66 Social Environment 



extreme plasticity, of power of imitation and 

 suggestion, and of capacity for developing and 

 transmitting ideas. As the prehuman came 

 to the human stage it was as if the mind which 

 at first appeared as form and instinct rather 

 than as rational consciousness rose into shapes 

 that could disembody themselves at will. Ideas 

 which had been things of flesh became free 

 spirit, to live and grow from age to age in the 

 souls of successive generations of men, and to 

 leap the barriers of time, continent, and race. 

 Primitive man poetically grasped the truth of 

 the human soul when he thought of it as some- 

 thing passing like a dream =hape from the body 

 and finding lodgment in other bodies, or when 

 he felt the living presence of departed an- 

 cestors with him in his struggles. For ideas, 

 whether crudely embodied in custom or scien- 

 tifically stated in textbooks, are living things 

 that pass from soul to soul and from genera- 

 tion to generation, to mold the character and 

 determine the actions of the recipients. So the 

 experiences and experiments of the past go 

 with the living generation, wrought into their 

 lives as they grow into the customs and spirit 

 of their times. 



Human nature is educabllity. It is the 



