THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE 133 



superficiality still more wide-spread and debilitating than it is now? 

 Not at all. Paradoxical as it may seem, the very conditions that would 

 produce a broader knowledge of living things would make that knowl- 

 edge more accurate and penetrating. 



Once see clearly how much more educational effort can accomplish 

 with small children when it takes advantage of curiosity about, and 

 spontaneous interest in, nature, than when it tries to compel interest, 

 and one of the main ways of escape from the difficulty here indicated 

 will have been found. As to more advanced youths and adults, the 

 belief is altogether too widely and influentially held that interest in 

 nature is more dependent upon continuous work with and exhaustive 

 knowledge of the particular sections of nature concerned, than is actu- 

 ally the case. Under the guidance of a free and expansive general 

 theory of living nature a keen and genuinely elevating interest in a 

 vast range of things about which one's technical knowledge is rather 

 meager, is undoubtedly possible. 



The dread of superficiality entertained by professional biologists, 

 while justifiable to a certain extent, is yet often strongly tinctured with 

 the notion that profundity of knowledge means knowledge of the deeply 

 located parts of organisms; and contrariwise, that any knowledge of 

 the exterior, easily visible parts and activities is superficial. This 

 tincturing is another of the results of the bad metaphysics already 

 referred to. 



But perhaps the most important consideration under this head con- 

 cerns the powers of men. Human beings are indeed limited in capacity. 

 No one can learn or do everything. Yet exactly where are the bounds 

 of human capacity? What psychologist has determined accurately the 

 utmost limits of the power of acquisition by any given human mind? 

 When we ascribe limitations to the powers of the mind it is vitally 

 important that we measure our words. There is a vast difference be- 

 tween recognizing that limits do exist and knowing just where they are. 



Such expressions as " we can do anything we really want to do," 

 and " we can do what we must do," though so long familiar in common 

 life, are only now coming to scientific definiteness of meaning in 

 psychology and biology. We must presently become aware that the 

 discovery of the unused spiritual and physical capacities of the human 

 being is of transcendent importance ; and but for the circumstance that 

 our dominant biological philosophy has had no use for, and hence no 

 interest in, the facts, it would be surprising that so little notice has 

 been taken of them. 



Who that has had anything to do with children has not noticed the 

 facility with which they learn certain things, which they take up all 

 by themselves, and which it seems there is no reason why they should 

 learn? Conspicuous illustrations before us everywhere in the United 



