Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/367

Rh should have been error, that something of tradition has held a sway beyond reason, and that much of existing methods are an inheritance from an outgrown past. It is not to be wondered if criticism has arisen. The wonder is that it has not come sooner and been more fierce. If one compares the civilization of even the most enlightened nation of antiquity with that of the present day; if with this survey he includes that of prevalent ideals and methods of education; if, indeed, he compares conditions in pagan Greece and Rome with the latter under the sway of the monasticism of later centuries, it will be less surprising that there arose the condition known as the "dark ages," which dominated both state and church, and school as well, for more than a thousand years. Without indifference to the good which may have endured in spite of dominant ills in the educational ideal and aim of those times it is still high time that they be estimated at their real worth and discounted according to their inadequacy in relation to present-day conditions and needs.

Through just what means the desired betterment may best be realized may still be an open question. There are those who will continue to regard it as a philosophical problem. But there are others, and their numbers are multiplying, who look upon the problem as one open to scientific and experimental solution. The writer assumes the biological point of view without hesitation or apology. He believes that whatever ideals one may assume it must be more or less evident that man, the subject of these ideals, is involved in those common relationships and laws which condition all organic nature. His growth, both physical and mental, is also conditioned by the same laws. Furthermore, it is probably beyond serious dispute that man in his entirety—bod}-, mind or spirit—is a unity; that all his powers are so correlated that it is not possible for us to isolate them for any such artificial object as that of conventional education. The older notion of mind as an entity, distinct and independent of body or natural relations, an occupant of the "tenement of clay," may still be a fruitful theme for the metaphysician, but it is without significance in any sound philosophy or science of education. "Whether one may accept the purely neurological view that all mentality is potential in the metabolism of nerve cells he can hardly doubt their intimate correlations.

Therefore, whether for better or worse, under the biological assumption, the methods of education, whether of body or mind, whether for mental or physical efficiency, must be those of the living world. In this view there is nothing essentially novel. In many of our educational processes, sometimes consciously, oftener otherwise, there has been at work these vital principles. Galton's appeal has been already cited. The whole program of eugenics is but another aspect of the application of the same conception. With this much accepted let attention be directed without further digression to the main aspect of our problem.