1340 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



regard to both History and Natural History, we are mainly missing 

 not merely the bull's-eye, but the target. It is partly because too 

 much of the material and the teaching is nonchalant and humdrum, 

 partly because we are too ambitious, our quantitative reach exceed- 

 ing our qualitative grasp, so that we lose the substance in the 

 shadow. It is partly because we have not thought resolutely 

 enough about our aim, and partly because the social fabric we are 

 enmeshed in is too much for us. But is not this largely because 

 we are lacking in imagination, and in courage? 



A further essential is that school children should be interested 

 in the world without, both animate and inanimate ; that they should 

 know their way about, even at first a little; that they should be able 

 and willing to make short excursions — metaphorical and literal — 

 by themselves, and that they should be accustomed to think in the 

 open — and not, as too much at present, almost exclusively in the 

 presence of print. They should have "Open Sesame" passes to open 

 Nature's treasure-caves; and next keys, even difficult to turn, in 

 the locks of her museum treasure-rooms. Their introduction to each 

 science should make them familiar with a few good examples (their 

 personal details included), showing how new knowledge has been 

 gained, and how the search for clearness has brought new control 

 over things and life. Of great importance it is that they should 

 begin to become aware of the general meaning of a Law of Nature — • 

 a uniformity of sequence that can be trusted to, in which no wishes 

 of man can produce a shadow of turning. There can be no doubt as 

 to the value of vitally biological instruction, but our present plea 

 widens into the more general one, that the mind of the school-child 

 should be fed with the facts of science, especially in regard to those 

 large aspects of the outer world, into which he is going, and may 

 spend the best of his life. At present we too often enforce premature 

 analysis, and so effect little. WTiat is worse, we succeed in killing 

 interest, not to speak of joyous wonder. And education that does not 

 develop the emotional life is anti-biological, chilling, often all but 

 paralysing the unity of our being. 



Just as every school should make and even emblazon its often- 

 changing historical chart, and this helped by some good pictures, 

 like Medici Prints, so there should be an active outdoor gathering, 

 from wood and quarry, cliff and shore; thus filling shelves, often- 

 renewed, always available (yet not always exposed), with beautiful 

 natural objects — shells, bits of rocks, fossils, minerals (often truly 

 precious stones), even feathers, mosses, withered leaves, which all 

 are treasures when found, and can turn into fairy gold anew. 

 Children and students alike soon learn to make and rejoice on such 

 "beauty-feasts", as they indeed call them. And in Kipling's early 

 home city of Lahore, it is still good to see the simple country visitors 

 coming to his father's museum, and hear them calling it "Adjib- 



