hodge] HUMAN INTEREST AND NATURE-STUDY 407 



the period of lowest savagery, when men lived solely by hunting, 

 fishing and browsing — brute beasts live on this level, and always 

 will — offers relatively little of educational suggestion, except, 

 possibly that we "accelerate" the child's safe emergence from this 

 stage. 



Chief educational significance attaches to the steps by which 

 man worked his way upward toward civilized relations to nature. 

 The first great step consisted in taming certain animals. This is 

 called by Shaler (in his Domesticated Animals) the greatest step 

 of the human race toward civilization. This work is only well 

 begun, and we need just now to extend this beneficent relation to 

 cover many of our valuable birds and other insectivorous animals 

 to save our insect tax of about one-seventh of our agricultural 

 produce. 



The final step into, essentially civilized relations to nature was 

 cultivation of plants. , Here we first get stable land-hold and along 

 with this develop the ideas of "Home" and "Country" — with love 

 of home and love of country. With increased food supply, too, 

 come stable community life, differentiations of occupation, manu- 

 factures and inventions, commerce, literature, art and finally 

 science. And, again, our agriculture at its best is still in its crude 

 beginnings with most inspiring possibilities of improvement 

 ahead. 



When we consider these fundamental relations we begin to see 

 why elementary education is turning into these channels — animal 

 industry, agriculture, and garden lessons, and we are assured that 

 at last nature study has come to its own in the perennially vital 

 and universal human interests by which nature always has and 

 always will support and evolve the life of mankind. 



Our public schools are not fancy-work circles nor art clubs; 

 they are not scientific academies or even natural history societies. 

 In their work of holding life true to nature their function is much 

 deeper than any or all of these combined. The school course in 

 nature study should do just one thing, i. e., bring very child into 

 essentially civilized relations to nature. As Huxley put it; "To 

 learn what is true, in order to do what is right." And Herbert 

 Spencer means the same thing when he says: "To prepare us for 

 complete living is the function which education has to discharge." 

 And since the essence of life as far as we can know it is "Response 

 to the order of nature," the higher and more perfect the response, 



