eliminating some harmful hereditary traits, abridging others, and shunting others.

Pessimists often raise the cry that no race progress is discernible. They argue that the world is no better to-day than four thousand years ago, that no one possesses a higher grade of intellect than in the earliest historic times. There is no warrant for such pessimism. There were giant intellects in the palmy days of Greece and Rome, and in the time of the Pharaohs, but the world average then was vastly lower than now. It may even be seriously doubted whether the giants of old would be so conspicuous were they alive to-day. The high level of to-day might make them sink out of sight by comparison. To-day there are thousands planning and executing enterprises as gigantic as the erection of the pyramids or the generalship of the Peloponnesian War. In every civilized country there are many writers, statesmen, kings of finance, inventors, scholars, educators, who have accomplished as great things as are recorded in the annals of ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt, or Palestine. They may never be singled out because the same degree of intelligence is so common.

That new instincts, physical, intellectual, and moral, have been developed, and are being developed, there can be no doubt. That some impulses have become atrophied and are dying out there is equally little doubt. The uniform attainments in poetry, music, scholarship, statesmanship, and commerce are greater than ever before, and it is reasonable to suppose that there is a close relationship between attainments and ability. Many troublesome instincts like pugnacity, selfishness, and sensuality are becoming subdued and controlled. The higher instincts of reason, morality, conscience, altruism, and religion have become expanded and strengthened. We now have less of war, carnage, gluttony, and lust, and more of refined courage, altruism, and love, than ever before in the world's history. The deeds of men as recorded in the annals of history, sacred and profane, make a splendid record of the growth of the higher and nobler powers and the crushing to heel of the baser instincts. The very fact

of the conservation of energy teaches that forces may become cumulative and tendencies or impulses to action be created. The facts of memory, habit, and heredity lead to the same inevitable conclusion. If we believe in evolution and the development of civilized man from primitive savagery, we cannot escape it; for is not the greatest difference between savagery and civilization one of instincts?

When we remember that interests are determined largely by instincts, it is at once seen that a knowledge of instinct is of great importance in determining courses of study. In the light of a knowledge of instinct the course of study is adapted to the capacities of individuals. The school is fitted to the child rather than the child to the school. The intelligent administration of the entire elective system must be thoroughly grounded upon a knowledge of the fundamental instinctive powers of the individual. There have been altogether too many misfits in the world because of a lack of recognition of innate possibilities and needs. Education is not only to minister to thoroughly apparent needs and interests of the individual, but one of its most important functions is to discover interests and aptitudes.

A better knowledge of nascent periods of development would effect many readjustments in the position of different subjects and topics in the curriculum. Already the fruits of even our limited knowledge of the subject are becoming apparent. The kindergarten work has been remodelled, formal arithmetic work is disappearing from the primary grades, concrete work is finding its place in the elementary schools, elementary algebra and concrete geometry have been shifted from the high school to the grammar school, and the abstract arithmetic has been relegated to the high school. Formal grammar is less emphasized in elementary work, and ought to be pushed still higher up. It is being recognized in practice that modern foreign languages can be most advantageously begun between seven ånd twelve. There are well-marked stages in the growth of interest and power in drawing which should serve as a guide in arranging drawing courses. Already the ultra-logical course in drawing has been

1

replaced by a more rational psychological arrangement recognizing the well-marked stages of development. The organization of manual training departments and schools is in part a tacit recognition on the part of educators 1 that the instincts for motor activity and of constructiveness are the most valuable allies in the training of childhood and youth, and must be utilized if education is to be normal and balanced. The head, the hand, and the heart, metaphorically speaking, all have claims asserting themselves which must be recognized if we would avoid malformation. As a final illustration, we may cite the recent recognition of the peculiar period of adolescence. The main value of the recent study of adolescence has been in the appreciation that there is a special time of budding of the most powerful instincts of the human race. The proper adjustment of the curriculum and the better recognition of nascent periods of development would guard against arrest of development, and enable educators to co-operate with nature in developing children normally from one stage to another and into the fullest and noblest manhood and womanhood made possible through the heritage bequeathed to each.

1 The people see in them doubtless only utilitarian ends and support them on that account.

CHAPTER IX

NATURE AND NURTURE: INHERITANCE AND

EDUCATION

Meaning and Illustrations of Heredity.-It is a law of nature that the descendants of individuals tend to be like their ancestors. Every one knows that children are apt to look like their parents or near relatives, to have similar dispositions, and to have many characteristics common to the family group. Th's law of transmission and reproduction of ancestral traits in descendants is termed heredity. President David Starr Jordan says: "There is something inherent in each developing animal that gives it an identity of its own. Although in its young stages it may be indistinguishable from some other kind of animal in similar stages, it is sure to come out, when fully developed, an individual of the same kind as its parents were or are. The young fish and the young salamander are in tinguishably alike, but one embryo is sure to develop into a fish and the other into a salamander. This certainty of an embryo to become an individual of a certain kind is called the law of heredity." This is the great conservative force in nature. Through heredity evolution is also made poble, since variations once established tend to be transmitted to po terity.

Heredity of Physical Structure.-Heredity of physical structure is everywhere apparent among human beings. It may manifest itself in stature, weight, length of limbs, color of eyes or hair, facial features, expression, etc. Children are often said to be exact images of father, mother, or grandparents. Among animals resemblances of young to parents are equally striking. The same laws are observable in plants. It may be safely pre1 Animal Life, p. 88.

dicted that a grain of corn or any other plant seed will produce under ordinary conditions a new plant of the same kind and of similar size, form, and color as that which bore the seed. These facts are all too obvious to need more than suggestion. Internal structures as well as external are governed by the laws of heredity. The various proportions of the cranium, thorax, vertebræ, teeth, the peculiarities of the circulatory system and the nervous system, which are manifest in a given individual will probably be found upon investigation to be characteristics common to his ancestry and his posterity. Ribot tells us that "There are some families in which the heart and the principal blood-vessels are naturally very large; others in which they are comparatively small; and others, again, which present identical faults of conformation." The nervous system, especially the brain, seems to follow a certain type in a given family or "line of ascent." Length of natural life is doubtless an ancestral bequest. In a family where there is a centenarian there is almost sure to be a large number who live to a very old age, exceeding their allotted "three score years and ten." Ribot writes that, "longevity depends far less on race, climate, profession, mode of life or food, than on hereditary transmission." "

Thomson says that "not less striking than the long persistence of specific and stock characters is the fact that offspring frequently reproduce the individual peculiarities-both normal and abnormal-of their parents or ancestors. A slight structural peculiarity, such as a lock of white hair or an extra digit, may persist for several generations. A slight functional peculiarity, such as left-handedness, has been recorded for at least four generations, and color-blindness for five." 2

Hereditary Disease Tendencies.-While specific diseases as such are probably not directly heritable, it is none the less true that tendencies to disease are very definitely inherited. A disease, according to Martius, is a process injurious to the organism. "The process," says Thomson," "is not transmitted, but

2

Ribot, Heredity, pp. 3 and 5.

J. Arthur Thomson, Heredity, p. 70.

3

Op. cit., p. 265.