128 cook: primitive social states 



between the parents and the children, for the families usually 

 separate for several months of the year, to plant their crops or 

 tend their herds. 



Agriculture is to be considered as the basis of civilization, not 

 only because it affords the physical support of civilized man, but 

 because it represents the condition of existence necessary for the 

 development of civilization. Farm life usually supplies both 

 society and solitude, the prime essentials of intellectual progress. 

 All of the highly civilized races seem to have developed their 

 powers during a primitive agricultural stage, preparatory to more 

 conspicuous exploits in other lines of activity, military, political, 

 industrial or artistic. The highest developments of specialized 

 arts are often attained after civilizations reach the urban stage, 

 but urban conditions are finally destructive of civilization. 



When people leave the land and become continuously occupied 

 with urban pursuits constructive contacts between parents and 

 children are at an end. The home may still supply food, lodging 

 and clothes, but other parental responsibilities are disregarded or 

 transferred to the school. The child really belongs to a group of 

 school children of his own age, rather than to a family group. 

 He spends all his active hours with the other children, thinks 

 their thoughts, speaks their language, and sees the world entirely 

 from their point of view. Under farm conditions the children 

 share in all the activities of their parents, instead of being rele- 

 gated to an artificial scholastic state, apart from the life of the 

 community. 



The school makes for progress when it serves to supplement the 

 parental contacts with other opportunities of learning. Civili- 

 zation is a synthetic process, as some ethnologists have pointed 

 out, but herding young children together does not advance civil- 

 ization. Compulsory instruction of parents in the interest of 

 home rearing of children would be a much wiser measure than 

 compulsory attendance at schools. The school becomes an agent 

 of disorganization when it weakens the family relations and gives 

 the child less than he might have obtained from his parents. The 

 juvenile savagery now recognized as a regular feature of our city 

 populations is not a normal state of the children of civilized races,. 



