474 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



all the higher animals ; and while the infant is crawling on all 

 fours like an animal, it possesses only these animal faculties of 

 mind. As the child obtains the erect posture and the fore 

 limbs are dissociated from progression, it begins to acquire the 

 human faculties of forming concepts and of giving expression 

 to them by speech, the primary incitation of which is hearing; 

 and later writing, reading, and measurements of time and space, 

 in which vision plays a dominant part, are acquired. As these 

 human faculties are evolved, so the processes of abstract 

 thought and reasoning by associative memory of symbols — par- 

 ticularly in a cultured and civilised environment — gradually 

 tend to replace in the child associative memory of concrete 

 images. I have already alluded to the importance of freedom 

 from restraint to the child's natural instincts of curiosity and 

 play, and Mr. Edmond Holmes, in What Is and What Might Be ; 

 A Study of Education in General, and Elementary Education in 

 Particular, says : " There is nothing that a healthy child hates 

 so much as to have the use of his natural faculties and the play 

 of his natural energies unduly restricted by pedagogic and 

 parental control." We should indeed recognise that one of the 

 child's greatest assets is its childishness. It should be interested 

 in its lessons because it enjoys them, and not to win prizes and 

 rewards, which in a number of instances only indicates an 

 ability to receive, retain, and retail information. Knowledge in 

 later life will be its own reward, ignorance its own punishment. 



Holmes asks : " Does elementary education, as at present 

 conducted in this country, tend to foster the growth of the 

 child's faculties?" According to Holmes the answer is an 

 emphatic No! " For in the school, as I have sketched it, the 

 one aim and end of the teacher is to prevent the child doing 

 anything whatever for himself, and where independence is 

 prohibited the growth of every faculty must needs be arrested, 

 the growth of every faculty as of every limb and organ being 

 duly and suitably exercised by its owner." 



From what I have previously said it will be observed that 

 perception and expression are interdependent, and an educa- 

 tional policy or system which does not make self-expression, in 

 other words sincere expression, its aim, is necessarily fatal to the 

 normal psycho-physiological development of the mental faculties. 



The kindergarten system introduced by Froebel, and lately 

 modified and developed by Dr. Marie Montessori, is based upon 



