332 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



elements, but, however composite it may turn out to be, it will 

 always continue the mainspring of human action, and the primary 

 element with which education will have to deal. Everything centers 

 in the emotional life. To stunt and cripple and repress that is to 

 make impossible a full life in other directions. Kill it, and you have 

 the dead souls of our social world. In childhood, the emotional life 

 is strong. And here, I think, and not in Florida, is to be found the 

 fountain of perpetual youth. We should never grow old if in our 

 hearts we could keep always the full flood of feeling. It is the drying 

 up of this part of our natures that makes possible the dreadful indif- 

 ference and paralysis of old age. And we want this prodigality of 

 feeling because it will lead to action, and we want action because it 

 will bring sensation, and we want sensations because they are the 

 material of thought. Manual training builds its methods upon this 

 psychology. It looks first and last and always to the motive power, 

 to the emotions and desires. If these are strong, if the child is alert 

 and full-blooded and interested, at once may be undertaken the 

 more specific work of supplying a rich and suitable environment, to 

 keep alive this emotional life, to strengthen it and to direct it to help- 

 ful and noble ends. Well-born children possess this full emotional 

 life. But with apathetic children it must be aroused. The little 

 childish heart must be set on fire with new desires and longings, and 

 these made so strong that they simply must be satisfied. This is a 

 difficult task, and one with which the older schemes of education 

 do not pretend to cope, for they do not realize that it is an essential 

 part of their work. Indeed, for the most part they address them- 

 selves to the very contrary proceeding, the repression of such childish 

 desires as already exist and are found not to be convenient. 



The method by which manual training arouses and fosters a 

 many-sided interest and stimulates desire is by giving children some- 

 thing to do, and by allowing such a free play of choice and indi- 

 viduality both in the something and in the doing that at the very 

 first possible moment the activity shall be self-directed. When this 

 point is once gained, the work of education has begun. Where the 

 will is weak, as in the case of poor, anaemic children, the interest may 

 soon flag, may indeed sputter and go quite out. And all this is 

 very discouraging. But the interest must simply be aroused and 

 stimulated afresh. Never, however great the seeming extremity, 

 must the interest and desire of the teacher be made to do duty for 

 that of the child, for, the moment this occurs, the work of education 

 ceases, and a meaningless, unpsychological process takes its place. 



It is not much learning that makes us mad, but much inter- 

 ference. 



In young children, the great impulse is to play, and it was this 



