BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1263 



this recapitulation idea in mind, without exaggerating it into a 

 fallacy. Thus the recapitulation expresses itself in the restlessness 

 of childhood. The young child is a motor-organism to whom it is 

 unnatural to sit quiet; it is influenced by the promptings of its 

 ancestry, roaming about and exploring, doing anything but sit still. 

 To repress this is dangerous. 



Part of the work of education is to shorten the child's recapi- 

 tulation of the racial history, else we should never get past child- 

 hood. This shortening includes the supply of suitable liberating 

 stimuli, and one of the great problems of childhood — and of the 

 school — is just the guidance of liberating stimuli, from books to 

 toys. It is common sense that the last, to take a little thing seriously, 

 should never be very sophisticated. The proud father goes to Regent 

 Street and buys the most expensive toy: he means well, but he does 

 ill. It is the simple, most unsophisticated toy that is wanted in the 

 tender years; but it should be beautiful, not crude, from the very 

 start; for the child is susceptible to beauty to an extent not yet 

 appreciated. Hence also the importance of having from the very 

 beginning, as far as may be, some of the fundamental impressions 

 of the country. We live in a mechanical age, and we are apt to get 

 away from the fundamental impressions of the countryside. Even 

 in towns, however, they are afforded to some extent by parks and 

 gardens. 



Childhood. — In childhood there is a continuation of develop- 

 ment, and therefore, since there are many centres in the brain which 

 are still being developed with ever-increasing intricacy of inter- 

 linkages, it is a period when there should be much rest and careful 

 feeding. If we are studying the development of the lung in a chick, 

 we find that up to a certain point inside the egg this development 

 goes on independent of the outside world, except that some oxygen 

 passes through the shell. The development proceeds with an organic 

 momentum which carried it on from stage to stage inside the egg 

 during the first twenty days; but there comes a time, normally 

 about the twenty-first day, when the lung will develop no further 

 unless the creature actively breathes. This is a parable — a great 

 lesson for childhood- -the importance of the functional factor in 

 development. The momentum of inheritance will enable the organism 

 to reach a certain stage, but beyond that stage there must be 

 functional activity — actual doing. The lung must be used if it is to 

 advance any further. This is, of course, embodied in many theories 

 of educational progress by action, by doing, by self- act ivit\^ 



Another biological impression of childhood is its extraordinary 

 impressionability. A child is like a photographic plate to an extent 

 which only those who know children well have realised: they see 

 things we have no idea of their seeing; they pick up things we never 

 noticed. And we note that the value of the indirect impression is 



