368 ELEMENTARY ZOOLOGY. 



361 . Education and its Place in Human Development. 



Education is, in general, the development of the individual 

 in such a way that he will be able to adjust and to readjust 

 himself rightly, in the light of his whole nature, to the 

 essential factors of his environment. This adjustment has 

 come slowly in the race, step by step in the experience of 

 each. Individual education in mankind is an effort to 

 give the child a short cut to the best that has been dis- 

 covered by the race in its history, so that it will not be 

 necessary for him to get it all by experience. Language 

 is again the vehicle that makes this possible. Some edu- 

 cation is possible through sight and imitation of parental 

 actions, and there is probably a certain amount of such 

 education in many of the lower animals. Confidence in the 

 parents, imitation, and curiosity are important individual 

 instincts underlying the education of the child. The 

 long dependence of the child on the parents, the close 

 relations of the home, the warmth of sympathy in the 

 parental feeling, all enter in furnishing the motive and 

 the opportunity for the training. That this education is 

 efficient is shown by the fact that the individual youth 

 in a period of twenty or twenty-five years may be brought 

 to a knowledge of the most important experiences of the 

 human race ; of the great implements of human progress, 

 as spoken and written language, knowledge of nature's 

 laws, and the relations of numbers; and of the great, 

 partly natural and largely artificial, structure which we 

 call human society, as well as of the modes of hehavior 

 necessary to meet its demands. 



These have required thousands of years to build. Many 

 of them have not become instinctive. It is the triumph 

 of human attainment that so much can be imparted in so 

 short a time. 



