49B POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



good-producing and bad-producing action. You must not mis- 

 understand me. I would, of course, try very earnestly to influ- 

 ence the desires of children, to make them want the things that 

 the experience of the race has shown to be good and wholesome, 

 but it seems to me of greater moment to have the desire and the 

 action harmonize than to have the action which would seem to 

 us always commendable. We would not, I think, run any very 

 great risk. Healthy children, living under wholesome conditions, 

 have, in the main, wholesome desires. And desires that are not 

 wholesome can not be more thoroughly killed than by allowing 

 them, if possible, to flower into action which the child himself 

 will recognize as painful. No greater wrong can be done a child 

 than by associating in his mind what is right with what is pain- 

 ful, and what is wrong with what is pleasant. It is an utterly 

 false association. He will attain the highest morality when he 

 does simply and naturally the thing that is good-producing with- 

 out any inner conflict, but solely as the result of cultivated in- 

 stincts. 



I read once the gospel credited to John, making careful note 

 of all reference to miracles. I was struck with the fact that all 

 of the reported events had to do with some physical want — the 

 curing of the sick, the feeding of the hungry, the raising of the 

 dead. You will notice in studying the inclinations of childhood 

 a similar uniformity. They are all physical wants, and may be 

 summed up for the most part in two words — muscular exercise. 

 The children are right. It is this exercise that is going to 

 strengthen all the organs and make them capable of more per- 

 fect function. Every physical act has its corresponding mental 

 act, and it is a succession of these acts that develops the gray and 

 white of the brain and gives us at last a highly evolved and sensi- 

 tive organism. The work of education consists in directing these 

 activities into those channels which will yield the most helpful 

 reactions. By concentrating the wandering attention, by increas- 

 ing the delicacy of touch, by cultivating a finer and finer dis- 

 crimination, by training the observation — in a word, by develop- 

 ing, as far as may be, each and all of the faculties — we make 

 possible that unfolding and perfecting of the human spirit, that 

 evolution of human nature, which is the end in education. 



The goal of modern education is not reached through manual 

 training alone, any more than it is through language or science 

 or mathematics. It is for this reason that I no longer desire to 

 see the establishment of manual training schools as such. They 

 were necessary in starting the movement. This side of things 

 had to be emphasized, and the early manual training schools did 

 yeoman service. But now it seems to me far more wholesome 

 and desirable that manual instruction should be introduced into 



