rd to suppose
that these have an independent growth of their own, which left to itself
would evolve a perfect speech. Taken literally, Rousseau's principle
would mean that adults should accept and repeat the babblings and
noises of children not merely as the beginnings of the development
of articulate speech--which they are--but as furnishing language
itself--the standard for all teaching of language.

The point may be summarized by saying that Rousseau was right,
introducing a much-needed reform into education, in holding that the
structure and activities of the organs furnish the conditions of all
teaching of the use of the organs; but profoundly wrong in intimating
that they supply not only the conditions but also the ends of their
development. As matter of fact, the native activities develop, in
contrast with random and capricious exercise, through the uses to which
they are put. And the office of the social medium is, as we have seen,
to direct growth through putting powers to the best possible use. The
instinctive activities may be called, metaphorically, spontaneous,
in the sense that the organs give a strong bias for a certain sort of
operation,--a bias so strong that we cannot go contrary to it, though by
trying to go contrary we may pervert, stunt, and corrupt them. But the
notion of a spontaneous normal development of these activities is pure
mythology. The natural, or native, powers furnish the initiating and
limiting forces in all education; they do not furnish its ends or aims.
There is no learning except from a beginning in unlearned powers, but
learning is not a matter of the spontaneous overflow of the unlearned
powers. Rousseau's contrary opinion is doubtless due to the fact that he
identified God with Nature; to him the original powers are wholly good,
coming directly from a wise and good creator. To paraphrase the old
saying about the country and the town, God made the original human
organs and faculties, man makes the uses to which they are put.
Consequently the development of the former furnishes the standard to
which the latter must be subordinated. When men attempt to determine the
uses to which the original activities shall be put, they interfere with
a divine plan. The interference by social arrangements with Nature,
God's work, is the primary source of corruption in individuals.

Rousseau's passionate assertion of the intrinsic goodness of all natural
tendencies was a reaction against the pre