1895-]
11 What fresh and vital forces, can’st thou guess,
Spring from my commerce with the wilderness? ”
Experimental psychology has shown some of the exceedingly
delicate influences of a physical sort, e. g.: Haller noted that the
noise from a drum increased the flow of blood from an open vein.
Mosso observed that the approach of a lamp toward a patient
whose brain was exposed, increased the volume of the brain sub
stance. M. Payot claims to have witnessed the passage of a
cloud over the sun increase the respiratory rhythm and pulse rate
of a sleeping infant. M. Fere found that slight sensations of
smell or taste oft affected a man’s dynamometric force. The more
patent effects of food, light, air, etc., are self-evident; the growth
and metamorphosis of animals can be entirely controlled thereby.
To mention some of the analogies in a broader sphere between
man and nature—we have day and night in the latter correspond
ing to waking and sleeping life in the former. The Seasons are
four, man’s temperaments, four. Epidemics and nervous out
breaks are said always to succeed social neuroses or uprisings.
The character of the African continent, isolated and unbroken,
its extreme climate and the monotony of its tropical year, all have
their exact counterparts in the mental and moral turpitude of the
Negro, in his “hot blood” and in his monotony of life. Cold
climates nourish a sluggish people, while temperate climates, a
susceptible one. The Alps and Scotch Highlands are mirrored in
the hardy and virtuous characters of their inhabitants.
None can afford to ignore in his education the physical element.
What a tremendous advantage, physically, the child of the
prairie or forest has over the slum-child, to whom fresh air is a
luxury and to whom a grassy play-ground is a merry treat. A
New York physician, writing in the Forum of March, 1894, says
(that of six hundred children of slum parents treated in a child’s
hospital for diseases of various sorts) the diseases are ' ‘ usually
acquired and not inherited.” Environment is stronger than
heredity in this, as in many other elements of early life. True,
this is but one example, but we are doubtless warranted in assum
ing that educational theory has thus far reckoned too sparsely
with the physical element. The determination of a large per
cent, of the race for life is effected by the combined educational
forces of the very earliest years. Nature is, to be sure, constantly
educating us, whether we are conscious of it or not. The maxim,
“ The burnt child dreads fire,” is true of adults in a thousand
Factors in Education.