EDUCATION AND SELECTION. 349 



EDUCATION AND SELECTION. 



BY M. ALFRED FOUILLKK. 



MOST of the controversies which are rife in reference to the 

 vital question of education appear to have originated in 

 failure to rise to a sufficiently general point of view of the subject 

 to a national, international or perhaps an ethnic view. M. M. 

 Guyau, who, in his Education et I'Heredite, has discussed prob- 

 lems relative to morals, religion, aesthetics, and education, from 

 the sociological point of view, has put the question into a really 

 scientific form : Given the hereditary merits and faults of a race, 

 to what extent can we by education modify the existing heritage 

 to the advantage of a new heritage ? For nothing less is involved ; 

 we have not only individuals to instruct, but a race to preserve and 

 increase. Education, therefore, must rest on the physiological and 

 moral laws of the cultivation of races. We do not overlook this 

 in breeding useful animals, but in dealing with human beings we 

 forget it as if the education of men was concerned only with in- 

 dividuals. 



The ethnic point of view is the correct one. We need, by edu- 

 cation, to create hereditary qualities physically and intellectually 

 useful to the race; besides cerebral and physiological heredity, 

 we should assure such social hereditary forms as traditions, cus- 

 toms, social conscience, and public opinion. Society is, in fact, 

 an organism endowed with a certain collective consciousness, al- 

 though it is not concentrated in a self. We should, therefore, 

 regard as a form of heredity and organic identity through ages, 

 everything that maintains among a people continuity of charac- 

 ter, spirit, habits, and aptitudes ; in short, a national conscious- 

 ness and a national will. 



It being admitted that the ultimate aim of education is to in- 

 sure the development of the race, the question arises as to the best 

 means of insuring it. There is one which we desire to set promi- 

 nently in the light selection. The history of mankind shows us 

 the struggles of races, nationalities, and individuals not for life 

 only, but for the progress of life under all its forms, including in- 

 tellectual, sesthetic, and moral life. In our talk about the struggle 

 for existence we forget the metamorphosis which selection under- 

 goes in passing from the domain of brutal into that of intellec- 

 tual and moral forces. We have, therefore, to reach a comprehen- 

 sion of the analogies and the differences between natural and 

 social selection. As a first step toward this, we should ask to 

 what extent ideas rule the world, and how a selection of ideas is 

 first induced in the brain by education. We might call this psy- 

 chological selection. The power of instruction and education, 



