PRINCIPLES DETERMINING METHOD. 179 



to appreciate what he receives from, and to realize and 

 perform what he owes to, his environment, nature, 

 man, God. Thus can he be adapted to his environment. 

 In formulating this aim, without any discussion of psy- . 

 chological laws, we naturally emphasized environment 

 rather than the child, and dwelt on adaptation to envi- 

 ronment. When we look at the question from a psycho- 

 logical standpoint, ask what is the ultimate aim of the 

 mind, we find that the mind ever seeks to reduce to unity 

 all its environment and itself, or to adapt its environ- 

 ment to itself. It discovers that phenomena at first very 

 diverse are illustrations of the same principle, results 

 of the action of the same agency or force ; that animals, 

 such as the vertebrates, at first showing almost infinite 

 diversity, are built on the same plan. Thus it refers all 

 physical changes to. a few agencies or forces, and groups 

 all forms of life about a few types. The mind finds 

 that physical phenomena and laws are analogous or 

 identical with those of the intellectual and spiritual 

 world. Thus it reduces to unity what is without 

 itself, and then relates this to itself. We see, there- 

 fore, in this law of unity, the psychological warrant 

 for the final aim of nature study or of education, before 

 established on ethical grounds, the perfecting of the 

 relations between the child and his environment, or the 

 reducing to unity of the "I" and the u not I." 



We express the same idea in spiritual terms when 

 we say, with the Great Teacher, " Love is the fulfilling 

 of the law. " Love is unity. Recognizing the unifying 

 tendency of the mind, and the importance of developing 



lr& . -V-HK 

 (UNIVERSITY 



