thinks he is free when following the dictates of his own whims is the most mistaken person in the world. We are all slaves to a thousand conditions we meet almost every day, because we do not know the truth about these conditions. We are slaves to physical conditions because we do not know the truth regarding these conditions that would enable us to master them. We reason like children because the truth is unknown to us. We do not know the facts. In the spiritual world there are a thousand unseen forces that have the complete mastery of us because we do not understand them. We are tossed about by a thousand false fears and superstitions because we do not understand.

It is the teacher's business to reveal to the pupil the perfect law of the school and help him to see that because he obeys it the greatest good will come to him. Not only this; she must offer such conditions that it will be easy for him to obey the law, for it is by obeying that he will learn to obey. It should be the aim to bring about such conditions as will make it most natural for him to be obedient, hence the school must be organized in harmony with his child nature and present needs. The laws should be so much in harmony with his normal growth that he will naturally be impelled to obey, not only the letter, but the spirit, for it is only the willing obedience that develops the habit of obedience. The habit of obedience should be formed before the pupil leaves school so that when he comes into the conditions on the outside it will be easy for him to obey the laws that there obtain and his freedom may be assured. The pupil should be so well acquainted with the laws of his growth and school life that his obedience to them will become natural; all restrictions should be removed from him as the habit of obedience is formed.

SCHOOL SHOULD INCULCATE HABIT OF OBEDIENCE

One of the greatest weaknesses of the present school system is that it fails to inculcate in the pupil this habit of obedience. Being founded, for the most part, on force, it seldom gets more than external obedience, and for this reason the habit of obedience is not formed. When the pupil leaves school, he does not know how to obey. He does not have the proper respect for law. The school may not be wholly to blame for this disrespect for the law, but its very nature encourages it. We have founded the school on force instead of on love and regard for the pupil's welfare as we should have done, and, as a result, we have not developed in our pupils the habit of obedience. Divine law is perfect because it is based on love, and the school law will be perfect when it is based on love. The teacher should never substitute her will for the child's will. Whenever it becomes necessary for her to run counter to the child's will, she should make it clear to him that it is because his will is out of harmony with his own supreme good. To do this, she must not only understand the nature of the school and its laws, but she must have in her heart love for the child and manifest it in her attitude toward him. It is for this reason that coercion should be resorted to only after every other remedy has failed and when the teacher becomes thoroughly convinced that the normal nature of the child has become so perverted that he cannot be induced to act in harmony with his highest good. Coercion is really an acknowledgment of failure; when it is resorted to, it is more for the good of the school as a whole than for the individual pupil. It sometimes happens that the environment of the child has been so abnormal that it has crushed his child nature; but in the great majority of cases the teacher may lead him

to see his relation to the school law if she approaches him in a spirit of love.

The ideal school is that in which the organization is in such complete harmony with child life that the pupil will not be conscious of any restriction. The personality of the teacher and the atmosphere of the school should be such that the pupil will unconsciously obey the laws of the school and at the same time feel that he is being obliged to bow to no external authority. The ability to bring about such conditions is the supreme test of the teacher. She must know which of the child's impulses are normal and which are abnormal, and be able to transform the abnormal into normal impulses. She is to do this, not by coercion, but by inspiration.

SCHOOL SHOULD BE ADAPTED TO THE NATURE OF

THE CHILD

As the teacher is not to substitute her will for the will of the child, so she is not to substitute her motives and impulses for those of the child. She must realize that the child's way of looking at things is different from that of the adult; that motives that appeal to the adult will not appeal to him. Conduct which seems to her to be wrong may not seem so to him at all; what seems to her a waste of time may be to him a great source of development. The child is not a little man or woman, as some people seem to think; he is not a man in any sense of the term; he is a different kind of being. He has thoughts, emotions, and feelings all peculiar to himself. As he grows up, he gradually comes to see things as adults do, because he grows up in the adult's environment. From the adult's standpoint, the child rises to higher and higher motives; he becomes a better and more complete being. But we must remember that this is

only the way the adult looks at it; the child does not see it in that way at all; and if we had a perfect standard by which to judge life, we might find that the child is right. Indeed, it was the opinion of the Great Teacher that the little child is a fitter subject for the kingdom of heaven than the adult; and those who have understood child nature best have been the ones to pay the child the highest tribute. Wordsworth seemed to think that the golden age of man is in his infancy. We all remember this tribute which he paid to childhood:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, 'our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy.

We must learn to take the child as he is and make his environment conducive to growth. We must let him grow like the plant, in his own natural way. We can no more force his growth than we can force the growth of the oak. It matters not how rich we may make the soil or how bright the sunshine may be, we can force the oak to grow no faster than nature intended. Indeed, the soil may be so rich and the sunshine so bright that the growth of the plant will be dwarfed; and no matter how conducive we may make the child's environment to his growth, he will not grow faster than nature intended. We may force the accumulation of knowledge; but knowledge is not growth, and too much knowledge accumulated without being organized and applied is hostile to growth. In spite of the time-honored adage, knowledge is not power any more than food in the stomach

is power; it may become power or it may not. It is not power until it has been assimilated into bone and muscle, and in the stomach of the dyspeptic this may never take place.

The child's knowledge of right and wrong depends, at first, on the conditions about him, and for this reason these conditions should be conducive to his highest good. His environment should be such that he will base his conduct on proper motives and never on such as appeal to his lower instincts. The school organization should be such as to develop in him a proper conception of right and wrong. The school organization is, indeed, the chief moral force the teacher has at her command. It is supe

rior to preaching, for preaching will do no good unless the school organization is such as to put the preaching into practice. It will do no good to tell the pupil not to lie, if the school is organized in such a way as to bring the greatest immediate good to him by lying. We can never bring the pupil to a proper conception of right and wrong except through self-activity. Hence, when we crush the child's self-activity and resort to coercion, we destroy the greatest means at our command for the development of moral force.

The school where the child has been trained to be obedient to the real law, and where he moves freely about without external pressure because the habit of obedience has been formed, is the only kind of school in which adequate results can be obtained. It is the only school where the highest development of the child, physically, mentally, and morally, can be brought about. In any other kind of a situation his growth will be forced, hence unnatural and without the harmonious development of all his powers. In an atmosphere of freedom we not only bring about, in a natural way, the child's