It is well to observe the weather, the marvelous changes of cloud and sky wrought by wind and rain and sunshine, and while doing this to read and memorize Shelley's "Cloud," or Moore's lines beginning:

"O God, thou art the life and light

Of all this wondrous world we see."

or Shakespeare's sonnet

"Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovran eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy."

The highest function of literature is to illumine the common things of life and to point out the ever present analogy between the things we see with our eyes and our own spiritual aspirations and experiences, and this can be made plain to children in correlation with nature study more readily perhaps than in any other way.

Résumé. The aims of all method in nature study should be: (1) to acquaint the children with nature as it is, as God made it; (2) to show them its relations to men, how they have modified it, for what purpose and with what rights, to the end that children may become lovers of nature and wise in its use; and (3) to show the spiritual significance of the natural world, its laws, its phenomena, its modes of life.

"To him who in the love of Nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware."

- BRYANT.

CHAPTER XX

PHYSIOLOGY

THE subject of physiology in a course of study for public schools should properly be considered among the natural sciences. But its position in our schools is so peculiar, because of an anomalous and to a degree artificial correlation with ethics and politics, that it seems necessary to treat it as constituting a class by itself.

Analysis of the Subject. Human physiology is the science of the human body considered as a living organism. It deals with the functions of the various organs and rests upon anatomy, which treats of the structure of the body as a whole and of its different parts. Anatomy may be learned directly and completely from the study of dead bodies. As physiology deals with life, it can be studied properly only in living organisms.

Hygiene is a corollary of physiology. Its function is to show how the various organs of the body may be made to perform their functions in a normal manner. Its province is the laws of health. The order of importance of these subjects, to children especially, is (1) Hygiene, (2) Physiology, (3) Anatomy. The educational order is the same.

Even quite young children can be taught profitably such simple laws of health as the importance of cleanliness and the danger of eating certain things, such as unripe fruit. Later, with the growth of curiosity, not only

may the list of laws be extended, but reasons for some of them may be given, thus leading naturally to some of the facts of physiology. Later yet, even some anatomical facts can be made to serve a definite hygienic purpose, and thus anatomy may come in at the right time and by the right door.

Errors in Treatment. This inductive treatment of the subject, in obedience to the laws of mental growth, seems so simple that one might expect to find it in our schools. But, strangely enough, the psychological laws obeyed in treating other sciences are ignored when the subject is the human body. In the primary grades the instruction, as indicated by the textbooks, consists in giving information about the body, chiefly anatomical, almost always uninteresting, and often misleading, interspersed with perfunctory advice in regard to hygiene and alcohol. The scientific method of the nature study lesson upon bird, beast, bug, or plant appears nowhere.

In the higher grades, especially the high school, again anatomy is to the fore with scalpel, microscope, and acid bottle. In very few schools is the wonderful and beautiful human body, a living organism manifesting in every part adaptability, symmetry, and usefulness, so studied as to inspire respect and to suggest powerfully to the children normal health and beauty, and to secure obedience to the laws of health because of the innate dignity and worth of the body, the home of the soul.

Legislative Meddling. How far this perversion of the subject, this retention of a method of instruction long since discarded in nearly every other subject, is due to legislative meddling it is impossible to say. Unques

tionably, however, to a considerable degree the wellintended efforts of good people to secure a certain amount and kind of catechetical instruction in a subject of great ethical importance, by force of law inserted into the physiology books, has led both authors and teachers away from a sane and well-balanced view of the subject. The necessary artificiality and cumbersomeness of a part of the book has naturally affected the remaining parts.

Two Points of View. There are two points of view from which the subject may be considered, and in planning a course of instruction both must be used. One is scientific, the other practical. The former considers the human body as in itself a proper object of study from the biological point of view like any other body. The other, regarding chiefly hygiene, has to do with the care of the body so that it may continue in a healthy state and may perform its functions normally.

The acceptance of two points of view, while broadening, is at the same time confusing. The question really is where to place the stress. If hygiene is kept in prominent relief before the eyes of the children, with science as a mere incident, getting its value from its relations to hygiene, we have one sort of results. If science is the manifest chief aim, with hygiene as a somewhat incidental though important corollary, we secure a quite different result. Which shall it be? Surely no thoughtful teacher can be in doubt.

Dangers from Wrong Emphasis. I am not sure but complete neglect of the subject would be better than a constant authoritative iteration of so-called laws of health. In the first place the "laws" whose efficacy is unquestioned are very few and can be taught simply,

without spending much time and without the cumbersomeness and the wastefulness incident to the usual teaching of " physiology" in the common school. To do more than this, with the stress on hygiene, is to center the thoughts of children altogether too much upon their own bodies, by the influence of suggestion, and to cause the very evils it is desired to prevent. Excessive bodily self-consciousness is dangerous at any age. The unhappy hypochondriacs and the innumerable victims of all sorts of quackeries are largely men and women who have acquired the habit of giving constant attention to the "laws of health." The thoroughly healthy person thinks little of either health or of possible disease. With children, excessive bodily self-consciousness produces even worse results. It arouses a morbid curiosity as to vital and sexual facts before they come normally into consciousness, and tends very definitely and surely to indecent and immoral practices.

Untimely Knowledge. - I have considerable sympathy with the good woman who wrote to a teacher: "Please excuse Jennie from physiology. I don't think it is nice for her to learn about her insides." Even important truths learned at the wrong time and without proper setting may be very mischievous. To this class belongs much of the information given to young children under the guise of "hygiene," relating to adult life and adult conditions, and not comprehensible by young children without distortion. This is the real ground for objection to the extreme requirements of the laws in some States regarding the teaching of " temperance hygiene." They overdo their office, so that children are supplied with facts, not only unnecessary to temperance or even total