that climax of my authority, but he seemed utterly subdued, and, for some reason, became wholly submissive to my will. He did return and became, in point of deportment, one of my model pupils, and my stoutest friend and defender in all Eastern Kansas. Here was indeed a case in which corporal punishment, rather than moral persuasion, would have been detrimental to both pupil and teacher. And this interesting experience convinced me that always, if the teacher could assume the proper state of mind and heart toward a pupil, however apparently incorrigible, he could be mastered without the intercession of physical punishment.

CHAPTER X.

Environment.

S man the creature or creator of circumstances? Is he cast within an invisible

mould of influences which shape and fash

ion his character, or does he consciously himself mould the forces that play upon his life? These are the problems that have ever confronted man. But perhaps in no age of the world has man been better and more intelligently enabled to solve them than to-day. In the processes of modern education we are rapidly passing from the conjectural methods to the scientific and demonstrable. We are no longer satisfied with suppositions and guesses. Tradition we cast easily aside and ask for impartial truth.

That man is really the product of his environment seems to-day, in the light of evolution and sociology, an indisputable law of life. Indeed, until we rightfully understand and appreciate this law of environ

ment, our lives must needs be but fragmentary and illogical. If we permit influences to play upon and mould our beings, thoughtless of their nature or effects, which are at least somewhat modifiable by application, we are suicidally reckless, unless fortunately endowed by heredity.

But what is environment? Is it merely the material and visible world with which we constantly commune, consciously or unconsciously, or is it also a vast invisible plane of forces with which we are in constant contact yet of whose presence we are mostly unaware? Both descriptions of environment are true. But it is the former, or more distinctly the visible or material environment, which we more commonly regard in our studies.

"To understand the sustaining influence of environment in the animal world, one has only to recall what the bilogists term the extrinsic or subsidiary conditions of vitality," observes Prof. Drummond. "Every living thing normally requires for its development an environment containing air, light, heat, and water. . . When we simply remember how indispensable food is to growth and work, and when we further bear in mind that the food-supply is solely contributed by the environment, we realize at once the meaning and the truth of the proposition that without environment there can be no life. Seventy

per cent. at least of the human body is made of water, the remaining thirty per cent. is of gases and earths. These have all come from environment. Through the secret pores of the skin two pounds of water are exhaled daily from every healthy adult. The supply is kept up by environment. Definite portions are continuously abstracted from and added to the organism."

This, however, refers to the purely material phase of environmental influences. We find on analysis that there are several other phases, such as racial, climatic, social, sensational, mental, and spiritual. Not until we thoroughly appreciate the force of each will we be able to guide our lives sanely or develop health and character along rational lines.

WHAT CAUSES SO MANY DIFFERENT KINDS OF PEOPLE.

We ask ourselves why are there so many different kinds of human beings in the world? Why are there so many different races; why so many different nationalities and individual idiosyncrasies? There must be some law underlying all these variations, for in Nature there are no uncaused accidents. Especially do we feel the force of this statement when we realize that according to the conclusions of eth

nologists, or the scientific students of the human races, that there was once a period in the evolution of humankind when there was but one homogeneous race in all the world.

We find that this result is directly attributable to climatic and geographical environment. People who dwell in hot climates have wholly different temperaments and dispositions from people who dwell in cold or temperate climates. In addition to this, we find that pathological conditions are also varied with climatic and geographical environment. Diseases that are common in one portion of the world are utterly unknown in other portions. More than that, some diseases, such as the measles for instance, which in our climate we regard very indifferently and not at all dangerous, among the Patagonians we are told will rage like a plague carrying off thousands in a

season.

We have observed how persons who have become acclimated to one section of a country, if they migrate to another section will immediately become subject to some disease which does not at all affect the natives. Thus people who have been born and reared in the northern portions of America, if they migrate to the south, are usually overtaken with malarial fevers, whereas the natives are little affected by it. While, on the contrary,