the critical spirit, the growth of the sense of individu- 
 ality, the spread of higher education among the pews, 
 the rivalry of the denominational sects, the progress 
 of modern knowledge, the conservatism of theology, 
 the growing social and financial attractions of other 
 professions, the consequent relative decline in minis- 
 terial ability, and other similar things. The funda- 
 mental thing is that the church as a whole has not 
 kept pace with the spiritual needs of modern life, with 
 the result that modern life flows by instead of, as it 
 once did, through the church. 
 
 This gives the church its crucial problem to-day, The Problem 
 the problem of regaining its social constructive influ- f h th ^ ch 
 ence, of expanding its ministry to compass the needs 
 and interests of modern life. The genius of religion 
 is sufficiently versatile and adjustable to allow this ; 
 whether the catholicity and zeal of the church is suffi- 
 
160 Idealism in Education 
 
 cient to achieve it remains to be seen. Many signs 
 to-day indicate that religion will rise to meet its social 
 crisis. 1 
 
 Progress in racial acquisitions is slow enough, 
 progress in racial capacity is much slower. Looking 
 at the race as a whole, to-day, its vital symptoms are 
 distinctly good. There are no signs of rapid decline 
 anywhere. The racial poisons, such as alcohol and 
 syphilis, are indeed playing havoc among those af- 
 fected and their descendants. The non-inheritance of 
 acquired characters is marvellously protecting the race 
 from the vices of many of its members. The plagues 
 that scourge humanity are rapidly yielding to science 
 and skill, and prophylaxis is opening a new era of racial 
 health. The relatively declining birth-rate in most 
 civilized societies is due more to choice than to im- 
 potency, and in so far as it evinces foresight rather 
 than the rejection of the duties of parenthood is com- 
 mendable. The declining death-rate among in i 
 and children has increased the mean duration of lifi- in 
 the last half century some ten or twelve years, though 
 the hopes of Metchnikoff for the prolongation of life 
 beyond a hundred years in full possession of all 
 faculties are probably fatuous. 
 
 We have seen previously that there are many and 
 serious menaces to American society. But on the 
 whole the American stock does not yet show evidences 
 of decline. Americans do not seem to be losing 
 height or lung capacity. There has been no marked 
 increase in insanity yet from American nervousness. 
 Criminality is perhaps only apparently increasing, 
 1 a. Rauichcnbuicb, Christianity and the Social Criiit," N. Y., 1908. 
 
The Philosophy of Man-making 161 
 
 because of its increased detection, the increasing 
 number of laws against it, and the improved records. 
 Children are not born old, though the absence of 
 playgrounds and early labor make them prematurely 
 so. Almost half our population is now urban, and it 
 is learning to survive so. The immigrant is sometimes 
 a bad citizen from the outset, and often is made so 
 the first few days after his arrival, but in most cases 
 he loves and wants liberty and eagerly assimilates 
 American ideals. The divorce evil is indeed shame- 
 ful, but it is notorious not among the masses of the > 
 people, but among the idle rich whose ancestors knew 
 how to make money better than their descendants 
 know how to spend it. The fact is, we have not 
 learned yet in any of its bearings that matrimony 
 contemplates the benefit of the race rather than the^~- - 
 pleasure of the individual. The most ominous cloud 
 on the American horizon is our mammoth industrial 
 system, which has not been assimilated by the true Nt 
 ends of living, life, liberty, truth, beauty, virtue, 
 happiness, but has instead been rapidly assimilating 
 all these in its monstrous maw. Even this system, 
 however, has given us great wealth, whose philan- 
 thropic uses in combating the evils the system has 
 itself helped to produce we are just learning. 
 
 With all these signs of promise for the American Need of Vi- 
 race, there are still many elemental things we need *^^ n 
 to learn about eating and drinking, breathing and 
 sleeping, dressing and walking, marrying and giving 
 in marriage, and the provision of the right conditions 
 of living. The modern rainbow of promise is the 
 adjustment of our intense individualism to the idea of 
 
162 Idealism in Education 
 
 social intervention for the good of the race. How- 
 ever much it hurts the monopolistic capitalist, the 
 state is beginning to conserve its material resources. 
 But the only true wealth is life, in relation to which 
 other things become costly or cheap, and though it 
 may hurt our individualism, and sense of the parental 
 ownership of children, the state is beginning to con- 
 serve its vital resources. This is conservation indeed. 
 
 
 Hours of labor are shortened ; labor is protected 
 from machinery and the perils that beset certain call- 
 ings, as mining; women and children are protected; 
 sanitation and school hygiene become compulsory; 
 breathing spaces for the city poor are provided ; and 
 particularly, and most hopefully, the marriage of the 
 unfit is being prevented by the establishment of 
 celibate industrial communities. Theoretically this 
 intrenchment upon individualism by the authority of 
 the state is fully justified by the finer type of individ- 
 uals to come thereby. 
 
 Thus we have reviewed the main lines of human 
 progress and the situation to-day. This is how n> 
 kind is getting on. But how might it get on ? 
 Suppose we applied ourselves to the study of the 
 forces that make man, and then applied our knowledge? 
 We have done this in our material world, and modern 
 material civilization, only dreamed of in the Utopias 
 of the Renaissance, is the result. If we did it in our 
 vital world, who can reasonably doubt that the present 
 dreams of the superman, the man with higher vital- 
 ity, truer knowledge, finer sensibilities, stronger charac- 
 ter, larger capacities in every way, would be the 
 
The Philosophy of Man-making 163 
 
 reality of some centuries hence ? Then our years 
 would be known as another human Renaissance, this 
 time not as the advancement of learning, but as the 
 advancement of life, the age of education in man-mak- 
 ing. An enlightened and well-disposed public opinion 
 could accomplish marvels of progress in but a tick of 
 the clock of the universe. What man has amounted 
 to is but a token of what he may become. His evo- 
 lution has already shifted from the material to the 
 mental plane. Man is now beginning to take a 
 conscious part in his own making. Conscious effort 
 wonderfully abbreviates the slow processes of Nature. 
 The past predetermines the line of man's future 
 evolution, though no prophet can predict what it will 
 be. It may be the perfecting of present physical and 
 mental powers; it may be the development of present 
 incipient powers, such. as telepathy ; it may be in time 
 the development of powers at present unimaginable. 
 It would be a distinct aid to man if his mind by any 
 means could make present the vast forgotten past or 
 the distant reaches of space beyond telescopic vision, 
 or could know the state of the dead. Avoidable 
 ignorance is no cure for any human ill. These are 
 admittedly dreams ; of their content we are by no 
 means so sure as of the methods of their realization. 
 The road of progress we know, the goal we cannot 
 see nor foresee. The road is the threefold way, the 
 royal road of truth to the full realization of man's 
 destiny, good births, good places, goodwills. Eugenics 
 enlarges capacity by mating the fit and preventing 
 the mating of the unfit. Eutopias provide the good 
 places of opportunity in which capacities may de- 
 
164 
 
 Idealism in Education 
 
 5. The Na- 
 ture of 
 
 The Nature 
 of Time. 
 
 velop. Eunoias are the rightly trained good wills 
 that realize capacity by utilizing opportunity. May 
 the traveller, man, and his threefold way become one 
 with the errand to be done, the making of a fitter 
 race of men and women. 
 
 Having now indicated the progress man has made 
 and the progress he might make, the question may be 
 raised as to the absolute nature of progress. How is 
 progress possible ? Is it real or illusory ? Does God 
 progress? If so, how is He perfect? If not, how is 
 progress genuine? These questions are easy to 
 ask and hard to answer. Their consideration will 
 help us later in finding the philosophy of man-making. 
 
 The answers depend essentially upon the real 
 nature of time. Nobody has doubted the reality of 
 time except some theologians and some philosophers. 
 Theology has separated between earthly time and 
 heavenly eternity when time shall be no more. Yet 
 theology, somewhat inconsistently, has pictured he 
 as including events which presuppose time even there. 
 Immanuel Kant among philosophers has attacked 
 the reality of time as well as of space, holding that 
 both time and space are peculiar to the human way of 
 regarding events and objects, that they do not charac- 
 terize reality, that they characterize only phenomena 
 or reality as viewed by us. Time, and space too, are 
 not derived by us from our experience of events 
 objects, they are brought by us to our experience of 
 events and objects, they area priori not a posteriori; 
 they arc the mental pre-conditions of experience, they 
 are not products of experience ; they are, in Kant's 
 
The Philosophy of Man-making 165 
 
 phrase, " empirically real but transcendentally ideal," 
 that is to say, they do belong to phenomena, but 
 they do not belong to noumena. 
 
 Kant's reason for holding this view of time and Kant's 
 space was that they both, as we knew them, were Ar s ument - 
 characterized by universality and necessity; time 
 covers all inner events and space includes all outer 
 objects, and there are no exceptions to the necessary 
 union of events in time and of objects in space. But 
 universality and necessity do not characterize prin- 
 ciples derived by observation from experience, all of 
 which are both particular and contingent. Hence, 
 Kant concluded, time and space were not derived 
 from experience, but were contributed by the mind to 
 experience. 
 
 It is a famous doctrine and we cannot go into all 
 its relations; it is bound up with the whole of the 
 very difficult Kantian philosophy. What shall we 
 say to it ? Is time unreal or real? If time is unreal, 
 all progress is illusory; if time is real, progress is 
 genuine. 
 
 The trouble with Kant's view is the same as the Kant 
 trouble with all agnostics, Kant was an intellectual Criticised - 
 agnostic ; he knows too much about the realities he 
 said nobody could know anything about. That time 
 characterizes phenomena, we may all agree with Kant; 
 that time does not characterize noumena, how does 
 he know ? That there are any unknowable noumena, 
 how does he know ? Like many philosophers, he is 
 right in what he affirms and perhaps wrong in what 
 he denies. As for the marks of a-priority, universal- 
 ity and necessity, these may be nothing more than 
 
166 Idealism in Education 
 
 generalizations from exceptionless experience ; all 
 events we experience as temporal and as parts of one 
 continuous time ; all objects we experience as spatial 
 and as contained in one space ; such numberless ex- 
 periences without any exceptions are enough to as- 
 sure the mind that its concepts of time and space are 
 universal and necessary without assuming that time 
 and space are, in Kant's words, " the a priori forms 
 of sense." Time, then, we conclude, is one of the 
 objective elements we men experience ; it is not con- 
 tributed by our minds to experience. Without ob- 
 servers, if something happens, there is still time. 
 The Unity of But further. The idea of unity has met us in sev- 
 eral of our discussions, the unity of man, the unity 
 of Nature, the unity of deity. We now come upon the 
 idea of the unity of all experience. Kant got into 
 trouble when he asserted a peculiar human type of 
 temporal and spatial experience, beyond which were 
 realities, noumena, " things-in-themselves, M neither 
 temporal nor spatial in character. This introduced 
 duality into his world. It is obvious that the things 
 beyond experience must in some sense be experienced 
 in order to be asserted. Thus all reality falls within 
 one all-embracing experience. If all experience is 
 one, and time characterizes what we men know as a 
 part of this experience, it also in some sense charac- 
 terizes the whole of experience. This need not mean 
 that the whole of experience is in time, for, as Spinoza 
 said, God may be infinite in an infinite number of 
 ways; but it does mean that time is in the whole of 
 experience, that time consequently is one of the real 
 experiences of the Absolute, if we may introduce this 
 
The Philosophy of Man-making 167 
 
 term for the whole of reality, and that consequently 
 time is one of the realities. On the basis of the unity 
 of all experience, the Kantian distinctions of kind 
 between " empirical" and " transcendental " merge 
 into distinctions of degree between less and more. 
 
 With the reality of time comes also the reality of The Reality 
 progress. We may be deluded as to the amount of s ^ r g " 
 progress that has taken place, but the fact of progress 
 itself is not illusory. The world moves, and with its 
 movement, marking the lapse of time to us, human 
 experience is becoming richer. 
 
 But the question arises again, how is God related Does God 
 to human progress ? In the light of the foregoing Pr g ress? 
 discussion there is no content we can ascribe to the 
 term " God " quite so worthy as the whole of experi- 
 ence, all reality, the Absolute. Time, we saw, is in 
 God rather than God being in time. So progress is 
 in the content of the stream of time within the Abso- 
 lute Life; progress is in God, it is not necessary to 
 say God progresses ; as a flowing river may gather 
 alluvia as it flows, becoming thereby richer, and finally 
 depositing its riches at the delta, without the fertility 
 of the country being thereby increased. Yet the river 
 gathers from the land, and finally gives to the land. 
 So progress is possible as man gathers from the Di- 
 vine Life in which he lives, yet God as all-containing 
 may suffer neither increase nor decrease. Man's 
 progress is his increasing participation in the abun- 
 dant life of God. 
 
 These deep matters, fascinating as they are, may 
 yet repel us by their difficulty. But we live in the 
 shallows of being so much of the time, it is well for 
 
168 Idealism in Education 
 
 us occasionally to realize there are great depths, even 
 if we can only sink in their mysteries. And these 
 questions about progress help us to go further in our 
 philosophy of man-making. 
 
 6. The Phi- The race progresses, we saw, and may progress 
 5 more rapidly, by means of heredity, environment, 
 
 ; Lrccs. and will. What is to be our philosophy of these 
 processes ? These are evidently, in the light of the 
 foregoing analysis, the divine means whereby men 
 and women are made. Creation is rather the making 
 of something out of something by growth than the 
 making of something out of nothing by a word. 
 Procreation, transmitting heredity, environment, 
 shedding influence, and will, combining the two ef- 
 fectively, are the creative forces, are the means God 
 uses to come into the life of man increasingly, are 
 the means man may use to progress in God toward 
 his ideal. God uses men to fulfil his purposes for 
 man ; the race is working out its own salvation, 1 
 is God working in and through the race. 
 
 To consider the creative forces in succession. 
 Heredity means the unity, the continuity, and the 
 evolution of the living, especially human, species. 
 It is the tie that binds together all living things. 
 The cell is the unit of life; it has no known o 
 except preceding cells; it transmits its character 
 to all the cells that grow from it, it makes all living 
 things one, all plants, all animals, and all men. 
 Heredity is the linkage of cells, the bond of connec- 
 tion between the generations. Heredity passes on 
 but not back, it moves only in the forward direction, 
 
The Philosophy of Man-making 169 
 
 its series is irreversible, it tells the story of man, his 
 origin, his nature, his goal. The stream of heredity 
 running through all living and unfolding things 
 realizes by slow degrees the meaning of man. In 
 sum, the philosophical meaning of heredity is the 
 unity of all mankind with itself and with all life. 
 
 Environment is the setting of the story of man. Meaning of 
 In the broadest sense of the term it includes all ex- Envlron - 
 
 ment. 
 
 cept the cell-life. One group of cells indeed may be 
 environment to another, as the human body is a part 
 of the environment of the germ cells, as one plant, 
 animal, or person is part of the environment of 
 another. Thus the environment itself is largely liv- 
 ing. Perhaps if we knew the whole truth respecting 
 the so-called inanimate environment, it too would be 
 throbbing with life and significant with meaning, as 
 Idealism holds with the poets. This environment is 
 the condition of evolution, permitting nutrition, growth, 
 change, development. Between heredity and environ- 
 ment, action and reaction take place, the struggle 
 which is the condition of surviving. In sum, the 
 philosophical meaning of environment is, existence 
 includes an objective changing system in relation to 
 which life must maintain itself by adjustment. 
 
 Will is the response of the individual to his Meaning 
 heredity and environment. It is the part conscious- of WlU - 
 ness plays in evolution. It is the individual organ- 
 ism helping to make itself, man taking a hand in his 
 own making, piloting his own vessel of heredity 
 through the sea of environment. And, greatest of 
 all, it is the individual organism helping to make 
 the future of the members of its kind, by improving 
 
170 Idealism in Education 
 
 their physiological heredity, by transmitting the hu- 
 man social heredity, by providing a better environ- 
 ment, by fashioning their wills. Will means that at 
 last conscious selection aids natural selection, that 
 evolution comes to consciousness of itself, its past, 
 its present, its possible grand goal. Will means that 
 God, creating by means of evolution, finally fashions \ 
 an incomplete creature, man, capable of purpose- 
 ful cooperation in his own completing. The me- 
 chanical theories of evolution, using heredity and 
 environment alone as the explanatory factors, do 
 scant justice to the creature's struggle for survival, 
 what Schopenhauer called "the will to live." This 
 effort on the part of the organism to survive, whether 
 in the case of the least amoeba or the largest whale, 
 is a pre-condition of life. The creatures that do not 
 will to live do not live. Even the creatures that will 
 to live end by dying, but they triumph over death 
 through their will to live procreating offspring. Plato 
 in the Symposium showed long ago, as Schopenhauer 
 later, that the love of children is the love of immor- 
 tality. Without the will to live no heredity could be 
 transmitted, no environment sustain life. We are 
 using will here to cover the broad sense of the term, 
 viz., consciousness in action, and not simply its narrow 
 sense of conscious choice. In sum, the philosophical 
 meaning of will is that creatures take part in tlu-ir 
 own creating. This is peculiarly true in the case of 
 the highest creature, man. 
 
 The Groat- If we put these three elements together we get the 
 
 Mmn * idea of a process, occupying time, composed of ;m 
 
 internal factor, heredity; an external factor, envi- 
 
The Philosophy of Man-making 171 
 
 ronment; and a directive factor, will, whose goal 
 the making of men and women is being partially 
 attained constantly, whose final goal the perfecting 
 of men and women is ever more closely approached, 
 but never reached. Using the Aristotelian distinctions 
 among causes, we may say that the material cause of 
 the process is environment, the efficient cause is 
 heredity, the formal cause is will, and the final cause 
 is man. There may be some question about the 
 exactness of these identifications. In the light of 
 this temporal process, apparently engrossing the in- 
 terest of the evolving earth for countless past ages, we 
 come both to understand and appreciate man. Some 
 ancient words say : " When I consider thy heavens, 
 the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, 
 which thou hast ordained ; what is man that thou art 
 mindful of him ? And the son of man that thou 
 visitest him ? " These are words of exaltation, not of 
 abasement. Likewise, with Hamlet, those who know 
 will say: "What a piece of work is man! How 
 noble in reason ! how infinite in faculties ! in form 
 and moving, how express and admirable ! in action, 
 how like an angel ! in apprehension, how like a god ! 
 the beauty of the world ! the paragon of animals ! " 
 Few of us will care to add with feigning Hamlet, 
 unless we feign as he : " And yet, to me, what is this 
 quintessence of dust ? man delights not me ; no, nor 
 woman neither." 
 
 This one-way, irreversible, unfolding, time-filling TheExpiana- 
 process, with these means and this end, what shall we 
 say in explanation of it ? Is chance the father of it Process, 
 all? But chance is a name for human ignorance ; it is 
 
172 
 
 Idealism in Education 
 
 Chance? 
 
 Maeterlinck 
 quoted. 
 
 no true cause, it explains nothing. Is blind necessity, 
 working in and through impersonal and mechanical 
 laws, the lord of all ? But " necessity " is itself but a 
 concept of the human mind, framed to aid the mind 
 in its description of the regularity in the movements 
 of the process ; it is not the mind itself ; nor could 
 it, being blind, produce the seeing mind; necessity is 
 the product, not the producer, of mind. 
 
 Is it Conscious Will? Here only is an adequate 
 explanation. It is Conscious Will expressing itself 
 in time and space, bringing forth beings, like itself, as 
 like as finite can be to infinite, to share its abounding I 
 life. It is Will, for in the process there is motion, 
 action, conduct; it is Conscious, for we, its lesser prod- 
 ucts, are conscious, and no light springs from dark- 
 ness ; it is Conscious, for, as Anaxagoras said, only 
 Mind can explain such order as we know ; it is Con- 
 scious, for only so could we be so surely approaching 
 our receding goal. 
 
 In a notable though perhaps unduly agnostic pas- 
 sage in a remarkable book that combines science and 
 philosophy, Maeterlinck writes : " Whoever brings 
 careful attention to bear will scarcely deny, even 
 though it be not evident, the presence in nature of a 
 will that tends to raise a portion of matter to a subtler 
 and perhaps better condition, and to penetrate its 
 substance little by little with a mystery-laden fluid 
 that we at first term life, then instinct, and finally 
 intelligence; a will that, for an end we know not, 
 organizes, strengthens, and facilitates the existence 
 of all that is. There can be no certainty, and yet 
 many instances invite us to believe that, were an 
 
The Philosophy of Man-making 173 
 
 actual estimate possible, the quantity of matter that 
 has raised itself from its beginnings would be found 
 to be ever increasing. A fragile remark, I admit, 
 but the only one we can make on the hidden force 
 that leads us ; and it stands for much in a world where 
 confidence in life, until certitude to the contrary reach 
 us, must remain the first of all our duties, at times 
 even when life itself conveys no encouraging clear- 
 ness to us." 1 
 
 The universe in which will works these wonders TmeCon- 
 with matter is no vast machine grinding out little and jeptionofthe 
 
 Universe. 
 
 big creatures, as even Mark Twain 2 appears, beneath 
 his superficial laughter, really to have regarded it, but 
 a Life, a purpose, a system of purposes in itself, 
 expressing itself in many lesser lives. The view of 
 the universe as a mechanism, made possible to modern 
 minds through Newton's law of universal attraction, 
 is a construction of man's own intelligence to satisfy 
 his own purpose in understanding the universal 
 motion. Behind man's intellect, formulating mechan- 
 ical conceptions of life and Nature, is man's will to 
 know and his feelings of appreciation. So, behind 
 the apparently routine world that mechanism describes 
 we may suppose there is meaning, life, feeling, and 
 will, akin to ourselves, but vaster. All variety escapes 
 our mechanical descriptions, all irregularity, all varia- 
 tion, but just as there is variety evanescent feelings, 
 fleeting ideas, momentary impulses, halting intentions 
 
 1 Maeterlinck, "The Life of the Bee" (Tr. Sutro), N. Y., 1907. pp. 
 
 382-383- 
 
 3 Cf. Current Literature, June, 1910, " Mark Twain's Pessimistic 
 Philosophy." 
 
174 Idealism in Education 
 
 that escapes our mechanical psychology, so there is 
 variety in Nature that escapes our mechanical descrip- 
 tions : little motions of the air, wavelets of the sea, 
 twinklings of the stars, songs of the birds, noddings 
 of flowers, plays of animals, laughter of children. 
 All is instinct with a common life. But when man 
 can, if ever, perfectly describe in mechanical terms the 
 life of Nature, even then he must know that Nature 
 may be uniform because the will of God is consistently 
 expressed in it It is man's scientific duty to explain 
 all mechanically; it is his moral duty to recognize 
 personalities. At the end of the mechanical chapter 
 the scientist must still allow that his love for his 
 mother is really a relation of person to person and not 
 of dust to dust " Freedom is the truth of necessity," 
 says Hegel. So mechanism is the efficient means 
 used by intelligence in reaching final ends. Mechan- 
 ism describes the behavior of Nature, teleology ex- 
 plains mechanism, man with intellect and will explains 
 both mechanism and teleology, the Conscious Will of 
 the world explains man and all. 
 
 The Conccp. This Conscious Will is our God, the true Father of 
 too of God. Qur being. Our heredity is originally from Him, and 
 represents His continuing process of creation by pro- 
 creation. Our environment is He Himself expressed 
 in Nature. Our will is, when right, His own will in 
 us lifting us toward Himself, that we may be, that we 
 may be ourselves, that we may be His, that human and 
 divine comradeship and collaboration may exist upon 
 the earth. Man's greatest intellectual mistake has 
 been in separating between himself in his best mo- 
 ments and God ; man's greatest need is to find the 
 
The Philosophy of Man-making 175 
 
 unity between his being and God. To be in harmony 
 with external and internal nature is to be in harmony 
 with the immanent God. If these things be true, we 
 may anticipate that one of the fruits, perhaps the 
 finest, of the new education of the better race to 
 come will be the cultivation of the spiritual sense, 
 the sense of the divine meanings in the daily happen- 
 ings, the vision of all things in God, the awareness 
 that man's life is lived as a part of the permeating 
 Universal Life. This is not impersonal pantheism, 
 nor artificial dualism, nor degrading materialism, nor 
 impotent parallelism, nor hesitant agnosticism, nor 
 anthropomorphic theism, but real monotheism. It is 
 the larger faith of our modern world with its new 
 knowledge, that unabashed but reverently looks into 
 the processes of Nature as they have been making 
 life for ages past, as being really only the methods of 
 the divine working hitherto, the faith that calls man to 
 work, to work with the things of earth not as earthly 
 but as heavenly, that the joint creation of God and 
 man may be worthy to endure. 
 
 " I read, on the porch of a palace bold, 
 In a purple tablet letters cast : 
 * A house, though a million winters old, 
 A house of earth comes down at last : 
 Then quarry thy stones from the crystal All, 
 And build the dome that shall not fall.' " 
 
 But what have these views as to the ultimate Tucker 
 things to do with education ? They may become the Sdcaf nal 
 light of all our educational seeing. Many watchmen Need, 
 agree that society is ready for a new ethical and re- 
 ligious awakening. Dr. W. J. Tucker finds "the 
 
176 Idealism in Education 
 
 greatest present need in the educational world" to be 
 " that of an ethical revival at the heart of education." 
 What he means by this will appear from the follow- 
 ing quotation : 
 
 " Where then shall we look for the recovery and 
 advancement of education to its highest ethical power? 
 Chiefly, I believe, to our capacity for carrying on the 
 idealizing process through which we accustom our- 
 selves to think reverently of all knowledge, to insist 
 upon all intellectual work as a moral discipline, and 
 to hold all intellectual attainments and achievements 
 as tributary to the social good." * 
 
 Not every man, not every teacher, can idealize his 
 work ethically, or at all. It is our great desideratum. 
 It is by the use of idealism we are to make men and 
 women who can idealize. With the perfecting of the 
 spiritual sense along with the other noble phys 
 intellectual, emotional, moral, and social capac 
 of man, we may anticipate the day when the measure 
 of a man will include the physique of the athlete, 
 the reason of the scientist and philosopher, the feel- 
 ing of the poet, the imagination of the prophet and 
 inventor, and the will of the reformer. Such men 
 will be practical idealists, with vision to see and with 
 energy to execute. Some such fruition as this has 
 already been glimpsed in the greatest characters of 
 human history ; those great ones are the earnest of 
 the coming men and women God is making through 
 present men and women. To aid in this work is the 
 true calling of all noble souls. And to aim at this 
 
 1 W. J. Tucker, " Modern Education Capable of Idealism," in 
 Public- Mindtdntu, Concord, N. H., 1910. 
 
The Philosophy of Man-making 177 
 
 fruition, the perfecting of humanity in the image of 
 divinity, is idealism in educating. 
 
 These words contemplate particularly our teachers. 
 Theirs to inform young people aright as to bettering 
 the race by selected heredity, by improved environ- 
 ments, and by good wills; theirs to provide the right 
 environment in the schools ; theirs to cultivate their 
 own souls as the most important influence upon their 
 pupils; theirs to aid in building moral character; 
 theirs to receive the wages of going on ; theirs to 
 recognize, appreciate, and apply, with all parents and The Last 
 citizens, the last of the first principles in the making 
 of men and women, viz., eugenics, eutopias, and ing. 
 eunoias are the chosen means of the Divine Purpose in 
 perfecting mankind. 
 
 Idealism as a practical philosophy of living, as well 
 as educating, is expressed for us in Tennyson's 
 " Higher Pantheism," a poem now fortunately too 
 familiar to require quotation. But, as setting the 
 philosophy of this book to song, I will append from 
 the same poet : 
 
 THE HUMAN CRY 
 I 
 
 Hallowed be Thy name Halleluiah! 
 Infinite Ideality! 
 Immeasurable Reality! 
 Infinite Personality ! 
 Hallowed be Thy name Halleluiah ! 
 
 II 
 
 We feel we are nothing for all is Thou and in Thee ; 
 We feel we are something that also has come from Thee; 
 We know we are nothing but Thou wilt help us to be. 
 Hallowed be Thy name, Halleluiah. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Addams, Jane, 88. 
 
 ^Eschylus, 101. 
 
 Agnosticism, 147. 
 
 Alexander the Great, 101. 
 
 Allen, W. H., 58. 
 
 Allin, A., 58. 
 
 Alps, the, 104. 
 
 American society, menaces to, 83. 
 
 Anarchism vs. socialism, no. 
 
 Anaxagoras, 172. 
 
 Angelo, Michel, 152. 
 
 Aristophanes, 102. 
 
 Aristotle, 101, 127, 128. 
 
 Arminianism, 108. 
 
 Arnold, F., 143. 
 
 Arnold, M., 99. 
 
 Associates, personal, 86. 
 
 Attention, 124. 
 
 Atrophy, through disuse, 69. 
 
 Augustine, St., 33, 107. 
 
 Average, the, 80. 
 
 Bacon. F., 152. 
 
 Bagley, W. C., 143. 
 
 Bain, A., 143. 
 
 Baldwin, J. M., 58, 62. 
 
 Ball, W. P., 58. 
 
 Bancroft, G., 98. 
 
 Barnett, P. A., 143. 
 
 Bateson, W., 58. 
 
 Beethoven, L., 152. 
 
 Biology, its emphasis on heredity, 10 ; 
 
 and will, 112. 
 Bjorkman, 58. 
 Bourne, H. E., 134. 
 Bradford, A. H., 94. 
 Brewster, 58. 
 Brinton, D. G., 94. 
 Broca, 13. 
 Brooks, W. K., 580 
 Bruno, G., 82. 
 Bryant, H. C., 85. 
 
 Bryce, J., 151. 
 Bryn Mawr, 49. 
 Buddha, 88. 
 Burbank, L., 4, 36. 
 Burnett, J., 128, 129. 
 Byron, May, 14. 
 
 Calderwood, H., 8, 94, 143. 
 
 Calvin, J., 33, 105, 108. 
 
 Capacity, 30, 31, 120. 
 
 Catiline, 103. 
 
 Cato, 103. 
 
 Carlyle, n. 
 
 Carver, T. M., 59. 
 
 Chamberlain, A. H., 143. 
 
 Chamberlain, T. C., i. 
 
 Character, not inherited, 32. 
 
 Characters, acquired, the inheritance 
 
 of, 24. 
 
 Child, study of the individual, 45. 
 Choices, to be allowed, 138. 
 Christianity, individuality in, 105. 
 Church, its present problem, 159. 
 Cicero, 103. 
 Clough, A. H., 138. 
 Coe, G. A., 143. 
 Community, social environment in, 
 
 78. 
 
 Compayr6, G., 143. 
 Competition, 74. 
 Confucius, 88. 
 
 Conn, H. W., 26, 27, 62, 94. 
 Conover, J. P., 143. 
 Conservation, need of vital, 161. 
 Cooperation, vs. competition, 87. 
 Cope, E. D., 25, 59, 143. 
 Crawley, 94. 
 
 Criminality, inheritance of, 13. 
 Curriculum, moral use of, 133. 
 
 D'Alembert, 13. 
 
 Darwin, C., 8, 13, 22, 59, 71, 117. 
 
 179 
 
i8o 
 
 Index 
 
 Davenport, C. B., 38, 59. 
 
 Da Vinci, L., 152. 
 
 Degeneration, no racial, in America, 
 
 160. 
 
 Destiny, dependent on thought, 123. 
 De Vries, H., 4, 60, 69, 119. 
 Dewey, J., 143, 155. 
 Dexter and Gaiiick, 143. 
 Dickinson, G. L., 79. 
 Discipline, 132. 
 Dock, L. L., 59. 
 
 Drawing, ethical value of, 135. 
 Drummond, H., 8. 
 Dualism, 147. 
 Dudley and Kellor, 04. 
 Dugdalc, R. L., 59. 
 Dutton, S. T. 143. 
 
 the problem of, in man- 
 making, Chap. I; and Heredity, 
 Chap. II; the practical bearings 
 of heredity on, 35; and Environ- 
 ment, Chap. Ill; and Will, Chap. 
 IV; moral, 127-140. 
 
 Edwards, J., 33. 
 
 Efficiency, human, multiplication of, 
 4- 
 
 Effort, 131; and pleasure, 132. 
 
 Eigenmann, C. H., so- 
 
 Eimer, G. H. T., 25, SO- 
 
 Eliot, C. W., 31, 32, 39. 
 
 BBS, H, 13. 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 85, in. 
 
 Environment, and Education, Chap. 
 Ill, nature of, 61 ; kinds of, 62; 
 general mitacmce of, 64; law of, 
 64; modifies the organism, 64; 
 b modified by the organism, 65; 
 of the law of, 67; 
 opportunity, 67 ; in- 
 flucnce of the physical, 68; influ- 
 ence of the social, 73; practical 
 bearings of, on education, 80; our 
 duty to, 81 ; problem of handling, 
 82; how to control, 84 
 school, 89; abuse of the law of, 
 92; and will. 118. 
 
 Ethics, the teaching of, 136, 137 
 
 Eugenics, 55. 
 
 Eunoias, 140. 
 
 Euripides, 101. 
 Eutopias, 92. 
 
 Evolution, from unconscious to con- 
 scious, 3; social, its goal, 116. 
 Ewart, J. C., sp. 
 Experience, unity of, 166. 
 Esekiel, 57, 106. 
 
 Fechner, G., 2. 
 Fiske, J, 2, 8. 
 Fitch, J., 143. 
 Fletcher, H. 71. 
 Forces, life, 5. 
 Forel, A., 59. 
 Franklin, B., 55. 
 Frederick the Great, 52- 
 Fynn, A. J n 94- 
 
 Galton. Sir F., 4, 18, S, 39, 54, 59- 
 
 Geddes and Thomson, 59. 
 
 Geneva, 108. 
 
 Genius, 79. 
 
 Geography, and man, 71. 
 
 George III, 116. 
 
 God, and human progress, 167. 
 
 God, conception of, 174. 
 
 Greece, individuality in, 101. 
 
 Guyau, M. J., 15, 59- 
 
 Habit, 129. 
 
 Haeckcl, E, 8, 25, 46, 94- 
 
 Hay ward, F. H., 59. 
 
 Hegel G. W. F., 98, 117, i?4- 
 
 Herbart, J. F., 131, 135. 
 
 v, and Education, Chap. II; 
 its fundamental place, 10 ; illustra- 
 tions of, ii ; and crime, t 
 literature, 14; its nature, i 
 law, 16; its law applied to the 
 physique, 16; its law appi 
 the mind, 19; its law applied to the 
 moral traits, 20; reversion to tin- 
 normal, 22; its gradual appear- 
 ance, 23 ; the inheritance of a< 
 characters, 24; the inheritance of 
 capacity, 30; use of, in making 
 progress, 32; and predestination, 
 33; practical bearings <>: 
 education, 35 ; develop the strong 
 points of, 43 ; arouse dormant, 44 ; 
 
Index 
 
 181 
 
 abuse of the law of, 55; latent, 
 
 called out by environment, 68; 
 
 and will, 118. 
 Hibben, J. G., 9- 
 History, its philosophy, 98; ethical 
 
 value of, 134. 
 Holmes, 0. W., 57- 
 Home, social environment in, 77. 
 Rowland, G., 143. 
 Huxley, T. H., 9. 
 
 Idealism, 149; in education, 176. 
 
 Imitation, 74. 
 
 Immigration, 47. 
 
 Inbreeding, 22. 
 
 Individual, study of the, 45 ; histori- 
 cal survey of the recognition of the, 
 97, 117; socializing the, 126. 
 
 Individualism, its future, 115. 
 
 Individuality, and personality, 97. 
 
 Inquisition, the, 104. 
 
 Instruction, 77 ; direct ethical, 136. 
 
 Isaiah, 106. 
 
 James, W., 94, 131* 143- 
 
 Jenks, J. W., 143- 
 
 Jeremiah, 106. 
 
 Jesuits, 81, 104. 
 
 Jesus, 79, 88, 93, 107, 109, 127. 
 
 Job, 92. 
 
 Johonnot, J., 143. 
 
 Jordan, D. S., 59. 
 
 Jordan and Kellogg, 9, 59. 
 
 Jowett, B., 93. 
 
 Judaism, and Christianity, 106. 
 
 Judas, 93. 
 
 Jukes, the, 14, 59, 76. 
 
 Kant, I., in; on time, 164. 
 
 Keatinge, M. W., 129, 134. 
 
 Kent, C. F, 72. 
 
 Key, 131. 
 
 King, H. C., 82. 
 
 Kirkpatrick, E. A., 65, 76, 144. 
 
 Knox, J., 105. 
 
 Lamarck, 25, 26, 69. 
 Lamprecht, K., 134. 
 La Place, i. 
 Laurie, S. S., 144. 
 
 Leibnitz, 2, in. 
 Lincoln, A., 22, 112. 
 Literature, use of the doctrine of 
 heredity in, 14; ethical value of, 
 
 134- 
 
 Lock, R. H. 94. 
 Lombroso, 13. 
 Lowell, P., i, 72. 
 Lowell, A. L., 122. 
 Luther, M., 81, 105, 127. 
 
 MacCunn, J., 144. 
 
 MacDonald, G., 56. 
 
 MacDougall, D. T., 94. 
 
 Machinery, and will, 113. 
 
 Maeterlinck, 172, 173. 
 
 M'Kim, W. D., 59- 
 
 Man, his greatness and littleness, 2, 
 170; self -improvement of, 3, 4. 
 
 Man-making, the occupation of the 
 ages, i ; the forces of, 5 ; the prob- 
 lem of, 6, 8 ; the first principle of, 
 55; the second principle of, 92; 
 the third principle of, 140; sum- 
 mary of, 140; problems connected 
 with the elements of, 141 ; the last 
 principle of, 177. 
 
 Manu, 100. 
 
 Manual training, ethical value of, 
 135. 
 
 Marriage tests, 48. 
 
 Mason, O. T., 99. 
 
 Materialism, 147. 
 
 Meme, n. 
 
 Mendel, G., 17. 
 
 Mendelism, 56, 58. 
 
 Met calf, 73, 95. 
 
 Middle Ages, Individualism in, 
 107. 
 
 Mill, J. S., 63, 148. 
 
 Mind, in our universe, 2. 
 
 Missions, 157. 
 
 Models, 129. 
 
 Mohammed, 88. 
 
 Monotheism, 156. 
 
 Morality, and Deity, 156. 
 
 Morgan, C. L., 59. 
 
 Morgan, T. H., 95. 
 
 Munro, M. F., 59. 
 
 Myron, 152. 
 
182 
 
 Index 
 
 Nagli, 68. 
 Napoleon, 52. 
 
 Nature, associations with, 85. 
 Newton, 173. 
 Nietache, F., 4, S3- 
 Nisbet, J. F., 60. 
 Northwestern University, 144. 
 Nutrition, effects of, 70. 
 
 Object lessons, in moral education, 
 
 130. 
 
 Oppenheim. N., 60. 
 Opportunity, use of, by will, 120. 
 
 / v ; ***f*Altim*4 K Aniriw\nn4nt 
 
 urganism, rnoninea oy environment, 
 64; modifies environment, 65; 
 become* like environment, 65. 
 
 Orient, recognition of individuality 
 in. 100. 
 
 Orr. H. B., 95. 
 
 Outcast, the, 80. 
 
 Palmer, G. H., 137, 144. 
 
 Parallelism, 148. 
 
 Parents, a duty of, 36; the study of, 
 by teachers, 45- 
 
 Parker, F. W., 144. 
 
 Paul, St., 33, 107, n? 
 
 Payot, J., 144- 
 
 Peace, universal. 52. 
 
 Pearl. R., 60. 
 
 Pearson, K., 4. *>, 25, 3 4L 60. 
 
 Pedrtto.ii. 
 
 Perides, 101, 102. 
 
 Philanthropy, is it misguided? 53. 
 
 Philosophies, typical, 146. 
 
 Philosophy, of history, 08. 
 
 Philosophy, a mechanical, and will, 
 the, of man-making, Chap. 
 IV; its nature, 145; its method, 
 145; of heredity, 168; of environ- 
 ment, 169; of will, 169; of the 
 unity of these three, 171. 
 
 FUtO, 4^*4. 36, 3*. 93, ioi. 
 
 Pleasure, and effort, 132. 
 
 Pluralism, 148. 
 
 Plutarch, 75. 
 
 Poulton, E. B., 95. 
 
 Predestination, and heredity, 33- 
 
 Prejudice, race, 155. 
 
 Prenatal influence, 51. 
 
 Presbyterians, 108. 
 
 Primitive peoples, recognition of in- 
 dividuality among, 99. 
 
 Progress, use of heredity in making, 
 32 ; the possibility of, 32 ; human, 
 149; in capacity, in contrast with 
 acquisition, 150; material, 151; 
 intellectual, 151; esthetic, 152; 
 moral, 153 ; religious, 155 ; possible, 
 162; its nature, 164; its reality, 
 167. 
 
 Protestantism, individuality in, 108; 
 its paradox, 108. 
 
 Punnett, R. C, SS, 56, 60. 
 
 Race, improvement of, 35, 60; study 
 
 of. by teachers, 46; " suidde," 39. 
 
 Rauschenbusch, W., 160. 
 
 Recapitulation, theory of, 46. 
 
 Reformation, individuality in the, 109. 
 
 Reformers, social. 88. 
 
 Religion, decline in the social in- 
 fluence of, 158. 
 
 Renaissance, individuality in the, 109. 
 
 Reversion, to the normal in heredity, 
 22. 
 
 Revolution, the French, individualism 
 in, no. 
 
 Ribot, T. H., 29, 60. 
 
 Rights, of woman, 48. 
 
 Riis, J., 82, 88. 
 
 Romanes, G. J., 60, 95. 
 
 Rome, individuality in, 102. 
 
 Roosevelt, T., 39, 88, 153. 
 
 Rousseau, no. 
 
 Rugh, C. E., 144- 
 
 Ruskin, J., 35, "6. 
 
 Sadler, M. E., 144. 
 
 Saleeby, C. W., 7, 9, 40, 60. 
 
 Savonarola, 127. 
 
 School, the social environment of the, 
 78, 89; and tuberculosis, 91 ; r61e 
 of the, in frntn-FtiflV* n gj 142. 
 
 Scott, C. A., 88, 144. 
 
 Sedgwick and Wilson, 95. 
 
 Sedey, L., 144. 
 
 Segregation, of the unfit 
 
 Selection, sexual, 38 ; environmental, 
 69- 
 
Index 
 
 183 
 
 Self, improvement of, by man, 3. 
 
 Servetus, 82. 
 
 Shakespeare, 5. 
 
 Shaler, N. S., 20. 
 
 Shaw, G. B., 4, 53. 
 
 Snedden, D., 143. 
 
 Socialism vs. anarchism, no. 
 
 Society vs. the individual, 97; in- 
 dividualizing, 126. 
 
 Sociology, and will, 112. 
 
 Socrates, 79, 88, 101, 127. 
 
 Sophists, 101. 
 
 Sophocles, 101. 
 
 Spencer, H., 25, 53, 60, 64, 87, 95, 
 117, 144- 
 
 Spinoza, 166. 
 
 Suggestion, 75, 129, 131. 
 
 Sully, J., 144. 
 
 Sutton, 95. 
 
 Swift, E. J., 144. 
 
 Tacitus, 104, 105. 
 
 Teachers, a duty of, 36. 
 
 Tennyson, 22, 177. 
 
 Teutons, individuality among the, 103. 
 
 Thomson, J. A., 6, 7, 60, 76, 82, 95. 
 
 Thoreau, 53, 85. 
 
 Thorndike, E. L., 14, 21, 60. 
 
 Time, nature of, 164. 
 
 Titchener, on attention, 124, 125. 
 
 Tuberculosis, and school, 91. 
 
 Tucker, W. J., 153, 175, 176. 
 
 Tufts, J. H., 143, iSS. 
 
 Tyler, J. M., 9, 95- 
 
 Twain, Mark, 173. 
 
 Unfit, segregation of the, 41. 
 Universe, true conception of, 173. 
 
 Variation, explanation of, 71. 
 Vernon, H. M., 95. 
 Virgil, 152. 
 
 Wallace, A. R., 60. 
 
 Ward, L. F., 95. 
 
 Weismann, A., 25, 26, 60, 95. 
 
 Wells, H. G., 9. 
 
 Wharton, Edith, 14. 
 
 White, J. T., 130. 
 
 Will, and Education, Chap. IV; 
 meaning of, 96, 123; exaggerations 
 of its influence, 1 1 1 ; minimizing 
 its influence, 112 ; in discussions of 
 heredity and environment, 118; 
 its contribution to man-making, 
 119, 122; its lower stages, 124; 
 practical bearings of discussion of, 
 125; aim in educating the, 126; 
 principles in educating the, 127; 
 its indirect education, 127; never 
 break a child's, 139; conscious, 
 the explanation of creation, 172. 
 
 Wilson, E. B., 60. 
 
 Woman, her rights, 48; outdoor life 
 for, 50. 
 
 Woods, F. A., 23. 
 
 Wordsworth, W., 85. 
 
 Zeus, 101. 
 Zola, 14. 
 Zwingli, 105. 
 

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