We have seen how the laws of heredity largely decide the physical embodiment of the coming lives as a resultant of the reproductive action of parents whether motived by ethical principle or by unrestrained animal passion. We have now to consider the second great human factor in man’s evolution, viz. nurture or education, which depends in its highest terms upon sound knowledge and the application of that knowledge by men and women of the period. In an advanced scientific age, the reproductive forces of man will be socially controlled and guided to the creation of normal, i.e. healthy, physical life; while the whole apparatus of nurture, or the entire range of influence, playing upon childhood, will manifest a rational adaptation of means to a special end, namely, the elevation of humanity. Adaptation necessarily becomes more difficult with the growing complexities of evolving humanity, but never has man’s intellect been stronger than to-day to grapple with difficult problems, or so furnished with the facts required in dealing with this problem of education. The marvellous scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century and the practical uses to which these discoveries are put, have created in man a new attitude towards external nature. All Western nations partake of the scientific bent. They are interpenetrated by reverence for science, and are conscious that its method of close observation and study of nature is the direct road to material progress. This bent is influencing school education. There are few thoughtful teachers to-day who do not recognize that some hours spent at intervals in country lanes and fields, on the sea-shore, or in a farm-yard, with children free to observe according to native impulse, when followed by careful instruction concerning the objects observed, are of far more value than weeks of book-learning indoors. In many parts of America “nature-studies” on this plan are worked into the public school curriculum.[6] But adaptation implies also a fuller knowledge of the rudimentary faculties which are to be scientifically nurtured, and here again America has taken the lead. In its “child-study” movement, now spreading in this country, an effort is made to apprehend nature’s processes in unfolding mental powers; and the inference is that teachers may thwart progress by traversing the true order of mental development. This clearly indicates the entrance of a scientific spirit into the field of education. It shows regard for the order of nature, willingness to be guided by knowledge of that order, and a conviction that the laws of a child’s inner being must be respected and no arbitrary compulsion exercised in bringing him into harmony with the laws of the environment. Footnote 6: