4i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



teacher fails utterly to appreciate, nay often deliberately excommuni- 

 cates ! The adult, as a rule, by reason of his own artificially produced 

 'normality/ neglects or represses those 'genial moments' of childhood, 

 which are kith and kin with the ' inspiration ' and ' intoxication ' of 

 those greatest of the race whom we recognize sooner or later as true 

 geniuses. Another characteristic of childhood is the rapidity with 

 which the change from play to rest, from brilliancy to apparent 

 stupidity, from action to inaction bodily and mental can be 

 made, and vice versa. This is particularly noticeable in American 

 school-children, whose power of summoning up their reserve knowledge 

 or strength (often with almost entire neglect of regular training) 

 is remarkable. The records of the amateur dramatics, of the young 

 people's associations of all kinds, religious as well as secular, of sports 

 and games (here the English boy and girl count too) even, amply 

 demonstrate this. Time and again has the instructor, driven to despair 

 by the neglect, inattention and apparent stupidity of those in his 

 charge, been moved to admiration by their performances when the 

 critical moment arrived. This power of childhood, too, has been largely 

 overlooked, or unavailed of, unappealed to, in our schools, where the 

 desire has always been to make sure of the accomplishment of the task 

 set by actual demonstration of the pupil's parts, rather than, by 

 indirection, to make sure that the latent genius will, in the right set- 

 ting, assert itself in a fashion unattainable by the mere artificialities 

 of hetero-persuasion and compulsion. In this respect we have still 

 much to learn from the philosophy of primitive peoples. 



Woman. — At first blush woman would seem to be an exception to 

 the theory outlined in these pages. The popular saying has it ' woman's 

 work is never done,' and Professor 0. T. Mason* has shown the im- 

 mense amount of labor of all sorts, from the care of the tribal religion 

 to the merest drudgery, that has been performed by her. Says Have- 

 lock Ellis:* "The tasks which demand a powerful development of 

 muscle and bone, and the resulting capacity for intermittent spurts 

 of energy, involving corresponding periods of rest, fall to the man ; the 

 care of the children and all the very various industries which radiate 

 from the hearth, and which call for an expenditure of energy more 

 continuous but at a lower tension, fall to the woman." But he admits 

 that 'the exceptions are very numerous.' And woman has been so 

 long under an artificial regime inspired bv man's belief in her in- 

 feriority that many of the phenomena of work are with her no longer 

 naive, natural or strictly evolutional in character. The women of the 

 Seris, e. g., possess a good deal of the marked characteristics of the 

 men in respect to intense activity, continued rest and rapid transition 



•'Woman's Share in Primitive Culture' (N. Y., 1894). 

 * 'Man and Woman' (London, 1894), p. 1. 



