from constraint, laughing is an instinctive form of relaxation. It also has some primitive connections with the tickle sense, with play, and with the savage instinct of bullying. Even among the lower animals there are traces of mirth, smile, chuckle, and laugh. The sense for the humorous, in common with the other exalted powers of man, has a lineage that goes back to humble origins. An interesting passage on this point is quoted by Sully from an essay by George Eliot: "Strange as the genealogy may seem, the original parentage of that wonderful and delicious mixture of fun, philosophy, and feeling which constitutes modern humor was probably the cruel mockery of a savage at the writhings of a suffering enemy. Such is the tendency of things toward the better and more beautiful."

As in the race, so in the individual, the sense of humor is capable of development. From the clownish and sometimes savage fun of childhood to a gentle, sympathetic humor "saturated with reflection" is a long step, but not an impossible one. Even the great humorist Shakespeare had to elevate himself and his patrons from the lower levels to the higher. His early dramas, like "The Comedy of Errors" and "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," are full of buffoonery, mistaken identity, broad punning, and rustic horseplay. In his riper productions, like "Twelfth Night' and "The Tempest," the fool is philosopher and the jester exalted humorist. Can we not bring into child life more of this developing and developmental humor?

ee

The conservation of child life" is more than a phrase. It fully represents the deepest and most central of all problems and duties. We are not thinking of physical health only but also of psychic values. Physical health will always remain the first requisite, but life is more than circulation of healthy blood. The child will be a man, and

what will serve him best then are the generic qualities of childhood, elasticity and eagerness of spirit. The preservation of these qualities is the conservation of child life and should be the highest ideal of education.

As school and society are now constituted we can hardly behold the buoyancy and curiosity of a child without a vague dread that these life elements are probably doomed to die out. The school does not even consciously try to conserve them. All pedagogy is mainly bent on developing the virtues of obedience, accuracy, honesty, faithfulness in memory, faithfulness in conduct, skill in technique, perseverance, and a host of proprieties. Well and good, but it is significant that these virtues are the virtues of fixity, of mechanization, even of rigidity. In Royce's terminology, they are the virtues of docility but not of initiative.

No wonder that the schools turn out such large job lots of commonplaceness. We are not earnestly trying to preserve the most precious of life elements, the variant elements of enthusiasm and originality. The dullness, the routine, the solemnity, the inflexibility of the schools, kill initiative.

If we make a rough inventory of the larger mental traits which every grown person ought to have for his own happiness and that of others, we surely must add many traits to the docility list given above. What this old world needs, in addition to the "training" of mind and morals, is a greater fund of untrained elastic spirit, flexible enough to take fresh, unbigoted attitudes toward things and problems. Let us try to enumerate some of these nondocility traits: toleration; resourcefulness in work, play, leisure; genial interest in the commonest things of life; ability to see the point; adaptability to new and suddenly shifting situations; a sense for disproportion and keenness to see through the unwarranted pretensions of others; capacity to laugh aright

at self and others; control over sensitiveness. (A silly, semijealous sensitiveness is one of the most universal causes for trouble in this world, a human trait on which a bulky sociological treatise might be written.)

These qualities, though they do not have much recognition in the textbooks of ethics and the current discussions of moral education, are of highest ethical import and value. To say that these fine qualities can be learned only in the school of life, and not in the life of the school, is pedagogical pessimism. The life of the school can be made rich and free enough to nourish them all.

There is a marked and wholesome tendency in current thought which is casting suspicion on the whole value of the first years of primary-school education. We hear it said that it would be just as well, or better, if the child did not go to school at all until he is ten years old or more. But the last word on this great subject has not been said. The child life of rich and poor alike will suffer atrophy if opportunities for expression and imitation at home are limited. It is not so much a question of home versus school as right atmosphere and healthful surroundings. Even in the primary schools it is not so much a question of upsetting the whole curriculum as revolutionizing the spirit and method of conducting the school. We have tried all along to show how the humble materials in the reach of every teacher,drawing, reading, writing, handwork, and even trivial busywork, every occupation of the school, can be hygienically used to develop the child, to speed the growth of his free and conquering spirit. If this cannot be done, let us say that Rousseau was right, and turn the little colts out to pasture and be done with it.

But while the primary school exists it must have lifegiving breath for the spirit of its children. The thick fogs

of formalism must pass out of the windows, and the saving sense of humor must enter. Humor is a large, life-giving trait, bound up with play, sympathy, and insight. It is related to the relaxation reflexes, which have a biological origin and a psycho-physiological protective function. It is a natural means of conserving the intellectual quality of mental pliancy and the ethical quality of elasticity of spirit. It is a saving sense, and as such has an important office in the hygiene of mind and in an educational policy of conservation.

CHAPTER XXVI

FORMALISM AND CHILD PERSONALITY

The overzealous parent at the door and the relentless timepiece on the wall conspire to keep an artificially precocious atmosphere in the primary school. Order, system, detail, and prescription have replaced spontaneity, grace, initiative, and investigation. The spirit of childhood languishes, and in its place stalk the stern figures of propriety and formalism. Children are variable, inconstant, and unstable; like birds on the wing they dart hither and thither, glad of the very air they breathe. They work intensively, unevenly, in short periods of effort, and flourish in freedom rather than in confinement. Mood, the unerring guide of childhood, may not be grafted on from the outside, but must spring from a joyous, inward response to a frank, healthy, childlike atmosphere.

How often the most promising child in the room is thwarted in his growth by the incessant inhibition and prescription of the early grades. The eager, questioning, imaginative child cannot endure the dull tedium of perfunctory instruction. He wants to express rather than to be always impressed. Life is new and invites exploration. He is not willing to memorize and visualize the symbols while the warm, living things which they represent are touching his elbow.

We have in mind a little ragged, eager boy whom the schools are robbing of his most precious gifts. He commits the sin of talking out, for his responses are quick, sudden,