BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1339 



ill the first place, surely a supreme subject is the history of our race. 

 At the very least there should be a growing familiarity with the 

 general idea of the Ascent of Man — a great subject too for play — 

 and with the more obvious significance of the greatest events and 

 changes in the historical evolution of mankind; even starting with 

 any one the teacher feels of value, then to a score or so, and so on. 

 But these should possess the mind dramatically, through school 

 acting and tableau, on to pageant and celebration. Every momen- 

 tous social change and phase should be associated with its personali- 

 ties (when picturesque heroes, so much the better) and with some- 

 thing of its correlated treasures, of literature and art. Every school, 

 in making its illumined history chart, will find that its most signi- 

 ficant milestones are oftener books than battles, creations more than 

 conquests, and discoveries often more than dynasties. 



Along with some knowledge of the way in which even a few great 

 men and great events and great ideas have counted in human 

 history, there readily arises a growing awareness that many of the 

 great waves — as from Egypt and Babylon, Athens, Jerusalem, and 

 Rome — have reached this town, this parish, and left their marks 

 there, their distant past living on in our midst. The very stones are 

 whispering, sometimes loudly calling; hence there is much to be 

 had from observation — regional and city survey — ^which the studious 

 reading of world-history cannot give; and which helps this later. It 

 is also plain that real (not merely regal) history will involve a cor- 

 respondingly balanced amount of human geography, alter oculus 

 historice. 



The corollary in the pupils' minds wiU be the realisation — first 

 dim, yet later incandescent — that history is always a-making; and 

 that they themselves at any given hour are either swimmers or 

 drifters in the stream. To which will be added the growing convic- 

 tion, so powerful a stimulus to diligence, that if we are to understand 

 the present better, we must learn more about the past; for that is 

 mostly still in our present, and not far to seek. Ever so carefully, 

 yet without flinching, there should also be some illustration of the 

 fact that just as our bodies are walking museums of a hundred and 

 more relics, so in the fabric of our mind there are ancient strands 

 persisting and interweaving, strands of the animal mind, the savage 

 mind, the ancient and the medieval mind, and later minds as well. 

 Emancipation — free thinking in the true sense — comes in proportion 

 to our understanding of the mind in the making, and our willingness 

 to have it shaken up, sometimes even upset. There is little fear but 

 that the best elements of the past wiU survive, indeed return all 

 the more clearly. 



No doubt there is good History in many schools, just as there is 

 good Natural History in a few others; but these encouraging yet 

 too occasional successes must not blind us to the sad fact, that in 



