Her mother, however, became dissatisfied after a time with her child’s general condition. Curious and somewhat alarming physical distortions were beginning to manifest themselves, most noticeably a tendency to carry her head on one side, a tendency she was unable to rectify. At last the mother brought back the child to me for re-examination.

Now less than a year before I had passed this child as an unusually fine example of correct physical co-ordination. When she came back to me she was in little better condition than a congenital degenerate. All that fluent co-ordination of her muscular mechanisms had disappeared, and in place of it I found rigid tendons, stiffened muscles, and, worst of all, faulty habits of guidance and control, among them a habit of governing the muscles of her body and legs by stiffening the unrelated muscles of her neck. (Incidentally I may note in passing that in the human being the neck is very often the indicator of inadequate and false controls. There are good reasons why this should be the case, a priori, but they are too technical for this book.) A further particular defect was due to a tensing and shortening of the upper muscles of the thighs where they are attached to the torso, a defect that was tending to warp and shorten the child’s stature. Lastly, the most significant change of all, the child who a year before had been outspoken and fearless, and clear of speech, was now timid and shy, and mumbled her words so badly that I could with difficulty understand her.

Here then is a case of a child, starting in the best physical condition, who was placed in what was considered the right environment and permitted the exercise of free activity. And I claim that the harmful result was so inevitable that any one of real experience might have anticipated it with almost absolute certainty.

The second ominous “D” is drawing, and this comes into another category of damnation, since mental rather than physical effects are concerned, although the latter are involved both in the harmful, uncorrected poses adopted by the children when seated at the table, and in the false directions of the ideo-motor centres of which only a few reach the essential fingers that are holding or more often grotesquely clutching the pencil. It may seem a small thing to the layman that a child should try to guide a pencil by movements of its tongue, but to the expert that confusion of functions is indicative of endless subconscious troubles.

Let me describe the practical procedure of a certain type of “free-drawing” lesson. Pencils, paper, and the usual paraphernalia are placed on tables or desks in different parts of the schoolroom, in the hope that the child may be tempted to use them in drawing. Then, one day, a pupil takes up a pencil and makes an attempt to draw, another follows his example and so on, until all the pupils have made some kind of effort in this direction.

Now the act of drawing is in the last analysis a mechanical process that concerns the management of the fingers, and the co-ordination of the muscles of the hand and forearm in response to certain visual images conceived in the brain and imaginatively projected on to the paper. And the standard of functioning of the human fingers and hand in this connection depends entirely upon the degree of kinæsthetic development of the arm, torso, and joints; in fact upon the standard of co-ordination of the whole organism. It is not surprising, therefore, that hardly one of these more or less defectively co-ordinated children should have any idea of how to hold a pencil in such a way as will command the freedom, power, and control that will enable him to do himself justice as a draughtsman.

Any attentive and thoughtful observer who will watch the movement and position of these children’s fingers, hand, wrist, arm, neck and body generally, during the varying attempts to draw straight or crooked lines, cannot fail to note the lack of co-ordination between these parts. The fingers are probably attempting to perform the duties of the arm, the shoulders are humped, the head twisted on one side. In short, energies are being projected to parts of the bodily mechanism which have little or no influence on the performance of the desired act of drawing, and the mere waste projection of such energies alone is almost sufficient to nullify the purpose in view.

But I have already said enough to prove that no free expression can come by this means. The right impulse may be in the child’s mind, but he has not the physical ability to express it. Not one modern child in ten thousand is born with the gift to draw as we say “by the light of Nature,” and that one exceptional child will have his task made easier if he is wisely guided in his first attempts.

But my chief objection to this teaching of drawing is the encouragement it gives to profitless dreaming. Drawing is an art, and we know some of the characteristics that are commonly imputed to the artist,—though many of the greatest artists have been exemplarily free from them. These characteristics are eccentricity, lack of balance, power of self-hypnotism, and a general irrationality. Yet surely it cannot be emphasised too strongly that the artist succeeds in spite of these impediments to expression, and not because of them. These characteristics that I have instanced are by-products of the artistic genius. They are developed through erroneous conceptions and overconcentration on a particular creative activity, and time and again in the history of the world these by-products have ruined, incapacitated, and disgraced men of real genius.

Nevertheless, if I can judge by my experience of this form of free expression, the child is encouraged to practise the eccentricity as a means to obtain the gift of drawing, which as a principle is about the same as trying to breed race horses with weak lungs because it has been noted that certain very fast horses have been rather deficient in this respect. To encourage eccentricity is not to breed genius, and genius itself is more free and more creative when it is not hampered by eccentricity. Let us, at least, have some appreciation of rational cause and effect.

So much for my two “D’s,” but my general criticism of the “free expression” experiment does not end there. For I must confess that I have been shocked to witness the work that has been going on in these schools. I have seen children of various ages amusing themselves—somewhat inadequately in quite a number of cases—by drawing, dancing, carpentering, and so on, but in hardly a single instance have I seen an example of one of these children employing his physical mechanisms in a correct or natural way. I insist upon the use of the word natural even though it be applied to such relatively artificial activities as drawing and carpentering. For there is a right, that is to say a most effective, way of holding and using a pencil or a carpenter’s tool. But the children I saw commonly sat or stood in positions of the worst mechanical advantage, and the manner in which they held their pencils or their tools demonstrated very clearly that until their management of such instruments was corrected, they could never hope to produce anything but the most clumsy results. Worse still, these children were forming physical habits which would develop in a large majority of cases into positive physical ills. A child who tries to guide its pencil by futile movements of its head, tongue, and shoulders may be preparing the way to ills so far-reaching that their origin is often lost sight of.

As an instance of this, I recently had a case of a boy of 3½ years who suffered from fear reflexes. If a stranger entered a room when the child was present, he would cry and cling to his mother or nurse. At the seaside after asking to be allowed to bathe with other children, he was subsequently afraid to go near the water. And in many other ways he exhibited unreasoning terrors which, according to the general diagnosis common in such cases, were presumed to be the cause of his general backwardness, a symptom particularly marked in his speech, for he was only able to articulate a few words and those very imperfectly.

My first examination of him revealed the fact that he lacked proper control of his lips and tongue, and of one internal physical function, the latter chiefly at night. And that the lack of control in these particulars was the direct cause of his psycho-physical condition was very conclusively proved by my treatment of him. Treated on a basis of conscious guidance and control, re-educated and co-ordinated, the child made rapid advancement, and he progressed towards a condition approximating more closely to what one might call normal, than he had experienced since birth. The fear reflexes became less and less subject to excitement, he grew less irritable, his temper was more controlled, and his outbursts of crying were exhibited far less often.

I have cited this instance to show what strange psychic effects may spring from apparently purely physical causes,—though, indeed, the complement of psycho-physical is so unified that it is impossible to divide the components and place them on one plane or the other. In this boy’s case, the primary cause of the trouble was probably congenital, but equal and greater troubles may arise from much smaller original defects if the initial habit is confirmed and crystallised by use, as I fear will be the case, if the child is left to develop itself on the lines of the free expression advocates. It is quite certain, for example, in the case just referred to, that no amount of “free” activity could have released the child from his constrictions whilst the influence caused by his malco-ordinations still existed.

But surely I have given evidence enough to prove my case against this last development in education. In an ideal world into which children were born with ideal capacities, Mr. Shaw’s thesis might have some weight. In this rapidly changing world of the 20th century we require, more than ever before, a system that shall guide and direct the child during his earlier years. This implies no contradiction of what I have said earlier anent the method of constant supervision. The necessary correction of physical and mental faults that I am advocating is a very different thing from the attempt to mould a child into one particular preconceived form. I would only insist that the children of to-day, born as they are with very feeble powers of instinctive control, absolutely require certain definite instructions by which to guide themselves before they can be left to free activity. And these directions must be based on a principle that will help the child to employ his various mechanisms to the best advantage in his daily activities. These directions involve no interference with what the child has to express; they represent merely a cultivation and development of the means whereby he may find adequate and satisfying release for his potentialities.

It is true that the foregoing principles must and will involve certain necessary prohibitions, but if we select those essentials that deal with the root cause of the evil instead of with the effects, we render unnecessary the continual admonitions and “naggings” which represented one of the vices of the old system, a vice from which it has been the object of the new education to free the child.

To sum up this aspect of child-training, I find that on the whole the methods of the older educationalists, with their definite prohibitions and their exact instructions, were less harmful than the extremes of the modern school that would base their scheme of education upon a child’s instinctive reactions. The older methods failed, I admit, for one reason, because the system was carried too far; for another, because the injunctions and prohibitions were based on tradition, prejudice, and ignorance, instead of upon a scientific principle dictated by reason. But the new methods fail because they are founded on an entirely erroneous assumption which is demonstrably fallacious. Can any method be defended that is open to such a charge?

Give a child conscious control and you give him poise, the essential starting point for education. Without that poise, which is a result aimed at by neither the old nor the new methods of education, he will presently be cramped and distorted by his environment. For although you may choose the environment of a nursery or a school, there are few, indeed, who can choose their desired environment in the world at large. But give the child poise and the reasoned control of his physical being and you fit him for any and every mode of life; he will have wonderful powers of adapting himself to any and every environment that may surround him. And if he be one of those exceptional individuals that, by some rare gift of nature or by some force of personality, are able to bend life to their own needs, be very sure that so far from having suppressed his power of free expression, you will have strengthened and perfected just those abilities which will enable the genius to put forth all that is best and greatest in him.

My last charge against the advocates of free expression is that they themselves are not free. So many propagandists and teachers show an unwarranted intolerance towards the exponents of the old systems. They are, in fact, too constricted in their mental attitude to give play to their imagination. From one extreme they have flown to the other, and so have missed the way of the great middle course which is wide enough to accommodate all shades of opinion.

For let me state clearly in concluding this comment on a new method, that I am, myself, as strong an advocate for free expression, rightly understood, as any propagandist in the United States of America. But I am convinced by long observation and experiment that the untrained child has not the adequate power of free expression. There are certain mechanical and other laws, deduced from untold centuries of human experience, laws that are only in the rarest cases unconsciously followed by the natural child of to-day. (One of these rare cases that has recently come under my notice has been the billiard playing of Mr. George Gray. I am of the opinion that the mechanical principle of the position adopted by him could be scientifically demonstrated as being as nearly perfect for its particular purpose as any position could be. And according to my observation of him, Mr. Gray manifests in his play the most remarkable and controlled kinæsthetic development I have yet witnessed. But how many George Grays has the world so far produced?)

Over twenty-two years ago in Australia, I was teaching what I still believe to be the true meaning of free expression. My pupils in this case came to me for lessons in vocal and dramatic expression. Now by the old methods these pupils would have been taught to imitate their master very accurately in vocal and facial expression, in gesture, in the manner of voice production; and it would have been at once apparent to any one acquainted with the manner and methods of the teachers, where each pupil had received his training. Furthermore, pupils educated by those methods were taught to interpret each poem, scene, or passage on the exact lines that were considered correct by their respective teachers.

My own method, which at that time was regarded as very radical and subversive, was to give my pupils certain lessons in re-education and co-ordination on a basis of conscious guidance and control, and in this way I gave the reciter, actor, or potential artist the means of employing to the best advantage his powers of vocal, facial, and dramatic expression, gesture, etc. He could then safely be permitted to develop his own characteristics. A few suggestions might be necessary as to interpretation, but the individual manner was his own. No pupil of mine could be pointed to as representing some narrow school of expression, although most of them could be recognised by the confidence and freedom of their performances.

And in this connection it may be of interest to my readers to know that in 1902–3 I decided to test the principles I advocated, and to this end I organised performances of “Hamlet” and “The Merchant of Venice” for which I gave special training on the lines I have just indicated to young men and women, none of whom had previously appeared in a public performance of any kind whatsoever. I trained all these young people on the principles of conscious guidance and control, principles that I had then developed and practised. My friends and critics naturally anticipated a wonderful exhibition of “stage fright” on the evening of the first performance, but as a matter of fact not one of my young students had the least apprehension of that terror. By the time they were ready to appear the idea of “stage fright” was one that seemed to them the merest absurdity. It may be said that they did not understand what was meant by such a condition. And this, although I would not allow a prompter on the nights of the public performance! I regard this as one of the most convincing public demonstrations I have yet made of the wonderful command and self-possession that may be attained by the inculcation of these principles.

For it must be observed that I sent these tyros to the performance capable of expressing their own individualities. If they had been hedged about or boxed in by an endless series of “Don’ts” confining their performances by a rigid set of rules, the majority of them would almost certainly have broken down within the first two minutes. On the other hand, it is hardly necessary to picture the chaos that would have ensued, had I sent them on the stage without training of any kind, poor, helpless, ignorant examples of what they supposed to be free expression.

The foregoing is an example of education in only one sphere of art, but it serves as an excellent indication of the essential needs of education, in general, where the child is concerned. We must give the child of to-day and of the future as a fundamental of education as complete a command of his or her kinæsthetic systems as is possible, so that the highest possible standard of “free expression” may be given in every sphere of life and in all forms of human activity. We must build up, co-ordinate, and re-adjust the human machine so that it may be in tune. We are all acquainted with the expression “tune up” where the automobile is concerned, and when we wish to command the best expression of this machine we avail ourselves of the “tuning up” process of the mechanical expert. And as the human organism is, as Huxley says, a machine, we must remember that if we wish it to express its potentialities adequately it must be “in tune.” This will represent what we consider to be that satisfactory condition of the child’s kinæsthetic systems which will enable him to express himself freely and adequately. It constitutes the “means whereby” of free and full expression, of adaptability to the ever changing environment of civilised life, and to all that these two essentials connote.

In this note on race culture and the training of children, I have thus far dwelt almost exclusively on the earlier years of childhood. But I have much to say at some future time on the questions of primary and secondary education, that is, of the boy and girl at school between the ages of, say, seven and eighteen. No one who has read so far with attention and has earnestly attempted to comprehend my point of view, will now be able to urge that the question of education, secular or religious, is outside my province, for the mental and physical are so inextricably combined that we cannot consider the one without the other, but, at the risk of being accused of repetition, I will briefly state my case in this connexion once again, as follows:

I wish to postulate:

That conscious guidance and control, as a universal, must be the fundamental of future education.

That civilisation and education, as manifested up to the present, cannot be said to have compelled man to advance adequately from the lower to those higher planes of satisfactory evolution, where his savage animal instincts will not under any circumstances, or in response to any stimuli, dominate his transcendent tendencies, or put him out of communication with his reason.

That mankind should progress by slow continuous processes from one stage of evolution to another. This will be particularly the case when he is passing from his animal subconscious stage to the higher, reasoned conscious stages, during which process he will develop a new subconsciousness (cultivated, not inherited) under the guidance of consciousness, likewise an increasing control which holds his animal proclivities in check.

That the evolutionary progress from childhood to adolescence, and so through the vicissitudes of life which follow, is determined by the process adopted, the ratio of progress being in accordance with the standard of efficacy of this process, and that this principle of evolution applies equally to a nation.

That subconsciously developed mechanisms (subconscious guidance and control) function satisfactorily during those stages of our evolution which approximate to the more or less animal plane.

That the old moderate methods of education are not incompatible with cultivation and development on the animal subconscious plane.

That “free expression” principles cannot bring satisfactory results while the subject’s mechanisms are operated by inherited subconscious guidance and control.

For this very reason, all aid to progressive development must conform to the principle of the projection of guiding orders and controls in the right direction or directions with the simultaneous employment of positions of mechanical advantage, irrespective of the correctness or otherwise of the immediate result. The result may be unsatisfactory to-day and to-morrow, or during the next week, but if the position of mechanical advantage is employed and orders and controls in the right direction are held in mind and projected again and again, a new and correct complex sooner or later supersedes the old vicious one, and becomes permanently established.

That consciously controlled mechanisms (conscious guidance and control) are essential to man’s satisfactory development and progress to the higher stages of his evolution; and to that continued adequate vital functioning of his physical or mental organism necessary in these advanced stages, where more rapid adaptability to the swiftly and everchanging environment, and the power to see, and comprehend new ideas, are the urgent demands of an advancing civilisation.

That consciously controlled mechanisms are essential to the successful inculcation of the principle of “free expression” and all that it connotes in Education.

Conscious guidance and control, as the fundamental in education, commands the fundamentals of “free expression.” The words free or freedom are herein used in their true meaning, not in the ordinary acceptation. I refer to the point of view which causes one to ask, “Is there such a thing as real freedom?” For we know that we cannot have freedom without restraint, any more than we can have psycho-physical harmony without antagonism.

It is said that the dividing line between tragedy and comedy is not one that the majority of people readily recognise, and this is also the case in regard to what is called freedom and licence. This is the danger which the new democracies of the world are facing at this very moment, and their dangers will be increased a thousandfold in the near future, when they will be called upon to pass through that critical period of re-adjustment which must follow the present world crisis.

In this matter of education I am, admittedly, an iconoclast. I would fain break down the idols of tradition and set up new concepts. In no matters do we see more plainly the harmful effect of the rigid convention than in this matter of teaching. We speak commonly of training the minds of children. It is a happy expression in its origin, and we still retain its proper intention when we apply the word to its uses in horticulture.

The gardener does, indeed, train the young growth. He draws it out to the light and warmth and leads it into the conditions most helpful for its development.

And so, in teaching, the first essential should be to cultivate the uses of the mind and body, and not, as is so often the case, to neglect the instrument of thought and reason by the inculcation of fixed rules which have never been examined. Again, where ideas that are patently erroneous have already been formed in the child’s mind, the teacher should take pains to apprehend these preconceptions, and in dealing with them he should not attempt to overlay them, but should eradicate them as far as possible before teaching or submitting the new and correct idea. I say “teaching or submitting” and perhaps the latter word better expresses my meaning, for by teaching I understand the placing of facts, for and against, before the child, in such a way as to appeal to his reasoning faculties, and to his latent powers of originality. He should be allowed to think for himself, and should not be crammed with other people’s ideas, or one side only of a controversial subject. Why should not the child’s powers of intelligence be trained? Why should they be stunted by our forcing him to accept the preconceived ideas and traditions which have been handed down from generation to generation, without examination, without reason, without enquiry as to their truth or origin? The human mind of to-day is suffering from partial paralysis by this method of forcing these unreasoned and antiquated principles upon the young and plastic intelligence.

The educational system itself is grievously inadequate and detrimental, as all thinking educationalists are aware, but the decision regarding the necessity for physical exercise and “deep breathing” in our schools has added another evil. I wish to say here deliberately that the many systems of physical training generally adopted show an almost criminal neglect of rational method, and of the test which can demonstrably prove the practice to be unsound and hurtful.

Some years ago I wrote in the Pall Mall Gazette:

“I will merely point out that in our schools and in the Army human beings are actually being developed into deformities by breathing and physical exercises. I have before me a book on the breathing exercises which are used in the Army, and any person reasonably versed in physiology and psychology, and knowing they are inseparable in practice, will at once understand why so much harm results from them. Take either the officers or the men. In a greater or less degree the unduly protruded upper chests (development of emphysema), unduly hollowed backs (lordosis), stiff necks, rigid thorax, and other physical eccentricities have been cultivated. It is for these reasons that heart troubles, varicose veins, emphysema, and mouth breathing (in exercise) are so much in evidence in the Army. As this is a matter of national importance, I am prepared to give the time necessary to prove to the authorities (medical or official) connected with the Army, the schools, or the sanatoria, that the ‘deep breathing’ and physical exercises in vogue are doing far more harm than good, and are laying the foundations of much graver trouble in the future. The truth is that all exercises involving ‘deep breathing’ cause an exaggeration of the defective muscular co-ordination already present, so that even if one bad habit is eradicated many others—often more harmful—are cultivated.”

And again in my pamphlet “Why We Breathe Incorrectly” (Nov., 1909) I wrote:

“Let me make myself clear by explaining that the man who breathes incorrectly and inadequately, does so as an immediate and inevitable consequence of abnormal and harmful conditions of certain parts of his body. The man who breathes correctly and adequately does so as an immediate and inevitable consequence of normal and salubrious conditions of the same parts. It therefore follows that if the conditions present in the second man can be induced in the first, he will then, but not otherwise, be a correct and adequate breather. And the process by which this is achieved is simply a re-adjustment of the parts of the body by a new and correct use of the muscular mechanisms through the directive agent of the sphere of consciousness. This change brings about a proper mechanical advantage of all the parts concerned, and causes, thanks to the right employment of the relative machinery, such expansion and contraction of the thoracic cavity as to give atmospheric pressure its opportunity. Now here we have (a) the directive agent of the sphere of consciousness, and (b) the use of the muscular mechanisms—the combination causing certain expansions and contractions, and the result being what is known as breathing. It will at once be seen, therefore, that the act of breathing is not a primary, or even a secondary, part of the process, which is really re-education of the kinæsthetic systems associated with correct bodily postures and respiration, and will be referred to universally as such in the near future. As a matter of fact, given the perfect co-ordination of parts as acquired by my system, breathing is a subordinate operation which will perform itself.”

I stand by every word of this to-day. Hundreds of soldiers every year have to leave the British Army on account of heart trouble directly brought about by the “drill-sergeant’s chest” and its concomitant strains and rigidities. Not long ago, Mr. Punch had a picture of a young boy riding in the Row with his groom and answering that worthy’s question as to how he would salute a Royal Personage—“Same as the soldiers do; hold my hand up to my hat and look as if I was going to burst”! Certainly a straw showing which way the wind blows.

These same soldiers will start on a long route march with chest “well set” and stiff. The strain of marching inevitably brings them later into an easier slouching position, which makes continuance possible and at its worst is not so positively harmful as is the tension of the other posture.

Compare the free, loose but more healthy physical attitude of the sailor ashore with that of the “smart” soldier strutting in town like a pouter pigeon for the honour of the regiment. It is your team of sailors that is the readier and the more effective for hard work.

And but a few weeks (now years) ago, I saw with dismay in a popular illustrated daily paper a truly pathetic picture of a class of schoolboys with hollowed backs and protruding chests looking like nothing so much as very ruffled pouter pigeons. And the master was commended for his zeal in producing such results by “deep breathing.” (See photographs facing this page.)

Is it, I would ask, likely on the face of it that the right position in which a man or woman should stand for health’s sake should be one needing positive strain to preserve? The thing is preposterous, and I am convinced that nothing can result from the application of such principles but complete chaos, physical and mental.

To return to my general theory of training, I fear I must not particularise too definitely in some directions, but my instance of right-handedness has its application. On the one hand we are willing to sacrifice reason for such a tradition and convention as this; on the other for an untried and possibly illogical idea. The defence for the latter sacrifice is generally based either on the need for enthusiasm or the necessity for proceeding by a system of trial and error. Well, as to enthusiasm, I will claim that no one is a greater enthusiast than I am myself, but I will not permit my enthusiasm to dominate my reason. One day I hope to write an account of how I arrived at the practical elucidation of my principles of conscious control, and when I do, I shall show very plainly how one of the greatest, if not the greatest danger against which I had to fight was my own enthusiasm. It is as vivid and keen to-day as it was over twenty years ago, but I should never have worked out my principles, if I had allowed it to dominate my reason. Again, as to the argument pleading the necessity for empiricism, I admit also that my own methods have been and still are, in some directions, experimental. But with regard to the “free expression” movement, I claim that the error in practice has been sufficiently demonstrated, and further than that, I must insist that we are not justified in experimenting on children. I have never done that inasmuch as I have realised that the error may be irreparable. Could any fault weigh heavier on a human conscience than that by which, however unwittingly, another human life had been distorted?

Wherefore, pleading on behalf of my most important client, the child of this younger generation, I demand that we shall proceed to neither of the dangerous extremes that threaten his physical and mental well-being. On the one hand we must avoid the thrusting upon him of fixed ideas, by which you may narrow his mind, for I know that when you limit him, imparting to him deliberately your own mental habits, the effects go far beyond what we are pleased to call the “formation of character.” On the other hand we are not justified in leaving him entirely to himself. Whilst he has the right of choice within certain limits, he has not, unhappily, the ability to choose in his earlier years. We need not bind him to choose this or that, but we must educate him in such a way as to give him the power of choice. In Mr. Allen Upward’s delightful work, The New Word, which I have already quoted, he says: “Give the child leave to grow. Give the child leave to live. Give the child leave to hope and to hope truly.... He is the plaintiff in this case. I say that he is mankind ... and his birthright is the truth.” And to that I would add, “Give the child leave, also, to learn. Give him opportunity to profit by all the knowledge we can give him out of our experience. His birthright, indeed, is the truth, but we must aid him in making the discovery.”

It is full time that we gave more earnest thought to this matter. I cannot in this brief outline dwell on the many phases of proper food, clothing, and physical training, and all those other points which we must consider. The Kinæsthetic Systems concerned with correct and healthy bodily movements and postures have become demoralised by the habits engendered in the schoolroom through the restraint enforced at a time when natural activity should have been encouraged and scientifically directed, and in the crouching positions caused by useless and irrational deskwork.

And I may note in this connection that I am continually being asked, both by friends and unknown correspondents, for my opinion concerning the correct type of chair, stool, desk or table to be used in order to prevent the bad habits which these pieces of furniture are supposed to have caused in schools. In my replies I have tried to demonstrate that the problem is being attacked from the wrong standpoint.

Let us consider the problem in the light of common-sense. Suppose, for example, that there is an ideal chair, some wonderful arrangement of perfect angles, hollows, and supports that will almost magically rectify or prevent every fault in the child’s physical mechanism. Suppose further that the child finds great ease and repose when seated in this ideal chair. How then can he avoid suffering the tortures of all that is uncomfortable, when he rides in the cars, or sits down in his own home, or visits a friend, or goes for a picnic on the river or in the woods? I see nothing else for it; when that ideal chair has been found, our child will have to carry it about with him wherever he goes.

In the second place, how is it possible for this ideal chair to be miraculously adaptable to every age and type of child? Are we to treat children as plastic lumps of clay to be fitted to the model insisted upon by the lines of our ideal chair; or are we to study and measure each individual and have a chair built to his measure, once a year, say, until he is adult?

No, what we need to do is not to educate our school furniture, but to educate our children. Give a child the ability to adapt himself within reasonable limits to his environment, and he will not suffer discomfort, nor develop bad physical habits, whatever chair or form you give him to sit upon. I say, “within reasonable limits,” for it is obviously absurd to expect a Brobdingnagian child to use a Lilliputian chair. But let us waste no valuable time, thought, or invention in designing furniture, when by a smaller expenditure of those three gifts we may train the child to win its own conscious control, and rise superior to any probable limitations imposed by ordinary school fittings.

For the problem to be solved in education is that same problem which needs solution in the social, political, religious, industrial, economic, ethical, æsthetic and other spheres of progressive human activity. In every sphere of life we have for years given “effects” the significance of “causes” and have made worthy attempts to put matters right on this unsound basis. In the case of education certain symptoms have been recognised as more or less harmful, and the whole blame has been placed upon the method or methods of education involved.

For at least half a century, the method of the social worker was conceived on the lines of giving money, food, and clothing to the poor, in an attempt to ameliorate their condition. The evils of this false policy came home to them in a practical way, and nowadays, the object of the social worker is to give the poor the “means whereby” of general advancement and of getting money, clothes, and food by their own efforts.

The same principle holds good in the treatment of the children. Hitherto educationalists have given them what they considered they needed. What we must do in the future is to give them the “means whereby” they may themselves satisfy their needs and command their own advancement.

The adoption of new methods is a procedure which always demands a due and proper consideration of the thing, person, or persons to which they are to be applied. Investigation along these lines would probably have revealed the real cause of the difficulties to be faced in the education of the child of to-day, which is that the process of civilised life has gradually changed the child’s psycho-physical condition at birth. In this process much has been gained and much lost. From the educator’s point of view the losses have been stupendous as compared with the gains, for the all-important kinæsthetic systems have been deteriorated by man’s attempt to pass from the lower (animal) to the higher stages of the evolutionary plane while depending upon a subconsciously controlled organism.

I have still very much more to say on this subject of education, and I hope to have an opportunity in the near future of elaborating my methods and of setting them out so that they may be practically and universally applied. But if by these few remarks I can arouse some interest in this world problem, I shall have done something towards its solution. It is a problem which is very urgent at the present time, and is growing more urgent every day. All that we have done up to the present time is to enforce one rule or another upon the children as an experiment, for all the rules have been rigid in their enforcement, however unscientific in their conception. In place of these rules I look for an ideal which I believe to be comparatively easy of realisation. I look for, and already see, a method of training our children which shall make them masters of their own bodies; I look for a time when the child shall be so taught and trained that whatever the circumstance which shall later surround it, it will without effort be able to adapt itself to its environment, and be enabled to live its life in the enjoyment of perfect health, physical and mental. For, as I have already pointed out, man has progressed towards the higher and more complex stages of civilisation. He has continued to change his habits of life and being still far from the highest state attainable he will continue to change. The farther he becomes removed from the primitive uncivilised stage of his evolution the less likely is he to have the opportunity in the daily routine of his life so to exercise the physical machinery that it will be prevented from working imperfectly by the controls of instinct. “Conscious control” will enable man to adapt himself more readily to changing conditions of life. No one who looks out upon this latter day world with discerning eyes can fail to see that the changes tend to become more rapid and more radical than ever before in the history of the world’s progress.

We look towards the goal, and it is best to seek the highest and be content with no less, but at the same time it is necessary that we should consider the practical detail of our journey. What follows in Parts II and III may seem trivial by comparison with the high endeavour I have outlined, but it is the triviality of the essential detail.

I wish to point the road still more clearly, and to show how every man and woman may learn to walk upon it.

In the previous chapters I have dealt briefly with the fundamentals upon which our whole structure of education and civilisation is based, and have attempted to point to the different tendencies developed by the individual in the struggle to progress upon this basis. At the same time I have indicated that which I am confident is the only true fundamental upon which mankind in a state of civilisation may progress and evolve to a condition commanding freedom for all time from those limiting, narrowing, and debasing qualities which belong to the animal spheres of existence.

It seems to me that the present world crisis indicates that this is the psychological moment to make a wide application of my principles, though my reader may consider that I should not enter the debatable ground of hypothesis in a work which has been devoted, up to this point, to arguments almost entirely drawn from personal experiences and observation.

I have dealt with the fundamentals employed in the development of the child and the adult, and I have postulated that the evolutionary progress from childhood to adolescence, and on through the vicissitudes of life which follow, is determined by the process adopted, the ratio of progress being in accordance with the standard of efficacy of this process, and that this principle of evolution applies equally to a nation.

It then devolves upon us to consider the different processes adopted by different nations, in order to gauge accurately their different stages of evolution and their possibilities of growth and development towards real individual and national progress.

After centuries of endeavour in the direction of progress in accordance with well-defined processes, founded upon approved educational, religious, economic, political, industrial, ethical and æsthetic principles, and after a century of unprecedented progress in the realm of Arts and Sciences, we are faced with the spectacle, in a supposedly civilised nation, of a debauched kinæsthesia which has manifested itself in such a display of savage instincts as will present us in the eyes of a more highly evolved universe as plunged in the depths of barbarism.

During the past three years the people of the world have been shocked and stirred by events which even four years ago were considered impossible in the stage of civilisation then reached. In consequence, we find that a special and earnest endeavour is being made to solve problems of vital importance which have a bearing upon the future development and cultivation of the potentialities of mankind.

It is, therefore, essential to recognise that we have reached a point in the process called civilisation which will be recorded as one of the most critical and vital in the world’s history.

At this moment the great nations of Europe are engaged in the most terrific conflict of force ever recorded, whilst in America, a land of peace, there is being witnessed what is probably the most bitterly contested conflict of opinion ever experienced regarding the conduct, policy, and duty of the American nation where the old world is concerned.

(This was penned prior to American intervention in the war.)

The happenings of the past three years must influence our present and future opinion of the value of our educational, political, moral, social, industrial, religious and other principles where the progress of man is concerned, as he passes from the animal plane of his evolution to those higher planes for which he is undoubtedly destined.

The conclusions thus reached will so influence the future welfare of mankind that the facts from which these conclusions are deduced demand the most serious attention and study of every human being.

It is therefore essential that we make an earnest endeavour to discover fundamentals. In this connexion we must consider the available evidence concerning the cause or causes of this conflict in Europe which has shaken our boasted advancement in civilisation to its very roots. What does this recrudescence of barbarity mean when viewed with an open and unprejudiced mind in its relation to the future of those principles which alone make for the real mental, physical, and spiritual growth of mankind in progressive civilisation?

It signifies a tremendous clash of opposing forces, a desperate conflict between the lowly-evolved peoples of the world as against the more highly evolved races, the struggle of an open-minded, mobile idealism for the supremacy of the individual against a narrow-minded, rigid, material automatism which entails the suppression of the individual and the obliteration of his reason in the supposed interests of the State.

Let us take, then, a general comparative view of the compelling psycho-physical forces in the life of primitive and civilised nations up to the crisis. America in this stands apart and must be considered separately.

In Primitive Nations. The compelling forces were chiefly physical and subconscious. The very essentials of life depended almost entirely upon brute force. Daily experiences gave a keen edge to savage instincts and unbridled passions, to an automatic development which opposed the cultivation of the faculty of adaptability to new environment. Even the spheres of courage were limited, and when confronted with the unusual these peoples quaked like cowards, and fled panic-stricken from the unaccustomed, as in the case of the negroes in the Southern States of America when the men of the Ku-Klux Klan pursued them on horseback dressed in white.

In Civilised Nations. The compelling forces have become less and less physical and less subconscious than in the case of primitive nations, but the advance from the physical to the mental and from the subconscious to the conscious has not been adequate or sufficiently comprehensive to establish the mental and conscious principles as the chief compelling forces in the progress of the nation or even of the individual. The essentials of life do not depend upon brute force, and daily experiences become less and less associated with factors which make for the development of savage instincts and unbridled passion, or automatic development. But experience has proved that civilised nations have failed to come through the ordeal of adaptation to the everchanging environment of civilisation with satisfactory results. The spheres of courage are still more or less limited, and when brought suddenly face to face with the unusual and unexpected people still exhibit a tendency to panic and loss of control. The progress made by civilised nations from the primitive state to the present has not been upon comprehensive lines. The result has been that the majority of the activities of the nation have been limited, and in those few activities where the widening influence held sway, the freedom became licence and led to overcompensation. This condition was sufficiently harmful as long as it applied to the individual and to individual effort, the individual being more or less held in check by collective opinion; but when it applied to the nation and to national effort, that nation which ignored the opinion of other nations developed unchecked, and the national decision to stifle the individual, body and soul, if it seemed to be for the welfare of the State, constituted the most powerful force in the prevention of progress on the evolutionary plane.

For this decision, once it became the result of national conception, carried with it the most damaging and impossible of all mental processes in the sphere of true evolutionary advancement. In the first place the national decision was the result of an erroneous national conception, the outcome of what I have called, for the want of a better name, “manufactured premises.”

Manufactured premises are the forerunners of unsound and delusive deductions—a stultification of reason—and demand the cultivation of a form of self-hypnotism which is fatal to national or individual progress.

A few observant people noted this dangerous habit even in the early literature of the German nation, and watched with keen interest its cultivation in all spheres of activity in recent years. This explains the stupendous failure of German judgment in all matters of national and international importance, of the impossibility of the peoples of that nation to see anything from any other point of view but their own, of their crass stupidity in gauging the psychology of other nations, and particularly that of the American nation.

In the foregoing we have fundamentals worthy of consideration. They must occupy the attention of all thinking people who wish to make a contribution towards the uplifting of mankind and the establishment of a standard of reasoned guidance and control which should make another barbarous conflict unthinkable and therefore impossible.

Naturally, every nation is ready enough with a more or less humane reason for its madness. Self-protection, an altruistic regard for the rights of smaller nations, a sense of high duty towards mankind at large, all these pleas have been urged as explaining the single principle which has drawn this or that nation into the whirlpool. And each and every nation must surely have pleaded liberty as their excuse at some time or another, liberty being one of those adaptable terms that may be used to mean almost anything. Before the war Germany was maintaining a right for “liberty” of expansion, a defensive use of the word that has hardly anything in common with the American use at the present time.

On the other hand philosophers, economists, psychologists, commercial experts, and the public at large have been busy with a dozen other theories of the primary causes of the war. We have heard much talk of race hatred, of business rivalry, of high commercial and political intrigues, and a dozen other influences, and all of them have been put forward at one time or another as the sole reason for the present welter of blood and fury. We have, in fine, so many reasons from which to choose that we may be quite sure no single one of them can possibly afford us an inclusive and adequate explanation.

But I will go still further than that. For I maintain on grounds which I find logically unshakeable, that if we admit, as seems the only sensible course, that something of all these reasons and excuses has entered into the conditions producing such awful results, we must still seek some explanation of the preceding state that made these conditions possible. All our reasons, in fact, are mere effects, and we are groping for our primary cause among resultant phenomena. We can never solve our problem by such a method as this. We might as well hope to find the origin of a child by dissecting its limbs and intestines. Our only hope is to shift our viewpoint, to cease our muddled examination of the details just in front of us, and try to see our problem in the broad terms of one who can stand back and see life moving through the centuries.

With all people, in all spheres of life, we know only too well that certain mental and physical manifestations give an absolute clue to their character, to their aims in life, their ideals, and, what is more to the point, to the stage they have reached in the process called evolution.

Incidentally, I would point out that education as generally understood, even when it implies the most up-to-date methods, does not necessarily mean progress on the evolutionary plane any more than ability as a linguist need denote a high standard of mentality.

This applies also to most arts and particularly to those where music and dancing are concerned. The lower the stage of evolution, within certain limits, the greater the appeal of music and dancing.

When we review the history and general progress of humanity we find the instincts and traits of the animal—the brute force principle—predominating at certain stages. If we go back far enough we find that there was a stage when it was always predominant.

Therefore, a test as to the ratio of progress of nations on the evolutionary plane is to be found in their tendency and desire to advance beyond that stage where the mental and physical forces, which should only belong as inherited instincts to the brute animals and savages, hold sway; and with this in view, if we take a survey of the history, ideals, habits of life, mental outlook, and general tendencies of the German nation, it will show conclusively that these self-hypnotised people approximated too closely to the lower animals and savages in their mode and chief aims of life.

The great and noble ideals and aims of mankind making for progress towards the more highly evolved states were cast aside for the unreasoning, brutal, and ignoble principles which make for the debasement of man’s elevating potentialities, and hold him a slave to the cruel and lowly-evolved state of the primitive creatures. That any nation or nations should deliberately adopt, as their highest ideals and aims, brute force in all its hideous aspects, desecration of mind, body, and soul for the State, justification of criminal instincts and acts if employed on behalf of the State, destruction, rape and plunder, murder and torture to terrify innocent civilians; that they should adopt, in short, the brutal principle that “Might is Right” in that special national form in which it has been manifested in the last half century and directed towards what is now known as “Militarism,”—all this is surely proof positive that they have progressed but little on the upward evolutionary stage from the state occupied by the brute beast and the savage. The criminal aspect of the outrage of all that rightthinking human beings hold dear is intensified by the fact that the nations which perpetrated the deed were among the most prosperous of the world, and enjoyed, as aliens, the same privileges as the subjects of those nations whose hospitality and confidence they abused.

The nations bearing the brunt of the struggle against this outburst of primitive brutal instincts and desires have long since reached a stage in their evolution which made the methods of Attila unthinkable. If forced into war they conducted it on the evolved plane of the human, and not that of the animal. They treated their captives as honourable men and extended to them every conceivable consideration within their power. Prior to this war the ideals and aims of these nations were the antithesis of those of their lowly-evolved enemies, and they were ideals and aims which made for the right to live in peace with all other nations. They aimed at the reduction of armaments, and gave practical proof of their aims. They opened their ports and their markets to their present enemies and gave them a free hand in every respect in all spheres of activity. They had no desire to beat down the ideals and principles which make for the ennoblement of mankind, they had no wish to dominate the world by brute force and to establish a system of living and a form of conduct which grinds the individual into a mere heartless unreasoning automaton, rigid-brained, driven like an animal, and not daring to claim even his soul as his own.

For many years prior to the crisis of 1914 we listened to the blatant outbursts of German professors and other educated authorities of that nation concerning its superiority to other nations. We were asked to believe that certain individuals of that nationality had reached the stage of the superman. These unfortunate and deluded people have for some time been cursed with this obsession.

Thinking men and women of other nations listened and wondered when these claims were made concerning these supermen, and after examining the evidence advanced to support these claims became convinced that they were not justified. The stupendous failure of the supposed supermen in every sphere of mental and physical activity in the present war proves the correctness of these convictions.

It seems inconceivable that supermen could so have guided and directed the whole national energy of Germany that it became more and more narrowed,—like the German mind,—until it concentrated almost solely upon the stupid conception of the domination of the world by Germany. To this end, the national energy was diverted chiefly into two channels:

COMMERCIAL INDUSTRY AND MILITARISM

One of the great features connected with the former was the extraordinary development of machinery, which demanded for its successful pursuance that the individual should be subjected to the most harmful systems of automatic training.

The standardised parts of the machine made demands which tended to stereotype the human machine. The limitations of human activity, mental and physical, reached the maximum. The power to continue work under such conditions depended upon a process of deterioration in the individual. He was slowly but surely being robbed of the possibility of development. The very soul of man was crushed to foster an industrial process which was to provide the sinews of the war machine, to support that curse called militarism, and the demoralisation of Germany came chiefly through that nation’s conceptions of militarism which, in the first and last analysis, stands for the worst manifestation of those savage instincts and unbridled passions associated with the lowest stages of primitive race development.

The horrible results of the sum total of the national madness which the foregoing represents are now revealed before us, for to Germany this militarism constituted a rigid plan, a system, and a world-philosophy.

She is convinced, against all the evidence, that her plan, system, or philosophy, is so undeniably right as to constitute an absolute. As a nation she has no mobility, no poise. She is influenced by a stultifying idea, the perfection of her own “Kultur” (a word more properly translated as a civilisation than by the word “culture” as used in the English or American sense). She is, in fact, just as badly co-ordinated, as unable to follow the true mandate of reason, as any individual who is dominated by a fixed idea.

For the trouble is that when reason is so far held in check that it loses its power of denial, it must have lost its power of control. The original “idea” formulated in the conscious mind has sunk so deep into the subconscious that it cannot be changed except under the influence of some stronger outside power. For nearly fifty years Germany, in her schools, her gymnasiums, her universities, her civic and her political life, has been inculcating a rigid and mentally demoralising system, and she is suffering now—as the monomaniac in private life must suffer—for her particular form of insanity.

Even in the conduct of her great campaign, this weakness of hers has begun to defeat her. She has lost the power of adaptability in military matters. She repeats the faults of her original plan, despite the endless illustrations that have been afforded by her Western antagonists that that plan can be very considerably bettered. No doubt the Higher Command may realise in some instances the weakness of the old method in conditions that have been immensely modified since August, 1914, but they are impotent to change, in a year or in a decade, the effect of their own teaching on the millions of Germany’s army. The massed attack, for example, has been demonstrated to be a disastrous failure—a single well-placed machine-gun can defeat it—but Germany’s soldiers will not advance in a scattered attack. They have learnt to depend upon the nearness of their comrades. Separate a German battalion and it has neither confidence nor courage.

Again, can one reasonably doubt that the German nation suffers from some form of self-hypnotism when one sees evidence of the almost pathetic belief apparently still placed in the campaign of “frightfulness”? The German people themselves are afraid—an inevitable symptom of certain forms of monomania—of the horrible devices they themselves are using, and no evidence can bring home to them the fact, that the plan of terrorising their enemies not only fails but recoils even upon their own heads. London—I speak from experience—is not intimidated by Zeppelin raids by night, nor by seaplane raids by day. The inhabitants of London do not cower under these terrible afflictions and beg for peace; on the contrary each horrible incident arouses afresh their determination to prevent, if possible, a recurrence of such savagery in the world’s history. Any sane nation must have realised this fact eighteen months ago; Germany, blind and rigid in the trance of her self-hypnosis, still staggers on to her own destruction.

In the opposite direction it is interesting to note the methods of the British. In their case, we can trace no such clear effort for narrowness and organisation. The general policy of the nation, whether internal or international, had that haphazard air which is so commonly cited as being a characteristic of the English method as a whole. We saw an almost complete inability to govern or even to manage that still largely subconsciously ruled country of Ireland. We witnessed the most astounding blunders of policy with regard to foreign countries (witness Lord Salisbury’s cession of Heligoland to Germany in 1890, Gladstone’s handling of the first Boer War, and a dozen other instances), and even with regard to the treatment of Britain’s own colonies, whilst internally her educational and administrative systems were the result of a method of trial and error which was sometimes well-nigh disastrous.

The British have in them a peculiar kind of empiricism. They are ready to laugh at and to criticise their own defects. They admit quite freely, for example, that they “blundered through somehow” in the Boer War, and that they have blundered again and again (most destructively in Gallipoli) in the present campaign. Their criticism of the rigidity of their own military methods is a proof that if the criticism is sometimes justified, the people at home—aye! and the New Army abroad—have never been infected with that rigidity themselves. But, in truth, that rigidity of discipline is now little in evidence in the field. And how little it has affected the British and French plan of campaign may be judged by the fact that every new device of any importance during the war, whether a device of method or of mechanical invention, has been originated by France and Great Britain. Now, from the German point of view, this adaptability to circumstances would be pronounced, a priori, as certain to lead to disaster. I put it to America, on the evidence afforded by the battle-fields of France, which method is the more likely to achieve ultimate success?

Returning now to my single reason for the cause of the present war, I feel that the explanation has already been given. Granted a nation educated and trained as Germany has been, some explosion was inevitable sooner or later. If we have in our midst an individual suffering from a fixed idea, he must in time become intolerable to us. Never in the history of the world have thought and the tendency to organisation been more fluid than they were in the first years of the 20th century. Yet one great and powerful nation interfered with us at every turn, impeding the flow of liberal thought by her obsession with the ideas of her own greatness and the omnipotence of her military machine. Nevertheless the other nations of Europe adapted themselves within limits to the demands of this rigid mechanism in their midst. And it may be that these very powers of endurance and adaptability hastened the crisis. They were regarded by the monomaniacs of Germany as signs of weakness, and just as their own philosopher Nietzsche went mad by concentration on his own invariable theme, so at last Germany crossed the bounds of sanity, imbued with a crazy belief in her own omnipotence. She ran amuck in the wide streets of Europe, and even yet she has not realised her own madness. I seriously question whether she will come to anything like a proper realisation of that madness in the present generation. She has allowed a habit of mind to become fixed; and it has fallen into the realms of her subconsciousness. We must treat her as mad, but she is nevertheless to be pitied.

Earlier in this chapter, I separated America from the rest of the world. And my reason for this is that I regard this great nation of the United States as still in its early childhood from one point of view. I have an immense confidence in the future of America. I see that she has potentialities and opportunities such as no other nation has ever had. For her the possibilities of control by reason are illimitable. But at the same time I must issue a very serious warning to every American reader of this book. For already I have seen the imitation of certain habits of thought, habits which, if they are persisted in, will sink deep into the national subconsciousness and prove a source of danger to the body politic.

My wish for America is that she should preserve as far as possible an open mind. She has recently entered the Great War for reasons that every right-minded man and woman must applaud and respect. I trust that she will come out of it with the same balance and power of choice, so that when she has to turn again to her own affairs, to matters of education, of government, and of her commercial interests, she will be able to form a national mind, sane enough and strong enough to control the great national body.

No finer ambition is possible than this. The old ambition of dominance, whether commercial or military, defeats itself by its very exaggeration. Such ambitions mount up until they become topheavy, and, even if they could be achieved, the result would be nothing but a decadence such as that which followed the Empire of Rome.

But given such a power of co-ordination and of self-control in the race, as a unit, as could be compared with the balance of a wise and healthy man, that nation would be free, with a greater liberty than history can record, and to such a nation little would be impossible. She would become the teacher of the world by the force of her reason and example. She would inaugurate the coming of a greater and wiser humanity.