EVOLUTION AND SIGNIFICANCE OF CEREBRAL CORTEX 313 



through the reflex machinery of the brain stem, and it must not 

 be forgotten in our pedagogy that this relation holds in a much 

 more vital and significant sense in the formative years of the 

 child. It is true that the child is born with no mental endow- 

 ments; but how rich is his inheritance in other respects! He has 

 an immense capital of preformed and innate ability which takes 

 the form of physiological vigor and instinctive and impulsive 

 actions, performed for the most part automatically and uncon- 

 sciously. This so-called lower or animal nature is ever present 

 with us. In infancy it is dominant; childhood is a period of 

 storm and stress, seeking an equilibrium between the stereotyped 

 but powerful impulsive forces and the controls of the nascent 

 intellectual and moral nature; and in mature years one's value in 

 his social community life is measured by the resultant outcome of 

 this great struggle in childhood and adolescence. This struggle 

 is education. 



The answer to the riddle of life, however, lies not in a success- 

 ful attack upon the native innate endowments of the child. No, 

 that would be unbiological and wasteful, for our world of ideas 

 and morals is no artificial world within the cosmos, but it is a 

 natural growth, which is as truly a part of the cosmic process as 

 are "ape and tiger methods" of evolution. No higher association 

 center of the human brain can function except upon materials of 

 experience furnished to it through the despised lower centers of 

 the reflex type. So also, no high intellectual, esthetic, or moral 

 culture can be reached save as it is built upon the foundation of 

 innate capacities and impulses. 



We are gradually learning through the kindergarten that the 

 most economical way to lead a child into the realm of learning is 

 not to stamp out all of his natural interests and shut him up with 

 his face to the wall, while he learns by rote an a-b-c lesson which 

 is neither interesting nor useful. On the contrary, we accept as 

 given his native impulses and automatisms, his spontaneous 

 interests and his overproduction of useless movements, and we 

 use these as the capital with which we set the youngsters up in 

 the serious business of the acquisition of culture. But how does 

 it happen that we make so small use of the principles here learned 

 in the later years of the child's schooling? 

 - Not all of the instincts with which man is by nature endowed 



