/033 
 
 V * 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL 
 
 FORTY-EIGHTH AND WEBSTER STREETS, OAKLAND 
 
 BULLETIN No.(2 
 
 SELF-IMPROVEMENT OF 
 TEACHERS 
 
 MARCH, 1919 
 

 or 
 
 n 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL 
 
 FORTY-EIGHTH AND WEBSTER STREETS, OAKLAND 
 
 BULLETIN No. 2 
 
 SELF-IMPROVEMENT OF 
 TEACHERS 
 
 MARCH, 1919 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS 
 BERKELEY 
 
K 
 
SELF-IMPROVEMENT OF 
 TEACHERS 
 
 USED IN CONNECTION WITH DIRECTED 
 TEACHING 
 
 C. E. RUGH 
 
 462822 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 BULLETIN No. 1, a Tentative Moral Code, issued October, 1917, 
 is intended for the self-improvement of boys and girls. The 
 present bulletin is intended for adults. The concrete applications 
 of the principles of self-improvement are made to the teacher, 
 but the principles employed are general and apply to all forms 
 of human service. 
 
 BULLETIN No. 3, now in preparation, treats of Professional 
 Improvement of Teachers. The particular forms of knowledge 
 and skill employed in the presence of the class are therefore 
 omitted in the present bulletin. 
 
 "The best way to train the young is to train yourself at 
 the same time; not to admonish them, but to carry out your 
 principles in practice." Plato. 
 
 ABSTRACT 
 
 FOREWORD. A monograph on personal improvement of the teacher. 
 Professional improvement is to be treated in Bulletin No. 3. 
 
 I. Introduction. 
 
 1. Teaching is a fine art, achieved through physical, mental and 
 
 moral development of the artist. 
 
 2. The teacher has at his command all the achievements of the 
 
 other fine arts. 
 
 3. Teaching is in contrast with the so-called industrial arts. 
 
 (a) The teacher works with persons, yet by means of things. 
 (&) The teacher is interested in the primary vocation of right 
 
 living, as well, as the vocation for making a living, 
 (c) Teaching may degenerate into a mechanical art. 
 
 (1) By emphasis of school machinery. 
 
 (2) By abuse of scales and 'measurements. + 
 
 (3) By failure to recognize the three products of educational 
 
 processes. 
 
 Improvement in teaching is achieved ~by improvement of the personality 
 of the teacher. 
 
6 
 
 II. Motives to Geli -improvement. 
 
 1. " Failure, in the sense of opportunities missed, lays its blighting 
 
 hand upon well-nigh every human life. ' ' 
 
 2. 1 1 The causes lie chiefly within the individual himself. ' ' 
 
 3. Positive motives towards achievements of success. 
 
 (a) Personal motives for self -improvement. 
 
 (1) Personal satisfaction from successful action. 
 
 (2) Gratitude of pupils well taught. 
 
 (3) Promotions and increase in salary, 
 (fc) Professional motives. 
 
 (1) Sense of personal service gives a high form of satis- 
 
 faction. 
 
 (2) Professional tact solves cases correctly. 
 
 (3) Professional spirit inspires a high form of service, 
 (c) Patriotic motives. 
 
 (1) Good citizenship. 
 
 (2) A democratic state. 
 
 (3) A safe and sane world. 
 
 III. Nature and Need of a Vital Surplus. 
 
 "1. Supreme service of the teacher, to be a sample, a good example 
 of right living. Attained and maintained by surplus vitality. 
 
 (a) Surplus vitality is the characteristic of the pupil which 
 
 makes learning possible. Teacher needs same as a basis 
 of sympathy and understanding. 
 
 (b) A surplus is a condition of continued good character. 
 
 (c) Emergencies and ''shock" require a surplus. 
 
 (1) Teaching becomes complex. 
 
 (2) Death rate among teachers increasing. 
 
 (3) Life of service may be increased. 
 
 2. Reserve power. 
 
 (a) Examples of great power and great endurance. 
 
 (1) Individual cases of extraordinary power and endurance. 
 
 (2) Groups of men, women, and children exhibited such en- 
 
 durance during the war. 
 
 (3) Inventors and artists exhibit surplus, 
 (fc) Explanations of reserve power. 
 
 ^1) The religious explanation bases the reserve in powers 
 external to the agent. 
 
 (2) The quasi-scientific explanation finds the power a re- 
 sultant from the situation and the physical powers 
 that are not "tapped" during normal activity. 
 
(3) The practical explanation is found in the emotions 
 aroused. These emotions require both external and 
 internal power. 
 3. Nature of a vital surplus. 
 
 (a) The principles of human conservation are found in the 
 
 laws of human life. 
 
 (b) Life is a harmony of rhythms. 
 
 (c) Vitality depends upon the harmonious working of three 
 
 systems. 
 
 (1) Dynamic system; to secure power. 
 
 a. A harmony of digestion, circulation, respiration, and 
 
 exercise secures power. 
 
 b. How strong are you? 
 
 c. How long will you live? 
 
 (2) The kinetic system; for releasing power. 
 
 a. Eeservoirs of power are brain, liver, muscles. 
 
 ft. The adrenal and thyroid glands are agents for release 
 
 and control of power. 
 c. This kinetic system is set to work by emotions. 
 
 (3) The Personal System; for directing powers to personal 
 
 ends. 
 
 a. Is man a machine or a person? 
 
 b. Man is both a machine and a person. 
 
 (1) The dynamic system and the kinetic systems work 
 
 according to mechanistic principles. 
 
 (2) The personal system works "by objects in our 
 
 environment, by memories, by the imagination, 
 and by ideals." 
 
 (3) These means bring into play, society, "The Great 
 
 Communion" (Eoyce) Here the mechanistic 
 formulas do not apply. 
 
 c. The development of "sentiments" becomes the su- 
 
 preme problems of personal power. 
 
 (1) Elimination of "fears and worries." 
 
 (2) Learning to rearrange emotions. 
 
 (3) Emotions are managed indirectly. 
 
 IV. Conservation of Vitality. 
 1. Formulae: 
 
 (a) Life formula. "Life is response to the Order of Nature." 
 (&) Law of Life responses. "Organisms are sensitive and 
 responsive to the forces that give them birth and con- 
 tinued being. ' ' 
 
 (c) Human life formula. "Human life is the achievement of 
 a perpetual triumph ' ' physical, mental spiritual. 
 
8 
 
 2. A life of three dimensions. 
 
 (a) Length of life depends upon the harmony of the physical 
 
 rhythms. 
 (Z>) Breadth of life is secured by breadth of interest and range 
 
 of activities, 
 (c) Depth of life depends upon an abiding vision and ideal. 
 
 3. Processes of conservation. 
 
 (a) Physical surplus. 
 
 (1) Checks upon physical vitality. 
 
 a. The sedentary habits of the profession is a check, 
 fc. Unhygienic living. 
 
 c. Poor accommodations in boarding houses and school 
 rooms. 
 
 (2) Cultivation of physical surplus. 
 
 a. By eliminating as many checks as' possible. 
 
 Z>. By positive deposits in brain, liver, and muscles. 
 
 c. By calling upon the vital organs for more vigorous 
 
 activity than is demanded of them in the routine 
 
 work. 
 
 (1) Enough muscular exercise to insure "organic 
 
 resonance. } ' 
 
 (2) Motivated and accompanied by joyous emotions 
 
 in order to avoid fatigue. 
 
 (3) Gulick Schedule. 
 
 (ft) Mental Vitality. 
 
 (1) Checks to Mental Surplus. 
 
 a. The flabby physical condition so prevalent in the 
 
 teaching profession. 
 
 (1) This condition is exhibited in lack of resistance. 
 
 (2) In frequent fatigue. 
 
 (3) In chronic fatigue. 
 
 b. The dangerous check upon the teacher's mental life 
 
 is incident to the profession. 
 
 (1) Teachers teach children. 
 
 (2) Teach same grade of children 
 
 (3) Teach same subjects. 
 
 c. School routine. 
 
 (2) Cultivation of Mental Vitality. 
 
 a. By cultivation of physical vitality. 
 
 (1) By toning up muscles and nerves. 
 
 (2) By sufficient supply of oxygen. 
 
9 
 
 ~b. By positive mental growth. 
 
 (1) Avoidance of medium mental material. 
 
 (2) By trying to be an authority upon some subject 
 
 other than the one the teacher is teaching. 
 
 (3) By a study regime, 
 (c) Spiritual Surplus. 
 
 (1) Nature of spiritual life. 
 
 a. The spiritual is in contrast to the material. 
 
 fc. Spiritual power projects the self into the future. 
 
 c. The spiritual life is improved by personal self -direction. 
 
 (2) Checks upon spiritual life. 
 
 a. A weak and halting body interferes with spiritual 
 
 power. Exception. 
 
 fc. Any check upon mental power checks spiritual power. 
 c. The severest check is found incident to the teaching 
 
 profession. 
 
 (1) The routine of school machinery may cloud the 
 
 teacher's vision. 
 
 (2) The tendency to live in the past according to 
 
 the memory checks spiritual life. 
 
 (3) The greatest blight upon the spiritual life of the 
 
 teacher comes from the development of the 
 critical attitude towards pupils' work and then 
 towards pupils. 
 
 (3) Development of spiritual power. 
 
 a. Spiritual power is dependent first upon the develop- 
 ment of a personal ideal. 
 
 6. The second problem is the development of the means 
 of expressing spiritual power. 
 
 (1) The graceful body and becoming clothes. 
 
 (2) A pleasing voice. 
 
 (2) A full and vital mind. 
 c. Elements of spiritual power. 
 
 (1) Intellectual characteristics of a good leader, 
 (a) Originality such a mastery of subject matter 
 and method as makes it unnecessary to rely 
 upon books or other persons. 
 (Z>) Insight: 
 
 1. An original view of the other side and inside 
 
 of the problem. 
 
 2. Breadth of view seeing things in their right 
 
 relations. 
 
 3. Seeing things as followers see them. 
 
10 
 
 (c) Good judgment. 
 
 1. Judgment suspended until facts are "in"; 
 
 insures against prejudice. 
 
 2. Ascribes right relative values to facts and 
 
 relations. 
 
 3. Good judgment is vital by being immediately 
 
 connected with the will. 
 
 (2) Volitional elements in a good leader. 
 
 (a) Definiteness of purpose. He knows what he 
 is about, and why he is "about" it. 
 
 (Z>) Largeness of purpose. Large enough to in- 
 clude the whole range of the learner's life. 
 
 (c) Faith in one's purpose. 
 
 1. Nature of faith. 
 
 a. Not an emotion. 
 
 Z>. Not a form of knowledge, nor a substitute 
 
 for knowledge. 
 c. Faith is a product of evolution developed 
 
 by action. 
 
 2. Development of faith. 
 
 a. By removing the checks to faith. 
 
 &. Association with persons engaged in the 
 
 successful pursuit of one's ideals. 
 c. By an independent personal adventure. 
 
 (d) Tenacity of purpose making faith victorious. 
 
 (3) Emotional characteristics of a good leader. 
 
 (a) Nature of emotions. 
 
 1. Contrasted with intellectual elements which 
 
 are more or less impersonal. 
 
 2. Contrasted with facts about other persons. 
 
 3. As an organizing principle of one's own per- 
 
 sonal universe. 
 
 (b) Essential emotional elements. 
 
 1. Sympathy; the ability and disposition to 
 
 apply the Golden Rule. 
 
 2. Humility: allegiance to what is spiritually 
 
 above us. 
 
 3. Love: dispositional interest in persons, mani- 
 
 festing itself in four emotions. 
 a. Tests. 
 
 (1) Satisfaction in 
 
 (x) Presence of loved one. 
 (y) Success of loved one. 
 
11 
 
 (2) Dissatisfaction in 
 
 (ic) Absence of loved one. 
 (y) Failure of loved one. 
 6. Principles. 
 
 (1) As an organizing principle, love de- 
 
 determines the values of other ele- 
 ments. 
 
 (2) Love is a reciprocal virtue. 
 
 (3) Love atrophies when teachers prize 
 
 scholarship more than the well- 
 being of scholars. 
 
 Sympathy, humility and love are sumpreme teaching virtues. They are 
 most stable and most reliable in religious persons. 
 
 V. Regime. 
 
 1. There is no necessary relation between information and behavior. 
 
 2. "Knowledge is the instrument of successful action." 
 
 3. Principles for constructing a personal program. 
 
 (a) Physiological principles; laws of habit. 
 
 (6) Psychic laws; laws of suggestion and of sentiments. 
 
 (c) Cosmic law and social usage. 
 
 (1) Twenty-four hour day routine. 
 
 (2) Social customs based on this routine. 
 
 A scientific program is secured by planning, scheduling, and dispatching. 
 CONCLUSION. A physiological day insures against impaired vitality. 
 
12 
 
 SELF-IMPROVEMENT OF TEACHERS 
 
 I. 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 1. Teaching is a fine art. A high degree of efficiency in this art is 
 achieved by a high degree of physical, mental, and moral development. 
 Proficiency is attained and maintained by improvement in health, men- 
 tality and personality. This monograph aims to bring together some of 
 the more recent achievements of physiology and psychology that suggest 
 ways and means for self -improvement. 
 
 2. Eight living is the finest of the fine arts. Good teaching comes 
 next because it is the most timely and most efficient means to right living. 
 The historians call architecture, sculpture, painting, music and literature 
 the fine arts. These are fine arts because they express the skill, the 
 thought, and the very life of the artist. For the same reason living and 
 teaching are fine arts. They are finer because they work upon the artist 
 with finer tools and also because they have at their command all the tools 
 as well as all the products of the other artists. The works of the other 
 artists are finished products. The paintings and the poems remain what 
 they are. Teaching is reproduced and multiplied in the lives of the pupils. 
 That is why mistakes in teaching are the worst mistakes. They are 
 reproduced and multiplied in the lives of the learners, and by the same 
 law the improvement in the teacher is an improvement in his art and in 
 the product of his art.' 
 
 3. (a) As a fine art, teaching is in contrast with the industrial arts. 
 Bernard Shaw once said, " Those who can, do; those who can't, teach. " 
 The fallacy lurking in this half-truth lies in contrasting "doing" with 
 "teaching." The real contrast is between those working with things and 
 those working with persons. Teaching is doing, but it is done mostly by 
 fellowship, and fellowship depends upon what teachers are. Because of 
 this interesting fact, improvement in teaching is also personal im- 
 provement. 
 
 Herbert Spencer announced a doctrine current for half a century 
 that ' ' education is preparation for complete living. ' ' Though this doctrine 
 places the emphasis upon living, it has done a great deal of harm. It 
 has now degenerated into the doctrine that ' ' education is preparation for 
 making a living." The fallacy lurking in both these formulas lies in 
 separating education from living. 
 
13 
 
 (ft) There can be no difference of opinion concerning the importance 
 of training for one 's vocation, but there is and ought to be protest against 
 the doctrine that skill in a trade, or skill of any kind for that matter, 
 is sufficient qualification for teaching. It is unfortunate that the term 
 "vocational education" has been used and applied chiefly to industrial 
 education, since industrial education means essentially trade education. 
 This partial meaning of the terms may be forgiven if it teaches us that 
 all education worthy the name is vocational, provided we interpret voca- 
 tion as a life calling as well as a calling to make a living. Kousseau 
 taught the correct doctrine, "all education should be vocational." "We 
 are first called to be men and women, then workmen and workwomen." 
 America needs good character on the part of her workmen as much as 
 she needs skill. Because of the shorter schooling period of most trade- 
 trained pupils, and because of the concentration of their thought upon 
 material means and material ends, good character is of supreme im- 
 portance in the trade courses. For this reason putting the trade classes 
 and trade schools off by themselves is a very short-sighted policy, 
 calculated to foster class distinctions. During the growing period every 
 youth needs training of "hand, head, and heart," and if economic 
 condition forces early emphasis upon one of these aspects of a well- 
 rounded life, this does not justify giving the pupils poorer teachers and 
 separating them from the pupils doing other lines of work. 
 
 (c) A third reason for stressing the personal worth of the teacher 
 and the necessity of improvement in character is found in the emphasis 
 just now being placed upon the machinery of education. School machinery 
 can never lessen the necessity for improvement in the machinist. Indeed 
 the improvement in the machinery increases the importance of the 
 machinist. 
 
 Scales and measurements if properly employed will do much to elimi- 
 nate educational waste, but they must not be allowed to put skill above 
 character. The common fallacy in educational measurements lies in the 
 assumption that when we have measured the product we have measured 
 the process. A pupil may exhibit correct answers, or correct products, 
 and get a perfect score on material that has been produced by wrong 
 methods and immoral means. The real and essential product in education 
 cannot be measured by any scale yet invented. This fact does not 
 lessen the importance of scales for skill. 
 
 The action of a growing person produces three results: (1) the 
 objective result, the finished product; (2) the physiological result in the 
 growing body; (3) the psychic result in the growing mind. The relation 
 between these three is more than a mathematical one. An over-emphasis 
 of any one of these results produces a partial result, a warped personality. 
 The school is not a factory. In a democracy, the workman is certainly 
 
14 
 
 as important as his work. This principle applies to both teacher and 
 pupil. Democracy is founded upon personality. Personality is a social 
 process and a social product. It is a combined product of individual 
 choices multiplied by the number of persons whom we carry in our 
 imaginations and \ffections, multiplied by the expectations of those we 
 know carry us in their imaginations and affections. It is of supreme 
 importance that the children of America, the children of the world for 
 that matter, build into their lives the images and affections of worthy, 
 growing teachers. As Irving Fisher has well said, "the world is slowly 
 coming to realize the improvability of all living things." Education 
 is founded on this fact. It includes the teacher. "Thou that teachest 
 another, teachest thou not thyself. ' ' 
 
 II. 
 
 MOTIVES TO SELF-IMPROVEMENT 
 
 "Of those who start in business for themselves at least one-third 
 sooner or later fail. They may in their failure injure others through 
 their inability to pay their debts. Or they may merely lose the money, 
 the time, and the energy which they have staked in the venture. In 
 either event, they have attempted and failed. We have records only of 
 those who are unable to pay their debts. In this class, according to the 
 analysis of Bradstreet's one-fifth of the failures are due primarily to 
 causes lying outside of the individual; the other four-fifths are due 
 primarily to the man himself. 
 
 "The figures are calculated to make even the most self-confident 
 serious. But there is worse behind. Many who succeed in making a 
 living fail in life. Life, for them, turns out in the end a disappointment. 
 They find it either tasteless or bitter, even though they may .have 
 obtained what the world calls success. Naturally we have no information 
 that enables us to locate the responsibility for this class of failures. 
 The causes are usually complex; but it is safe to say that the character 
 or intellect of the individual himself is more or less at fault in the vast 
 majority of cases. 
 
 1. "There remains one thing more. Many who do not fail in the 
 sense of being crushed by an overwhelming disaster fail in the sense 
 that they get out of themselves and their circumstances far less than 
 they might have done. This too is a serious matter; for life is not so 
 rich in resources that we can afford to be wasteful. Failure, in the sense 
 of opportunities missed, lays its blighting hand upon well-nigh every 
 
 human life. 
 
 ******* 
 
 2. "Failure, then, in one sense or another, is the great shadow upon 
 life. And the causes lie chiefly though, of course, far from exclusively 
 
15 
 
 within the individual himself. This does not mean necessarily that they 
 are removable. Some of them are not. On the other hand and here is 
 the food of hope many of them are. Since all these facts are, at least 
 in a general way, well known, one might suppose that he would find 
 every one devoting a certain amount of time and energy to serious 
 reflection upon life, its opportunities, its duties, and its dangers, and upon 
 the problem of his own adjustment to its demands. ' '* 
 
 These figures concerning business failure probably do not represent 
 failure in teaching; but the findings do represent many cases. "Life" 
 for many a teacher "turns out in the end to be a disappointment." "The 
 causes lie chiefly . . . within the individual himself." Since these facts 
 are known ( ' one might suppose that he would find every one devoting 
 a certain amount of time and energy to serious reflection upon life, its 
 opportunities, its duties, and its dangers, and upon the problems of his 
 own adjustment to its demands." 
 
 (a) Personal Motives for Self -Improvement. 
 
 "Divine discontent" is the distinct characteristic of human beings. 
 At their best they desire to be better. Self-preservation is the first law 
 of nature. Personality is a progressive principle. Personal self-preserva- 
 tion must preserve this principle. Personality knows no neutral ground. 
 Death sets in when progress ceases. 
 
 A skillful, happy, and honored shoemaker, when asked the secret of 
 his happy life, replied that it was in trying to dr^ve each peg a little 
 slicker than the last one. One of the joys of childhood which can be 
 continued into age is the pleasure of playful action; but playful action 
 in an adult must be easy and skillful. A process as complex and difficult 
 as teaching requires most extended training to become easy and skillful. 
 Teachers are privileged to pass on to children the greatest and best 
 achievements of the ages. To be able to handle such material in an 
 artful and successful manner ought to be an end to move any teacher 
 to continued efforts at self -improvement. The teacher, his material, and 
 his methods offer unlimited scope for improvement. 
 
 (1) There are three remunerations ascribed to teaching. First comes 
 the personal satisfaction from successful actions. To the normal person, 
 continued satisfaction can come only from increase of power. The 
 sorrow of age comes from thinking that something is slipping away from 
 us. Growth in skill and power gives us a feeling of youth, and though 
 growth of body stops we can continue to grow in skill. 
 
 (2) The second remuneration of teaching comes from the gratitude 
 and fellowship of those who have been well taught. A teacher can 
 
 * Dr. Frank Chapman Sharp, in Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin. 
 
16 
 
 hardly expect gratitude if he wastes the pupil's time and ability. This 
 gratitude comes to be a source of power and satisfaction as students grow 
 into a sense of their debt. 
 
 (3) The third remuneration, the salary, is not commensurate with 
 the importance of the task imposed, but it must be admitted that, con- 
 sidering the way the work is done, compared to the manner in which it 
 should be done, most teachers get all they are worth. Many of them 
 could not earn more at anything else they could do. Teachers who try 
 to increase their earnings by doing insurance, farming, etc., on the side, 
 are dear at any price. Teachers who show personal improvement in 
 service and profession, skill and power are recognized, and promoted. 
 
 (6) The Professional Motive. 
 
 (1) A sense of personal service gives a purer and higher form of 
 satisfaction than personal improvement. No other service is quite equal 
 to that given growing youth, because it is to be reproduced and multiplied. 
 "Only the best is good enough for the child." This requirement ought 
 to drive the lazy out of the profession. Others should be inspired to 
 personal effort to improve their skill. 
 
 (2) Professional Tact. Tact is the disposition and ability to apply a 
 general principle to the particular case. This ability is improved by 
 dealing with persons; second, it is improved in the acquisition of skill in 
 diagnosing the particular case; third, it is improved in correct application 
 of the principle. This is professional treatment. 
 
 (3) Professional 'Spirit. Spirit is the personal response the will makes 
 to an ideal. The teacher improves his professional spirit by improving 
 the ideal he sets up for the pupil. Great possibilities are ahead of any 
 normal b.oy and girl in America. This thought brings us to the particular 
 motive for the improvement of the teacher: 
 
 "Only the best is good enough for the child." 
 
 The greatest assets of the nation are the children. They may become 
 the geatest liabilities. The gains in health and wealth, the achievements 
 of art and science, and the progress in morals and religion must be con- 
 served and perpetuated through the children. Many of the common 
 diseases, vices, and crimes are perpetuated through the children. If the 
 organized forces of evil-doers were not recruited from the ranks of the 
 children, organized evil would die out in one short generation. 
 
 What determines whether children be a blessing or a cursing? Th 
 way they are treated. In the present economic and social order tht 
 school has become the fundamental social institution. The common 
 and essential social forms and social achievements are worked out here. 
 Here are the conditions for that social contagion and social stimulus, 
 guidance, and control that in large measure determines the character of 
 the boys and girls. The teacher is the essential factor in this process. 
 
17 
 
 Boys and girls deserve not only the best the individual teacher can 
 give, but the best that can be given. If declining interest or declining 
 vitality, whether from age, overwork, or unhygienic living, is robbing the 
 children of their rightful inheritance, then the teacher must "step down 
 and out. ' ' Schools are maintained in the interest of the children. They 
 deserve all the professional skill which the teacher can possibly develop. 
 
 (c) Patriotic Motives. g 
 
 The hope of the nation lies in the children. The hope of the children , 
 can only be realized through right social stimulus guidance, and control. 
 The nature and needs of the democratic state is a compelling motive for 
 any patriotic teacher. The great Italian statesman, Mazzini, defined 
 democracy as "The progress of all through all under the leadership of 
 the wisest and best. ' ' Thomas Jefferson long ago declared that the 
 freedom and perpetuity of the nation depended upon an intelligent citi- 
 zenship. But intelligence proves not to be enough. Nothing short of 
 good moral character in its citizenship can make democracy safe.. A 
 nation that has safeguarded our liberties and has insured us the oppor- 
 tunity to pursue the desirable things of life deserves the best service 
 the citizen can give, and what greater service can be rendered than 
 safeguarding and favoring the all-around development of the children? 
 
 Each of these motives has been accentuated by the world war. Never 
 were children quite as important as now, not to be exploited, but to 
 be used as the only hope of making the world a fit place to live in. The 
 people of the past have made a terrible muddle of civilization. There 
 is little hope of making the adult world over, but if teachers conceive 
 and believe in a socially safer and more efficient world and teach towards 
 these ends there is hope for the future. To accomplish this great hope 
 will require that most teachers will have to be made over in some respects. 
 In the last analysis, then, the whole problem comes back to the individual 
 teacher and to personal reasons for self -improvement. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE NATURE AND NEED OP A VITAL SURPLUS 
 
 It would be cruel and discouraging to make teachers more conscious 
 of the need of self -improvement if the ways and means of such improve- 
 ment were not readily at hand. What teachers lack is not so much the 
 desire for improvement as insight into the laws of life and the principles 
 of progress. 
 
 The conservation of any resource, natural or artificial, must be con- 
 ceived and worked out in terms of the service to be rendered by the 
 power to be conserved. 
 
18 
 
 1. What Is the Fundamental Service of the Teacher and by What Qualities 
 
 Is That Service Rendered? 
 
 The greatest service any teacher renders is to be a sample. A sample s 
 is a good example. This principle is true of the simplest service to be 
 rendered. A teacher of penmanship to be efficient must be a good pen- 
 man. Since life is the supreme concern of every human being, the greatest 
 service a teacher can render is to be an example of right living. This 
 .principle is also true for the simplest service. The enthusiasm and 
 inspirational power of a teacher is determined in large measure by the 
 conception he has of the life service of his daily work. The primary 
 inspiration of the pupil to go whole-heartedly at a task comes from the 
 contagion of a teacher who shows a whole-souled devotion to the subject 
 assigned. 
 
 THE SUPREME QUALIFICATION OF A GOOD TEACHER 
 
 (a) The qualification that makes good teaching possible and continu- 
 ous is surplus vitality life abounding. There are three outstanding 
 reasons why a vital surplus is necessary. 
 
 First, surplus vitality is the characteristic of the pupil that makes 
 learning possible. In order to sympathize with youth and in order to be 
 an example of vigorous action a teacher needs a surplus. Improvement 
 of the learner's behavior is the purpose of teaching. This improvement 
 in pupil and teacher alike is conditioned by surplus vitality. 
 
 (ft) The second reason why a teacher needs abundant life is found in 
 the fact that it is a condition of continued good character. { ' The center 
 of character is self-control. The center of self-control is will. The 
 center of will is attention." Now what has all this to do with the body? 
 Just this: The greatest cause of fatigue is attention; that is what tires 
 more than anything else. It takes nervous energy to attend; and the 
 supreme condition, therefore, of power of attention so far as the body is 
 concerned is surplus nervous energy. That is the whole problem. 
 Character, self-control, will, attention ... its supreme physical condition, 
 surplus nervous energy."* 
 
 M^ny of the vital mistakes in teaching and discipline are caused by 
 tired pupils and tired teachers. 
 
 (c) The third reason for conserving a surplus is found in the character 
 of the service. Teaching is the most complex service any human being 
 undertakes. Many of the mistakes in life and in fact many deaths are 
 caused by ' 'shock," physical, mental, or moral. Teaching affords more 
 
 * President Henry Churchill King, "How to Make a Rational Fight 
 for Character." 
 
19 
 
 occasions for emergencies and for " shock" than any other profession. 
 Children may "break out" at any time. Put thirty-five to fifty boys 
 and girls together in a room and there is no telling just what they will 
 do or when they will do it. 
 
 Teaching is a very personal matter and by tradition is rather a 
 private performance, so that the advent of the superintendent or any 
 other supervisor is an occasion of embarrassment if not of shock. For 
 the same reason the visit of parents, especially concerning cases of 
 discipline, is most likely to require more energy than the routine work. 
 
 The teacher's energy is taxed not only by the increasing complexity 
 of the task, but also by the lengthening time of service. A generation 
 ago teachers taught four to six months and then worked at something 
 else during the rest of the year. Since teaching is so exacting and 
 exhausting, this other work afforded an occasion for laying up reserve 
 power. 
 
 The increasing death rate among teachers need cause no special alarm. 
 The necessary length of the school term and the increasing demands of 
 the modern school machine may be somewhat responsible for this increase, 
 but the increase in the average age of teachers is about enough to 
 account for the new death rate and for the increase in sick leave. A 
 generation ago teachers began teaching younger and did not teach nearly 
 so long, so that the average age was much less. 
 
 There is another important fact not only of explanation but of warning. 
 A large majority of the teachers were and still are rural born. By 
 heredity they have a body suited to muscular work "out of doors." 
 They have been "in doors" from twelve to twenty-five years preparing 
 to teach and teaching. By this natural endowment and sedentary experi- 
 ence most teachers have developed unhygienic ways of living and even 
 atrophied organs; but even for these the findings of Cannon, Crile, 
 Fisher, et al, hold out a pleasing prospect. 
 
 ' ' So far as we can compare vital and physical assets as measured by 
 earning power, the vital assets are three to five times the physical. The 
 facts show that there is as great room for improvement in our vital 
 resources as in our lands, waters, minerals, and forest. This improvement 
 is possible in respect both to the length of life and to freedom from 
 disease during life." 
 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 . . . "From these data it is found that fifteen years at least could 
 be at once added to the average human lifetime by applying the science 
 of preventing disease." 
 
 "The world is gradually awakening to the fact of its own improva- 
 bility." (National Vitality, Senate Document No. 676; Vol. Ill, Sixtieth 
 Congress, Second Session.) 
 
20 
 
 Fisher is here dealing with the negative aspect of self -improvement 
 through improved environment. The positive power for personal progress 
 lies in the organism and its ability to adapt itself to an improved 
 environment. 
 
 2. Reserve Power. 
 
 The world war caused unmeasured suffering and sorrow. But it also 
 demonstrated how much suffering and sorrow a human being can endure 
 without giving up or dying. It also demonstrated the power of human 
 beings to put forth effort when moved by a great purpose or emotion. 
 All this has revived a lively interest in what William James calls the 
 "Powers of Men." 
 
 There had been noted and recorded individual cases of phenomenal 
 endurance and Herculean power before this war. These had been supposed 
 to be exceptional, to be "fortuitous variation." Mothers had cared for 
 sick children for hours, even days, without eating or sleeping and had 
 quickly come back to normal conditions when the f sick recovered or died. 
 Under stress or in danger, men, women, and children have lifted objects 
 and accomplished labors seemingly impossible. Inventors like Edison, 
 artists like Michael Angelo, and poets like Cowper have exhibited mar- 
 velous powers for work and recuperation. 
 
 James in his essay on the "Powers of Men" suggested that human 
 beings in general have reservoirs of power which they never tap and 
 that there are ' ' various keys for unlocking them in various individuals. ' ' 
 He said that "the man who energizes below his normal maximum, fails 
 just so much to profit by his chance at life; a nation filled with such 
 men is inferior to a nation run at higher pressure."* 
 
 The world war demonstrated that while men and women and children 
 vary very much in their powers of endurance and power to put forth 
 effort, normal human beings have these powers in greater abundance 
 than is generally believed. Groups of men, in some cases whole com- 
 panies, stood in freezing water, lived without food, and performed great 
 labors, and then "come back" in a few days under proper treatment. 
 
 (fc) Another contribution of the war was the discovery or rather the 
 corroboration of the discovery of the "keys" to unlock some of these 
 "reservoirs of power." Two explanations have been given to account 
 for these extraordinary phenomena the religious and the quasi-scientific. 
 (1) In many cases the persons themselves claimed that they relied on 
 "unseen powers"; or "powers not themselves"; "on God"; "on 
 prayer." In many other cases the persons were not conscious of any 
 power but themselves and believed that under similar circumstances they 
 could repeat the performance. 
 
 (2) Science has demonstrated that all living things have stored within 
 
 * American Magazine, November, 1907. 
 
21 
 
 their bodies many times the power they normally employ. This power is 
 assumed as necessary for survival in the struggle for existence. The 
 quasi-scientific explanation of all the cases is that the circumstances of 
 the case furnishes the "key" that releases the extraordinary power, and 
 that the persons who claim to be conscious of "powers not themselves" 
 are deluded merely using a "mystical explanation" because they do 
 not know the scientific one. Because of the long, bitter controversy 
 between theologians and scientists .these two explanations offer another 
 subject of controversy. Both explanations are partial and when the 
 whole situation is analyzed the two explanations are not so far apart 
 as they seem. The harmonizing of the two explanations lies in the term 
 ' ' circumstances. " " Circumstances ' ' means ' l standing around. ' ' Both 
 explanations employ powers outside the agent. The religious persons 
 include in the "'circumstances" "unseen persons" with which they 
 claim ' ' communion ' ' and ' ' fellowship. ' ' The scientist admits powers 
 external to the agent, but claims that a list of the mechanical means 
 that stimulate the agent are all that are necessary to explain* the case. 
 
 (3) Fortunately it is unnecessary to prejudice either side to this 
 controversy at this level by taking sides. Whatever the factors in the 
 "circumstances" surrounding the agents in these cases, the mechanism 
 in the agent's body, by which the work is done or pain endured, is the 
 same, and that mechanism is pretty well known, and we are rapidly 
 discovering ways of managing it. It is admitted by all that certain 
 emotions precede the release of power and certain emotional satisfactions 
 accompany the recovery. Both religionist and scientist are discovering 
 ways, in many cases more or less uncertain yet, of arousing these 
 emotions, "and a critical examination of the ways the religious people 
 and the non-religious go about arousing these emotions suggests at least 
 that what they think are very grave differences are mostly differences 
 in terms and definitions. What is of supreme importance is, that while 
 they are seemingly taking different routes they are both learning to 
 arrive. The practical problem now centers around the problem of emo- 
 tional control, and an increasing number of human beings are becoming 
 more interested in ways and means of living at their best than they are 
 in the theological or scientific theories of the scholastics. All this must 
 not be taken to mean that there are no differences between the religious 
 and the scientific attitudes. But it does mean that both attitudes as 
 usually employed are limited, and that many of the seemingly irrecon- 
 cilable differences are differences in method of approach to the problems 
 of life rather than differences in essentials or in results. 
 
 The problem of supreme interest to human beings who desire to 
 "energize themselves" up to their normal maximum, to employ James's 
 formula, is how to store the reservoirs of power and how to get the 
 "kevs" that unlock them. 
 
22 
 
 3. The Nature of a Vital Surplus. 
 
 (a) Surplus vitality must be secured and conserved according to the 
 laws of life. Each person as a vital complex is a product of native 
 endowment and personal acquisition. There are certain elemental qual- 
 ities of vitality, longevity, and power of endurance that are inherited; 
 but these are of no immediate or practical concern in this connection. 
 The fortunate individual who possesses these qualities, as natural en- 
 dowment, has some advantages. The surplus may be more easily main- 
 tained, but the native endowment does not insure success. Whatever 
 the endowment and whatever the present attainment and ability barring 
 certain chronic diseases each normal person has their future very much 
 -in their own keeping. 
 
 A person in good health and right mind enough to hold comfortably 
 a teaching position has enough present capital physical, mental, and 
 moral to make it pay dividends. For their own sake, for the sake of 
 the children, and in the interests of the Nation, teachers need daily 
 remind themselves that normal human beings can be improved. This 
 is the fundamental implication of education. A common error is to 
 assume that this power of improvement is limited to childhood. It is 
 not so limited. It is true that the ways and means of improvement 
 differ after the years of normal bodily growth. It is these principles of 
 personal power and improvement that are now to be set forth. 
 
 The biological foundation of surplus vitality is found in the fact that 
 complex living organisms have a great deal more power stored away in 
 their bodies than they use under normal conditions. Evolution has allowed 
 only such organisms to survive. Almost every living organism is insured 
 against emergencies. 
 
 There are three great problems of vitality: (1) Securing power, (2) 
 conserving it, and (3) employing it. In these processes, barring accident, 
 lies the possibilities of length, breadth, and depth of life. 
 
 (Z>) Life as a Harmony of Rhythms. Human life at its best is a 
 harmony of rhythms. 
 
 This characteristic is no accident. Ehythm is not peculiar to life, 
 though its greatest complexity is found in living things. This occurs, 
 of course, because they are composed of more kinds of elements and 
 more complex chemical and vital combinations than is found in inert 
 matter. The most complex molecule of inert matter is very simple com- 
 pared to the molecule of living matter. A brain molecule contains 
 hundreds of atoms. 
 
 Spencer has pointed out in detail in his "First Principles" that all 
 motion, all movement, all progress all change for that matter is 
 rhythmical. In such a world the living organism that would survive 
 must either fit into these rhythmic processes or successfully resist them. 
 In either ease the response would turn out to be rhythmical. 
 
23 
 
 3. For the purposes of understanding and favoring individual vital 
 surplus we may divide the life processes into the "vital responses and 
 harmonization of three systems. ' ' First, there is the dynamic system 
 for accumulating and storing power and surplus. Daily, every living 
 organism must renew itself not only by the vital process within its own 
 organism, but must accumulate the supply from the world other than 
 itself. This is the problem of taking into the body the air, water, and 
 food by which we are daily renewed. For us humans this is essentially 
 a daily problem. We have to accommodate our routine life of renewal 
 to the daily rhythm. 
 
 (1) The Dynamic System. 
 
 a. The simplest example of a harmony of life rhythms is found in the 
 dynamic system. The rhythm of which we are most conscious, and the 
 one that seems so essential and so near to life as to be substituted for it, 
 is the heart beat. This is one of the rhythms the good physician examines 
 to find whether there is any life disturbance. Indeed, this is one of 
 the sources of evidence of life and death. This rhythm is timed for 
 each person. The heart beats 50, 60, 72, 80, 100 times per minute. 
 Under normal conditions within the body and uniform conditions without 
 the heart keeps up this ' ' timed ' ' number per minute. One of the striking 
 phenomena of human life is the practically uniform temperature in the 
 normal human body, and the comparatively small range of variation in 
 the pulse beats. A second rhythm of which we are all conscious, or at 
 least may be at any moment, is the breathing rhythm. Under normal 
 conditions this rhythm is also regular. A variation of a few breaths per 
 minute is evidence of vital disturbance. If the disturbance is primary 
 in this rhythm it will soon affect and disturb the other life rhythms. 
 Another system of rhythms of which we are very little conscious is the 
 process of digestion. These movements have their own vital rhythm with 
 the system, but we start it and interrupt it several times in the twenty- 
 four hour day by eating and drinking. The conception of a Harmony 
 of Ehythm is revealed in the more or less fixed ration between these 
 different rhythms. The temperature of the body is a rhythm the most 
 uniform indeed of any. This uniformity is maintained by a more or 'less 
 fixed ratio between these other rhythms. Your heart beats normally 
 say seventy-two times per minute. You breathe a fraction of this 
 number of times. You eat three times per day sleep and wake work 
 and rest. The importance of the life process as a harmony of rhythms 
 is most evident in its disturbance and causes of disturbance. A disturb- 
 ance of any one of these regular life rhythms will soon disturb all the 
 others. The commonest cause of variation is eating and drinking. This 
 cause has its normal limits. Too much, too little, or the wrong kind of 
 food or drink not only disturbs the digestive rhythms but soon disturbs 
 
24 
 
 circulation, respiration, sleep, work. The patient why called patient? 
 is sick. 
 
 The dynamic system is that system of organs and processes by which 
 the organism accumulates, distributes, and stores the physical supply of 
 power. There are many factors in the strength and length of life. There 
 are the natural inherited elements and acquired characteristics, but what- 
 ever one's hereditary endowments may be and whatever one's acquisi- 
 tions, one's strength of life each day and length of life in the long run 
 is determined by the harmony of these life rhythms. 
 
 Z>. How Strong Are You? "When a person is free from all specific 
 ailments, both serious and minor, he usually calls himself 'well.' There 
 is, however, a vast difference between such a 'well' man and one in 
 ideally robust health. The difference is one of endurance or susceptibility 
 to fatigue. Many 'well' men cannot run a block for a street car or 
 climb more than one flight of stairs without feeling completely tired out, 
 while another 'well' man will run twenty-five miles or climb the Matter- 
 horn from pure love of sport. The Swiss guides, throughout the summer 
 seasons, day after day, spend their entire time in climbing. A Chinese 
 coolie will run for hours at a stretch. That the world regards such per- 
 formances as 'marvelous feats of endurance' only shows how marvelously 
 out of training the world as a whole really is. In mental work some 
 persons are unable to apply themselves more than an hour at a time, 
 while others, like Humboldt or Mommsen, can work almost continuously 
 through fifteen hours of the day. 
 
 ******* 
 
 "It should be noted that endurance is a quality quite distinct from 
 strength. Strength is measured by the utmost force a muscle can exert 
 once; endurance by the number of times it can repeat an exertion 
 requiring a specified fraction of available strength at the start. Thus, 
 if each one of two men is barely able to lift a dumb-bell weighing 100 
 pounds, their strengths are equal, but if one of them can raise a dumb- 
 bell weighing 50 pounds 20 times, while the other can raise it 40 times, 
 the latter may be said to have double the endurance of the former. 
 Another mode of expressing the same thought is that endurance is 
 measured by the slowness with which strength decreases through exertion. 
 ******* 
 
 "Perhaps the most important of the common influences affecting the 
 capacity to resist fatigue is physical exertion. It is well known that a 
 man 'in training' has greater endurance than one who attempts exertion 
 without previous systematic exercise or training. In general, it may be 
 said that a person in the 'pink of condition' is fit not only for physical 
 but also for mental exertion. The great majority of adults are far from 
 being 'in condition,' suffering either from lack of exercise or from too 
 
25 
 
 much exercise. The ordinary man errs either in one direction or the 
 other. The brain worker lives too sedentary a life, while the manual 
 worker, through fatigue caused by long hours, is in a continual state 
 of over-exertion. Could these conditions be remedied, endurance, as 
 measured by capacity to withstand prolonged strains, might be greatly 
 increased. 
 
 "Experiments have shown that physical endurance can be doubled 
 by dietetic causes alone, or doubled by exercise alone. By both together 
 it is not unlikely that it could be tripled or quadrupled. But when it 
 is said that the endurance, or capacity for exertion, of the ordinary 
 healthy man could be thus multiplied, it is not meant that the hours 
 of his daily work or even his daily output of work could be increased 
 in such a ratio. What it does mean is the removal of the fatigue limit, 
 a freer and more buoyant life, and a visible increase in the quantity and 
 quality of work per hour. 
 
 "In an ideal life, fatigue would seldom be experienced. But in most 
 lives, unfortunately, fatigue is a daily experience. A workman who gives 
 intelligent and systematic care to the body writes that when after a 
 long day's work the factory whistle blows at night he, unlike his fellows, 
 feels as fresh as when he began work in the morning. ' ' (Irving Fisher 
 in "National Vitality.") 
 
 . A student in bionomics once asked President Jordan of Stanford 
 University whether the "big man" had any advantage over the little 
 man in the life struggle. Dr. Jordan replied that it was not a matter of 
 size but of how the man was put together. The limit of an individual's 
 strength lies at the weakest point. " The most interesting and most 
 important evidence on this problem is found in the phenomena called 
 "shock." Many a surgical operation is reported successful and at the 
 end ef the report one often reads, "the patient died." This is no con- 
 tradiction. The patient died from "shock." A "shock" causes a break 
 in the life rhythms. Those interested in pursuing this problem further 
 will find Dr. George Crile's book, "Man an Adaptive Mechanism," most 
 enlightening. 
 
 c. How Long Will You Live? Barring accident, that also depends 
 upon how well you are put together. Winship "the strong man" lifted 
 over a ton and died in less than a month. He was strong, but just in 
 one system. This very strength was his undoing as an organism. One 
 of the tragedies of life, especially of youth, is the attempt to keep on 
 strengthening oneself at the strong points. The practice of physical 
 education putting its emphasis upon legs and arms would be most 
 amusing if it were not so wrought with evil consequences, at least 
 negative consequences. Strength of legs or arms has very little relation 
 to strength or length of life. A kind of negative formula for securing 
 strength and length of life would be to keep strengthening the weak 
 
26 
 
 points. The correct formula, however, is to harmonize and keep har- 
 monized the life rhythms, not only within the system itself, but each 
 system with all the others. It is not enough to keep the Dynamic System 
 harmonized within itself by hygienic eating and sleeping and exercising, 
 though this is the primary problem of physical life. But the manner of 
 release of power through the "Kinetic System" is a matter of vital 
 concern. In the case of the teacher the problem of supreme importance 
 is the end towards which the released power is directed through the 
 third or Personal System. 
 
 (2) The Kinetic System. 
 
 a. This system consists of the brain, the adrenals, the liver, the 
 thyroid glands, and muscles. ' ( These organs bear the brunt of the trans- 
 formation of potential into kinetic energy and the neutralization of the 
 consequent acid by-products in the body." . . . "The brain is the 
 initiator of response, being activated by the environment within or with- 
 out the body; acting like a storage battery, it contributes the initial spark 
 and impulse which drives the mechanism. (&) The adrenals act as 
 oxidizers, making possible the transformation of energy and the neu- 
 tralization of the resulting acid products. The liver is the chief fabricator 
 and storehouse of the carbohydrate fuel by which muscular action and 
 heat are produced. The liver also plays a large role in the neutralization 
 of the acid products of the transformation of energy. The muscles are 
 the engine or motor in which is consummated the final step in the trans- 
 formation of energy into heat or motion. The thyroid, by supplying a 
 secretion which facilitates the passage of irons, would seem to be the 
 organ of speed control, governing the rate at which the transformation 
 of energy is effected. ' ' The organs in this l ' Kinetic System ' ' are inter- 
 dependent, (c) "Emotional activation activation by worry and fear 
 particularly is as potent in causing excessive transformation of energy 
 and an excessive production of acid by-products with consequent physical 
 impairment as are any other kinetic stimuli. It is obvious, therefore, 
 that the absence of worry and fear may aid in stopping the body-wide 
 activations which lead to an organic breakdown. The therapeutic value 
 of rest, of change of scene, of diversion and the restorative powers of 
 happiness and success and congenial surroundings are thus explained in 
 terms of approximate physical value. ' ' 
 
 * * ' * * * * * 
 
 "Fear without muscular activity showed the same phenomena of 
 exhaustion and the same uniform histological changes in the brain, the 
 adrenals, and the liver as were shown by traumatic injury under ether 
 or by muscular exertion." (Crile in "Man an Adaptive Mechanism.") 
 
 These extensive experiments of Crile demonstrate that no matter 
 what the cause of fatigue, t. e. emotional disturbance, shock, muscular 
 
27 
 
 exertion or poisons, the histological effect on the brain, adrenals, and 
 liver is practically the same. To quote again from Crile: "The stimuli 
 of consciousness and the stimuli of injury, of fear, or of infection cause 
 fundamental lesions; morphia and nitrous oxide diminish them; sleep 
 cures them." 
 
 In a general way, every intelligent person knows that muscles are 
 reservoirs of power. Physiologists have pointed out how muscle tonicity 
 depends upon nerve tension. Nerve tension, of course, rests back upon 
 the metabolism of the nerve cell. A nerve cell is a veritable magazine 
 of power. The brain is another of these reservoirs, therefore. What has 
 not been known until recently was the fact that the liver was another 
 of these reservoirs. To Dr. Crile and his collaborators belongs the credit 
 of discovering the mechanism by which reserve power is released. 
 
 It has been known for a long time that there were reserves of power 
 somewhere in the body. In general the evolutionists, especially the 
 biologists, viewed this surplus as necessary for the emergencies that 
 occur in the struggle for existence. The kind and amount of this reserve 
 power has been viewed as one of the important variations upon which 
 selection and survival depended. Indeed this doctrine was the one by 
 which German scientists justified the world war. (See "My Nights at 
 Headquarters," Vernon Kellogg.) 
 
 The important question raised by William James was whether the 
 "keys" for unlocking these reservoirs might not be discovered and by 
 this discovery be put at our disposal at will. James named some of 
 these "keys which unlock hidden energies and stir men to achieve," as 
 "anger, war, duty, the temperance pledge, despair, crowd contagion r 
 Christian science, conversion, resistance of temptation, and other ex- 
 citements, ideas and efforts." (American Magazine, November, 1907.) 
 
 The connection between the reservoirs of power stored by the (1) 
 Dynamic System of Bhythms is made with the (2) Kinetic System, by 
 which the power is released by some emotion. Here we come upon the 
 third system in the makeup of a human being, (3) the Personal System. 
 
 (3) The Personal System. 
 
 The problem of personal power, especially the problem of free will, 
 is an age-long battle, still raging in scholastic centers, and since the 
 whole scheme of self -improvement herein set forth involves personal self- 
 control, it seems proper to take account of the controversy between 
 determinists and those who believe in free will. The more especially 
 is this important because the experiments establishing the facts con- 
 cerning the dynamic and kinetic systems were made under the assumption 
 that man is a mechanism and that all the data involved could be 
 statistically treated because they were objective and could be controlled 
 mechanically and therefore could be measured. Put differently, "the 
 
28 
 
 personal equation" had to be eliminated to establish these facts, but 
 the elimination of the personal equation from the solution of these 
 mechanistic problems forces the determinists to admit it in considering 
 the whole scheme of human life. The mechanists excluded personality 
 in discussing digestion and elimination of power in the liver because 
 they could induce these processes outside of the human body according 
 to mechanistic principles. Within the body, however, "all the experi- 
 menters admit an emotion as the connecting link between the dynamic 
 and kinetic systems. Now the problem arises whether this emotion or 
 "key," as James called it, is a personal factor and under personal 
 control or a mere mechanistic link between two other mechanisms, to 
 be made active by mechanistic power external to the agent experiencing 
 the emotion. In short, from this angle, the problem of personal power shifts 
 from the will to the emotions. Of course, for the believers in free will the 
 problem shifts back to the will as the cause of some of the actions that 
 induce the emotions. The point of controversy now concerns the nature of 
 the emotions. There is no difference of opinion concerning the place and 
 function of the emotions as a means of ' l stirring men and women to 
 achieve." The difference of opinion, more seeming than real, arises 
 concerning the cause and nature of the emotion. Are these emotions 
 under personal control or are they induced by environmental conditions 
 over which we have no control? (a) Put bluntly, is man a machine or 
 a person? It is certain he is a machine in the grip of forces that obey 
 all the laws of mechanics. The fallacy lurking in this question is due 
 to a disease of mind I have made bold to give the name ' l monitis, ' ' the 
 belief that the world is built on a monistic principle and man must be 
 either a machine or a person, and since man is a machine he cannot 
 be a person unless we make these terms stand for the same kind of 
 a thing. 
 
 The emotions have always been recognized as a subjective aspect of 
 experience and for this reason had to have a different kind of treatment 
 than the intellectual aspect referred to the objective world. 
 
 (2) For purposes of setting forth the principles of self-management 
 and self -improvement, it is unnecessary to pursue this controversy any 
 further. Nor is it necessary here to go into the psychology of the 
 relations of the emotions to the other aspects of experience. It is suf- 
 ficient for practical purposes to know that these emotions which make 
 the connecting link between the dynamic and the kinetic systems for 
 the release of power are by "objects in our environment, by memories, 
 by the imagination, and by ideals." "One may get angrier in thinking 
 over one's insult than at the moment of receiving it; and we may melt 
 more over a mother who is dead than we ever did when she was living," 
 says James. In short, the most rigid of the mechanists admits that by 
 memory and imagination we can repeat an emotional experience. 
 
29 
 
 The Personal System then is the agent by which the power released 
 by the Kinetic System is directed towards ends. Some of these ends 
 are personal, are purposes. Some of these purposes are ideals in the 
 psychological sense. That is, they are ideas into which we have already 
 thrown our wills and are willing to continue doing so. 
 
 Some of these ideals stir our imagination. This stirred imagination 
 brings up memories of objects that have stimulated our impulses. In 
 this analysis is set forth the factors in the shuttle movement of self- 
 control and self -improvement. Instinctive reactions through memories 
 develop specific impulsive personal tendencies. These impulses get 
 organized through the unifying power of consciousness about certain 
 individual interests. Some of these interests become causes shared by 
 other persons. These causes develop sentiments, the most important of 
 which is loyalty "will and practical and thoroughgoing devotion to a 
 cause." Fortunately for teachers, the school affords all the essential 
 conditions for the development of the sentiments that stir men and 
 women to achieve. 
 
 "Now on the ideational plane the specific tendencies which condition 
 the occurrence of emotion are incomparably more varied and complex 
 than the primary perceptual tendencies. All the various systems of 
 ideas which grow up in the process of ideal construction of the world 
 and of the Self have their conative aspect. Each system of ideas is 
 a general tendency to feel and act in certain ways under certain circum- 
 stances. It is convenient to have a general name for ideal systems, 
 considered from this point of view. It does not appear that any better 
 word can be selected for the purpose than sentiment, though in so 
 employing it we extend its application beyond the range of ordinary 
 usage. If we give this extended application to the word, we may regard 
 emotions which presuppose mental dispositions organized through previous 
 trains of ideational activity, as episodes in the life-history of sentiment. 
 
 "The credit of first drawing attention to this distinction between 
 emotion and sentiment belongs to Mr. Shand, and we cannot do better 
 than quote his words. Emotions are in a sense adjectival, and qualify 
 a more stable feeling. Whereas the specific organization of our senti- 
 ments affection for our friends, the home-sentiment, and every sentiment 
 that we can use the term 'love' to express, as love of knowledge, art, 
 goodness, love of comfort; and all our interests, as interest in our health, 
 fortune, and profession, interest in books, collections, self interest 
 these, so far from being mere adjectives and qualifying other feelings, 
 are the relatively stable centers to which the first attach themselves, the 
 substantives of these adjectives, the complex wholes which contain in 
 their possible life-history the entire gamut of the emotions. 
 
 " 'In the love of an object . . . there is pleasure in presence and 
 desire in absence, hope or despondency in anticipation, fear in the ex- 
 
30 
 
 pectation of its loss, injury, or destruction, surprise or astonishment in 
 its unexpected changes, anger when the course of our interest is opposed 
 or frustrated, elation when we triumph over obstacles, satisfaction or 
 disappointment in attaining our desire, regret in the loss, injury, or 
 destruction of the object, joy in its restoration or improvement, and 
 admiration for its superior quality or excellence. And this series of 
 emotions occurs, now in one order, now in another, in every sentiment 
 of love or interest, when the appropriate conditions are present. 
 
 " 'Now consider how these same emotions repeat themselves, often 
 with opposite objects, in the life-history of every sentiment which we 
 name dislike or hatred. There is pain instead of pleasure in the 
 presence of the object, desire to be rid of it, to escape from its presence, 
 except we can injure it or lower its quality, hope, or despondency accord- 
 ing to the chances of accomplishing this desire, elation, or disappointment 
 with success or failure, anger or fear when it is thrust upon us and 
 persists, surprise when the unexpected occurs, regret or grief, not in its 
 loss or injury, but in its presence and prosperous state.' "* 
 
 (1) "One who permits fears, worries and anxieties to disturb the 
 digestive process when there is nothing to be done is evidently allowing 
 the body to go on to what we may regard as a 'war footing' when there is 
 no war to be waged, no fighting or struggle to be engaged in." (Cannon.) 
 
 Cannon here speaks as if we "permit" these emotions to "disturb the 
 digestive process ' ' and implies that since there is no struggle sufficient 
 to arouse what he terms "major emotions" we do not release sufficient 
 power to compensate for the disturbance. 
 
 To some not familiar with the work recently done upon the emotions, 
 to speak of managing them may seem foolishness. Some scientific persons 
 call it ' ' stultifying the judgment. ' ' These persons are like Josh Billings ' 
 scientist that "knew so much that wasn't so." 
 
 The emotions are the primary cause of release of power. If we may 
 command them we may command our reserve power. It may be that our 
 "reservoirs of power" are to be tapped by emergencies. 
 
 (2) In a very fundamental sense, all self-control is management of 
 the emotions and since the emotions are the means of releasing physical 
 power, management of the emotions becomes a problem of supreme 
 importance. 
 
 (3) "Emotions .do not have handles that can be gotten hold of by 
 main strength, by an act of the will. You cannot attack them 
 subjectively. ' ' 
 
 "A man who is in the dumps can say to himself, 'Come now, brace 
 up! Be cheerful! ' but that will not make him so. What he can do and 
 
 * Quoted from "Character and the Emotions," Mind, N.S., No. 18, 
 April, 1896, pp. 217-218; by Stout in Principles of Psychology. 
 
31 
 
 do successfully is to make himself act the way a cheerful man would 
 act, to walk and talk the way a cheerful man would walk and talk, and 
 to eat what a cheerful man would eat and after a time the emotions 
 slip into line with his assumed attitude. -..." We can get at worry 
 in exactly the same way. ' ' 
 
 "See that all the hours of the day are so full of interesting and 
 healthful occupations that there is no chance for worry to stick its nose 
 in." (Luther Gulick, in "The Efficient Life," pp. 30-31.) 
 
 The emotions, therefore, are controllable, not mechanically nor directly 
 as we control a machine or a muscle; not even as we direct chains of 
 reasoning, but indirectly through the development of our sentiments. 
 The sentiments are capable of personal development. "We can quit 
 our meanness." Sam Jones had the correct idea. In one of his evangel- 
 istic meetings a judge "tried to get religion by the usual evangelistic 
 methods. He failed and reported his failure. Jones directed him to 
 begin and act like he thought a man with religion would act. The judge 
 followed directions. Jones reported that within a week the judge had 
 the 'greatest case of religion in Georgia.' " 
 
 IV. 
 CONSERVATION OP VITALITY 
 
 1. Life is a struggle. The struggle for existence is a fact. Emergencies 
 eliminate those who are teetering upon the edge between deficit and 
 surplus. Those with surplus survive. The world as a whole and the 
 educational field in particular presents a new set of emergencies. Add 
 to these general emergencies the individual emergencies of disease, 
 financial and social difficulties and the significance and importance of 
 taking thought concerning life appears. 
 
 (a) "Life is response to the Order of Nature." 
 
 (&) Every living organism is sensitive and responsive to the kinds 
 of forces that give it its birth and continued being, (c) Human life at 
 its best is ' l the achievement of a perpetual triumph. ' ' This triumph 
 is possible at three levels: physical, mental, and spiritual. These three 
 aspects are organically related, but neither one can be substituted for 
 the other. No amounfTnor kind of physical development will of itself 
 insure the mental life necessary for teaching. No amount nor kind of 
 information or knowledge will of itself provide "the spirit of the 
 teacher. ' ' This is a personal matter, not independent of bodily and 
 mental conditions, but not totally dependent upon them. Conservation 
 of vitality therefore consists of three kinds of problems: physical, mental, 
 and spiritual. 
 
' 
 32 
 
 People of America were astonished by the number of young men the 
 military authorities rejected as unfit for service in the army. Over 
 against this fact is the encouraging way the young men responded to 
 the army regime. This improvement in health and power of endurance 
 was not limited to young men. Many of the young women put under a 
 government regime were greatly improved in power and efficiency. Our 
 faith in the improvability of young men and young women is greatly 
 increased. How about those in middle life? Many persons in middle 
 life accept their physical, mental, and moral condition or change of 
 condition somewhat as they do the weather merely as a topic of com- 
 plaint or conversation. This is one of the marks of middle life and 
 senility. Like the weather a human life at any stage has its antecedent 
 conditions and causes. Each person carries his own history in his being. 
 As history it cannot be changed, but it can be accepted as cause or as 
 means. We cannot undo what has been done, but a living person as 
 long as really alive can be made over. " Twice Born Men" is Mr. 
 Harold Begbie's account of spiritual regeneration. MacFarlane describes 
 many cases of mental and moral improvement under the title, "Those 
 Who Have Come Back" (American Mag. 76). There is an ever-increasing 
 number of cases of physical regeneration: recovery not only from 
 disease but from debility and physical inefficiency. An examination of 
 a news stand or a current magazine reveals the number of persons and 
 number of methods employed in the business of physical self -improvement. 
 
 2. A Life of Three Dimensions. 
 
 "Length of life is but one indication of vitality. Everyone recognizes 
 that the life of a valitudinarian or an invalid, however long, is but a 
 narrow stream. We may therefore conceive, besides the dimension of 
 length, another dimension of life which may be called its 'breadth/ 
 By breadth of life we mean its healthiness. Just as length of life is 
 limited by and opposed to mortality or death, so breadth of life is limited 
 by and opposed to invalidity or illness." (Irving Fisher in "National 
 " Vitality. ' ') 
 
 The teacher who has chosen to serve the youth of the land must 
 measure the depth of life also. Everyone recognizes that the age of 
 the teacher and his health does not measure his worth or his success. 
 Depth of life means range and depth of interest and service and is 
 limited by and opposed to failure to serve. 
 
 (a) Length of life depends upon the harmony of the physical rhythms. 
 If every organ of the body co-operated with every other organ, and each 
 and all successfully responded to each changing condition of the environ- 
 ment, we would have physical immortality. Death is essentially a break 
 between the life rhythms and this break comes because some organ 
 failed to adjust itself to conditions external to it, or adjusted itself in 
 
33 
 
 such a manner that the functions of the organ were impaired. Length 
 of life is of itself not desirable unless there is enough breadth to insure 
 some degree of continued satisfaction. 
 
 (&) Breadth of Life. Human life cannot be measured by length of 
 days. Some persons live more in a year than others in a whole lifetime. 
 How is this done? By breadth of interest and by range of activities. 
 
 (c) Depth of Life. Even breadth of life may be desperately dis- 
 appointing unless it has enough depth to give it some stability. There 
 must be abundant abiding satisfactions. This is the final and fundamental 
 test of life. Small things can satisfy small minds, but not even small 
 minds can be satisfied by ever-changing conditions. Some things must 
 abide if life is to be endured, much less enjoyed. 
 
 What are the things that abide? "Whether there be knowledge, 
 etc., ... it shall vanish. " . . . " and now abideth faith, hope, and 
 love." (Paul.) 
 
 By a singular inversion, depth of life insures breadth and length. 
 Abounding abundant life is necessary if we are to meet the ever- 
 changing conditions in the teaching profession. The process is so complex 
 and so many of the factors are so incommensurate and seemingly 
 intangible that a teacher, at least a good teacher, must always be on 
 the qui vive in order to be able to meet very emergency. 
 
 Surplus vitality is, therefore, the supreme insurance against the evil 
 day. Surplus vitality is secured and maintained by the same laws of 
 conservation by which one maintains a bank surplus, and one needs it for 
 the same reason to draw upon in emergencies. 
 
 A bank surplus is secured and maintained by making sure of the 
 deposits and watching the checks. In life both processes must be carried 
 on at the same time. 
 
 (a) PHYSICAL SURPLUS 
 
 (1) Checks Upon Physical Surplus'. 
 
 a. Many teachers have been checking upon their physical vitality 
 ever since they began teaching. A rural ancestry gave them a good 
 balance to check upon, but sedentary habits and the increasing complexity 
 and demands of the profession have left a small margin. 
 
 1). The greatest check is unhygienic living. The mechanization of 
 the school processes drives most teachers into a daily routine in which 
 they make little if any provision for variation, relaxation, and recreation. 
 This routine fastens itself upon eating, sleeping, and working so much 
 that a disturbance of the routine causes shock, if not an emergency. A 
 teacher whose classroom routine usually runs like clockwork explained 
 a "bad day" by saying that she was up late, arose late and missed her 
 
34 
 
 morning cup of coffee. She said she felt "all in," which evidently meant 
 "mostly out." Teachers have no right to live so near the edge between 
 deficit and surplus that missing a cup of coffee throws the school 
 machinery out of gear. There are teachers so short on vitality that a 
 north wind introduces much friction into the school room. 
 
 c. Many teachers retain the rural appetite of their childhood and eat 
 meals more suited for farmers or wood choppers than sedentary workers. 
 Too many teachers have no homes and are slaves, incarcerated in a 
 boarding house. School rooms and living quarters generally are poorly 
 ventilated. Many teachers have quit playing both with their bodies 
 and with their minds. In general, they are a ' ' very serious bunch. ' ' 
 
 (2) Cultivation of Physical Vitality. 
 
 a. By a singular fact of organic unity in a person, the elimination 
 of some of the checks to vitality is positive cultivation of surplus, (&) 
 but there are more positive ways and means of making deposits in our 
 physiological banks the liver, the muscles, and the brain. 
 
 c. The general formula is simple and not very difficult of application. 
 Call upon the vital organs for a more vigorous activity than is demanded of 
 them in the routine work. A half -century ago Dr. Carpenter discovered 
 and announced the law of physiological transformation. He said "Organs 
 grow to the mode in which they' are exercised." By this interesting law 
 of self-preservation the organs of the body normally provide for the 
 maximum activity demanded of them. If the maximum daily activity is 
 the daily routing, then a variation or extra demand produces shock and 
 emergencies. By calling upon the heart, lungs, digestive organs, liver, 
 and brain for an activity more strenuous than that required in the school 
 room routine the teacher lays up a surplus against shock and a supply for 
 emergencies. To a vital person few emergencies occur. 
 
 (1) Some amount of muscular exercise is necessary in order to main- 
 tain what Angell calls "organic resonance" that is, the ability to 
 respond quickly and adequately to inevitable changes in environment. 
 The amount of such exercise is variable, depending very much upon 
 heredity, the kind of life lived during the growing period, and the 
 balance or rhythmic connection between the different systems. The man 
 that labored hard when a boy is most likely to require more exercise to 
 keep "fit" than the one that never did heavy work. 
 
 (2) A more important requirement than the amount of muscular 
 activity is the kind and quality of it. Muscular action must be properly 
 motivated and controlled to result in power, otherwise exercise results in 
 fatigue. That is why playful activity is recreative. The emotions 
 involved in the motive and accompanying the action tend to induce 
 balanced action. Such activity results in reconstruction rather than 
 destruction. Muscular activity if enjoyed insures and maintains a 
 
35 
 
 surplus, and this surplus instinctively arouses muscular activity. This 
 is the "vital circle." Deficit, and nervousness and restlessness resulting, 
 is a vicious circle, feeding on what it produces. This vicious circle is 
 often induced by monotony and continued by routine use of accessory 
 muscles tatting, for example. 
 
 The fundamental physical rhythms are exercised and developed by 
 the use of the fundamental trunk muscles. Going up and down stairs 
 can be done by a method that favors vitality, or it may increase fatigue. 
 Whether vitality or fatigue results is more determined by the mood and 
 and method than by the physical condition of the person. The lazy or 
 tired teacher who hates to go up and down stairs is likely to allow the 
 stairs to jar the vital organs down below their normal position. The 
 teacher that accepts the stairs as an opportunity for exercise carries the 
 head chest and vital organs well up and secures strength instead of 
 fatigue. Such a teacher substitutes it for mountain climbing, one of 
 the best exercises for developing lung capacity. 
 
 A sedentary profession like teaching must be matched by a play 
 and work regime apart from the teaching routine if physical vitality 
 is to be maintained. It cannot be sufficiently provided for by week-end 
 or summer vacations. 
 
 Walking, if joyously motivated, may afford enough daily exercise if 
 supplemented weekly and monthly by more strenuous activity. Some 
 outdoor avocation requiring vigorous exercise or physical games affords 
 excellent means of "keeping in condition." Some of the "systems of 
 physical culture ' ' afford excellent means of a balanced regime, especially 
 when adapted to the individual by a skillful teacher. 
 
 { ' There is little use in recommending an elaborate system of home 
 gymnastics. That would be easy to do. Hundreds of them have been 
 recently put on the market. People often take them up with religious 
 enthusiasm and get splendid^ results out of them for a time. But I 
 have known few who kept it up long. That does not mean that the 
 exercise system was at fault. It simply means that it was not calculated 
 to hold the interest. A man's enthusiasm for dumb-bell gymnastics is 
 almost sure to wane after a while. There is nothing to keep him at it 
 excepting will power and conscience, and they cannot bear the strain 
 forever." (Gulick in "The Efficient Life.") 
 
 Therefore one's daily regime must suggest and even require a walk 
 or a swim or work or play enough to keep the muscles firm and the 
 nervous system sensitive. 
 
 (3) GulicTc's Schedule. 
 
 "The average city business man without any physical impediment 
 to fight against can probably get along successfully on such an exercise 
 schedule as the following: 
 
36 
 
 "(1) Five minutes each day of purely muscular exercise, such as 
 can be taken perfectly well in one 's room without any special apparatus. 
 Five minutes a day does not put a great tax on one's conscience. There 
 is every possibility of a man 's being able to keep it up. This is to keep 
 external muscles in trim. 
 
 t( (2) Short intervals during the day of fresh air, brisk walking, deep 
 breathing. This can all be secured in the regular order of the day's 
 business. A man can easily spend as much, as half an hour walking out 
 of doors every day. This is for heart, lungs, and digestion. 
 
 " (3) The reservation of at least one day a week for rest and recrea- 
 tion, for being out of doors, for playing games, etc. This is an essential. 
 This is for both body and mind. A man who thinks he can get along 
 without at least one vacation time a week simply proves his ignorance. 
 He ruins his chances of doing really efficient work; for the mind cannot 
 concern itself all the time with a single subject and still keep any 
 freshness, spontaneity, or initiative. Such a man makes a mere machine 
 of himself. He is sacrificing his personality and all that it might count 
 for." (Gulick in "The Efficient Life.") 
 
 (Z>) MENTAL VITALITY 
 
 Teachers are supposed to know more than their pupils. In general 
 they do concerning some things but this knowledge does not provide 
 the surplus mental vitality that insures the abundant life making the 
 teacher a fit sample for impressionable youth. 
 
 (1) Checks to Mental Vitality. 
 
 a. The first and common check upon an alert and growing mind is the 
 flabby physical condition so common to the profession. This condition 
 expresses itself in lack of endurance, or sustained effort without frequent 
 or chronic fatigue. 
 
 "Let us now examine the bodily conditions to see what fatigue is 
 objectively. "Physiologically it has been demonstrated that fatigue is 
 accompanied by three sorts of changes: First, poisons accumulate in the 
 blood and affect the action of the nervous system, as has been shown by 
 direct analysis. Mosso . . . selected two dogs as nearly alike as possible. 
 One he kept tied all day; the other, he exercised until by night it was 
 thoroughly tired. Then he transfused the blood of the tired animal 
 into the veins of the rested one and produced in him all the signs of 
 fatigue that were shown by the other. There can be no doubt that the 
 waste products of the body accumulate in the blood and interfere with 
 the action of the nerve cells and muscles. It is probable that these 
 accumulations come as a result of mental as well as of physical work. 
 
37 
 
 <l 'A second change in fatigue has been found in the cell body of 
 the neurone. Hodge showed that the size of the nucleus of the cell in 
 the spinal cord of a bee diminished nearly 75 per cent, as a result of the 
 day's activity, and that the nucleus became much less solid. A third 
 change that has been demonstrated as a result of muscular work is the 
 accumulation of waste products in the muscle tissue. Fatigued muscles 
 contain considerable percentages of these products. That they are 
 important factors in the fatigue process has been shown by washing them 
 from a fatigued muscle. As a result the muscle gains new capacity for 
 work. The experiments are performed on the muscles of a frog that 
 have been cut from the body and fatigued by electrical stimulation. 
 When they will no longer respond their sensitivity may be renewed by 
 washing them in dilute alcohol or in a weak salt solution that will dissolve 
 the products of fatigue. It is probable that these products stimulate 
 the sense-organs in the muscles and thus give some of the sensations of 
 fatigue. Of these physical effects of fatigue, the accumulation of waste 
 products in the blood and the effects upon the nerve cells are probably 
 common both to mental and physical fatigue. The effect upon the 
 muscles plays a part in mental fatigue only so far as all mental work 
 involves some muscular activity. ' ' ' (Kitson in ' ' How to Use Your 
 Mind.") 
 
 The maintenance of a physiologic surplus will insure one against 
 these checks. This implies hygienic eating, sleeping, and exercising, 
 with a right timing of mental efforts. 
 
 b. The dangerous check upon the mental life of the teacher is incident 
 to teaching. Teachers teach children subjects they themselves studied 
 years before. Such a situation does not require them to use their minds 
 up to the "top notch." Compare the teacher's daily work with that 
 of the other professions. 
 
 The lawyer most likely matches his wits with his equal in the opposing 
 attorney, also with the judge and adults in the jury box. Eead in the 
 American Magazine, February, 1919, how the great trial lawyer, John 
 B. Stanchfield, uses his mind. 
 
 With physicians, each case is a new one. The physician accepts the 
 personal responsibility for the outcome. Good physicians throw them- 
 selves heartily into each case and hold themselves responsible for em- 
 ploying the most approved treatment. This explains why good physicians 
 have professional libraries far superior to those possessed by most 
 teachers and also explains why the circulation of medical journals is 
 much larger than that of educational journals, though there are many 
 more teachers than physicians. 
 
 Good ministers of the gospel try to do their best in each case, because 
 they cater to adults, many of them better informed upon many matters 
 than the ministers are themselves. They must also dispense new material. 
 
38 
 
 The average teacher, and the average is in the majority, deals in the 
 same old wares, most of them "second-hand." 
 
 In short, the experienced teacher is not forced to work his wits to the 
 limit. He can live on his past by working his memory. This is why 
 so many teachers get into an intellectual and professional rut. This 
 dealing with children and teaching the same subjects in the same grade, 
 along with the amount of details now forced upon teachers, accounts 
 for the mental dry rot in the profession. 
 
 c. Another source of lack of mental vitality is the school machinery. 
 Eoutine, slavish routine, is the characteristic of most school machines. 
 Monotony is deadly to the stream of consciousness. Freedom is dangerous 
 to the tired teacher, so his work must be prescribed. Here we have 
 a vicious circle, limiting the professional freedom that encourages 
 initiative and personal development. 
 
 As school means and processes are now mechanized, what can be 
 done by the average teacher to vitalize mental life? 
 
 (2) Cultivation of Mental Vitality. 
 
 We can do no better than to turn to the statement by Professor 
 James, whose wise remarks upon the subject have not been improved 
 Jipon: 
 
 a. "The physiological study of mental conditions is thus the most 
 powerful ally of hortatory ethics. The hell to be endured hereafter, of 
 which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves 
 in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. 
 Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking 
 bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in 
 the plastic state. "We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and 
 never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves 
 its never-so-little scar. The drunken Eip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's 
 play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't 
 count this time.' Well! He may not count it and a kind heaven may 
 not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his 
 nerve-cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering it, and 
 storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. 
 Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of 
 course this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become 
 permanent drunkards by so many drinks, so we become saints in the 
 moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, 
 by so many separate acts and hours of work. But let no youth have 
 any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it 
 may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he 
 may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty 
 count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the com- 
 
39 
 
 petent ones of his generation in whatever pursuit he has singled out. 
 Silently, between all the details of his business, the power of judging in 
 all that class of matter will have built itself up within him as a possession 
 that will never pass away. Young people should know the truth of this 
 in advance. The ignorance of it has probably engendered more dis- 
 couragement and faint-heartedness in youths embarking on arduous 
 careers than all other causes put together. ' ' 
 
 (1) First of all, tone up muscles and nerves by the physical regime 
 suited to particular needs. Second, pump more oxygen into the blood. 
 This is best done unconsciously by work or play; but it can be done 
 consciously in a few minutes outdoors or at a window by long forced 
 breathing. Look after the ventilation in working and sleeping quarters; 
 but all this will not insure mental surplus. It merely provides the 
 antecedent conditions. 
 
 b. The mental dry rot incident to teaching routine must be avoided 
 by mental growth. Only dead things rot. Live things grow. They grow 
 by feeding and exercise. Strength and growth does not depend so much 
 on what we eat as upon what we assimilate. What we assimilate is 
 determined very much by what we do. The muscle worker's body sends 
 the assimilated food to the muscles. The mind worker's body sends 
 assimilated food to the brain. In a very real and a very important 
 sense teachers ought to be all things all good things to all pupils to 
 all good pupils. This requirement demands a selected bill of mental 
 fare. The ordinary magazine offers too varied a bill. Most of them are 
 just ' ' nicknacks. ' ' Eead a magazine an hour and you have jumped like 
 a jumping-jack over seventeen topics and gotten nowhere. 
 
 (1) Why teachers will be satisfied by medium mental material when 
 fellowship with the masters is possible, costs no more money, and takes 
 no more time can only be explained by a bad or undeveloped taste, or 
 ignorance of who the masters are. 
 
 (2) One of the great teachers in my experience was great because 
 alive and growing. It was his practice to inform himself each year 
 concerning some human interest. He was a teacher of physiology. One 
 year he studied electric lights; another year he studied Christian Science. 
 When asked why he studied subjects so seemingly foreign to his own 
 teaching subject, he replied: "I am a teacher of students. I don't 
 know students nor know how to sympathize with them if I am not one 
 myself. Then I must keep the cobwebs out of my own head and keep 
 out of a rut." Here is an example of the correct principle. However, 
 to strictly follow this particular example might result in failure or 
 might cause mental indigestion or dyspepsia. 
 
 (3) What to Study. Consult and detect if possible your own intel- 
 lectual appetite and hunger. This is purely a personal diagnosis. The 
 wisest teacher or most efficient student cannot prescribe your mental 
 
40 
 
 menu. Pawlow's experiments show that appetite is the first condition of 
 digestion. Action has much to do with determining the assimilation of 
 what is digested. 
 
 Live teachers are students. They have not only full minds but minds 
 active and strong. They have the power of sustained attention. Atten- 
 tion can be sustained only by sustained interest. Interest is sustained 
 by a great and abiding purpose. In this respect teachers have every 
 advantage. The most interesting things in the world are human beings 
 and of all human beings children, young men, and young women are 
 the most interesting. They are great puzzles and also great possibilities. 
 
 The individual pupils make one of the most interesting and most 
 profitable subjects of study. This is most efficiently done by a private 
 card catalogue. Keep on the front card favorable comment. On the 
 reverse keep the criticisms. These cards are not only efficient means 
 of keeping up the study, they are means of making just judgments about 
 pupils. Now that teachers handle or try to handle (note the word 
 handle) so many pupils, it often happens that a single experience with a 
 pupil, especially an unpleasant one, becomes the determining factor 
 in judging the pupil. A reference to the cards might guard against 
 prejudice. 
 
 The sane procedure in study is to follow personal interest. It is the 
 surest to succeed. This principle, while sane, must be safeguarded at 
 one point. Interest and effort sometimes get in a rut and, as Booker T. 
 Washington said, they must lift themselves out. Because of the nature 
 of his work the teacher must have a many-sided interest and a sure 
 evidence of rut and rot is a persistent impulse to do only one kind of 
 study or one kind of thing in leisure hours. 
 
 Interest in child study, in psychology, in sociology, in any of the lines 
 of study of life is evidence of teaching vitality. 
 
 Breadth and variation of interest, of course, suggest lines of reading 
 and study other than those immediately associated with one's trade, and 
 yet the pragmatic attitude is the only efficient one for a teacher. The 
 motive for a teacher's study is to solve some problem. The more per- 
 sistent and pressing the problem the more vitalizing will be the study. 
 An efficient way is to keep a list of problems for which one desires 
 data and light. 
 
 Unfortunately for the teachers of the present era, study has meant 
 essentially holding one's face up to a book. School aims and school 
 processes have stimulated very little the creative aspect of personality. 
 Most pupils and most teachers deal in second-hand wares. There is need 
 for a professional declaration of independence. Jefferson produced the 
 political declaration. Emerson, the intellectual declaration in the Ameri- 
 can Scholar. America needs a professional prophet who will announce 
 the principles and processes by which American teachers may achieve 
 
41 
 
 their independence and become citizens of the world to lead the youth 
 of America into their spiritual inheritance. 
 
 Teachers who have undertaken to produce texts or school aids have 
 become not only better teachers but better citizens. Unfortunately most 
 teachers who have tried such production have been so limited in time 
 and means that they have needed to follow traditions and the rules of 
 the book companies. One of the lines of professional emancipation will 
 be the provisions for teachers to produce their own material for student 
 direction. What a stimulus to spontaneous activity and originality would 
 be furnished if the aids to pupils' study were produced by their own 
 teachers. (See Syndicate of Kesearch in Jan. Sierra Educational News.) 
 
 Of all workmen, of all artists, the teacher is most fortunately 
 situated. He has three great purposes: (1) Human welfare of his 
 student; (2) the increase and dissemination of knowledge; and (3) better- 
 ment of society and the state. Not only so the achievement of the 
 greatest minds in science, art, and religion are the possible materials 
 of his trade. 
 
 It is not want but wealth of material that is embarrassing. The 
 study of human beings, the study of human achievements, and the human 
 needs offer three fields of study of wonderful range of interest and all 
 of service in the profession. 
 
 (c) SPIRITUAL SURPLUS 
 
 (1) a. In these practical times, or what is probably better described 
 as a materialistically minded age, the terms spirit and spiritual have 
 uncertain and doubtful meanings. They stand for notions that are in 
 contrast with notions of matter, and for this reason they are sometimes 
 treated as if they stood for fancies if not phantasies, belonging to the 
 world of unrealities. The world war and the triumph of right over 
 might, or democracy as a form of idealism, brings back a certain amount 
 of respect for that aspect of the world and reality that is in contrast with 
 matter. Still there are certain small minds that think one or the other 
 is and the other is not. The new synthesis needed is the getting of right 
 and might, of spirit and matter, into right relation to one another. They 
 are both realities and both tangible, but not grasped by the same fingers. 
 Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. 
 
 T). Employing the life formula formerly used the spiritual life may 
 be described as the response the will makes to an ideal order. It is 
 just this characteristic of responding to an ideal order that gives spiritual 
 things their seeming unreality. The "ideal order" of each person is 
 not only real but very potent in determining behavior. It is not 
 only what we have been but also what we hope to be that enters into 
 our behavior. To be, a teacher must be an idealist. He must project 
 
42 
 
 himself and his pupil into the future. Here we come upon the final and 
 fundamental principle that not only distinguished teachers but the one 
 that determines their pleasure and power in their work. 
 
 c. There is another fallacy concerning the nature of spirit. Many who 
 believe in it and employ it, believe that it is a " given ' ' some say ' ' God 
 given" not subject to cultivation. They say " teachers are born, not 
 made." They are half right, but half right is wrong. Teachers are 
 born, but they are also made, and this power to respond to an ideal is 
 just as much capable of direction and cultivation as any other power. 
 It is not too much to say that here is not only the store-house of power 
 but the great cause of self -improvement. 
 
 (2) Checks Upon Spiritual Life. 
 
 a. A weak and halting person cannot put much spirit into anything. 
 Muscles are not spiritual things, but they are indispensable means of 
 spiritual processes in a world like ours. For ages the heart has been 
 a symbol of spiritual power. It is a superb muscle. Muscular power is 
 a factor in the heart a workman puts into his work. A check to health 
 or strength is a check to spiritual power, and yet this very check has 
 led many a person to the exercise and development of the spiritual. As 
 human beings are constituted, it seems natural to rely upon what seems 
 to be nearest at hand. All life relies on inherent power. The persons 
 who think they have muscle power or brain power or money power 
 instinctively rely on these means. It turns out then that both lack of 
 physical power or reliance upon it may be a check upon the spiritual 
 life. This is because the spiritual life is self -active and self-determined. 
 
 ft. Any check upon mental power is a check upon spiritual power. 
 Spiritual power depends directly upon one's ideals. Ideals cannot live 
 in a vacuum. They are created and maintained in accordance with mental 
 laws. Spirit is creative. Monotony or "standing still" is destructive. 
 
 c. The severest checks upon the spiritual life of the teacher is incident 
 to the profession. Teaching may degenerate into a mechanical process. 
 Spiritual is in contrast to mechanical. The mechanical processes of 
 education are for the purpose of freeing the pupils so that they may 
 have time and energy for the development of the spiritual life. As 
 schools are now administered it is easy for teachers to degenerate into 
 drill masters instead of being master minds. A second check to the 
 spirit incident to teaching is the fact that teachers deal with the 
 immature. Spirit must be creative and must do its best in order to 
 maintain its power. As pointed out under mental surplus, teachers may 
 drop back upon the employment of the memory. Now the memory 
 employed in school work is more mechanical than spiritual. The third 
 and greatest check to spiritual development in a teacher is the seeming 
 necessity of always taking the critical attitude. Pupils "make mistakes." 
 These ' ' mistakes ought to be corrected. ' ' There is a persistent school 
 
43 
 
 master's tradition that these mistakes must be pointed out and marked. 
 This habit of mind fastens itself upon most teachers so that they spend 
 much time looking for mistakes. If this method corrected these mistakes 
 where they are made there might be some excuse for enduring this 
 blight on spiritual life. But these red marks and grades on work done 
 usually does very little to correct the process in the learner 's mind. About 
 all it does in most cases is appease the ignorant conscience of the 
 teacher. The teacher finds the mistake. Mistakes ought not to be. Most 
 teachers don't know anything else to do with mistakes, so they mark 
 and grade. This process is degrading both to teacher and pupil. "An 
 ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure." If teachers spent as much 
 time in preventing mistakes as they have spent in marking and grading 
 them there would be few mistakes to mark. 
 
 Correct motivation and grading of school processes will work upon 
 the pupil's mind and body in constructive ways and prevent many of 
 the errors teachers force upon the immature, by using the methods and 
 standard of the mature. This is no plea for ' ' soft pedagogy. ' ' Pupils 
 make entirely too many mistakes, but the solution lies not in increasing 
 destructive criticism, but in a new educational philosophy and method. 
 If properly taught few pupils would misspell words. By foolish methods 
 we try to have growing children try to reproduce by sound machinery 
 a written language that is not phonetically constructed, and then criticize 
 and blame them. This is compounding mistakes both of the teacher and 
 pupil, and the worst of it is that it takes the spirit out of spelling, out 
 of the pupil, and out of the teacher. 
 
 This critical attitude focuses attention upon error, upon the negative 
 aspect of behavior and life, and dims the vision of the positive purposes 
 that make life worth living. 
 
 "Where there is no vision the people perish." Whatever interferes 
 with the teacher's vision of the meaning of life at its best subtracts 
 from the teacher the ability to know and employ the most efficient 
 means and methods of education. 
 
 (3) The Development of Spiritual Power. 
 
 a. "And they said one to another, 'Did not our heart burn within 
 us, while he talked with us by the way?' " (Jesus' Disciples.) 
 
 "And when they came out of his class room, their faces shone as 
 if they had seen the light. ' ' 
 
 "I have read that those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that there 
 was something finer in the man than anything which he said." . . . 
 
 "We cannot find the smallest part of the weight of Washington, in 
 the narrative of his exploits." 
 
 ' ' This inequality of the reputation to the works or the anecdotes 
 is not accounted for by saying that the reverberation is longer than the 
 thunderclap; but somewhat resided in these men which begot an expecta- 
 
44 
 
 tion that outran all their performance. The largest part of their 
 power was latent. This is that which we call character a reserved force 
 which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of 
 as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose im- 
 pulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart; which 
 is company for him, so that such men are often solitary, or if they 
 chance to be social, do not need society, but can entertain themselves 
 very well alone. The purest literary talent appears at one time great, 
 at another time small, but character is of a stellar and undiminishable 
 greatness. What others effect by talent or by eloquence this man accom- 
 plishes by some magnetism. 'Half his strength he put not forth.' His 
 victories are by demonstration of superiority, and not by crossing of 
 bayonets."* 
 
 "By all means let us exhaust the full resources of the physical 
 method, but at the same time let us avail ourselves of the spiritual. 
 After all, the spiritual relation of the brain cells is as big a thing and 
 as important as their chemistry. Iron and strychnine, phosphorus and 
 Indian hemp are very potent remedies; but as also are fear, doubt, hope, 
 confidence, interest, enthusiasm. Moral causes overturn many a mind 
 and brain, and moral causes may restore them." (Clinical Studies in 
 Vice and Insanity; George E. Wilson, M.D. ; p. 126.) 
 
 But it is easier to buy the strychnine and administer it than to get 
 1 ' hope " or " enthusiasm. ' ' 
 
 We have arrived at the source and center of teaching power "by 
 presences," as Emerson said. A good body, a fund of information, and 
 knowledge of professional ways and means are all means. Their power 
 depends upon the character of the person that employs them, and the 
 heart of character is the ideal the person has created and cherishes. 
 The spiritual life is the response the will makes to an ideal order. This 
 ideal order is of our own making. 
 
 fc. The Cultivation of the Means for Expressing Spiritual Power. There 
 are persons who pride themselves on being "practical," that "damn 
 the people of vision" with faint praise by calling them "idealists" or 
 ' ' dreamers. ' ' They say, ' ' That is good in theory, but it doesn 't work out 
 in practice. ' ' Such statements are prima facie evidence of ignorance 
 of the nature of the human mind and human life. The fundamental 
 characteristic of human beings distinguishing them from other animals 
 is this power to idealize; the power to project the self into the future. 
 This projecting the self into the future is theorizing, and the test of 
 the goodness of a theory, is that it does work out in practice. Theory 
 and practice must support one another if progress is to be made. They 
 work somewhat as our two feet. Each must support the other until it 
 
 * Emerson in ' ' Character. 
 
45 
 
 is brought forward. The cultivation of spiritual power implies not only 
 the clarifying of the vision but also the development of the means of 
 expressing it. The teacher may well "hitch his wagon to a star," but 
 he must keep the wheels on the ground or the load will be spilled. The 
 teacher's wagon must have long couplings. Effective teaching standards 
 do not drive pupils out of the class or out of the school. 
 
 The means through which the teacher expresses spiritual power are 
 the body and its movements, the clothes, the voic, language, and 
 thoughts.. 
 
 The large teacher has an advantage provided the body is beautifully 
 proportioned and the movements are graceful. Let us include in beautiful 
 proportions more than the relative size of parts. As a means of expression, 
 it is a problem of carriage, and carriage is capable of improvement. 
 
 As James has pointed out, clothes are a part of the self. The person 
 has put the self into them; they express the person's choice of color, 
 style, and care. All these aspects of clothing are subject to change, and 
 in many cases are subjects for improvement. Not only music but the 
 voice "hath charms to soothe." A pleasant voice is a great asset. It 
 is the most effective as well as the most used instrument of teaching. 
 Hiram Corson's "The Voice and Spiritual Education" should have a 
 place in every teacher's library. Corson says: "The organs of speech 
 can be brought by intelligent training into a complete obedience to the 
 will and feelings; and without this obedience of his vocal organs, a 
 reader, whatever be his other qualifications, cannot do his best. He is 
 in the position of a musical performer who has sympathetically assimi- 
 lated the composition he is rendering, but whose instrument is badly out 
 of tune. A reader may have the fullest possible appreciation of the 
 subject matter, intellectual and spiritual, of a poem, and a susceptibility 
 to all the subtlest elements of effect evolved in its form; but if he have 
 not full control of his vocal faculties, he can but imperfectly reveal 
 through his voice his appreciation and susceptibility. This control can 
 be secured only by long and intelligent training. The voices, generally, 
 of even the most cultivated people have gone more or less astray, and need 
 to be brought back from the error of their ways." The improvement of 
 language and thought ought to go along together. This is the problem 
 of "Mental Surplus," previously treated. 
 
 The body, the clothes, the voice, the language, and even the thoughts 
 themselves are but means by which the spirit expresses itself and 
 accomplishes its purposes. The normal ideal for anyone is visioned in 
 a social situation. The spirit is the most central and most personal part 
 of us, but it does not live in a vacuum. It thrives only in a social 
 atmosphere. That is why democracy affords the best possible conditions 
 for both individual and social progress. Mazzini defined democracy as 
 "progress of all through all under the leadership of the wisest and the 
 
46 
 
 best." The human spirit has its greatest development when it is 
 exercising leadership. It is multiplied by all that follow. Teaching at 
 its best is spiritual leadership. 
 
 c. The Elements of Spiritual Power. (1) Intellectual factors in a good 
 leader: (a) Originality; (&) insight ; (c) good judgment. 
 
 (a) Originality. Spirit, being personal and creative, can refer neither 
 its ideas nor its ideals nor its acts to another. Originality does not 
 mean eccentricity. It means essentially originating in one's self; not 
 referred to another. The original teacher has so mastered the subject 
 matter and the method demanded in teaching the subject that his teaching 
 is a living expression of his very being. When a book or outline or any 
 other means stands between the teacher and his pupils the teacher ceases 
 to be original. He becomes a mechanical means. Originality in the 
 sense here defined is the first element in a spiritual surplus. The discovery 
 and development of originality is inspiring (i. e., breathing in the spirit) 
 because it is accompanied by consciousness of being a cause. The capacity 
 for originality is not unique. It is inherent in every person. It is the 
 personal power: first, to appropriate, to assimilate, to make one's own 
 the essential experiences of other human beings; second, it is the ability 
 and disposition to act on one's own initiative and to accept the con- 
 sequences of the act. 
 
 How is originality developed? By producing. "In God's name 
 produce! Produce something!" said Carlyle, School machinery aad 
 the second-hand goods which are used as subject matter in most schools 
 are not favorable to originality. Teachers must so master the subjects 
 which they teach and the method by which they teach them that the 
 pupils feel that the teacher is an inspired source of information. In 
 the fine arts, imitation is suicide. Good tables, good chairs, good tools 
 may be made over a pattern; good teaching must be original. 
 
 (&) Insight. The second element of spiritual leadership is insight. 
 A person might be original in small and foolish ways. It is of the 
 nature of spirit to penetrate into the essence of things. A person of 
 insight views the other side, and the inside of things. That is the way 
 insight is cultivated. As originality is in contrast with the mechanical, 
 so insight is in contrast with the superficial. (1) Insight is first original, 
 then personal, and finally fundamental. (2) Insight implies breadth of 
 view. The person with insight sees not only the other side and the 
 inside of things, but sees the things themselves in their different and 
 relative values. This power makes the teacher a leader because he sees 
 the thing the way it is, and he sees also the way it seems to the pupil. 
 
 (c) Good Judgment. The third intellectual factor qualifying the 
 teacher to be a leader is good judgment. Originality and insight wait 
 on good judgment to apply them to the problems at hand. Good judgment 
 is a rare virtue. It is more akin to wisdom than to knowledge. There 
 
47 
 
 can be no good judgment without information, but information does not 
 insure good judgment. Good judgment is a very useful, a wonderfully prac- 
 tical virtue, but it is so as a spiritual quality a kind of personal disposition 
 to solve problems in terms of the conditions as they present themselves. 
 This power is akin to sagacity, which James defines as "the perception 
 of essence." In spite of the fact that good judgment is a rare virtue 
 and is all that is claimed by it and for it, it is a virtue capable of much 
 development and improvement. 
 
 Elements of Good Judgment. (1) Good judgment is never a prejudice. 
 The suspended judgment must not be confused with hesitation and inde- 
 cision. A person of good judgment knows what he is about. His goodness 
 of judgment is displayed by his search for materials by which to reach a 
 just conclusion. (2) A second quality of good judgment is the ascribing 
 of right relative values to facts the ability to perceive the ' ' thinghood ' ' 
 of the thing. "Not merely sees the thing before his eyes, but sees what 
 parts the thing is composed of. ' ' This rare power is cultivated by viewing 
 things in relation to their purposes. (3) The one quality of good judgment 
 that determines the value of the other elements is vitality. This power 
 is secured and maintained by acting upon our judgments. This is the 
 quality of good judgment that justifies describing it as spiritual. 
 
 (2) Volitional Elements in a Good Leader. (a) Definiteness of pur- 
 pose; (&) largeness of purpose; (c) faith in one's purpose; (d) tenacity 
 of purpose. 
 
 (a) Definiteness of Purpose. The intellectual elements in our spiritual 
 makeup are after all only means to be employed in the interests of our 
 personal purposes. As Dewey says, ' ' Knowledge is the instrument of 
 successful action. ' ' The core of any and every personality is to be found 
 in personal purposes. Mere power is of little use. It must be directed 
 to ends then it is work and gets work done. Definiteness of purpose is 
 the first volitional element in spiritual effectiveness. Until a teacher 
 knows what he is about and can focalize his powers of personality upon 
 his problems he is a mere mechanic, trifling with the tools of a great art. 
 Because spirit is response to an ideal order, and ideals are often thought 
 of as vague and indefinite, some teachers with the best of intentions, 
 yet refuse, or at least neglect, to define their aims. They are like Huxley 's 
 cab driver, ' ' They do not know where they are going, but they are driving 
 like Jehu!" 
 
 (b) Largeness of Purpose. Small people are small mostly because of 
 the smallness of their purposes. Small purposes can be realized by small 
 means but real teaching cannot thus be realized. The purpose of the 
 teacher must be large enough to encompass the whole range of the pupil 's 
 interests and life. Educational purposes must be large enough in the 
 mind of the teacher to require the greatest achievements of the race as 
 the means of achieving the purposes he holds in mind as he teaches. 
 
48 
 
 (c) Faith in One's Purpose. This is the central force in personal 
 power. The term faith, like the term spirit, has been used to stand for so 
 many different and doubtful things that to use it prejudices the one who 
 needs it most. Since this prejudice is founded upon ignorance, probably 
 it is just as well that those who pride themselves upon their scientific 
 procedure come to know what modern physiologists and psychologists 
 have discovered in the realm of faith. 
 
 These discoveries have an added interest for Americans. It was an 
 American who discovered the physiological effects of fear and faith. It 
 was William James who wrote "The Will to Believe" and rescued faith 
 from the wreck the scholastics had made of it. Dr. George Crile is a 
 mechanist with never the faintest hint of any mysticism in him. He is a 
 real scientist. In his work, "Man an Adaptive Mechanism," he says: 
 "If emotion, particularly fear, causes such far-reaching metabolic dis- 
 turbances, why does it not produce even more baleful consequences? 
 Indeed, why has not emotion wrecked the race? Is it because there are 
 now certain agencies at work in society which hold in check this 'harmful 
 tendency, as immunity and phagocytosis protect the organism against 
 bacterial menace, and as the custom of wearing clothes and building 
 houses is a protection from the dangers of wind and cold and hostile 
 strangers?" 
 
 "Has there been evolved in man some counter-adaptation which 
 provides a partial protection against self-destruction fro'm the too long 
 retained motor adaptation which we term 'emotion'? 
 
 "In attempting to find an answer to these questions we are led to 
 contemplate the fact that physical benefit is derived from those factors 
 in life, which solace and reassure the mind, which 'rejuvenate the spirit,/ 
 which dispel worry, and which substitute faith and tranquility for turmoil 
 and terror. Many attempts have been made to explain the universal 
 desire for joy and recreation, for entertainment, for diversion, for any 
 activity or mental influence, which changes the integration, ' diverts 
 attention' from work at hand, supplies a new field of interest, or closes 
 the mind to all interest. It would seem that a key to these phenomena 
 might be found in the very fact that emotion has the power to harm 
 the organism. On the principle that fear causes the dissipation and 
 faith the conservation of potential energy, we can understand the far- 
 reaching and abiding benefits of religion in all ages, among all peoples, 
 throughout the whole human race, as far back as we have any record. 
 We can understand the power of prayer and of belief in a Supreme Being 
 who is also Eedeemer and Solace, to put 'new life' into the discouraged 
 and faint-hearted, and its overwhelming influence for good upon the 
 weak, oppressed and sick-at-heart. We can understand the power of 
 so-called 'faith cures'; of beliefs in fetishes and charms; even of the 
 
49 
 
 faith in one 's own physician, which undoubtedly plays a part in the 
 successful outcome of most therapeutic measures. 
 
 "This principle explains the striking benefits in all situations in life 
 of good luck and success, of cheerful and optimistic friends, of congenial 
 occupations, associates, and surroundings. It explains the spectacular, 
 successful careers of certain personalities abounding in health, optimism 
 and self-confidence, the value of self-confidence in business, and the 
 wreckage of hopes and fortune which often attends the lack of these 
 qualities. 
 
 "Since whatever dispels worry and uncertainty helps to stop the 
 body-wide activation which leads to lesions as truly physical as 'a 
 fracture, we can understand the therapeutic significance of the admoni- 
 tions to 'take a vacation,' 'go abroad,' 'go fishing'; to do anything 
 that will give a change of scene and occupation. On this basis we can 
 understand the desperate tendency of certain sorely driven organisms 
 to seek forgetfulness in alcohol or narcotic drugs; of others, driven 
 beyond the point of endurance, to settle their problems finally by suicide. 
 
 "Eealizing that sedentary occupations, like suppressed emotion, pro- 
 duce an accumulation of harmful products in the blood stream, we can 
 understand the good feeling that follows a lively game, a long walk, or 
 exercise in the open air after working hours, since by these means is 
 accomplished the elimination, by oxidation or otherwise, of much of the 
 superimposed burden. We can understand the overwhelming desire in 
 time of anger or worry to 'walk it off' or to 'talk it out' with some- 
 body. We can understand the value to the physician of psychic analysis, 
 since it enables him to get at the root of his patient's troubles and to 
 elicit a full confession, which, in itself, brings a measure of relief. 
 
 "The fact the lesions wrought by suppressed integrations to activity 
 are largely the same for other animals as for man explains why the 
 fettered wild animal 'pines away' and dies in captivity, or grows 'ugly' 
 or 'vicious'; and why, when released to liberty and its natural environ- 
 ment, it quickly shows a return to health and good nature. Considering 
 this tendency of the kinetic or dynamic organism to be destroyed by its 
 own adaptive mechanism it is easy to see why certain adynamic species, 
 such as the turtle or the elephant, survive longer than animals evolved 
 for intense kinetic activity, such as the deer and the rabbit; why, 
 generally speaking, the expectancy of life is greater for placid individuals 
 than for those of an 'explosive' temperament; why the calm adynamic 
 philosopher outlasts the dynamic ironworker, who, through excessive 
 exertion, breaks early a link in his vital chain; why the timid individual 
 who thinks his life is threatened by trivial incidents, and hence avoids 
 risk and responsibility, outlasts the strenuous and careless-of-self indi- 
 vidual who goes on the rocks just past middle life. ' ' 
 
 "Thus innumerable phenomena of life may be interpreted by applying 
 
50 
 
 this principle of the antithetic actions of fear and faith; phenomena 
 not only of the life of the individual but of the life of the race at large, 
 as manifested in its past history, in political situations of today, in 
 family life; phenomena which prove invariably that the unconscious 
 processes and the passive modifications of the structure itself are but 
 evidence of nature's mode of securing survival for the species. The 
 processes of 'reason' and 'instinct,' like the 'protective muscular re- 
 flexes,' the pain areas, the phenomena of "phagocytosis, immunity and 
 blood clotting, are merely examples of the working of the system which 
 secures 'survival of the fittest.' In thus placing faith, hope, and charity 
 on the same plane with muscular reflexes, in their power to conserve 
 the life of the race, we but give them their proper place in evolution 
 as adaptations which have arisen coincidently with the need for such 
 modifications. And, furthermore, we place them on the same plane with 
 another 'conscious' but no less automatically evolved adaptation by 
 means of which the energy of the individual is concerned the applica- 
 tion of the principle of anoci-association in surgery. 
 
 "Whatever weakens or breaks the integration of the body at the 
 brain link breaks the continuity of the kinetic chain and diminishes the 
 expenditure of energy, and to that extent is a conserver of life. The 
 technique of anoci-association was the outgrowth of a study of nature's 
 methods of adaptation. It does not seem too much to expect that a 
 further study along the same lines may lead to a further understanding 
 of the relations of fear and faith to the laws of life, as a result of 
 which, through education and training, the principle of faith may fulfill 
 as useful a role in the clinic of life as is fulfilled in the clinic of surgery 
 by anoci-association." (Crile's "Man, an Adaptive Mechanism.") 
 
 Faith has the physiological effects here cited. Crile, in placing 
 faith, hope, and charity on the same plane with muscular reflexes in 
 their power to conserve the life of the race, justifies doing all we can 
 to develop them, but the "life of the race" includes factors not on the 
 same plane with muscular reflexes. These reflexes rest back upon the 
 past. The distinctive power of faith is exhibited by projecting the self 
 into the future. After examining the phenomena of faith from this 
 angle, Martensen with abundant examples and evidence concludes that 
 ' ' faith is a living commencement which contains within itself the pos- 
 sibility of a progressive development and a fulfillment of the vocation 
 of man." It is this power to "commence" and continue to realize 
 ideals that has brought to their present development all the sciences 
 and arts. 
 
 But it is not the definition of faith, but the development of it, that 
 is sought. Singularly enough, though faith is so much a matter of 
 personal control, one does not need to have correct views concerning its 
 nature in order to have a measure of development. Somewhat like diges- 
 
51 
 
 tion, it takes very good care of itself under proper conditions; but, also 
 like digestion, it can be hindered and defeated by not complying with 
 these conditions. Society in general and schools in particular are so 
 artificial that spiritual hygiene and sanitation are becoming more and 
 more important. 
 
 When Beecher said that whether life was worth living depended 
 upon the liver he came nearer .to stating a scientific fact than he knew. 
 Faith has physiological conditions. Purposes are not purposes until 
 conceived in terms of means. The means for realizing purposes are 
 personal. One of these means is enough muscular power and nerve 
 reserve to have sustained attention. Again we are driven back to the 
 importance of good health. 
 
 Attention is an intellectual process as well as a muscular one. The 
 plans for realizing large purposes employ all the mental equipment and 
 mental power at one's command. Though faith is fundamental and 
 central, it cannot function effectively without enough muscular and 
 mental power to keep it from degenerating into a pious wish. 
 
 2. Development of Faith. In addition to supplying what might be 
 called the negative condition for the development of faith, there are 
 positive ways and means for making faith victorious. Faith has con- 
 ditions, but it is a cause. It develops by use. But even faith cannot 
 lift itself by pulling at its own boot-straps. It must have a fulcrum 
 for its lever. It must have one .of its feet grounded in fact. But some 
 of its facts are its own product. This is the case of warm purposes. As 
 James says in "The Will to Believe": 
 
 "A social organism of any sort whatever, large or small, is what 
 it is because each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that 
 the other members will simultaneously do theirs. Wherever a desired 
 result is achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons, its 
 existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in one 
 another of those immediately concerned. A government, an army, a 
 commercial system, a ship, a college, an athletic team all exist on this 
 condition, without which is nothing achieved, but nothing is even 
 attempted. A whole train of passengers (individually brave enough) 
 will be looted by a few highwaymen, simply because the latter can 
 count on one another, while each passenger fears that if he makes a 
 movement of resistance he will be shot before anyone else backs him 
 up. If we believed that the whole car full would rise at once with us 
 we should each severally rise and train-robbing would never even be 
 attempted. There are, then, cases where a fact cannot come at all 
 unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming. And where faith in a fact 
 can help create the fact that would be an insane logic which should say 
 that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is the 'lowest kind of 
 immorality' into which a thinking being can fall. Yet such is the logic 
 
52 
 
 by which our scientific absolutists pretend to regulate our lives!" 
 (Pages 26-27.) 
 
 As already pointed out, personal ideals always have their setting in 
 social situations. Personal purposes, if they have any largeness at all, 
 are within a social organism. This fact is what justifies Home's con- 
 clusion that "Faith in one's purpose solicits the aid of others in its 
 execution," but these others dare not force the issue. This is the 
 inherent wickedness of autocracy. It produces slavery. "A slave is 
 one whose act expresses the will of another," said Plato. 
 
 Pupils, Teachers, Principals, Superintendents, Boards of Education 
 all with capital letters what possibilities for slavery! What oppor- 
 tunities for free, co-operation and democracy "The progress of all, 
 through all, under the leadership of the wisest and the best. ' ' 
 
 Faith is not an emotion, though it has emotional elements in its 
 makeup. It is not a kind of knowledge nor a substitute for knowledge, 
 but at its best it employs the knowledge available. It is "like muscular 
 reflexes" in at least one particular it is a vital process of the whole 
 organism. By it the workman throws himself whole-heartedly into his 
 work. The Hebrew writer was correct who said: 
 
 "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of 
 things not seen. 
 
 "For by it the elders obtained a good report. 
 
 "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by 
 the word of God; so that things which are seen were not made of things 
 which do appear. . . . 
 
 "And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of 
 Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jepthae; and of David 
 also, and Samuel, and of the prophets; 
 
 "Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, ob- 
 tained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 
 
 "Quenced the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out 
 of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight 
 the army of the aliens." (Hebrews i. 1-2; i. 32-34.) 
 
 The final and successful method for the development of faith is a 
 personal discovery, following a personal adventure. It involves a certain 
 abandon. It never succeeds by half-way measures. It is impossible to 
 set forth a never-failing regime, but it is possible to suggest some of 
 the fields in which the personal discovery can be made. 
 
 For the teacher, probably the most important thing to be done is to 
 write out the purposes that call for faith. Then they should be examined 
 to see if they are definite enough to suggest some available ways and 
 means by which they can be realized. Then they must be critically 
 examined to see if they are large enough to demand one's greater en- 
 deavors. By some such venture, and it takes some faith to do even this 
 
53 
 
 much, the teacher may discover some of the secret places of personal 
 power. 
 
 Faith has a way of developing by contagion also. The "company of 
 the faithful" is no empty phrase. There are great teachers, living and 
 dead, who make our "communion of saints." 
 
 (d) Tenacity of Purpose. The tenacity of one's purpose depends very 
 much upon faith. It, too, rests back upon ' ' organic resonance, ' ' muscular 
 tonicity, nerve reserve, and a clear vision of ways and means for realizing 
 the large purposes definitely defined in one's philosophy of life, which 
 in the case of the teacher must be large enough to encompass himself, 
 the pupil, and the rest of humanity. 
 
 (3) The Emotional Elements in a Good Leader. The volitional factors 
 in our personal makeup are not only personal, they are purely individual. 
 My purposes are mine. When I am at my best I know I can entertain 
 them, banish them, or change them, much as I please. 
 
 The content of the intellectual elements in spiritual makeup are more 
 or less impersonal. Scientific judgment, to be valid, must eliminate the 
 personal equation. The facts of the objective world are what they are, 
 and good judgment accepts them at their face value. Of course, we must 
 always remember that among the facts of the objective world are other 
 persons. They are not only facts, they are unique. The most important 
 fact about them is this personal equation. Among other facts is our 
 own personal equation and for each of us it is the most important fact, 
 because it makes the value and use of all the other facts. We have, 
 therefore, three classes of facts to deal with: (1) Impersonal facts, the 
 facts of things; (2) other persons as persons, not as things; (3) my own 
 self as center of my own universe. This personal universe is organized 
 and held together by certain emotional elements. For the teacher the 
 essential emotional elements are: (1) Sympathy; (2) Humility; (3) Love. 
 
 1 ' ' This is my commandment, ' said Jesus ' that ye love one another as 
 I have loved you'; 'Every particle of matter in the universe,' said 
 Newton, 'attracts every other particle with a force directly proportioned 
 to the mass of the attracting particle, and inversely to the square of the 
 distance'; these are the two monumental deliverances in human knowl- 
 edge, and the law of love in the sphere of metaphysics is the analogue of 
 the law of gravitation in the sphere of physics. The measure of ignorance 
 in religion has been selfishness, when the race appears a certain number 
 of individuals fighting each for his own hand. The master achievement 
 of knowledge has been the discovery of unity. Before Newton, gravita- 
 tion was holding the world together; it was his honor to formulate the 
 law. Before Jesus, love was preventing the dissolution of the race: it 
 was His glory to dictate the law. Newton found a number of fragments 
 and left a physical universe. Jesus found a multitude of individuals 
 and created a spiritual kingdom. The advance from a congeries of indi- 
 
54 
 
 viduals to an organized society is marked by four milestones: First, 
 we are simply conscious of other men and accept the fact of their 
 existence; we realize our mutual dependence and come to a working 
 agreement. This is the infancy of the Race and conscience is not yet 
 awake. Then we discover that there are certain things one must not 
 do to his neighbor, and certain services one may expect from his neighbor, 
 that to injure the next man is misery and to help him is happiness. This 
 is the childhood of the Eace", and conscience now asserts itself. Afterwards 
 we begin to review the situation and to collect our various duties: we 
 arrange them under heads and state them in black and white. This is 
 the youth of the Race, and reason is now in action. Finally, we take our 
 list of black and white rules and try to settle their connection. It is 
 not possible to trace them all to one root and comprehend them in one 
 act. What a light to conscience, a relief to reason, a joy to the heart! 
 This is the mature manhood of the Race and the heart is now in evidence. 
 From an instinct to duties, from duties to rule, and now from rules to 
 Law. State that Law and the Race become one society." (Maclaren, 
 "The Mind of the Master," pp. 157-159.) 
 
 1. Sympathy is essentially the ability and disposition to employ the 
 Golden Rule. It is the personal quality by which we attract to ourselves 
 the persons that make up our social world. This furnishes the means 
 for multiplying our own power. It is also the power that binds us to 
 those we serve. The teacher must stimulate, guide, and control the 
 behavior of the pupil for the purpose of the pupil's well-being. Sym- 
 pathy is therefore an indispensable means for interpreting the interests 
 and behavior of the pupil. How could a teacher assign a lesson intelli- 
 gently or judge the pupil's work justly without this means of entering 
 into the pupil's life? 
 
 Fortunately, sympathy like every other power develops by appropriate 
 use. Fortunately also for the teacher, no other situation affords quite 
 the range and depth for exercising this power that personal fellowship 
 with growing youth affords. Growth in sympathy not only increases 
 personal power but produces profession efficiency. 
 
 2. Humility. Erroneously, sympathy is often conceived as a feeling 
 only for the inferior, for those suffering. This is probably due to the 
 fact that these cases are the most obvious. Essentially, sympathy is a 
 principle of personal equality a disposition to treat others even when 
 down and out as our equals, at least potentially. By contrast humility is 
 stimulated and developed by contact with those we deem superior. 
 Humility is allegiance to those spiritually above us. By this allegiance or 
 devotion to the principles and causes represented by the superior we 
 appropriate their power through fellowship. Humility is the power by 
 which we lift ourselves by pulling at our own spiritual boot-straps. The 
 Good Book warns us that "We cannot by taking thought add to our 
 
55 
 
 stature"; but by contrast this is just the way we add to our spiritual 
 stature, if we take the right kind of thought. 
 
 Every teacher will, of course, conclude that humility is a pupil 
 virtue. The ones who need it most will be in doubt about humility as 
 a teaching virtue. Its great importance, as a teaching virtue, comes 
 from its contagious quality. The teacher that exhibits humility towards 
 those spiritually above him will not only come to possess those qualities 
 making him deserving the attitude of humility from the pupils, but the 
 example will be contagious. The humble pupil is just in the mood for both 
 effective discipline and instruction. 
 
 Humility, like sympathy, is developed by exercise and as in the case 
 of sympathy the school offers most inspiring opportunities for its use. 
 The whole range of great persons of the world are at our command. 
 Ought not the teacher bring to the notice of the pupils the lives of 
 the men and women who have made the great contributions to the 
 world? Again, there are great teachers that might become a source of 
 abiding inspiration. Alice Freeman Palmer, Miss Sullivan, Agassiz, Mark 
 Hopkins, and Jesus Himself. Again there is sufficient ground for 
 humility towards many of the pupils. What they are potentially no one 
 can tell, but we know they are more than will be realized, and if we 
 are wise we realize that their very youth gives them a responsiveness 
 to the spiritual impress not possessed by older persons. It is, of course, 
 important to remember that the final virtue of humility develops upon 
 the insight and good judgment used in selecting the persons we deem 
 spiritually above us. 
 
 3. Love. "It seems hardly decent to discuss so sacred a matter in 
 the publicity of print. Divinely aware of this, we try to approach the 
 subject delicately through such phrases as 'The Spirit of Youth' (Jane 
 Addams), or 'The Life Force' (G. Bernard Shaw in "Man and Super- 
 man"). To free the word 'love' from its association with boudoirs and 
 morbid novels, we try to identify it with something genial and all- 
 pervasive, to ally it with the great, sane forces of nature. For we 
 believe that if these allies stimulate and reinforce personality, if they 
 awaken and intensify our feeble energies, then they tend to ennoble our 
 affections." (Eichard C. Cabot in "What Men Live By.") 
 
 Just as profane persons employ the names of holy persons to express 
 their ignorant emotions, so vulgarity expresses itself by jokes about love. 
 Correctly viewed, of course, this is a kind of negative evidence of love 's 
 supreme place among the emotions. Another narrowness and fallacy in 
 the use of the term love is to limit it to emotions aroused by opposite 
 sexes, and then raise a danger signal for teachers, warning them against 
 personal improprieties between teacher and pupil. Like all the other 
 fundamental forces of the world, love is very powerful and therefore 
 most destructive and most dangerous when misused. 
 
56 
 
 Love for pupils is the final test of a person's right to pursue the 
 teaching profession. For purposes of this discussion, love may be 
 described as dispositional interest in persons manifested by two groups 
 of emotions: (1) Satisfaction in the presence and in the successes of the 
 loved ones; (2) dissatisfied in absence and with the failures of the loved 
 ones. Under these relations the presence of the pupil stimulates the best 
 endeavors of the teacher and raises his activities to the professional grade 
 where he disregards selfish or even personal interests in the interests of 
 those he serves. 
 
 Love is not only the final test of the teacher's right to pose as a 
 teacher, it is the organizing principle of all the other personal qualities. 
 It determines the quantity and quality of the powers the teacher exerts. 
 It determines the teacher's enthusiasm in and for his work as well as 
 the satisfactions and dissatisfactions from this work. 
 
 Love is a reciprocal virtue. It is a social process. It can not and 
 does not live in isolation or in a vacuum. In the teacher it attains its 
 supreme development by active interest in the whole range of the pupil's 
 life. At this point it links up with the insight (see page 46) of the 
 teacher and the largeness of the teacher's purposes (see page 47). Here 
 we come upon the problem of the teacher's life in the community and 
 upon the dangers and difficulties of large schools and great school systems. 
 There is a limit to the number of pupils that can be embraced in the 
 teacher's love. There is also a limit to the teacher's time and energy 
 that can be spent in community interests and functions. In former times 
 teachers taught more subjects to fewer pupils. This situation had every 
 advantage from the standpoint of personal contact and influence. The 
 current practice tends to put the emphasis upon subject-matter and tries 
 to run every pupil through the same hopper. There is prospect of even 
 returning to the academy regime. The hope of democracy through the 
 schools as a personal process lies in so changing and vitalizing the 
 subject-matter and method that each school process functions in the 
 life the pupils now live and in the further requirement that these present 
 processes shall be so fundamental that they will not only be interesting 
 and vital now, but be the best possible preparation for any essential life 
 process in the future. / 
 
 Is this not an Utopian dream? It is not. The pupil is now a citizen 
 in our democracy. He is living in and through all the essential life 
 processes. Eight living is his supreme problem and it affords all the 
 kinds of problems worthy assignment as laboratory or school room tasks. 
 In short, the teacher prepared for today's task loves life and the life 
 and spirit of youth as it must now be lived. This demands that the 
 teachers of today be men and women of the world. Each one cannot 
 be skilled in all the crafts of the world, but each one can be interested, 
 
57 
 
 intelligent, and more or less skilled in all the fundamental social 
 processes. 
 
 The teachers who love scholarship more than scholars and were and 
 are interested in grades and curricula will still excuse their procedure 
 by requirements above or behind them. They will find the new world 
 distracting and annoying. This will help to throw them on the pro- 
 fessional scrap-heap. 
 
 Like the other teaching virtues, love develops by loving, and children 
 are not only worthy objects of love but most responsive to its power. 
 
 Sympathy, humility and love are the supreme teaching virtues. They 
 thrive only in company and are most stable and most reliable in persons 
 religiously inclined. Indeed if harmonized into "systems of sentiments," 
 to use McDougal 's phrase, they become the person 's religion. This is 
 the great contribution of religion it affords the fellowship of the living 
 and the dead of "one mind." This furnishes the breath of spiritual life. 
 
 V. 
 
 REGIME 
 
 "Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time for that is the 
 stuff life is made of." (Benjamin Franklin.) 
 
 Most workmen take their vocation and daily routine very much as 
 they do the weather and their own age as a matter of course, over 
 which they have little control. This is a kind of false fatalism, but one 
 easily indulged. 
 
 1. There is no necessary relation between information and behavior, 
 and yet information makes a difference. The facts concerning personal 
 power and improvability contain the material for a sane and workable 
 philosophy of life. But facts have no power. Knowledge of these facts 
 as such has no power to move anyone to improvement. Most knowledge 
 somehow has the power to turn the mind towards the past. With most 
 persons past middle life the past has a fatal grip upon them. I suppose 
 that is what middle life means. 
 
 2. Knowledge becomes "the instrument of successful action" only in 
 the minds of those that propose to live the overcoming life. Such a life 
 involves both the past and the future. Successful and happy people live 
 a life of routine and a life of reason. A life program ought to provide 
 for both. The recurring processes ought to be mechanized in order to 
 leave us the time and energy for the things that are worth reasoning 
 about. 
 
 A formal arbitrary program can' never vitalize either routine or new 
 work, because a program is "scaffolding external to the real structure. A 
 regime treated as 'a scaffolding, however, for getting at the real work 
 aids in improvement. 
 
58 
 
 3. Principles for Constructing a Personal Program. 
 
 (a) Physiological Principles. A regime to be most efficient must con- 
 form to the physiological laws of habit. The daily recurring processes 
 of life ought to be "gotten into one's bones," into the backbone, into 
 the spinal cord. But even after so mechanized, many of them can be 
 improved. For five thousand years, bricklayers made as many as eighteen 
 motions in laying a single brick. By taking thought, Gilbreth reduced 
 the process to six movements. He raised bricklaying to an art, done 
 beautifully. He learned this art by trying to lay each brick a little 
 slicker than the last one. Time for ' ' the things worth reasoning about ' ' 
 may be secured by saving time on the processes we do awkwardly and 
 wastefully. To do this requires that we analyze our life processes for 
 waste motions. Having found the new and better way, it must be 
 "focalized," done thoughtfully, a few times until it is mechanized. 
 
 (fc) Psychic Law. The daily program must conform also to the laws 
 of the mind. Even the stimulus to the most routine acts may function 
 in determining the mood or emotional accompaniment of the act. One's 
 disposition in and during both work and play has very much to do with 
 the bodily and mental effects of behavior. The mood for work and play 
 and the emotional accompaniment of the action is determined largely 
 by the sentiments one has developed. It will be remembered that senti- 
 ments cluster around objects, using the term object in two senses: (1) The 
 things that stimulate the senses and become for the time being centers 
 of attention; and (2) ends to be obtained. The tools one uses ought to 
 be up to standard, not only for the sake of the work to be accomplished, 
 but for the sake of the workman. The subtle and far-reaching power of 
 imitation and suggestion are just coming to be recognized. 
 
 Teaching may be idealized around images of great teachers. A picture, 
 a book, or even a phrase or motto may be used to stimulate idealized 
 processes. In the teacher's day there are at least two periods when such 
 a state of mind is desirable: (1) In the morning, when the mental toilet 
 (mental atmosphere for the day) is being made; (2) when the teacher 
 arrives at the teaching desk in the class room. A picture or a book on 
 the dresser, a picture or book on the desk these will aid in this form of 
 personal improvement. 
 
 Every human being has the personal privilege of selecting his own 
 ideal personages. In one sense it is a kind of impertinence, a partial 
 condemnation of the plan, to suggest a list from which the teacher may 
 select an ideal, yet this is the practical way to help those who have not 
 already a plan of their own as good or better than this. Note the use 
 of faces and names in advertising or political campaigns. There are 
 illustrious names and faces associated with teaching, as well as with the 
 more public and more spectacular forms of human service. 
 
59 
 
 The name and face of the Great Teacher should come first. To 
 some, of course, it would lack inspiration and guiding power. This is due 
 partly to ignorance and superstition, as the aim of His service was the 
 "abundant" life. The immediate problems of life were His means. He 
 used the method of example, of parable, of personal reaction. 
 
 Mark Hopkins, Agassiz, Mary Lyon, Alice Freeman Palmer, Anna 
 Mansfield Sullivan (now Mrs. Macy), Booker T. Washington, Thomas 
 Davidson these make a worthy American list. 
 
 Great teachers also idealize the pupil. Daily the ideal pupil should 
 function in the teaching mind, not so much as a standard for criticism 
 as one for guidance in selecting the positive means and methods for 
 stimulating the pupil. For this purpose, Hoffman's picture of the boy 
 Jesus before the doctors is effective. 
 
 (c) The Cosmic Law and Social Usage. The essence of life is a series 
 of rhythms. The cosmic foundations of this 'characteristic of life have 
 been already pointed out. The concrete realization of it is in the twenty- 
 four hour day, and the seven day week. The good old world always comes 
 around to a new day, and we can start over again. It is wise to learn 
 to live on twenty-four hours a day, for that is all we will get; but we 
 are sure to get that much. Sometimes teachers are tricked into saying 
 "There is not time," "I do not have time." This is not true. Teachers 
 have all the time there is and .there is always time for essentials. ' Time 
 to do what we want to do is wholly a question of emphasis. 
 
 Twenty-four hours a day is plenty of time for all we ought to do, 
 anyway. Of course, if by awkwardness, idleness, ignorance, bad man- 
 agement, or vulgar interruption we waste any of the sacred hours, they 
 are gone forever, and we must pay the price a deficit in life's account. 
 
 There is nothing in nature or in life itself to suggest the distribution 
 of time to our several tasks. This is the problem of the personal program. 
 Nature divides the day into light and darkness, but by tools and the 
 capturing of sunshine man has freed himself from these natural limitations. 
 
 In general, human beings at their best may divide the day into three 
 equal portions: eight hours for vocation, eight hours for avocation and 
 recreation, and eight hours for sleep. 
 
 Few teachers really work eight hours a day. Withhold your judgment, 
 please! I said work; some "putter" around about their work more than 
 eight hours. Eight hours of controlled, directed effort upon the profes- 
 sional problems of the day is all that any teacher should give under 
 normal circumstances. Emergency may arise to produce a situation in 
 which the teacher ought to be physically able to give the time needed 
 for the emergency without being "all in " at the end. 
 
 Eight hours of good sound sleep is generally sufficient for the healthy 
 adult. Count two hours for eating and two hours for personal toilet, 
 
60 
 
 there still remains four hours every day for avocation and recreation 
 physical, mental, and moral. 
 
 Viewed from a schedule card, that is the way it looks. Very frequently 
 at the end of a twenty-four hour day it does not look that way. If 
 sometimes it does not look correct, it need not shock us nor discourage 
 us until the schedule regularly becomes irregular. Then it deserves careful 
 attention. Degeneration may have set in, but ' ' degeneration is objective 
 and economic, while regeneration is psychic and personal," says Patton, 
 with abundant proof. By this statement Patton means that these 
 irregularities are due to the way in which we use time, means, and 
 energy, and that our destiny is in our own hands. If we personally take 
 charge of ourselves and the twenty -four hour day we can be "regen- 
 erated. ' ' A program is possible and desirable, but programs do not 
 make themselves nor enforce themselves. 
 
 Planning, scheduling, and dispatching are the technical terms used 
 in scientific management for programming. Planning is a description of 
 the contents of the program. Scheduling distributes the contents of the 
 plan and determines the sequence of the different processes and the 
 amount of time allowed to each. Dispatching is execution of the 
 schedules beginning on time, quitting on time. 
 
 Necessarily, a program is a personal affair. Your program cannot 
 be made to order for you, yet nature and society are so mechanized 
 that the general feature of the plan may be suggested. 
 
 1. Arise. 
 
 2. Bodily toilet. 
 
 3. Mental and spiritual toilet. 
 
 4. Study. 
 
 5. Breakfast. 
 
 6. Survey of daily plan. 
 
 7. Work. 
 
 8. Luncheon. 
 
 9. Work. 
 
 10. Besurvey of plan. 
 
 11. Recreation. 
 
 12. Dinner. 
 
 13. Personal recreation or improvement. 
 
 14. Evening toilet (mental as well as physical). 
 
 15. Sleep. 
 
 CONCLUSION. A physiological day is one in which the recreation of 
 the day and the sleep of the night make it possible to begin the new day 
 without impaired vitality. Nature furnishes an original surplus. If this 
 surplus is conserved by a rational regime, each day will be not only 
 new but better, and self -improvement is achieved. 
 
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