A PROBLEM IN EDUCATIONAL EUGENICS 363 



should have been error, that something of tradition has held a sway 

 beyond reason, and that much of existing methods are an inheritance 

 from an outgrown past. It is not to be wondered if criticism has arisen. 

 The wonder is that it has not come sooner and been more fierce. If one 

 compares the civilization of even the most enlightened nation of anti- 

 quity with that of the present day ; if with this survey he includes that 

 of prevalent ideals and methods of education; if, indeed, he compares 

 conditions in pagan Greece and Rome with the latter under the sway 

 of the monasticism of later centuries, it will be less surprising that there 

 arose the condition known as the " dark ages," which dominated both 

 state and church, and school as well, for more than a thousand years. 

 Without indifference to the good which may have endured in spite of 

 dominant ills in the educational ideal and aim of those times it is stiU 

 high time that they be estimated at their real worth and discounted ac- 

 cording to their inadequacy in relation to present-day conditions and 

 needs. 



Through just what means the desired betterment may best be realized 

 may still be an open question. There are those who will continue to 

 regard it as a philosophical problem. But there are others, and their 

 numbers are multiplying, who look upon the problem as one open to 

 scientific and experimental solution. The writer assumes the biological 

 point of view without hesitation or apology. He believes that whatever 

 ideals one may assume it must be more or less evident that man, the sub- 

 ject of these ideals, is involved in those common relationships and laws 

 which condition all organic nature. His growth, both physical and 

 mental, is also conditioned by the same laws. Furthermore, it is prob- 

 ably beyond serious dispute that man in his entirety — bod}-, mind or 

 spirit — is a unity; that all his powers are so correlated that it is not 

 possible for us to isolate them for any such artificial object as that of 

 conventional education. The older notion of mind as an entity, distinct 

 and independent of body or natural relations, an occupant of the " tene- 

 ment of clay," may still be a fruitful theme for the metaphysician, but 

 it is without significance in any sound philosophy or science of educa- 

 tion. "Whether one may accept the purely neurological view that all 

 mentality is potential in the metabolism of nerve cells he can hardly 

 doubt their intimate correlations. 



Therefore, whether for better or worse, under the biological assump- 

 tion, the methods of education, whether of body or mind, whether for 

 mental or physical efficiency, must be those of the living world. In this 

 view there is nothing essentially novel. In many of our educational 

 processes, sometimes consciously, oftener otherwise, there has been at 

 work these vital principles. Galton's appeal has been already cited. 

 The whole program of eugenics is but another aspect of the application 

 of the same conception. With this much accepted let attention be 

 directed without further digression to the main aspect of our problem. 



