INTEGUMENT
931
INTEREST
ment fund provided by the act workingmen and their employers each contribute 2>£d weekly, the state adding an amount equal to y§ of their aggregate contribution. For national health purposes, male employes contribute 4d, female 3d. For each employe the state adds 2d weekly. Employers pay the employes7 contributions, deducting them from wages. The benefits include: Medical, sanitarium, sickness varying from los to 6s weekly for 26 weeks, disablement and maternity.
Integ'ument (in plants). A special envelope developed about the ovule of seed-plants. There may be one integument or two. In either case the integument is not distinct about the whole ovule, but only in its upper portion. At the apex of the ovule the integument or integuments leave a small passage-way, known as the "micropyle," which is for the passage of the pollen-tube on its way to the nucellus, the interior and essential part of the ovule within the integuments. It is in the integument tissue that the hard coat or " testa " of the seed develops after fertilization. See OVULE.
In'tercolo'nial Rail'way, The, is a government property. An all-Canadian system, it is the only all-rail line from Montreal to the extreme points of the maritime provinces, and (with the Prince Edward island Railway) embraces nearly 1,700 miles of well-built road with excellent rail and steamer connections. It traverses an inviting tourist country, and reaches Quebec, Riviere du Loup and Cacouna. The general offices are at Moncton, 186 miles from Halifax. It runs to St. Johns, the capital of New Brunswick and 89 miles west of Moncton. It enters Nova Scotia and serves Halifax, Truro, Pictou, New Glasgow and other important points. It was one of the main links in effecting federation.
In'terest. When any special sort of activity engages our attention so that we are, as it were, compelled to take part in it, it is said to be interesting. Interest involves feeling (q. v.}, and is based primarily upon the native instincts of the person. As the expres-tion of the supposed natural man, interest has been looked upon with suspicion by those moralists who regard the aim of life as the control or suppression of the native desires for the sake of some higher ideal of duty. Mankind very early in the history of civilization comes to regard as one of the principal aims of education the suppression of the natural cowardice and selfishness of the individual and the substitution of courage and self-sacrifice for the sake of the community. Discipline is the aim of the savage who cruelly tattoos his person with tribal emblems to show his fortitude and devotion to his people and of the more modern Puritan schoolmaster who believes that to spare the rod is to spoil the child. It is by discipline that the natural man is conceived to be made into a civilized man. According to
the C hristian ascetics, it is by discipline that the mortal body is conquered by the immortal spirit and the original sin of natural desire eradicated to make way for self-abnegation, submission to the will of God.
Against this time-honored view Rousseau set himself. He declared that the natural man is better than the artificial product of the training of society. He saw in the discipline of social education, not the benevolence of God, but the tyranny of man. God, he conceived, created the natural man, whom scheming priest and noble strive to reduce to slavish submission by a cruel and debasing education. The true divine plan is to let nature take its course, and true education is based on the interests of the child.
But inspiring and revolutionary as were the ideas of Rousseau, his educational scheme was in itself quite as one-sided as the one he strove to replace. For the natural impulses, unless they are organized and brought under control, leave the individual a prey to the inclination of the moment. His mental life is anarchy and not an expression of character. Rousseau assumes that self-control will naturally spring up, but he does not sufficiently emphasize its importance. Kant, the German philosopher, represents a reaction. While .he agrees with Rousseau that the rod of the schoolmaster, instead of creating free and noble character, simply terrifies the child into slavery, he maintains that character means control of natural inclinations and interests. One who gives up his natural desires because of fear of social consequences is simply substituting one interest for another. The truly free man is one who governs himself by an inborn idea of duty without any reference to interests or consequences. This ideal the schoolmaster can not create by education or discipline. Hence in the long run Kant agrees with Rousseau that in reference to the highest result, character, education can do no better than to let the child alone.
This view rouses in Herbart intense opposition. He maintains that character does not consist in doing the right instead of the interesting, but rather in being interested in doing the right. He declares that self-control does not mean the imposition of an independent ideal of virtue upon natural inclinations. On the contrary, it consists in an organization and harmonizing of these interests through the discovery of their interrelation and interdependence. Moreover, he accounts for the interests from the experience that education gives the child. We become interested in things because we know something about them. The problem of the teacher is to present such a variety of experience that all the interests, sympathetic as well as individual, esthetic and religious as well as scientific, shall be developed. Then true self-government will appear in a democracy of desires, each sharing
