MAN 471 



best that has been discovered by the race in its history, so that 

 it will not be necessary for him to get it all by experience. Lan- 

 guage is again the vehicle that makes this possible. Some edu- 

 cation is possible through sight and imitation of parental actions, 

 and there is probably a certain amount of such education in 

 many of the lower animals. Confidence in the parents, imita- 

 tion, and curiosity are important individual instincts underlying 

 the education of the child. The long dependence of the child 

 on the parents, the close relations of the home, the warmth of 

 sympathy in the parental feeling, all enter in furnishing the 

 motive and the opportunity for the training. That this educa- 

 tion is efficient is shown by the fact that the individual youth 

 in a period of twenty or twenty-five years may be brought to a 

 knowledge of the most important experiences of the human race; 

 of the great implements of human progress, as spoken and writ- 

 ten language, knowledge of nature's laws, and the relations of 

 numbers; and of the great, partly natural and largely artificial 

 structure which we call human society, as well as of the modes of 

 behavior necessary to meet its demands. 



These have required thousands of years to build. Most 

 of them have not become instinctive. It is the triumph of 

 human attainment that so much can be imparted in so short a 

 time. 



473. Man's Relation to Nature. There is nothing in what 

 we can learn about man that suggests that he is not just as 

 dependent on the natural laws of his own being and of the en- 

 vironment about him as any other animal in the animal kingdom. 

 He starts in the same humble way, as a single cell; he has the 

 same powers of growth and development, but he must have con- 

 ditions favorable to them. To-day is always the child of yester- 

 day, just as with the other animals. He has the like diseases; 

 he is affected with similar parasites; he has enemies among 

 the animals just as is true of the others. Equally, he depends 

 on them for his food. The same struggle for existence and the 

 survival of the fittest that we find in all of life can be traced in 

 much of human history. 



Man, however, has made a mastery of nature which no other 



