CHAPTER XXIV 



METHODS OF SCHOLASTIC TEACHING 



The evolution of the hunting instinct The reason why labour is 

 unpleasant The formal education of the lower classes That of 

 the higher classes Classical teaching The decay of the patrician 

 classes Scientific teaching Artificial aids to memory and the 

 reasoning faculty The teachings of the principles of heredity 

 The training of medical men. 



494. SCHOLASTIC as well as religious methods of teaching may 

 confer on races and classes mental characteristics which have 

 all the appearance of being inborn. We have seen how the 

 infant instinctively trains himself physically and mentally, 

 and how, when older, the child continues this process. His 

 imitative instinct having come into play, he " forms " himself 

 on the model of his companions, juvenile and adult. Later 

 his parents, taking advantage of his vast receptive powers, 

 begin his formal education. The first, the instinctive part 

 of his education, presents common features the world over. 

 All children delight in play and instinctively choose such 

 games as will develop their powers. Doubtless, however, 

 different games produce mental differences which subtly 

 mould the characters of individuals and races. To the second, 

 the formal part of his education, the child's instincts are 

 frequently opposed. Hitherto he has played; now he must 

 work. This formal education differs greatly in different 

 regions of the world and in different sections of the com- 

 munity, and always it is most opposed to the child's instincts 

 amongst civilized communities. For man has not evolved 

 into a civilized being; he has merely developed into one. 

 The change in him consists solely or principally in a change 

 of mental acquirements, not in a germinal change. He 

 transmits his civilized habits by tradition, not by inheritance. 

 495. While the ancestral brute was evolving into the 

 human being, he became carnivorous and gained his subsist- 



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