BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1359 



songs and ballads, for Scots, Gaelic, and Flemish, and on the other in 

 educated homes, for English and French, with something of their 

 literatures accordingly. So, too, for science. Geometry became solid 

 through stone-hewing; and so on for geology, botany, and zoology 

 alike, and for meteorology with observation of land and sea weather. 

 One's public school and university friends were long dubious of all 

 this: said they: "All very interesting and happy, but what is to become 

 of your young folks when they have to go out into the hard world and 

 its struggle for existence?" Said we: "Our anxieties are all for your 

 young folks, at their great schools; for when they have forgotten their 

 parsing and construing and have got tired of their kitten-ball-games 

 (though ours, of course, can enjoy these too), what can they do — unless 

 you can afford to protect them from the struggle for existence — save 

 to begin again where ours are now ? To be able to live by simple labour, 

 efficiently and happily, as ours at present are ready to do, is already a 

 life of active happiness ; but next it is leading to the direction of labour, 

 the work for a true governing class, which the too prevalent educa- 

 tion strives to reach too much by way of verbalistic empaperment; 

 and this too simply relieved by play." Yet in the first month after 

 graduation a choice of ten unasked appointments — in botany, forestry, 

 geography, town-planning, etc. — seven of these on levels usually kept 

 for seniors farther beyond new graduates — was offered; and that 

 affording further travel, leading to exploration, was taken. Then came 

 the War — and in 19 17 death in battle; yet with record as "best observer 

 in the Army", and one of our two British "aces" of the air first singled 

 out by our French allies for the Legion of Honour. 



This record is outlined at such length in evidence of the proposition 

 that it is on such naturalistic and occupational lines that we may 

 readily have far more vital and efficient "educational reform" than 

 government departments, or even the progressive schools, are yet as fully 

 facing. It is in the movements towards recapitulation of real life, and 

 these of widening range, ever heightening its developmental level — like 

 the Boy Scouts, and kindred groups above-mentioned — as in cases like 

 the above also, that the educationalist and the biologist may best com- 

 bine; in co-operation with boys and youths themselves, and of course 

 with girls too. It is also clearly to be noted that here was no case of 

 "infant prodigy", or of anything like it later; on the contrary, here was 

 just the "good average boy"; who could have been easily subdued to 

 cram and exam, relieved by the usual games — or unrelieved, when 

 lowered to compulsory; as is being done to tens of thousands more. 

 The one psychologic element clearly marked from the outset was 

 sympathy, far more than intellect; and as that was encouraged — instead 

 of being dulled by pseudo-intellectual schooling, and repressed by 

 schoolfellows, as so commonly happens — it widened naturally, out 

 even into habit of happiness and joy-giving; and all in the old normal 

 homely way, from helping mother in house and father in garden, into 

 a real and realised ambition, to share in, and learn and understand all 

 in reach of the world's work, and this through appreciative prenticeship 

 to its manliest hand- workers of all kinds; and then under directive 

 experts later. Thus such a prentice quite naturally discovers for himself 



