2 1 6 THE NA TURE-STUD Y RE VIE W | 3 . 8 -nov., . 9 o 7 



are coming to believe it and to desire for their children certain 

 advantages of education which perhaps they themselves did not 

 have. Not only is the necessity of technical education for money 

 earning and physical education for bodily development realized, 

 but also the equal necessity of an education that shall harden the 

 moral fibre, so to speak. Man sees today with a long eye. He 

 knows very well that ulcers will destroy unless cured. So he is 

 restless in the face of the tremenduous. misuse of power taking 

 place in every direction from the government of the municipality 

 to the self-government of the individual. What can he do to 

 escape the threatened destruction? How can he fortify his 

 children against the ever-increasing dangers? What can he do 

 towards removing those dangers? These are the questions he is 

 continually asking himself. 



One great problem, among the many problems of social life, 

 always remains — others change their form and pass on — this 

 neither changes nor passes. It is the problem, broadly stated, of 

 the conservation of the creative energy. This energy, which is 

 the greatest dynamic force of the universe, wrongly applied is the 

 most destructive agent in society; and because of the sovereign 

 necessity of its exercise becomes in a necessarily restricted and 

 artificial social organization like our own. a menace to the physical 

 and moral health of the community. 



How then is this danger to be averted ? This sovereign power 

 applied to save instead of destroy the higher civilization, upon 

 the outer rim of which man seems now to stand, looking forward? 

 Undoubtedly the prevailing idea must be changed. The idea of 

 the barbarian, the savage, the physical man, must be replaced by 

 the idea of the new man, the man about to be civilized, the pro- 

 phet, if you please. 



Superstitions die slowly, particularly those that encourage 

 self-indulgence. Consequently the rising civilization, in order to 

 rise, has to face and strangle the most deep-seated and deadly of 

 all superstitions — that of the necessity, or, at least the unavoid- 

 ability, of perverting the physical creative power, and the new 

 idea on this subject must be planted in the mind of the child, it 

 must grow with his growth, sink into his sub-consciousness, as it 

 were. 



Heretofore this subject has, as a rule, been dealt with inade- 

 quately, if at all, in the home. Too often it has not been dealt 



