586 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



develop, and do develop into racial responsibility are in the making 

 in playing the game. Another line of doing by which youth may 

 learn is suggested by such activities as scouting, especially when 

 this is developed on broad lines, with a good deal of exploring 

 thrown in, and with real enduring of hardness. It is difficult to 

 conceive of anything more educative, as a change from the impera- 

 tive and invaluable discipline of the schoolroom, than some active 

 participation in the communal life, especially at some juncture 

 when scouts are useful, though without any prematurely heavy 

 burden of responsibility. Are there not many indications that our 

 education requires to become more occupational and less bookish, 

 more motor and less sedentary, more communal and less conventual ? 

 In any case, it will have to be admitted that one of the reasons why 

 painstaking education is often disappointing is that the responsi- 

 bilities are so largely fictitious, not real. The apprentice in a 

 carpenter's shop knows what real responsibility is when he makes 

 a wheelbarrow that won't wheel, or spoils a good tool; but the 

 schoolboy "slacker" often gains no such valuable lesson. That he 

 may be punished does not make him feel the responsibility any 

 less fictitious. Our point is that a discipline in real responsibilities 

 in youth is the natural condition of the desired development of the 

 eugenic conscience. 



(c) The third stimulus comes through the ordinary avenue of 

 knowledge. But here again it is the indirect method that pays. Let 

 a diagrammatic illustration suffice. It is easy nowadays to get an 

 observation beehive, and a formicarium is also readily procurable. 

 Now, it may be safely said that it is quite impossible for any normal 

 pupil whatsoever — except a few who are born philosophers — not to 

 be interested in the social life of the bees and the ants, especially if 

 the teacher has added to an accurate knowledge of the facts just a 

 dash of, say, Maeterlinck's art. But if this be true in regard to the 

 insects' hive, can we believe that the study of a human society will 

 prove less fascinating if we give it a fair chance ? In spite of all our 

 remarkable improvements, is it not too true still that we waste so 

 much time over the Wars of the Roses that we seldom get near the 

 beginning of an interpretation of the society in which we live? 

 While there is truth in the epigram that activity is the only road 

 to knowledge, it requires the supplement that accurate knowledge 

 is the only sound basis for action in cases where you cannot trust 

 your instincts. It is useless nowadays to expect a feeling of responsi- 

 bility for future generations from pathetically unreflective "John- 

 nies" and tragically mis-educated "Jennies", who do not under- 

 stand, who have never had a chance of understanding, what racial 

 evolution means. 



Racial evolution in school! Surely! For the idea that the present 

 is the child of the past and the parent of the future is one of those 



