Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/202

 188 w. H. WINCH: books ; free-trade all round ; work first, play afterwards. The surplus energy theory logically correlates with these concep- tions, and their outcome educationally was the exaltation of competitive examinations, and " payment by results ". Then came the dictum " Ontogeny repeats Phylogeny," the child passes through the stages which the race has passed through. Here we get a logical bifurcation, according as it is held that the child must pass through these stages at a certain rate, or that the child shall linger as short a time in primitive stages as possible. But, either way, such a theory requires that the spontaneous activities of childhood shall be recapitulatory. But both these great optimisms have given way. Neither unrestricted liberty nor equality in strife commend themselves to the thought of to-day. The survival of the fittest turns out to mean the survival of those who do survive, since that is the test of fitness. Though in the long run, as the eco- nomists say, national persistence may be the best test of all, yet, applied to our present town populations, we may be pardoned for not thinking too highly of the survivors. Moreover, limitations to biological recapitulation, physio- logical short-cuts and instinctive plasticity, rather than in- stinctive reflexiveness, are dominant notes of latter-day science. So that the educational justification of complete recapitu- lation is gone, and we need not regard impulse and instinct as divine guides to which exclusive attention must be given. But there is something on the other side. It is true, no doubt, as some recent work seems to show, that variation has a trend and is not entirely indifferent in direction, yet we lack that confidence in the inheritance of acquired char- acters which formed yet another strong support of mid- century optimism. The upward movement of men on the whole, which was to diminish the sphere of government and make democracy safe, does not seem to be taking place. Nature, not nurture, has again become the dominant part- ner, but Nature, no longer as a beneficent mother working wholly for good, but as a stern task-master whom we must obey that we may live ; but from whom, if we study him carefully, we may snatch here and there a little victory for our own ideals. And this view, I take it, has an exact application to the school work of to-day. Let us by all means study the spon- taneities of play ; no inductive work in this department can be thrown away, but to erect our empirical conclusions into pedagogical imperatives is fatal.