[II. ORIGINAL NATURE, THE CAPITAL WITH WHICH TEACHERS WORK]
After deciding upon the aims of education, the goals towards which all teaching must strive, the fundamental question to be answered is, "What have we to work with?" "What is the makeup with which children start in life?" Given a certain nature, certain definite results are possible; but if the nature is different, the results must of necessity differ. The possibility of education or of teaching along any line depends upon the presence of an original nature which possesses corresponding abilities. The development of intellect, of character, of interest, or of any other trait depends absolutely upon the presence in human beings of capacity for growth or development. What the child inherits, his original nature, is the capital with which education must work; beyond the limits which are determined by inheritance education cannot go.
All original nature is in terms of a nervous system. What a child inherits is not ideas, or feelings, or habits, as such, but a nervous system whose correlate is human intelligence and emotion. Just what relationship exists between the action of the nervous system and consciousness or intellect or emotion is still an open question and need not be discussed here. One thing seems fairly certain, that the original of any individual is bound up in some way with the kind of nervous system he has inherited. What we have in common, as a human race, of imagination, or reason, or tact, or skill is correlated in some fashion to the inheritance of a human nervous system. What we have as individual abilities, which distinguish us from our fellows, depends primarily upon our family inheritance. Certain traits such as interest in people, and accuracy in perception of details, seem to be dependent upon the sex inheritance. All traits, whether racial, or family, or sex, are inherited in terms of a plastic nervous system.
The racial inheritance, the capital which all normal children bring into the world, is usually discussed under several heads: reflexes, physiological actions, impulsive actions, instincts, capacities, etc., the particular heads chosen varying with the author. They all depend for their existence upon the fact that certain bonds of connection are performed in the nervous system. Just what this connection is which is found between the nerve cells is still open to question. It may be chemical or it may be electrical. We know it is not a growing together of the neurones,[1] but further than that nothing is definitely known. That there are very definite pathways of discharge developed by the laws of inner growth and independent of individual learning, there can be no doubt. This of course means that in the early days of a child's life, and later in so far as he is governed by these inborn tendencies, his conduct is machine-like and blind--with no purpose and no consciousness controlling or initiating the responses. Only after experience and learning have had an opportunity to influence these responses can the child be held responsible for his conduct, for only then does his conduct become conscious instead of merely physiological.
There are many facts concerning the psychology of these inborn tendencies that are interesting and important from a purely theoretical point of view, but only those which are of primary importance in teaching will be considered here. A fact that is often overlooked by teachers is that these inborn tendencies to connections of various kinds exist in the intellectual and emotional fields just as truly as in the field of action or motor response. The capacity to think in terms of words and of generals; to understand relationships; to remember; to imagine; to be satisfied with thinking,--all these, as well as such special abilities as skill in music, in managing people or affairs, in tact, or in sympathy, are due to just the same factors as produce fear or curiosity. These former types of tendencies differ from the latter in complexity of situation and response, in definiteness of response, in variability amongst individuals of the same family, and in modifiability; but in the essential element they do not differ from the more evident inborn tendencies.
Just what these original tendencies are and just what the situations are to which they come as responses are both unknown except in a very few instances. The psychology of original nature has enumerated the so-called instincts and discussed a few of their characteristics, but has left almost untouched the inborn capacities that are more peculiarly human. Even the treatment of instincts has been misleading. For instance, instincts have been discussed under such heads as the "self-preservative instincts," "the social instincts," just as if the child had an inborn, mystical something that told him how to preserve his life, or become a social king. Original nature does not work in that way; it is only as the experience of the individual modifies the blind instinctive responses through learning that these results can just as easily come about unless the care of parents provides the right sort of surroundings. There is nothing in the child's natural makeup that warns him against eating pins and buttons and poisonous berries, or encourages him to eat milk and eggs and cereal instead of cake and sweets. He will do one sort of thing just as easily as the other. All nature provides him with is a blind tendency to put all objects that attract his attention into his mouth. This response may preserve his life or destroy it, depending on the conditions in which he lives. The same thing is true of the "social instinct"--the child may become the most selfish egotist imaginable or the most self-sacrificing of men, according as his surroundings and training influence the original tendencies towards behavior to other people in one way or the other. Of course it is very evident that no one has ever consistently lived up to the idea indicated by such a treatment of original nature, but certain tendencies in education are traceable to such psychology. What the child has by nature is neither good nor bad, right nor wrong--it may become either according to the habits which grow out of these tendencies. A child's inborn nature cannot determine the goal of his education. His nature has remained practically the same from the days of primitive man, while the goals of education have changed. What nature does provide is an immense number of definite responses to definite situations. These provide the capital which education and training may use as it will.
It is just because education does need to use these tendencies as capital that the lack of knowledge of just what the responses are is such a serious one. And yet the difficulties of determining just what original nature gives are so tremendous that the task seems a hopeless one to many investigators. The fact that in the human being these tendencies are so easily modified means that from the first they are being influenced and changed by the experiences of the child. Because of the quality of our inheritance the response to a situation is not a one-to-one affair, like a key in a lock, but all sorts of minor causes in the individual are operative in determining his response; and, on the other side, situations are so complex in themselves that they contain that which may call out several different instincts. For example, a child's response to an animal will be influenced by his own physical condition, emotional attitude, and recent mental status and by the conditions of size and nearness of the animal, whether it is shaggy or not, moving or still, whether he is alone or with others, on the floor or in his chair, and the like. It will depend on just how these factors combine as to whether the response is one of fear, of curiosity, of manipulation, or of friendliness. When to these facts are added the fact that the age and previous habits of the child also influence his response, the immense complexity of the problem of discovering just what the situations are to which there are original tendencies to respond and just how these tendencies show themselves is evident. And yet this is what psychologists must finally do if the use by teachers of these tendencies is to be both economical and wise. Just as an illustration of the possibilities of analysis, Thorndike in his "Original Nature of Man" lists eleven different situations which call out an instinctive expression of fear and thirty-one different responses which may occur in that expression. Under fighting he says, "There seem, indeed, to be at least six separable sets of connections in the so-called 'fighting instinct,'" in each of which the situation and the response differ from any other one.
Very few of the instincts are present at birth; most of them develop later in the child's life. Pillsbury says, "One may recognize the food-taking instincts, the vocal protests at discomfort, but relatively few others." This delay in the appearance of instincts and capacities is dependent upon the development of the nervous system. No one of them can appear until the connections between nerve centers are ready, making the path of discharge perfect. Just when these various nervous connections mature, and therefore just when the respective tendencies should appear, is largely unknown. In only a few of the most prominent and comparatively simple responses is it even approximately known. Holding the head up is accomplished about the fourth month, walking and talking somewhere near the twelfth, but the more complex the tendency and the more they involve intellectual factors, the greater is the uncertainty as to the time of development. We are told that fear is most prominent at about "three or four" years of age, spontaneous imitation "becomes very prominent the latter part of the first year," the gang instinct is characteristic of the preadolescent period, desire for adventure shows itself in early adolescence, altruism "appears in the early teens," and the sex instinct "after about a dozen years of life." The child of from four to six is largely sensory, from seven to nine he is motor, from then to twelve the retentive powers are prominent. In the adolescent period he is capable of thinking logically and reasoning, while maturity finds him a man of responsibilities and affairs. Although there is some truth in the belief that certain tendencies are more prominent at certain periods in the development of the child than at others, still it must be borne in mind that just when these optimum periods occur is not known. Three of the most important reasons for this lack of knowledge are: first, the fact that all inborn tendencies mature gradually and do not burst into being; second, we do not know how transitory they are; and, third, the fact of the great influence of environment in stimulating or repressing such capacities.
Although the tendency to make collections is most prominent at nine, the beginnings of it may be found before the child is five. Moll finds that the sex instinct begins its development at about six years of age, despite the fact that it is always quoted as the adolescent instinct. Children in the kindergarten can think out their little problems purposively, even though reasoning is supposed to mark the high school pupil. The elements of most tendencies show themselves early in crude, almost unrecognizable, beginnings, and from these they grow gradually to maturity.