HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EDUCATION. 473 



right itself under favorable conditions, the teacher is considerate, 

 hopeful, and wise in the guidance of his pupils. 



But equally important is the study of the individual, and it is 

 the neglect of this that constitutes perhaps the greatest danger of 

 modern education. We adapt our methods to human nature as 

 we conceive of it, but is the individual as much considered as he 

 was ? The tendency of the age is to aggregation of men, to con- 

 certed action, to adaptation of methods to the masses, to the aver- 

 age man or boy or girl, while John Smith and Eliza Brown are 

 apt to be regarded as simply units and nothing more. If I were 

 asked to state what I considered the greatest evil threatening 

 education or actually existing in education, if not in our entire 

 civilization to-day, I should reply that in my opinion it was just 

 what I have referred to not recognizing the individual as such 

 in the masses. 



Allow me to point out that the available energy of the world 

 is increased in proportion as we develop individuals i. e., human 

 beings differing from their fellows. We see this in the passage 

 of a community from a savage to a civilized condition. There is 

 division of labor with differentiation of function. It is better 

 for the community that there should be carpenters, blacksmiths, 

 masons, etc., than that there should be an attempt to make each 

 individual a Jack-of-all-trades. So in education we should aim to 

 develop those differences that Nature has established. So-called 

 education has done much harm by running counter to Nature. 

 Evidently, then, the great business of the teacher is to study 

 Nature with a solicitous anxiety to learn her meaning as to man. 



Froebel, after ages of educational blundering by mankind, set 

 out on the right path, because he, like the one who would enter 

 the kingdom of heaven, became as a little child, and so under- 

 stood children and adapted methods to human nature as it is 

 methods in which their individuality is recognized at the very 

 outset. Would that we had followed this great genius closer ; 

 would that we were to-day applying his methods in their best 

 aspects to our education more fully ! I mean in the sense that we 

 adapted our methods to human nature as it is, and not with any 

 so-called practical end in view, such as fitting the boy or girl 

 merely to sit at a desk in a warehouse, or stand behind a counter 

 in a shop. 



But our schools, like our other institutions, are a reflection of 

 our general state of human progress ; and while we have much to 

 be thankful for, I must, with President Eliot, of Harvard Uni- 

 versity, consider that our school education is still in no small de- 

 gree a failure, partly because we have not grasped the purpose of 

 education and partly because we do not recognize that men are 

 more than methods after all that John Smith is more than 



TOL. XLIV. 37 



