274 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



includes much more. It grows until it embraces the universe, and 

 the relation to others widens until, from a simple physical relation, 

 it involves the action of men on the highest plane of consciousness. 

 Education in man is to fit his offspring for all this — for the most 

 perfect attainable life in this complicated and ever-growing physical 

 and psychical environment. We have to educate for an essentially 

 new universe and the demand for studies that will be directly useful 

 in life, now becoming so energetic, while one strong expression of the 

 growing consciousness of this need is yet an utterly inadequate ex- 

 pression of it. 



Clearly, education through instinct, nature's way, becomes then 

 wholly insufficient for man. Its method of adaptation is too slow 

 when physical and psychical conditions change so rapidly. Besides, 

 it costs enormously. The herring lays twenty thousand eggs, the 

 oyster upwards of sixteen million, while the conger-eel requires the 

 enormous number of fifteen million annually to save itself from 

 annihilation. 14 Mar shall and Brooks estimate that if you start with 

 one oyster producing sixteen million eggs, half of which are females, 

 and let them go on increasing at the same rate for five years, there 

 would be oysters enough, if we estimate them as shells, to make a mass 

 more than eight times the size of the earth. 15 As we descend the 

 animal series these facts become still more startling. " Certain bac- 

 teria multiply so rapidly that the descendants of a single individual, 

 if allowed to multiply unhindered for three days, would be represented 

 by the figures 47,000,000,000,000." 16 



Among lower animals the individual is of little importance be- 

 cause infinite numbers can be produced, and the cost does not matter 

 much, but in the human world the individual has become of supreme 

 importance. It is costly to vitality to bring even one to maturity and 

 expensive in every way to train him. Besides, the worth of a human 

 being is recognized as permanent. A fine individual is of the highest 

 value to the whole. The best are pioneers to a higher level. Fine 

 individuals create a good society, and a superior society, in turn, is 

 a prime factor in the production of the finest individuals. 



With the lower animals the purpose is adaptation to environment, 

 a strictly biological end, but the growth of knowledge and culture has 

 introduced a higher element into human society which adaptation can 

 not fully satisfy. This is that man must always improve his environ- 

 ment. Character is not merely a matter of heredity, but of heredity 

 acted upon by environment. This is illustrated, on the one side, by the 

 Juke family, and on the other by the transformation wrought in boys of 



14 C. J. Marshall, "Lectures on the Darwinian Theory," New York, 1900, 

 p. 30. 



15 hoc. cit., pp. 39-40; W. K. Brooks, "The Oyster," p. 50. 

 10 H. W. Conn, "The Method of Evolution," p. 53. 



