ell-managed school-room is as
sanitary as a hospital ward; sterilizing and fumigating are part of the
regular work, and every book and pencil undergoes such treatment before
being transferred from one child to another. The number of cubic feet of
air, per child, per hour, is calculated and provided for. The designing
of seats for school children is a matter which occupies the attention of
men whose reputation is international, and whole schools of philosophy
busy themselves to determine the sequence in which the different formal
studies shall be presented.

In these halcyon days when Botany doffs her cap and gown and associates
with ordinary mortals in the friendly guise of "How to Know the Wild
Flowers," "Nature's Garden," and other enticing disguises; when
ornithology takes such friendly shapes as "A Kentucky Cardinal" and
"Bird Life"; when physiology becomes "How to Grow Young" and "What Ails
the Baby"; when even political economy reaches the ordinary plane at the
hands of Messrs. Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, and Charles
Edward Russell--we soon expect psychology to burst its academic bonds.
It has already made one or two tentative appearances, and it was
moderately well received; but some day, and soon, a prophet will arise
to preach it with a yet more popular voice.

Then shall mother and teacher sweetly lisp of the "fringe of
apperception," "the stream of consciousness," "inhibition," "ideal motor
action," and "the tabula raza." Psychology has, I am aware, an
unappealing sound. But let no one imagine that it is not or, rather,
cannot be made interesting. We cannot always catch a bird, find a
flower, or unearth a social evil; but every one, under all conditions
and at all times, has a psychology in full working order concealed
about him, and the art of teaching in its last analysis is applied
psychology.

How many mothers have heard of the theory, formulated and vouched for by
most distinguished scientists, that the individual during the normal
progress of his existence passes through the whole history of the
development of his race? That he has, in turn, the instincts and the
wants which animated all his ancestors, from the age of chaos to the day
of the flying-machine? Upon this theory the whole scheme of education is
based. Its essential principle is that if you can catch the child at the
stone-age point of its development, you can then most readily teach him
the rather restricted sum of knowledge by