LONDON.

LAJPAT RAI.

WONDERFUL EXPERIMENTS WHICH SUGGEST THAT THE NERVOUS SYSTEM OF PLANTS IS ALMOST IDENTICAL WITH THAT OF MAN.

In these days it seems to be impossible to live for more than a few weeks at a time without receiving some more or less serious mental shock. Soon after you have recovered from seeing an aeroplane weighing half-a-ton leave the ground, you are called on to make a mental adjustment which will reconcile you to travelling in a train hanging in midair, and in another day or two you may find yourself face to face with the adventure of speaking to someone fifty miles away without the aid even of a wire. It is getting a little difficult to keep up with science.

LIKE HUMAN BEINGS.

Just now Professor J. C. Bose-a Hindu scientist who has been sent by the Government of India to lay the results of his discoveries before the Western scientific world-is giving people shocks in Maida Vale. If you watch his astonishing experiments with plants and flowers, you have to leave an old world behind and enter a new one. The world where plants are merely plants becomes mercilessly out of date, and you are forced abruptly into a world where plants are almost human beings. Professor Bose makes you take the leap when he demonstrates that plants have a nervous system quite comparable with that of men, and makes them write down their lifestory. So you step into yet another world.

SUDDEN DEATH.

Perhaps the most amazing experiment is one showing the actual death of a plant. This does not sound very wonderful-but have you ever seen a plant die? You have seen it gradually fade and wither; but it actually died long before it faded. Have you ever seen it die abruptly, as a man dies? Have you seen the death struggle of a plant? That is what Professor Bose shows you-and it is a disturbing thing to watch. It gives a plant a human quality.

The experiment is not easy to describe; but this is briefly what you see. In a darkened room you see a strip of light on the wall, and this light moves slowly to the left. Quite suddenly it hesitates and quivers and struggles, and then moves slowly to the right. It is when the light hesitates and quivers and struggles that you are watching the death of the plant.

WHAT KILLS IT

One of the Professor's great difficulties was to know how to kill a plant suddenly enough. When you pick a rose you kill it, but not abruptly. There is still a little nourishment for it in the stem, and

its collapse is gradual. Such a death does not lend itself to dramatic demonstration. But Prof. Bost found that water at a high temperature-say 14 degrees Fahrenheit-would kill a plant suddenly, and he worked out a very ingenious way of showing that First he cuts the stem of a plant so that it forms a spiral, and on the outside of the spiral he fixes a little piece of glass which will reflect light that is thrown on to it. Then he puts the stem in warm water. Under the congenial, influence the warmth the tendency is for the stem of the plant to expand. It enjoys the stimulant of the warmth, just as a man will enjoy the stimulant of a hot bath and it shows its appreciation by expanding.

Being cut in the form of a spiral the stem is bound to tarn slightly as it expands, and this morement is thrown by the little piece of glass through a lens on to the wall. As the temperature of the water is gradually increased, the movement, shown so dramatically by the strip of light on the wall increases. But there comes a moment when the heat of the water is too much for the plant-when, in fact, it is in danger of being scalded to death just as a man would be scalded if he were held in water which was gradually heated to boiling point. And the plant's nervous system collapses just as the man's system would collapse. The strip of light on the wall pauses and quivers for a second, and then returns along its path. It has died suddenly-scalded to death-and the backward movement of the light is but a dramatic reproduction of the contraction of its body-that contraction which immediately follows death.

THEIR SURPRISING FEELINGS.

Other experiments showing the feelings of plants are equally surprising. Prof. Bose employs a compulsive force which causes the plant to give an answering signal-a twitch in reply. These signals are automa tically recorded on the delicate instruments the protes sor has invented and the records reveal the hidden feelings of the plant. Some idea of the delicacy of the instruments may be gained from the fact that they can record a time interval so short as the 1,000th part of the duration of a heart-beat.

The Professor connected a plant with the instru ment, and then lightly struck one of the leaves. At once it was clear that the plant felt the blow just as a man would feel a blow. That is, its whole nervous system was affected, and its pulse, written down by the ingenious recorder varied with the severity of the blow. The Professor gave the plant a little stimu lant. At once the height of the pulse was increased It was given a depressing drug and the effect was quickly seen in the feebler beating of the pulse.

MAKING IT DRINK.

There was something almost humiliating in this ensitiveness of a mere plant to the very same agents to which men and women respond. No one would object to a plant being refreshed by water; but what ight has it to enjoy, as it were, a cup of tea? When Professor Bose gave the plant a dose of alcohol its esponse through the recorder was ludicrously insteady. One had the humiliation of watching a Irunken plant. The plant is, indeed, always brotherly.' Too much food makes it lethargic and ncapable of reply, but the removal of the excess emoves the lethargy.

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The resonant recorder indicates the time taken by he plant to perceive a shock, and here again there is onsiderable likeness to humanity, for a stoutish plant vill give its response in a slow and lordly fashion, out a thin one attains the acme of its excitement in an ncredibly short time-in the case of mimosa in the ix-hundredth part of a second. The perception part of the plant becomes very sluggish under fatigue. When excessively tired or bored it loses for the time Il power of perception, and requires a rest-cure of at east half an hour to restore its equanimity.

Too Sheltered Life not gOOD.

That the too sheltered life is no better for plants han for man is suggested by another interesting xperiment. A plant which was carefully protected nder glass from outside blows looked most sleek and ourishing, but its conducting power was found atrohied or paralysed. Yet when a succession of blows were rained on this effete and bloated specimen, the timulus canalized its own path of conduction, and he plant soon became more alert and responsive, and Es nervous impulses were very much quickened.

It is impossible for a spectator of the Professor's xperiments to make any attempt to separate himself rom the rest of life. In the matter of automatic hearteats the Indian plant Desmodium Gyrans shows emarkable activity, and Professor Bose, by obtain1g records of these pulsations, shows that the throbings in the plant are affected by external agents in recisely the same way as the heart-beats of an anial. Thus, in plant, as in animal life, the pulserequency is increased under the action of warmth and

lessened under cold. Under ether the throbbing of the plant is arrested, but revival is possible when the vapour is blown off. Chloroform is more fata'. There is, too, an extraordinary parallelism in the fact that those poisons which arrest the beat of the heart in a particular way arrest the plant pulsation in a corresponding manner. Also, taking advantage of the antagonistic reactions of specific poisons Professor Bose has been able to revive a poisoned leaf by the application of another counteracting poison.

PLANTS AND LATE HOURS.

To find whether the plant varies in its state of responsiveness, Professor Bose has subjected mimosa (a plant especially sensitive and useful for this line of work) to uniform shocks repeated every hour of the day and night. And he was rewarded by the discovery that plants keep very late hours. Contrary to current views, the plant is awake till early in the morning, falling into deepest sleep between 6 and 9 a. m. when it becomes quite insensitive. It wakes gradually, and by noon is fully awake, becoming lethargic as the afternoon passes, to sleep again in the early morning.

The superiority of a man must, in fact, be established on a foundation more secure than sensibility. The most sensitive organ by which we can detect an electric current is our tongue. An average European can perceive a current as feeble as 64 microamperes (a microampere is a millionth part of the unit of current). Possibly the tongue of a Celt may be more excitable. But the plant mimosa is ten times more sensitive than this, and it is not in the case of special plants that this sensitiveness is felt. Nothing could appear more solid than the common radish. But under the persuasion of Professor Bose's instruments it responds vigorously to stimuli

That the establishment of this similarity of responsive actions in the plant and animal will be found of the highest significance is evident from the enthusiastic reception of these discoveries at Oxford, Cambridge, London, and Continental scientific centres. By study of the vegetable organisms the more complex physiological reactions of the human being may be understood. Thus, as Professor Bose says, community throughout the great ocean of life is seen to outweigh apparent dissimilarity. Diversity is swallowed up in unity.-The Daily News and Leader.

These are high and worthy ideals. A man developed under this criterion of education must serve as well as know. It has long been recognized that the man who serves his fellowmen best is the man who intuitively understands the power and effectiveness of sensibility as well as the power and effectiveness of knowledge. The proper development of sensibility is now demanding as much attention as the proper development of intellectuality. Those who understand the spirit and nature of true progress realize that the development of intellectuality at the cost of indurating sensibility robs citizenship of its inspiration and moral efficiency.

Professor Sarkar has provided against

a certain form of the induration of sensibility by the second proposition in his "Educational Creed."

"II. Moral Training to be imparted not through lessons culled from moral and religious textbooks, but through arrangements by which the student is actually made to develop habits of self-sacrifice and devotion to the interests of others by undertaking works of philanthropy and social service."

This laboratory method of the develop. ment of sensibility is a promising one. It ought to be worked out in detail and given a fair and honest trial. In this connection, however, it must be kept in mind that the induration of sensibility begins early. early. Therefore, it is necessary to begin the laboratory method of the development of sensibility in the lowest grades of the child's education. This can be best accomplished by the proper correlation of human experience and those experiences which which are easily derived from the study of carefully selected literature suited at all times to the child's range of consciousness. The child must be enabled to find experiences in his environment which correspond with the experiences suggested in the literature selected for study.

The following simple plan has been used to develop the poetic impulse in children of the first grade. Certain words and phrases were taken from the poem to be studied before it was assigned to the class for study. The responses to those expressions are recorded just as given.

1. "Down from a cloud." What does this call to your mind? The child responded: "Once, I saw, after a rain, when I looked out of the window, little paths of light coming down from the clouds." Concerning the same phrase another pupil

gave the following: "One day I was in the house and it was storming. The wind was blowing and the trees were bending nearly to the ground. I looked from the door and saw rain and bright streaks of lightning coming from the clouds."

2. "Softest light" was another phrase selected. The child was asked, "What does this call to your mind?" He responded "One night there was a ring around the moon, and it looked like a soft light."

3.

"Stars" was next selected as likely to call back some previous experi ence. The child responded: "Friday night the sky was full of stars. They looked like dots of gold sprinkled over the sky." Thus each child in the first year of his training, was prepared to find that he had something in his experience in common with what he was to find in the poem. He had something in his mind to attend with. The first important step in awakening his sensibility had been taken inductively and synthetically.

In the administration of the influences of literature chosen for any grade of study lies the greatest danger of the induration of sensibility. Literature is the treasury of experiences considered worthy of transmission from generation to generation. If these treasures are opened before minds unprepared to react upon them there can be no increase of sensibility.

Mr. R. C. Dutt in his admirable treaties on "The Literature of Bengal," has effectively presented the notion of the relation of poetry to the development of sensibility. His illuminating interpretation of this important subject ought to be indelibly stamped upon the memory.

"Poetry may be defined as a piece of metrical composition, raising an image or string of ideas and awakening our finer sensibilities. We shall try to illustrate what we mean.

"We all know, though it is scarcely possible to define, what our nicer sensibilities, our finer emotions are. To take an instance, emotion of laughter is not one of the nicer sensibilities, and a piece of composition, calculated to move laughter, comes in more properly within the province of a comic journal than of poetry accurately so called. On the other hand, vene ration for the mighty and the sublime, sorrow and sympathy for the lowly and the suffering, love for the innocent and the beautiful, these, and such as these, are pre-eminently the finer sensibilities of our heart. and that which excites these feelings is genuine poetry. A variety of things produce the same effect. Natural scenery, seasons of the year, hours of the day, the incidents of our everyday life, the presence or ab sence of dear relatives, all these produce the same effect in us; and we, therefore, say there is poetry in a

group of children; there is poetry in the stillness of a calm evening by the margin of a lake: there is still 1obler poetry in lofty mountains and snow-clad peaks. What we really mean is, that a group of children with shining faces, a lake sleeping under the stillness of evening, or a lofty mountain piercing through clouds and raising its serried snow-clad heights to the skies, nspire in us the same feelings of love or beauty or sublimity as a poetical composition does."

We feel that Mr. Dutt is right. And one of the most important tasks in the teaching of literature and language is to rightly prepare the mind of the pupil to receive the images of poetry that the "finer sensibilities" may not be indurated. To this end there must be a wise correlation of the experiences of life with the experiences presented in literature. If the boy is to be developed from within by the aid of literature he must be enabled to see that he has something in his mind in common with the images which he finds in literature. Otherwise he cannot attend ipon the subject because he has no typical experience in his mind by means of which to attend with. Herein lies the problem of attention, interest and reaction. Right procedure at this point guards against the induration of sensibility. The child must be taught to attend upon the study of literature with what he can gain from environment by means of which to attend with. If he is to find images of "clouds", "stars" and "softest light" in poetry he must be first directed in synthesizing his own life-experience. Later when he finds these words and phrases in poetry his own sense-images are illumined and his "finer sensibilities" are developed.

The induration of sensibility by unwise pedagogy is often far-reaching in consequences. Because of this a grave responsibility rests upon all teachers of literature. In a certain sense they are the custodians of the cultural ideas of the race. The development of the child for the highest social efficiency is largely in their hands. Citizenship is a matter of ideals as well as of practical knowledge. The teachers of literature and composition deal directly with the "finer sensibilities." It is their duty to recognize the poetic instinct in child-life and develop it into a consciousness in which right judgments of men and things will prevail. To know ideas at their right value is the beginning of wisdom

The Literature of Bengal by Arcydae, Calcutta, 1887, pp. IX-XV.

that leads to power. To accomplish this teachers must go about their tasks in a workmanlike fashion. Just as the modern teacher of science develops the scientific consciousness by laboratory experience in the use of the lowest elements first, so the literature teacher must develop literary consciousness by presenting the lowest literary units and at every step enabling the pupil to first identify these elements as an organic part of his life-experience. If a boy is to read and interpret character in books he must first be energized to see that he reads and interprets character in the faces of his fellows and in what they say and do, and do not say, or do. When he is able to discern the nobleness and worth in the conduct of his associates he has taken the first step in the development of his power to see the same forces in books that present a series of human into the cultural ideas and ideals of his actions. Thus he is prepared for initiation race which have been stored up in the great treasure-house of literature for the nourishment and increase of the sensibility of mankind.

The development of strong sense-images in the minds of pulpils for the express purpose of developing sensibility is no new achievement in the pedagogy of India. Centuries ago it was done by intuition. It is now time to do it more consciously by methods which best conserve the imaginative energy of both teacher and pupils. The problem of how to deal with indurated sensibility dates far back in the past and has an interesting literary history. Once upon a time a Pandit believing in his power to develop insight concerning political political and social science said to an anxious father whose sons were lacking in fine sensibility: "By six months' instruction I will make your majesty's sons thoroughly conversant with Political and Social Science." This was the daring proposal to King Sudarsana made by the great Vishnusarman. He may have had some misgiving as he sat on the terrace with the princes at their first meeting. But he had unfaltering confidence in his method. Intuitively.he had divined the fact that the development of the soul through education must be from within. Guided by an unerring instinct he began the correlation of the literature of his time with human experience. His problem was the awaken

ing of sensibility. By the aid of concrete forms he enabled definite sense-images and made active the inner experiences that brought forth the insight which controls and guides impulse. His method was unique. Beginning with 1, Mitralabha, the acquisition of friends; he passed to 2, Subridbheda, the creating of divisions among friends; then on to 3, Vigraha, the way to make war; concluding with 4, Sandhi, the way to make peace. The Crow, the Tortoise, the Deer and the Mouse were used to illustrate the art of making friends. The escape of the Tortoise aided by his three friends indicated the essential value of genuine friendship. The breaking of friendship between the Lion and the Bull by the greedy mischievous Jackal furnished the concrete images in the second study. War was made concrete by the battle between the Geese and the Peacocks. Deeds of valor characterized each of the contending forces. With great loss of life on both sides the fighting subsided. Diplomats were appointed to act as mediators. Their skilful diplomacy finally restored peace.

The Pandit's success in developing sensibility is indicated by what the Princes said and did. One day they said; "Sir! we are the sons of a king and we should like to hear something about war." It was a triumphant moment for the faithful Pandit. He had awakened interest. With even greater skill he proceeded in the effort to develop sensibility. The climax was reached in the portrayal of the heroic act of the Sarasa in protecting the life of the king while his own body was being pierced through and through by the sharp beak of his adversary. The Princes were aroused and exclaimed: "Truly the Sarasa showed his honour and loyalty in saving his master at the sacrifice of his own life." At the conclusion of the study about "the peace which men call golden" a satisfying response was given to the skilful teacher by those royal sons,-"Sir," replied the Princes, "You, through your goodness and learning have taught us all the round of our kingly

duties; we have learned our lesson and are contented." The inner awakening of those Princes became a potential value to society. It insured the social betterment of the people whom they were born to serve. To be made sensible concerning one's duty toward one's fellows, to find insight that controls and guides impulse is a social value which cannot be overestimated.

In the Niti-Shastra material to which many minds have contributed there is strong evidence of the intuitive effort to correlate literature and human experience in behalf of social service by developing sensibility and enabling insight. The intrinsic value of the Hitopadeca and its forerunner the Panchatantra is the revealment of the essential elements of a teaching process that is being slowly perfected in these days of the science of education. Yet in the face of all present progress there is still danger of indurating sensibility. How to awaken and develop sensibility under changing conditions making it productive. serviceable and cultural is the greatest problem of modern education either in the East or the West. Without fine sensibility there can be no enduring culture. Culture characterized by breadth and depth of spirit and increasing light has been the open door to the spiritual life of mankind in all generations. Modern teaching must not be unmindful of its noble and sublime

duty to society. To this end the advice of Professor Sarkar concerning tutorial and organizational plans should be carefully tested out:

"The mother-tongue must be the Medium of instruction in all subjects and through all standards. "The laboratory and environment of student life must be the whole world of men and things."

By such fair and broad-minded methods the induration of sensibility in modern teaching can be reduced to the minimum. Then each child will be enabled to come into his own heritage, the power to see clearly, to feel nobly, to think wisely and act justly toward all mankind.