Unless the mind retains impressions and can recall them, no development is possible. Acts at first difficult become easy because nerves and muscles remember. Attention is the mother of memory. The more various and intimate the association of ideas the better. 115
Walking and other common movements of the body become all but automatic. In much the same way mental experiences become organized into judgments which are largely or wholly true. Judgment in mathematics or other sciences demands special training. Grammar is often unconsciously acquired. The intuitions of the practised detective. The desire to do right strengthens the intellect. A wise man trusts to the spontaneities of his mind, just as a rider may trust his horse to find its way home. The human race, like the individual man, grows in common sense, abandons absurd practices and beliefs. 131
If we are to win the game of life we must understand and obey its rules. No man wholly uneducated. A liberal education makes the most of body, mind and heart. Education to the poor is of supreme importance: reading and writing are merely the means of education. The classics should be taught in a scientific way. Thorough knowledge of the earth as a centre from which study may proceed. Literature and history are indispensable. 151
The themes of classical education are less important than those of science. For culture an exclusively scientific education is at least as effectual as an exclusively literary education. New knowledge has so much increased in modern times as to sway daily life. The scientific method is now recognized as the one mode of discerning or discovering truth. What in the past men said about things is vastly less to the point than what can be learned now at first hand. The Greeks looked to Nature, let us also look to Nature and not merely repeat what the Greeks reported. Modern languages, especially English, as means of culture. Science cannot be applied unless its principles are understood. The mastery of these principles is culture. Art and letters, no less than science, are needed for a well-rounded mind. 171
THE PART PLAYED BY INFANCY IN THE EVOLUTION OF MAN
[John Fiske attained distinction in three distinct fields of letters: as a historian, as a scientific interpreter of religion, as an expositor of the philosophy of evolution. In this last department of his work his original contribution was the theory here set forth, taken from a chapter in "A Century of Science and Other Essays," copyright by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York, 1900. Mr. Fiske died in 1901, in his sixtieth year.]