Heredity and Education. 325 



human race for hundreds, and some of them for thousands, of 

 years. They constitute the salted-down portion of human 

 knowledge, and exhibit no life or power of growth. 



The general principles (major premises) of the biological 

 sciences are being constantly elevated to higher levels of truth 

 through the efforts of thousands of observers and experi- 

 menters in inducting new truth. 



The scientist on the farm bewilders and even disgusts the 

 old-time farmer with his new methods of farming, but the 

 better crops of the scientist and his greater profits in raising 

 sheep, hogs, cattle and horses are slowly convincing the neigh- 

 bor farmer that the inductive methods of the biological sciences 

 are best. High-bred seed crops and high-pedigreed domestic 

 animals are slowly displacing the scrub plants and animals of 

 his ancestors. Drought loses its terrors when faced by irri- 

 gation ditches and drought-enduring seed plants. Traditions 

 brought from a far different environment are being dispelled 

 by the warming influence of scientific common sense. 



Statk Normal School, Emporia. 



HEREDITY AND EDUCATION. 



IjYMax C. Wooster. 



SOME of the powers of the human mind are evidently in- 

 herited, some are developed through contact with the 

 natural environment, and some are certainly strengthened 

 through the agency of schools ; but just what part is played by 

 each of these agencies, and just how much the adult mind owes 

 to each, is a question that must be answered before the worth 

 of schools and school studies can be determined. 



1. Is life an entity with poivers of its oivn? 



Man's first inheritance from his parents is a tiny sphere of 

 protoplasm — a fertilized eg^ cell, one one-hundredth of an 

 inch in diameter. This sphere contains what are commonly 

 known as matter, energy, and life. The matter of protoplasm 

 consists of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, phos- 

 phorus — six elements not at all uncommon in other forms of 

 matter. The energy, as is well known, is obtained by oxida- 

 tion of food material stored with the protoplasm in the tiny 

 sphere. Life, the chief entity of this fertilized e^^ cell, is 

 said by the vitalist to control the matter through the energy, 



