FACTORS IN EDUCATION
A good old lady, after reading Bunyan’s “ Pilgrim’s Progress,”
with “Scott’s Explanatory Notes,” said that she understood
everything except the “Notes.” Even at the risk of obscuring
that common term, education, let me accede to your request for
an article by presenting some notes upon the factors in education.
Briefly, then, we shall divide these factors into two divisions,
the internal and the external—the meaning of which will be
apparent as we proceed.
The internal factor embraces the three elements of original en
dowment, heredity and temperament; while the external factor
includes what we shall term the physical and institutional ele
ments. In what follows the merest sketch of these is attempted.
First. What is original endowment ? We may reply that it is
a racial heritage. Man is born into one race system or another,
he belongs to one of the three to seventy races into which man
kind has variously been divided. He is subject to certain bonds
which hold him to his own. The Indian chieftain, Sitting Bull,
was not wholly wrong when his race independence is said to have
asserted itself in this wise: “ God Almighty made me an Indian.
He did not make me an agency Indian, and I do not intend to
become one.” So we say, and with a show of reason: “ Once an
Englishman, always an Englishman.” We perceive the fitness
of maintaining the race continuity and race solidarity into which
we have been placed. A certain capital, it might be expressed,
with which to establish ourselves in business, is awarded us by
our very connection with the race system, The Anglo-Saxon,
even in his rude and crude barbarism, living his life of ease and
haughty vice amid the forests of Northern Germany, yet betrayed
the race characteristics which have insured his progress and ad
vancement. The picture of Tacitus, albeit somewhat highly
colored, yet enables us to recognize in it the Englishman of
Britain. The Norman conquest, so thorough in its transforma
tion of institutions, imparting Norman manners and Norman
poesy, and introducting into the language a third part of its
words; still after three hundred years the race, as Taine says,
remains Saxon. Such is the all-potent influence of race connec
tion, and the original endowment thus assured becomes the
chosen vehicle of progress, before which the opposed and baser
The Free Lance.
[May,