lay or professional, who long for better things in education. Plans for coming numbers are announced elsewhere in this issue.

We take this opportunity to thank all those who have so generously responded with the articles which have helped so greatly in the success of the magazine, and to thank also all our members who have worked with such interest and zeal to spread the news of the quarterly and to secure subscribers for it.

The Progressive Education Association now stands at a point where its success and influence, already assured, will in its proportions be commensurate with the size and importance of its membership. Those who founded the association conceived of it as a cooperative effort, and organization which by enrolling all those interested in the forward movement of education could give unity, force and direction to what would otherwise be a haphazard and individualistic effort. Thus not only does the association strive to give help and inspiration to its members, but it depends for its effectiveness upon its members; the association consists in fact of its members and of nothing more. This zeal of its members has, however, proved sufficient in the past for its support. Those who could afford only the minimum memberships have been glad

ly welcomed; and those who could afford more have given more. For progressive education is somewhat in the nature of a cause a reform so needed that those who believe in it are willing to work for it, and to give for it.

Now at the beginning of its second year to those of our members who may be asking themselves how they can best help Progressive Education to grow, the following suggestions may be given:

I Wherever possible, take a higher membership in the association. The memberships are: Minimum, two dollars; Contributing, five dollars to fifty dollars; Sustaining, fifty dollars or more. The funds thus made available will enable us to make more approaches and to gain a larger membership. 2 Send in the names of those who might be interested to become members.

3 Send remittance to cover the cost of mailing sample copies to friends who may thus be induced to subscribe.

The generous gift from a member of the association which made possible a two years' trial of the quarterly expires at the end of this current year. The hope of the donor was that by the end of that trial period, if Progressive Education met a real need it would have received a subscription list large enough to justify its continuance. STANWOOD COBB,

Chairman of the Executive Committee.

association.

W

ILLIAM James more than thirty years ago in his remarkable chapter on "Instinct," greatly stimulated interest in the socalled instinctive behavior of man. Contrary to the more common view then held, he attributed to man more instincts than to animals. And man, he clearly stated, although endowed with reason, behaved nevertheless in accord with his instinctive and impulsive promptings. Reason, he said, could neither supply nor inhibit an impulse; it could only make an inference and the inference could excite the imagination so as to let loose an impulse for or against a certain act.

Other writers came to lay stress upon the moral and social significance of "instinctive" behavior in man. Dewey emphasized the view that all conduct springs ultimately out of native instincts and impulses. Perry: "The self-preservative impulse of the simplest organism is the initial bias from which, by a continuous progression in the direction of the first intent, have sprung the service of mankind and the love of God." Pulson: "The goal at which the will aims does not consist in a maximum of pleasurable feelings, but in the normal exercise of the vital functions for which the species is predisposed."

These views marked a complete departure from the doctrine of "original sin," which held prominent place in early American education, and suggested rather the substitution of a doctrine of original virtue, thus lending impetus to the idea of "freedom" in childhood.

But there was by no means full agreement among psychologists either upon the multiplicity of human instincts or upon the

rightness of the impulses manifested in them. Thorndike in "The Original Nature of Man" reviewed with care the list given by James and proposed a much shorter category of accredited instincts. He challenged also the view presented by ardent advocates of the doctrine that Nature is right and claimed that the "Original tendencies of man have not been right, are not right, and probably never will be right;" "that lying, stealing, torturing, ignorance, irrational fears, and a hundred weaknesses and vices are original in man;" that human welfare "required that some original tendencies be cherished, that some be redirected or modified, and that others be eliminated outright." Thus the old idea of original sin or at least of an original tendency towards evil received the support of modern psychology and the impetus to the idea of "freedom" in education was in a measure checked.

Meantime writers in various fields continued to emphasize the significance of instinctive behavior in human life. The brilliant young writer upon economics, the late Carlton H. Parker, in an article on instincts in economic life wrote:

"Instinct of hunting. Man survived in earlier ages through destroying his rivals and killing his game, and these tendencies bit deep into his pyschic make-up. Modern man delights in a prize fight or a street brawl, even at times joys in ill news of his own friends, has poorly concealed pleasure if his competition wrecks a business rival, falls easily into committing atrocities if conventional policing be withdrawn, kills off a trade union, and is an always possible member of a lynching party. He is still a hunter and reverts to his primordial hunt habits with disconcerting zest and expediency. . . . All this goes on often under naive rationalization about justice and patriotism, but it is pure and innate lust to run something down and hurt it."

ment" says:

"Because of social inheritance the extrinsic con

ditions of life continue to grow more complex age after age, while our inherited natures remain unchanged. All moralists, all religions, have recognized the very general experience among men of a sense of imperfection and of disharmony with social and ethical standards. . . . Our physical,

social and moral environment has come to us from the past with ever-increasing increments, every age standing on the shoulders of the preceding one. The aspirations, impulses, responsibilities of modern life have become enormous and our inherited natures and abilities have not essentially improved. Social heredity has outrun germinal heredity and the intellectual, social and moral responsibilites of our times are too great for many men. Civilization is a strenuous affair, with impulses and compulsions which are difficult for the primitive man to fulfil, and many of us are hereditarily primitive men. The frequent result is disharmony, poor adjustment, a struggle between primitive instincts and high ideals, with a resulting sense of discouragement and defeat which

often ends in abnormal states of mind."

For a decade and more the tendency among psychologists generally has been to shorten the category of specific instincts and to place more and more emphasis upon learning as the basis of typical reactions in man. Some psychologists go so far as to reduce the number of specific human instincts to one or two only and others have denied the existence of separate human instincts altogether. What really has happened in the case of the behavior that appears to be the manifestation of instinct, it is explained, is that some random response of the child has hit by chance upon the act that gives a satisfying result and this becomes linked in memory with the responses that produced it. Repetition tends to strengthen the connection or bond in the nervous system and to cause it to persist in the individual's behavior.

This problem is of significance to those concerned with the management of children in the pre-school years. If the many

seated and persistent that they have commonly been regarded as inborn, both those that are good and those that are evil, as "lying, stealing, torturing," the "lust to run something down and hurt it," if these are not really inborn but are learned, that fact at once greatly magnifies the opportunity and responsibility of those in charge of children.

To those who are confused or wearied by conflicting views of authorities, this brief article attempts to offer a practical suggestion for guidance in their efforts to safeguard and utilize the original nature of a child in education.

On what, if anything, do the various schools agree? All schools agree in this, that the child has an original nature. Even those who deny that there are separate, specific human instincts make such statements as these:

"... the instincts of babies are more numerous and less complex than are the instincts of the young of other species. 1

1

"There are an indefinite number of original and instinctive activities which are organized into interests and dispositions according to the situations to which they respond."

All schools agree in this also, that the development of animal life and of man in his physical, mental, moral and social capacities has consistently accompanied or been accompanied by change in organic structure; that the various organic structures of different species of animals are accompanied by various characteristic predispositions.

Each individual human life begins in a single cell and evolves through essential forms to birth, then to maturity.

Every successive stage of individual human development is accompanied by change in organic structure and change in 1 Smith and Guthrie: General Psychology. Page 58. * Dewey: Human Nature and Conduct.

characteristic predispositions. Example: The manipulation play of a baby; the constructive play of a child of six.

Some predispositions are inborn, some are acquired.

An inborn predisposition may be regarded as the tendency of an organism towards a particular type of unlearned response to a state or situation. Example: The tendency of a broody fowl to sit on a nest of eggs.

An inborn predisposition is conditioned not only by the general structure of the organism but also by the internal physiological condition of the organism. Example: The absence of tendency of mature fowls not laying nor broody to sit on a nest of eggs.

An acquired predisposition is an inborn predisposition modified by experience. An acquired predisposition is conditioned not only by the general structure and internal or physiological condition of the organism (as in the case of inborn predispositions) but also by the changes in the organism due to experience. Example: Every normal child has an inborn predisposition towards movement of body and member. The peculiar way in which the child tends to creep is due to an acquired predisposi

tion.

Inborn predispositions are not supplanted but are adapted in the process of forming acquired predispositions. The general type of original response and affective attitude persist but they may become associated through experience with any one of somewhat similar or widely diver

gent situations. Examples: Locomotion by skating; manipulation with tools; goodnatured competition.

A great educational error has been the conceiving of the inborn predispositions as antagonistic to the good and inclined to the evil. There is a state or situation for the useful expression of any given inborn tendency. Evil in behavior is à departure from the good; it consists in the wrong attachment of an originally good tendency. Indeed, in the case of children in favorable environment the predispositions are the chief motives for the achievement of virtue · and the achievement of virtue is the chief source of happiness. The office of education, then, is to provide the environment that shall best stimulate the development of predispositions of children in normal expression and in the achievement of happiness and virtue. The predispositions, moreover, relate the activities of children naturally and directly to permanent interests which coincide with the fields of human endeavor and achievement today. There is no antagonism between original nature and social inheritance or between the normally acquired predispositions of children and the essentials of the subjectmatter of the school. When we shall have learned to begin the education of children. in the first years of life and to send the whole child to school when his school life begins, we shall not fear that he will not find joy in his learning or that the progress of civilization must be stayed to await a new breed of man.