Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/758

should expect all those individuals whose calling leads them to study history more or less, as the lawyer, the politician, historical teachers, and others to be distinguished for their morality above the scientist, the mathematician, or any one else in the community; but if this be so, it has not yet impressed itself upon the public mind. The more just view to take of this question is (to be dogmatic for the sake of brevity) that those activities which tend to become habitual are the ones that determine character; and an individual may study profoundly about charity, for instance, without ever exercising that quality himself; while, on the other hand, one may be little familiar with the literature of benevolence, but an exemplary person in its practice. Although it seems eminently true that our thoughts tend to get worked out into appropriate activities, yet we make a serious mistake when we conclude that those ideas which we get from books are uppermost in our minds when we are inspired to action; rather those impressions that have already become deepened and fixed through previous expressions are the ones that get mastery when we are about to act. This does not imply that literature and history have not great moral culture value when rightly used to furnish incentives and models for moral activities that become actually realized in the pupil's life—in the child immediately under the guidance of the teacher, in the older person at a more remote period perhaps. But at the same time it should be understood that character in a true sense includes the whole of personality, and a defect in any part is essentially a moral defect; so that what one can and does do, in a material sense, is as important to be looked after in elementary education as how he may think or feel in a bookish sense. These considerations alone (and there are other important arguments that might be advanced) indicate that, so far as values are concerned, the study of science, and of the various industries that maybe understood and improved upon only by a comprehension of its laws, should hold a place in the elementary school co-ordinate with that of literature and history. One may not dogmatize here, though, considering the present state of our knowledge upon the most effective means for training moral character; and it is to be sincerely hoped that we may ere long be in possession of further contributions along this line from psychologists and educators.

 

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Cutting telegraph wires is, according to Mr. P. V. Luke, of the British-Indian Chitral Expedition, a favorite amusement with frontier tribes. They find the wire useful. Sometimes, too, they convert the hollow iron posts of which the telegraph poles are made into guns, by lapping them round with wire; and they cut the wire up for bullets.