776 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



come, better by reason of that tenderness which it calls forth, and 

 better by reason of that irresistible appeal to love and sympathy 

 which a child alone can make. A life into which this holy experience 

 has never come is not complete, whatever may be its other compensa- 

 tions. And I should deplore the higher education for both men 

 and women if it made them less ready to meet the exj^erience of 

 parenthood, deplore it, not from the point of view of society or the 

 state, for with the continuance of the race I feel that we have con- 

 sciously nothing to do, but deplore it for the loss that it meant in 

 their own lives. 



The life of the organism begins in mystery, in birth. It ends in 

 mystery, in death. But death may be terrible, or it may be benefi- 

 cent. It is terrible when it comes as an interrupter to the full activi- 

 ties of life, and more terrible when it comes through slow, wasting 

 disease and decay. But death is beneficent when it comes at the close 

 of a complete, well-rounded life, comes as a savior from the in- 

 firmities of too great age. What is so universal must be good. 



A scheme of education which neglects any of these functions of 

 the complete bodily life, or fails to inculcate sound ideas regarding 

 them, is sadly deficient, and can not be called rational. It would be 

 a denial of the very philosophy upon which the new education rests. 



The demands of the emotional life are no less exigent. Every 

 human action has back of it a feeling, a desire. Where these desires 

 are sluggish or wanting, the action is corresponding. We must 

 never forget that we can only do what we want to do. It may seem a 

 trivial statement upon which to base so much, but it is practically at 

 the basis of all of psychology. However perfect the organism, the 

 complete life is impossible unless back of the organism is the en- 

 ginery of keen appetite and manifold desire. The whole human 

 drama depends upon just this, upon mere sentiment, if you choose. 

 This emotional life upon which so much depends, upon which every- 

 thing depends, is wrapped up in the organism itself, is a part of the 

 very flesh and blood, and can not be separated from it. It is only 

 convenient to name it aside from the more obvious bodily func- 

 tions. The same is true of the intellectual functions. I am nam- 

 ing them last not because they are least, but because they are great- 

 est, and in the sequence of life they are the fruits of the others. 

 The school works for those as the gardener works for his most perfect 

 fruit. But if it work rationally, it must work, not from the empyrean 

 downward, but from the earth upward, through sturdy limb, and 

 branch, and leaf, and blossom. 



The educational process itself is only highly evolved when it too 

 recognizes in the most practical way the idea of causation, and ad- 

 justs its acts to ends. I often think that the friends of goodness miss 



