little ones in my name receiveth me."

The path of life for the little child is the path of the nerve fibre which threads its devious winding way from the sense organ to the brain, bringing knowledge of the Lord's good earth and the fullness thereof-its flowers rich and rare-fragrance exquisite and pure-its wondrous fullness of light and color and song. All these things must enter the heart of the child by way of the "reflex arc." Music must vibrate along this path of life. All impressions must enter the same way. And impressions are the stuffs that desire is made of, that will is made of, that intellect is made of.

Impressions are gained through the activity of the senses and through muscular contact with the outside world.

It is because children love life and desire abundant life that they are so omnivorously hungry for experience with the objects about them. It is the plan of the Creator that His children should have abundant life. Then why thwart the impulses of children? To reach out impulsively is for them to live! Life is feeling, desire, will, purpose. To thwart a child's joy in effort, to make him a colorless, nondescript individual is to unfit him for citizenship in a democracy. He will be another of those who are driven to their work by the force of circumstances, instead of

led to it by the impulse of self-expression, and he will always have a grievance against the world. To kill a child's initiative is to cripple his will and to inhibit genius, to make of him a blank nonentity or to leave him with a small remnant of mediocrity. The mother who said that her child had his life before him did not take into account the way "life" is gained. She did not know that denial of abundant life to the child meant sorrow and failure and loss to the man. It was the blunder of the pre-psychological age that it failed to conform to the laws of mental growth. It is the crime of the age that has read Ribot and learned that attention is a motor process.

One day last summer we were obliged, because of a stalled car, to retrace our way for several miles along a country road. We told the fiveyear-old child of the party that he need not walk farther than he wanted to, before stopping to rest, and that we would all sit down, and wait for him to get ready to walk some more. After a very few yards of aimless trudging aimless to him because he did not know where he was going, or why he was going, or what he had come for— the child got very tired. Every movement of his body and the whole aspect of his little face denoted extreme fatigue. We sat down to rest with

him very often, but the intervals during which his strength would hold out became shorter and shorter. Finally the road ran along side of some land from which stone had been gathered and heaped up. We sat down to rest near one of the stone piles. And then the little boy began to occupy himself with the stones. There was not a

minute of the time while we waited that he was not climbing up one side of the rough stone pile and down the other. He exerted himself much more than when walking and yet he was so "rested" when we started on again that he walked with head erect and eager step. He espied another stone pile in the distance and hastened forward with a livelier pace than we wanted to go, that he might reach it and rest after the same manner as before. Interest and desire had touched the springs of energy and determination.

The incident just described does not reveal a fact that has never been observed before. There is nothing new about this phase of child life. That which is new is the modern attitude toward it. We have ceased to quarrel with the fact. We have ceased to taunt the child with it. As though he could help it that he has plenty of strength for his spontaneous activities and little for the tasks we force him to perform! The educators have joined the group of scientists when, like the

mechanic, the electrician, the agriculturist, they have begun to conform to natural law.

The gardener does not quarrel with nature. If a certain exposure, degree of moisture or kind of fertilizer is conducive to growth, he accepts the situation without cavil.

He is guided by the signs of growth. He has no prescription for the mysterious thing itselfinvisible, inscrutable power-but he knows that when fresh, vigorous stalk, and delicately curling leaf meet his eye, when fragrance is present, that the plant is growing.

The educator has become humble and cautious like the scientist. Shall we not expect that parents be guided by the signs of growth? When interest is present, when feeling is present, when desire is present, the whole personality of the child is growing. Energy is at work building up that nervous structure that is called the brain. We have an idea of what will be favorable to growth in the plant, but we wait, we watch, we compare results. If the signs are bloom and fragrance we know that though we have not penetrated into the mystery of hidden forces of growth, we are working with them. That is why the school system is henceforth to be for the child, not the child for the system. We modify our plans according to the signs. As the gardener

dreads the sight of withering leaf and drooping stalk, of blossoms dead in the bud, so the educator dreads the flagging of interest, knowing that it means spent energy and burnt out cell. In the lagging step, the reluctant young face, the enervated muscle, do you see signs of anything, oh mothers? Do you not see signs of the spent cell, retarded growth, the atrophy of those delicate elusive fibres that were about to establish associations in the brain? We know enough to recognize the physically dead child. The sight of the stiff, stark little form fills us with unspeakable grief. In the paralysis of childish enthusiasm we are made aware, only in a less degree, of spent energy and burnt out cell.

The child comes to you with his flushed face, his bright eyes, his eager hope. In the thwarting of his desire you bring about the relaxed muscle, the suspension of blood supply, the slackening of nervous tension. The subtle connection that was to have been made under this stimulus of spontaneous instinct is not made,* and in so far as it is not, the mind is left a stark dead thing.

Since our duty to the growing plant and the growing child is the same-to keep them growing; since our supreme duty as parents and educators is to supply the conditions of growth, we

*Ribot on "Attention."