56 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



accumulated science is clearly a system whicli proceeds upon this 

 universal principle of development. / 



We liave said that the reflection of the time-spirit which edu- 

 cation represents is always and necessarily a somewhat retarded 

 image. It follows the time-spirit. It can not precede it. But 

 were this all, the problem of education would be vastly easier 

 than at present. Fallen as we are upon a scientific age, it would 

 be a comfort to believe that the image of it shown in education 

 would surely conform to it, however slowly. But unfortunately 

 the plate upon which this reflection is thrown is far from free. It 

 bears already the deep impressions of many previous images. At 

 any moment our education reflects not only the living Zeit- 

 geist, but also, and even more clearly, the dead standards of a 

 long past. It is seldom that a man arises among us who has suffi- 

 ciently clear vision to distinguish these several images and apply 

 the upper one to the needs of childhood. It is comparatively easy 

 to refute a sophistry with a new face. It is tremendously diffi- 

 cult to escape the power of a sophistry to which you have been 

 born, and in the presence of whose illogic you have always lived. 

 It takes genius to escape. 



But suppose now for one brief moment that we could apply a 

 sponge to this complex plate of ours not from the front, for that 

 would remove the image we most wish to preserve ; but from the 

 back, removing image after image until we came to the last and 

 uppermost what do you think we should remove, and what let 

 stand, in our current education ? I think we should erase much 

 and leave but little. Let us see. 



The human infant is a much less complex thing than we are 

 wont to think. It is plastic and general; for the most part a 

 mere bundle of possibilities. And we stand to it in the relation 

 of Fate or Destiny. We have given to us a tiny organism with 

 little individual will or intelligence. The influences to which we 

 subject this organism constitute the educative process. 



There are two elements to be considered. First of all, there is 

 wrapped up in this tiny ball of organized matter an inherent 

 tendency more inexorable than the predestination taught by 

 Calvin. We call it heredity. It is the gift, for good or ill, of 

 fathers and great-grandfathers, of mothers and great-grandmoth- 

 ers, for many generations back. The fairy godmothers who come 

 in the story book to every child's christening represent a scien- 

 tific fact. The talents they bestow, the fatal limitations they 

 inflict, are not by chance. They are the qualities of ancestry. 



A system of education neglecting this element of heredity 

 neglects a determining cause, and is fundamentally unscientific. 

 But it is an element largely beyond the control of the teacher. 

 All he can do is to develop these germs, or discourage them, as 



