Chapter XII: Moral and Religious Training (2)

Next to be considered are the sentiments which unfold under the influence of that fresh and naive curiosity which attends the first impressions of natural objects from which both religion and science spring as from one common root. The awe and sublimity of a thunderstorm, the sights and sounds of a spring morning, objects which lead the child's thoughts to what is remote in time and space, old trees, ruins, the rocks, and, above all, the heavenly bodies--the utilization of these lessons is the most important task of the religious teacher during the _kindergarten_ stage of childhood. Still more than the undevout astronomer, the undevout child under such influences is abnormal. In these directions the mind of the child is as open and plastic as that of the ancient prophet to the promptings of the inspiring Spirit. The child can recognize no essential difference between nature and the supernatural, and the products of mythopoeic fancy which have been spun about natural objects, and which have lain so long and so warm about the hearts of generations and races of men, are now the best of all nutriments for the soul. To teach scientific rudiments only about nature, on the shallow principle that nothing should be taught which must be unlearned, or to encourage the child to assume the critical attitude of mind, is dwarfing the heart and prematurely forcing the head. It has been said that country life is religion for children at this stage. However this may be, it is clear that natural religion is rooted in such experiences, and precedes revealed religion in the order of growth and education, whatever its logical order in systems of thought may be. A little later, habits of truthfulness[3] are best cultivated by the use of the senses in exact observation. To see a simple phenomenon in nature and report it fully and correctly is no easy matter, but the habit of trying to do so teaches what truthfulness is and leaves the impress of truth upon the whole life and character. I do not hesitate to say, therefore, that elements of science should be taught to children for the moral effects of its influences. At the same time all truth is not sensuous, and this training alone at this age tends to make the mind pragmatic, dry, and insensitive or unresponsive to that other kind of truth the value of which is not measured by its certainty so much as by its effect upon us. We must learn to interpret the heart and our native instincts as truthfully as we do external nature, for our happiness in life depends quite as largely upon bringing our beliefs into harmony with the deeper feelings of our nature as it does upon the ability to adapt ourselves to our physical environment. Thus not only all religious beliefs and moral acts will strengthen if they truly express the character instead of cultivating affectation and insincerity in opinion, word, and deed, as with mistaken pedagogic methods they may do. This latter can be avoided only by leaving all to naturalism and spontaneity at first, and feeding the soul only according to its appetites and stage of growth. No religious truth must be taught as fundamental--especially as fundamental to morality--which can be seriously doubted or even misunderstood. Yet it must be expected that convictions will be transformed and worked over and over again, and only late, if at all, will an equilibrium between the heart and the truth it clings to as finally satisfying be attained. Hence most positive religious instruction, or public piety, if taught at all, should be taught briefly as most serious but too high for the child yet, or as rewards to stimulate curiosity for them later, but sacred things should not become too familiar or be conventionalized before they can be felt or understood.

The child's conception of God should not be personal or too familiar _at first_, but He should appear distant and vague, inspiring awe and reverence far more than love; in a word, as the God of nature rather than as devoted to serviceable ministrations to the child's individual wants. The latter should be taught to be a faithful servant rather than a favorite of God. The inestimable pedagogic value of the God-idea consists in that it widens the child's glimpse of the whole, and gives the first presentment of the universality of laws, such as are observed in its experiences and that of others, so that all things seem comprehended under one stable system or government. The slow realization that God's laws are not like those of parents and teachers, evadible, suspensible, but changeless, and their penalties sure as the laws of nature, is most important factor of moral training. First the law, the schoolmaster, then the Gospel; first nature, then grace, is the order of growth.

The pains or pleasures which follow many acts are immediate, while the results that follow others are so remote or so serious that the child must utilize the experience of others. Artificial rewards and punishments must be cunningly devised so as to simulate and typify as closely as possible the real natural penalty, and they must be administered uniformly and impartially like laws of nature. As commands are just, and as they are gradually perceived to spring from superior wisdom, respect arises, which Kant called the bottom motive of duty, and defined as the immediate determination of the will by law, thwarting self-love. Here the child reverences what is not understood as authority, and to the childish "Why?" which always implies imperfect respect for the authority, however displeasing its behest, the teacher or parent should always reply, "You cannot understand why yet," unless quite sure that a convincing and controlling insight can be given, such as shall make all future exercise of outward authority in this particular unnecessary. From this standpoint the great importance of the character and native dignity of the teacher is best seen. Daily contact with some teachers is itself all-sided ethical education for the child without a spoken precept. Here, too, the real advantage of male over female teachers, especially for boys, is seen in their superior physical strength, which often, if highly estimated, gives real dignity and commands real respect, and especially in the unquestionably greater uniformity of their moods and their discipline.

During the first years of school life, a point of prime importance in ethico-religious training is the education of conscience. This latter is the most complex and perhaps the most educable of all our so-called "faculties." A system of carefully arranged talks, with copious illustrations from history and literature, about such topics as fair play, slang, cronies, dress, teasing, getting mad, prompting in class, white lies, affectation, cleanliness, order, honor, taste, self-respect, treatment of animals, reading, vacation pursuits, etc., can be brought quite within the range of boy-and-girl interests by a sympathetic and tactful teacher, and be made immediately and obviously practical. All this is nothing more or less than conscience-building. The old superstition that children have innate faculties of such a finished sort that they flash up and grasp the principle of things by a rapid sort of first "intellection," an error that made all departments of education so trivial, assumptive and dogmatic for centuries before Comenius, Basedow and Pestalozzi, has been banished everywhere save from moral and religious training, where it still persists in full force. The senses develop first, and all the higher intuitions called by the collective name of conscience gradually and later in life. They first take the form of sentiments without much insight, and are hence liable to be unconscious affectation, and are caught insensibly from the environment with the aid of inherited predisposition, and only made more definite by such talks as the above. But parents are prone to forget that healthful and correct sentiments concerning matters of conduct are, at first, very feeble, and that the sense of obligation needs the long and careful guardianship of external authority. Just as a young medical student with a rudimentary notion of physiology and hygiene is sometimes disposed to undertake a more or less complete reform of his diet, regimen, etc., to make it "scientific" in a way that an older and a more learned physician would shrink from, so the half-insights of boys into matters of moral regimen are far too apt, in the American temperament, to expend, in precocious emancipation and crude attempts at practical realization, the force which is needed to bring their insights to maturity. Authority should be relaxed gradually, explicitly, and provisionally over one definite department of conduct at a time. To distinguish right and wrong in their own nature is the highest and most complex of intellectual processes. Most men and all children are guided only by associations of greater or less subtlety. Perhaps the whole round of human duties might be best taught by gathering illustrations of selfishness and tracing it in its countless disguises and ramifications through every stage of life. Selfishness is opposed to a sense of the infinite and is inversely as real religion, and the study of it is not, like systematic ethics, apt to be confused and made unpractical by conflicting theories.

The Bible, the great instrument in the education of conscience, is far less juvenile than it is now the fashion to suppose. At the very least, it expresses the result of the ripest human experience, the noblest traditions of humanity. Old Testament history, even more than most very ancient history, is distilled to an almost purely ethical content. For centuries Scripture was withheld from the masses for the same reason that Plato refused at first to put his thoughts into writing, because it would be sure to be misunderstood by very many and lead to that worst of errors and fanaticism caused by half-truths. Children should not approach it too lightly.

The Old Testament, perhaps before or more than the New, is the Bible for childhood. A good, protracted course of the law pedagogically prepares the way for the apprehension of the Gospel. Then the study of the Old Testament should begin with selected tales, told, as in the German schools, impressively, in the teacher's language, but objectively, and without exegetical or hortatory comment. The appeal is directly to the understanding only at first, but the moral lesson is brought clearly and surely within the child's reach, but not personally applied after the manner common with us.

Probably the most important changes for the educator to study are those which begin between the ages of twelve and sixteen and are completed only some years later, when the young adolescent receives from nature a new capital of energy and altruistic feeling. It is physiological second birth, and success in life depends upon the care and wisdom with which this new and final invoice of energy is husbanded. These changes constitute a natural predisposition to a change of heart, and may perhaps be called, in Kantian phrase, its _schema_. Even from the psychophysic standpoint it is a correct instinct which has slowly led churches to center so much of their cultus upon regeneration. In this I, of course, only assert here the neurophysical side, which is everywhere present, even if everywhere subordinate to the spiritual side. As everywhere, so here, too, the physical may be called in a sense regulative rather than constitutive. It is therefore not surprising that statistics show that far more conversions, proportionately, take place during the adolescent period, which does not normally end before the age of twenty-four or five, than during any other period of equal length. At this age most churches confirm.

Before this age the child lives in the present, is normally selfish, deficient in sympathy, but frank and confidential, obedient to authority, and without affectation save the supreme affectation of childhood, viz., assuming the words, manners, habits, etc., of those older than itself. But now stature suddenly increases, and the power of physical and mental endurance and effort diminishes for a time; larynx, nose, chin change, and normal and morbid ancestral traits and features appear. Far greater and more protracted, though unseen, are the changes which take place in the nervous system, both in the development of the cortex and expansion of the convolutions and the growth of association-fibers by which the elements shoot together and relation of things are seen, which hitherto seemed independent, to which it seems as if for a few years the energies of growth were chiefly directed. Hence this period is so critical and changes in character are so rapid. No matter how confidential the relations with the parent may have been, an important domain of the soul now declares its independence. Confidences are shared with those of equal age and withheld from parents, especially by boys, to an extent probably little suspected by most parents. Education must be addressed to freedom, which recognizes only self-made law, and spontaneity of opinion and conduct is manifested, often in extravagant and grotesque forms. There is now a longing for that kind of close sympathy and friendship which makes cronies and intimates; there is a craving for strong emotions which gives pleasure in exaggerations; and there are nameless longings for what is far, remote, strange, which emphasizes the self-estrangement which Hegel so well describes, and which marks the normal rise of the presentiment of something higher than self. Instincts of rivalry and competition now grow strong in boys, and girls grow more conscientious and inward, and begin to feel their music, reading, religion, painting, etc., and to realize the bearing of these upon their future adult life. There is often a strong instinct of devotion and self-sacrifice toward some, perhaps almost any, object, or in almost any cause which circumstances may present. Moodiness and perhaps a love of solitude are developed. "Growing fits" make hard and severe labor of body and mind impossible without dwarfing or arresting the development, by robbing of its nutrition some part of the organism--stomach, lungs, chest, heart, back, brain, etc.--which is peculiarly liable to disease later. It is never so hard to tell the truth plainly and objectively and without any subjective twist. The life of the mere individual ceases and that of person, or better, of the race, begins. It is a period of realization, and hence often of introspection. In healthy natures it is the golden age of life, in which enthusiasm, sympathy, generosity, and curiosity are at their strongest and best, and when growth is so rapid that, e.g., each college class is conscious of a vast interval of development which separates it from the class below; but it is also a period subject to Wertherian crises, such as Hume, Richter, J.S. Mill, and others passed through, and all depends on the direction given to these new forces.

The dangers of this period are great and manifest. The chief of these, far greater even than the dangers of intemperance, is that the sexual elements of soul and body will be developed prematurely and disproportionately. Indeed, early maturity in this respect is itself bad. If it occurs before other compensating and controlling powers are unfolded, this element is hypertrophied and absorbs and dwarfs their energy and it is then more likely to be uninstructed and to suck up all that is vile in the environment. Far more than we realize, the thoughts and feelings of youth center about this factor of his nature. Quite apart, therefore, from its intrinsic value, education should serve the purpose of preoccupation, and should divert attention from an element of our nature the premature or excessive development of which dwarfs every part of soul and body. Intellectual interests, athleticism, social and esthetic tastes, should be cultivated. There should be some change in external life. Previous routine and drill-work must be broken through and new occupations resorted to, that the mind may not be left idle while the hands are mechanically employed. Attractive home-life, friendships well chosen and on a high plane, and regular habits, should of course be cultivated. Now, too, though the intellect is not frequently judged insane, so that pubescent insanity is comparatively rare, the feelings, which are yet more fundamental to mental sanity, are most often perverted, and lack of emotional steadiness, violent and dangerous impulses, unreasonable conduct, lack of enthusiasm and sympathy, are very commonly caused by abnormalities here. Neurotic disturbances, such as hysteria, chorea, and, in the opinion of some physicians, sick-headache and early dementia are peculiarly liable to appear and become seated during this period. In short, the previous selfhood is broken up like the regulation copy handwriting of early school years, and a new individual is in process of crystallization. All is solvent, plastic, peculiarly susceptible to external influences.

Between love and religion, God and nature have wrought a strong and indissoluble bond. Flagellations, fasts, exposure, excessive penances of many kinds, the Hindoo cultus of quietude, and mental absorption in vacuity and even one pedagogic motive of a cultus of the spiritual and supernatural, e. g. in the symposium of Plato, are all designed as palliatives and alteratives of degraded love. Change of heart before pubescent years, there are several scientific reasons for thinking means precocity and forcing. The age signalized by the ancient Greeks as that at which the study of what was comprehensively called music should begin, the age at which Roman guardianship ended, as explained by Sir Henry Maine, at which boys are confirmed in the modern Greek, Catholic, Lutheran and Episcopal churches, and at which the child Jesus entered the temple, is as early as any child ought consciously to go about his heavenly Father's business. If children are instructed in the language of these sentiments too early, the all-sided deepening and broadening of soul and of conscience which should come with adolescent years will be incomplete. Revival sermon which the writer has heard preached to very young children are analogous to exhorting them to imagine themselves married people and inculcating the duties of that relation. It is because this precept is violated in the intemperate haste for immediate results that we may so often hear childish sentiments and puerile expressions so strangely mingled in the religious experience of otherwise apparently mature adults, which remind one of a male voice constantly modulating from manly tones into boyish falsetto. Some one has said of very early risers that they were apt to be conceited all the forenoon, and stupid and uninteresting all the afternoon and evening. So, too, precocious infant Christians are apt to be conceited and full of pious affectations all the forenoon of life, and thereafter commonplace enough in their religious life. One is reminded of Aristotle's theory of Catharsis, according to which the soul was purged of strong or bad passions by listening to vivid representations of them on the stage. So, by the forcing method we deprecate, the soul is given just enough religious stimulus to act as an inoculation against deeper and more serious interest later. At this age the prescription of a series of strong feelings is very apt to cause attention to concentrate on physical states in a way which may culminate in the increased activity of the passional nature, or may induce that sort of self-flirtation which is expressed in morbid love of autobiographic confessional outpourings, or may issue in the supreme selfishness of incipient and often unsuspected hysteria. Those who are led to Christ normally by obeying conscience are not apt to endanger the foundation of their moral character if they should later chance to doubt the doctrine of verbal inspiration or some of the miracles, or even get confused about the Trinity, because their religious nature is not built on the sand. The art of leading young men through college without ennobling or enlarging any of the religious notions of childhood is anti-pedagogic and unworthy philosophy, and is to leave men puerile in the highest department of their nature.

At the age we have indicated, when the young man instinctively takes the control of himself into his own hands, previous ethico-religious training should be brought to a focus and given a personal application, which, to be most effective, should probably, in most cases, be according to the creed of the parent. It is a serious and solemn epoch, and ought to be fittingly signalised. Morality now needs religion, which cannot have affected life much before. Now duties should be recognised as divine commands, for the strongest motives, natural and supernatural, are needed for the regulation of the new impulses, passions, desires, half insights, ambitions, etc., which come to the American temperament so suddenly before the methods of self-regulation can become established and operative. Now a deep personal sense of purity and impurity are first possible, and indeed inevitable, and this natural moral tension is a great opportunity to the religious teacher. A serious sense of God within, and of responsibilities which transcend this life as they do the adolescent's power of comprehension; a feeling for duties deepened by a realization and experience of their conflict such as some have thought to be the origin of religion itself in the soul--these, too, are elements of the "theology of the heart" revealed at this age to every serious youth, but to the judicious emphasis and utilization of which, the teacher should lend his consummate skill. While special lines of interest leading to a career must be now well grounded, there must also be a culture of the ideal and an absorption in general views and remote and universal ends. If all that is pure and disciplining in what is transcendent, whether to the Christian believers, the poet or the philosopher, had even been devised only for the better regulation of human energies set free at this age, but not yet fully defined or realized, they would still have a most potent justification on this ground alone. At any rate, what is often wasted in excess here, if husbanded, ripens into philosophy, the larger love to the world, the true and the good, in a sense not unlike that in the symposium of Plato.

Finally, there is danger lest this change, as prescribed and formulated by the church, be too sudden and violent, and the capital of moral force which should last a lifetime be consumed in a brief, convulsive effort, like the sudden running down of a watch if its spring be broken. Piety is naturally the slowest because the most comprehensive kind of growth. Quetelet says that the measure of the state of civilization in a nation is the way in which it achieves its revolutions. As it becomes truly civilized, revolutions cease to be sudden and violent, and become gradually transitory and without abrupt change. The same is true of that individual crisis which psycho-physiology describes as adolescence, and of which theology formulates a higher spiritual potency as conversion. The adolescent period lasts ten years or more, during all of which development of every sort is very rapid and constant, and it is, as already remarked, intemperate haste for immediate results, of reaping without sowing, which has made so many regard change of heart as an instantaneous conquest rather than as a growth, and persistently to forget that there is something of importance before and after it in healthful religious experience.

[Footnote 1: See author's Boy Life, in Massachusetts Country Town Forty Years Ago. Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1906, vol. 13, pp. 192-207.]

[Footnote 2: Those interested in school statistics may value the record kept by a Swabian schoolmaster named Hauberle, extending over fifty-one years and seven months' experience as a teacher, as follows: 911,527 blows with a cane; 124,010 with a rod; 20,939 with a ruler; 136,715 with the hand; 19,295 over the mouth; 7,905 boxes on the ear; 1,115,800 snaps on the head; 22,763 nota benes with Bible, catechism, hymnbook and grammar; 777 times boys had to kneel on peas; 613 times on triangular blocks of wand; 5,001 had to carry a timber mare; and, 7,701 hold the rod high; the last two being punishments of his own invention. Of the blows with the cane 800,000 were for Latin vowels, and 76,000 of those with the rod for Bible verses and hymns. He used a scolding vocabulary of over 3,000 terms, of which one-third were of his own invention.]

[Footnote 3: For most recent and elaborate study of children's lies see Zeitschrift für pädagogische Psychologie, Pathologie und Hygiene, Juli, 1905. Jahrgang 7, Heft 3, pp. 177-205.]

* * * * *

GLOSSARY

AGAMIC. Unmarried; unmarriageable, sometimes non-sexed.

AGENIC. Lacking in reproductive power; sterile.

AMPHIMIXIS. That form of reproduction which involves the mingling of substance from two individuals so as to effect a mixture of hereditary characteristics. It includes the phenomena of conjugation and fertilization among both unicellular and multicellular organisms.

ANABOLISM. _See_ METABOLISM.

ANAMNESIC. Pertaining to or aiding recollection.

ANEMIC. Deficient in blood; bloodless.

ANTHROPOMORPHISM. The attributing of human characteristics to natural, supernatural, or divine beings.

ANTHROPOMETRY. Science of measurement of the human body.

ARTIFACT. Any artificial product.

APHASIA. Impairment or lose of the ability to understand or use speech.

ASSOCIATIONISM. The psychological theory which regards the laws of association as the fundamental laws of mental action and development.

ATAVISTIC. Pertaining to reversion through the influence of heredity to remote ancestral characteristics.

ATAXIC. Pertaining to inability to coördinate voluntary movements; irregular.

CALAMO-PAPYRUS. Reed papyrus or pen-paper.

CATABOLISM. _See_ METABOLISM.

CATHARSIS. Purgation or cleansing. Aristotle's esthetic theory that little renders immune for much.

CEREBRATION. Brain action, conscious or unconscious.

CHOREA. St. Vitus's dance; a nervous disease marked by irregular and involuntary movements of the limbs and face.

CHRESTOMATHY. A collection of extracts and choice pieces.

CHRISTENTHUM. The Christian belief; the spirit of Christianity.

COMMANDO EXERCISES. Gymnastic exercises whose order is dependent upon the spoken command of the director.

CORTEX. The gray matter of the brain, mostly on its surface.

CORTICAL. Pertaining to the cortex.

CRANIOMETRY. The measurement of skulls.

CRYPTOGAMOUS. Having an obscure mode of fertilization; or, of plants that do not blossom.

CULTUS. A system of religious belief and worship.

DEUTSCHENTHUM. The spirit of the German people.

DIATHESIS. A constitutional predisposition.

EPHEBIC. Pertaining to the Greek system of instruction given to young men to fit them for citizenship; adolescent.

EPIGONI. Successors; followers who only follow.

EPISTEMOLOGY. The theory of knowledge; that branch of logic which undertakes to explain how knowledge is possible and to define its limitations, meaning, and worth.

EUPEPTIC. Having good digestion.

EUPHORIA. The sense of well-being; of fullness of life.

EVIRATION. Emasculation; loss of manly characteristics.

FERAL. Wild by nature; untamed; undomesticated.

FORMICARY. An artificial ants' nest.

GEMÜTH. Disposition; the entire affective soul and its habitual state.

HEBETUDE. Dullness; stupidity.

HEDONISTIC. Relating to hedonism, that form of Greek philosophy which taught that pleasure is the chief end of existence.

HETAERA. A Greek courtesan. This class was often highly trained in music and social art, and represented the highest grade of culture among Greek women.

HETEROGENY. (1) The spontaneous generation of animals and vegetables, low in the scale of organization, from inorganic elements. (2) That kind of generation in which the parent, whether plant or animal, produces offspring differing in structure or habit from itself, but in which after one or more generations the original form reappears.

HETERONOMOUS. Having a different name.

HOROLOGY. The science of measuring time and of constructing instruments for that purpose.

HYGEIA. The Greek goddess of health; health.

HYPERMETHODIC. Methodic to excess; overmethodic.

HYPERTROPHY. Excessive growth.

INDISCERPTIBLE. Incapable of being destroyed by separation of parts.

INHIBITION. Interference with the normal result of a nervous excitement by an opposing force.

IRRADIATION. The diffusion of nervous stimuli out of the path of normal discharge which, as a result of the excitation of a peripheral end organ may excite other central organs than those directly connected with it.

KINESOLOGICAL. Pertaining to the science of tests and measurements of bodily strength.

KINESOMETER. An instrument for measuring muscular strength.

MEDULLATION. The investment of nerve fibers with a protective covering or medullary sheath, consisting of white, fat-like matter.

MERISTIC. Pertaining to the levels or spinal and cerebral segments of the body.

METABOLISM. The act or process by which, on the one hand, dead food is built up into living matter--anabolism, and by which, on the other, the living matter is broken down into simpler products within a cell or organism--catabolism.

METAMORPHOSIS. Change of form or structure; transformation.

METEMPSYCHOSIS. The doctrine of the transmigration of the soul from one body to another.

MONOPHRASTIC. Pertaining to or consisting of a single phrase.

MONOTECHNIC. Pertaining to a single art or craft.

MORPHOLOGY. The science of form and structure of plants and animals without regard to function.

MYOLOGY. The scientific knowledge of the muscular system.

MYTHOPOEIC. Producing or having a tendency to produce myths.

NOETIC. Of, pertaining to, or conceived by, mind.

NUANCE. Slight shade; difference; distinction; degree.

ORTHOGENIC. Pertaining to right beginning and development.

ORTHOPEDIC. Relating to the art of curing deformities.

OSSUARY. A depository of dry bones.

PALEOPSYCHIC. Pertaining to the antiquity of the soul.

PANTHEISTIC. Relating to that doctrine which holds that the entire phenomenal universe, including man and nature, is the ever-changing manifestation of God, who rises to self-consciousness and personality only in man.

PATRISTICS. That department of study occupied with the doctrines and writings of the fathers of the Christian Church.

PHOBIA. Excessive or morbid fear of anything.

PHYLETICALLY. In accordance with the phylum or race; racially.

PHYLETIC. Pertaining to a race or clan.

PHYLOGENY. The history of the evolution of a species or group; tribal history; ancestral development as opposed to ontogeny or the development of the individual.

PHYLUM. A term introduced by Haeckel to designate the great branches of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Each phylum may include several classes.

PICKELHAUBE. The spiked helmet of the German army.

PLANKTON. Sea animals and plants collectively; distinguished from coast or bottom forms and floating in a great mass.

POLYGAMIC (LOVE). Pertaining to the habit of having more than one mate of the opposite sex.

POLYPHRASTIC. Having many phrases; pertaining to rambling, incoherent speech.

POST-SIMIAN. Pertaining to an age later than that in which simian or monkey-like forms prevailed.

PRENUBILE. Pertaining to the age before sexual maturity or marriageability is reached.

PRIE DIEU. A praying desk.

PROPEDEUTIC. Preliminary; introductory.

PROPHYLACTIC. Any medicine or measure efficacious in preventing disease.

PSEUDOPHOBIAC. Pertaining to a morbid condition in which the subject is continually in fear of having said something not strictly true.

PSYCHOGENESIS. The origin and development of soul.

PSYCHONOMIC. Pertaining to the laws of mind.

PSYCHOSIS. Mental constitution or condition; any change in consciousness, especially if abnormal.

PUBERTY. The age of sexual maturity.

PUBESCENT. Relating to the dawning of puberty.

PYGMOID. Of pygmy size and form.

RABULIST. A chronic wrangler; one who argues about everything.

SCHEMA. A synopsis; a summary. In the Kantian sense, a general type.

SCHEMATISM. An outline of any systematic arrangement; an outline.

SUPERFOETATION. A second conception some time after a prior one, by which two foetuses of different age exist together in the same female. Often used figuratively.

TEMIBILITY. (From Italian _temibile_, to be feared.) The principle of adjustment of penalty to crime in just that degree necessary to prevent a repetition of the criminal act.

TIC. A nervous affection of the muscles; a twitching.

TRANSCENDENTAL. In the Kantian system having an _a priori_ character, transcending experience, presupposed in and necessary to experience.

TRAUMATA. Wounds.

TRAUMATISM. A wound; any morbid condition produced by wounds or other external violence.

VERBIGERATION. The continual utterance of certain words or phrases at short intervals, without reference to their meaning, as seen in insane _Gedankenflucht_ or rapid flight of thought.

INDEX

* * * * *

Abstract words, need of Accessory and fundamental movement Accuracy of memory overdone Activity of children, motor Adolescence biography and literature of characterized Agriculture Alternations of physical and psychic states Altruism of country children of woman, cutlet for Amphimixis, psychic, basis of Anger Anthropometry and ideal of gymnastics Arboreal life and the hand Art study Arts and crafts movement Associations devised or guided by adults Astronomy Athletic festivals in Greece Athletics as a conversation topic dangers and defects of records in Attention fostered by _commando_ exercises rhythm in spontaneous Authority and adolescence Autobiographies of boyhood Automatisms motor, causes and kinds of control and serialization of danger of premature control of desirable

Bachelor women Basal muscles, development of Basal powers, development of Bathing Beauty, age of feminine Belief, habit and muscle determining Bible, the influence of, in adolescence methods of teaching study of, for girls study of, in German method of will training study of, order in study of, postponed study of, preparation for Biography and adolescence Blood vessels, expansion at puberty Blushing, characteristic of puberty Body training, Greek Botany Boxing Boys age of little affection in dangers of coeducation for differences between, and girls latitude in conduct and studies of, before puberty puberty in, characteristics of Brain action, unity in Bullying Bushido

Cakewalk Castration, functional in women Catharsis, Aristotle's theory of Character and muscles Children faults and crimes of motor activity of motor defects of selfishness of Chivalry, medieval Chorea Christianity, muscular Chums and cronies Church, feminity in the City children vs. country children Civilized men, savages physically superior to Climbing hill muscles, age for exercise of Coeducation, dangers in College coeducation in English requirements of woman's ideal school and Combat, personal, as exercise _Commando_ exercises restricted for girls Concentration Concreteness in modern language study, criticized Conduct mechanized of Italian schoolboys tabulated weather and Confessionalism of young women passional inducement to Conflict, _see_ Combat Control nervous, through dancing of anger of brute instincts of children's movements Conversation, athletics in degeneration in, causes of Conversion Coördination loosened at adolescence inherited tendencies of muscular Corporal punishment Country children vs. city children Crime, juvenile causes of education and reading and Cruelty, a juvenile fault Culture heroes

Dancing Deadly sins, the seven, vs. modern juvenile faults Debate and will-training Doll curve Domesticity Dramatic instinct of puberty Drawing, curve of stages of Dueling

Education
art in
crime and
industrial
intellectual
manual
moral and religious
of boys
of girls
physical
Effort, as a developing force
Emotions
dancing completest language of the
religion directed to
Endurance
Energy and laziness
English
language and literature, pedagogy of
pedagogic degeneration in, causes of
requirements of college
sense language, dangers of
_Ennui_
Erect position and true life
Ethics, study of, criticized
Ethical judgments of children
Euphoria and exercise
Evolution, movement as a measure of
Exercise
health and
measurements and
music and
nascent periods and
rhythm and

Farm work Fatigue at puberty chores and not a cause for punishment play and restlessness expressive of result of labor with defective psychic impulsion rhythm of activity and will-culture and Faults of children Favorite sounds and words Fecundity of college women Femininity in the church in the school and college Feminists Fighting Flogging Foreign languages, dangers of France, religious training in Friendships of adolescence Fundamental and accessory Future life, as a school teaching

Games
groups
Panhellenic
Gangs, organized juvenile
Genius, early development of
Germany, will-training in
Girl graduates
aversion to marriage of
fecundity of
sterility of
Girls
and boys, differences between
coeducation for, dangers of
education of
education of, humanistic
education of, manners in
education of, more difficult than of boys
education of, nature in
education of, regularity in
education of, religion in
ideal school and curriculum for
overdrawing their energy
Grammar, place of
Greece, athletic festivals in
Greek body training
Group games
Growth
at puberty
gymnastics and its effect on
of muscle structure and function, measure of
periods
rhythmic
Gymnastics
effect on growth, its
ideal of, and anthropometry
ideals, its four unharmonized, and
military ideals and
nascent periods and
patriotism and
proportion and measurement for, criticized
Swedish

Habits and muscle Hand and arboreal life Health, exercise and of girls Heredity, a factor in development High School, the coeducation in language study and Hill-climbing Historic interest, growth of Home, restraint of, detrimental Honor, among hoodlums in sports Hoodlums Hysteria

Imagination, at puberty of children play and Individuality, growth of, at puberty Industrial education Industry and movement Inhibition Intellect, adolescence in Intemperance

Knightly ideas of youth Knowing and doing

Language, concreteness in, degeneration through dangers of, through eye and hand precision curve of _vs_. literature Latin, danger of Laughter Laziness and energy Lies Literary men, youth of women, youth of Literature and adolescence language _vs_.

Machinery and movement Mammae, loss of function of Manners in girls' education Manual training defects and criticisms of difficulties of Marriage, dangers in delay of influenced by coeducation influenced by college training Mastery in art-craft, equipment for Maternity, dangers of deferred Measurements and exercise Memory, accuracy, age, and kinds of sex curve of types of Military drill ideals and gymnastics Mind and motility Money sense Monthly period and Sabbath Motherhood, training for Motor, activity, primitive automatisms defects of children defects, general economies powers, general growth of precocity psychoses, muscles and recaptulation regularity Movement and industry Movements, passive precocity of Muscle tension and thought Muscles, per cent by weight of body character and motor psychoses and small, and thought will and Muscular Christianity Music and exercise Myths, study of

Nascent periods and exercises Nature in girls' education

Obedience

Panhellenic games Passive movements Patriotism and gymnastics Peace, man's normal state Periodicity in growth in women Philology, dangers of Plasticity of growth at puberty Play course of study imagination and prehistoric activity and problem sex and stages and ages of work and Plays and games, codification of Precocity, motor in the motor sphere Predatory organizations Primitive motor activity Punishments in school, causes of

Reading age crime and curve Reason, development of Recapitulation and motor heredity Records in athletics Regularity in education of girls Religious training, age for for girls in Europe premature two methods of Retardation as a means of broadening Revivalists Rhythm, exercise and in primitive activities of work and rest

Savages physically superior to civilized men School, language study in need of enthusiasm in punishments in, causes of reading in Scientific men, youth of Sedentary life Selfishness of children Sex, play and sports and Slang curve value of Sleep, in education of girls Sloyd, origin, aims, criticism of Social activities organizations of youth Solitude Sounds, favorite, and words Sports, values of different codification of sexual influence in team work in Spurtiness Sterility of girl graduates Story-telling, interest in Struggle-for-lifeurs Students' associations Stuttering and stammering Swedish gymnastics Swimming

Talent, early development of Teachers, aversions to Team spirit Technical courses, need of Telegraphic skill Temibility Theft, juvenile Thought and muscle tension Transitory nature of youthful experiences Tree life and erect posture Truancy Truth-telling Turner movement

Unmarried women, dangers to

Vagabondage Vagrancy Virility in the Church

Weather and conduct
Will, muscles and
training
Womanly, the eternal
Women, bachelors
dangers to, in not marrying
education of, ideal
young, confessionalism of
Work at its best, play
play and
rest and, rhythm of
Wrestling

Young Men's Christian Association

* * * * *

INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES.

* * * * *

AN IDEAL SCHOOL; OR, LOOKING FORWARD.

By Preston W. Search, Honorary Fellow in Clark University. With an Introduction by Pres. G. Stanley Hall. Vol. 52. 12mo. Cloth, $1.20 net.

"I am not concerned that the things presented in this little constructive endeavor will not find bodily incorporation in schools; for it is cross-fertilization and not grafting that has given us our richest varieties of fruits and flowers. This work is an attempt at spirit, not letter; at principle, not method."--_From the Author's Preface_.

"A book I wish I could have written myself; and I can think of no single educational volume in the world-wide range of literature in this field that I believe so well calculated to do so much good at the present time, and which I could so heartily advise every teacher in the land, of whatever grade, to read and ponder."--_Pres. G. Stanley Hall, Clark University_.

"It is to my mind the most stimulating book that has appeared for a long time. The conception here set forth of the function of the school is, I believe, the broadest and best that has been formulated. The chapter on Illustrative Methods is worth more than all the books on 'Method' that I know of. The diagrams and tables are very convincing. I am satisfied that the author has given us an epoch-making book."--_Henry H. Goddard, Ph.D., State Normal School, West Chester, Pa_.

"I received a copy of 'An Ideal School,' and I am satisfied that I made no mistake when I, with the other two members of the book committee, recommended the book to the 310 teachers in our county."--_J.G. Dundore, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania_.

"Certainly one of the most notable books on education published in many years"--_P.P. Claxton, Editor Atlantic Educational Journal_.

"You have done the cause of real education an important service. This book is, in my opinion, one of the most useful in the International Education Series."--_Albert Leonard, Editor of the Journals of Pedagogy_.

* * * * *

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.

DICKENS AS AN EDUCATOR.

By JAMES I. HUGHES, Inspector of Schools, Toronto. Vol. 49. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.

ADOPTED BY SEVERAL STATE TEACHERS' READING CIRCLES.

All teachers have read Dickens's novels with pleasure. Probably few, however have presumably thought definitely of him as a great educational reformer. But Inspector Hughes demonstrates that such is his just title. William T. Harris says of "Dickens as an Educator": "This book is sufficient to establish the claim for Dickens as an educational reformer. He has done more than any one else to secure for the child considerate treatment of his tender age. Dickens stands apart and alone as one of the most potent influences of social reform in the nineteenth century, and therefore deserves to be read and studied by all who have to do with schools, and by all parents everywhere in our day and generation." Professor Hughes asserts that "Dickens was the most profound exponent of the kindergarten and the most comprehensive student of childhood that England has yet produced." The book brings into connected form, under proper headings, the educational principles of this most sympathetic friend of children.

"Mr. James L. Hughes has just published a book that will rank as one of the finest appreciations of Dickens ever written."--_Colorado School Journal._

"Mr. Hughes has brought together in an interesting and most effective manner the chief teachings of Dickens on educational subjects. His extracts make the reader feel again the reality of Dickens's descriptions and the power of the appeal that he made for a saner, kindlier, more inspiring pedagogy, and thus became, through his immense vogue, one of the chief instrumentalities working for the new education."--_Wisconsin Journal of Education._