end, the answer is that of Nature. For since
the concurrence of the three kinds of education is necessary to their
completeness, the kind which is entirely independent of our control must
necessarily regulate us in determining the other two." Then he defines
Nature to mean the capacities and dispositions which are inborn, "as
they exist prior to the modification due to constraining habits and the
influence of the opinion of others."

The wording of Rousseau will repay careful study. It contains as
fundamental truths as have been uttered about education in conjunction
with a curious twist. It would be impossible to say better what is said
in the first sentences. The three factors of educative development
are (a) the native structure of our bodily organs and their functional
activities; (b) the uses to which the activities of these organs are put
under the influence of other persons; (c) their direct interaction with
the environment. This statement certainly covers the ground. His other
two propositions are equally sound; namely, (a) that only when the
three factors of education are consonant and cooperative does adequate
development of the individual occur, and (b) that the native activities
of the organs, being original, are basic in conceiving consonance. But
it requires but little reading between the lines, supplemented by other
statements of Rousseau, to perceive that instead of regarding these
three things as factors which must work together to some extent in
order that any one of them may proceed educatively, he regards them as
separate and independent operations. Especially does he believe that
there is an independent and, as he says, "spontaneous" development of
the native organs and faculties. He thinks that this development can
go on irrespective of the use to which they are put. And it is to this
separate development that education coming from social contact is to be
subordinated. Now there is an immense difference between a use of native
activities in accord with those activities themselves--as distinct from
forcing them and perverting them--and supposing that they have a normal
development apart from any use, which development furnishes the standard
and norm of all learning by use. To recur to our previous illustration,
the process of acquiring language is a practically perfect model of
proper educative growth. The start is from native activities of the
vocal apparatus, organs of hearing, etc. But it is absu