Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/587

Rh note that the bellowing at once assumes, Mr. Hudson supposes that "their inherited memory associates the smell of blood with the presence among them of some powerful enemy," and that their attacks on each other result from the lack of any visible foe. This seems reasonable, and it might be worth while for Mr. Hudson to consider whether a better explanation of the excitement caused by red objects could not be found by connecting the impression produced by the sight of red—the color of blood—with that produced by the smell of blood. To the same blind terror and the same invisibility of cause is attributed the impulse of cattle to gore or trample to death a disabled companion—ability to discriminate between distress and the cause of distress being wanting. Of a very different origin is the persecution of the weakly members of a herd by the stronger. This comes from the instinct of self-preservation that prompts the individual animal to establish ascendency over as many of the herd as it can.

The Preparatory Stage in Education.—The young mind, with all its latent powers, with all its individual characteristics, is likened by President J. M. Coulter to an uncultivated field that must be drained and broken up and harrowed, to be ready for the seed; and the seed is one's specialty, which is to be planted when the ground is ready. This popular cry for a "practical education" asks us to omit the preparation of the soil and plant the seed at once, that there may be no loss of time. This figure seems to express the proper relationship between the general training or preparation which we call "education" and the special training or apprenticeship which looks directly to one's life-work. It is these two stages which are distinct in method and purpose that are ignored in the popular reasoning. One prepares the soil, the other sows the seed; the one reduces the metal, the other fashions it to its special use; the one develops the muscle, the other turns this developed power to some definite purpose; the one weaves the cloth, the other cuts and fits it. Think of shaping an axe from unreduced ore; of wielding a sledge-hammer with weak and flabby muscles; of cutting clothes from an unworked fleece, and you have the sort of reasoning used by "practical" men concerning what is called "practical" education. The author thinks it is apparent that mental muscle may be developed without a single item of information being obtained as such; and that it may often be cultivated in a pleasanter, more even, and scientific way, if the utilitarian idea of obtaining information be not constantly present. Education, then, being the development of mental muscle, the period of preparation, we are confronted with the question, "What is a practical education?" not in the popular meaning of the term, but really. Plainly, it is that kind of education which will bring about the development of this mental muscle, this preparation which is to bring ability to grasp one's specialty and the problems of life. Hence, studies become tools, the agricultural implements, not the seed; the means, not the end. No study in our ordinary, unprofessional schools has any right to be other than a means; the subject itself entirely lost sight of in its application; the grindstone forgotten in the sharpening of the tool.

The Uses of Potlatch.—The Northwestern Indian custom of potlatch, from Dr. Boaz's description of which in a report to the British Association we gave a condensed extract in the May number of the Monthly, is regarded by the Hon. Horatio Hale as something essentially different from the parade of wasteful and ostentatious profusion which it superficially appears to be. It is, he says, "a method most ingeniously devised for displaying merit, acquiring influence, and at the same time laying up a provision for the future. Among these Indians, as among all communities in which genuine civilization has made some progress, the qualities most highly esteemed in a citizen are thrift, forethought, and liberality. The thrift is exhibited by the collection of the property which is distributed at the gift-feast; the liberality is, of course, shown in its distribution; and the forethought is displayed in selecting as the special objects of this liberality those who are most likely to be able to return it. By a well-understood rule, which among these punctilious natives had all the force of a law of honor, every recipient of a gift at a potlatch was bound to return its value, at some future day, twofold.