212 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



no reason for leaving the development of the executive powers to 

 the conditions outside of school that does not apply with equal 

 force to the culture of the receptive and reflective powers. Such 

 a course would do away with schools altogether. There are two 

 reasons that render the training of the executive powers of chil- 

 dren absolutely essential in a complete education : First, the re- 

 ceptive and reflective powers are really useful to the individual 

 and humanity only when they are made productive by executive 

 ability ; and, second, the training of the executive powers is the 

 only way by which the receptive and reflective powers can be 

 thoroughly cultivated. Nature's sequence is : Receive, reflect, use. 

 The first two steps must be imperfect without the third. The kin- 

 dergarten always completes the ascent; it never destroys the 

 unity of the trinity. 



The kindergarten makes children creative; or it is better to 

 say that it preserves and utilizes their creative powers. Men and 

 women were not intended to be mere imitators or servile followers 

 of other men and women. They should be independent, original, 

 creative. Man can not be creative as God is creative, but the 

 divine in each human being gives him power to be and do what 

 others have never been or done. There is something for each 

 of us to discover and reveal; something for each to produce; 

 something for each to add to the helpful agencies that serve to 

 make man happier ; something that will aid in the realization of 

 the highest hopes of the heart of humanity. The kindergarten 

 aims from the first to develop the truly productive more than the 

 reproductive tendencies and talents of the child. It makes chil- 

 dren not merely submissive and responsive, but suggestive, in- 

 ventive, creative. The schools and universities will learn to do so 

 in due time. 



The discipline of the kindergarten is natural. It is based on 

 love and executed by love. There is no heart whose feelings are 

 not purified and ennobled by the consciousness of the love of 

 another heart; no mind that is not aroused and stimulated to 

 grander efl'ort by the full sympathy of another mind. The young 

 heart yearns for the mother-love, and there is no other who could 

 make so perfect a teacher as the mother of the child to be taught, 

 if her education and her time were sufficient for the work. There 

 will come a time when noble mothers will train great daughters 

 and sons for humanity to a much greater extent than they do 

 now. As women more clearly realize their powers and their re- 

 sponsibilities, it will be impossible to satisfy them with the society 

 customs of semi-civilization. The social instinct has been terribly 

 degraded. The period of its ennobling is at hand, when social 

 unity shall in no sense be formalism. The kindergarten empha- 

 sizes the need of mother-love as an educational force. It does 



I 



