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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 which the stone man steered his daily course. The difficulty lies in catching what is then most literally “the psychologic moment,” at which a raw root dug up with a stone hammer will strike the young learner as a square meal.

Any interested outsider will testify that the new baby confirms this theory. It is an absolute savage. No head-hunter of Borneo could be more destitute of the “self-knowledge, self-reverence, self-control” which characterize the civilized man. Observe the small boy taking care of his small sister, and you will see the spirit of the Inquisition reproduced in all its ingenuity for torture. Note the length of time which a boy will spend in a green-shaded swimming-hole on a summer day, and you will see him dating back to his jelly-fish ancestors. A little girl will lavish all the passion and absorption of motherhood upon a bath towel and a croquet-ball. Hundreds of Davids have gone forth against their Goliaths. Thousands of knights in short stockings have kept the law of the Table Round. The most pampered of lads and lassies, left to their own devices, will revert to the cuisine of the cave man and sustain themselves upon mud pies.

Whole volumes, learned, authoritative, but so far ponderous, have been devoted to determining the age at which the different impulses which prompt or qualify human action are added unto the individual. Reason, honor, self-control, knowledge, religion, the sense of right and wrong and of responsibility, hate, envy, love, joy–all the forces developed in the race through immemorial ages–are born and reach maturity in the individual during the little span of one short life.

Whether this theory be right or wrong, no one can question that it is interesting and suggestive. It is but one of dozens with which the teacher is supposed to be at least on speaking terms. There is another large field of experiment and accomplishment in what is known as the manual-training movement, the marvellous and so long unrecognized connection between the development of the hand and the development of the mind and morals. Any one craving greater marvels than are furnished in modern romance can find them in the reports of reformatories, prisons, lunatic asylums, or schools for the defective, in which manual training has been introduced.

The whole trend of education changed when the “three R’s” ceased to be its war-cry, and it behooves the modern mother to realize this change and to adapt herself to it. For the school and the home are but two agencies in the training of the child, two powers which should work together for good; and the ideal relation between the two is that they should be as one. It was a very great Teacher who taught that “no man can serve two masters.” Then let the mother conform her rule and her judgments to the laws of the sister kingdom.

Let her hold, for instance, that the principle of self-activity is stronger than blind obedience ever was; that emulation as a spur to effort is the abomination of desolation; that a sound mind in a sound body is more to be valued than riches; that a keen eye for color and form, a steady hand to guide a pencil or a tool, a mind alert, eager, and reasonable, a heart which feels its brotherhood with all living, growing things, a free, frank speech, a generous nature, and an honest tongue, are in themselves a Declaration of Independence and a Psalm of Life.