Book 'Z i^ GopightN". ■^ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. GROWING A LIFE A BOOK FOR THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME By CHARLES EVANS President of the Central State Normal School, Edmond, Oklahoma RAND McNALLY & COMPAIIY Chicago j^^,r^ yj..j^ Copyright, 19 12. by Charles Evans ^ \» 'T i£ CI. A 3^08 53 To my two sons Charles and Edward THE PREFACE THIS book is bom of a desire to serve. There is nothing original about it, unless to view pedagogy as a life process be original. It has been our privilege annually to meet in Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Texas many teachers and parents and talk to them of the child. At such times these thoughts took shape around that theme. Kind hearts and keen minds were interested in the views here put forth, accepted some of them, and said they were practical. In such tributes a certain latitude is to be allowed for insincerity, yet in ten years and more of contact with hfe we have found more than enough of truth to make us "trust the larger hope." The principles here announced have been tested in the laboratory of home and school for nearly a score of years. They are the thoughts of the wisest we have met, hammered into something of a unit by the child as we met him in the everyday world. Our school service, whatever it has been, is due directly to an appropriation and application of these principles. What has helped us so much may help others a little. Often the child, the center of all systems of education, is overlooked while the puny satellites — texts, methods, and routine — monopolize attention. In this work, therefore, the child is elevated above all else. Throughout the work there is an attempt to express a pedagogy of conviction, of personal entreaty, of joyous- ness of living, and more especially of the divine happiness of living with children. The teacher should be a leader, it matters not the place 6 THE PREFACE or time. Therefore pictures of live teachers are often presented as well as sketches of some of their opposites. The first six lectures, for the chapters are given in that form, undertake to lay a simple yet firm foundation for growing a life. A little of psychology and metaphysics was necessary to widen and strengthen the base. The work is so constructed that the reader may take up any division and get in each a unit of thought. Each lecture tells a complete story. There is an attempt made in these pages to grow a life naturally, under law, constantly unfolding at all times toward the end, completion, and climax of all life — enthusiastic, righteous character — and filling its place as a useful citizen in a great Republic. C. E. Edmond, Okla., September, igi2. THE CONTENTS PAGE The Preface 5 CHAPTER I The Law of Laws 9 II The Law of Continuity 14 III Mind and Force 20 IV Mind and Growth 26 V Consciousness 34 VI Self-activity 45 VII Righteousness 59 VIII Happiness the Birthright 73 IX Food . 86 X Stimuli 96 XI Training 116 XII Appetite 136 XIII Time i49 XIV Freedom 163 XV Powers 176 XVI Processes 185 XVII The Great Ideal i95 An Outline of the Book 203 GROWING A LIFE CHAPTER I THE LAW OF LAWS TN the last two decades much has been said and written -*• about the child. This has sprung from an increasing faith in the truism that the child is father of the man; that whatever you would have a race be, see that its children are not neglected. Out of all this desire and effort to better the lot of the child two individuals have been most benefited : first the child, next the teacher. In fact, viewing it from that point of truth which reveals that the sacrificing toiler receives the chief reward, the teacher, because of all his endeavor to reduce the chance of children being bom to a life of hopeless ignorance, should be rated as the one most blest. Even as Columbus, through a vision enlarged by sacrifice and a feeling divinely illumined by persecuted yet unconquerable faith, saw not a few scattered islands but "came upon a new world and saw the rivers roll from Paradise,'* just so did Froebel, Pestalozzi, and the true teachers following after through an equivalent of toil and suffering achieve the greater blessing in the discovery of a mental freedom for the human race through its childhood. The progressive teacher of all time has been marked by work and receptivity. In demand for more fields to conquer, the educators of America have broadened the educational tests for teaching, placed pedagogy in all the great institutions of learning, created normal and summer lo GROWING A LIFE schools, molded and sustained lecture courses, and forced upon a reluctantly yielding body politic the worth and dignity of child life. Reading, listening, seeing, the teachers of the land have pushed their way through the darkness of superstition and ignorance to save mankind, their brothers. "Fear God, and keep your eyes open," were the last words of Dickens's mother to her son Charles. Whether he followed the first part of this advice to the letter we do not know, but Pickwick Papers and David Copperfield assure us that he kept his eyes open. So the multitude of books read, the papers and pamphlets issued, the migration of the educators of this country to every point of the compass where instruction and thought can be had, prove beyond doubt that the teachers are getting their eyes open. Yet with all this desire and endeavor to reach the light education as a real science still lies beyond us. We pile our treatises on mind and methods about us heaven high, and extract therefrom myriad plans only to find that the new discoveries are but exhumations from a pedagogical graveyard, long since forgotten. We turn in dismay to living masters and beg for educational bread, and quite too often, in high-sounding metaphor and appalling exegeses, are handed a stone. When one thinks of the many books written, the many lectures delivered to assist the teacher yet put forth in style and substance as if the intent were to conceal thought rather than reveal it, the boyhood prayer of Abraham Lincoln, one of Nature's schoolmasters, rises to the lips. The pedantic itinerant preacher was spending the evening in the Lincoln home. The topics, politics and religion, rife with the virility of pioneer days, were uppermost. Just as young Lincoln's interests would leap into flame at some startling piece of THE LAW OF LAWS ii news, the preacher would quench the fire with a torrent of verbosity. To the dismay of the eager but disgusted boy this went on for two hours. At last, worn out, he cHmbed to his attic and in his agonizing search for reUef from such mental bHght prayed: "O Lord, whenever I talk and use words no one can understand, kill me there and then. Amen." What we need most in the training world to-day is a thinker who will seize the few well-defined principles of education with a grip so sure and firm as to transform them into a true and unfailing pedagogical magnet. To this magnet we may bring our purposes and our plans. If these cleave, they are time; if rejected, they are false. It matters not whether this be original mate- rial. The demand is not so much for originaHty as for clearness and stability. In addressing ourselves to any effort in this direction one thought towers above all others: there must be an unfailing basis upon which to rest our reasoning. The polestar must not be more unwavering than the theory upon which a system of child training must depend. The oracle of the child must climb a Sinai and gather mes- sages fresh from God before he speaks as one having authority. Where shall we find this oracle? Where are the lips that speak unvarying truth? Where are the pens that trace infallible law? Where may the eye, though hedged by finite weakness, look upon infinite strength? Where may the teacher go to gather unchanging principles of childhood's growth? To the first and last great teacher. Nature — the one infallible guide, with whom it is better to eat a crust of truth than to feast sumptuously at the tables of philosophers and poets. 12 GROWING A LIFE "To build, to plant, whatever you intend, To rear the column or the arch to bend; To swell the terrace or to sink t'az grot: In all let nature never be forgot. " The mind staggers beneath the breadth and compass of this trite word, Nature, and begs an illuminating defi- nition. Some workm.an chiseled into the v/all of the Congressional Library at Washington: "Nature is the Poetry of God. " Drummond says it is a scaffolding by which we climb from the known to the unknown, from the material to the mental, and from the mental to the spiritual. The teacher, in accepting man the learner as a phenomenon of Nature, can find real assistance in this definition: " Nature is the creation or projection of God in order to reveal himself unto Himself and unto His creatures." That man was made in the image of his Maker is no longer a phrase from an accepted creed, but a scientific fact. As far as human mind can trace, Nature reveals the truth that specie stamps succeeding specie with characteristics similar to its own. When we hear the song sparrow's note we hear the twitterings of the first song sparrow created. So with man; look upon him, note his attributes, and we have a right to exclaim in scientific terms as in poetry, "How like a god!" Man works, thinks, produces the savage speech, the pic- tured thought, the monolith and the stylus, the Caxton Press and the electrically driven Hoe cylinder, all "to reveal himself unto himself and unto his creatures." This then is fundamental, that Nature is the one unfailing revelator, the one true teacher. With her we must ever work; to her we must ever go for guidance. With the simple law of the natural world in his grasp, the humblest THE LAW OF LAWS 13 teacher in the land, so far as he uses it, is on an equality with the most famous and capable, "For truth is truth To the end of reckoning." To make a few of these truths his own is a work of any student and lover of the child. CHAPTER II THE LAW OF CONTINUITY THE nineteenth century was a remarkable epoch in the evolution of man. In truth, when we view that century through the perspective of invention or science there seem but two divisions of all time — first, the nineteenth century ; second, all time preceding it. If one were to say that the greatest feat of human progress is the annihilation of time and space through the inven- tion of the telegraph, telephone, and cable, that would be an idle statement. Or if one were to say that by means of the microscope, telescope, and spectroscope man had been given a new heaven and a new earth, and that through the phonograph the dead still speak, even yet the chief conquest of mind is not found. But behold a quiet but persistent group of men, thinking, thinking with no guide but truth, no master but truth, with no end in view but to know the truth, silently breaking the fetters of prejudice, bravely assaulting error and superstition wherever found — Darwin, Spencer, Tyn- dall, Faraday, and Huxley pushing their way up the steep, rough paths which lead to the greatest of dis- coveries. At last it was secure, and for all invention, science, reHgion, and government man had an unfailing basis in the truth that this imiverse is a thing of law. Until the year 1850 there was no science, save mathe- matics, worthy of the name. Chemistry was alchemy, astronomy was astrology, geology was guesswork gibbeted by superstition, and chaos ruled the whole. But "back to Nature" became the cry, and through microscope and 14 THE LAW OF CONTINUITY 15 telescope daring minds looked into atoms and burning worlds, and lo, all was law ! They analyzed the crawling worm, the drifting seaweed, man himself, and as they looked, compared, and reasoned they were forced to exclaim : " All's love, yet all's law . . . Perfection, no more and no less, In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod. " It remained, however, for the latter part of the century to see the final conquest. For while law was established in the material kingdom all effort to project it into or relate it with mental or spiritual phenomena was bitterly opposed. The physicist closed his eyes to mental or spiritual phenomena, while he berated the pulpiteer. The pulpiteer declared there was no revelation of truth save one, and this new story of the natural world was a cheat and a snare. So from i860 to 1880 was fought the greatest war in thought the world has ever known. No quarter was asked and none was given. But just when the hour seemed darkest, when the scientist in his pain and persecution was about to cry, "I will have nothing of your God and His soul-world," and the exhausted and infuriated idealist hurl back at him, "Henceforth there is an inseparable gap between us," Henry Drummond stepped forth, saying, "Peace, be still. You must not talk about your natural world and your spiritual world, your realm of matter and your realm of mind. I say unto you there is but one world, one realm, encircled and controlled by a supreme law, and that is the law of continuity. "It has been my privilege," continued Drummond, "for some years to address regularly two very different i6 GROWING A LIFE audiences on two very different themes. On week-daj'-s I have lectured to a class of students on the Natural Sciences, and on Sundays to an audience consisting for the most part of working men on subjects of a moral and religious char- acter. I cannot say that this collocation ever appeared as a difficulty to myself, but to certain of my friends it was more than a problem. It was solved to me, however, at first, by what then seemed the necessities of the case — I must keep the two departments entirely by themselves. They lay at opposite poles of thought; and for a time I succeeded in keeping the Science and the Religion shut off from one another in two separate compartments of my mind. But gradually the wall of partition showed symptoms of giving way. The two fountains of knowledge also slowly began to overflow, and finally their waters met and mingled. The great change was in the compart- ment which held the Religion. It was not that the well there was dried; still less that the fermenting waters were washed away by the flood of Science. The actual con- tents remained the same. But the crystals of former doctrine were dissolved; and as they precipitated them- selves once more in definite forms, I observed that the Crystalline System was changed. New channels also for outward expression opened, and some of the old closed up; and I found the truth running out to my audience on the Sundays by the week-day outlets. In other words, the subject-matter Religion had taken on the method of ex- pression of Science, and I discovered myself enunciating Spiritual Law in the exact terms of Biology and Physics." This quotation, given at length, discloses in Drummond's own way how he had traced the web of natural law into the mental or spiritual world and found nowhere a break in the thread, and how in the same way this man of THE LAW OF CONTINUITY 17 genius traced the line of truth from the Bible only to be led to the natural law. "Verily many thinkers of this age, Are wrong in just my sense who understood Our natural world too insularly, as if No spiritual counterpart completed it. Consummating its meaning, rounding all To justice and perfection, line by Une, Form by form, nothing single nor alone. The great below clenched by the great above. " Then there broke a chorus from Tennyson, Browning, and Carlyle, caught up in America by Emerson and sent through all the earth, proclaiming: ''Detached, separated! I say there is no such separa- tion. Nothing hitherto was ever estranged, cast aside; but all, were it only a withered leaf, works together with all; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless flood of Action and lives through perpetual metamorphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and lost, there are forces in it and around it, though working in inverse order; else how could it rot? Despise not the rag from which man makes paper, or the litter from which the earth makes cork. Rightly viewed, no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows through which the philosophic eye looks into Infinitude itself." So the idea of the universe being a thing of law and the supreme law of the universe being continuity moved along, gathering momentum until it was accepted as the basis of order in the existence of all science, all poetry, all art, all religion. There is nothing new in this. It is God's beneficent attitude. Like electricity, like gravita- tion, like radiimi, it has always existed, though unknown and unused until science brought it to light. But now 2 i8 GROWING A LIFE under this new order a truth here is a truth there. A law here of the inorganic rock is a law of the organic worm, can the mind but trace it. From material to physical, from physical to mental, from mental to spiritual the mind now steps without a break, and the law of con- tinuity reigns supreme. Let the teacher rejoice that at last an immovable point of view for the study of the child has been found. "Pedagogics as a science," says Herbart, "is based on ethics and psychology. . . . The former points out the goal of education; the latter the way, the means and the obstacles." But let the teacher reach beyond this and get a firmer, clearer, simpler basis. The center of pedagogics is the child. The child is a phenomenon of Nature, and is to be studied like any other work of Nature through the law of continuity. Psychology in the hands of its best American expositor, William James, preaches no other doctrine. Who can read the chapter on "Habit" in his epoch-making work (epoch-making, because he followed mind under the law of continuity closer than ever before attempted) and not feel that here at last is substance? Here the mind is subjected to the same inspection, the same analysis, in its medium, the brain, as is the air in its medium, the lungs. Here is not physical analogy upon which to rest practical truths of mental habit, but physical law, as fixed and unchangeable, because the very same, as that which holds the stars in place and brings the rivers from the hills to the sea. Ethics, under the influence of continuous law, has taken on new life and given a divine range to the child and its teacher. The old ethical conception was based upon the belief that all other species of animals and all worlds THE LAW OF CONTINUITY 19 were produced for the exclusive benefit of man. But biology, under natural law, reveals such a general con- tinuity of the nervous structure throughout the whole animal kingdom that John Fiske says: "I can hardly doubt that the butterfly really enjoys life somewhat as we enjoy it, though far less vividly. I cannot but think that he finds honey sweet and perfume pleasant and color attractive, and that he feels a likesome gladness as he flits in the sunshine from flower to flower, and knows a faint thrill at the sight of his chosen mate. Still more is this belief forced upon me when I reflect that save only in a few aberrant types, sugar is sweet to taste, thyme to smell and song to hear, and sunshine to bask in. " Here, teachers, is one world, not two or more, governed by a sweet concord of law which exclaims "How strange is human pride! I tell thee that those living things, To whom the fragile blade of grass, That springeth in the mom And perisheth ere noon. Is an unbounded world; I tell thee that those viewless beings, Whose mansion is the smallest particle Of the impassive atmosphere, Think, feel and live like man ; That their affections, and antipathies, Like his, produce the laws Ruling their moral state; And the minutest throb That through their frame diffuses The slightest, faintest motion, Is fixed and indispensable As the majestic laws That rule yon rolling orbs. " CHAPTER III MIND AND FORCE THE child is the central figure in the field of pedagogy. Some great teacher said: "Three things should a trainer of children study: Nature, the Bible, and the Child. " Whatever triune of the schoolroom may be named, the child must be in the center of it. Because here is at once the object of attack and defense, here is the thing which molds and shapes the standard of earth's possibilities; for here is mind, the child. It is easy to find definitions for mind. Lexicographers, philosophers, and psychologists can furnish them by the score. But after they have defined it we may call in vain upon all the magicians, astrologers, sorcerers, and Chaldeans to interpret their psychologic dreams. There is a Daniel, however, who stands so close to the Revealer of Secrets that we may trust him for a simple interpre- tation of this word. This Daniel is generous and infalli- ble Nature. Language is an effort to interpret Nature. The senses slip out of their narrow cells and climb by matter up to words. How many cycles of sensing, experience, joy, and suffering are mirrored in such words as body, soul, and God ! These are indeed pyramids from which more than "forty centimes look down upon us.** Into this environment wanders mind, testing, analyzing, selecting, rejecting, until at last conception stands triumphant with a name — a word. Let us with primitive faith imder natural law enter upon a search for a definition of mind based upon its MIND AND FORCE 21 most decisive phenomenon. What myriad worids lie about us! But upon closer scrutiny they become one, "whose body Nature is, and God the soul." Here lies substance, passive, inert. Out of the vortex of the great unknown moves a mysterious, intangible, all-pervading something, seizes upon the material, and all is action. This last because it impels, coerces, repels, energizes,— in short, does. We call it "Fors" or force. Here are the two expressions of divinity, —matter and force. To which of these does mind belong? Look upon mind, note its phenomena, and then decide. Hedged about by infancy, it is ever active, ever struggUng for a better light. To youth it bequeathes the power of mental comparison and bodily energy, the miracles of Nature. Maturity brings us to man. **Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds Of high resolve; on fancy's boldest wing To soar unv/earied, fearlessly to turn The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield. " Look upon mind, a child prattling in infancy or a Webster in the forum, fashioning a toy in youth or an engine in maturity, planning a lesson in school or shaping a charter of civil liberty. Mind must be classed among the forces. Mind must be clearly defined by Natiu-e as a force. Beyond that we cannot go; less than that is not truth. One would exclaim, "Why all this array of facts and words to arrive at a conclusion so simple and so apparent? Let it be understood now and here that such exclamations reveal as nothing else the weakness and poverty attending all study of child and mind. That class of workers which enters our schoolrooms with half-defined views borrowed 2 2 • GROW ma A LIFE from varied sources, unabsorbed, unassimilated, and therefore indigestible and thoroughly hurtful, is only exceeded in number by that class which refuses to read or think at all. Let it be repeated that what the teacher needs are a few well-defined principles of education. The demand is not so much for originality as for clearness and stability. Is the truth that the mind is a force, simple? Then revere it, because the Almighty uses simplicity for His divine Seal. Is it old? So are the ten laws of Sinai, yet to this day they are the bone and sinew of all law. Does it make mind a common thing, like heat and friction, steam and electricity, which we call forces? Then let us rejoice that we have at last found common kinship for this subtle, elusive thing called mind — common as friction is common, proving man's foothold as he climbs to triimiphant invention; common as steam is common, as, imprisoned or released by the mind-force, it flies to do man's bidding; common as electricity is common, which, studied and appreciated as a force, in the flash of an eye encircles the world. The statement wrung from Nature's lips that mind is a force is as simple and easy to grasp as that heat is a form of motion, that matter is that which occupies space, or that God is love. But, for all this, let the teacher think upon it. Those who direct children are besought, after reading and associating "Mind is a force" with the environing world of substance, to mark that force is something * * which changes or tends to change the motion of a body by alter- ing either its direction or its magnitude. " Let them note when next they enter the schoolroom or home how they treat mind in the light of tliis definition. Remember now, mind is a force, the changing, subtle, inexhaustible, MIND AND FORCE 23 outward, inward agent of God. It is that, all forces are that, and philosophers and scientists admit it while they deny it. When under the sway of natural law they admit it, but as subjects of unnatural law they deny it. It is there they treat the mind as a thing to be shaped, a plastic, plaster-made thing, and proceed to lay the fingers of the personalities all about it. At last a receptacle for text, or prescribed rules and daily routine, is made of it. It is not a force now; it is a jug. Come, with your spelling, your reading, your writing, your arithmetic, and all the remaining texts, at the required times, and fill this mind, this passive receptacle! "Slam it in, cram it in. Children's heads are hollow. " This tmthinking attitude toward mind brings us face to face with one of the most, if not the most, baneful weaknesses of past and present teaching, — the viewing of the mind as a passive recipient rather than as a force. The jug or pouring-in process, and the drawing-out or India-rubber process, have been challenged, condemned, and ostracized by the true teachers of all ages, yet the schoolrooms of to-day abound with the apostles of such methods. David Page is a great name in American education. Bom in obscurity and tutored by adversity, through a divine aspiration to be a teacher he became the coworker of Horace Mann, the first normal-school president, and an educational power unrivaled in his day. But Page's chief legacy to man is that classic. Theory and Practice of Teaching, The most potent chapter of this book contains a rebiike to the instructor who cannot or will not see mind a force. With a taste of humor, which 24 GROWING A LIFE every worker among children should cultivate, Mr. Page gives the following too common picture of this foolish procedure. "'John,' says the teacher when conducting a recitation in Long Division, 'John, what is the number to be divided called?' John hesitates. 'Is it the dividend?' says the teacher. 'Yes, sir — the dividend.* 'Well, John, what is that which is left after dividing called? — the remainder, is it?' 'Yes, sir.' A visitor now enters the room, and the teacher desires to show off John's talents. 'Well, John, of what denomination is the remainder?' "John looks upon the floor. '"Isn't it always the same as the dividend, John?' '"Yes, sir.' "'Very well, John,' says the teacher, soothingly, 'what denomination is this dividend ? ' pointing to the work upon the board. ' Dollars, is it not ? ' "'Yes, sir; dollars.' '"Very well; now what is this remainder?' "John hesitates. '"Why, dollars J too, isn't it?' says the teacher. "'Oh, yes, sir, dollars!' says John, energetically, while the teacher complacently looks at the visitor to see if he has noticed how correctly John has answered!" These sketches of the "Yes, sir, " system applied to an arithmetic class are as fine as any the author of a Dothe- boys Hall could pen. Yet the eyes of thousands have passed over this plain and pointed criticism without any self-application. Mr. Page realized that this false view of mind was a fearful obstacle to natural educational processes, and he concludes the chapter mXh. these words : "I look upon the two processes just described, as very prominent and prevalent faults in our modem teaching; MIND AND FORCE 2$ and if by describing them thus fully, I shall induce any to set a guard upon their practice in this particular, I shall feel amply rewarded. " Many have read his warning and have taken heed. But an honest opinion offered in no spirit of criticism is that more would have heeded had they been given the cause of the disease along with this vivid exposition of it. If they committed the blimder of cribbing and confining mind, one of Nature's great forces, was it not because they failed to see that learning comes not so much by filling in as by opening up a way by which the fettered mind may escape? CHAPTER IV MIND AND GROWTH NOTHING is more startling, more awe-inspiring and impressive, than science or classified knowledge. A simple incident in school life stands out in my memory, and proves the truth of this. A visitor came to the school and talked to the pupils. That was a common occurrence. So we at once began to yawn and show inat- tention. But soon this man said something about rocks, and drew from his pocket some specimens. We immediately straightened up and began to listen, for every barefooted, freckle-faced urchin about there was as devout a rock worshiper as the disciples of Stonehenge. They used them in the worship of their gods ; we used them on jay birds and cats. Anyway, the rocks caught our attention. We heard the visitor say that every rock had a story as interesting as any fairy tale. "This little pebble," said he, "was picked out of a gravel pit and comes to light to tell of rolling, tum- bling, and rocking on the ocean's blue waves, millions of years ago.'* He had almost caught us with his poetry of the pebbles when he changed his story to something about the great rock families. Our credibility went to pieces here and an extra yawn was summoned to call time on him. Just then he drew a little bottle from his pocket. Every- body sat up again. How clearly, even now, I can hear him say: "There are just two sorts of rocks in the world, just two. One is made by crj^stallization, the other by some kind of animal life. Take a little acid like this in the bottle, apply it to a rock, like this [looking closely, I saw with bidging eyes little bubbles rise upon it], and if it eats it 26 MIND AND GROWTH 27 as you see this does you may know it is a rock made of animal matter. If not [and he poured the contents of the bottle over a little slick looking pebble, which only made it look slicker], then you may know it is the other sort, or siliceous rock." This power of classification to dart its keen lance, sev- ering with its magic the organic from the inorganic, the spurious from the real, the living from the dead, is no more impressive than it is necessary. Without it, learn- ing would be a wilderness of thorns, thought a traveler without a compass, and science unknown. The question arises, if mind is a force, where shall it be listed? How shall we distinguish it from the other great forces and associate it with its own? The same answer must be given as before : Let us enter the world of forces, classify according to the decisive phenomena, and then we can place our finger securely upon mind. Track a dewdrop through its brief span and it reveals numberless forces. Clinging to the grass blade, it obeys the laws of cohesion within and adhesion without. Clamped by friction, it is rounded and exists by chemical affinity of oxygen for hydrogen. Heated by the sun's rays, its dissolution works an electric energy which lives again in the thunderbolt of the evening storm. But with all this, classification reveals in the material world just two kinds of forces, — physical, producing change without altering chemical constituents of the substance; chemical, when this alteration takes place creating new substances. The fall of a dewdrop, the melting of a bullet, the driving of a train, and the flow of the Mississippi are examples of phy- sical force, while the burning of coal, the making of gun- powder, and the decay of matter are results of chemical force. 28 GROWING A LIFE Where then does mind appear? One readily notes that the mind of a child gathering a lesson from tree or book does not merge with phenomena of physical forces. There is no change wrought in book, but there is in mind. One cannot tell by any process known to man whether this change in mind is one of position or dissolution and new combination, as in oxygenation of the blood, making new corpuscles. It is the belief of ancient and modem thinkers that mind never is increased or lessened. It is of the infinite, as are other forces, and therefore changeless. So any effort to classify mind under physical or chemical forces falls to the ground. But skirt the edges of these two forces, chemical and physical, and you will note they are but poor words at best to describe many force phenomena. Some man somewhere once upon a time rubbed a bit of amber, and a force was released which was so little vmderstood then and is so little understood now that the word, electricity, coined from the name of a fossil substance, still persists. Chemical combination or separation may release it, the tail of an eel may discharge it, m^an may store and harness it in order to annihilate time and space, but man cannot classify it, save under the o!d accidental name, electricity. Then there is an organic v/orld dominated by the phenomenon called life. It is assisted by physical and chemical forces, yet differs so vitally from both that it would be straining thought and language to call it either. Life is a peculiar manifestation of energy, a thing which no human chemist or physicist can develop — a force Nature, God's agent, cannot fashion without the assistance of life itself. Hear Huxley as, laying aside the microscope and retort with which he knit together the ends of all mat- ter, he says: "The present state of knowledge furnishes MIND AND GROWTH 29 us with no link between the living and the not-living." Yet this life-force furnishes us with the closest link to mental force. There is no mind, so far as we know, with- out life. There are many who beheve that there is no life without mind. But life and mind are so closely associated it would be well to inquire what is the decisive phenomenon of each. Life, to-day within the compass of the microscopic germ; to-morrow, the Behemoth whose "bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron." Life, to-day a reed shaken by the wind and at the mercy of a little child ; to-morrow, one of God's to-morrows, a giant oak stretching in glee its sturdy limbs to the roaring storm. Thus look- ing uf)on life where we will, in bee or blossom, in vegetable or animal, growth is its chief characteristic. Life is a force of growth. Mind, to-day within the narrow boundaries of an infant's skull; to-morrow, with oratory and imagination bridging the centuries with prophecy Hke a Clay, climbing to un- known worlds by invention's ladder like a Marconi, or as a lover of mankind and the first beloved of his fellowmen leaving his name written large in history's page, like a Washington. Here as in life, but more intensified, is growth — growth, bewitching, mysterious, now slow, now meteoric, now true, now defective, but always growth. So, in the world of forces, mind must be classified as a force of growth. Hand in hand we have walked with Nature and Nature's spokesmen, and these secrets they have told us: Mind is a force; mind is a force of growth. What is it worth to the teacher, this last ? Under the law of continuity it says, "Enter into all the tangible world of growth, gather loiowledge where you ^411, of bursting bud, cixrling tendril, 30 GROWING A LIFE blooming vine, and maturing fniit, and under the same laws that these prosper, so prospers mind." Observe, teacher, the law of growth under which bird or man approaches to physical perfection, and so siu-e as there is "One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves," so sure does this law apply to the minds under your charge. Here in short are some liberating truths this law holds for every teacher: It puts the mind on a tangible basis beside all vege- table and animal life. It makes biology a study of mind as well as of life. It makes physiology a study of mind-growth as well as of bodily growth. It makes zoology a study of mind as well as of the animal. It makes botany contribute, as far as the laws of vegetable growth are discovered, to a better under- standing of mind-growth. It links, combines, crystalhzes separated sciences on life-growth by making a truth in one a truth in all. It bridges the foolish chasm existing between psy- chology and the sensuous world; this last the only world, so far as we can sense or know. Imagination may swing into aerial realms on wings of prophecy and faith, but the heavens seen have gates of pearl, earth's pearl, streets of gold, earth's shin- ing gold, while angels are but counterparts of the blessed fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers that make for us a heaven of earth. MIND AND GROWTH 31 The teachers of America have need to cultivate, above most things, the sense of S3mibolizing. Such a truth as "The mind is a force of growth," when rightly appro- priated will assist in this process and cannot be appro- priated without symbolism. A mind that, seeing a yellow simflower by the brook, sees a yellow sunflower and nothing more should stay away from children. The schoolrooms do not need rainbow chasers, but devotees of Iris who uncover their heads in adoration when she drops her cur- tains of seven colors athwart the sky which canopies the schoolhouse. Blades of grass or massive elms are not specimens merely of herb or tree, but of growing things pulsating with life akin to all life, subject to law like man, and calling for mind to study and know them and thus know itself. Symbolize, force yourself to see that *' Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, hke the toad, ugly and venomous. Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life exempt from public haunt Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks. Sermons in stones and good in every thing. " Shakspere knew that if he knew God's world in part he would know it in whole; Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Dante, Leonardo, Savonarola, Froebel, Mann, Arnold, Harper, Moses, Eliot, Lincoln, Christ, all great teachers, knew with Tennyson : *' Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies; — Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower — but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is. *' Christ, the master teacher, so appreciated the truth that mind is a force of growth that He found in vine and 32 GROWING A LIFE seed, fig tree and growing corn, brooding fowl and wander- ing sheep, lessons of soul-growth the world will not cease repeating because the simplicity of God's law and sym- bolism make them perfect. Is it not astonishing that so many of earth's teachers have sat at His feet, yet so few have gone away brave enough and bold enough to wrest from common things their secrets and give them to the children? A beautiful picture is presented as this Teacher and this truth are connected. Simple as a cliild, majestic as a king, low of voice, with healing in His touch, the people of Gali- lee, His children, have learned to revere Him and to need Him. They have come down to the sea — the old, because He is so tender with tradition ; the middle-aged, because He is so buoyant with promise; and the trooping children, because He actually saves the most blessed spot for them, — His knees, — and then He talks of birds and bees, of com and vines, like those about their own homes. They are so interested, so eager, they can hardly v/ait for the lesson to begin. They press close, so close His school- room must be readjusted. With a smile he enters a little boat, pushes out, and swings arotmd so close to shore every one can see and hear and, as a lesson-giver should be. He is near yet removed from all. He begins to speak, and the sweetness of the lov/, mellow tones silences all murmur. "Harken." More of gentle address, than admonition. "Behold, a sower went forth to sow. ' * As the teacher speaks, a smile of triimiph flashes over the class, as if they said, "We know it. He tells us of the beautiful life in everyday terms." There, living in them, not Himself, He sits as the soft ripples lap the boat. Beneath a roof of blue sky, with the seashore for recitation bench and a boat for desk, this teacher of mankind by MIND AND GROWTH 33 His thought leads these children up the edge of the dusty waysides, over their stony fields, and along the waste places, scattering seed. They know His life and the seed He sows. He knows their lives and the seed they sow. What need for explanation? The lesson over, they go quietly away, realizing that to sow seed of mind or soul is to plant under precisely the same law as when sowing wheat or barley. And just as the seed needs the dew and the rain, the soil and the sun to enable it to spring forth from darkness into the glory and beauty of full fruition, so that which is sown in the fertile soil of the child's mind and soul must be refreshed by life-giving streams of thought, and warmed and nur- tured by daily contact with the penetrating light which radiates from the Master Teacher, until ripe for the great ingathering of life's harvest. CHAPTER y CONSCIOUSNESS IN the learning of all matter, we have to start with some one deep aspect of the question, abstracting it as if it were the only aspect, and then we gradually correct ourselves by adding those neglected other features which complete the case," says Dr. William James. We have started with the accepted truth that Nature is the one true teacher. We have been told by her that this universe is a thing of law. We have seen her point to the unbroken thread running through the material, the vegetable, the animal, and the mental, and establish the law of all laws, continuity. Under this law we have sought to know mind, and have traced it to the world of force. Continuing the quest, we have been brought closer to mind by finding it in the sphere of those life- forces marked by growth. Following the same highway, and with the same guide, let us approach still nearer. It has been said that the year 1858 has an especial grip on history. That year saw the beginning of the Standard Oil Company, and in that year Cyrus Field laid his first ocean cable, and Charles Darwin began to preach the doc- trine of the origin of species. While no doubt the first two events have left their impress upon commercialism and transportation for all time, still, outreaching both of these because reshaping and liberating human thought, the parent of both, stands the work of Charles Darwin. The greatness of this work in no way consisted in the number of truths presented, but in the fact that it gave thought a truer process and a broader basis than before known. 34 CONSCIOUSNESS 35 When the law of natural selection was declared it was thought to pertain only to a narrow sphere of reasoning. But it has been found useful in all operations of thought. In making observations in continents, in both hemispheres, it was noticed that while such types as the elephant and giraffe flourished in one continent, in another, wdthin the same latitude, they were non-existent, and not even re- mains of their life in fossil form could be found. This strange gap of Nature could be explained only by an equivalent projection of environment, due to life-forces which, swept on to ease, finally met vicissitude, and per- ished. Struck by hazardous environment, set upon by tooth and claw of enemies, there was a struggle among forces, and naturally the survival of the fittest followed. What mental or moral principles were involved in this contest? Not any. Existence was the end* in view, and battle the thought. Fonn crowded form and specie fought with specie for place and food. It was a stubborn contest with justice and sympathy playing no part. Mercy and altruism were unknown. The misshapen, the feeble, were soon swept aside, and perished. Yet in all this there was growth, there was plan, for within it and of it instinct was born. Life, the vital energy of growth, had seized the protoplasm, the physical agent of life, and was moving it in certain fixed lines. W^hen this substance met a resistance greater than itself it adapted itself to the situation, altering either its rate or its course. This being done often, the changes in the movement of the protoplasm became established and the creature became specialized to suit his environment. Thus the movements of this life-agent were ground into the very fiber of the being, became fixed characteristics of the individuals of that type, and instinctive in their 36 GROWING A LIFE offspring. This must result, since the offspring were formed from and were a part of the parent. Through this process of vital energy the world was fixed under an inexorable law of routine or habit. The earth, subjected to the great forces of attraction and repulsion, settled into a Mississippi basin or broke into an Alpine crest. Through this process Nature taught the mole to burrow and his brother, the squirrel, to climb; the eagle to soar and the duck to swim. No swerving from the course, no comparison by the sparrow of his song of to-day with that of yesterday. Blind obedience to instinct everywhere; no remembrance, no imagination, no emotion, no will anywhere. Up to this time the mind has had nothing to do with the process. All has been done by the life-energy of God. Nature has been defined as a projection or creation of God in order to reveal Himself unto Himself and unto His creatures. This interpretation reveals the brain as a mass or projection of fibers, or centers of association, whose function is the reception and recording of the higher sense products conducted thither by the special sense organ. Here in the association centers of the brain the mind meets the material world. Just here, if we mark its decisive phenomenon, v/e shall find mind's chief differ- entiation from other forces and, as teachers, may seize one of its vital principles. There is a close analogy between the mind's relation to the brain and that of a musician to his instrument. The pianist is no part of the piano; neither is the mind a part of the brain. The different keys are touched by the performer, and exquisite hannony results. The localized cells of the brain, diversified, resemble the keys of an instrument when touched, giving rise to the bodily CONSCIOUSNESS 37 movement. In the lower animals an impulse is sent out by the special sense organ. This is carried by the pro- jection fibers to certain localities of the brain designed to receive such sensations. Thence it is reflected to an association center where it is translated into a stimulus. This stimulus tends to produce action in the parts whose motor functions are localized there. In man all this takes place and something more. When the vibration from the sense organs passes to the associa- tion centers, as in the lower animals, it is in part reflected to the motor centers, where it may act as a stimulus, and in part it acts upon the mind, which instantaneously remembers, imagines, reasons, and wills. Thus mind has a reactionary power. This power is consciousness. The mind-force differs from all forces of growth in this, that it is a conscious growing thing. A modem w^riter has said that man differs from all other creatures in that he only can sit in the grandstand and see himself march by. The bird sings but knows not that it sings; the child laughs and knows that it laughs. At this point the mind of man releases itself from mate- rial bearings and moves out into unending, unceasing growth. We think a thought, and consciousness as mem- ory marshals yesterday's thought alongside; comparison is made, and a new thought is born. Let the teacher in the schoolroom and the home follow the process by which vital energy in the growth-world yields at last to the pecuHar characteristic of mental growth, consciousness. By all means let trainers of chil- dren lift up their eyes to the blessings attendant on child- hood work w^hen mind as a conscious growing thing is properly appreciated. There is no growth, no mind, where the consciousness 38 GROWING A LIFE is not touched; there is no impression upon mind unless correlative expression is there to record it. It is like knocking on the door of a house where the inmates are deaf. No action is worthy of the term which does not report to the mental consciousness for comparison and reaction. Here only is the "articulation wath one's environments"; here only is life. If the ears are not knov/ing, conscious ears then you had as well speak to cold, insensate bmtes. If the eyes see to-day yet never consciously record that it is different from yesterday, then the child is blinder than those who, their optic nerves destroyed, have learned to make the sense of touch do double duty. In short, teaching is the conscious effort to place the mind in conscious touch with its environment so that the best possibilities may be obtained for reaction toward conscious high ideals. When you look upon the multitude of schoolrooms filled with children possessed with conscious powers yet sitting hour after hour in dull routine, having eyes that see not and ears that hear not, you want to write over the door of every such schoolroom, "Treat these children, O teachers, as though mind were a conscious growing thing." If devotional service has the beginning ten minutes, choose the morning song because it tells of the season expressed in autumn's varied colors all about them or in the verdant carpet of spring spread just without the schoolroom doors. If the Bible story comes next, awaken memory, stimulate judgment, by first relating a companion story, permitting some few questions, and then move off into the reading of one of the psalms of David or songs of Solomon with a spirit so appreciative, so centered in the consciousness that you must awaken minds before you, that it will lift your head, distend your CONSCIOUSNESS 39 nostrils as for a great breath of life, kindle your eyes to altars of love, and arouse your children to a sense of appreciation of the li^4ng truth as thus written and expressed. The recitation comes. How the bow of promise bends above the teacher who knows that she is dealing wdth conscious growth! Tests are made with quizzing and examination. Now the figures are cast up and there is the evidence of gro\\i;h. But there is something better than figures by which to rate improvement. It is the child's measure of himself through consciousness. There are some beautiful displays from Nature's seven-hued paint box. Aurora ushers in the day beneath a canopy rich with Tyrian purple and damask rose. Apollo at his zenith beholds an earth beneath him resplendent in color. Nox, sable goddess from her ebon throne, throws a rich drapery of dazzling hues athwart the setting sun. But not one of these sends forth a ray so swift, so beauti- ful, or so divine as that which lights the eye of a child when it realizes its own growth. On the other hand, the saddest, most condemning sight in any place where children live is the unconscious, lack-luster eye; recitation benches full of dull, listless minds — minds weighted by long hours, unwholesome curriculum, incompetent instruc- tion, and the thoughtlessness of unseeing parents — minds, unconscious, unthinking, unfeeling, caught in the meshes of expressionless existence. Have you not seen the successful teacher wdth quick, elastic tread step before a group of children and with vivacity, keen understanding, and rare discrimination assign tasks fitted to each? **Mary, you may take that problem because you are mistress of the situation. John, you may have that one, because it is a knotty test, and 40 GROWING A LIFE you have proved yourself an untangler of knots. Nellie, take this. Very well, if you do not see it clearly now, you will to-morrow, and you know the worth of 'try.' '* Thus the clear- voiced, well-balanced leader directs her little army. Every captain assigned a responsible posi- tion in the field of thought, every volunteer incited by the appreciative word and the remembered smile of approval (and memories of the white-faced, calm, but outraged leader one day ordering a pupil from the ranks for con- duct unbecoming a soldier), the command rings out, " Proceed to work. " With pencil and chalk for bayonets and swords, watch them spring to the happiest contest known, a mental battle. Figtues fly thick and fast, the outposts of thought are met and driven back, and in a little while uplifted hands like flags are waving over the conquered citadels of truth. But there is one problem no one can solve. They have stormed this bulwark with might and main. This the teacher notes with sympathy and admiration, and at last says, " I shall work this for you. I can take the fort. " The conscious power of the class is roused, and in part or in whole it exclaims, "No, please, teacher, give us another chance. Do not do it for us; we can conquer it. '* The clim.ax of good teaching rests in this. But is such work ever done? Yes, it is done in thousands of schoolrooms in America. It was done, memory true and joyous assures us, in a little backwoods village in Kentucky years ago by an unknown schoolmaster who never heard of psychology and had read but little of fixed pedagogy, but who was a thinker, a toiler, and every inch a man. In this discussion some things may be said that might be construed as disparaging the merits and the study of psychology. Far from it. Every time a master work CONSCIOUSNESS 41 on this subject is bequeathed to learning by a Hegel, a Kant, a Spencer, or a James it gives strength, inspira- tion, and impetus to civilization. But there is a greater strength, a sublimer inspiration, in the teacher herself, as, resting her view upon a few simple laws of Nature, the only psychology worth while, she remembers that in dealing with a pupil "divination and perception, not psychological pedagogics or theoretic strategy, are her real helpers." Let us quote further from Dr. James on this point: " I say it once more that in my humble opinion there is no new psychology worthy of the name. There is nothing but the old psychology which began in Locke's time plus a Httle psychology of the brain and the senses and theory of evolution and a few refinements of introspective detail for the most part without adaptation to the teacher's use. It is only the fundamental conceptions of psychology which are of real value to the teacher, and they, apart from the aforesaid theory or evolution, are very far from being new. . . . Psychology is a science, and teach- ing is an art. . . . An intermediary, inventive mind must make the application by using its originality. . . . The art of teaching grew up in the schoolroom out of inventiveness, and concrete observation. . . . The worst thing that can happen to a good teacher is to get a bad conscience about her profession because she feels herself hopeless as a psychologist. Our teachers are over- worked already. " It would be well if these words of wisdom were given a prominent place on every schoolroom wall. It would be better if they could be knotted into a club, a scoiu*ge like that used in the temple by the Master Teacher, and in the hands of a live soul be used to drive dead rote from 42 GROWING A LIFE the schoolrooms, craniining and stultification from our summer normals or institutes (summer abnomials many should be called) and higher courses for teachers. Truths like this should impel all who serve children directly or indirectly to the conclusion that the mind is a conscious growing thing and that it takes a soul conscious of its own task and powers to awaken it. We need not know so much of some things that occupy the school day; at least, we need not take them with such frightful literalness. Better the wonder, the sweet mystery, of the primal mind. Better far at times to let sink into the heart the Upper Spirit, common to man whose operations Wordsworth describes as he says: "The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. — Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. " The cry is for larger teachers and smaller books; more pages of spirit and less of matter; barriers of rostrum, chart, and texts broken down and thought spealcing from mind to mind. "Don't, teacher, don't tell that!" cries a little boy, as \vith imagination roused, the teacher tells of the retreat of the ragged, shoeless Continentals over ice and snow, leaving heroism written in footprints CONSCIOUSNESS 43 of blood from bruised and mangled feet. /'What is the matter, my child?'* asks the teacher. "Oh I" said the little man, "it hurts my feet so to hear you tell that story. '* Do you know strong, rugged truths, and when your pupils are gathered around you can you send them hot from your soul to theirs? A man bums a steel rod in oxygen. It is a wonderful sight to see the vi\ad sparks of tense metal fall before the flame Hke thread shriveled in a burning grate. It is still more wonderful when, looking in the glass vessel which held the experiment, you see bits of steel imbedded therein. Moulten hot it flew, melted what it fell upon, and was forever imbedded in it. *'So many little books are read there is no time for the great books. It is reading, spelling, parsing, arith- metic, and the rest of the succession, until w^e become 'sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,* and the grand proportions of teacherhood are lost. Yet the worst remains to be said. It is this. Behold, our children grow Hke us.'* In an article, "Our Poet of Nature as I Remember Him, " Mrs. Henrietta M. Nahmer vividly describes conscious teaching: "Not far from the birthplace of Bryant, v/hich is marked by a plain monolith of granite, and on the same ridge v/here the Bryant homestead commands a view of the Hampshire hills for miles, there stood in tlie fifties a Httle red schoolhouse so completely hidden in the forest that the stranger could not know of its existence until close upon it. Here was the typical New England school of that date; and while as yet no modem methods had crept in to disturb the somewhai dull serenity of teacher and pupil, there v>^as, once a day at least, a detour into byways where one might associate with the great 44 GROWING A LIFE ones of literature, and in the daily reading of selections from the English classics was begun that education which Matthew Arnold defines as the highest culture, *the knowledge of the best that has been said and thought in all ages.* Instead of the commonplace by which so many children of to-day are nourished, the youth of that time were spelUng out lofty themes from Cowper, the smooth verse of Addison, and the repose and dignity of Gray's Elegy in a Country Chttrchyard. What matters if the philosophy and insight of the glorious bursts of Thana- topsis were beyond the reach of our comprehension; the rolling measure of its cadences was music to our ears, even then stirring to the harmonies of the universe. ** This scene presents some values of conscious growth being assimilated. Let us study it and as far as prac- ticable, in home and schoolroom, profit by the example. CHAPTER VI SELF-ACTIVITY EVERY worthy movement of the world has found its nourishment rooted in the soil of philanthropy. Philanthropy is just a bundle of syllables hiding the idea of love — love, robbed of lust and divorced from infatuation; love of a m.an for his brother man. Philan- thropy is incarnated in self-sacrifice. " Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends . ' * Who is your friend , your neighbor ? "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves," — you know the rest of the story. Therein we find the answer to our question. How this conception of the beautiful life has widened from the individual into the family, from family to tribe, from tribe to state, from state to confederacy, from confederacy to a perpetual union, and from federated empires into Hague international tribunals, furnishes the heart's true hope for the fulfill- ment of the Tennyson prophecy: "Till the war-druni throbb'd no longer, and the battle-ila^a were furl'd In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world." While we are appreciating this truth we may as well state that philanthropy has prospered because it pays. If you have noticed. Nature is a good business woman. She propagates no grain, no horse, no man, or no idea unless it pays. Found your business upon principles opposed to Nature's laws and you may choose between bankruptcy or another begimiing. The shrewdest men of the world, the business men, know this to be true. 45 46 GROWING A LIFE This thing of getting only for yourself has about gone out of style, except among failures. This old world is geared upon the notch, get for the other fellow also or you will not get at all. That is what Wendell Phillips meant when he said to the soft-cheeked lawmakers at Washington: "Build your Capitol of marble and granite, heaven high, yet found it upon wrong and the *pulse-beats of an intelHgent schoolgirl will in time reduce it to dust.' " Education as a movement is no exception to this law. In all ages educators have been the greatest apostles of philanthropy, altruism, and divine love. The largest enterprises, the greatest efforts to enlarge the joys and liberties of men, have been founded upon and conducted through teaching. Moses was a true lawgiver, because he read in the eyes of his suffering people every law he v/rote upon the holy mountain. Socrates taught from the lascivious but artistic youth in the market place that Greece was dying of luxmy and avarice, and so preached the message of simplicity, though for this he lost his life. Christ is altruism incarnate. *'The Shepherd will give his life for his sheep. '* As a teacher he did give his life for his school. There was then, and there is now, no other way. Pestalozzi, Froebel, Horace Mann, William T. Harris, Franci§ W. Parker — what an unbroken succession of philanthropists! Into the garden where children, the hope of the world, were growing neglected, misunderstood, entered these great kindergartners. To teach theory — books? Yes, a little, but more to bestow smiles and hope and food and play and thought and love. Have they successors among the living? At once memory calls into being a picture. Behold a building lighted from pit to dome by a thousand lamps and still furthei illumined by SELF'ACTIVITY ' 47 the thousands of intelligent eyes focused upon the stage. Expectancy tiptoe in the streets, in the corridors, and in the aisles abated not as now it sat awaiting the words of Nathan C. Schaffer, the President of the National Education Association of America. Leader as he was, they cared nothing for what he would say. The mind leaps any barrier to pay deference to an idea. That idea, embodied in a splendid trinity of womanhood, sat upon the stage. The largest educational assembly of the world had gathered to pay deference to three of the world's good women, whom it called teachers: Jane Addams, Ella Flagg Young, and Sarah L. Arnold. It was a memorable occasion because it marked another milestone in human progress. The fall of Fort Sumter was not great as a battle, but it put an issue to the test. Waterloo was not a battle. **It was the facing about of the universe." This was no program offered by this trio of women educators, but an equalization of the scales of justice, a triumph of woman over time and circumstance. How the brute force that had circumvented, foiled, and crushed the woman of ages past would have scowled had it beheld the mind of woman thus enthroned ! They spoke, but it was not what they said but what they were that attracted. They were exponents of the greatest educational idea thus far generated or discovered. Every idea of philanthropy sent forth from Hull House, every method pursued at the Chicago Normal College, and every kindergarten plan in the Boston public schools was dominated by this principle : * * The mind is naturally self- active." All teachers and home makers should hear this truth, receive it, and analyze it. In Boston, in 1903, Miss Arnold said: "It has always seemed strange to me that man went searching so long 48 GROWING A LIFE for the di\dnest principle of education, when it lay always at his very feet." That principle was the self -activity of mind. She was right. Nature, the infallible inter- preter of natural law, reveals, along with the truth that mind is a force of growth, that all growth is naturally self -active. Go take Hf e in the germ , in the grain of wheat , in the acorn. Can you add to or subtract from the potential life wdthin? Pare with knife or crush with stone, the shell alone you mutilate. You may wreck environment of the life principle of a snail or of a man, but the vital principle, or the mind-principle, you cannot touch. You can bring all of the elements of an egg together in the chemical kingdom, but no wizard of the laboratory has been able to compound the Hfe principle of that egg. To the teacher this is at once a sure guide and bless- ing. It says, God has furnished mind. With that mind per se you have nothing to do. The work is finished, and finished by a master hand ; it is not to be touched directly. Environment is on one side ready to assist you with the influences you wield; on the other side stands heredity. These two, "heredity and environment," explains Drum- mond, "are the two master forces of the organic world. " Not only of the child-world but of the whole organic or growth kingdom; then, proceeding from this, Drummond hurls out a system of pedagogy in a paragraph. It is so fundamental, it is so plain and practical, that every worker with children should appropriate it. ** These have made us what we are. These forces are still ceaselessly playing upon all of our lives. And he who truly imderstands these influences; he w^ho has decided how much to allow to each; he who can regulate new forces as they arise or adjust them to the old, so SELF-ACTIVITY 49 directing them as at one moment to make them cooperate, at another to counteract one another, understands the rationale of personal development. To seize continu- ously the opportunity of more and more perfect adjust- ment to better and higher conditions, to balance some inward evil with some pmrer influence acting from with- out, in a word to make our environment at the same time that it is making us, these are the secrets of a well-ordered and a successful life." Let us as teachers and parents recast this paragraph. Heredity and environment make the child what he is. These forces are ceaselessly playing upon his life. The teacher or parent who truly understands these influences, — the teacher or parent who has decided how much to allow to each, — the teacher or parent who can regulate new forces for us as they arise or adjust them to the old, so directing them as at one moment to make them coop- erate, at another to counteract one another, imderstands the rationale of child development. To seize continu- ously the opportimity of more and more perfect adjust- ment to better and higher conditions, to balance some inward evil with some purer influence acting from without ; in a word, to permit and assist the child to make its environment at the same time that environment is making the child; these are the secrets of well-ordered and suc- cessful child-growth. , Beginning with heredity, which is all things that have gone before, we would begin the instruction of the child, as Dr. Holmes suggested, hundreds of years before it is bom. Since that is beyond us, we must leave heredity save as a study of what this child inherited from the past, to be modified and shaped by the present. We cannot go back of the blood corpuscle. The pupil sits 4 50 GROWING A LIFE before us as representative of his mother, his father, his grandparents, and millions of other ancestral forces. Is his speech not clear? Wait, a hundred years or more of uncultiu-ed tongues speak through his. Is his form misshapen, his eye dull, his mind enfeebled? Remember, you saw his father and grandfather yesterday, and he is a part of a starved, degenerate force. Be patient, and with dexterous hand present the picture, guide the crayon, exercise the feeble joints, feed the famished body, break away the clogs and fetters until the pent-up mind, freed, escapes the barren environment, and from the poorhouse boy of Wales we shall have a Stanley, a world explorer. Study environment, look close upon that which lies about the child. Ask many teachers to name the envi- ronment closest to the mind, and such answers as these will be given: the air, the home, the schoolroom. There are three important divisions of socius or environ- ment. The material "me," made up of such factors as body, clothes, and home; the social "me," including such elements as companions and school scenery ; and the spir- itual "me," including such influences as church and Sunday school. These are the avenues by which mind is approached. Texts, along which teachers too con- stantly move, are narrow bypaths contrasted with the broad, nature-adorned highways, the body or home of the child. Along these ways the physician, the medical inspector, pure-food commissions, playground associations, and physical training director are moving with gifts of better throats, better eyes, better bodies, and better food in better homes, all to make the body give the mind a better chance. "I have missed Nellie for the last two days," said a teacher. "Yes," said the friend addressed, "she came SELF- ACTIVITY . .51 from school one day in a nervous collapse and has not recovered. You know, she suflers from a spinal weakness. She must have received a shock of a severe nature, for she has suffered since with nervous rigors that have verged on catalepsy. I fear her school days are over for a year or more." Consulting the record book, and comparing the entry with the friend's statement, the teacher dis- covered the day of * ' shock ' ' was the day a decided ' * shake ' * was given Nellie because she was fidgety in class. It would be well if the teachers could know the health, the bodily environment, of the child before these decided "shakes" take place. Instead of tests on number, make sometimes a test for adenoids. Substitute for examina- tions in grammar an examination of teeth. Instead of using your watch in a race in quick addition, make a test in quick hearing, accurate breathing, and skilled acting. Instead of continually criticizing idle, listless children, give them a critical sight test and report to the parent and physician how, when, and w^here. By a thousand devices born of faith, it is your mission to bring life and bring it more abundantly to the child. This must be done to-da}^ for we know not what to-morrow may bring forth. Here in your own schoolroom, whose area is unrestricted because its roof is the blue dome of heaven, this work must go on. True, we seem to be losing sight of our great natural principle. Mind is naturally self-active. Yet excuse is not needed nor asked, inasmuch as environment is nearer to mind than breathing, " and closer than hands and feet. " It is even less sentiment than scientific fact to say that modem mind training discovers that the dismal gap between school and home must be bridged. "James," said the irate teacher, "I believe that you are the worst 52 GROWING A LIFE boy I ever saw." "Oh," said James with a knowing curl of the lip, "you just ought to hear what Ma says about you. " Too often this little piece of active flesh, "James," is the only exchange in the big educational system con- necting home and school. To carry the figure further, is it any wonder, when you come to think of the common toil, the common authority, and the exceedingly common ideals centering in James, that he gets his wires crossed? Between the vicious home, the undeveloped child, and the poor teaclier, and the good home, the normal child, and the strong teacher every problem of education is included. Home may be to those children in front of you tragedy or comedy, love or hate, control or license, education or neglect, heaven or hell. A teacher tells a story of a visitor coming to her school- room one day. She had the children tell some stories for his pleasiue. One hand, though it wore the dirt of neglect and was attached to a body clothed all too scantily for comfort, would not down. The little fellow arose, and with as much light of eye as the self-active flame could shed within its restricted niche, told the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. "On they went," he said, "on they went right into the moimtain; just as the last little boy got in, the mountain shut up, that quick." And he clapped his little hands together, his face lighting with an extra glow. "And the little boys and girls were shut up in the moimtain and never had to go home no more. They found pretty woods and rivers, and played all the time, and never had to go home no more. Oh, it was no nice, and just think, they never had to go home no more." The teacher forgot everything except the little waif's graphic description of his own home, and in SELF-ACTIVITY S3 the gnawing pity for his stricken life she wept. Who doubts it ? Not a teacher, not a lover of humanity possess- ing mind and heart. This dethroned, deflected, and dis- mally environed soul is closer to us than we know. Riches as well as poverty create it. Excess as often as starvation mothers it. But there it is, and la>4ng aside the text, let us with unremitting persistence cut loose from the enfeebling falsities and supply imprisoned, divinely self- active mind a passageway to the true nobleness it seeks. Bring in the sunshine and calcimine. Pitch out switches, and hang up Peny pictiures. Lower the rostrum, the teacher's symbol of separation, and elevate the American flag. Drop the pointer, and take up the paint brush, chanting with your children as they rub on the japalac, "Little beds of flowers, little coats of paint. Make a pretty schoolhouse out of one that ain't." Push out with longing and laughter, created by story- telling, song, and love, the sides of the hot old school- house, and go forth into the meadow and count the clover blossoms, the primroses, and the blue hills. "Define ferment," said a teacher to a class of fidgety youngsters lined up for spelling at the end of a two hours' stay indoors on a hot April afternoon. "You may use it in a sentence, if you wish." One little fellow out of the abimdance of his heart availed himself of the privilege and wrote: "I had rather play outdoors in April than ferment in the schoolhouse." Who doubts that this little boy understood the meaning of the word? Dig and grade, plant and protect the school yards imtil on cool stretches of green swards, bordered by violets and brightened by climips of lilacs, sunflowers, and elms, you 54 GROWING A LIFE can see laughing, merry, joyous children playing, while in fancy Froebel's spirit brooding over all whispers, "This is my child's garden. " Whatever the struggle environment and heredity may bring, there is always a great force working with us. The steam does not spring with greater alacrity to push from out its pathway 3rielding piston and whirling v/heel than mind leaps to break dowTi the barriers of abnormalism. The subtle force along the electric wire is as a child's breath in power and runs but slowly compared with mind as it darts through limpid blood and pain-racked frame up through wrong and on until it almost thinks the thoughts of God. Lovers of children should never forget that mind in its self -activity fights w4th them, and that like all of Nature's forces it is greater than they and all their texts and theories. This is Nature's plea for personality — so plain that he who runs may read. What is personality? The way in which mind reacts when in contact with its environment. If reaction has some way peculiar to itself, we call this individuality; if not, we call it mediocrity, or do not name it at all. But thoughtless, opinionated, ill balanced minds call individuality, or mind reacting in a way peculiarly its own, impertinence, pride, or wrong. They begin to right it, and then there is a battle between mind and mind. Squeers is not the only master that used his school as a thing to sit upon. Too much to-day do we behold in the schools of the land the children boxed in text and routine, latched by the teacher's personality, and king teacher, with triimiphant mien, sitting on the lid. "Children, will you tell me," said the visiting super- intendent, "how many are three peaches and four peaches?" The little upturned faces looked sweetly at SELF-ACTIVITY $$ him, but their tongues were still. Once more the ques- tion was urged, and just as the silence grew ominous the good man asked, "What is it, little girl?'* ''Please, sir," said the little girl, "we do them in apples, not in peaches," and every little head bobbed in accord. That superintendent found some moldy fruit being served to childhood, but he was not alone in his discovery. The little man who replied when asked the shape of the earth, "Round like an apple on the week day, and like a snuffbox on Sunday, " was only repeating what had been told him. Teacher had said, "Thou shalt have no other God of thought before me. What I tell you is to be taken and, mind, there is to be no looking into the spoon." The only trouble was, the teacher could not be everywhere, both in day school and Sunday school. Teachers shift, but all they say to the child is true. So out comes the snuffbox of the new teacher on Sunday, up goes the apple theory until Monday, and down goes the child through such training into mental slavery. In a schoolroom one day a class in history was called. Noble faces, sturdy, finely proportioned limbs, and intelligence above the ordinary marked the group as they swung into their places. The teacher was a neatly dressed, dark-eyed young man pleasing in speech and manner. They were summing up some biographical values. Topics had been assigned for special investiga- tion. "The next topic," said the teacher, "is assigned James." Instantly a fine chap arose and said it had been given to him to tell of a certain character. In pleasing tones and inviting speech for one so young he outlined the life of an eminent statesman. At last he said: "It seems to me this was an honest man. He acted for the best interests of his people." As he 56 GROWING A LIFE approached this point the class shifted restlessly in their places and looked with quick glances at the teacher. It was plainly to be seen that "coming events cast their shadows before." The dark eyes of the teacher grew darker, his brow knotted, and his hands tmtched. The class seemed to know what this meant. The word "Stop!" rang out. The lad raised his head as nearly on a level with the teacher's as he could and waited. "You say from what you gather this was an honest man. Where did you get such an opinion?" "From history," replied the boy. "Where do you find it there?" "In all of the histories that are worth anything," answered the lad. "Name one, and cite the page and line," commanded the teacher in a voice full of passion. "They may not say so in exact words or on a certain page, but it is intimated everywhere," said the lad. "Name the book and the page, or sit down," said the teacher with fire in his eyes. The boy, pale but undaunted, said sturdily: "In talking last night with my father this was his opinion also. " " Ah ! " said the irate teacher, ' ' there is where you found it. No, young man, this character is not worthy of respect, and I want you to understand that in this schoolroom, as long as I am here, I do not want any of yoiu* or your father's opinions to the contrary. If you bring them here you do so at yovir peril." This scene is as vivid in memory as if enacted yesterday rather than twelve years ago. And over the straightening of young shoulders and glances of startled S3mipathy for a comrade wotmded on the battle field of thought, over the picture of the schoolmaster with the cruel bludgeon of an imbalanced mind, upraised to strike a blow to honest conviction, stands out the figtu-e of the boy. Respectfully silent he stood, yet the pale face, quivering SELF-ACTIVITY 57 nostrils, and unabashed blue eyes cried aloud as in thunder tones: "Teacher, you have wounded my individuality sorely. It is all I have to help me to success. You have not killed it to-day, but beware. The weakness of years, my blood's respect for authority, and the demand of my home decree that I meet you regardless of suffering, but I entreat you to give my self-activity, my personaHty, a chance to live. ,. Teacher, in the name of the larger life, spare me." In a greater or less degree this tragedy is being enacted in schoolrooms and homes every hotir. Teachers, mothers, and fathers consciously or unconsciously too often play the role of this misguided, ignorant teacher. History would have told him: Be steady, this life you discuss is only an effect, not a cause. Such men no more caused the effects for which you condemn them than the overflow of rivers caused the rain that choked their banks. These men were only so much flotsam and jetsam on the river of human progress. True, the crest of an historical wave caught such a man and threw him into special prominence. This is plain even to a child. Wherefore your spleen, wherefore your imwillingness to confess that any searching after truth should be treated with respect? Beware how mind gets set. "Very positive men," says a profound thinker and writer of good peda- gogy, "have a great need of being very right, otherwise they may be very wrong. " For centuries self-activity has been the active principle of educational enterprise. It created the kindergarten and shaped the normal school. It has cleansed, purified, and rendered acceptable the public-school curriculum. It has, like a veritable life sap, crept from point to point up the educational systems imtil the public school, 58 GROWING A LIFE high school, nonnal school, college, university, and home find in it "the thread that doth all unite." It is the natural law upon which the trichotomy of education — the head, the hand, and the heart — has encircled the child, lifting him to intellectual liberty. It is the founder of training schools and of modern industriaHsm. It is striking dead the old fetish that grind, grind, grind of memory and little more is education. It is the mother of handicrafts, which is doing for the boyhood of America what Colimibus did for the Europe of his day — furnishing the other half of the world. The self-active mind, ever ready, ever willing, ever anxious, has given the teachers just one thing to do. Just one, let it be repeated, and that is, to work on the child's environment. It has simplified because it has diversified; it has edified because it has unified. The thoughts, feeHngs, and actions of men were divorced by oppression and repression of the child's heart and hand. Self -activity, listening to the child's cry for the crayon and the brush, for the hammer and the saw, for the throttle and the electric switch, has heard, and the child in a world of art, science, rehgion, and love is growing to the stature of its Maker's ideal. CHAPTER VII RIGHTEOUSNESS SCIENCE in the world is like the surveyor and the engineer in a new country; it opens up highways for the mind; it bridges the chasms and marshes; it gives us dominion over the wild; it brings order out of chaos. What a maze, what a tangle the world is till we come to look upon it with the clews and solutions in mind which science affords! The heavens seem a haphazard spatter of stars, the earth a wild jumble of plants and animals and blind forces all struggling with one another, — confusion, contradiction, failure everywhere. And so it was to the early men and so it still is to those who have not the light of science, but so it need not remain to the child born into the world to-day. The great mysteries of life and death, of final causes and ultimate ends still remain and will continue, but nature now, compared with the nature of a few centuries ago, is like a land subdued and peopled and cultivated compared with a pathless wilderness. " So says John Burroughs. Government has liberated and mothered art; religion, sweetened and ennobled government. Science has set its ladder of natural law over against government, art, and religion, and they, mounting above speculation, have attained dominion over earth, sea, and air. Not more than a century ago man was the center of a world where everything was at loggerheads. Did earthquake and pestilence appear ? Then an angry god was being appeased. Did flood or drought approach? They were tokens of divine scourgings. Was the sun red within the compass 59 6o GROWING A LIFE of certain days ? That was why a messenger brought news that war was being talked in the palace of the king. There is a man running a machine with that sputtering, hissing stuff that makes the teakettle lid dance. Very well, no good will come of it, for does it not bum and cut as though the very spirit of the evil one were in it? Beware of the cheerful mind, for sorrow will sup with it to-morrow. Thus mind ttuned to matter, and in terms of supersti- tion read its doom. Thus matter, in arching sky, in generous cloud, in shady forest, in all her myriad forms held out beseeching arms to man only to receive from him suspicion and disdain. Mind was a caged animal between two jailers, the flesh and the devil below and an avenging God above. Long faces were at a premium, while love and laughter bowed the knee to hate. A man was a worm of the dust, and what were worms good for but to crush? So pulpiteers preached showers of brimstone, kings sent nations to death, schoolmasters flogged, and the philosophy of pessimism spread its broad black pall over the thoughts of man. But always there are some men who bow not to Baal. "God sends His teachers into every age, to every race of man, with revelations fitted to their growth, nor gives the Nile of Truth into the selfish realm of one sole race. " Priestly found the world a new atmosphere, and La Place and La Grange trained their mathematics to step along the rim of the solar system until every lost planet was recovered. Spectnmi analysis swung its infallible search- light from star to star, and under Kirchoff and Bunsen revealed that the remotest bodies disclosed by the telescope are truly a part and parcel of the dynamic world in which we live. Lyell forged his way over plains and mountains, and with trust in Nature's guidance traced cause and RIGHTEOUSNESS 6i effect by comparative anatomy, by fossiliferous life, and proved with Moses that earth was the result of growth and not of whim. Darwin searched and Huxley exposed, Goethe sang and Spencer theorized; and the world swung into full-orbed day — a creation of right not wrong, a thing of law and love. With careful search, under great toil and execration, we have come to know that man has a glorious heritage. If anything be wrong it is because of our own disobedi- ence to law. If there be weakness, it is of the flesh, not the spirit. The environment may be disarranged, but the forces of Nature are orderly and only wait for system to be restored. Going into the growth-world, if to the wheat sown upon a thousand fields we give a proper environment, perfection results. Examine that noble forest through which you pass. If blight of wind or insect has not matched contrary forces with the rich soil and abundant rainfall, nothing will be seen but arboreal symmetry. So the forces of growth, like all Nature's forces, are right, ever right. Mind is a force of growth; mind is naturally self -active, and in its self -activity mind naturally grows right. If you wish to prove how knowledge grows and wisdom lingers, state this proposition — ^mind naturally grows right — before a body of average thinkers. At once you will read doubt written upon their faces. Offer proof, and they will refute it. They may admit that order and law pervade the inorganic world, that star and stone move in their orbits beneath forces true and perfect. They will admit that all is stable and divinely related in the vegetable kingdom; that in the animal kingdom, up to and including man's physical growth, all is governed by a propitious and inflexible law. But 62 GROWING A LIFE there you must halt. Into that force-woiid, the highest because most complex, the most potent because it domi- nates all, the most divine since it alone knows God, you must not carry your law of continuous good. They will tell you that other forces may be orderly, but mind is erratic. Other forces may be true, but mind is false. Other forces may obey the behests of an all-directing Good, but mind is naturally depraved. This blighting, vmscientific conception, although fast dying out, still lingers about too many places where children grow. If it were possible to stop every teacher in America upon the threshold as she enters the school- room to begin a year's work and ask her one question by which her fitness to teach is to be decided, this would be the question : ' * Do you believe in the child ? ' ' Stand fast; "in the child" means all children, rich and poor, beautiful and iigly, clean and dirty, pure and sinful, divine and devilish. Do not dissimulate. The intuitive child heart will expose and condemn you. Do not equiv- ocate and mutter. Speak out, and say whether these expressions of aptitude or stupidity, cleanhness or filth, good or bad in child form shall be given faith. If "No" be your answer, then turn to other work until you learn that men and children can receive nothing from one who distrusts them. Step aside until you learn that mind is a force of Nature ; and like all of Nature's forces, such as light, heat, and electricity, is without fault. Halt until you grasp the truth. You can afford to have faith in that whi,ch God has used through the long train of ages to pull this earth from a dark chaos to " a blooming, fertile, heaven-encompassed world. " Let a teacher believe that mind naturally grows right and ever there is sure orround beneath her feet. Mind RIGHTEOUSNESS 63 naturally grows right, mind unnaturally grows wrong. Is there a dullness about this pupil or an unnatural bril- liancy about that other? You know that it is not the mind, for mind naturally grows right. Make all excuse you will for your teaching, for the home training, the par- entage, and other features of environment, but make none for mind. Is there a little pest who begins in early hours to play havoc with your plans for the day? Think; maybe you made those plans for self and overlooked this junior partner in the firm. Consult him, using here a watchful eye, there a quiet hand and soothing voice. Speak in a low, sweet tone, so different from the scolding, high-pitched tones he heard in his home a little while ago, thus enabling him to start out with a pleasant sensation. "There they come to class again, Hke so many cattle, " shouted the schoolroom keeper in high-pitched tones which spoke of rage, sarcasm, and rebuke. And on they came with an extra tribute to the challenge, with a harder thump of heels than ever and a more knowing twinkle of the eye than yesterday. They know her better than she knows herself. She thinks she is a teacher and they know she is a patrol. She thinks she is to keep order and they know her as the chief noise maker in the schoolroom. She thinks she is in command and running things; she should know that they have been running things ever since they found out that she w^as not an efficient leader, but an unbalanced creature. *' Superintendent, I am trying," said a young woman to the school chief. She was one of those untrained teachers to whom the American public has turned over so much of the instruction of its children. They are aspiring, bright — and besides, what is going to become of 64 GROWING A LIFE them if you do not give them something to do, says the American school board. She stood there, as fine a speci- men of undeveloped teacherhood as one might look upon. Time after time had she been criticized for having a disorderly room, for cultivating lawlessness and engen- dering weakness. Each time she saw her mistake and promised it should not recur. But here again the class, the whole room, was a hotbed of idleness and noise. "I try to stop it; I talk, I tell them stories, I draw pretty pictures, I send them to play, I beseech, I threaten, and I whip, but I cannot make them work or be quiet. " Only too true; they were then shifting in their seats, talking in undertones, standing up only to see how they might slide back into their seats, or coming with noisy feet to ask a question the answer to which they already knew, — in fact, doing all those things the unlicensed mind of children always suggests. Turning to the teacher, the superintendent asked, "What are you doing?" *'I doing? Why, I was hearing the reading lesson.** "Was that all?" "Yes, I think so, " replied the teacher, rolling her eyes as if in quest of an idea. "Take a piece of paper and write down what you were doing as I saw it," said the superintendent. "You greeted me in tones loud enough to be heard throughout the building. You asked questions in the same tone. You paced with nervous tread back and forth before your class while the pupils, with smiles and winks, telegraphed to each other yotu* lack of poise. Yotu* heels made more noise than any other three pairs in the room. Your voice drowned the din and confusion of the noisy tramping of the pupils as they came for a walk, though ostensibly to ask you a question. The shifting of yoiu: attention RIGHTEOUSNESS 6$ from the class in recitation to the class in study, with loud criticism and nervous starts, destroyed your balance. Read this, and then let me ask, as to this disorder, who should be criticized? No, my young friend, there is nothing the matter with the pupils here, but the teacher needs to study herself. The queenship of this schoolroom lies within you, as does the Kingdom of Heaven. Conquer self, lower your voice, wear rubber heels or quit using them to dig into the floor, relax body and mind before preparation, and believe in self until you can walk or stand, sit or run, with ease and grace. Bring your physical self into harmony with a clear, happy, and restful mind, and, believe me, your children will move, live, and have their quiet being in you. If you cannot do this, in the name of the children you are injur- ing, get out of the schoolroom." She did not get out, but she did conquer self, poised her soul in the power-giving faith that she was wrong, that the child's mind naturally grows right, and to-day she is one of the most successful teachers in a splendid system of city schools. In "A Teacher's Talk to Teachers" in The Ladies* Home Journal Miss Williams has admirably summed up the thoughts embodied in the foregoing. ** In saying these things, I have told you nothing new. You have heard them repeated at institutes. Every recent educational book or periodical contains at least a reference to them. I bring them up now not to inform you, but to ask you whether you believe them. If you do, you act upon them, since the only beliefs to which current thought permits the name are those which you work out in conduct.** There it is — the gulf between the dreamer, the drifter in teaching, and the doer. It is just a north star of faith. 5 66 GROWING A LIFE There need be but a facing about, and the individual may exchange a vista of horror for one of beauty. So a worker among the children, with the lodestar of Nature's simple, unwavering proof before her, out of discord, out of strife and pessimism, steps into haiTQony, power, and joy. Ask the American teacher what she believes, and in her reply you have a picture of her work. This principle of pedagogy, that mind naturally grows right, is another supreme plea for consideration of the individual. The class may be all wrong; but you are not teaching classes, but individuals. The lesson may be a failure — you planned it with a textbook or a teachers' aid — but the mind of that child is no failure. Do not scold, do not fret, do not accuse! Do you know whom you are accusing? Do you know even his whole name, his father's name, the name of his mother, his lineage, the occupation of his parents, something of their home life, his home, his health, appetite, strength of senses, sleep, play, inclination, love, hate, religion, companions, acquirements, and what he thinks of you? Wait and learn about him before you pass judgment. Two boys sit side by side. The teacher has detained them that she might make comparison. James, she knows, is a model child ; William is the bane of her exist- ence. Beyond that she has not gone. ''William, once more I urge you to be a better boy. All day you have tried my patience, and now it is at the breaking point. Besides complete ignorance of the lesson, you have chosen to disregard my commands. Here is James, no larger, no older, and with no better mind, yet he is always studious, always obedient. Tell me, Wil- liam, " and the teacher's voice grew low and tender with feeling, "tell me why you are such a bad boy." It RIGHTEOUSNESS 67 seemed as though light had come at last, for with tears falling fast the little fellow said, " 'Deed, teacher, I dunno. I swear every day I'll be better, and just when I think I'm doin' fine, something seems to just jerk me back to the old way again. I v/ish, " and with more tears came the words, *'I could be as good as James, but I'm afraid I never can, because, " and the sobs came thick and hard, "because, sometimes, I'm afraid my mind's like mother's, and she is in the insane asylum. " Ah, teacher, there is your answer. One of those chil- dren was bom under the roof of a normal, happy home; the other was born under the shadow of insanity, and now motherless lives ever in dread of it. This is an exaggera- tion, some one says. No, it is taken directly from the diary of an American teacher, and the teacher who doubts the frequency of such experiences either has no experi- ence or never touched the heartstrings of individual children. When thought pictures Squeers's method applied to thousands of homes and schools — children living in an atmosphere of scowling faces, threats, slaps, kicks, and sticks; teachers exclaiming, "Say all the nice things you please about the minds of children naturally growing right, but we know some that are naturally demoniacal " — memory calls up a story told by a Kentucky educator, which if possible should reach every teacher harboring such pessimistic thoughts. He said: "When acting as principal, yearsago, down on the waterfront in Louisville, many hard problems arose in dealing witH the life along the -river. One case especially stands out in memory. In those" years the reign of the rod was supreme. Like Draco's laws, for the least infraction the boy got the switch, and we knew no greater punishment for larger offenses. So this incorrigible 68 GROWING A LIFE boy received it early and often. He became noted for two things — ^how in a school-yard brawl he could straighten out his arm and measure an adversary fiat along the ground, and how nonchalantly he could take the whippings that I gave him. He would lift a shoulder or maintain his back in a hump after one of my best efforts, as if to say, * Why not go ahead? This thing seems to do you lots of good, while it doesn't hurt me at all.' "One day a lad came hastily into my office saying a certain teacher wanted me at once. I went, and there, back braced against the wall, knife in half -hidden hand, and teacher confronting him with a switch in her hand and tears in her eyes, stood my boy. She said: This boy has been unruly all the morning. At last I concluded that I must punish him. He resented it, and said that I must not hit him again; if I did, he would cut me.* "There stood the young outlaw, angry, sullen, defiant. Bidding him come with me that I might make out papers for expulsion, I started for my office. As we moved along I looked at him, and was struck forcibly with the fact that often as I had beaten him, I had never seen him before. There he was, sturdy of build, expressive of head and face, truly a good animal. Turn this boy out? Where would he go? Home? What home? Something seemed to whisper, *You know nothing of this child, and he it is you are paid to educate, to save — not the normal child whom anybody can help.* So in self-defense I asked, * Where do you live, my son ? * " 'Down on the river,* he muttered. '* *Are your parents living?* " 'Yes, sir,* he replied. " 'What does your father do?' " 'Hauls coal.' RIGHTEOUSNESS 69 " *And your mother, does she help the home by her work?' " *Yes, sir.' " 'By doing what?' " 'By washing.' " 'Do you have a happy time about home?' The ox- like eyes searched mine for explanation. 'I mean, is your father kind and good always?' " 'Yes, sir, most all of the time.' " 'And when is it you find him unkind?' " 'When he is drunk,' said the boy with a scowl. " 'What happens then, my lad?" " 'He beats me.' " 'Too bad, but then your mother makes up for all that unkindness; she is always kind?' Never shall I forget the startled look in his eyes, as if the wild, untrained heart of the boy said, 'Go no further; I would defend my mother'; but he answered, 'Yes, most all the time.' " 'And when is it that you are not happy with your mother?' "With a lump in the throat, and after much effort, he replied, 'When she is drunk, too.' " 'How does she treat you then?' *' And the lips of the boy slowly said, 'She beats me.* *'It went through me like an electric shock. 'You beat him; what a drunken father and mother have done to this poor body you also have done. Your method at school has been their method at home. A home of drunkenness has sent him to you bruised and imbruted with stripes, and you beat him some more, thus degrading him the more. If you had treated this mind as though it were noble, the result might have been different.* Repentance shot me through and through. I must try 70 GROWING A LIFE to get back my self-respect. *My boy,' I said, *I want to beg you to forgive me. I have been mistreating you.' "The boy raised his dark eyes searchingly and said, *I don't know what you mean.* " 'I mean just this. You have come to me a Httle boy, and made mistakes for which I have beaten you. Instead of striking you, I should have cared for you, talked with you, loved you. But I beat you, and I want you to forgive me and promise to help me.' " 'Why, Mr. ,' calling my name with far more show of feeling than he had ever before evinced, "I do not see how I can help you.' " 'You can help me by giving me another chance to help you. Come, my boy, promise me that you will remain in school, be dutiful, and let me be your friend and you be mine.' ''Shaking his head, but with more light in his eye, he said, 'I do not see how I can be your friend.' " 'You can do your best in school, and then I will do my best to help you. Come, give me your hand; let us earnestly promise each other to be good friends.' "Slowly the truth went home, and with tears flowing from the fountain of his soul he said earnestly, 'I will, Mr. , I will be a better boy. I will be your friend.' "And," said this great teacher, "from that very day he was a different boy. Step by step I saw him climb through the grades. With a special handclasp and enco-uraging word he left me and entered high school. Then after four years of warm companionship I saw him graduated, and with a look of gratitude over his shoulder for me, pass out into the world. This story vv^ould be but half told if I did not tell you what follows. A few years ago I was in the city of San Francisco at a meeting RIGHTEOUSNESS 71 of the National Education Association. One evening while sitting in the lobby of one of the great hotels a bell- boy came to say a gentleman wished to speak to me. He was followed by a young man who bore the unmistakable stamp of the wide-awake, progressive Vv^estemer. Holding out his hand, with a smile he asked if I remembered him. Some things about him seemed familiar, but I did not know him. Did I remember the boy whom I used to teach, down on the waterfront in Louisville, and with whom I had once made a compact of friendship ? With heartiest handclasp we met again. He said: *I came here soon after leaving high school, and after great effort have built up a prosperous business and possess a good home. I have a wife to whom I have often told the story of the help you gave me. We both believe that you have been the greatest force for good in making me a man. We often speak your name when at night we thank God for his blessings, and I have come to take you to my home that my wife may know you.' " Although almost twenty years have passed since this story fell upon my ears, it stands out as vividly in memory as if related yesterday. Raising his fine face, all aglow with sweetest faith in the human heart, the great man concluded, "It pays to trust in boys and girls." It is true. This poor hulk of pain, vanity, and weakness, the body and its surroundings, may press sorely upon the mind; but with love, and cheer, with hand and heart let us pry, lift, and work until the weight is removed and mind is given its natural growth. Mind is all right. This is the optimism seizing the entire world. Reach up, reach up, you teachers and parents of children, until you grasp this practical truth, deduced from atom, molecule, plant, and animal — mind naturally 72 GROWING A LIFE grows right. Look up, not down; forward, not back; out, not in; and lend a hand. "Things tend still upward, progress is The law of life, man is not man as yet ... But in completed man begins anew A tendency to God." CHAPTER VIII HAPPINESS THE BIRTHRIGHT WE have moved thus far in the assurance that we tread firm pedagogical ground. There has been no speculation; with devious ways of men-made plans and methods we have had nothing to do. For a few cents we can buy enough of these to puzzle for a lifetime. It was understood in the beginning that the teacher did not need methods or plans. The multiplicity of these is the tangled maze from which the teachers of children would escape. What we wish and must have where mind is studied is law — simple, sense-supported law. We have gone into the world of substance, and with guides who have tracked truth home over a thousand ranges of thought we have met the laws of God or Nature face to face. We have found that the sages say all is one and one is all under the law of continuity. This gives us, who seek for basic truths of mind, splendid hope. Two phases of the universe present themselves, — the realm of matter and the realm of force. In the latter we find our study, mind, by the phenomena it presents, the only way by which anything can be named or classified. We move on until in that force-world where growth is chief we approach closer to mind. Then through the organic world of vegetable and animal life we pass, and just where unconscious force passes into conscious energy, there we find another basic attribute of mind. We turn back to the growth-world to observe some of its basic qualities, and wherever growth is seen, self- activity is the primal principle. Continuity reveals the 73 74 GROWING A LIFE mind of man as a thing of life from within outward. Nowhere is there an exception, and another base for mental development is laid in that mind is naturally self -active. We turn to microscope, telescope, and test tube, and they tell how, when, and where forces organic or inorganic, physical or chemical, vital or spiritual, are met; they are always sure, always right. Again conti- nuity with swift finger traces the way to the mental forces and finds that in the highest efforts of God and Nature the law of beneficence holds. The teacher finds in this the revelation that mind naturally grows right. These foundation stones in the educational structure may be few; but so far as knowledge ranges they are as true and immovable as the universe of which they are a part. Let us go forward with that well-groimded opti- mism. Nature has thus far led us to believe that if we shall be as "bold as truth and as uncompromising as justice" greater victories for the children await us. How it should delight us to observe that all genuine thinkers seek to lay their comer stones of truth upon Nature's act. To the fool the commonplace world is the wise or thinking man's sanctum sanctorum. Too often do individuals, called to worthy pursuits, with unseeing eyes go through God's universe, sensing nothing of the manifold color of ocean and land, the form and beauty of encircling, fleecy clouds, of life and love — nothing but dirt to tread upon, nothing but business buried in dollars to think about; no home, no school, no work, no world save sordid self. The boldest, clearest word for human betterment that has been spoken for a decade is found in The New Ethics by J. Howard Moore, of the Crane Manual Training High School, Chicago. It is an uncompromising plea HAPPINESS THE BIRTHRIGHT 75 for a recognition of the best there is in man. It asks that mind assert its dominion over unfavorable environ- ment. It is a fighting message full of fervor bom of rich, warm blood which flows straight to the true brotherhood of man and leads to the real fatherhood of God. It is a finer message for teachers than many of the driveling, puerile kind fostered under "quick-result" names. For the lasting part of such a message, the practical part, is not a saying, not an appeal; it is the fundamental truth upon which such sayings and appeals rest. This appeal is for a new ethics, a new view of the soul. Keep in mind the introduction to this work, and mark what was said of a need in pedagogy. Professor Moore bids men throw away plans of human method and uplift that are shallow, metaphysical, and smell of the chamel house of the Dark Ages. Up into God's best altruism, where man's chief happiness must ever rest, he climbs, and light and joy axe reached. With the skill of a scientist he goes forth to learn the story of life from crawling worm, fluttering moth, darting fish, soaring bird, and man. He talks to life, all life, not a part. This is cited because it is a flashlight upon the broad central theme of this work — that Nature is the one great teacher. It proves that advanced thought is moving this way. It reveals in what splendid company we journey, as, passing to our schoolroom, we hear giant thinkers of this and the preceding half -century expressing kindred faith. The needs of the teacher are thought and a few well-defined principles of life, grooved and rooted in uni- versal law. The teachers of the land will never be worthy of their heritage until they break loose from petty text, ready-to-use plans, and dull routine, and think and live broadly. 76 GROWING A LIFE Dr. Mclver of sainted memory, an educator of North Carolina, referred aptly to a classification which was long only too justly applied to the teacher. Going through a country district he turned into a farm house for a drink of water, and encountered an old woman, keen minded and kindly and gracious of manner. En- gaging her in conversation, he learned that she was the mother of five sons. Upon asking if all were living, Dr. Mclver was informed that two were living, two were dead, and one was ** teaching school." But the teachers are now stirred by a breath of a greater life. They are believing in their work, they are believing in themselves, and they are making their faith felt. A quotation from The New Ethics, like an index finger points to another strong principle of pedagogy, indissolu- bly linked with those heretofore deduced from the natural world. The end of new or old ethical plan and progress, because the end of all good, is happiness. "Righteous or right happiness? " some one asks. Certainly, but since simplest thought bom of even shallow observation teaches that there is no happiness but that bom of right, it needs no modification. * * Biology teaches, if it teaches an5rthing, that there is a solidarity of the sentient world. . The ox [man] slays, the horse he bestrides, the insect he bayonets with a pin, the fish he deceives, the moth that dies in his evening light, and the poor serpent that flees from his footsteps, are his kindred, partaking of his frail- ties and sharing his work. No being is utterly unlike or utterly unrelated to any other being. . . . *'The insect that flutters out its little existence among the prairie flowers, and whose nervous architecture is seemingly so different from man's, is attracted by the same bright colours and delighted by the same sweets and perfumes as HAPPINESS THE BIRTHRIGHT 77 those that entertain the senses of man. The honey stored by the flower for the bee, and by the bee gathered for its own use, is stolen and eaten by man himself. The thyme and lavender, the rose and jasmine, so alluring to the butterfly and bee, are the very things men choose to sweeten and adorn their own abodes." From deep down in the taproot of primordial life flows the active principle, enjoyment. Upward and outward it moves into every channel of the growth- world, flooding all with color, form and motion, laughter, smiles and music. Is life normal ? Then it is happy. Is life happy? Then it is normal. Everything reveals this law which dominates the mental processes as well as the physical. Is mind normal? Then it is happy. Is mind happy? Then it is normal. Over every mental process bends this bow of promise which teachers of children should ever behold; mind naturally enjoys growing right. Experience and observation teach that right thinking, the chief business of mind, is attended by supreme joy. Whether displayed in the abandoned glee, the flashing eye, and the flushing cheek of a child, or in the ponderous pen of a Carlyle as he startles the hemispheres with his titanic thought, there is always joy in thinking. Why did the home or school mix pain with instruction? Why did classrooms and jails fall into the same category in children's minds? Because there thinking, feeling, and willing — the sources and supporters of happiness — were too often fettered. A class in reading was going through the treadmill process of ''Rise, Mary, and read the next verse." At last Mary gave way to a large boy that had risen and fallen in perfunctory reading classes for seven dreary years but, unlike the fall of the Roman Empire, as yet the end was nowhere in sight. He had 78 GROWING A LIFE been asked to read that stanza telling of dying autumn, *'The melancholy days are come, The saddest of the year." Thus far he had drawled when the superintendent stepped in and asked, ''What is that you said, William?" Looking up in blank wonder, the boy replied, "I never said an3rthing. " "Oh, yes, you did, you said something about 'melan- choly days,' " said the visitor cheerily. "No, sir," replied William, "I never said anything about 'melancholy days.' " Coloring, the superintendent said, with distinct warmth in voice and eye, "Come now, let us have no nonsense; did you not say, 'The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year'? " "No, sir," replied the confused and stammering youth with a vexation that brought tears, " I never said anything at all." Dimifounded, the superintendent glowered, and look- ing about for something that would explain the situation, he exclaimed, "Well, if you did not say it, who did? " "Why," explained the lad in all earnestness, "I didn't say it; the book said it. " . Did one of the seven wise men ever give question a truer, better answer? Poor boy, he never said a word of it. Between his misused and deadened consciousness and the vivid autumn dreams of Bryant an awful chasm yawned, unbridged by any text or teacher. To him, reading was word calling, stumbling over bowlders of thought with only a little comma here or there to break the monotony of the journey toward the end for which he eagerly panted, a period. With a smile and "I beg your pardon," that superintendent, with swift and lively HAPPINESS THE BIRTHRIGHT 79 questioning, went to work on that stanza; he bade the children take up that statement, this word and that, and to think on the picture; he led them toward this and that light; and soon thought was sending out its beauteous streamers from every eye and childish cheek. In five minutes he turned to the boy who had denied saying the sentence and asked, ** You could have said it, could you not, my son?" The lad modestly but happily replied, "Yes, sir, if I had thought I could have said something like it." That last was teaching, and there was the attendant sign of pleasure where before was only dull pain. As you enter the schoolroom or the home, do the children brighten and glow with happiness? If not, seek the cause and remove it. It may be your voice. The soul bursts into bud and blossom at the sound of the human voice. Of the many requisites for a progressive, successful teacher none is more necessary than a happy, low-toned voice. "Do you see in my face signs of premature age?" said a master teacher before a throng of his disciples. "Know, then, that these wrinkles are scars left upon my brow by the high, shrill voice the teacher used as she hurled at my sensitive ears in the old spelling line such words as 'shady,' 'lady,' and 'baker.' " Too] true, as many more can testify. "Why, sire," asked a courtier of Napoleon, "does the Empress secure from you policies of state that your cabinet attempt in vain to obtain?" "Ah," answered the auto- crat of Europe, "you cannot know the bewitching voice of my beautiful Josephine. ' ' Every teacher in the land should be made to study her voice under a competent critic. It may be dress or address by which children are approached, but they are sensitive plants, and feel more 8o GROWING A LIFE than they reason. '*My teacher is prettier than yours,** may mean nothing, but it may mean everything. "The first requisite to success in this life is to be a good animal. " Herbert Spencer names here one of the prime demands school boards are making upon teachers. Start the child toward happiness by giving him a teaching environment full of rich, red blood, that can laugh, breathe, and sleep well. The era of the laughless instructor is dead. The wager between Thomas and Robert as to whether, if the teacher laughed, it would break her face, has fallen to the ground. The occupant of the schoolroom that took the role of Kipling's vampire in looking like '' a rag, a bone, and a hank of hair" is gone with the reign of the collarless shirt and the unpolished shoe. Praise be to Providence, the schools and homes, like the earth, are rolling sunward, and those who carry daily messages to children study the graces of courtiers; in spotless shirtwaist and well- hung skirt, in polished shoe and with well-ordered hair, they come with a smile before the true kings and queens of Christendom, the children, crying, ''Behold, I bring tidings of great joy." From self to room, from room to class, from class to text, from text to method, from method to recitation, from recitation to recreation, from the beginning of the day to the close, let the eye of the teacher not fail to note whether the seal of happiness is upon all. In the name of God and man, do not evade this. Say not this child is abnormal or that home is wrong. True, it may be, but there the matter must not rest. You were sent to bring light to lives that have never known aught but darkness. Fail to do this, and you fail utterly. Salary and selfish success will avail nothing if you do not bring happiness to the children. As you value real success, find a way by HAPPINESS THE BIRTHRIGHT 8i which blessed joy and peace may come to your pupils. There are thousands of ways, yet there is just one; that one says, "Accepting with glad hearts the truth that mind naturally enjoys growing right, and having put your hand and heart to that faith, look not backward." John Ruskin says that one of the saddest and most astonishing things to him is that while the true kings and queens of the earth, the great poets and thinkers of all ages, stand beckoning from bookcase shelves to men and women to come associate with them, yet they turn away to spend their time in talking with kitchen maids and stable boys. Equally as sad a spectacle is presented when thousands of teachers and parents, hearing this doctrine that joy is the children's heritage, yet go out and away to schoolrooms and homes dark and bare, set in fenceless and treeless yards, through which sad-eyed children go to dull and grinding routine. Truly, Dickens, we have need of thy flashing, scathing pen if we would penetrate every nook and corner and display the squalor, misery, and mal-education going on in the *'Dotheboys Halls" that still exist! The cleansing htimor and renovating sarcasm of such as Dickens are needed even now in great temples dedicated to education as well as in the little schoolhouse out at the edge of the prairie. There was an interesting and a novel scene presented when three sets of school directors and a demure little * * school marm ' ' met one day. One director said : * ' Miss Susie, we have had you in our district two years, and we want you again. We want you so much that we have gone down into our pockets and made up more than a hundred dollars extra for you. This will make your salary twenty dollars a month more than last year." 82 GROWING A LIFE "Now, with the permission of the board whose repre- sentative has just spoken, " said a shrewd looking farmer, "we have come from our district, Miss Susie, to try to get you to teach our school. We are in a neighboring district and we know your work. We have a bigger school and we are going to offer you five dollars a month more than you have just been offered. We believe you ought to come over and help us." The third spokesman made his plea, saying that his district knew of the good spellers, speakers, and thinkers she was turning out, and he also came to make her an offer. They were not prepared at this time to compete with their neighbors, but if she would just wait they would go back home, raise the money, and show her the best salary yet. There sat a winsome girl, mistress of the situation so far as three good, local school plums were concerned. She had worked out with telling power the darkest problem of modern education, increase of salary. One who looked upon this scene at once made a resolution that, whoever obtained her services, a visit would be made to her school. On the edge of an open, unfenced spot stood the school- house in which she had already taught for two terms. She said that a few dollars more must not separate her from the love and appreciation of her former pupils, patrons, and friends. "The welcome already awaiting me in these peoples' hearts I should miss so much," she said. A wood skirted the meadow not far away, but the place looked hard and barren until you noticed the schoolhouse. It was early fall, and festoons of morning- glories hung over the windows, and in front cypress, feathery, fluffy, graceful cypress, made a bower over the door that would have enticed a dryad from her nook. HAPPINESS THE BIRTHRIGHT 83 Do not ask how these were made to grow and persist. She said it was easy, and any one who has seen a human soul bind toil to happiness knows that undertaking all tasks as though they were easy is the best miracle worker. Thousands have asked, and among them scores of school keepers, *'How in the world do you keep such beautiful flowers on school grounds among children ? ' ' Poor ques- tioners, but poorer children who are in the charge of these same questioners ! As though children and flowers would not grow together as good friends! But to the story. Passing into the schoolroom, the eye was impressed with the cleanliness everywhere. Neat desks, a neat table, a bouquet of goldenrod, but overtopping all in their white spotlessness were the walls. Upon inquiry it was dis- covered that these walls were black dust-covered logs when the teacher went there. She set her astonished children to work at them, and after broom and washcloth came a troop of boy artists with full buckets of white calcimine and laid it on heavily. How she gloated as she spoke of those days when arithmetic was forgotten and geography was but a name, while "Cleanliness in our home" was the shibboleth. The Perry picture was in evidence, and she smiled again as she told of how, but yesterday, a little girl had said, "Miss Susie, it seems the pictures over on that wall do not balance. The lines can be made better. May I try to do it?" The classes were called with a magnetic, pleasing voice, and not with a call bell. The pupils moved under her loving and watchful eye as subjects passing in review before a beloved sovereign. Questions were asked with a "Please, " and responses were punctuated at times with a "Thank you." Thought was aroused and kept sweet 84 GROWING A LIFE by a clash of mind with mind. She was living with them so freely that smiles and laughter showed in dimpled cheeks and happy eyes just as if school was not and visitors were commonplace. At playtime she called attention to a curtained corner behind which were a few books, such as Little Men, Little Women, Ten Boys of Long Ago, and others which have made glad the hearts of children. ' ' This is quite worn out because they take it home and enjoy it so much." It was the tale of Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates. "Ah, sir, " said she, *'you should see these dear children cry and crowd for books on Friday after- noons. Over there I keep the pretty things the children make — a neatly written story, a clever map, a well-torn brownie. Just look at that one! Does not that show good taste? These children have fine power. When mothers come I point out to them what their Httle people have done, and we are proud together." Thus it went on through the hours. At last, when closing time drew near, she turned and asked if the Httle ones might not sing for me. Smilingly and in low tones she consulted with her flock, then with careful feeling after proper pitch they got the note and, sweet voiced and soft, followed her in a ''Song of the Owl." It was so true, blending with their experiences and the shadow of the woods outside, that when they ended the audience was touched to tearful elation. Turning at the door for a merry good-by from the school, a chorus reflected in happy, upturned faces, the puzzle of the three school boards and the coveted teacher was solved. There she was, a teacher; yes, and more — a spirit of joy. Her creed was that under God these children should have light — not in feeble beams but in golden floods. There she was, from tip of shapely, well-clad foot to crown of beautiful HAPPINESS THE BIRTHRIGHT 85 hair, from skillful finger tip to pulsing heart, an apostle of the law that mind naturally enjoys growing right. ^ ^ Compare this plea for more attractive schoolrooms and teachers with Superintendent Fairchild's report to the National Education Association in 1912, on "Why the Public School is so Poorly- Attended." The gist of the report is that of the twelve million children belonging to the grammar schools in the United States, about eight million never reach the end because of unattractive surroundings. CHAPTER IX FOOD THE principles thus far enunciated are fundamental in mental growth. From these basic truths are de- duced some simple postulates that reach far in their pedagogical applications. If mind be a force of growth, it is to be sustained, as is all growth, by new elements taking the place of those exhausted. If all growth is sustained by food, then mind must be fed. This conclusion opens a wide field of thought and sheds practical light into many dark corners where children are found. If mind must be fed, then the law of continuity suggests, and ultimately demands, that it be fed under the same laws as the body. So far, science has invariably proved that we get the inorganic under the same laws as the organic; the mind under the same laws as the body. We must accept it as so here. Many words coined for the physiological world have been applied to the mental. "Healthful mind, " ''masticated thought," "omnivorous intellect," "digested ideas," and a hundred other such modifications reveal that mind is so like the body that its attributes and processes may bear the same names as those coined for the body. There are some who would say that these are figurative expressions. Figurative expressions, when constantly used, cease to be figurative and drop into the commonplace of everyday usage. This much is apparent to a child who reads the physiology of the present day — that the bodily functions are so intimately associated with the mental functions that they must never be dissociated. One of the leading series of physiologies 86 FOOD 87 put forth in recent years has a volume entitled Control of Body and Mind. Psychology, on the other hand, learned long ago that if it had any claim to respect, it depended upon relating mind to body. If mind may be fed we are ready to affirm that its chief agent of food supply is the body. The mind takes no food, so far as we know, except through the blood. The five senses, those great avenues by which mind articulates with its environment, depend upon the blood supply for their efficacy and growth. Does not this at once proclaim in compelHng terms to teachers and all interested in chil- dren that you should begin with the body if you would have the mind grow right? "That is an old statement, " says the reader smilingly. In the name of common sense and history, when did the age of a statement or thought insure its acceptance ? For nearly two thousand years the words have been coming to us, "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, " yet the world, calling itself highly civilized, has never penetrated the outer cover of that practical principle of ethics. All true masters have called the minds of their children to greater powers through feeding starved bodies, healing diseased organs, and nursing sick functions. Pestalozzi did it at Yverdon ; Froebeldid it at Keilhau; Dickens did it in England by unlocking with his caustic yet luminous pen all the dark prisons and closets misnamed schools. He pointed the public to starved, abused, and joyless childhood under the merciless tutelage of a Squeers or a Choakumchild. Mann began his work in America upon the physical basis. Better school buildings, more light, cleaner and purer air, and more even temperatures. The idea has moved on, gaining accretion, until in centers where education is fast becoming a science, each step, 88 GROWING A LIFE from the employment of an architect to plan the school building, its light, heat, air, and water supply, is based on the health of the child; the selection of the superin- tendent and teachers, all are chosen upon the principle, — begin with the body if you would have the mind grow right. In spite of this, however, step just around the comer from one of these centers and what do you find ? A room of fifty children, eyes listless, limbs lolling, heads aching, stove roaring, heat suffocating, light flickering, and air sickening, teacher in the midst, textbook supreme. You are challenged to visit three schoolrooms near you as soon as possible; and if you do not find one of the three coming under this description, drop this book and dismiss it from your mind. If you are a teacher, you are permitted to count your own schoolroom as one of the three in order to reduce the ratio. Meager measures of light and air, stove heat, chalk dust, dead water supply, damp base- ments, and overcrowded rooms are some evils the American school boards have not yet hated enough. But let the teacher take her share of credit or discredit in this food supply. ''What is the matter with your room. Miss Lucy? Truly, I can just see the dim outlines of your children." **Why, it is dark, I suppose, but this morning the sun shone in along that side so fiercely I pulled the curtains close and forgot to put them up again." "You sent for me to investigate an odor of gas in the room, " said the superintendent to one of his best teachers. "Yes," said the teacher, "this morning as soon as I entered the room I discovered that gas was escaping." In looking about the room he noticed that not a single window had been lowered. "Why did you not open the windows to let this gas escape, especially the upper FOOD 89 divisions, that a current from above could be had?" he asked vehemently. "Oh," said she with a smile, "I did not know these windows could be lowered. " "You should have a basin of water on this hot stove, " said a visitor to the red-faced, coughing teacher surrounded by red-faced, coughing pupils. "Yes, I know it; but it is the business of the school board to furnish these things, and I will do without forever before I will buy them; the teacher's salary is small enough, anyway." "Give physical drills every little while to destroy this lassitude," advised a supervisor as he looked upon a recitation that bore every stamp of lifelessness. "Give them a cheerful, quick swing. " "But you cannot be stopping your class exercises every little while to do such things as calisthenics, " replied the Nestor of the high-school faculty; "you will break to pieces your class work. " Such instructors, or destructors, should be haunted for a season by a vision like this: Seated high on a throne a textbook open at some page whereon is printed in large letters, "Take this, and this, and this." Out in front stretch pupils* desks, where, bowed low, meek, hollow-eyed, and gaunt sit the members of a high-school class. In the shadows may be seen faintly a few forms prostrate, and above them is written, "Vanquished because of weak lungs," "indigestion," or "nervous collapse." Between King Textbook and his worshipers stands the sweet-faced but ignorant teacher, with pointer touching the king, and from her mouth issues the statement: "From the decree of this king, O children, there is no appeal." Over in the door stand the anxious and 90 GROWING A LIFE inspiring forms of Fresh Air, Right Temperature, and Ex- ercise, shouting in chorus, **And she calls that teaching!" Too often the instructor of children agrees with the mother who sent the following letter to a complaining teacher who had demanded that WilHam be given a bath. "Dear Miss: William says that you want him to wash. You aint satisfied with his sent. William aint no rose and I want you to learn him, not smell him. " It will behoove all who study the child to study the body. In the food world, to observe the kinds of food, their value and their use, is an essential business of the teacher. The six great movements of the present age are the one-price system, aerial navigation, rejuvenation of the soil, evolution, rapid transit, and dietetics. The food of man has changed. The battle of Mukden not only put the Russians on the run, but at the same time it gave the meat-eaters a lesson. Here are a few things that progressive people remember when they select and pre- pare food : A few foods, well masticated, are best. Vegetables are in the main more nutritious than meats, and are more easily digested. Fruits and cereals are the power producers. Now if truths pertaining to physical nourishment are vital to home and school, if food classification for the body should be made a close study, how much more should the mental foods sustaining mental life be closely studied and classified. Inspecting the mental foods cloesly, we find that they drop into the same classifi- cation as the physical : natural and artificial, heavy and light, digestible and indigestible. Under the natural mental food of the child comes the natural world as revealed to a healthful sensoriiim. Here FOOD 91 is the cooling, refreshing, appetizing fruit right off the tree. Luscious peach or juicy plum never yielded more pleasure or support to the body than communion with flower- decked meadows, shadowy woods, and winding streams gives to the mind. James Whit comb Riley sings of "Knee Deep in June"; but' if you want to see children get closer to that than Riley ever did in verse, let them go out with a competent guide to watch Robin Redbreast build his nest, to catch polliwogs in shady pools, or to sit upon the green grass happy in the study of Nature's green calyx or multicolored corolla. First-hand obser- vation is to observation through books as the fresh apple plucked from the bough compared with the apple out of the can. Blessed be the devotees of Nature study! True, there have been serious blunders made by those who just ''doted" on Nature, in fact, were ** crazy about her, " as they expressed it, but who carried on their ravings within the radius of a classroom or text while the school window box and aquarium were dusty and the school yard looked like an imported piece of the Sahara desert. Nature study has slipped into the intellect, heart, and practice of the true teacher as well as into the curriculum. Nature study is no longer a thing fenced off, but something included in all truth. The first-grade teacher wins her way to success through knowledge of birds, bees, and flowers. The intermediate grades in the best schools are taught by those who have ears to hear and hands to mold, cut, and draw the pretty things of earth, air, and water. The high schools, in laboratories, observation trips, shops, and gardens, are giving a new birth to educa- tion through the study of things at first hand. Since the Quincy, Massachusetts, school board became affrighted at Francis W. Parker's "dead duck, " the fresh food supply 92 GROWING A LIFE of children has been revolutionized. The measure of teach- ing now is determined by the ability to feed the children this natural nourishment. The strength of methods can be tested by how much or how little mind is taught to see, to feel, to hear, to touch, to taste. The force of your management or discipline lies in your capacity to reveal the beauty, truth, and harmony of the objects about your school or home. The position you hold, the salary you secure, and the impression you make depend upon how daily you use your senses on your environment. In olden days the man who saw, truly saw, was called a seer. It came to be known, this special harvest of practical seeing, as wisdom. It is so now as witnessed in a Franklin whose keen eyes saw a messenger in the lightning's flash, a Morse who read messages in the electric spark, and a Marconi who beheld unseen currents sweep words around the globe in the twinkling of an eye. The educated man is the man who can first learn from Nature her secrets. Books are nothing but index fingers pointing the way to second-hand facts. Nature taught these facts to the writer; he gave them to you. In the reading class, and in all classes for that matter, how often is a thought observed only through the narrow slit of the book's back. "The day is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall. And the day is dark and dreary. "Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary." FOOD 93 This sentiment, inspired by boiintiful Nature and stored up in these words, is droned off. Few if any questions are asked, and these few receive perfunctory replies. With not a glance at Longfellow, who brings the messages, they turn away from this messenger of Mother Natiu-e to par- take of another meal of husks or word calling. Is this not a dark and unsavory procediu-e for a teacher? After the art of phrase and flow of rhythm had been seen and ap- preciated in these stanzas, the student should have gone to the window with eyes trained to see how much of this truth lies out there in field and sky. Then some girl or boy would disclose the fact that Longfellow was only an imitator. God first wrote those lines. When we notice how the indigestible is served to chil- dren; how reading is word calling instead of sensing; how spelHng is routine hearing instead of comparative seeing; how language is a hodgepodge of rules rather than a medium of exchange; how history is a mess of dates with- out even the seeds extracted, when it should be the grand serial story of man; how physiology is a subsistence upon confusing names when it should be a diet of observation seasoned by hygienic deeds; how arithmetic is an arbi- trary mess of figures conf oimding and indigestible instead of a feast of reason stimulated by illustration and chal- lenge; how the heart of the curriculum is scarcely touched, while the husks are fed all the day long— truly, it is a disheartening spectacle that is presented. Among the artificial foods, as has been intimated, we must place the texts. They are foods in tin cans and cold storage to which the teacher and parents must, by well- directed plan, restore Nature's original flavor. In many cases they are stale and as insipid as melons long pulled or oranges plucked too early. We serve the literature 94 GROWING A LIFE of past centuries, arithmetic or history of the Middle Ages, without scraping the mold off the top or toning them with current deeds. Geography is taught as though it were a settled thing. The plan Bob Taylor puts into the mouth of the master of the "old-field school" still obtains. Governor Taylor said that the school board asked the old teacher what was his plan or system of teaching geography. He repHed, with lofty mien, "That depends upon whar I am teaching. If they want me to teach the round sys- tem, I teach it; but if the people require the fiat system, why, I teach that. " Carrying the figure of canned or cold-storage foods fur- ther, it is sometimes true that many of them are entirely worthless. Hundreds of spelling lists , many of our reading texts, nearly all of our copy books, half of our arithmetics, two thirds of our texts on language should be taken out of our schoolrooms and carted away to the trash pile. What could be substituted for all this loss ? The worthy portion remaining, the active world without and within, and a teacher who knows. Some indispensable mental pabiilimi is found in news- papers, current literature, and Hbraries. Here we come to the most diversified of all the prepared foods for the mind. Most textbooks grow insipid and distasteful when compared with the rich and varied repast afforded by a worthy library. A teacher's chief business after making a child an observer is to make him a reader, a lover of books. Give a boy all the instruction of the universities, but fail to instill in him a love for litera- ture, and he has not been educated. Give him a love, an insatiate love for good books, and if he never sees a school he will be educated. Socrates said: "A home that possesses a library has a soul." He may not have FOOD 95 intended to hint that a school without a Hbrary has no soul, but his words suggest that thought. Get a library. For the love of childhood, get a few good books and teach your children to come to them for pictures from the Sketch Book of an Irving, for sunshine from Green Fields and Running Brooks, and for courage taught by Little Men. Better a school with one text and a paper for current stories one week than five texts and no paper for six weeks. Turn in any direction you will, the postulate that mind may be fed reveals a multitude of healthful truths upheld and simplified by well-estabHshed physical law. Teachers and parents, in fact every one that has a life to live, should trace this truth as far as possible. It will be safe to say that new beauties and new faith will be revealed the farther we go, and all these shall be clustered about this central truth, — we do not get the mind in any other way than as we get the body. CHAPTER X STIMULI ALL matter has a point of fatigue. The most elastic watch spring reaches a round in its ceaseless tension when its buoyancy lags. Engineers have at times what they call a "tired locomotive." Fly wheels untouched by friction must have periods of rest. Push molecular structure beyond this point of fatigue and disaster ensues. So it is where vital forces are at work. Earth will sustain growth just so long, but autumn and winter must arrest this activity and permit both plant and soil to recuperate. The animal may have its periods of tireless rounds, but there must be a time when all muscles shall relax that Nature may offer her stimulus. Mental effort moves to a climax, then sinks to a lower level, and before it can again rise to its former power something must excite and quicken. From this condition or phenomenon of all existence this postulate is reached: Mind may be stimulated. This is interesting to follow, because in this lie some of the most practical questions presented in school and home. How can we keep mind or child life at its best ? How can we incite to better activities ? How can we cure stupidity ? How can we get zest, spirit, joy, and love into the proc- esses of learning? To answer these questions is to make a new heaven and a new earth for the public schools. Child the learner is as much a responsive phase of Nature as bird the singer or plant the grower, and one responds as readily to stimuli as the other. If this be true, then let the child lover, like the modern gardener, study those 96 STIMULI 97 elements which, added to poor soil, will enrich, revivify, and restore until in the waste places of the mind, "instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree. " In making this search the natural world again should be the basis. Let the teacher and the parent keep repeat- ing, "We get the mind under the same conditions as we get the body. " It is the very substance of modem truth, simplifying, because it unifies, all thought. Scientific experiment has demonstrated with the accuracy of mathe- matics and established for all time that the brain, the seat of the mind, is, so far as known, the organ most susceptible to impressions. Due to this impressionable quahty, sleep has been weighed, thought has been pictured, fatigue has been measured to the millionth of an inch. Under this persistent search for truth there are some vital facts to which the worker with the child may pin his faith with full assurance that something stable has been found: Blood is the food of the brain, and through it all brain stimuli must reach the mjnd. Oxygen is Nature's central stimulus for the blood and mind. The food we eat and the way we eat it develops right or wrong stimuli in the blood and mind. It is apparent that such principles reveal that all efforts toward school improvement center in the development of a better body for every child. Have you a dull pupil- age or teacher in your community? Cleanse their lungs with fresh air, improve their blood with proper tempera- tures and pure food and water, then history lessons will not fret their tempers. "But," says one, "this fresh air, better water, and adjusted temperatures will not work 7 98 GROWING A LIFE out all things. Besides, I teach in the country, where the [children are fine, hungry animals, well fed, well clothed, and well housed. They need other stimuli than oxygen and food." There are needs for other stimuli, it is true, and they shall be sought, but let one who speaks knowingly of the country boy or girl spend an hour or two in tracing the air and food supply of the country child and it will be seen that these things apply to him as well as to his city cou- sin. First, he has unlimited quantities of food; second, in these, fats and sugars predominate; third, the water supply is often furnished by surface drainage; fourth, he sleeps in a room in which windows are usually kept closed in winter and often in summer; fifth, all foods and air are taken without any knowledge of their relative values, or modes of use. What do you think Mrs. Rorer would say regarding the dinners children generally eat? What would be Horace Fletcher's comment on the process of mastication and deglutition? And what would Bernard McFadden say of such an atmosphere? **But," replies a teacher, **they have nothing whatever to say about it; and besides, it would be worth all of Mrs. Rorer's scientific cooking, Horace Fletcher's fletcherism, and the life of any physical culturist to criticize the boys and girls of my community on these points." There is the rub; a challenging question which should be fairly met, too often receives an evasive reply. Let the American school make such excuse as it will, but let it beware how it imputes a lack of receptivity to the American home. The home makers in town and country are seeking light as never before. The farmer has thrown aside the weekly message from market and experiment station and by rural delivery and telephone STIMULI 99 is daily in touch with the latest and best. The mothers of the rural districts are calling as never before for all lines of comfort, sanitation, and convenience, which extended so partially over the city a few decades ago, to swing out into God's good garden, the country, and include them and their children. It is moving out, far out, through many excellent farm journals, countless inexpensive books, thousands of splendid country schools, practical courses of domestic science, visits to university farm schools on free trains, until the American farm home is becoming the admiration and the envy of the thinking world. No capable teacher will find an obstruction in the unreceptive attitude of the home. As a rule, the home welcomes aid with an earnest entreaty for more light. What really frightens the teacher is her own incom- petence. Yet it is not her fault. It lies in our Amer- ican education. It comes from farther back than our educational history. It is one of those sacred, musty, vacuous heirlooms which the Dark Ages bequeathed along with other beautiful but belittling relics, such as the divine right of kings, titles of nobility, and a state church. Turning students' faces toward the past rather than the present or outward to the future is a curse of study. Yet in pursuance of this, the mighty public-school sys- tem yearly turns its thousands into the shops, factories, churches, and farms to display a weakness begotten because, in their training, they secured after much toil a little Latin and less Greek. They could have well sub- stituted for these two branches another two which the University of Success and the School of Hard Knocks ele- vate above all other branches, good health and initiative. Dr. G. Stanley Hall, when he said that the time was coming when the universities would permit entrance loo GROWING A LIFE to their courses of study if the applicant read well a chapter from the Bible, should have added perhaps an- other requirement — a healthy body. Let us go further and say the pupils of this country may not lack health, they may be readers of good EngHsh, but we wager that they could find additional power if they would lay aside algebra, Latin, geometry, Greek, and Roman and Greek mythology for practical English, domestic science, seed selection, modem sanitation, fietcherism, and many other live, twentieth-century subjects lying within that sacred volume, Initiative. By as accurate computation as you arrive at the dis- tance between two objects or the amount of interest due at a certain time, science develops two truths pertain- ing to mind and body, known and accepted among men: Hard brain work lessens the power of the body. Hard muscular work reduces for a time the power of the brain. The best and most natural stimulus for fatigued muscles and brain is rest. Watch an individual or a class think, and invariably you will observe, without the use of other scientific appa- ratus than eye or ear, the blood leap to electrify eyes and cheeks, to move thought to gesture, to quicken voice and animate muscles, until at some turning point the machinery will refuse to go and will send out danger signals in yawns and stretches, sighs, and inattention. Nature can give no better signals to warn you that think- ing in the recitation is over. Scolding is waste; ques- tioning might as well cease, and the lecture be broken off; a warning was sent a few moments ago to stop, to change, to rest, but some one was too dull or too blind STIMULI loi to see, so Nature is going to stop regardless of class hours or signals. On the other hand, see that big, strapping fellow as he comes panting from the baseball field! He is exhausted as he sinks into the recitation seat, and you get no work out of him until after a quiet hour, or even a night's sleep, he presents himself next day fit for duty. Do not fret, do not call upon him. Advise him if you will how and when physical exercise may be taken so that it will not cheat him out of a good hour's mental work, but do not scold or drive. Now he could not think though a hundred goads be put upon his back or mind. Wait and assist, and next day he will repay you with sledge-hammer blows that will make arithmetic look insignificant. Thus, it is seen, we have a complex machine in this child — one who thinks with his muscles and acts with his brains. There is no condition of growth where the toxin of fatigue is not found. No sail but what needs another element; no individual always at his best; no mind but what under proper stimulus would arrive at infinite pro- portions. That sainted soul Dr. WiUiam James, who has passed from this restricted sphere over into divine activity, out of his wisdom said that he was convinced that mind was content to exist in one or, at most, a few mental strata when beyond was a countless nimiber of strata which the mind could and would penetrate under proper stimuli. It is the supreme business of home and school to secure these and further to search far and near for such antitoxin as will insure childhood the best pro- tection against the pernicious influences of mental and physical poisons. Rest; it is an enigmatical word. How in boyish sur- prise came the discovery that there was no such thing I02 GROWING A LIFE as a stop, a cessation, a disconnection in Nature. Pause, action, inertia, motion, decay, growth, life, and death are just a few words that modify man's view of Nature's ceaseless and eternal progress. Divine activity is rest. Of the natural stimuli for the body there is none sur- passing sweet and wholesome sleep. It is the business of the teacher to know the hours and the nature of chil- dren's sleep. "At what time did you retire last night, and at what time did you arise this morning?" will often shed a far stronger light on lesson getting, stupefaction, and class standing than any other ten questions. The restlessness of the pupil, calling forth stem criticism, could have been understood by looking at the open mouth. Adenoids refuse to let him sleep soundly, blood is impoverished, nerve neurons are starved, and we strike out at neglected childhood. There is a straining to make the grades; there is a desire to stand well in examinations, to get first or second place in a class of forty, which is breaking down the nerves of many of our best children. The schools do not carry the burden of all this crime, for loving but ambitious and thoughtless parents play the leading part. "I try to get my daughter to retire at ten o'clock, but she steadily refuses to do so, saying that she cannot make the grades and meet the work of her competitors; so often, waking at twelve o'clock at night, I find my girl still bending over her books." With no wish to be melodramatic, let it be said that often this sort of thing ends with a mother and father bending over that same daughter cold in death, her young life destroyed by over-stimuli of the nervous sys- tem, superinduced by neglect and false ambitions at school and home. She nor her parents nor her teacher STIMULI 103 kept the law which says, ''When the nuclei of the neu- rons are already shriveled by fatigue, it is perilous to tax them further. Leaders of childhood, discuss rest and sleep with your children, assist them in coming to you daily with the nuclei of the nerve cells large, round, smooth, and regular. Take up physical inspection, put away the honor roll for a season, cut out overstrain in football, basket ball, and examinations. Introduce healthful games, but get sleep and needed repose." This is no attack on exercise. Exercise is Nature's divine tonic. It is the chief foe of decay, the elixir of physical and mental life. Did "Dodd" become stupid and wicked? Then, you remember, was the time his real teacher sent him for a bucket of water. Did Dodd become dangerous? Then the resourceful teacher turned all of his pent-up wrath into a race against time, by saying, "Dodd, my boy, you see that oak tree in the distance? I should like to see you run, touch it, and get back to me in so many seconds." Thousands who read The Evolution of ''Dodd'' sneered at it, and the next day went to their schools to enjoy the regular battles of fuss, fume, and fight. Others read it, wished they might do just such a thing with the little miscreants they had, but with the everlasting round of "readin', 'ritin', and 'rithmetic" where could such things come in? O tempora, O mores! It will be the cry until the fool- killer finishes his work. In the meantime, or in good time, the child lover that is bringing things to pass is studying how to make her children good animals that their lessons may be better, their tongues and feet quieter, and that she, too, may have a chance to be happy. Is there a school without a playground? Then it is without an escape valve. Is there a school without a 104 GROW IX G A LIFE regular time for calisthenics? Then it is a fuss box, and a hatchery for ansmics. A bad word, that last. Yes, but you could take one describing whiter faces, duller eyes, noisier feet, and poorer digestions and yet not do justice to the school without physical training exercises. Is there a school without games and sports directed by the teacher? Then do not call it modem, because the latest and best turn made by education is toward the children's playgroimd exercises. Is there a school large enough for basket ball, baseball, football, t€ther-ball, and tennis that passes by these forms of exercise? Then, in truth, they are Hke Sir Latmfal, who mistook the master spirit of his life for a beggar, in that they are ignoring the master spirits of childhood — joy and health — to reach the beggars' routine, texts and form. Away with such deadening trash for a little while! Cry, "It doesn't matter, after all," and it does not. Think after all that when you teach most, per- haps you teach least. Shout, "Let us be thankful for the ink left in the inkstand"; "Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse." Paraphrase, interpolate, appro- priate, and exclaim, "Let us be thankful for the books unused, in the schoolroom. Many a school is made by a football center rush." Exercise, due to the reaction quality of the mind, belongs to mind in itself. How do we acquire a good biceps? By exercise. How do we acquire strong senso- rium, strong thought, feeling, and will? In the very same way, by exercise. If we would have children grow minds of roimded proportions let them think roundly. The blacksmith runs to arm, the skiSman runs to back, while the glutton develops the neck. Too often our schoolrooms develop one-sided minds. Every lesson, ever>' piece of STIMULI los work given the children, should have a threefold test in it, — how strong can you think? how strong can you feel? how strong can you do ? Mark the word "strong' ' ; children do not care to waste their time in breaking straws or jump- ing cracks in the floor; they want to conquer something worthy of their metal. "Son," said a \dsiting friend to a four-year-old boy, "are you going away on the chu-chu train ? " " No, " said the Httle man, stiffening perceptibly, but with never a side glance, "I am going away on the four-twenty train." His mother talked to her boy in English; he thought in English, and answered in that language. The mental exercises in reading, \\a*iting, and arithmetic are too often dead weight. No stimuli, no taste, no exciting, alluring tang. The child is a strange being whose powers we can scarce define. Wordsworth Hfts the veil and reveals the child's early status: "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And Cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home." That is better pedagogy than many ever read or know. It bids us treat the child as a thing of power, not a thing to snivel over. A mother noticed the approach of lowering clouds at about the time her little eight-year-old girl was released from school, and knowing that her way home took her over a stream and through a wood, went Co meet her child. The storm burst in a fury of Hghtning, rain, and thimder; and just as the dismayed mother io6 GROWING A LIFE reached the edge of the wood she found her little girl drenched, anxious to see her, but cahn. At home the mother asked if she were not frightened when she reached the stream, and the little girl repHed: **Yes, I was at first, but just then some verses we repeat popped into my mind and I just kept saying them, and by the time I saw you I was not scared much. You see, mother, the teacher has us sing and repeat, " 'Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircHng gloom, Lead Thou me on ; The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead Thou me on. Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me.* " That teacher should be emulated in ignoring such obnoxious, stilted language exercises as fill most of our language texts and giving the child a real exercise which proved not only a stimulus, but presented a support in time of trial and need. Variety is not only the spice of life, but it is one of the greatest mental and physical stimulants known. It may appear in arrangement. Memory brings visions of school "marms" and school masters that never changed. How we hoped for change, longed for change, yea, even prayed for change! But the same voice greeted us, the same eyes rolled at us, the same hair rose and fell, the same collar enthralled the same neck, and the same dress clasped the changeless body of our teacher day after day. The room partook of the nature of this death-dealing leader. The desks had marks they bore the first morning. The teacher's desk and chair were never moved. We felt sure he wotild sit just at the same place, at the very point, to be more exact, to-day that he did yesterday. STIMULI 107 He must sit exact, or he could not doze with assurance. The texts, the recitations, the round of school duties were fixed. Classes were called at the same time, and in the same way, and we were led into our reading stall to feed for so many minutes on facts of reading. ** Facts, sir, facts, nothing but facts," was the law here, as with Mr. Choakumchild. Did a boy see an incident of history protruding and reach to get it? Whack went the teacher's board of fact, and back into the reading stall went the little hand. Over in literature, through the cracks of the reading pen, we could see such inviting green fields and lovely flowers. But any little imagination raising its head to look over was struck by this cudgel of facts, "reading facts only at this time, " and the sunshine and green fields were shut out. From stall to stall we were led, no joy but what must be stolen, laughter a crime, freedom of expression anath- ematized, and thus chained in the lockstep of unnatural routine we moved on to discontent, rebellion, and dismay. ** Hold, " some one may cry, "turn our eyes in the direc- tion of enlightenment and progress!" It is well to look into Dante's Inferno occasionally that we may better interpret Milton's heaven. The muck and mire give true emphasis to the spotless white of the Hly or to the clear blue of the arching sky. Cromwell, when shown his portrait, discovered not his face full of seams and jagged with warts but another's, and blurted, " Paint me as I am. " The unnatural dwarfing and destroying monotony of countless homes and schools of the earth needs painting as it is. The father who builds a cabin, a cottage, or a palace should know he builds but a prison pen if he leaves life and laughter, song and story, outside. The mother is not one who merely bears children, but one who, having io8 GROWING A LIFE caught a vision of the divinity and solemnity of mother- hood, surmounts squalor as did Nancy Hanks Lincoln, or seductive wealth as did Anne Hill Lee, to bring light and life to their children. Their sons were not children of fate or destiny. Under God they were, as every child is and will ever be, the children of life's stimuli furnished by mothers, fathers, and life's schools. The teacher is not a knowledge dispenser, a diploma holder, a lesson hearer, a salary grab- ber, a school keeper, or child ogre ; but a teacher is a child lover, a school joy, a salary winner, a life interpreter, a splendid leader, and all in all a dispenser of natural stimuli. Hear the dynamo of the public school himmiing its song of power? Here pupils, teacher, and homes are connected with live wires of sympathy, cooperation, and respect. Here is continuous teacher service, growing salary, happy pupilage, community pride, and best of all, competent young life passing to success in the world. Whence comes all this? Within there is a teacher who knows and believes, it may be only a little, but, like all real men and women, she knows and believes that little intensely. She knows that this is the twentieth century, the electrical epoch of history. She knows that to be a working part of this age is a blessing and privilege coveted by milHons who toiled, hoped, and died that they might possess it. She knows that rank has passed and that the greatest of all is he who serves. She believes no form of service known to man is more holy, more usefiil, or quite so joyous as keeping childhood, sometimes called teaching. Her creed is that which is done on the very winds of present progress and written deep in the tablets of the hearts of those who know. Henry van Dyke voices a part of it for her and them when he writes: " To be glad of life because it gives you STIMULI 109 the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars. To be satisfied with your possessions but not contented with yourself until you have made the best of them. To despise nothing in the world except false- hood and meanness and to fear nothing except cowardice. To be governed by your admirations rather than by your disgusts; to covet nothing that is your neighbor's except his kindness of heart and gentleness of manner. To think seldom of your enemies, often of your friends, and every day of Christ ; and to spend as much time as you can with body and with spirit in God's out of doors. These are little guideposts on the footpath to peace. " "I shall get my happiness out of my work or I shall never get it at all. " " Every child shall, so far as concerns me, have the best chance in life possible. " " The business of being bom to a life of hopeless ignorance shall be reduced to a minimum." She knows and believes these things and, like Luther, though every shingle upon her little schoolhouse were a devil demanding that she bring not these views to her children, yet would she do it. There has been plan in it all. Never did the coming of kings and queens demand more preparation than the coming of these school children, the true lords and ladies of the earth, has demanded of her, the ruler of their schoolroom, the custodian of their lives. Through their eyes they must commune with the beau- tiful, so the pictures are chosen for the walls, the stencil for the borders, the curtains so white and dainty for the windows, the spread so clean and charming for the table. Then the library must have its draping. No library may be there? It will be there either when she comes or a little later, because it is a part of her very life, this belief that there is no school or home without a library. So no GROWING A LIFE the pretty baize cloth is found and put away with the half-dozen books she is going to place in her children's library, just to implant within them a love for books. This reminds her that she has set her heart on having a Pupils* Reading Circle; so the bulletin put forth by the state is found and tucked away in her package of school blessings. Hands must be busy; so pretty papers for cutting and drawing, blocks, games and globes, splints, and her old box of pretty colored beans are garnered in, all to make a feast which will stimulate every little hand. God's out of doors ! She must never forget that whatever else young hearts may learn, they must never fail to learn how good and generous is Mother Earth. So with visions of a school yard made receptive by rakes, hoes, and plows in the hands of eager, joyous children, the sowing of seed, the waiting, and then the clinging vine and the wondrous harvest, she tucks away packages of seeds, — morning-glory, aster, larkspur, and zinnia. The ears of those blessed children must be turned from the coarse and the untrue, so song books obtained from a piano company, a mere advertisement in the eyes of the unthinking, but to her a wellspring of opportunity, are taken along; for in them are some sweet melodies. There is " Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground, " " Suwanee River, " "Lead, Kindly Light " ; and how much laughter shall ring out when they are taught to sing rollick- ing old ** Yankee Doodle, " and " Dixie " ! It reminds her that the school is the nation's best drill master in patriot- ism. So, for fear the flag may be missing, she finds one, that its beauty may bless the very first day. With a corner for her Parker's Talks on Teaching, her monthly plan books, Drummond's addresses for tone, and Rhymes of Childhood for a smile-maker on Friday afternoons, she has come down to live with these children. STIMULI III Approach the school building, and the neat and attrac- tive yard seems to reflect the creed, "We believe; we are a part of all we meet.'* Within, you find a group of bright-eyed young Americans at work. Hair, clothing, shoes, desks, radiate cleanliness and care. Over there is a bit of motto in white letters. Some one explains that this is a part of character-building work which runs through the whole of the term's plan. The walls, the windows, and the library present cheerful aspects because of plans made in stmimer. The cozy comer is not only inviting with the flag floating above it, but down on the border line a window-box records wireless messages from the cool green world without. The recitations, the drills, the seat work, the walls and blackboards, the very atmosphere ' — all are dynamic with stimuli. Chief of all, center of all, stands the smiling, well-groomed teacher, low yet com- manding of voice, — the storage battery of this vibrant school center. There is an earnest desire that as much as possible weakness and sorrow be kept from earth's children. There is an earnest cry for forceful leadership. The petition ascends to the Arbiter of all destiny to give every child a positive stimulus to call father, mother, or teacher. We may build our school buildings of marble and granite, we may pile our texts mountain high, yet if we employ teachers who are pigmies in personality it would be better that children should walk once each day about a truly great man, look into his face a few moments, and go away. Personality is the divinest force on earth. Positive personality is leadership in some one direction. It is the mark God places upon every soul to differentiate if from all others in possibility. To Homer it was poetry; to Csesar it was statesmanship; to Edison it was invention; 112 GROWING A LIFE to Carnegie it was benefaction; to Christ it was Messiah- ship. It belongs as much to the low as to the high, to the foolish as to the wise, to the rogue as to the good man; but half the universe lives unconscious of its existence. It makes the man of one talent as supreme as the man with ten talents. It is the measure of God within every man; and since any of the Infinite is infinite, it makes us of equal measure. Elbert Hubbard gives a pretty picture of this stimulus working in a modest comer. Out of grati- tude to him, and with a profound faith that it is a picture of the true school, such as Socrates, Aristotle, and Froebel with other kindred souls would have enjoyed, this descrip- tion, entitled "The New Education,'* is placed here. "You will remember that very often we used to be told that 'children should be seen, not heard. ' We know better now — let the babies talk. God bless 'em! The healthy, active child is full of impressions, and that he should express himself is just as natural as for a bird to sing. It is Nature's way of giving growth — no one knows a thing for sure until he tells it to some one else. We deepen impressions by recounting them, and habitually to sup- press and repress the child when he wants to tell of the curious things he has seen is to display a two-by-four acimien. Not long ago, on a horseback ride of a hundred miles or more, I came to an out-of-the-way 'Deestrick School,' just such a one as you see every few miles all over New York state. This particular schoolhouse would not have attracted my attention especially, had I not noticed that nearly half the school lot was taken up with a garden and flower beds. No house was near, and it was apparent that this garden was the work of the teacher and the pupils. Straightway I dismounted, tied my horse, and walked into the schoolhouse. The teacher was STIMULI 113 a man of middle age — a himchback, and one of the rarest, gentlest spirits I have ever met. Have you ever noticed what an alert, receptive, and beautiful soul is often housed in a misshaped body ? This man was modest and shy as a woman, and when I spoke of the flower beds he half apologized for them and tried to change the subject. When, after a few moments^ he reaHzed that my interest in his garden was something deeper than mere curiosity, he offered to go out with me and show me what had been done. So we walked out, and out behind us trooped the school of just fifteen pupils. 'You see,' he said, 'in winter we have sixty or more pupils, but the school is small now. I thought I would try the plan of teaching out of doors half the time, and to keep the girls and boys busy I just let each one have a flower bed. Some wanted to raise vege- tables, and of course I let them plant any seed they wished. The older children, girls or boys, helped the younger ones — it is lots of fun. When the weather is fine we are out here a good deal of the time, just working and talking.' "And that is the way this man taught, letting the chil- dren do things and talk. He explained to me that he was not an 'educated man,' and as I contradicted him, my eyes filled with tears. Not educated ? I wonder how many of us who call ourselves educated have a discipHned mind, and can call by name the forest birds in our vicinity? Do we know the bird notes when we hear them ? Can we with pencil outline the leaves of oak, elm, maple, chestnut, hazel, walnut, birch or beech trees, so others familiar with these trees can recognize them ? Do we know by name or at sight the insects that fill the summer nights with melody ? Do we know whether the katydid, cricket, and locust 'sing' with mouth, wings or feet? Do we know what they feed upon, how long they live, and what becomes of the tree- 114 GROWING A LIFE toad in winter? Do we know for sure how much a bushel of wheat weighs? I wonder what it is to be educated? ''Here was a man seemingly sore smitten by the hand of Fate, yet whose heart was filled with sympathy and love. He had no quarrel either with the world or with Destiny. He was childless that he might love all chil- dren, and that his heart might go out to every living thing. "The trustees of the school did not take much interest in methods, I found, so they let the teacher have his way; and I have since been told that the best schools are those where the trustees or directors take no interest in the institution. "A rare collection of birds' eggs, fungi, and forest leaves had been made, and I was shown an outline drawing of all the leaves in the garden. This idea of drawing a pic- ture of the object led to much closer observation, the teacher thought. And when, on questioning some of the children, I found that the whole school took a semi-weekly ramble through the woods, and made close studies of the wild birds and insects as well, it came to me that this man, afar from any 'intellectual center,' was working out a pedagogic system that science could never improve upon. "Whether the little man realized this or not I cannot say, but I do not think he guessed the greatness of his work and methods. It was all so simple — he did the thing he liked to do, and led the children out, and they followed because they loved the man, and soon loved the things that he loved. ' ' Science seeks to simplify. This country school teacher, doing his own little work in his own little way, was a true scientist. And he was also a great teacher: he was mold- ing human lives, and filhng the minds of his children with beautiful and useful impressions." STIMULI IIS After disclosing clearly that habit rests upon a physical basis and is due to pathways through the nerve centers carved by repeated mental discharges, James shows the beneficence of this plan. He quotes Dr. Carpenter to prove that ** habit simplifies the movements required to achieve a given result, makes them more accurate and diminishes fatigue." CHAPTER XI TRAINING I WENT into my garden one morning when the spirit of spring was wooing the sleeping Hfe in the earth to come forth. I saw that the little yearling peach was putting on its leafy wings for the year's flight. It grew near a ragged, leaning fence; and I noticed with intent to correct that the top of the little tree, bent by a touch of some sort, was passing beneath a strip of wood, which in time would cause a crooked growth. I was called away, and it was late autimm before I again walked that way. There was my peach tree, crooked and ugly from a season of untrained, unassisted growth, still battling with an unfeeling fence. I attempted to do what I should have done six months before, bend it down and draw it from beneath the oaken strip; but it had grown beyond me. The plasticity in the tender sprout of a few months before had become a stubborn fixity in the two-year-old plant. It would break before it would bend. I must move the fence if I would relieve the situation, and even then the mistake could be only partially corrected. Nature may be directed at a certain time and place by the weight of the pebble or the pressure of a child's finger; but neglected for a time, granite walls crumble as chalk before it, and a people's defense in homes and stores is swept away like straws. In his childish way little Peter of Holland knew this when he heard the sound of trickling water as he played about the dike. For generations in the home it had been dinned into the ears of Dutch children that trickling water along the dike might mean ii6 TRAINING 117 a leak, and a leak might mean ruin and death. So Peter, as you know, clacked his wooden shoes until he found the running water. It was a leak, and it was fast crumbling the earth, and he must run to tell. But no, the leak was growing; it must be stopped now. What could be found ? There was nothing in sight. "Quick," said a small voice, ''thrust in your finger" — and in went the chubby finger of Dutch Peter. It is an old tale. We remember how the finger stayed, stayed until finger, hand, arm, and the child himself grew numb from waiting for the help that came so slowly, but came at last. Such stories will be ever new because they tell of truths coexistent and coextensive with the primal heart. This direction given to forces of Nature by the plas- ticity of matter is at once the substance of all training. Ignorant of conditions, blindly guessing, men had spent millions trying to train the Mississippi to clear its mouth of the silt and sand which crippled the commerce of its whole system. The eye of Captain Eads read the law under which its waters acted, and by means of jetties the habits of the Mississippi changed and there was harmony between man's desire and Nature. Within the home of Helen Keller the life of a little girl was being directed without the possibilities of de- velopment in her restricted senses being discerned. But with Miss Sullivan came law and light, and the confined soul found channels of discharge which have made Helen Keller a miracle and a blessing to the world. Under this immutable law of the material and the imma- terial, that change may be made with ease at certain periods and with difficulty at others, education meets its severest challenge. The pitiless finger of an all-wise, omnipotent law points to mind and says to mothers, ii8 CROWING A LIFE fathers, and teachers: "Whatsoever influences you wish to exert, exert them now within this space of time, or have but little hope of future effort. " Under the guidance of habit, your soul, mine, and every other is moving to its education. Shall it be a Czolgosz or a McKinley , an Arnold or a Washington, a Catherine de* Medici or a Frances E. Willard, a Judas or a Saviour ? This moment, right here, right in this room at this more than commonplace time, with these unpromising surroundings, is to decide. Here in the temple in the silent hour the voice calls, "Samuel," and he doubts. It calls again, and without a discerning, sensitive, well-poised student of childhood like Eli minis- tering in the temple, Israel's line of prophets would have perished and the coming of the Lord's evangel been delayed. Where can the law of direction for mind be traced? Everywhere. The mountains exist because they obey the law of adhesion and cohesion. When the giant forces of Nature discharged through fissures, breaking, tearing, and rolling up the earth as a scroll, it yielded as paper for awhile but as time passed grew firm as adamant. The rivers exist because water has a plasticity that sends the raindrop rolling down the mountain side, yet a rigidity that holds it together until other raindrops are met and unite with it on its journey to the sea. The very stars have been trained to order by the obedience of their plastic atoms. There was a time when the mountains, resisting cohesion and adhesion beyond a certain degree, would have rushed to disintegration. There was a moment when the raindrop felt a resistance to these same forces, and had it yielded the valleys would have waited in vain for "the complain- ing brooks which make the meadows green." Under the law of continuity this plasticity passes from the inorganic to the organic. The nerves and the brain TRAINING 119 are the most plastic of all known organisms. Dr. William James says that for our first proposition in directing mind we may without hesitation lay down the following: *'The phenomena of habit in living beings are due to the plasticity of the organic material of which their bodies are composed. " Some twenty years ago the psychological world awoke to find itself not famous, but organized. What Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer had done with the science of Nature, WilHam James had done with the science of the soul. He placed it within the range of microscope, test tube, and dis- secting knife. Than his, there has been no style more pleasing, no statement more convincing. Any teacher who has read such chapters in his books as that on habit realizes they are the result of inspiration. His deductions from Nature on mind direction are the best thus far written, and will be used to illtmiine this talk on mental training. Referring to habit's economy of nervous and muscular energy, Mr. James entirely agrees with Dr. Maudsley that "if an act became no easier after being done several times, if the careful direction of consciousness were neces- sary to its accomplishment on each occasion, it is evident that the whole activity of a lifetime would be confined to one or two deeds — that no progress could take place in development. A man might be occupied all day dressing and undressing himself; the attitude of his body would absorb all his attention and energy. The washing of his hands or the fastening of a button would be as difficult to him on each occasion as to the child on its first trial ; and he would, furthermore, be completely exhausted by his exertions. . . . It is impossible for an individual to realize how much he owes to its automatic agency until disease has impaired its ftmctions, " I20 GROWING A LIFE James, in quoting Carpenter, adds to the tribute which the world has ever paid to backbone when he points out the spinal cord as the real "backbone" or center of the sub- conscious life. To all of us who are interested in "back- bone" for ourselves and others, it would be well right now to realize that education, or true mental growth, lies in training this wonderful organism of subconscious powers to discharge its currents in accurate and well-grooved channels. "Secondly, habit diminishes the conscious attention with which our acts are performed. The lower nerve centers become with training great storehouses of nervous events. The alphabet to the child at first was a serious challenge to the higher nerve centers. Every movement to grasp *A ' was attended by a succession of nervous events which produced 'confusion worse confounded.' But one day the child found the pictured *A'. This started the tongue to wagging, and before it could be stopped the alphabet was said. Mind upon that day took the alpha- bet down into the exchange of habitual action, and placed it on the proper wire of the upper nerve centers for future use. Then it held its head higher the next day because it found its workshop so clear of alphabetical rubbish. It had room to spread its growing wings of conscious ideation. "While we are learning to walk, to ride, to swim, skate, fence, write, play, or sing, we interrupt ourselves at every step by unnecessary movements and false notes. When we are proficients, on the contrary, the results not only follow with the very minimum of muscular action requisite to bring them forth, they also follow from a sin- gle instantaneous 'cue.' The marksman sees the bird, and, before he knows it, he has aimed and shot. A gleam in TRAINING 121 his adversary's eye, a momentary pressure from his rapier, and the fencer finds that instantly he has made the right parry and return. A glance at the musical hieroglyphics, and the pianist's fingers have rippled through a shower of notes. And not only is it the right thing at the right time that we thus involuntarily do, but the wrong thing also, if it be an habitual thing. Who is there that has never wound up his watch on taking off his waistcoat in the daj^ime, or taken his latchkey out on arriving at the doorstep of a friend? Very absent-minded persons in going to their bedroom to dress for dinner have been known to take off one garment after another and finally to get into bed, merely because that was the habitual issue of the first few movements when per- formed at a later hour. ... We all of us have a definite routine manner of performing certain daily offices con- nected with the toilet, with the opening and shutting of familiar cupboards, and the like. . . . But our higher thought-centres know hardly anything about the matter. " In a subsequent paragraph Dr. James sums up this whole subject of mental training under natural law. It is the most enlightening, most satisfactory, and practical paragraph in modem pedagogy or psychology. Wherever there is mind to develop, this truth should appear to sim- plify, to guide, and to support. By the parent and teacher it should be rated the eleventh commandment — since after God and in God is the child. To every soul that sees this truth it should appear as a key which unlocks every door of self, revealing personal possibilities and untold power. "The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make auto- matic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful 122 GROWING A LIFE actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional dehberation. P'ull half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. If there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my readers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right. " The inmates of every schoolroom and every home should ponder deeply these truths. Our mental workshops should be arranged in conscious and subconscious depart- ments. In the upper chamber, conscious thought should command; in the lower, automatism. Now is the time to begin separating the trivial from the important, the automatic from the conscious, the mechanical from the sentient; every study of the curriculum has its machinery, which must be put down in the cellar of subconsciousness. Open the sluices and pitch in the fundamental processes of mathematics; make addition, subtraction, and all such operations in numbers not only second nature but a habit many times stronger than nature. In reading, articu- late, enunciate, and visualize, and articulate, enunciate, and visuaHze again, until all such fly wheels, eccentrics, and journals of mechanical reading are placed in the TRAINING 123 powerliouse of subconsciousness. They must not appear in the high-school boy's Hfe at the fifteenth or sixteenth year as rusty junk in the fonn of stumbHng, blundering word calHng. Clean the mouth of bad language whether or not we teach grammar. In the home, on the street, everywhere, keep the brain tract of clean language open by speaking correctly and writing correctly, until the currents of pure English move through them as naturally as water moves through God's continental groove, the Mississippi Valley. The parents of John Ruskin and of Lord Macaulay dug the pathways of language discharge so deep in their sons' brains by having them read, memo- rize, and write good English every day, that rules, regu- lations, and such skeletons of language were not found in their upper brain regions when the first went to write his Modern Painters and the other to sing the Battle of Ivry or cast in mold of deathless art the model English para- graph. Heave to, and systematically pack away in the boundless storeroom of the lower brain centers the details of personal and professional Hfe, that reason may have its perfect sway in the upper chambers of thought when serious problems arrive. Do you anticipate great things for your children? Here is the truth that truly makes them free. What was the power of Washington? The drill, the routine that determined in the boy of twelve the undercurrent of life and reserved unobstructed the tide of subsequent years upon which to float his schemes of war and state. What was the genius of Emerson? The clearing of brain tracts of useless rubbish by the plain living and high thinking of several generations of priestly ancestry; the training in his home to make verses, prayers, and orations daily for seven or eight years, until his brain 124 GROWING A LIFE cells offered such glide and expansion to the old poetic images that one fine day they burst into the newest, finest frenzy known to letters in this hemisphere. So every story of worthy life runs along this groove of truth. Away with the doctrine of luck and partiality of Fate, sometimes called genius! Genius is merely an extraordinary way of doing ordinary things. Napoleon, denominated by his biographers a genius unparalleled, agreed with modern psychology when he said that his successes were the result of giving close attention to details. It is time that the training which shackles the life of rich or poor, the plodding or the brilHant, with preconceived opinions of their limitations, should be set aside. Under law life knows no limitation. Link the soul to an ideal, and the half-witted dunce becomes Johnson the lexicographer; the half -starved boy of Wales becomes Stanley the African explorer; and the half-developed poacher becomes Shakspere, the bard of genius. Let those who associate with children throw open wide the doors of schoolroom and home that Nature's laws may freely enter to awaken the children to a con- sciousness of divine power. What are some of the ways in which this complete life may be had ? How is this * ' edition de luxe ' ' of mentality issued? James summons to his assistance, in answering this question, two maxims from Professor Baines's chapter on The Moral Habits. First, in the acquisition of a new habit or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to "launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible." A primary teacher had consented to illustrate before an assembly oE teachers some methods of teaching reading to beginners. Those who lingered late in the assembly TRAINING 125 room the afternoon preceding the day when the exposition was to be given, interestedly observed the movements of the busy teacher who was to develop the lesson, and above all noted with curious eyes the articles she fashioned and displayed. Deftly her fingers cut paper into the form of a star, skillfully tinfoil was brought into use, and then tacks and chalk were put to work. At last, stepping back, this primary teacher calmly surveyed the board with questioning eyes. After a correction here and there, into her eyes stole a light akin to that which shone in the eyes of the Master Architect when he looked upon his masterpiece, a world, and called it good. Then they saw her do a thing that excited deeper curiosity. Un- rolling two neat curtains and stringing them, she hung them with care over the chalk work she had placed upon the board. She then drew them back, peeped in, smiled, dropped them, and went away. Next morning the Httle ones were about her, big-eyed and trustful, yet startled by the strange crowd and place. But one glance at her face and all was well with them. With skill she unfolded before them things they knew and enjoyed. She placed upon the board certain stock words met before, and they stood every test she offered. Finally she said, ** Behind these curtains I have something pretty for you. " Instantly there was a chorus of ''Oh's" from open mouths, and many pairs of hands clasped and flut- tered with delight at the coming view. With just the right proportion of suspense she whetted the mental appetite, then when ciiriosity stood on tiptoe within each little mind (and in the mature crowd of onlookers, too) she parted the curtains. Looking at the creation of scissors and tinfoil, each child spoke in ecstasy the words, "A star." A few deft strokes of chalk, and "A star" was 126 GROWING A LIFE fixed forever in the working vocabulary of these young Americans. We had witnessed the launching with decided initiative of something — a word. We had seen something more; we had seen demonstrated by teaching art a large 'portion of the line which separates the old pedagogy from the new. We had looked upon what was once, and is yet in many schoolrooms, a process of pain presented as a process of pleasure. We had watched plan and preparation map out a campaign against deficiencies of equipment, poverty of texts, and impoverished senses. A belated aide-de- camp once found Napoleon sprawled upon the palace floor at four o'clock in the morning, sticking pins in a map, and heard him exclaim in happy frenzy, "There, bravo, I have them ! " * * Have whom , sire ? ' ' asked the young aide. "The Austrian general and his entire army," replied Napoleon. History records how that pin marked the exact spot where, on June 14, 1800, he did have the Aus- trian anny on the battle field of Marengo. Just so had we beheld a captain of thought use her chalk, her tacks, and her curtains until, with as clear vision as ever the great Corsican knew, she saw a victory for her children on the morrow, and when that day came she as surely achieved a victory. Are we to spend any time with young minds? If so, then plain common sense demands that the greatest hap- piness as well as the greatest strength be secured from this contact; we must give to children the best we have, even the best that we can get. "John Milton, what are you going to do?" asked a friend of the beautiful boy of twelve. "If you please, sir," said the lad in tones like a silver bell, "I am going to write the greatest epic poem England ever can claim." Was this the boy speaking? TRAINING 127 No, it was the wise plan, and loving vigil, the ceaseless toil of a father who had decided at the birth of this boy, and maybe before, that so far as a father could accomplish it, his son should go into life with a decided initiative. Examine the records of any worthy life, and you will find the distinct trace of a glowing enthusiasm which grooved it in channels of worthy habit. Said Mary, the mother of Washington, "Son, I regret you have killed my horse, but I would rather my son would kill all my horses than to tell an imtruth." "There is no genius in my work,'* said Charles Dickens. "The habit of record- ing what I observe is the only genius I possess." And Lincoln paid tribute to the enthusiasm of his mother when he said, "All I am or ever hope to be in life I owe to my angel mother." She denied the right of arduous pioneer duties to deprive her of the companionship and training of her little boy. "Well begun is half done," says the German proverb. All but a few of our fine arts are legacies from Greece, because within her borders there were men and women who lived and wrought as though they were possessed of the spirit of a god. "This one thing I do," was the watchword of Saint Paul, the greatest teacher of his day. A young man sitting in the back pew of a New England church heard the minister say, "The world has yet to know what a man can do who will give him- self unreservedly to God." The young man arose and came forward, and giving his hand, said, "God helping me, I shall try to be that man." That act of decided initiative determined the career of a D wight L. Moody. The curse of a thoughtless beginning can never be effaced. The mediocrity and misery of mankind are the offspring of homes and schools where the light 128 GROWING A LIFE of intelligent enthusiasm never burns. Rugby of Arnold's day was only a fountain of love and faith for the boy. Build yoiu* Harvards of brick and stone as you please, but their sons will never attack the line of duty harder than with the ardor, the zeal, and the faith with which an Eliot inspires them. It would be better to-day, throughout the nation, if children could be kept from schools and homes where unstinted grind deadens the voice of hope, where eye and face of those who direct never blaze with earnestness and love of work and worker. The second James maxim quoted is: "Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life." There is nothing like success, except success. "Continuity of training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly right." The longest way around is the nearest way to the fire if you are sure you know that way and are not sure of any other. It does not matter so much how the child con- quers walking, speech, or the multiplication tables as that he does master them, and without exceptions. Here is the value of the beaten path, the blazed trail of mental discharge. Some minds are sufficient, as that of Boone, to make their road by the winds and stars; but to most a fallen tree, a notch, a footprint, or a path is necessary to keep them right. There is doubt whether the old schoolmaster who had his classes reduce their reasoning at last to a set rule, and set that rule up in memory as a guide for future faith and practice, was not superior to the modem instructor who claims that rule should never be set in book or mind. If I must find the dimension of a circle, let it be done swiftly, be- cause, knowing the radius, I have in memory a rule which says that the square of a radius times 3.1415926 TRAINING 129 invariably gives the area. The pathway of discharge is deep and clear in this direction. That groove was made in my brain cells by a stern old master who believed in the Scotch proverb, "It's dogged as does it." In a textbook exercise, in a memory test, in making the first public speech, in learning to leap a hedge or in conquering a taste for drink, never let an exception occur. vStart well and close well. In any undertaking by child life let the teacher and helper be on guard. There comes a severe test of memory and self-control. The youth begins his lines in front of a throng of upturned faces. They seem so strange, so unresponsive, so unlike the S3mipathetic face of mother as she helps him in his child- ish efforts. What if he should forget? The thought is father to the act — he is forgetting — horrors, he has forgotten! The world is reeling before his eyes, when at the back of the audience up rises some one with radiant face and with chin at an angle which lifts him from de- spair. It is teacher, as she had often appeared when she told him to stand firm — be a man — he could conquer an3rthing. Glorious, vAih. the movement of her lips, and her eyes of faith upon him, the next word leaps to memory. Out of the way now. Defeat! The rocks and shoals are behind, and bounding over the waves of con- scious power the youth lands his craft of expression safe in the harbor of success, because there was a pilot aboard ship that neither sltmibered nor slept. She was ever at the helm ^ to see that no exceptions occurred. Drill, drill, drill; review, review, re\'iew. Pick out the simple course which leads to the best, physically, mentally, and ethically. What the education of the present day needs most is simplifying, by pitching out of the window half the stuff we attempt to teach and Q I30 GROWING A LIFE more than half the methods by which we attempt to teach it. When shall we learn that conquering a few words daily, just one or two, is better than making a futile attempt at a long string of words; that the thought in a story, if clothed in simple appropriate lan- guage, will ensure expression in a reading class truer and finer than any word analysis ever invented; that the lives of three or four such men as Washington, Jef- ferson, Jackson, and Lincoln, absorbed and rightly assimilated, afford a better history of America than a^ text full of seedy paragraphs and dates; that arithmetic should be made habitual, as also the more important subject, health; that the use of the toothbrush every day is a matter of more importance than diagraming; that the several fundamentals of courtesy — a pleasing address, reverence toward the aged, consideration for the weak and helpless, gallantry toward womanhood, and respect for religion — should appear in home and school day after day without exception, even as does algebra, Latin, and parsing? All ideas and ideals of education aim toward conduct. How a man behaves determines his place. To have the mind of the child rise each day upon its "dead self to higher things," is the summum bonum of training. Is reason enfeebled? Set it right; then stand close to see that no reverses come to it. Is there a sickly will? Build it up with watcliful sympathy, love, and sacrifice. It takes thought and attention to raise com, cotton, or calves; none the less does it take to raise children. A dear little girl had performed some task so cheerfully and so well that the teacher stooped to smile at her and kiss her. With astonishment she saw the child tremble, blush, and then break into tears and sobs. ** What is the TRAINING 131 matter, little one?" asked the teacher, anxiously. "Oh," said the Httle girl, "it is so strange to me to be treated that way. I am never kissed or cared for like that at home. Mother gives me nice dresses and 'most every- thing, but never gives me hugs and smiles." The third maxim added by Dr. James to the preced- ing pair is, "Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emo- tional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain." This is Nature's law of positivity. Use is the demand Nature makes of every part or whole if identity and progress be preserved. **We have as possibilities," says Lancaster, "either balance or elaboration or degeneration." "A character," John Stuart Mill puts it, "is a completely fashioned will. With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved. When a resolve or a fine glow of feeling is allowed to evaporate without bearing practical fruit it is worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge." These are stinging challenges and rebukes to much of the work done in school and home. The class may think The Village Blacksmith, but often it gets no further than mere word calling, mere snapping of dry twigs beneath the feet of the intellect. Often a fine glow of the emotions is aroused at the rhjrthmic truth, "Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each burning deed and thought." 132 GROWING A LIFE But this emotional flame finds no deeds to feed it, no motor activities to record it forever in the cortex; and so the contact of a Longfellow becomes a hollow mem- ory, a thing of head, a something of heart, but nothing of will. Out of such practice grows the educated fool and too often, what is worse, the educated hypocrite. The school that calls up fine thought and delicate emo- tion without giving them form and life in concrete deed is v/orking in the same way as the man who plants and plows but, just as flower and fruit appear, puts in the sickle and prohibits God's final expression, a bountiful harvest. The old schoolmaster who said he always kept some knotty hickory logs for his boys to chop after reading Scott's "Breathes there a man" or Patrick Henry's **Give me liberty or give me death," was the father of the manual-training movement. For every impression there must be an expression; for every set of rules of grammar there must be a debating club; for every reading of Thanatopsis there must be some use of hoe or spade in individual gardens; for every study of Julius Caesar there must be a happy, hearty class drama; for every chance at Webster, Burke, or Cicero there must be an oratorical contest; for every novel read and theater attended there must be dishes to wash, essays to write, and chores to do until every sentiment finds its complement in good honest sweat. A few years ago the foremost law^-ers of North America met in the city of New York to greet the Chief Justice of England. Of these three hundred legal lights of the first magnitude, it was asked how many were reared on the farm. Two hundred ninety reported themselves farmer boys. Here was a percentage which proved TRAINING 133 that success came because of the efficiency of the coun- try school? Not at all— but in spite of its deficiencies. They had attended the school of God's out of doors, where contact mth plow and horse, flocks and herds, had developed toil, self-sacrifice, and carefulness until every day "inured them to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial." These men in their habit-forming period had been so drilled by morning help to mother and chores to do for father, by woodcraft and hardy self-denial, by the heat of summer sun and the cold of winter night, their brains were so grooved in effort and attention, that the tedious lecture in the law school, the dry dissertations of Black- stone or Kent, and the tangle of a bad law case were but general forms of discharge to them. Like young Webster, fresh from the New Hampshire hills, who for pure pleas- ure while reading law memorized the Constitution of the United States, so did these men carry the habits of the will to that final practical maxim laid down by James: "Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gra- tuitous exercise every day." They never watched the clock. Law, legal knots, hot office days were reckoned fun, just pure fun. So "when everj^hing rocks around" such men, and their "softer fellow-mortals are winnowed Hke chaff in the blast," they stand Hke a granite tower. So habit, as a plain phenomenon of the physical world, is the chief phenomenon of the mental and ethical life. "Habit a second nature!" said the Duke of Wellington. "Habit is ten times nature," and Mr. James illustrates by recounting that "Riderless cavalry-horses, at many a battle, have been seen to come together and go through their customxary evolutions at the sound of the bugle-call." The law of habit demands that those who have charge of 134 GROWING A LIFE children develop right personal habits between the ages of five and twenty or cripple those children for all time. Good speech, good manners, neatness and taste in dress, cleanliness of person, exercise and health, and all those important features which make so much for success must be settled before twenty or they will likely trip one up and render life awkward and miserable for all time. Is the art of conversation as important as the art of computing interest? Then teach one as you do the other. Is the art of personal address toward men and women as important as the law of falling bodies? Then in making the curriculum, pay as much respect to good manners as you do to physics. As the personal traits are settled between five and twenty, so the professional tendencies are cast in adamant between the years of twenty and thirty. See that man yonder? They call him a preacher, but habit held him for thirty and two years a farmer, and in dress, manners, and thought, habit will keep him a farmer all the rest of his life, regardless of the pulpits he occupies. The workshop of character is everyday life. This is a terrible and glorious truth. Terrible, if our to-days and yesterdays are weak and vicious; glorious, if they are strong and pure. Under this law a mind irrevocably builds for itself each day a heaven or a hell. Every thought is a chisel which shapes the image of a satyr or an angel. Every deed of love is a rung in habit's ladder which lifts us nearer God. By long life of simple, earnest faith and self-sacrifice the himian soul mounts so close to eternal life that there is no death. Mark the lips of Luther as they move for the last time: " Into thy hands I commend my spirit. Thou hast redeemed me, thou faithful God." Who doubts that this personal appeal TRAINING 135 was not occasioned by personal contact? Looking upon the chaste and beautiful life of Stonewall Jackson, and remembering this law of habit, it is scientific to trust that he did, at Chancellors ville, "pass over the river to rest 'neath the shade of the trees." Moody closed his eyes on earth saying, "Light, what rapturous light!'* To those who saw him climb through saintly service from earth to heaven there comes no doubt that at his Father's knee he had opened his eyes, as a waking child, and the vision was as rapturous as his words implied. Let not those interested in mind growth trust to occa- sion. We think that conspicuous events, striking expe- riences, exalted moments, have most to do with character and capacity. We are wrong. Common days, monot- onous hours, wearisome paths, tell the real story. Good habits are not made on birthdays nor strong characters at New Year. The vision may dawn, the dream may unfold, the heart may leap with a new inspiration on some mountain top, but the test, the triumph, is at the foot of the mountain, on the level plain. Teach the youth to trust the imeventful and the commonplace. Bid the young soul realize that patient, unremitting toil leaves no room for doubt. But as sure as the stars journey in their courses, so sure will the day of triumph come to that soul which lives the common day in performing old duties with new inspiration. CHAPTER XII APPETITE THE movement of mind through the years has been toward monism. Through chaos, disorder, ignor- ance, man has groped, stvimbled, and pushed his way toward oneness. Religion developed its idols, its individ- ual penates; here and there appeared a teacher and seer for this nation or that race, constructing with converging truisms a ten commandments so useful that a people siuTounded these heralds vn\h. curtains of smoke and fire which veiled them from men and cloaked them with God. But Confucius, Baal, Buddha, Brahma, Thor, and Moses, all have passed before the light of One who swept the creeds and commandments of the human heart into a imit, as declared and proved in ** I am the way, the truth, and the life. " Truth has been hampered, dethroned, imprisoned, and under the mask of foolish empiricism been made to ap- pear in myriad and contradicting forms. Misconception vaunted itself and looked to bigotry and superstition for approval. The year 1774 introduced us to Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, and their experim.ent in government. It also introduced Priestley and his experiment revealing oxygen, unkno^^^l before, though composing one fifth of the air in volume and eight ninths of the ocean by weight. Though separated by seas and lands, such men were closer than brothers of the flesh. One in spirit and aim, to know the truth, they were of that select circle that with eye upon simple phenomena, fear- ing nothing but ignorance, pushed on over artificiality, 136 APPETITE 137 intolerance, and division to a unified knowledge swayed by unified law. "A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things." If mind be a thing of growth, and all growth requires food, then, it may safely be postulated, mind must have appetite. So far as we know, there is no voluntary taking of food in the normal organic or inorganic spheres where there is no desire, no appetite for it. The amoeba in tak- ing nourishment as plainly reveals an attitude of change which indicates that something important is transpiring as does a man w^hen partaking of a good dinner. Over the whole organic kingdom stretches this desire, designed by Nature to sustain life. According to the law of continuity this manifestation of all growth should not Stop here. It should involve the mental or spiritual life as well as the organic, and every study of psychic phenom- ena reveals that this is eminently true. A juicy golden orange is no more an appeal to the physi- cal appetite of a hungry schoolboy than is a good truth to a himgry mind. Thomas A. Edison refuses physical food when on the hot trail of a new invention, because he is so mentally hungry that his physical appetite is lost. The old Greek who found the solution of the problem how to tell a real gold crown from a filled one so absorbing as to make him forget that he had been taking a bath, and started out on a run through the streets, shouting, "Eu- reka! Eureka!" is but a larger type of the boys who shout from their stomachs "Hurrah for the fun! Is the puddin' done? Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!" 138 GROWING A LIFE Natural law has injected so strong and sure a light into every phase and form of the taking of physical food that it has become the best index to the state of the body. With but slight exception the hearty **I am feeling tiptop," or the feeble "I am not well to-day," is based upon a reHsh or distaste for food. When a rollicking, hearty schoolboy becomes quiet for too long a time there is a suspicion about the house that something is wrong. When he ceases to joke the big sister, or tease the little brother, there is a consultation of parents. But when he refuses to eat, the verdict " He is ill" is rendered at once. Why this same common sense, unfailing diagnosis should not be applied to the mental state no one can figure out, except a few trainers of children who live in a separate world, operated under separate laws, and controlled by that infallible reason, "Just because." But that this natural and beautifid desire is ignored in mental feeding, thousands of schools and homes in this country testify. Walk into these schools and what do you find? On the first day, a throng of jubilant, expectant youngsters, hungry for anything that is appetizing. Fresh from the back of the farm horse, from contact with tree, bird, and brook, though staggered by stories of the schoolhouses being jails, they yet come to enjoy a change. The second month reveals depleted ranks, and classes moving with the dryness and friction of an ungreased wheel. The end of the year discloses a decimated list. Through the persuasive "please" of mother and the "must" from father a scant third, listless and unresponsive, remain. The United States Bureau of Education estimates that of the 14,794,403 men over thirty years of age in 1900, 1,757,023 are without education, did not enter the school- room at all; 12,054,335 received only a common-school APPETITE 139 education or part thereof; 657,432 received a high-school training, and 325,612 had college training. Here is proof in reliable figures that the mental food ser\^ed has been of such kind and quality that it has not appealed to the mental appetite of young America. What can be done to tone, preserve, and restore the mind's normal state of hunger ? Precisely the same things that are done to tone, preserve, and restore the physical appetite. Repeat over and over again, until it becomes a clear, convincing truth, *' We get the mind under precisely the same laws as we get the body." When we have a good appetite, how do we keep it? By understanding in the first place that all functions of the body must be carefully regulated. It depends upon the quality of the air in the room where we sleep. My taste for oatmeal and literature depends upon the blood bounding and whirling through my body, enlivened by healthful exercise. The \dtal, mental, and spiritual forces are known to be so closely related that sensible teachers and trainers are proclaiming that injury or benefit to one results to all. The most recent and the most beneficent reform in popular education is the conservation of the child through physical training and inspection. And every part of this movement rests upon the basis that the physical child is one and the same with the mental child. Then comes the proper selection of food. House- keepers succeed best when through reading, training, or native common sense they keep sight of the fact that the body needs carbohydrates and proteids. Variety is the spice of life, because it is a fundamental demand of appe- tite. When one has a dinner of meat, let this proteid producer be accompanied by vegetables and fruits rich in starch and sugar. If there be a breakfast of bacon and I40 GROWING A LIFE eggs, do not insult the appetite by having the succeeding meal loaded with roast beef and beans. The regions of greatest sloth are where meat and bread, cooked in cease- less round and unchanging ways, predominate as foods. Thus the mental provider who is able to make wise and nourishing combinations of the curriculum keeps uncloyed the mental appetites of her children. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are splendid foods. They are the corn bread and roast beef of the educational menu, and with proper carbohydrates, such as drawing, drills, music, school gardens, history stories, and play, they can be used once a day, five times a week, for years, and yet keep their tang for the mental tongue. But day after day you find teachers and parents who serve these studies in rigid routine and ceaseless monotony, ignoring the laws of combination, succession, and variety. Over and over this one-sided feeding goes on. The children send out quiet protests in sighs. Over and over the next month the grind of facts, nothing but facts, goes madly on, and the dim look in the children's eyes has changed to one of resentment. A few more weeks, and truancy appears. It would be well if now and then teachers and parents would get together and study the situation; otherwise the state may lose in educated citizenship. Through ignorance, some strange stimulants poisonous in their effects are used to restore appetite, but without avail. Finally one morning there is an interview between the boy and his father. Will meets will, and the father learns that, plead or threaten, the fourteen-year-old son v/ill have no more of such school life. There is nothing there to nourish him, to interest him, or to make him happy. One of the rules or suggestions offered his friends by a wise octogenarian whereby they might approach his APPETITE 141 years, was, ** Always leave the table hungry." In other words, if the liver be overworked, at some inconvenient season it will strike back by underworking. After a hearty breakfast of pork chops and griddle cakes, the indulgent parent will take the young hopeful into the city as her shopping companion. The youngster pauses with longing looks before the \\'indows where bonbons and enticing candies are displayed. The mother at last yields, and candy and cakes enough for six are handed over to one. Lunch hour arrives, and mother and child get something tempting and warm at the Fireside Cafe. This is topped off with some fruit, — bananas and a big rosv' apple. The afternoon sees peanuts and a sack of popcorn provided for the famished hopeful, and when home is reached in the evening the mother proceeds to prepare supper, an extra fine big supper for her poor starved little boy. But that starv^ed boy hunts for a spot where he can get his stomach rolled up against his knees and head. He wants to be let alone; he does not want play, supper, or any other form of expression. He is too full for utterance. Scene at supper time: Father fresh from his labor, famished, faces juicy steak, steaming eggs, and hot rolls as a thoroughbred faces the wire in a get-away. Mother, expectant, looks around for her boy, and calls him to come to supper. From his retreat he grunts he isn't hungry. But the anxious parent in mental perturbation brings him to the table, saying that he just must eat something; he has had nothing all day; he cannot Hve on an empty stomach. The steak is refused, the sight of the eggs makes him sick, and when a buttered roll is also refused, the fond parents are face to face with a catastrophe, and "pa" must go for a doctor. 142 GROWING A LIFE This absurd abuse of the stomach is no more common than the mental cramming obtaining throughout the land. Breakfast of arithmetic and reading at 9 a.m. is followed in rapid succession by writing and drawing, and a little vapid art criticism as a relish. Then comes a sturdy dinner of language washed down with a literary veneer. Now, although the child is satiated, the program must not be spoiled, and there follows in regular fifteen- minute periods history, music, geography, spelling, and some necessary instruction in civics and current topics, ending with a book-served dish of physiology and hygiene. Truly, the little girl had it right when, after a day of this sort, she came home, threw herself upon the bed in despair, and exclaimed, "Mother, we were given another extra to-day." "What was it, my dear?" asked the anxious mother. "Oh," said the little victim, getting her phy- sical culture and hygiene a bit mixed, "they called it physical torture and high jinks." The modem curriculum is overloaded. There is so much to take in that mastication and insalivation must be neglected, and bad cases of mental indigestion follow. Spelling lists, reading lessons, everything, gulped down, and thought anasmics result. Examinations reveal this in ludicrous light. The public press furnishes some prod- ucts of school examinations for the people to laugh at. Here is a sample from the spelling lists which almost any teacher can duplicate: "Define these words: 'auriferous, ammonia, eques- trian, parasite, ipecac, demagogue, and republican.' " One paper said, "Auriferous means an orifice." To another, ammonia was a "food of the gods. " Equestrian was given as "one who asks questions," while parasite was ' ' a kind of umbrella. ' ' Ipecac got mixed with epicure APPETITE 143 and was interpreted as "a man who likes a good dinner. " Republican was dismissed by one as "a sinner mentioned in the Bible. '* Demagogue closed the list in a way that should have repaired any rents in the whole examination the definer may have made through mental awkwardness. "Demagogue," said he, "is a vessel containing beer and other liquids." How can this message of alarm as regards the danger of an overburdened curriculum and a stultified child reach the American home and school — reach them so clearly, sharply, and convincingly that it will stiffen their spines to rebellion, if need be, for simple yet none the less appealing nourishment for the children? There is not a school board, superintendent, or supervising power in the American schools but knows that educational im- possibilities daily are being forced on the grade teachers and children. There was a great audience facing the Honorable Andrew S. Draper, commissioner of education of the State of New York, when he arose to speak in the Cleveland meeting of the National Education Association in 1908. Five thousand representative teachers were thrilled to intense quietude when this gray-haired patriarch of popular education appeared. Here was one who had seen two epochs of American education within the span of his own life. They were in part of his creation. Under the theme of "Desirable Uniformity and Diversity in American Education, " this splendid seer, with the dynamic eloquence of a Horace Mann and the cogent reasoning of a Locke or a Hegel, flayed his audience to the quick for overloading the curriculum, for the teaching of every- thing and not much of an3l:hing, and for stripping the schools of their most stimulating features — ^individuality 144 GROWING A LIFE in the teacher, and individual teaching — by reducing ever3rthing to a lock-step, standardized uniformity. He said: "The trouble with the schools, certainly the lower schools (and there is trouble with the lower at least) is, that they lack aims, unless they are aims which ought not to appeal but to a moiety of the people. . . . The overwhelming influence of the schools is in the direction of a superficial culture, although sustained and successftd work is the instrument of all true culture. "We each undertake to keep up with all the rest. We have each added v/hatever subjects of a culturing cur- riculum the people would stand, and brought in all the incidental novelties the conventions could suggest. ' ' We are eternally conforming and standardizing. W hat we want is not schools that are alike but diverse as the conditions are. Of course all schools must have stand- ards, but they must be standards of sense, standards of character, standards of information, and not standards of uniform courses, or uniform methods for all the schools of a state or of the country. "... We are a considerate and tolerant people. For a score of years good people whose minds seem to live in an in_flated atmosphere have pretty nearly monop- olized the attention in the schools where young teachers are prepared. . . . The effect upon the young girl teachers is pathetic. They are not only called upon to do more things than they can do, in order to meet the demands of the enthusiasts, but they are invoking the aid of the occult sciences and feel obliged to accomplish ends by constrained methods and devices which are destructive of that freedom which is the essence of eft'ectiveness in teaching. . . . Out of it the children do not have trained into them the ability to do some particular thing. APPETITE 145 The parents are confounded. The school boards have become pretty near helpless. The general public is rest- less and anxious." It was a great pedagogic master who threw our fallacies and absurdities upon the canvas before our very eyes. Children, tired, bedizened, gorged, sat in schoolrooms weighted down with handcuffed programs and idoHzed texts. Above it all the artist sketched the executive and administrative powers beaming with pride as from their lips streamed in roseate glow, "Standardized." Some laughed, and vStraightway forgot it; some laughed, and straightway went to schoolrooms and lugged in more of tasteless texts and rasping routine; a few laughed, and returned to their schools mth the red corpuscle enlarged. They lived with their children more, brought them the best they had, be it a problem, a paragraph, or a flower, and with cheer and love shut the door in the face of uni- formity and monotony. Appetite is maintained and renewed through enjoy- ment. Says Dr. Gulick in his Control of Body and Mind: "At this moment I think of two different families in separate towns, wide apart. Four children, two parents, a dog, and a cat make up each family. Each also seems to have its own distinct family motto: 'Good Cheer!' for one; 'Discontent,' for the other. And meal time is the grand parade ground for these mottoes. "In the Good-Cheer family cross looks and unkind words are positively forbidden, while teasing is voted down by imanimous consent. Meal times here are joyful occasions w^iich provide good cheer and courage for all. If indigestion ever attacks a stomach in this family it will have to travel by some other road than that of the uncomfortable mind and the sjanpathetic ganglia. 10 146 GROWING A LIFE " In the family of 'Discontent' the law of practice seems to be, 'Tease, quarrel, complain. Get as much as you can. Give as little as you must. Be discourteous and unamiable whenever you feel like it.' And the law bears fruit at meal time and between meals. Parents and children alike act as if they had never dreamed of any connection between good health and good cheer. For this or some other reason both parents have nervous dyspepsia already." If the reader will insert in these quotations from this celebrated physician the word "school" for ''family" and also for "meal," and the word "teacher" for "par- ents," there will be revealed as accurate a picture of two kinds of schools, school teaching, and school teachers as can be put into words. Read it, hsten to it, for verily the truths physical so readily become the truths mental that it indicates in some measure not an analogy between the physical and mental but a continuous law. "Where is the lesson?" How it came hurtling and thundering among us, and woe be unto us if silence too long or speech too quick betrayed ignorance on the one hand or false memory on the other. " Here, do you mean to say that a great big class like this does not know where the lesson is? " Smike never trembled before the one eye of Squeers more than we trembled before the contracting jaw of the teacher who flung that remark into our ranks. " Please, sir, " says the good girl, or it may be the giggler, "it is at the top of page 97." Now all is well, the chin moving downward a sixteenth of an inch, oh, happy omen! That good girl or giggler has saved the day, for it was just a cue the teacher wanted. He was "there to assign lessons, if you please, not to remember them." That last was our monopoly. Page 79 would have done APPETITE 147 as well if there had been no misunderstanding; but difference of opinion meant that some one had slighted the command to record, remember, and reproduce. ** Slighted commands in that school would not be tolerated, excused, or endured for a moment; not for a second; in fact, not for any space of time that could be recorded. " But the blunderer was there, Tommy Twaddles; and for once he knew just where the lesson was. His little hand went up, and every one ** ducked.'* "Well, what is it?" roared the teacher. ''She is wrong, please; it is page 79." Then the storm broke. "Now is this not a pretty predicament! A class not knowing what the lesson is! What do I assign lessons for, anyway? Say! Just for a lot of thick-heads to forget, of course ! It would serve you right if I stood every one of you on this floor until you did remember it . " Here the giggler twitched the comer of her mouth, but not so furtively that the falcon eye of the teacher did not discover it. "And you think it funny, do you? Well, I shall just step down and get something that will chase those same smiles away!" He went, he came, he conquered — ^maybe. What need to say more? — save that a big, roseate, inspiring Ken- tucky day, "When all the earth was crammed full of heaven And every bush afire with God," was murdered in the v/orshipful hearts of those children. It was a joyous day when we met the other kind ! Her cheery smile and hearty laughter set the seal of attendance upon our wills at once. Her brown hair — ^we used to think it was caught up with a dainty ribbon and a pretty flower just for us. She was always at the desk, sweets voiced and earnest, when the school day began. A happy 148 GROWING A LIFE song, a fresh story, was the invigorating appetizer for the coming text. The glow in her cheeks, the light in her eyes, as she tilted her cliin like the mocking bird greeting a summer's dawn, still Hve in memory — and how we sang! It was our best, and she said it v/as good. It did its work; it banished despair, worry, fear, and discouragement from each little heart. It ushered in love, joy, hope, courage, faith, belief in others and belief in ourselves. The games she played with us, the pictures she brought us, the books she read to us after the hard lessons were met and con- quered, come out of the past and lend a sweet aroma to the present. She could be severe, but always was sympathetic, and many a lad laid bare the burden of his soul to her and received light when all was dark and comfortless at home. No, seen by the light of receding years, she was not pretty; she was more — she was beautiful. Day after day this radiant creature served *'readin', writin', and 'rithrnetic" out of musty, dog-eared text- books, but so choice were the selections, so artistic was the service, so entrancing the server, our appetites never failed us. T CHAPTER XIII TIME IME is the stuff life is made of; beware how you use ^ it. This thought is the substance of an aphorism often quoted. Whether this be true or not, we do know that the ceaseless flow of years is the most solemn phenom- enon of Nature. Time is the invention of man to mark the footsteps of God. Along the Mississippi the steamers move at night \\Hth certainty and precision, though rocks, quicksands, fogs, and shallows abound. Standing by 'the pilot's side, you catch the steady gleam of his eye fixed unswervingly upon something across the waters; it is the beacon light which has been set to mark the channel's course. So man along the river of time has set up his hours, days, months, years, and centuries to indicate the course of history. The time element is conspicuous in all operations of the natural worid. The flash of a sunbeam and the construction of the hills are alike within the grip of seconds. ''Instantaneous" is a meaningless word, applicable to nothing unless it would fit a process of instruction too often found. "What is nine times five? " asked an anxious teacher in one of the finishing schools of a big slugger of the multiplication table. The boy hung fire "Well, go on," cried the insistent instructor, " what are you stopping for ? " "To think, " replied the young pliilosopher . "Oh, move along ; we can't take time this morning to think; we are behind ten minutes now." This miraculous tossing of the inexorable out of the mental sphere is a thing worthy of close study. Not only is the hand of time reversed in this process, but the clock, with the whole works, is pitched summarily into the scrap pile. 149 I50 GROWING A LIFE John Fiske explains the growth of man to his present preeminence over all creation through the extension of the program for his infantile education. To this American philosopher it is no accident that to man has been given a long period ** during which mind is plastic and malleable, " and that the length of this period has increased with civilization until it covers nearly one third of our lives. "It is babyhood that has made man what he is. Up through the vertebrate and invertebrate classes heredity predetermines ever3rthing. There is no infancy for the mollusk, the fish, or the bird. Hence the sphere of education with them is extremely limited. . . . The educable power of man increases with the lengthening of the period of plasticity. As mental life became more complex and various, as the things to be learned kept multiplying, less and less could be done before birth and more and more must be left to be done in the earlier years of life. So instead of being bom with a few simple capac- ities thoroughly organized, man came at last to be bom with the genius of many complex capacities which were reserved to be unfolded and enhanced or checked or stifled by the incidents of personal experience in each individual. " This potent piece of logic supports and elevates the thought that if mind or man under natural law breasted and struggled with primal antagonisms through countless years, in order to wrest a long period of time in which consciousness may shape habit, thus liberating conscious mind for flight to higher altitudes, then certainly teachers and all others interested in education should approach the time element with something of awe and reverence. The school life of the American child as mapped out by educators who are rated as authority comprises about eighteen years, — two years of kindergarten, eight years TIME 151 of grammar grades, four years of high school, and four years of college or university. The kindergarten has not received general support in this country, because the American apparently believes that we cannot spare time for it. Blossom into college education in a day, fructify in knowledge, produce diplomas at once — even though it be done with the startlingly incongruous effect of legerde- main; as by growing cocoanuts on broomsticks. So the few years of kindergarten may be subtracted. The grammar school is rated the pet educational institu- tion of our country, and few parents are so submerged in poverty or ignorance that they do not covet a grammar- school education for their children. Beginning with the normal child at six, it struggles to keep him for eight years, or until he is fourteen. But mark the results! Out of every one hundred children of school age in the United States only seventy get their names on the rolls. Of these seventy only forty-nine attend school regularly. Of these forty-nine only fifteen — or less — are enticed, cajoled, or encouraged to complete the grammar-school course. Eighty-five children lOvSt to the schools between the first day of the first grade and the last day of the eighth! A school life of three and a half years is all that the average American child is getting! Truly, it woiild seem that "popular education" is not so popular in this "land of the free and the home of the brave*' as would appear at first thought ! 1 Just three and a half years to meet the child in school ! To extend this time is, indeed, a work worthy of the best minds of the world. Extend it through readjusting the 'Read article, "Is the Public School a Failure?" in The Ladies* Home Journal for August. It will be interesting to know that this chapter was written two years before this article appeared. 152 GROWING A LIFE courses of study. Extend it by renovating the musty closets of learning. Extend it by pitching out the cob- webbed heirlooms of the Dark Ages. Extend it by growing better, brainier minds, by letting the sunshine of a strong teaching personality flood the dark comers of misdirected schoolrooms. Take off the shackling, benumbing thongs of lock-step uniformity and let the rich, red blood of child life flow in unfettered channels! Extend it, extend life's opportunity, by wooing the child heart, as spring showers woo the bursting buds; extend it by flooding their lives with an environment of joyous sustenance. Children will not continue going five or ten years where they find nothing they can enjoy. Out with the siftings of musty texts and in with the rich, fine soil of adapted subjects! Purge the air of om* schoolrooms and homes of unprogres- sive thinking, of nagging and dawdling, and surcharge them with receptive leadership, enthusiastic faith, and systematic, inspiring work! Do these things through the cultivation of our own lives, by means of the great instruments of imiversal knowledge the state furnishes in its public schools, state normals, and universities, and we shall increase the school life of the children. We shall win them to know that the schoolroom is the happy spot, the good-time center, and the place to go when seeking the jolliest, pluckiest, brainiest bimch in the community. In and through this impression and no other you will add several years to their education. What are vv^e doing with the Course of Study of the public school? This could be well answered in part by asking another question. "What have we done with it?" We have constructed it out of subjects bequeathed to us by past ages. We have joined to those a few elements introduced by technical trades. Others have TIME IS3 been brought in by the scientists. The theologian has put in one or two more. The culture clubs of the land have rounded it up, and the list is nearly complete. There is nothing especially bad about this composition. It is but the response of environment to that complex child nature which is asserting itself. Dr. Dewey's room, where a multiplicity of well-selected channels of effort awaited the self-activity of the pupil, is Nature's school. Have your languages, foreign and domestic; your history, ancient, medieval, modem, and mixed; sciences applied or misapplied; mathematics practical, impractical, and theoretical ; the fine arts or some arts not so fine; the indus- trial arts, such as manual training, agriculture, horticul- ture, stock feeding, and road building; take them all, and you will not outnm the range of mental activity, but you would best take care how you. mix them, box them, and feed them, or you will outiiin the child's capacity to use them. It was a bad day when there flashed on the screen of man's mentaHty the ideas contained in such words as *' perfected" and "finished." It has furnished the igno- ramus, the idler, the sycophant, and the bigot with an excuse for setting the stakes and boxing the compass of religion, science, and educational processes when some self-satisfied character or characters proceeded to drive a wedge straight through the normal growth of child life by saying that *' eight years shall constitvite the grammar school and four years the high school." After this it is so easy for all to box the rollicking, growing, irrepressible yoimgsters into these ready-made stalls and pitch down the food. Palatable or not palatable, soluble or insoluble, assimilable or indigestible, it matters not; they have eight years, whether needed or not, to perform the acts of mastication, insalivation, deglutition, and assimilation. 154 GROWING A LIFE Or, to change the figure, it has permitted us to "play school" so easily. Bringing little blocks and piling up eight in neat order, every little teacher could claim the erection of a grammar school; four more laid on these made the complete public-school system. We are face to face with our folly. It is plain to think- ing men and women that the classification of foods for the mind should never have been mistaken for mental capacity or growth; that growth or content 0} life is continuous ^ and there is no more possibility of building a stream of thought out of classified knowledge, without the blending force of a self -active mental selection, than there is of constructing a flowing stream by setting barrels of water side by side. Efforts have been made to correct this. Thinking it a trouble of time scale, the grammar school was shortened to seven years and the high school lengthened to five. The hallowed twelve-year curriculum must be worshiped, no matter the angle of approach. This did not work, so some proceeded to try another combination of days : nine years of grammar school and three years of high school. But still, to the amazement of the experimenters, the plodders and pushers, the creepers and flyers were penned together as before. The National Education Association was set to work on this question of time, and the report of the committee known as the Committee on Six-year Course of Study was brought forth in 1908. The sub- stance of this investigation is thus stated: **It is painfully evident that the United States is the o]ily considerable civilized nation that prolongs its system of elementary schools to eight or nine years. "Since 1900 France and Japan have reversed their national programs, and both have limited the term of elementary study to six years. TIME IS5 "In 1907 a committee on Six-year Courses of High School Study reported the trend of competent opinion is strongly toward such a di\asion. "i. It would give better instructors and better instruction. "2. It would offer variety in personality because of departmental plan. "3. It would give better science equipment earlier. "4. Manual training would be submitted earlier and better. "5. Modem languages could be begun earlier and continued longer. **6. It would soften the present abruptness of passing up. "7. It would cause more pupils to enter ninth grade. "8. Six-year courses would unite subject, pupil, and environment better, as proved in Germany and England. ''9. It would give more time for preparation for college. "10. It would aid in solving the problem of broadening and crowding the curriculum. " In 1908 J, Edward Swanstrom of the Board of Educa- tion of Greater New York declared for a six-year elemen- tary course, followed by three years in the lower high school plus three years in the upper grades or specialized high schools. This plan would be highly economical for Greater New York. At least ten cities in the United States for several years have used the six-year division. "Your present committee offers an outline of require- ments for pupils at the end of the sixth year on this plan : It suggests for seventh and eighth grades a course of study based on the experience and practice of the civilized world, to consume seventy per cent of the pupil's time, and 156 GROWING A LIFE advises the other thirty per cent be given to electives; it recommends fixing points for vocational influences to enter into the pupil's life in accord with local conditions and individual characteristics. It recommends that pro- motions be made by units of work rather than by years, thereby shortening or lengthening the time in which the course may be completed by pupils of varying ability. " Focus all this into one declaration, and we have in very truth a process of economy in time identical with that launched at the outset of this discussion. For in substance this is what the report advises: Use your courses of instruction to feed and to classify but not to impede. Rate the pupils' growth by evident powers and possibilities rather than by days and texts. Use as much reasonable and flexible "red tape" as you need, but in the name of Pro\'idence do not tangle it with the burning desires, the fond hopes, and splendid capacities of the normal mind. The pedagogy of the twentieth centiuy demands that the eye be taken off the clock and fastened on the child. Mete out promotions for "deeds, not years; for heart throbs, not seconds meas- ured upon a dial." The chief enemy to the flexible, natural course of study is the "perfected" or "finished" instructor. Such an in- structor having gone through a "regular" high-school or grammar-school course, believes that a sufficient reason why all children of the earth should take the same sanc- tified path or be forever lost. One of these, a graduate from a great university, came into a high school where the pupils could finish the course in three years or ten according to their abilities and at once this teacher so far forgot her sense of honor as to make disloyal and disre- spectful remarks about the coiu-se of study, intimating TIME 157 that it was weak and shoddy. She passed over the fact that all the leading universities of the Middle West accredited that course of study, but because it was not like her high-school course, cribbed into four years, she ignored it. "Why do you not have solid geometry in your course?" she asked the principal. "We have always had it, madam, and are having it every day." "Why, I did not know that," she exclaimed; and the extent of her reasoning or discernment was revealed. Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, in her plea before the Boston National Education Association of 1903 for receptivity among teachers as to economy of time, pointed to an eighth-grade girl, especially able in arithmetic, entering a high-school algebra class. She found the class had finished the fundamentals of factoring, the greatest com- mon divisor, the least common multiple, and algebraic fractions. To the wonder and pleasure of the teacher, the girl accomplished this work in three days. Yet, to the shame of that same teacher be it known, this prodigy in mathematics was kept loitering in algebra for the regular periods required for college affiliation. The "old-field school," with its backless benches and its course of study abbreviated, as Bob Taylor tells us, to "one Webster's blue-backed elementary spelling book, one stone bruise, one sore toe, and Peter Parley's travels," knew better than that. There were boys in it that laid aside the spelling book at twelve and stepped into the dazzling glories of the "dictionary." Geography was mastered by a certain kind of boy at ten, and that boy knew accurately more things about this earth at that age than most eighth-grade graduates who now mark time in this study through the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and a part of the eighth years. iSS GROWING A LIFE The eye kindles, the heart throbs with boyish fervor, as in memory a trip is made up the aisle to the teacher to tell him that all those problems assigned have been conquered. But dearer than conquest was the low- toned reward he offered. "Go right on, my boy, if you have more time; and remember, that for every page you forge ahead, you will receive just and ample reward." Caesar never found fairer realms for conquest beyond the Alps than the boys and girls of the old, gradeless school discovered in such statements as that. How the master's reading in the open our stages of progress beyond the "prescribed lesson" whetted to the sword's edge a contest with a freckle-faced son of a blacksmith. The other day in Minneapolis, in the great Conservation Congress, that boy, now a man with a copious sprinkle of gray in his hair, sat among the dignitaries as repre- sentative from Kentucky. He might smile should he read this, but there is no doubt he sat there because he learned to love power by fighting with another black- smith's son over leadership in arithmetic, reading, and "speakin' pieces" in a school where a teacher ruled who knew how to regulate life. See that time saver yonder? She has begun her work to-day with a central idea. Everything must bend and move to the need of the child. The Course of Study marked out for children is a pathway upon which they can move to success with least waste. The supervising powers have given her much of text from which to select. How carefully she winnows the grain from the husks! Life is too dear to crop on sagebrush, mesquite, and thorns of the "page-to-page lesson" and the parched stubble of the "yes and no" question. She leads her division of the elect in pastures green, where under skillful TIME 159 plan every step reveals an alluring bower of thought and every thought looks out upon the dimpling waters of joyous emotions. Every recitation is a tournament where knights gallant as those of the the Round Table ride to contest. The fight rages furiously. Javelins of geography or battle axes of arithmetic fly through the air, and woe unto the insecure visor of the guesser, the ill-adjusted armor of the sluggard, and the thin shield of the inat- tentive! The air tingles with silent huzzas for the brave and valiant, be he vanquished or victor. He has done his best, and better than that no man can do. But down the field come the workers in the last test against that barbed line of opposing thought. Quick, or the victory is delayed another lesson! Eager minds sway eager bodies — swift as eagles they move; but the clang of the gong announces the close of the contest. Instantly a forest of hands goes up, a chorus of eager appeals arises: ''Please, teacher, let us have but a minute more, and we will get this problem." The queen is gracious, and with the wave of her hand they are at it again, and in a moment it is done. The victory is com- plete. Here they come trooping by to their seats. They dip the pennants of their hearts — fluttering, happy smiles — before their teacher-queen, and she crowns each worker and each winner with an approving glance. There you have the solution of the time problem, no matter whether it be touching a school lesson, a school love, or a school life. Did you ever see a room of pupils smothered and stunted by the professional dawdler? I once made a trip to a little village in which I was deeply interested. The genial sky and inviting fields lured me one fine i6o GROWING A LIFE morning into paths leading away from the \nllage center. Looking about me, I noticed that a well-defined avenue through the dog fennel, touched here and there by an open space of blue grass, was blocked in the distance by the white cupola of the town schoolhouse. Here then was the Harvard of this community. This was the opportunity house for the children of a rich agri- cultural center. Turning down that way, I was soon upon the threshold. "The jackknife's carved initial" was there festooned with pencilings of chalk and lead. With the autocratic courtesy of the cult, I lifted the latch of the door from which the greater commotion issued, and smilingly entered. My pride took a tumble. No obsequious usher rushed forward to offer a prominent seat. Not even the teacher appeared. A few pupils near the door stopped the anything but gentle flow of animated conversation for a moment to look up, but beyond that I did not cause a ripple upon the varied stream of life about me. The scene that met my gaze was a striking one. By the stove sat a group of boys and girls of older years chatting, each one keeping accompaniment to the general conversation with the chewing of a bit of wax. Down a little farther a Jeffries-Fitzsimmons struggle was on, accompanied by all the proper jargon. Two of the oldest girls in the room were an-anging their hair with the aid of a pocket mirror, small, yet large enough to reveal the charms of rosy cheeks and starry eyes. Audac- ity seasoned with chagrin had routed dignity, and I resolved to explore this pandemonium to the end. **Is this recess?'* I asked a fine lass with her hair in pigtails. With a roguish twinkle she replied, " La, no, sir, this goes on all the time." "Where is the teacher?" TIME i6i **She is over there," nodding her head toward a corner of the room, somewhat obscured by some long and high benches that stretched between. Through the crush of Hfe about me I pushed my way until I came full upon a group of boys sitting upon a long bench. They appeared neither "cabined, cribbed, nor confined." "Whose ques- tion next?" asked one, "Mine," said a strapping fellow. "No," said a little round boy by his side, with a smirk, "it is mine, and I must hurry to get the answer ready or she will get me." "Hurry" was easy for that bunch; for with swift glance into hidden books and with good connections, each made good on his numbered question. "What is this class doing, my son?" I asked of the boy nearest me. "Oh, nothing much," was the cheery answer; and the whole row acquiesced in a giggle. I looked over at the teacher, who was so busy hunting for questions inside a book that she had scarcely discovered my presence, and she seemed, by garb, posture, face, plan, and purpose to echo — ' ' Nothing much . * ' Was it said that eighty-five children are lost to the schools between the first day of the first grade and the last day of the eighth grade? Then they can be found on the road that stretches between this pedagogic dead- beat and that princess of pedagogy who lives twenty- four hours of every day. This sort of logic may not please the man or woman who for personal reasons (very personal reasons) demands "facts and figures, sir, instead of high-sounding phrases and glittering generalities." Bah! Bring a red-blooded, whizzing, burning axiom of pedagogy into the midst of American teachers and some "professah" will put up his nose glasses, put his blood- less finger as near it as he dares, and in Murdstone tones 11 1 62 GROWING A LIFE remark, "Now, let us be stire about this; where does the philosophy of the matter lie?" The homes and schools of this good earth have had too much of your philosophy already, you schoolroom iceberg! Your reasoning in its golden age reached the acme of its dynamics in the conclusion, "I think; therefore I am." Poor old, inert scholarship! The American schoolboy knows better than that now. Your pallid lips and palsied limbs are reflections of the medieval light and life that failed. When the earth of necessity swung sunward into a new day, your simimary of living went out with the mists of medieval night, and there flashed forth the truth born of Hfe's real philosophy, the philosophy of service, "I do; therefore I am." What the school calendar needs is life, and to have it more abundantly. CHAPTER XIV FREEDOM DO you like to grow flowers? Whisper the answer low; because if it be **no" we must hide it, or some one will be in disgrace. Flowers are God's thoughts in bloom. Talk about responsive friends! Never could there be anything more responsive than a bed of petu- nias, or a border of chrysanthemimis. With hoe in hand we talk to and caress them, and with fluted leaf, silky tendril, and nodding grace they speak their grati- tude and love. You bend above them with your brain afire with ambitious schemes, and with cool green leaf and tender bud they woo away consuming passions. Growth, graceful mold, and airy motion would seem enough from plants to tell to grower their tales of love. But one fine sunrise the flower lover finds Mother Nature has sent him numberless love lyrics, with the chrysanthemum or morning-glory done in original colors across the front. A man or woman who will live through a spring or sum- mer without growing a plant should be sent to his or her natural habitat, — a jail with a concrete floor. There are two gigantic caladiums swinging their pen- dant ears of green above a spacious lawn. Each leaf by outshining and overgrowing its elder brother pro- claims that caladiums believe "time's noblest offspring is its last." The lady of the garden inspects them with fondest pride. That last great leaf is phenomenal. How can so large a thing be borne upon so slender a support? There must be no risk — that leaf must be pre- served, even though Nature be corrected and improved. 163 1 64 GROWING A LIFE She searches for an idea, and who ever knew woman- kind to search in vain? A forked branch is cut and thrust into the moist earth until the fork lies beneath the slender, pliant petiole of the great leaf; over into the pronged support is lifted this beautiful but unfinished product of Nature, while a triumphant smile illumines the lady's face. The leaf has nothing to do but lie in the protecting groove and thrive. But "The best laid plans of mice and men Gang aft aglee," because there are other forces in this good world besides those particular mice and men. Later My Lady of the Garden stood beside her casement and watched the clouds scud before an approaching storm. Sheets of dust swirled and eddied to tell of wild companionship with the wind. Now if the v/ind had known of the stanch protec- tion given the great leaf by the kind lady it might not have swept over meadow and trees right across her fine lawn where grew the caladiums. But on it came, whirring and hurtling into the very midst of the huge leaves. How they swung and danced, cur\^ed and flexed, and seemed to shout in laughter to the storm, **0n with your swift currents ; otir Mother has given us curved keels and ribs of tissued torsion with which to ride your rolling billows." But horrors! There is one with stem reefed against a stick. It bows, it bends, but the avenues of freedom have been choked by a false support. Around goes the big green leaf, but the groove does its work, holds it tight, and "pop" goes the stem. The tryst of an hour before has turned into a tragedy, and the beloved leaf lies bleeding and broken before the eyes of its would-be protector, while its kindred, riding in the embrace of Nature, move on to safety and to jo}^ FREEDOM 1 6s The curse of groove rests upon education. The dry- bones of the Dark Ages — conformity, ritualism, caste, and barbarous ideals — continue to be the props upon which we rest too much of the superstructure of our children's training. In his essay on ''Education" Herbert Spencer a few decades ago hurled at the head of our systems of learning a burning brand which has not yet ceased to arouse and illuminate two hemispheres. Said he: . "The remark is trite that in his shop or in his office, in managing his estate or his family, or in play- ing his part as a director of a bank or a railway, the college graduate is little aided by his knowledge he took so many years to acquire — so little, that generally the greater part of it drops out of his memory. "If we inquire what the real reason is for giving boys a classical education, we find it to be simply conformity to public opinion. Men dress their children's minds, as they do their bodies, in the prevailing fashion. "A boy's drilling in Latin and Greek is insisted on, not because of their intrinsic value but that he may not be disgraced by being found ignorant of them, that he may have the education of a gentleman, the badge marking a certain social position, and command a consequent respect. "To get above some and be reverenced by them and to propitiate those who are above us, is the universal struggle in which the chief energies of life are expended. "Not what knowledge is of most real worth is the consideration, but what will bring most applause, honor, respect, what will most conduce to social position and influence, what will be the most imposing. As throughout life not what we are but how we shall be thought of is the question, so in education the question is not the intrinsic value of knowledge so much as its extrinsic effects on t66 GROWING A LIFE others. And this being our dominant idea, direct utility is scarcely more regarded than by the barbarian when filing his teeth and staining his nails. **But we that have span-long Uves must ever bear in mind our limited time for acquisition. And remembering how narrowly this time is limited, not only by the short- ness of life but also still more by the business of life, we ought to be especially solicitous to employ what time we have to the greatest advantage. "Before devoting years to some subject which fancy or fashion suggests, it is surely wise to weigh vidth great care the worth of the results which the years might bring if otherwise applied. " Such appeals have not been without effect. Spencer, Ruskin, Emerson, and Dickens have through logic and laughter, essay and novel, touched the palsied body of nineteenth-century education into a new freedom. When Charles Dickens died half of mankind — its women — had little if any access to popular education. The curricula of all schools were dominated entirely by the classics. There was not a science laboratory in existence; manual training had not appeared in England or in the United States ; industrial and technical schools, save in the weak- est forms, had not arisen; the Smikes and Joes of the entire earth were still bruised and crushed on the wheel of sordid and narrow conceptions of education and brotherhood; the bleak, bare walls of such madhouses as cast terrible shadows over the lives of Charles Lamb and his dear sister were still the types of mercy to the imbalanced minds ; at looms, in mines, in shops dark, dirty, and reeking with disease, children, haggard, starved, and oppressed, were robbed of their birthright, and nowhere appeared remedial legislation. Education was still in the hands of FREEDOM 167 the unfeeling, awkward squad, there being but few training schools for teachers in existence. Learning was a badge of differentiation, separating its possessor from the "common herd" and testifying to the world that he who had achieved it was immune from work. "Kjiow the truth and the truth shall make you free, " said the Master Teacher. Truth has done much to relieve the hampered and oppressed mind during the last few decades, but there is still more freedom needed. The college and the university have done a good work. They have been altars of educational zeal, where devotees of learning have lighted their torches to turn again and push into the reluctantly yielding darkness of superstition and ignorance to save their brother, man. But the higher institutions are opening their windows more and more to currents of common opinion. There may be still in these institutions some self-centered intolerance and license, but no one knows this better than the universities and colleges themselves, and they have set their faces toward the problem of eradicating these evils. The collegiate world in the main has been greatly helped in the last two decades by cotirting criticism. What the other, the outside fellow, thinks is a question no longer without weight to higher education, but one to which it constantly seeks an answer. Just the other day a gentleman of Chicago, of an inquisitive turn of mind and a few millions, decided to revolve his curiosity about the question, "Why a college or university?" He set up a great bureau with all the proper knobs, drawers, rollers, and mirrors which could please the fastidious taste of any one wishing to display his charms before such a piece of furniture. He called upon all the college presidents in America to bring forward all the facts and figures they had i68 GROWING A LIFE on the subject. He hunted up the college graduates, and some he shook loose from teaching, some from law, some from renown, and some from cigarettes long enough for them to tell him how and where and when the college or the university had aided them. Figures were cast up, experts were summoned, everything was checked, and at last the report was ready. Mr. Crane, for that was the name of the inquisitive gentleman, stepped forward and said: "So far as we are able to ascertain, after great expense of time and money, there is no reason for the existence of the American college or university. " Did this throw the institutions of higher learning into a frenzy? It was deHghtful to see the college men laugh, shake hands with Mr. Crane, congratulate him on his discovery, and then turn round, take some of the gentle- man's own figures, add a few of their own, and, twisting them into a keen, graceful lash, proceed to give Mr. Crane a chance to dance. Resistance is the avenue adown which Nature leads all things to freedom. Challenge falsehood, and it kneels at your feet; run from it, and it looms large as your master. Protestantism had its birth in Luther's answer to the friends who urged him to fly from persecution: "To Wonns shall I go. Though every tile upon the housetops be a devil, yet will I go." The colleges and universities of this country have nothing to fear from anything save truth. Recently the cause of higher education in the land was greatly helped when a man whose words reach the ears of a million readers proclaimed: "The college gives honors where there is no merit; position without character; rewards the unworthy ; inflates the foolish ; makes mention of the mediocre and advertises nullity. All schools where young men and women are taught to work with their hands FREEDOM 169 as well as their heads, and where self-reliance and useful- ness are given a first place in the curriculum, are good and worthy." The modem educator ceases to call such remarks vaporings of the vicious, panderings to the contadtni, or the maudlin mutterings of the envious ; but he uses them as Lincoln did the rat hole in his ofhce, as "a thing worth looking into." Higher education and the whole system of public education realizes that satisfaction breeds rust, and that a healthful discontent is the first symptom of success. Education in America has slipped its cable from the buoy of intolerance and has set its prow toward the seas of scientific service. It is adapting its demands to the needs of men. Read the report of the College Entrance Require- ment Committee at the last National Education Association. It is regarding the human hand and heart as well as head. Read O. J. Keni's book on the training in Illinois country schools. It is getting more into life and less into books. Read the report of playground and fresh-air move- ments in the public schools of progressive centers. It is learning that education is an attitude and not an examination. Read three most recent works on pedagogy. It is meeting the only test of merit, — service to all. Read the report as to the new attitude of Cincin- nati University. It is learning that its chief legacy was mentioned when the Master Mind said, "The poor always j^e have with you. " I70 GROWING A LIFE Read report of ** community center" work by the public schools of New York and Chicago. It is learning that it must produce men, high-minded men, or die. Read the annual addresses of President Garfield of Williams, President Hadley of Yale, and President Lowell of Harvard in the summer of 191 1. An educational system, like a Chinese house, is con- structed from the top downward. The forces of freedom working in the higher institutions of learning are reaching down to the high school and to the elementary school. In fact, the red blood of thinkers like Harris, Eliot, and Parker has found in the broad, full organs of democracy — the public schools — such room for expansion and such choice nourishment that a reaction has resulted which has enriched the whole system as never before in the history of education. The public-school forces of many states of this republic have in the last twenty years stripped their universities and colleges of the trappings of medievalism and pushed them into the race of progress. The public school close to the people has won the people's confidence, and in turn there seems to be a contest between the states as to which can quickest and best enrich and develop its common- school system. To secure uniformity, adaptation, and power the people are granting public educational depart- ments some remarkable prerogatives. Colorado, Iowa, and Oklahoma have each placed in charge of the department of public education all education in the state, save a few unimportant items. In the last year Oklahoma placed in the hands of a Board of Education her entire interests in public education, embracing the common schools, elementary institutions, normal schools, FREEDOM 171 and all others, except the agricultural and medical college and subsidiary branches of a technical nature, together with her university and attendant preparatory schools. Such a thing is probably unparalleled in the annals of popular education in America. Among the many results of this triumphant era of the public school is one that seems more important than all others because more just, and that is, the greater freedom given to and taken by the public-school teacher. There is no atmosphere of repression, regret, or remorse about the places where the public-school teachers gather. It means much to be a teacher now, and the very rank and file are acting in that belief. They are developing that righteous egoism which once belonged only to the great teachers. "The state must educate, " said Horace Mann, in tone and manner that indicated he knew more than all the sneering politicians of America, and he did. F. W. Parker, in his talks to teachers on teaching, inserted no "Excuse me for being personal, "or "If I may," but spoke as one having authority, and he did. Savonarola and Socrates preached the divinit}'' of personality as did that great teacher who said, "All authority is given me in heaven and in earth." There is no apology for one's existence or work in that sort of statement; it is such a radiant spirit of self-respect and self-reliance that is com- ing to dominate the schoolrooms of this country. Stand a free soul in the obscurest comer of earth, and tyranny will some day vibrate to its influence. It is said that every guard chained to Saint Paul in the dark prisons of Rome went away a Christian. Place the free, unbiased, receptive man or woman in the place where children dwell, and self-reliant, normal characters will issue therefrom. In this is a solution for the murky and 172 GROWING A LIFE vitiating condition confronting high schools and grammar schools, with their overloaded curricula, their monotonous grind, their colorless mental food, and their decadent public sentiment. Let the school boards employ a man or a woman who is worth while, who trusts himself or herself, and all problems will be solved. What is a curriculimi to a teacher who knows, is, and can do? It is a thing to take up and lay down, to make or break at will! "But that destroys system!" The disciples of Gradgrind should understand that the destruc- tion of such monotonous systems is what the tired brains and listless hands of the children are beseeching. If this teacher of personality to-day leaves out a study, vshe inserts two portions of self, and thereby becomes one of Lincoln's philanthropists, in making two good things where was only one before. If you find her at the arithmetic period doing the most splendid language work, she insists it is such a delightful surprise to the children to gather pretty language plums off the old arithmetic tree. If you catch her afire with a story, she will blush in modesty and say: "I saw such splendid color work done the other day by a little girl who has too little faith in her own efforts. So I was telling this story of Millet to increase her confidence in herself. I am always thinking of my pupils as little men and women. That freckle-faced boy over there is my lawyer, that curly-haired one is my farmer — he leads in school gardens — while that one is my Ty Cobb, for he is a wonderful "fielder. " The daily program to this worker is just so many oppor- tunities to feed the natural desires of the children, instead of merely a certain niunber of texts. Each subject is a food which must be classified and must be prepared with skill so that in this form it may be appetizing to some, FREEDOM 173 in that form to others, wliile to many it must not be offered at all. Each pupil is an individual with special tastes, desires, and possibihties. There is no stuffing, cramming, or repressing here, in spite of educational fashions, examination demands, and college requirements. On the inside of her pedagogic heart this worker always reserves room for wholesome laughter at the ridiculous. Nothing excites her risibilities more than to contemplate certain makers of courses of study and association auto- crats rushing down before the footlights, shouting that all schools must toe a common mark. "Away with local situations, aptitude or inaptitude ! The grind is good and must go on! Throw in the fanner boy and the city boy, the imaginative and the unimaginative, the normal and the defective ! Pitch them into the great uniformity hopper and grind them out into passing Latins or historians, or let them take the way of the worthless and bring up at the trash bin. *' With what merriment she recites the charm- ing allegory put forth by Professor Dolbear of Tufts College in mocking tribute to just such policies of training. *'In antedilmdan times, while the creatures of the animal kingdom were being differentiated into swimmers, climbers, nmners, and flyers, there was a school started for their development. Its theory was that the best animals should be able to do one thing as well as another. If an animal had short legs and good wings, attention should be directed to running, so as to even up the qualities as far as possible. So the duck was kept waddling instead of swimming and the pelican was kept wagging his short wings in the attempt to fly; the eagle was made to run and allowed to fly only for recreation, while maturing tadpoles were unmercifully guyed for not being one thing or another. "The animals that would not submit to such training, 174 GROWING A LIFE but persisted in developing the best gifts they had, were dishonored and humiliated in many ways. They were stigmatized as being narrow-minded specialists. "No one was allowed to be graduated from the school unless he could climb, swim, run, and fly at certain pre- scribed rates ; so it happened that the time wasted by the duck in the attempt to run had so hindered him from swimming that his swimming muscles had atrophied and he was hardly able to swim at all ; and in addition to that, he had been scolded, punished, and ill-treated in so many ways as to make life a burden. In fact, he left school humiliated. The eagle could make no headway in climb- ing to the top of the tree; and although he showed he could get there just the same, the performance was counted a demerit since it had not been done according to the prescribed course of study. "An abnormal eel with large pectoral fins proved he covild run, swim, climb trees, and fly a little. He attained an average of sixty per cent in all studies. He was made valedictorian of his class. ' ' In making observation of the schools that are really worth while, where liberty under law reigns and the prod- uct turned out is competent, wholesome character, you will find that these principles obtain : Strict reverence for the personality of the child. Absolute adherence to the faith that the physical basis is the best mental basis. Attaching more significance to hitting a nail, hanging a picture, or delivering the goods than to giving the rule of Quintilian, naming the Pimic wars, or working cube root. Demanding that pupils be given ideas, not texts and programs. FREEDOM 175 Indexing the months by happiness instead of studies completed or depleted. Giving ninety-nine per cent inspiration and one per cent discipline instead of one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent discipline. Treating every schoolroom or class as if it were a repubUc of free souls. Realizing that all just governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed. Decapitating, as it were, the first party in a leader's place caught watching the clock. Presenting teachers with a merry laugh, a beautiful face, charming dress, and with personality plus. Not only coveting criticism and comparison but going out and compelHng them to come in. Advertising; making the school a community center and keeping in direct touch with the newspapers— the best signs of a live work. In each of these principles is found the law of free and continuous growth. Education is not in the schoolroom but everywhere— not a mechanical process but a beautiful unfolding under the sway of Nature within and the genius of the master hand without; moving not toward the scrap heaps of grades and graduation but toward the image of the just made perfect, strong, accomplished, and beautiful in body, intelligent and responsive in mind, reverent in spirit, and at last a just and useful citizen, because, under freedom, efficient. CHAPTER XV POWERS MIND as a natural phenomenon has been discovered to be a force, — a force of growth and a conscious growing thing. Its growth iinder natural law is self- active, right, and joyous. The conditions under which this life flourishes best have been found as those com- mon to all organic life properiy fed, stimvilated, and trained. These conditions in every realm of growth de- mand that feeding be attended by appetite, stimulation by time, and direction by freedom. Continuity per- mits no exception as mind is approached, but seemingly becomes more and more insistent that these conditions be met. Mind has been identified, classified, and con- ditioned in the plain terms of the world at our doors. "Let us with ear of faith," borrowing the thought of Wordsworth, "keep the shell of the Universe to our own ear'/ until its sonorous cadences teach us the mysterious blending of matter, mind, and spirit. Have you observed that great powers have their own idiosjmcrasies of expression? Tricks of the trade, they might be called. Michaelangelo called upon a friend and, finding him out, left his card, a circle upon the door. "Michaelangelo has been here," said his friend upon returning, "for no man but him in Rome can draw a circle like that." Craftsmen of the violin know the model of Stradivarius. The curve of Cremona has filled the earth with his spirit. "Is it a Steinway, a Tiffany, or an Oliver Chilled?" is but to ask for the stamp of individuality. 176 POWERS 177 Nature also has little oddities o£ her own. In truth, these children gathered their habits from her, their mother. Nature is trichotomous. From shaping the trifold or trefoil clover leaf to fashioning a planet, she shows a love for the figure three. There is the seed, radicle, and plumule; root, trunk, fruit; land, water, atmosphere; heredity, life, environment; father, mother, child- body, mind, soul; Father, Son, and Spint. The attributes of mind observe this empmcism. In classifying the powers of the mind, logical psychologists and metaphysicians illogical have found three-the intellect, the emotions, and the will. A boy looks upon a tree laden with fruit. Perception is at work.^ There is a struggle going on within that interested brain. Are they apples or pears? Representative powers of the intellect call up mental images of pears heretofore seen; comparison in color, size, and shape is made, and decision is reached. They are pears. Here through the senso- rium, the intellect chiefly has been active. Now mem- ories come of joy experienced in eating pears. Tne boy s eyes sparkle, his mouth waters, the muscles become tense. Emotion now occupies the center of the mental sta^e. The more he looks the more he desires. But seeing and wanting avail him nothing, he discovers. He moves, he vaults the fence, he scales the tree, grabs a pear, and begins to eat. Will is at last entlironed. He has brought every mental power into play. There has been studied care throughout these remarks to avoid any tendency toward static psychology. Sonie trainers of children thrive on the mysticisms of^mmd. To the majority it has proved a disastrous bore. Here we are engaged in growing a life, not in dissectmg a mmd. Yet since all the mental powers are essential factors in a 12 178 GROWING A LIFE complete mental act, just at this point there appears a general truth which never should be overlooked or for- gotten: The full orbed and most successful mind is that wherein the three powers, intellect, emotions, and will, are best developed and are equally balanced. To the lover of God's out of doors perhaps one of the saddest sights is that of a giant tree, whose roots have drawn sustenance from a thousand chambers deep down in the generous earth, lying prone beneath the weight of ax or storm, deprived of bearing fruit or yielding pro- tection to its friends, man and beast. But to lovers of men there is something sadder by far than that. It is to behold an intellect, colossal in proportions and power, shorn of value because it is linked with dwarfed emotions or a cankered will. Through the medium of letters view a Coleridge! At three able to read the Bible; at eight passionate and selfish yet a marvel in intellect; at fifteen a master of the classics and a lover of metaphysics, alternating Greek and Latin medical treatises with Vol- taire's philosophical dictionary; in college an inveterate reader, his room the council chamber of gowned poli- ticians, himself the life and fire of democracy in con- versation and debate. Preaching, editing, scheming to propitiate "the two giants Bread and Cheese"; a thinker and a dreamer, poet and critic; a full man at whose feet sat the great of the age, like children about a Pindar; deep, exhaustless, mysterious; of gifts so infinite in variety and so great that a patient and wise will would have placed him among the few achieving eternal fame; but of naturally unstable temper, aggravated in early life by poor discipline and later by the use of opium, falling at last into sorrowful imbecility, receiving from friends charity and from God beseeching forgiveness. POWERS i7g The geniuses of the world have so often proved defec- tive that the question, "Is not genius a disease?'* has been raised. A French satirist has said that enthusiasts without capacity are the really dangerous people. This is but saying that the emotional powers should never be cultivated at the expense of intellect or will. Such enthusiasts are indeed the sounding brass and tinkling cymbals of society. "They are the orators who speak often but have nothing to say; soldiers whose hearts bum for battle but whose legs run for peace ; the Marshal Neys who go out to bring back the 'Little Corporals' in cages and come marching home in a few hours with *Vive la Napoleon' upon their Hps." "Mr. Moody," said a dashing woman as the celebrated evangelist came down from his pulpit, "I thought your sermon this morning just swell; in truth, it was just too cute for anything." Excusing himself, Moody was seen to place his hands over the region of his heart, while signs of pain crossed his face: "What is the matter?" his friends anxiously inquired. "Oh," said Mr. Moody with a smile, "I guess I shall come round all right, but I've just been struck by a pile driver." High "sauciety," where pretense and folly usurp the place of toil, swarms with the "genus enthusiasticus." At a banquet a scholar of repute found by his side a gushing product of this type. "Doctor," simpered she, "I am just crazy about literature, aren't you?" The reply, while lacking in ardor, rejoiced the airy connoisseur of literary art, and the doctor was informed that she was reading Scott's Waverley for the fifth time. "Oh, I just dote on Scott," came the bubbHng assiurance of the worthiness of her course, and to his * ' Do you like his poetry ?" came the ready answer that she thought it "gorgeous." Opinions were i8o GROWING A LIFE exchanged as to Marmion and The Lady oj the Lake wherein he was told the first was "perfectly beautiful" and the other was ''sweet.'* Suddenly a thought occurred to the learned gentleman, and with a twinkle in his eye he sprung the trap. **And what do you think of Scott's Emulsion?" asked he. "Ah," said the radiant critic, clasping her hands and gazing into his face with literary enthusiasm, "I think it the best thing he ever wrote." Tragedy reveals its deepest plot when will is enthroned beside passionate emotion, while equal poise and grasp of intellect are lacking. A boy of noble brow and luminous eye stood and looked upon the sea as it leaped and roared under the sway of the storm. "My boy," said the anxious mother, who had in dismay searched for her child, "come home; the storm is upon you." The boy did not stir, but the hght of his eyes flashed brighter as the sky grew darker. "Come," cried the mother, "I command you to come with me and at once." Then the lad turned, and with strange and solemn mien replied, "I was not born to be commanded but to command." Alas that. this young Bonaparte did not find a force, a home, a teacher, and environing power to lift his intel- lectual prudence to an equal plane with his irresistible enthusiasm and matchless will. Then would the flame wliich at the end of the first Italian campaign leaped forth in such utterances as "I see what I may become; I already behold the world beneath me as if I were being carried through the air," have been a fire of philanthropy such as was never kindled on altars of liberty. Then would that imperious v/ill, evidenced in Marengo, Aus- terlitz, Jena, and Friedland, world conqueiing, have con- quered self, and Napoleon's path across the map of liistory been traced in lines of love and praise rather POWERS i8i than in blood and carnage, and posterity could have said, "His honor and the greatness of his name Shall make new nations." Such unbalanced education has been and will continue to be the chief retarder of civilization. The governments are calling for leaders who will put integrity above par- tisanship and self-love,— men who think broadly, feel kinship with all life, and act in the fear of God. The answer comes slowly v/hile graft and greed jeer at democ- racy, and the hope of a righteous republic is delayed. The church as well as the government appeals, but the story of the Life Beautiful passes but little beyond the ear. It falls upon an unemotional (that is, "not motional") , unsympathetic people. These are the products of our schools and homes. Textbooks and routine, neglect and unnatural processes for six days will prevent the most wonderful tale of love from reaching the brain centers on the seventh. Some speak of the strange reception given the Nazarene by his people. Read history, and wonder will disappear. They had been educated to this rejection for a thousand years. Put in your schools what you would have the nation he. Greece was wonderful and brilliant, but she was imbal- anced. She loved art, and she gave to the world an art that has been "a glory to Greece and a reproach to the remainder of the world." But she loved art for its own sake, and when she needed something else to sustain her she had nothing but thought; and so she died. Judea arose, and gave to the earth two religions of power. Overstepping thought, mere thinking, the Jew took into his heart the love of humanity, and let it waken every fiber of being. The result? The religions of Judea have for hundreds of years exemplified the deepest 1 82 GROWING A LIFE feelings of the world, have been the very strength of all religious and ethical emotions. But Judea was one- sided; she felt, but did not think or create, and the Roman conqueror drove through the streets of the impe- rial city dragging Judea captive at his chariot wheels. Rome resolved that she would teach mankind the lesson of empire. She created an empire such as had never before been seen. But where is Rome? Ask of the ruins that mark the seven hills above the Tiber. Rome willed, but she did not justly think or feel. So the civilizations have gone, each striving for a balanced development. Centuries roll by, but the ideal is not realized. From the shores of a kingdom across the sea there sets forth the Mayflower. It contains the germ of the Magna Chart a. Will it prosper better in this new America? History, reaching from Plymouth Rock to Manila Bay, records the answer. It is the story of a new hope for the freedom of man — the story of a balanced civilization. True asceticism and abandoned depravity wrestled here for a few epochs, but from out the struggle burst at last the splendid, broad, true, typical American — one whose creed is to "do unto others as you would that they should do unto you," and one thing more — see that you do it and do not mouth it; one who says, "I take my lot with the Publican rather than the Pharisee"; one who stands for an idea and not for a class or sect; one who believes in men, not good men, not weak men, not wise men or foolish men, but all men; who holds with Lincoln "that God must have loved the plain people or he would not have made so many of them." Washington, Lincoln, Lee, these typify the balanced man. The following story told of Lincoln proves the POWERS 183 truth of this. Many such stories could also be told of Washington and Lee: "One morning I called at the White House," said a gentleman, "and found Lincoln in good spirits. He had witnessed the play of Richard III the evening before, and he took up with me the discussion of that character. With the skill of an artist he portrayed the play of pas- sions, and with peculiar vigor he criticized the actor's version of the part. Laughingly I asked if he would not give me the act himself. To my amazement he reached up, took down a well-used copy of the play, turned to the passage, and launched forth into a reading that was the equal of anything I had ever Hstened to. "Before I could express my surprise and admiration there was a loud noise at the door, and in crowded a num- ber of frontiersmen, who with 'Hello, Abe!' and 'AH the old neighbors down on the Sangamon said howdy, * soon made it known they were the President's old friends. One tall fellow said he had made a bet that he was as tall as Lincoln, and he wanted it settled right now. So, with quip and laughter, the long, gaunt form of Lincoln was backed up against the door to get the needed measure. Later, with warmest good-bys, the callers took their departure. "The many sides of Lincoln's nature were successively to be touched that morning. A woman in black entered. After a kind, 'What can I do for you, my good woman?* she said, 'Mr. President, I come to ask you to release my boy from the army.' 'No,' said Lincoln. 'I have done too much of that, so Stanton says. I shall have to refuse you.* 'But, Mr. President,' said the woman, her voice aquiver, 'you see, it is this way. When the war came on there were four of us, three boys and I. We i84 GROWING A LIFE must help you, and so we said that the eldest boy should enlist. He was killed at Chickamauga. The other two said we must have some one at the front for you and the Union, and I agreed. When they brought my second boy home dead I thought my heart was gone. But at last the youngest pleaded so that I thought I could get along without him. I mortgaged my home and he went. But, Mr. Lincoln, I am starving; I must have my boy.' *My dear woman,' said the President, 'I did not know, did I? You shall have your boy. Stanton,' rang out the voice, and Stanton came. 'Fix a discharge for this woman's son, Stanton; her needs are greater than ours.' 'But, Mr. President' — Stanton got no further. 'Stanton,' said the President with a glint of steel in his sad eyes, *do this at once.' Stanton did it. Never shall I forget the scene as the President signed the paper. The woman in black stood behind Lincoln's chair stroking his coarse dark hair as if he were a child, while her tears fell fast upon his head. 'God bless you, Mr. Lincoln, and He will. No man need fear for the Union in such kind hands as yours.' " Here was a man who, in an hour, had thought with Shakspere, enjoyed with backwoodsmen, and felt with the heart of motherhood. Here was a balanced man. To this ideal every Anerican heart should be turned and is turned. Let those dealing with life hear ever in mind that there are three attitudes the mind can take personally, socially, religiously, or otherwise. It can think; it can feel; it can create. To keep these balanced has been at once the confusion and sublimity of man. CHAPTER XVI PROCESSES THROUGHOUT the organic world the life processes are three in ntimber. The lichen and the oak, the star-fish, and man thrive and multiply through absorption, assimilation, and reproduction. There is no exception to this law. Nourishment is taken, distributed to tissue and organ, and assimilated there, until sustained life fashions its genn or ovum, which is ready to absorb again; and the grand cycle is made complete. So truly do mental phenomena reveal the same processes and so precisely do the same terms, absorption, assimila- tion, and reproduction, apply to the threefold activity of the mind, that reason is forced to the conclusion that it is not analogy but an extension of natural law through an harmonious monism. An idea is absorbed or acquired, duly assimilated or reflected upon by certain faculties, and at last is reproduced in expression through the will. This expression is ready to be modified or absorbed again, and the grand cycle of mental operation is complete. Here is the surest, plainest, and most useful principle revealed to pedagogy. Without doubt it comes nearer to fm-nishing a panacea for all ills affecting mental processes than anything else thus far discovered. It develops order out of chaos. It has been the basis of normal methods of instruction in every age. It will continue in usefulness because it is so simple, so wholly applicable, and so clearly scientific. The efficacy of the principle lies largely in this, that common sense demands its respect and use when once it 185 i86 GROWING A LIFE is understood. The plant whose roots drink freely of suit- able nourishment would not be expected to fructify should it be clipped at the ground as soon as the stem appeared. Again, it would not be sensible to expect that though absorption by roots and assimilation by trunk, branch, and leaf should be perfectly carried out, fruit would develop and ripen if every manifestation of bud and flower were neglected or repressed. Just so is it clear to any thinking mind that the intellect may acquire all the facts, yet if these truths never reach into the atmosphere of the emotions it is but a moldy, sickly mentality indeed. But even shotdd these facts put on the assimilational forms of desire, hope, and love, and these never be permitted to break and bloom into expression and ripen into deeds, surely growth and life would be a mockery. It is plain that the three thought processes, absorption, assimilation, and reproduction, are necessary and must be completed. One process demands the other. A failure in one is a failure in all. Is it not strange that this truth, which it seems a babe might drink in with its mother's milk, has been shame- fully ignored and ruthlessly trodden under foot by teachers, parents, and individual learners who have reached an age of reason? To-day the ignorance of this principle, or its slothful abuse, if knowTi, is making many teachers mere lesson assigners and reciting posts rather than cooperators with Nature in the normal education of children. It is the shattering of this priceless jewel of threefold mental activity, by eliminating one function of the three, or two of the three, or all of the three, that makes instructors driving taskmasters instead of friends of children and brothers of Him who took the little ones in His arms and blessed them. PROCESSES 187 This thought may be mixed with sentiment. Let us devoutly hope so. The average American, and that no doubt is an average broad enough to embrace most of us, needs to get his ears off the pipings of his own soul and attune them to the harmonies of the Life Beautiful. Children climbed His knees gladly, because He brought them Nature's processes. He attuned His soul to choirs visible and invisible in flowing stream, song of bird, childish laughter, and childish love. Take the eyes off our own narrow round, our own method, our own school and salary, and get out into God's good world to learn with Mrs. Wiggs "That beneath the mud and scum of things, Something always, always sings." In one of the best schools of the West a high-school inspector had come upon a fine class in the hands of a good and experienced teacher. The class getting into the midst of some splendid history topics, the inspector grew agitated. The teacher would fire twenty-two- caliber questions and the class would retaliate by peppering him with rejoinders of equal caliber or less. At the rattle of these small firearms the inspector grew nervous, wrung his hands, and finally, with his face flushing with indigna- tion, swung around to the superintendent near him and said, ** Why is it that a teacher will chop to pieces such a fine class as this with dwarfing questions when they are begging him to turn them loose on these topics and let them do some genuine, consecutive thinking?" The superintendent whispered, "Suppose you take a hand." He did. He slipped the leash, after a bit of pleasantry, by asking, "Who will take this question, go upon the floor, and tell what he thinks about it?" Up went the hands, and, facing the class, several pupils gave such excellent discussions that all were \4sibly aroused; i88 GROWING A LIFE enthusiastic comment came from all sides, and individual expression ripened so fully that every one in conscious happiness realized that here was something worth while. Step into seven high-school rooms out of ten, and you will find the teacher, like this automatic quizzer, blocking the way. That is blunt — but Dr. Holmes justifies .such blunt statement by saying that a "truth is a solid cube, while falsehood has many forms, and a lie is a handle which fits them all." See that class in science? The pupils are fairly bloated with impressions. They may not know it, any more than other abused soil, but there are a thou- sand seeds ready to germinate and grow out of their thoughts if the teacher will but get his question machine off the class and let the showers and sunshine of conscious effort and freedom of expression come in. Here comes a good question; it is picked up quickly, and away goes the class mind in chase of a truth. But "No," snaps the teacher, "no, that is not my point"; and with this jerk the entire group of thought runners lie flat on their mental backs. Again they line up at the wire, and away they start — only to be brought back once more that they may keep "goose step" to a jingle of small questions fashioned so that each one in the class may have an equal share in the lesson in the "required" number of minutes. Let it be written in large letters over the doors of the schools, so that he who runs may read, that schools are turned into prisons, teachers into jailers, and pupils into incompetent drudges because out of many impressions or acquisitions come few reflections and still fewer expres- sions. Most instructors cram, some require reflection, and a few give opportimity for free, genuine expression. When you contemplate the books, the schools, the lyceums, the magical rapid transit v/hich by ribbons of steel connects PROCESSES 189 the ends of the earth in enlightenment, this is indeed strange. Strange, passing strange, that Nature, the one great teacher, should hold out so natural a process and even send disciples into every comer of the land, and yet in university, college, high school, and grades this problem of the trinity be despised, while text and routine prevail. Charles H. Ham, in his admirable work, Mind and Hand, exposes the educational crime committed when any one of these — absorption, assimilation, or expression — is neglected. He says: "The schools educate auto- matically. They train the absorbing powers of the brain but fail to cultivate the faculties of assimilation, and neglect almost wholly to develop the power of expression. " Then Mr. Ham proceeds to reinforce his remarks by giving several paragraphs of remarkable point and beauty from a treatise on this subject by John S. Clark of Boston. Here are some sentences of d3mamic power from this treatise : "Studying the functions of the brain, we find that for educational purposes it may be likened to an organism with a power of absorption, a power of assimilation or recreation, and a power of expression or giving out. The force of a brain is measured entirely by its expressing power. " "Now the equipping of a brain, or the healthy educa- tion of a brain, consists in giving it expressing power through the tongue and the hand, coextensive with the power of absorption and power of recreation. " " If now we follow the result of the brain equipment into practical life, we find that speech and writing, as means for expressing thought, have their applications mainly in the commercial and financial employments and the professions and then only incidentally in the industrial and mechanical employments. " IQO GROWING A LIFE ''The simple fact is that our education is not broad enough on the expressing side of the brain, that too much attention has been given to the absorbing side oj this organ, that no adequate provision has been made whereby it can discharge its power in work connected with the industries.'' Mr. Ham does not stop with Mr. Clark as witness against the heinous process of mental stultification, but summons the master minds of America of the nineteenth century and bids them speak as those interested in educa- tion. Starting with the Quincy Movement of 1873, he moves through the cycle of the New Education, completing it by calling last upon Colonel Parker. Mr. Walton, an experienced educator of Massachusetts, says: "Too much has been attempted by the schools. There has been a slavish adherence to textbooks and no room given for freedom and originality of thought. Rules have been memorized and the children taught to recite from the textbook until they have not had the slightest conception of the true meaning of the subject. " Charles Francis Adams, Jr., says: "The imitative or memorizing faculties only are cultivated and little or no attention is paid to thinking or reflective powers." Professor Barbour of Yale declares: "Our schools are suffering from congestion of the brain; too much thought and too little putting it into practice. " Superintendent Wickersham of Pennsylvania: "It is high time that something should be done to enable the youth to learn trades and to form industrious habits and a taste for work." It is a delight to realize that a common faith annihilates time and space and makes us truly brothers with the immortals. Abraham in his time spoke to a simple, nomadic race, but God gave his words the color of faith PROCESSES 191 which ages cannot pale. Moses gave the mutterings of Sinai to a simple tribe, but across brawling centuries of strife they call to us in the Ten Commandments. Jesus of Nazareth, broken upon a cross, bowed His head and yielded up His spirit ; but thousands daily put their hands in His, and He speaks again that "peace which passeth understanding." So by a similar power many a man or woman who never met Francis W. Parker looked into his face and touched his hand. Parker was the greatest defender of normal educational processes since the days of Horace Mann. He studied the charter of freedom granted to childhood by God's decree. He interpreted it by his own unerring love. He was a fighter. Pedagogical idlers, legislative shams, and jay-hawking school boards never slept well until March 2, 1902, when Colonel Parker was called off picket duty. These are his words: "Nearly three hundred years ago, Cosmenius discovered a rule of teaching which may be said to embrace all rules in its category. Things that have to be learned or done should be learned by doing them. This rule is so simple and plain that every one, except the teachers, has adopted and used it since man has lived upon the earth. If I am not very much mistaken, the schoolmaster for the last fifty years has been inces- santly inventing ways of doing things in the schoolroom by doing something else. . . . We cram our victim's head full of empty, meaningless words instead of inspiring and developing it by the sweet and strong realities of thought. This futile struggle to do things by doing some- thing else is to-day costing the people of this country miUions and millions of hard-earned dollars. And it is much to be feared that it will one day cost their children the blessings of free government. " 192 GROWING A LIFE How is it that the half-miUion teachers and millions of parents of this country read truths like this, and still the largest per cent the next hour take up the sickening round of routine and abnormal cram? It is clearly because we are victims more or less of this very educational process which Francis W. Parker condemns. Not one person in fifty is capable of assimilating as much as he acquires in the physical, mental, or moral life, and not one in thou- sands is capable of expressing the full measure of his reflections. Out of sheer resentment and deep-rooted rebellion against a process and a method which, as Parker says, have cost us so much and brought us so little, it would seem we would resist them to the death. Some one asks again, ''What is wanted?" Just this: in every physical, mental, and spiritual condition of life see that Nature's process, absorption, assimilation, and expression — reflected in every living thing — goes on. Never as Jar as unthin you lies permit a single exception to occur. Of all pathways of discharge, grooved in the brain, let this be the deepest and strongest. In every lesson at home, at school, or at church, see that the child thinks, that he reasons or reflects, and then in God's name not only give him opportunity to reflect but grip him with an eye of faith, support him with a conscious plan, not only until he can but until he must express. Express, express, express! With tongue or plow, pen or plane, brush or skillet, song or flower, express ! Get these and a thousand more avenues of expression into every place where chil- dren dwell, and let their souls feel the delight of creating (expressing), akin to that which the Divine experienced when He looked upon His own expression, a world. Expression is peculiarly important, though it is the clearest truth that at this point the weak instruction of PROCESSES 193 the past made its blunder and the poor instruction of the present is to be found. Science reveals man as the animal peculiarly distinguished because of his manifold possibil- ities for doing things. But the command has been, *'Get your lesson," or "Study your lesson," — but not often enough, — "Do or express your lesson." David B. Henderson, once speaker of the House of Representatives, was asked to what he owed his ascendency in life. "To the debating club in the 'old-field' school," was his reply. He was right. There the only chance for a clean sprint in consecutive thought was offered. There in that "literary" was a chance to do, to become, — to rout that fellow who had asserted his equality or superiority in too many offensive ways. To-day the school without a good debating club or some regular argumentative combat is not a well-rounded school. The school that does not possess a literary society in which declamation, composi- tion, and varied forms of expression are practiced and encouraged may call itself a school, — but what's in a name? We should like to have manual training accompanied by all the kindred industrial arts — sloyd, weaving, paper cutting; also by agriculture, horticulture, school garden- ing, and all that. We have some of these, and many others, as reading, writing, and like avenues for conveying ideas. From first day to last we should seek to open up a way by which the child's soul may escape into realms of fitting and beautiful expression. Let us with this splendid elixir of Nature's own process put an end to mental, moral, and physical dyspepsia. Preach and practice less absorption, more assimilation, and still more expression. This psychology is as good for practice as for preaching, as good for the teacher as the taught, as good for tlie individual in home and office as 13 194 GROWING A LIFE for the lecturer and the scientist. It is a brave physician who will take his own prescription, but here is a mental prescription for growing a Hfe you can yourself take as well as give, every hour. You can not only recommend it, but you can insure it. Say to any teacher, mother, father, preacher, business man, or student that if he or she will apply the three processes to every subject presented, first absorb it, then assimilate it, and last express it, you will forfeit your life if each is not master of the situation at no distant day. But remember, as you preach or practice this beneficent cycle of Nature, that the all-important point is that you grow through expression. If you know things, there is a strong desire to express them. It is Nature's way of deepening our impressions, this thing of recounting them. CHAPTER XVII THE GREAT IDEAL THE finest of all arts is the art of right living. The best proof of the existence of a deity is a well-poised, cultured, and mature human being. We have been grow- ing a life in these pages. We have thought together. Up from the ovum we have seen life spring, a thing of force and growth. Under the expansion of self -activity we have heard it laugh and sing in conscious pleasure as it rejoiced in its growth toward its destined end. Within right environment we have seen it fed, stimulated, directed through normal appetite, time, and freedom, and thus as a natural phenomenon under natural law, its powers, intellect, sensibilities, and will have unfolded equally. Wedded with all life, its processes of growth are as simple and sublime as the triune method by which God grows a violet or a leviathan. Now, with suspense, but in love and expectation, we ask, "What shall the harvest be?" Looking upon our own growing life or into the trustful eyes of our children, it is a wonderful question to ask, "What shall we train this life to be?" The worth of it is disclosed when the inexorable makes it a question of iron and granite which will not be worn away by evasion or neglect. You must answer it, teachers in the schools, ministers of the church, parents of children, and individual souls, whether you will or not; and whether you will or not, your answer will be recorded. A mother sat beside the cradle of her first born, and after happy play and crooning lullaby both mother and 195 196 GROWING A LIFE child fell asleep. Visions bom of fond and anxious care flitted through the mother's mind. Beside the cradle stood an angel in magnificent array. "Let me, O Mother, touch this child, and he shall never know want. I am Wealth, and all whom I touch are princes in the realm of riches." But the mother said not a word, and he passed from view. Another came, of eagle eye and commanding voice. He said: "I am Fam.e, and those I claim shall know not death, for favor of men shall cling to them throughout all time." The mother heart sat heedless, and Fame went his way. **0 Mother," cried a third, "give me your babe to touch, and the coveted prize of all the earth shall be forever his. I am Beauty, and all the graces wait on me." Still the mother sat unmoved. Then came Power, Love, and many more, until at last a sweet voice said: "Those that I touch have paths of thorns to tread and some have crowns of thorns thrust upon their heads, but one thing do they ever — they cleave to their ideals." The mother's soul leaped, and kneeling at the feet of this low-voiced spirit she begged that her child be touched and blessed. The annals of man reveal that this mother chose the better part. Behind all discussion and all effort and all organization to better the lot of humanity, stands the yearning love of the great reformers; and bending these, as reeds before the wind, sweeps the idea or ideal. As interesting a moment for civilization as history records is that in which man has stopped to pick out his heroes. The old plaster-cast theory has divinity immovable, but the face of Jehovah must have glowed with joy when Judea chose the obedient Abraham as its guide, and must have been shadowed with dismay as Rome made Nero emperor. THE GREAT IDEAL 197 Here then let the question be asked of the trainers and companions of children: "What do you expect them to be?" When, after the textbooks are laid aside, the last lesson is said, telling you *'good-by" they tiun to an exacting world, how will the lives you have helped to grow respond to the everyday demands of duty? How will your educational goods, these children, be rated in the markets of success? Will press of competition and superior mental products from other schools or other fire- sides send your boys to the servant list while others, through merit, move round to the master's desk? Will your pupils give orders as a potent soul sometime should, or will they like weaklings receive them all the time ? Do not dodge or evade ; necessity with a big stick is waiting around the comer. Stand up as associates of young life should, with heels together, heart full, and chin firm, while you give your answer. What is your teaching worth ? It is plain that it will not suffice to declare that our aims are to deliver to the world an educated man, a creature of mere habit, without denomination as to what that habit is. The veriest sneak thief could claim as much for his education. It is not sufficient to say we are doing our best to turn out pupils who will do the best they can. That sort of purposeless growth is developed in the school of Apology and about the hearthstone of Excuse. "The- best-I-can ' ' boy is an abbreviated edition of the man who needs a mustard plaster to make him feel. This training develops *'the jumper who never quite clears the bar, the poet whose verses ever limp, the artist whose colors are always on the run, and the woman whose buttons refuse to stay on." He is the twig that becomes that stick of a lawyer who gets but one client and that one the jailer takes off his hands, or the doctor who sent in a certificate 198 GROWING A LIFE of death with his name signed in the space reserved for "cause." Children shovild Hve in an atmosphere saturated with positivity. Clear and scintillating as the facets of the Kohinoor must flash the meaning of life to the young. Books, apparatus, buildings, and organization are but so many index fingers pointing receptive life to the most inspiring possibiHty, — a rounded, creative soul. Accu- mulated wisdom cries so loud the dullest may hear that education is not giving something, but finding something. It is the child discovering self. It is poverty and struggle buffeting the spirit of the boy Edison until, like good school- masters, they have stripped him of the rags of ease and idleness and revealed to him his own genius. Education is not information; it is an attitude. Lowell speaks of the "thread of the all-sustaining beauty, which doth run through all and doth all unite." It is within the plan of Nature to fashion tall, sun- crowned men and women out of these children about us. Under the law of continuity, the force which makes a Luther Burbank makes also a good community farmer. The virtues of that bunch of boys in khaki storming San Juan Hill are of precisely the same quality as those of a Washington. Let no unfeeling, unsympathetic reader challenge these paragraphs as so much shooting at impossibilities. One may refuse to see it, but what the young need is to associate with optimists — optimists like Christ, who sent through the world a shout, "All things are possible to him that believeth." "Monsieiu:," said Mirabeau's secretary, "what you require is impossible." "Impossible!" cried the rev- olutionist, springing from his chair. "Never mention that blockhead of a word to me again." The ideal is a THE GREAT IDEAL 199 tie which binds the hero of the shop with the hero of the cabinet. It Hnks the factory girl, dying that others may live, to Helen Gould, living that others may not die. The same qualities that give peculiar radiance to the names of Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale, and Frances E. Willard shine through the lives of plain girlhood everywhere, girls who bear in their young and tender breasts the burdens and destinies of mankind. The "thread of all sustaining beauty" loops itself about the brain of every normal child and binds it to genuine success if those who lead the child know where and how to touch it. Here is the place again to say that there is a difference in the powers of children but no difference in the spirit. It should he repeated over and over that there is enough of the God in every mind to grow it into infinite beauty and worth if hut properly cultivated. Any mind is oj God^ and any of God is infinite. Helen Keller is indisputable proof of this. A child lost in threefold darkness, through threefold enthusiasm brought to a pinnacle of intel- lectual power which has rendered her a marvel of the age. This liberating principle of all life, which should he the one supreme agent of education everywhere, is enthusi- astic, righteous doing; and its product, the supreme, cli- mactic product of the educational process, is ''the enthusiastic righteous doer.'' The old Greeks coined the word enthusiasm because they must have a term to explain some of the actions of their children. When Phidias chiseled marble into grapes which birds pecked at, or released from stone the figure of a Jove before which men trembled, they must find excuse for his conduct by exclaiming, "He is pos- sessed of a spirit. He is enthusiastic." But why pause here, for while the term originated with Hellas the 200 GROWING A LIFE substance of enthusiasm sprang coexistent with the origin of the suns. Shelley said that the Almighty gave men and women arms long enough to reach to the stars if they would only put them out. Enthusiasm, the arm of the heart, is the Aladdin's lamp of the American child. With it Ben Franklin reached out, and from being a slovenly, ill-treated printer's apprentice became the first philan- thropist and philosopher of America, and at last an arbiter at the courts of international freedom. With this arm Washington reached across the path of the British lion, though in the snows of Valley Forge he must needs fall upon his knees to implore the God of hosts to com- plete what he in patriotic enthusiasm had undertaken. This was the arm which raised the myriad hosts that tested with blood the covenant of this federal Union and at last permitted the swords of Grant and Lee to be alike sheathed in stainless honor. This spirit of righteous doing, this reach of the strenuous life, has wrought the modem miracle of miracles. Behold the scene! Forty years ago a war-worn, ex- hausted land, rent with passion and partisanship; with a population impoverished in finance and undeveloped in the arts and sciences. To-day what greets the eye and ear? United, and each state in possession of local self-govern- ment, the federal constitution unchanged save as respects the great issues submitted to the arbitrament of war; humming with her factories, shouting with her printing presses, flashing her lightning-sped secrets through the air and beneath the wave ; every section in full sympathy with all the present grandeur and imperial promise of a glorious union of over one hundred million souls, America stands to-day the teacher and leader of the nations. THE GREAT IDEAL 201 This is the story that must be told over and over to our children. The wonderful work of the enthusiastic y righteous doer. They must become such. Nor must we merely tell the story. We must let it sink deep into our own minds until it becomes part of our very fiber. Still more, we must Hve it, act it. In every sunrise, we must find a challenge for children calling for eager, righteous effort, and we must ride to battle with them. In every lesson of head, heart, and hand, we must find a Golden Fleece or a Holy Grail to seek. Woe unto us if in their presence we shrink from test or impending struggle! With our own lives we must preach the gospel of the impertinence of Fate, so that the deathly mirage which projects any occasion as small or any privilege as petty may never perplex their vision or ours. One picttu-e should be presented to the salary-drawing, time-serving, excuse-making, half-hearted teacher of this land, whether wasting her talents on a class of three husky Americans out on the edge of No-Man's Land or up among an ideal thirty in a palace of brick and stone with tessellated floors and with art and science joining hands to keep her contented. This should be the pic- ture: A Syrian sun at its zenith in a white sky, sending its summer rays upon the dusty road that leads from Jerusalem to Jericho; upon the stone well ciurb at Sychar sits a traveled-stained Figure. The face shows lines of sickly sweat, but you see the eyes, and all interest centers in them as you mark their burning beauty. You note they are reading the woman standing near with a water pot in her hands. You seem to hear the Man say some- thing of "living water," and with wonderful skill this Teacher leads the poor pupil on tmtil the need of the recreant woman has been laid bare by the Son of Man. 202 GROWING A LIFE With eager heart, lest He lose her, you hear Him say what the crowds in the synagogue and even the beloved dis- ciples tried but in vain to wring from Him — a declaration of his Messiahship: "I that speak unto thee am He." Over this picture there should be written, "The En- thusiastic Righteous Doer," and beneath, these words, **Here is a teacher that never despised an opportunity." Surrounded by the influence of earth's richest life, let us now close this message. There was a young man who had attached himself to a painter. He had only one aim, — to paint as his master painted. Year after year every energy was bent in the one direction. But still the goal was not reached. Seated one day before the canvas, he felt the spirit of the master glow within him. Seizing his brush, with swift sure strokes he began to paint. But ere the vision was fixed on the canvas the flame died down and again his ideal eluded him. Discouraged by the realization of his failure, he cast aside his brushes and, overcome by weariness and despair, sank to sleep. As he slept, the master entered the room, saw the unfinished canvas, and with one deft stroke left an impress that was all the awaking pupil needed to realize his ideal. So with us. We may fall short of the goal, but when at last we sink to sleep, with aim and aspiration still unrealized, may it not be that the Master will enter the room and with loving hand aid us to reach our ideal? AN OUTLINE OF THE BOOK CHAPTER I The Law of Laws The teacher is benefited by her endeavor to assist the child. The teachers of America have been progressive. Education as a science is not yet a real science. Principles of education need to be defined with exact "^Nature the infallible guide, and physical law the only basis of a system of pedagogy. Nature defined. Man or mind a proof of this definition. CHAPTER II The Law of Continuity The great discovery of the nineteenth century. There is but one world, controlled by the supreme law, the law of continuity. , ^ .1 i Rehgion, science, poetry, and art acknowledge the law of continuity as the basis of their existence. The child, a phenomenon of Nature, studied as any other work of Nature under the law of continuity, is the center of pedagogics. , . Modem psychology, obeying this, rests its reasoning on a physical basis. ?o3 204 GROWING A LIFE CHAPTER III Mind and Force Searching for a definition of mind through natural phenomena. Mind defined by Nature as a force. That mind is a force need not mystify, because it is simple. This definition forgotten, misused, or abused. Learning comes by opening up a way for mind rather than by the filling in of mind. CHAPTER IV Mind and Growth Mind is a force distinguished from other forces. Under continuity upon the physical basis, the classifica- tion is made. Mind neither a chemical nor a physical force. Mind found to be a force of growth. This truth applied under the law of continuity makes the whole growth-world reveal the mind. To grasp this, teachers must cultivate the sense of symbolizing. All the great teachers have recognized this. Christ the master teacher addressed the mind as a simple phenomenon of growth. CHAPTER V Consciousness Mind still further classified or differentiated. The reasoning of Charles Darwin examined and utilized in differentiating mind from other forces of growth. AN OUTLINE OF THE BOOK 205 From the survival of the fittest, through growth, man passed from mere growth to instinct or habit. Up to this time all has been done by the Hfe energy or material energy. Mind had nothing to do with it. At a certain point in the history of man the vibration from the sense organs passing to the association centers met mind, which remembered, imagined, reasoned, and willed. Mind became a conscious growing thing. The beneficent working of this truth in school and home. Clear understanding between the study of psychology and a few simple laws of Nature necessary to the teacher. If mind is a conscious growing thing it takes a soul conscious of its own possibilities and powers to awaken it. The call is for trainers of children conscious of the truth that the child mind is heir to all of Nature's gifts and the beauties of Nature's revelation through literature. CHAPTER VI Self-activity Mind reached, as all things for good are reached, through love. Great teachers have been great philanthropists. The basis upon which the mind has been Hberated is, "The mind is naturally self -active. " This truth founded on natural phenomena. Self-active mind pictured between the two Hfe forces, heredity and environment. Dnmimond gives a system of pedagogy in a paragraph. Heredity dismissed. So far as the living child is con- cerned, we cannot go back of the blood corpuscle. 2o6 GROWING A LIFE Environment all-important because it can be adjusted to self -active mind. The material "me" calls for close study of the body of the child. The social "me" calls for the closest study of the child's companions, father, mother, and teacher. The spiritual "me" demands sunshine, pictures, laughter, flowers, and the spirit of Froebel in the home and schools. That mind is naturally self -active is the most encourag- ing truth Nature can present to home or school. It calls, however, for large minds to grasp and apply it. Self-activity has been and will continue to be the central principle of all educational enterprise. CHAPTER VII Righteousness The mind is growing out of superstition into science, out of weakness into strength. Mind, under the search of science, revealed in the past century as a creation of right, not wrong. Weakness is of the flesh, not of the spirit. The teacher is powerless who does not accept the Nature-revealed truth that mind naturally grows right, or mind unnaturally grows wrong. Illustrations of how the acceptance of an old principle like this may make a new teacher, a new school or home, and a new life for the child. That mind naturally grows right is a supreme plea for individualizing. Mind is all right. Lift off the false weights of environ- ment and it will always grow right. AN OUTLINE OF THE BOOK 207 CHAPTER VIII Happiness the Birthright A resume of the preceding principles made: The four statements, "Mind is a force," "Mind is a force of growth," "Mind is a conscious growing thing," and "Mind naturally grows right," have been established by Nature. The mind studied still further as a natural phenomenon reveals that all of its right growth is enjoyable. Is life normal? Then it is happy. Is mind normal? Then it is happy. Pain should never be mixed with instruction. Any exercise of school or home, as reading, writing, playing, singing, when not accompanied by pleasure is unnatural. All trainers of children failing to adapt themselves, their schools, and their homes to the great natural princi- ple, "Mind naturally enjoys growing right," will fail utterly. A description of a school developed under this law. CHAPTER IX Mind Food Some postulates deduced from basic truths formerly announced. First, mind may be fed. The law of continuity suggests that mind may be fed precisely as the body is fed. You should begin with the body if you would have the mind grow right. All true teachers have developed mind by nursing and preserving the body. 2o8 GROWING A LIFE The ventilation, temperature, sanitation, and general environment of the child for health in school and home challenged. The teacher not as interested or enlightened on this subject, ** Mental Food," as necessity demands. The subject of dietetics assuming world-wide interest. Fletcherism is claiming a common interest with aerial navigation. Analogy implies that mental foods may be classified under the same headings as the physical. An application of this revealed through illustration. This postulate, "The mind may be fed," should be traced as far as possible. The farther we go, the more plainly is it revealed that we get the mind as we get the body. CHAPTER X Stimuli Organic and inorganic substances demand stimuli. Under this law we may safely conclude that mind may be stimulated. The blood is the food of the brain, oxygen is the blood's chief stimulus, while the food which the child eats serves to supply right or wrong stimuli through the blood to the mind. The home life of the child unreceptive to these truths, yet not more so than is the teacher. The old viewpoint of education, that of developing the academics only, has grown unsatisfactory. Mind and body indissolubly linked; what strengthens one strengthens the other. Rest and sleep for the child should be obtained by the school and the home. AN OUTLINE OF THE BOOK 209 A plea for the study of the health movement and for playgrounds for every child. Mind itself, even as does a muscle, seems to respond to the stimulus of exercise. The joy of conquest the great mental stimulus. Offer the child mind something worthy to conquer. Variety, as a stimulus to mind and body, essential. The teacher must interpret her mission as that of one who is to dispense natural stimuli to the child mind. This truth applied in description of the preparation of a teacher for her work. The teacher the strongest of all stimuli in the schoolroom. CHAPTER XI Training Nature presents another postulate of mind-growth, because it is true of all growth, '*Mind may be directed or trained." Education receives its severest tests in this, that due to the plasticity of matter change of mental direction may be made with ease at certain periods and with great difficulty at others. This is the point where Nature begins to build habit. The remarkable treatise on habit by Dr. William James discussed and analyzed. The whole subject of mental training is placed in a paragraph by James. This begins: "The great thing, then, in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy." The application of this truth has always separated weakness from strength, ability from incompetency, and explains that genius is nothing but an attention to details. 14 2IO GROWING A LIFE The four laws by which James secures right habits of the mind given and illustrated : "Launch with as strong and decided an initiative as possible." "Never suffer an exception to occur until the new habit is securely rooted in life. " "Seize the very first opportunity to act on every resolution made. " "Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by gratuitous exercise every day." Habit not second nature but "ten times nature." Personal traits are settled between the fifth and twentieth years, and professional tendencies between the twentieth and thirtieth. Let the school and the home never forget this. This law of habit displays character as a result of each day's training. CHAPTER Xn Appetite Out of the nattu-al attributes of growth sprang the statement, "Mind may be fed." From this issues the proposition that mind must have appetite. The movement of the mind through the years has been toward monism ; the amoeba and the physical man reveal kindred desires for nourishment. When the child refuses to eat, the verdict is he is ill. When the mind refuses to take food with joy, it is ill. Non-attendance at school is a proof that mental appetite is lacking. All improvement must rest upon the basis that the physical child is one and the same with the mental child. AN OUTLINE OF THE BOOK 211 Conserve the appetite of the mind by regulating all functions of the body through careful physical training and inspection and by the proper selection and combina- tions of foods. Teachers too often ignore the laws of mental combina- tion, succession or variety. False stimulants, irregular hours, and overloading to be avoided. Andrew S. Draper quoted on overloading the cur- riculum. Cheerfulness a necessary sauce for the mental pabulum. CHAPTER XIII Time The time element is a potential factor in Nature and in education. Fiske's idea that babyhood has made man what he is. The great loss of pupils to the grammar school through its period of eight years. Suggestions for extending the average school life of the child centers in making the child's life in the school a happy one. The present ciirriculum is within the range of mental activity, perhaps, but too extensive in scope for the time involved. A curriculum should never be mistaken for mental growth or as a perfect measure for mental capacity. Every effort to establish an arbitrary measure of time for grammar school or high school, college or university, is unsuccessful because unnatural. Conclusions of all educational committees on courses of instruction end in this: Rate the pupils' growth by 212 GROWING A LIFE apparent powers and accomplishments rather than by hours, days, and years. Distribute promotions upon the basis of effort, not of examinations. The "perfected" or "finished" instructor is the chief time destroyer in the present system of schools. Everything in the school day should bend and move about the needs of the child. A picture of a teacher who acts upon this truth; an opposite view. If the time problem must be solved it can be done only by a teacher who lives completely. The philosophy of medievalism must yield to the philosophy of service. CHAPTER XIV Freedom Mind must have freedom. This is reflected every- where in Nature. The blight of groove and conformity rests too much upon present-day education. Spencer, Ruskin, Emerson, Dickens, and other thinkers brought freedom of mental life to the child. Not enough freedom yet. Higher education and all education suffering from too much satisfaction. The common-school system is the center of the greatest educational freedom. The public-school teacher is the chief apostle and interpreter of this mental freedom. The answer to the question, "How may we secure a better school and better school sentiment?" is the teacher, receptive, self-reliant, unbiased, free. A capable and free teacher destructive to monotony, grind, and lock-step uniformity. AN OUTLINE OF THE BOOK 213 Professor Dolbear's allegory. Characteristics which mark free schools. A succinct view of education under freedom. CHAPTER XV Powers A resimie of preceding principles. Under the law of continuity the natural powers of the mind discovered and classified. Nature demands a balanced mind. Some views of ill poise, or unbalanced conditions, of mind. Unbalanced or one-sided education retards civilization. Greece, Judea, and Rome typify one-sided education. The United States developing the whole man. CHAPTER XVI Processes The natural world, presenting ever5rwhere thought processes corresponding to its three powers. The three thought processes, absorption, assimilation, and reproduction, are necessary and must be completed. A failure in one is a failure in all. A plea for a Httle more sentiment touching the teachers' ideals. The teacher the chief obstacle to free, consecutive thinking in the school. Schools and homes deprived of joyous power because out of many impressions come few reflections and still fewer expressions. The views of some great thinkers on this question. Francis W. Parker denominates the destruction of this 214 GROWING A LIFE natural process of the mind in our schools and homes a national crime, tending toward the loss of free govern- ment. The great commandment in the methodical decalogue is, "See that Nature's process, reflected in every living thing — absorption, assimilation, and expression — goes on in all mental, physical, and spiritual life. " Expression peculiarly important. CHAPTER XVII The Great Ideal In the natural world of growth there were three hours, three powers, and three processes. Corresponding with these there m^^st be products. In mental growth three forms present themselves, — mere creatures of habit, creatures of mediocrity, and creatures of enthusiastic, righteous deeds. Schools and homes must set up an ideal as to what product of childhood must be had. Child growth must fructify in an atmosphere saturated with positivity. The school and home should keep in mind the fact that the common people are fullest of possibilities. There may be a difference in the powers of children but there is no difference in the spirit. Enthusiasm is an arm of the mind which will reach any successful end. America is a product of the enthusiastic, righteous doer. The One Complete Man was an educational product of this type. The school and the home, the teacher and the parent, should train and develop the child's mental tendencies toward this plain, approachable, yet divine ideal. '"What is the child Worth in the tight of eternity?' should confront the teacher at eVert^ stage of his Work.** Common Sense Didactics. These books will help him to supply the answer. THE CHILD His Thinking, Feeling, and Doing By amy ELIZABETH TANNER, Ph.'D., Formerly Professor of Philosophy, Wilson College, Chambersburg, Penn. A study of the child from birth to adolescence. "It is remarkable," says Bertha Payne, Head of the Kinder- garten Department, School of Education, University of Chicago, "that the author has been able to present the main facts of psychology with the data of child study and the pedagogical bearing of both in a so brief yet scholarly manner. The volume is admirably adapted to fill a pressing need long felt by teachers in normal schools, in training classes, and in reading circles." EDUCATION FOR CITIZENSHIP By Dr. GEORG KERSCHENSTEINER Member of the Royal Council of Education; Director of Public Schools, Munich. Translated by A. J. PRESSLAND for the Commercial Club, Chicago. "A landmark in the history of education," says Michael Sadler, of the University of Manchester. The result of practical achievement, "it throws fresh light on the educational responsibility of the state, and makes clear that education for citizenship is no less indisf)ensable than preparation for trade." Correspondence invited. RAND McNALLY O COMPANY. PUBLISHERS Chicago New York OCT 10 1912 **EVeri^ day should add something neW to the outfit of the teacher." George Howland. In each of these books you will find fresh impetus to work, fresh wisdom, fresh courage. COMMON SENSE DIDACTICS By henry SABIN, LL. D. Superintendent of Public Instrudicn for the S ate of Iowa for Eight Years, "Henry Sabin's Common Sense Didactics is one of the really great books that has been written by an Ameri- can educator." A. E. Winship, Journal of Education, Boston, Mass. "It is the counsel of a veteran educator whose ex- perience has taken in every phase of school work." Orville T. Bright, District Supt. of the Public Schools, Chicago, III. INDUSTRIAL WORK FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS By ADELAIDE M. HOLTON, formerly Supervisor of Primary and Industrial Work in the Public ScJiools, AND ALICE F. ROLLINS. Principal Sheridan School, Minneapolis, Minn. "At a time when we are looking toward the light in our endeavor to solve the problem of industrial work in the schools this book comes as a very valuable contribution . to educational literature." Wilhelmina Seegmiller, Director of the Art Department oj the Public Schools, Indianapolis, Ind, HAND LOOM WEAVING By MATTIE PPIIPPS TODD of the Horace Mann School, Minneapolis, Minn. "Mrs. Todd has done remarkably good work for the schools. Her book represents a thoroughly helpful line of work which will be a basis for a more wholesome manual training for older girls, as well as for primary children who are first concerned. Sarah Louise Arnold, Dean of Simmons College, Boston, Let us hear from you. RAND McNALLY €^ COMPANY, PUBLISHERS Chicago New York