THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE CYCLE 173 



many of the keys wherewith to open doors through 

 which the child's mind may go out and in. Another set 

 of liberating stimuH is to be found in art, and another 

 set in Nature. What the child needs is not so much 

 meals of information, though these are well enough 

 in their way, but thrills of dehght, discoveries that 

 open up new worlds, adventures that reveal new powers. 

 For really fine gains hke * a love of the country,' the 

 indirect aesthetic approach is surest. 



(2) One of the profound facts of biology, not as yet 

 fully understood, is the formative role of function. ■ Develop- 

 ment, especially after the early stages, is no passive 

 unfolding, it is an active process. The young creature 

 traffics with circumstance and in this way comes to its 

 own. It is true, indeed, that the embryo chick has 

 tiny lungs formed long before the twenty-first day on 

 which the creature gets its first mouthful of air ; this 

 internal capitaHsation or organisation of past achieve- 

 ments is the central mystery of heredity ; but the sub- 

 sequent open-air development of the lungs of the chicken 

 depends on its breathing. It seems, moreover, that a 

 certain amount of active functioning is necessary to keep 

 complicated structure up to the level previously attained. 

 The unused hill-road, the unused trench, disappears, and 

 a structure shut off from the bustle of metaboHsm is 

 apt to go back on itself, to unweave its web, to show 

 de-differentiation. On such facts rests our second bio- 

 logical principle of education, that the best learning is 

 that in which the pupil has an active share — and is not 

 merely a passive recipient. 



