Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/738

 722 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

II. In a first and rough approximation, it may be taken that the middle term between science and policy is potency. The concep- tion of potency presents itself to us with a reality and force pro- portional to the frequency and intensity of our first-hand, imme- diate, and direct contact with nature. The conception doubtless reaches a vanishing-point in the mind of that urban breed of domesticated animals which is cut off from nature by the continu- ous confinement in the cages called town houses. This variety of animal degenerates into a sort of city subnatural species, with supernatural cravings. The city in its evolution is, of course, a natural phenomenon. But within the city the barriers between man and nature are numerous and formidable. Among the dwellers in the cities it is probable that the only persons who are in habitual contact with nature are mothers and poets. To the mother the infant is an embodiment and epitome of all the potencies of nature. The baby, as has been well said, is a bundle of potencies. Its development through adolescence to maturity is the realization of its potency for evolution or for degeneration. The process of growth is, in the proper sense of the word, the education of the child ; that is to say, the drawing-out of its poten- cies. In its training and education the primary factors are three. These are the hereditary predispositions of the child, the resources available for its education, and finally the ideals of the mother. It is the last which is perhaps the most important for the progress of culture ; for, of the three factors, the ideal of the mother is the most variable, the most modifiable, and therefore the most sub- ject to control and guidance. The mother's ideal is a compound of types of humanity that have most appealed to her in actual life, in romance, and in history. In other words, it is, whether she knows it or not, the historic or racial imagination of the mother that determines her ideals. She directs the education of her child toward her personal ideals of strength, of health, and wealth; toward her personal ideals of beauty in person, of wisdom in thought, of.goodness in deed. And in proportion as these differ- ent aspects of the mother's ideal of manhood and womanhood harmonize into an imaginative unity, a synthetic reality, in that