1344 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



tion for life", that educationalists — parents, teachers, and public 

 authorities alike — should so commonly leave the study of Life out of 

 account in their teaching. We know that mothers at home, and fathers 

 after their work, alike think of education as for life, and still more 

 the best teachers too; yet in the pressure of home or business cares, 

 and the routine of school "subjects" and examinations, neither 

 home nor school have yet found time to listen to our plea — for 

 Life in education. Time was, when as naturalists we had great hopes 

 from our nature excursions and demonstrations and lectures, and 

 from making a school museum or garden here and there; and yet 

 more when we were helping to get "Nature Study" into the Educa- 

 tion Codes. But though we still thus do what we can, we have come 

 to see that a far larger, and even thorough, change is needed, and 

 throughout the whole world of education. For here, with all respect 

 to the advance of psychology, and gratitude to our many masters 

 — whether for help to us as teachers, like William James and 

 Stanley Hall, or for deep-sighted contributions like those of Freud 

 and Jung and Adler — we yet submit, and to parents and teachers 

 as well as readers, the simplest and broadest generalisation of our 

 own observation and experience, alike as teachers and in life, that 

 the many (alas, proportionately not so very many) conspicuously 

 happy and healthy, productive and effective, men and women whom 

 we have met in life, and these at all levels, from simplest labour to 

 highest achievements, and with or without fame accordingly, are 

 those who have enjoyed a happy (even more than always health}^) 

 childhood. Motherly instinct, of course, expresses this; pater- 

 familias gets it too; yet either or both may spoil the child; indeed 

 only too often do so: and school, with all its good intentions, too 

 much falls short as weU. Beyond home instinct and good intentions, 

 beyond school and code routines also, we need knowledge and 

 guidance, and this with foresight, towards all that can fitly prepare 

 for life. Towards this we have had a multitude of counsellors, and 

 from old times to this day, and often with wisdom. So of all this, 

 what briefer summary than the old Indian story — in which the boy, 

 awaking to the urges and perplexities of every opening adolescence, 

 asks its fundamental question, "Shall I go with those who seek 

 pleasure, or those who follow virtue?" and gets the answer, "My 

 son, while men are seeking and disputing, here for virtue, or there 

 for pleasure, do thou possess thyself of the realities of both!" 



Quality of Life. — ^Though we cannot name any precise debt of 

 new biological thought to Froebel, evolutionists have much to learn 

 from his vital applications in education, for his characteristic idea 

 and aim were in spirit truly biological; those of the full develop- 

 ment of the child's mind and its culture, like that from seed to shoot 

 and bud, and thence to flower and fruit. Hence his endeavour to 

 give full and free play to the child's own life ; and instead of crush- 



