1

mission of he racial nheritance

the mind of individuals, such continuity can be preserved and development secured only "by preparing the young gradually to appropriate the collective tradition in general and by training a few minds to receive and elaborate its various highly or the trans- specialized divisions." Without this inheritance of racial experience by participation in social institutions, the individual becomes an abstraction. There is no social mind, it is true, aside from the individual minds which collectively constitute it; but, on the other hand, there can be no individual mind save as it receives its content from this social one. Thus the negative of Rousseau's idea of a "natural" education is reached. This, however, is not a return to the view against which Rousseau revolted; but, by a completion of the circle of thought, it is a compromise of the two extreme views in a conception which rejects both the unchecked individualism of the one and the unlimited dominance of authority of the other. The individual is educated, or he develops, by incorporating within his own experience the summarized achievements of the race; social stability is secured by this same process and social progress through the modification of tradition and slight increment which the individual may furnish it. Thus it is not to a fixed but to a constantly changing environment that the individual is adjusted. This is the fundamental characteristic of modern education. For it is because the thought and institutional as well as the natural environment is constantly changing that the individual, in adjusting himself to it as perfectly as the adult generation can secure, must preserve and develop his own individuality. It is the power of adjustment to a changing environment, not the fixed adjustment in itself, that modern education seeks to secure for the individual as its highest product.

Adjustment

of the indiridual to a Changing environment

(4) Place of

Thus is suggested the fourth and highest aspect of the socioducation in logical interpretation of education. Education becomes the most advanced phase of evolutionary process, or at least its most advanced method. The most general aspect of the theory

he theory of evolution

of evolution is that vast uninterrupted and eternal forces of development obtain throughout all nature, and that all phenomena, physical and mental, are subject to law. In the more specific sense, organic evolution is that adaptation of organic life to its environment which is secured for the most part through the process of natural selection. Human evolution is such selfadaptation of the human race to its environment as results in development. With this stage of evolution the institutional aspect of environment is most important and social selection is of greater functional significance than natural. However, so far as the race as a whole is concerned, such development has been largely unconscious. That is, since the social consciousness rather seeks to prevent change, social progress has resulted for the most part through the conscious effort of the individual to secure for himself some advantage which is not permitted or, at least, not consciously given by society. The highest form of social selection is attained when society becomes conscious of the aim a given social status and of the process through which the desired results are to be secured. Since the group has now conceived definite ends and a definite method of procedure through which it shapes the character of its constituent members and thus affects its own well-being, the process is a self-conscious one on the part of the group as well as on the part of individuals. Though chiefly of a negative character, legislation in general is such a method. The great positive Education method developed by modern society for effecting these pur- of social poses is public education. Education thus becomes for the evolution social world what natural selection is for the subhuman world, - the chief factor in the process of evolution.1

PHILANTHROPIC-RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS FOR EDUCATION. The growth of the systems of public schools, now supported by all advanced nations, has been along two lines of development, or rather through two successive stages. The

For further development of this thesis, see Ward, Mackenzie, Vincent, Howerth, and Davidson.

the method