ness of offspring. Their helplessness aroused mutual feelings of sympathy in parents and older offspring, resulting in longer periods of close companionship. Finally not only family interests and bonds were developed, but also community relationships. An examination of the genesis and growth of morality reveals also that morality is concomitant with the growth of community life. Incipient morality is first observed in the social animals, and it develops progressively through the lowest human tribal organization up to the highest altruistic communities. Here are two important directions in the highest education of man accomplished through the period of long infancy. Current history as well as evolution chronicles the same lesson. Discords, divorces, and separations are astonishingly more frequent in households where no children have cemented the bonds that first produced the union. Childless people are usually devoid of many feelings of sympathy that actuate persons who have children. This is especially true where the parents were "only" children and reared in affluence. Thus since the state and all higher forms of institutional life rest upon the family, the child should become the centre of regard in our noblest efforts to uplift humanity. Through all his years of plasticity the wisest nurture should be afforded that will assist nature in unfolding what is best in the child and extend his evolution to the highest point possible.

Besides the best physical and physiological inheritance to which the child is entitled and which the best of nutrition and care should develop undiminished, there is a social inheritance which is the birthright of every human individual. This social inheritance is bequeathed to posterity not in the form of fixed structures and reactions, but in the works of man as represented in institutions, discoveries, arts, sciences, traditions, and beliefs. Butler says these spiritual possessions "may be variously classified, but they certainly are at least five-fold. The child is entitled to his scientific inheritance, to his literary inheritance, to his æsthetic inheritance, to his institutional inheritance, and to his religious inheritance. Without them he cannot become a

truly educated or a cultivated man." He further maintains that, "The period of infancy is to be used by civilized men for adaptation along these five lines, in order to introduce the child to his intellectual and spiritual inheritance, just as the shorter period of infancy in the lower animals is used to develop, to adjust, and to co-ordinate those physical actions which constitute the higher instincts, and which require the larger, the more deeply furrowed, and the more complex brain. That, as it seems to me, is the lesson of biology, of physiology, and of psychology, on the basis of the theory of evolution, regarding the meaning and the place of education in modern life." 2

Recapitulation and the Relative Value of Knowledge.-In seeking an answer to the question, "What knowledge is of most worth?" Spencer turned to race history. He assumed that knowledge to be most fundamental which was first developed by the race and therefore of most worth at all times. This elemental knowledge he finds to be that which directly ministers to self-preservation. "That next after direct selfpreservation comes the indirect self-preservation which consists in acquiring the means of living, none will question." Third in order come "those activities which have for their end the rearing and discipline of offspring. . . . That a man's industrial functions must be considered before his parental ones, is manifest from the fact that, speaking generally, the discharge of the parental functions is made possible only by the previous discharge of the industrial ones." Next in order he places "Those activities which are involved in the maintenance of proper social and political relations." This he regards as following the phylogenetic order, "As the family comes before the State in order of time as the bringing up of children is possible before the State exists, or when it has ceased to be, whereas the State is rendered possible only by the bringing up of children; it follows that the duties of the parent demand closer attention than those of the citizen." The final group of race activities which determine the relative values of instruction for the individual are "Those 1 The Meaning of Education, p. 19. 2 Ibid., p. 31.

miscellaneous activities which make up the leisure part of life, devoted to the gratification of the tastes and feelings." 1

1

The foregoing furnishes a fairly good order of emphasis of different kinds of knowledge. Of course, each is intricately interwoven with all the others, but the order suggested is practically coincident with the order of the development of the individual's interests in the various activities. That the types of knowledge taught in the schools should harmonize with the natural rise of interests is sound doctrine. At every stage the school should be correlated with life's dominant, legitimate interests.

Many more educational applications suggested by embryology will be stated in the chapters on "From Fundamental to Accessory," "Instinct," "Correlations between Mind and Body," "Sensory Education," and "Motor Education." The next chapter deals with a special phase of application in the "Culture Epochs Theory."

1Spencer, Education, pp. 32, 33.

CHAPTER VI

THE CULTURE EPOCHS THEORY AND EDUCATION

Meaning of Culture Epochs.-Various attempts have been made to map out the periods of child development and to study them in the light of corresponding periods of racial development. Exponents of the "Culture Epochs Theory" assume that the particular kinds of environment, experience, or education which the race received and which produced particular development in the race at certain periods should produce the same sort of development in the individual at corresponding periods. It is also assumed that the child must retrace each of the phylogenetic stages in order to develop normally. Hence a study of the race has been made to determine what kind of culture materials contributed to its progress from each given stage to the next higher. This is done n order to give the child the same sort of material at a corresponding period. During a certain epoch it is known that man was evolving myths, legends, and folk-tales. These are believed to have been the culture materials which enabled the race to develop into a higher stage. Different interests and activities occupied the dominant place at different periods. At one period it was war, at another the hunt and chase, at another the beginnings of agriculture, etc. The mental life as manifested in speech, song, poetry, and literature also corresponded to dominant interests. Thus different culture materials are supposed to have been utilized at different epochs of race history. Hence the term "Cultureepochs." It is thus seen that we may speak of the pastoral epoch, the nomadic period, the stone age, the bronze age, the hunting stage, the agricultural epoch, the urban period, etc. Herbartian Applications.-The Herbartian school of educationists especially have attached much value to the culture epochs theory of education. They have arranged very definite pro

gram of study which they believe to be fitted to afford the child the specific culture necessary to assist him wisely into the next stage of growth. The following outline scheme represents the ideas of Professor Rein, of Jena, as to the proper sequence and arrangement of materials for the German Volks-school.'

2

ing

Historic Mind

Social and Political

Development. Scientific and Philosophic Mind

Dr. Otto Beyer has set forth, as shown below, the chief stages of human development, when viewed from the side of man's reaction to his varying environment. The instructional material which would be desirable for the child representing each epoch is also indicated.

1 Van Liew, First Yearbook of the National Herbart Society, p. 99. Ib., p. 97.