The Foundations of Culture 
211 
and unconsciously. This so-called lower or animal nature is ever 
present with us. In infancy it is dominant ; childhood is a period 
of storm and stress, seeking an equilibrium between the stereo- 
typed but powerful impulsive forces and the controls of the 
nascent intellectual and moral nature; and in mature years one’s 
value in his social community life is measured by the resultant 
outcome of this great struggle in childhood and adolescence. 
This struggle is education. 
The answer to the riddle of life, however, lies not in a success- 
ful attack upon the native innate endowments of the child, which 
Mr. Huxley would apparently call his inheritance from the cosmic 
process, directed toward their destruction and replacement by 
building up an artificial world within the cosmos.” No, that 
would be unbiological and wasteful, for our world of ideas and 
morals is no artificial world within the cosmos, but it is a natural 
growth, which is as truly a part of the cosmic process as are ^^ape 
and tiger methods” of evolution. No higher association center 
of the human brain can function, except upon materials of experi- 
ence furnished to it through the despised lower centers of the 
reflex type. So also, no high intellectual, aesthetic or moral 
culture can be reached, save as it is built upon the foundation of 
innate capacities and impulses. 
We are gradually learning through the kindergarten that the 
most economical way to lead a child into the realm of learning is 
not to stamp out all of his natural interests and shut him up with 
his face to the wall, while he learns by rote an a-b-c lesson which 
is neither interesting nor useful. On the contrary, we accept as 
given his native impulses and automatisms, his spontaneous 
interests and his over-production of useless movements, and we 
use these as the capital with which we set the youngsters up in 
the serious business of the acquisition of culture. But how does 
it happen that we make so small use of the principles here learned 
in the later years of the child’s schooling? 
Not all of the instincts with which man is by nature endowed 
come into function in a sucking babe or a kindergarten pupil. 
Childish curiosity is our strongest ally, if only we can use it wisely, 
throughout the whole of the educational career from infancy to 
the graduate school. Anger is a mighty passion in childhood. 
It is not wise to eradicate it altogether; rather keep it, though 
under curb, for there are times when real abuses arise, which 
