outpouring of genius, and of joyous and willing workers.

Crime will be abolished because the wrong mental impressions will not be allowed to cause the child to stumble, and his soul unfettered will run its full course. The subconscious mind will be full of "robes of righteousness" which like garments for the journey will wear to the end.

OBEDIENCE AND EFFICIENT TRAIN

ING FOR DEMOCRACY

WHILE the English speaking mind for several hundred years has been faithfully ridding itself of the medieval conception of obedience to arbitrary authority as a moral virtue, the adhesion appears greatest at the very place where it should be least desirable.

This same conception of obedience is dominant at the very source of the social organism. Across the mental horizon of the vast majority of those who have to do with children, may be found the trail of the ancient mistake that there is more in the inherent relation of parent or teacher to child than protection and direction on the one hand, and the need of the same on the other. We are obsessed with the inherited assumption that there is a divine right of parents analogous to the divine right of kings, to obedience. This assumption complicates a very simple situation-introduces an extraneous factor into the relation of the adult to the child, and destroys the only subconsciousness that is possible to our philosophy

of government.

The experience of the baby as he gropes for the relations of his physical environment is typical of normal discipline. His environment is determined for him. He is not set free with little bare feet in a yard covered with broken glass and rusty nails. But in proper conditions, and within limits, he is left to make his own adjustments. If he bumps his head against the wall because he did not know that it afforded a barrier to his progress, he encounters no superfluous wrath. The wall does not fall down upon him, neither do you throw down a piece of it upon his poor little head. He is not punished for his lack of knowledge or deprived of his power to acquire it.

In the matter of his social adjustments, this manner of dealing with the child is most scientific and efficient as regards the democratic ideal. When modern psychology has sufficiently illuminated the educational process, it will be seen that the whole duty of the adult world toward the child consists in creating the right environment for him, that is, the right home and the right school, and then, setting him free.

Let no one imagine that he sees, in this method, future radical departures from social moorings. If the most ardent traditionist in the world wished

to find a sure safeguard for his traditions, he need only turn them loose with children who are free to act upon their own initiative.

For the initiative of a free child always takes the form of elaborating the established order. The most casual observer of children cannot fail to see that a child is a stickler for precedent. The merest two-year-old seizes, by the trousers leg, his father who has thoughtlessly lain his hat upon the table, and pulls him in the direction of the hall-tree.

The usual is the moral to the child. One child stares with wide frightened eyes at the sound of "swear words." The child of a different environment is accosted by a pious person and upon being asked if he swears replies innocently and apologetically, "Ain't much of a hand at it myself," then turning to his chum of whose accomplishments he infers that he may be proud, says, "Cuss for her Jimmie."

When the educational problem resolves itself into the effort to create the proper environment for the child, in short, to turn him loose with the right stimuli, we have a sequence that is threefold. (1) There is eliminated the clumsy, unscientific, cart-before-the-horse method of forcing the child to do what he would do anyway. (2) There is preserved in its simplicity the funda

mental relation between parent and child. (3) There is not introduced at the stage of social adjustment, by our treatment of him, a brood of subconscious impressions that serve to abnormalize the whole democratic ideal.

No one can have been the docile subject of arbitrary and external authority without having ingrained the disposition to rule others as he has been ruled. The film of the subconscious faithfully reproduces a series of situations between parent and child in which the superfluous factor, arbitrary force, is always the conspicuous one.

We find ourselves, in more than one respect, at the mercy of this subconscious tendency. How often do we find ourselves trying to force others to our conclusions by something more emphatic than reason. Had we been permitted to make our own mental adjustments we should have acquired mental poise that would have expressed itself in being able to hold our own faith calmly, sweetly, independently. As it is, we must go across the road and rub our beliefs into our neighbor, and he in his turn must rub his into us, both being more concerned with the rubbing in process than with the faith itself.

Men find themselves being ordered about by political bosses and capable of assuming the same prerogatives when their turn comes. The men