#talks to teachers# on psychology: and to students on some of life's ideals, by william james #new york henry holt and company# # # #copyright, , # #by william james# #press of geo. h. ellis co. (inc.) boston# preface. in i was asked by the harvard corporation to give a few public lectures on psychology to the cambridge teachers. the talks now printed form the substance of that course, which has since then been delivered at various places to various teacher-audiences. i have found by experience that what my hearers seem least to relish is analytical technicality, and what they most care for is concrete practical application. so i have gradually weeded out the former, and left the latter unreduced; and now, that i have at last written out the lectures, they contain a minimum of what is deemed 'scientific' in psychology, and are practical and popular in the extreme. some of my colleagues may possibly shake their heads at this; but in taking my cue from what has seemed to me to be the feeling of the audiences i believe that i am shaping my book so as to satisfy the more genuine public need. teachers, of course, will miss the minute divisions, subdivisions, and definitions, the lettered and numbered headings, the variations of type, and all the other mechanical artifices on which they are accustomed to prop their minds. but my main desire has been to make them conceive, and, if possible, reproduce sympathetically in their imagination, the mental life of their pupil as the sort of active unity which he himself feels it to be. _he_ doesn't chop himself into distinct processes and compartments; and it would have frustrated this deeper purpose of my book to make it look, when printed, like a baedeker's handbook of travel or a text-book of arithmetic. so far as books printed like this book force the fluidity of the facts upon the young teacher's attention, so far i am sure they tend to do his intellect a service, even though they may leave unsatisfied a craving (not altogether without its legitimate grounds) for more nomenclature, head-lines, and subdivisions. readers acquainted with my larger books on psychology will meet much familiar phraseology. in the chapters on habit and memory i have even copied several pages verbatim, but i do not know that apology is needed for such plagiarism as this. the talks to students, which conclude the volume, were written in response to invitations to deliver 'addresses' to students at women's colleges. the first one was to the graduating class of the boston normal school of gymnastics. properly, it continues the series of talks to teachers. the second and the third address belong together, and continue another line of thought. i wish i were able to make the second, 'on a certain blindness in human beings,' more impressive. it is more than the mere piece of sentimentalism which it may seem to some readers. it connects itself with a definite view of the world and of our moral relations to the same. those who have done me the honor of reading my volume of philosophic essays will recognize that i mean the pluralistic or individualistic philosophy. according to that philosophy, the truth is too great for any one actual mind, even though that mind be dubbed 'the absolute,' to know the whole of it. the facts and worths of life need many cognizers to take them in. there is no point of view absolutely public and universal. private and uncommunicable perceptions always remain over, and the worst of it is that those who look for them from the outside never know _where_. the practical consequence of such a philosophy is the well-known democratic respect for the sacredness of individuality,--is, at any rate, the outward tolerance of whatever is not itself intolerant. these phrases are so familiar that they sound now rather dead in our ears. once they had a passionate inner meaning. such a passionate inner meaning they may easily acquire again if the pretension of our nation to inflict its own inner ideals and institutions _vi et armis_ upon orientals should meet with a resistance as obdurate as so far it has been gallant and spirited. religiously and philosophically, our ancient national doctrine of live and let live may prove to have a far deeper meaning than our people now seem to imagine it to possess. cambridge, mass., march, . contents. talks to teachers. i. psychology and the teaching art the american educational organization,--what teachers may expect from psychology,--teaching methods must agree with psychology, but cannot be immediately deduced therefrom,--the science of teaching and the science of war,--the educational uses of psychology defined,--the teacher's duty toward child-study. ii. the stream of consciousness our mental life is a succession of conscious 'fields,'--they have a focus and a margin,--this description contrasted with the theory of 'ideas,'--wundt's conclusions, note. iii. the child as a behaving organism mind as pure reason and mind as practical guide,--the latter view the more fashionable one to-day,--it will be adopted in this work,--why so?--the teacher's function is to train pupils to behavior. iv. education and behavior education defined,--conduct is always its outcome,--different national ideals: germany and england. v. the necessity of reactions no impression without expression,--verbal reproduction,--manual training,--pupils should know their 'marks'. vi. native and acquired reactions the acquired reactions must be preceded by native ones,--illustration: teaching child to ask instead of snatching,--man has more instincts than other mammals. vii. what the native reactions are fear and love,--curiosity,--imitation,--emulation,--forbidden by rousseau,--his error,--ambition, pugnacity, and pride. soft pedagogics and the fighting impulse,--ownership,--its educational uses,--constructiveness,--manual teaching,--transitoriness in instincts,--their order of succession. viii. the laws of habit good and bad habits,--habit due to plasticity of organic tissues,--the aim of education is to make useful habits automatic,--maxims relative to habit-forming: . strong initiative,-- . no exception,-- . seize first opportunity to act,-- . don't preach,--darwin and poetry: without exercise our capacities decay,--the habit of mental and muscular relaxation,--fifth maxim, keep the faculty of effort trained,--sudden conversions compatible with laws of habit,--momentous influence of habits on character. ix. the association of ideas a case of habit,--the two laws, contiguity and similarity,--the teacher has to build up useful systems of association,--habitual associations determine character,--indeterminateness of our trains of association,--we can trace them backward, but not foretell them,--interest deflects,--prepotent parts of the field,--in teaching, multiply cues. x. interest the child's native interests,--how uninteresting things acquire an interest,--rules for the teacher,--'preparation' of the mind for the lesson: the pupil must have something to attend with,--all later interests are borrowed from original ones. xi. attention interest and attention are two aspects of one fact,--voluntary attention comes in beats,--genius and attention,--the subject must change to win attention,--mechanical aids,--the physiological process,--the new in the old is what excites interest,--interest and effort are compatible,--mind-wandering,--not fatal to mental efficiency. xii. memory due to association,--no recall without a cue,--memory is due to brain-plasticity,--native retentiveness,--number of associations may practically be its equivalent,--retentiveness is a fixed property of the individual,--memory _versus_ memories,--scientific system as help to memory,--technical memories,--cramming,--elementary memory unimprovable,--utility of verbal memorizing,--measurements of immediate memory,--they throw little light,--passion is the important factor in human efficiency,--eye-memory, ear-memory, etc.,--the rate of forgetting, ebbinghaus's results,--influence of the unreproducible,--to remember, one must think and connect. xiii. the acquisition of ideas education gives a stock of conceptions,--the order of their acquisition,--value of verbal material,--abstractions of different orders: when are they assimilable,--false conceptions of children. xiv. apperception often a mystifying idea,--the process defined,--the law of economy,--old-fogyism,--how many types of apperception?--new heads of classification must continually be invented,--alteration of the apperceiving mass,--class names are what we work by,--few new fundamental conceptions acquired after twenty-five. xv. the will the word defined,--all consciousness tends to action,--ideo-motor action,--inhibition,--the process of deliberation,--why so few of our ideas result in acts,--the associationist account of the will,--a balance of impulses and inhibitions,--the over-impulsive and the over-obstructed type,--the perfect type,--the balky will,--what character building consists in,--right action depends on right apperception of the case,--effort of will is effort of attention: the drunkard's dilemma,--vital importance of voluntary attention,--its amount may be indeterminate,--affirmation of free-will,--two types of inhibition,--spinoza on inhibition by a higher good,--conclusion. talks to students. i. the gospel of relaxation ii. on a certain blindness in human beings iii. what makes a life significant? * * * * * talks to teachers i. psychology and the teaching art in the general activity and uprising of ideal interests which every one with an eye for fact can discern all about us in american life, there is perhaps no more promising feature than the fermentation which for a dozen years or more has been going on among the teachers. in whatever sphere of education their functions may lie, there is to be seen among them a really inspiring amount of searching of the heart about the highest concerns of their profession. the renovation of nations begins always at the top, among the reflective members of the state, and spreads slowly outward and downward. the teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands. the earnestness which they at present show in striving to enlighten and strengthen themselves is an index of the nation's probabilities of advance in all ideal directions. the outward organization of education which we have in our united states is perhaps, on the whole, the best organization that exists in any country. the state school systems give a diversity and flexibility, an opportunity for experiment and keenness of competition, nowhere else to be found on such an important scale. the independence of so many of the colleges and universities; the give and take of students and instructors between them all; their emulation, and their happy organic relations to the lower schools; the traditions of instruction in them, evolved from the older american recitation-method (and so avoiding on the one hand the pure lecture-system prevalent in germany and scotland, which considers too little the individual student, and yet not involving the sacrifice of the instructor to the individual student, which the english tutorial system would seem too often to entail),--all these things (to say nothing of that coeducation of the sexes in whose benefits so many of us heartily believe), all these things, i say, are most happy features of our scholastic life, and from them the most sanguine auguries may be drawn. having so favorable an organization, all we need is to impregnate it with geniuses, to get superior men and women working more and more abundantly in it and for it and at it, and in a generation or two america may well lead the education of the world. i must say that i look forward with no little confidence to the day when that shall be an accomplished fact. no one has profited more by the fermentation of which i speak, in pedagogical circles, than we psychologists. the desire of the schoolteachers for a completer professional training, and their aspiration toward the 'professional' spirit in their work, have led them more and more to turn to us for light on fundamental principles. and in these few hours which we are to spend together you look to me, i am sure, for information concerning the mind's operations, which may enable you to labor more easily and effectively in the several schoolrooms over which you preside. far be it from me to disclaim for psychology all title to such hopes. psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help. and yet i confess that, acquainted as i am with the height of some of your expectations, i feel a little anxious lest, at the end of these simple talks of mine, not a few of you may experience some disappointment at the net results. in other words, i am not sure that you may not be indulging fancies that are just a shade exaggerated. that would not be altogether astonishing, for we have been having something like a 'boom' in psychology in this country. laboratories and professorships have been founded, and reviews established. the air has been full of rumors. the editors of educational journals and the arrangers of conventions have had to show themselves enterprising and on a level with the novelties of the day. some of the professors have not been unwilling to co-operate, and i am not sure even that the publishers have been entirely inert. 'the new psychology' has thus become a term to conjure up portentous ideas withal; and you teachers, docile and receptive and aspiring as many of you are, have been plunged in an atmosphere of vague talk about our science, which to a great extent has been more mystifying than enlightening. altogether it does seem as if there were a certain fatality of mystification laid upon the teachers of our day. the matter of their profession, compact enough in itself, has to be frothed up for them in journals and institutes, till its outlines often threaten to be lost in a kind of vast uncertainty. where the disciples are not independent and critical-minded enough (and i think that, if you teachers in the earlier grades have any defect--the slightest touch of a defect in the world--it is that you are a mite too docile), we are pretty sure to miss accuracy and balance and measure in those who get a license to lay down the law to them from above. as regards this subject of psychology, now, i wish at the very threshold to do what i can to dispel the mystification. so i say at once that in my humble opinion there _is_ no 'new psychology' worthy of the name. there is nothing but the old psychology which began in locke's time, plus a little physiology of the brain and senses and theory of evolution, and a few refinements of introspective detail, for the most part without adaptation to the teacher's use. it is only the fundamental conceptions of psychology which are of real value to the teacher; and they, apart from the aforesaid theory of evolution, are very far from being new.--i trust that you will see better what i mean by this at the end of all these talks. i say moreover that you make a great, a very great mistake, if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws, is something from which you can deduce definite programmes and schemes and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use. psychology is a science, and teaching is an art; and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves. an intermediary inventive mind must make the application, by using its originality. the science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics (if there be such a thing) never made a man behave rightly. the most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly; and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes. a science only lays down lines within which the rules of the art must fall, laws which the follower of the art must not transgress; but what particular thing he shall positively do within those lines is left exclusively to his own genius. one genius will do his work well and succeed in one way, while another succeeds as well quite differently; yet neither will transgress the lines. the art of teaching grew up in the schoolroom, out of inventiveness and sympathetic concrete observation. even where (as in the case of herbart) the advancer of the art was also a psychologist, the pedagogics and the psychology ran side by side, and the former was not derived in any sense from the latter. the two were congruent, but neither was subordinate. and so everywhere the teaching must _agree_ with the psychology, but need not necessarily be the only kind of teaching that would so agree; for many diverse methods of teaching may equally well agree with psychological laws. to know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teachers. to advance to that result, we must have an additional endowment altogether, a happy tact and ingenuity to tell us what definite things to say and do when the pupil is before us. that ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and omega of the teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot help us in the least. the science of psychology, and whatever science of general pedagogics may be based on it, are in fact much like the science of war. nothing is simpler or more definite than the principles of either. in war, all you have to do is to work your enemy into a position from which the natural obstacles prevent him from escaping if he tries to; then to fall on him in numbers superior to his own, at a moment when you have led him to think you far away; and so, with a minimum of exposure of your own troops, to hack his force to pieces, and take the remainder prisoners. just so, in teaching, you must simply work your pupil into such a state of interest in what you are going to teach him that every other object of attention is banished from his mind; then reveal it to him so impressively that he will remember the occasion to his dying day; and finally fill him with devouring curiosity to know what the next steps in connection with the subject are. the principles being so plain, there would be nothing but victories for the masters of the science, either on the battlefield or in the schoolroom, if they did not both have to make their application to an incalculable quantity in the shape of the mind of their opponent. the mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the scientific general. just what the respective enemies want and think, and what they know and do not know, are as hard things for the teacher as for the general to find out. divination and perception, not psychological pedagogics or theoretic strategy, are the only helpers here. but, if the use of psychological principles thus be negative rather than positive, it does not follow that it may not be a great use, all the same. it certainly narrows the path for experiments and trials. we know in advance, if we are psychologists, that certain methods will be wrong, so our psychology saves us from mistakes. it makes us, moreover, more clear as to what we are about. we gain confidence in respect to any method which we are using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice at its back. most of all, it fructifies our independence, and it reanimates our interest, to see our subject at two different angles,--to get a stereoscopic view, so to speak, of the youthful organism who is our enemy, and, while handling him with all our concrete tact and divination, to be able, at the same time, to represent to ourselves the curious inner elements of his mental machine. such a complete knowledge as this of the pupil, at once intuitive and analytic, is surely the knowledge at which every teacher ought to aim. fortunately for you teachers, the elements of the mental machine can be clearly apprehended, and their workings easily grasped. and, as the most general elements and workings are just those parts of psychology which the teacher finds most directly useful, it follows that the amount of this science which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great. those who find themselves loving the subject may go as far as they please, and become possibly none the worse teachers for the fact, even though in some of them one might apprehend a little loss of balance from the tendency observable in all of us to overemphasize certain special parts of a subject when we are studying it intensely and abstractly. but for the great majority of you a general view is enough, provided it be a true one; and such a general view, one may say, might almost be written on the palm of one's hand. least of all need you, merely _as teachers_, deem it part of your duty to become contributors to psychological science or to make psychological observations in a methodical or responsible manner. i fear that some of the enthusiasts for child-study have thrown a certain burden on you in this way. by all means let child-study go on,--it is refreshing all our sense of the child's life. there are teachers who take a spontaneous delight in filling syllabuses, inscribing observations, compiling statistics, and computing the per cent. child-study will certainly enrich their lives. and, if its results, as treated statistically, would seem on the whole to have but trifling value, yet the anecdotes and observations of which it in part consist do certainly acquaint us more intimately with our pupils. our eyes and ears grow quickened to discern in the child before us processes similar to those we have read of as noted in the children,--processes of which we might otherwise have remained inobservant. but, for heaven's sake, let the rank and file of teachers be passive readers if they so prefer, and feel free not to contribute to the accumulation. let not the prosecution of it be preached as an imperative duty or imposed by regulation on those to whom it proves an exterminating bore, or who in any way whatever miss in themselves the appropriate vocation for it. i cannot too strongly agree with my colleague, professor münsterberg, when he says that the teacher's attitude toward the child, being concrete and ethical, is positively opposed to the psychological observer's, which is abstract and analytic. although some of us may conjoin the attitudes successfully, in most of us they must conflict. the worst thing that can happen to a good teacher is to get a bad conscience about her profession because she feels herself hopeless as a psychologist. our teachers are overworked already. every one who adds a jot or tittle of unnecessary weight to their burden is a foe of education. a bad conscience increases the weight of every other burden; yet i know that child-study, and other pieces of psychology as well, have been productive of bad conscience in many a really innocent pedagogic breast. i should indeed be glad if this passing word from me might tend to dispel such a bad conscience, if any of you have it; for it is certainly one of those fruits of more or less systematic mystification of which i have already complained. the best teacher may be the poorest contributor of child-study material, and the best contributor may be the poorest teacher. no fact is more palpable than this. so much for what seems the most reasonable general attitude of the teacher toward the subject which is to occupy our attention. ii. the stream of consciousness i said a few minutes ago that the most general elements and workings of the mind are all that the teacher absolutely needs to be acquainted with for his purposes. now the _immediate_ fact which psychology, the science of mind, has to study is also the most general fact. it is the fact that in each of us, when awake (and often when asleep), _some kind of consciousness is always going on_. there is a stream, a succession of states, or waves, or fields (or of whatever you please to call them), of knowledge, of feeling, of desire, of deliberation, etc., that constantly pass and repass, and that constitute our inner life. the existence of this stream is the primal fact, the nature and origin of it form the essential problem, of our science. so far as we class the states or fields of consciousness, write down their several natures, analyze their contents into elements, or trace their habits of succession, we are on the descriptive or analytic level. so far as we ask where they come from or why they are just what they are, we are on the explanatory level. in these talks with you, i shall entirely neglect the questions that come up on the explanatory level. it must be frankly confessed that in no fundamental sense do we know where our successive fields of consciousness come from, or why they have the precise inner constitution which they do have. they certainly follow or accompany our brain states, and of course their special forms are determined by our past experiences and education. but, if we ask just _how_ the brain conditions them, we have not the remotest inkling of an answer to give; and, if we ask just how the education moulds the brain, we can speak but in the most abstract, general, and conjectural terms. on the other hand, if we should say that they are due to a spiritual being called our soul, which reacts on our brain states by these peculiar forms of spiritual energy, our words would be familiar enough, it is true; but i think you will agree that they would offer little genuine explanatory meaning. the truth is that we really _do not know_ the answers to the problems on the explanatory level, even though in some directions of inquiry there may be promising speculations to be found. for our present purposes i shall therefore dismiss them entirely, and turn to mere description. this state of things was what i had in mind when, a moment ago, i said there was no 'new psychology' worthy of the name. _we have thus fields of consciousness_,--that is the first general fact; and the second general fact is that the concrete fields are always complex. they contain sensations of our bodies and of the objects around us, memories of past experiences and thoughts of distant things, feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, desires and aversions, and other emotional conditions, together with determinations of the will, in every variety of permutation and combination. in most of our concrete states of consciousness all these different classes of ingredients are found simultaneously present to some degree, though the relative proportion they bear to one another is very shifting. one state will seem to be composed of hardly anything but sensations, another of hardly anything but memories, etc. but around the sensation, if one consider carefully, there will always be some fringe of thought or will, and around the memory some margin or penumbra of emotion or sensation. in most of our fields of consciousness there is a core of sensation that is very pronounced. you, for example, now, although you are also thinking and feeling, are getting through your eyes sensations of my face and figure, and through your ears sensations of my voice. the sensations are the _centre_ or _focus_, the thoughts and feelings the _margin_, of your actually present conscious field. on the other hand, some object of thought, some distant image, may have become the focus of your mental attention even while i am speaking,--your mind, in short, may have wandered from the lecture; and, in that case, the sensations of my face and voice, although not absolutely vanishing from your conscious field, may have taken up there a very faint and marginal place. again, to take another sort of variation, some feeling connected with your own body may have passed from a marginal to a focal place, even while i speak. the expressions 'focal object' and 'marginal object,' which we owe to mr. lloyd morgan, require, i think, no further explanation. the distinction they embody is a very important one, and they are the first technical terms which i shall ask you to remember. * * * * * in the successive mutations of our fields of consciousness, the process by which one dissolves into another is often very gradual, and all sorts of inner rearrangements of contents occur. sometimes the focus remains but little changed, while the margin alters rapidly. sometimes the focus alters, and the margin stays. sometimes focus and margin change places. sometimes, again, abrupt alterations of the whole field occur. there can seldom be a sharp description. all we know is that, for the most part, each field has a sort of practical unity for its possessor, and that from this practical point of view we can class a field with other fields similar to it, by calling it a state of emotion, of perplexity, of sensation, of abstract thought, of volition, and the like. vague and hazy as such an account of our stream of consciousness may be, it is at least secure from positive error and free from admixture of conjecture or hypothesis. an influential school of psychology, seeking to avoid haziness of outline, has tried to make things appear more exact and scientific by making the analysis more sharp. the various fields of consciousness, according to this school, result from a definite number of perfectly definite elementary mental states, mechanically associated into a mosaic or chemically combined. according to some thinkers,--spencer, for example, or taine,--these resolve themselves at last into little elementary psychic particles or atoms of 'mind-stuff,' out of which all the more immediately known mental states are said to be built up. locke introduced this theory in a somewhat vague form. simple 'ideas' of sensation and reflection, as he called them, were for him the bricks of which our mental architecture is built up. if i ever have to refer to this theory again, i shall refer to it as the theory of 'ideas.' but i shall try to steer clear of it altogether. whether it be true or false, it is at any rate only conjectural; and, for your practical purposes as teachers, the more unpretending conception of the stream of consciousness, with its total waves or fields incessantly changing, will amply suffice.[a] [a] in the light of some of the expectations that are abroad concerning the 'new psychology,' it is instructive to read the unusually candid confession of its founder wundt, after his thirty years of laboratory-experience: "the service which it [the experimental method] can yield consists essentially in perfecting our inner observation, or rather, as i believe, in making this really possible, in any exact sense. well, has our experimental self-observation, so understood, already accomplished aught of importance? no general answer to this question can be given, because in the unfinished state of our science, there is, even inside of the experimental lines of inquiry, no universally accepted body of psychologic doctrine.... "in such a discord of opinions (comprehensible enough at a time of uncertain and groping development), the individual inquirer can only tell for what views and insights he himself has to thank the newer methods. and if i were asked in what for me the worth of experimental observation in psychology has consisted, and still consists, i should say that it has given me an entirely new idea of the nature and connection of our inner processes. i learned in the achievements of the sense of sight to apprehend the fact of creative mental synthesis.... from my inquiry into time-relations, etc.,... i attained an insight into the close union of all those psychic functions usually separated by artificial abstractions and names, such as ideation, feeling, will; and i saw the indivisibility and inner homogeneity, in all its phases, of the mental life. the chronometric study of association-processes finally showed me that the notion of distinct mental 'images' [_reproducirten vorstellungen_] was one of those numerous self-deceptions which are no sooner stamped in a verbal term than they forthwith thrust non-existent fictions into the place of the reality. i learned to understand an 'idea' as a process no less melting and fleeting than an act of feeling or of will, and i comprehended the older doctrine of association of 'ideas' to be no longer tenable.... besides all this, experimental observation yielded much other information about the span of consciousness, the rapidity of certain processes, the exact numerical value of certain psychophysical data, and the like. but i hold all these more special results to be relatively insignificant by-products, and by no means the important thing."--_philosophische studien_, x. - . the whole passage should be read. as i interpret it, it amounts to a complete espousal of the vaguer conception of the stream of thought, and a complete renunciation of the whole business, still so industriously carried on in text-books, of chopping up 'the mind' into distinct units of composition or function, numbering these off, and labelling them by technical names. iii. the child as a behaving organism i wish now to continue the description of the peculiarities of the stream of consciousness by asking whether we can in any intelligible way assign its _functions_. it has two functions that are obvious: it leads to knowledge, and it leads to action. can we say which of these functions is the more essential? an old historic divergence of opinion comes in here. popular belief has always tended to estimate the worth of a man's mental processes by their effects upon his practical life. but philosophers have usually cherished a different view. "man's supreme glory," they have said, "is to be a _rational_ being, to know absolute and eternal and universal truth. the uses of his intellect for practical affairs are therefore subordinate matters. 'the theoretic life' is his soul's genuine concern." nothing can be more different in its results for our personal attitude than to take sides with one or the other of these views, and emphasize the practical or the theoretical ideal. in the latter case, abstraction from the emotions and passions and withdrawal from the strife of human affairs would be not only pardonable, but praiseworthy; and all that makes for quiet and contemplation should be regarded as conducive to the highest human perfection. in the former, the man of contemplation would be treated as only half a human being, passion and practical resource would become once more glories of our race, a concrete victory over this earth's outward powers of darkness would appear an equivalent for any amount of passive spiritual culture, and conduct would remain as the test of every education worthy of the name. it is impossible to disguise the fact that in the psychology of our own day the emphasis is transferred from the mind's purely rational function, where plato and aristotle, and what one may call the whole classic tradition in philosophy had placed it, to the so long neglected practical side. the theory of evolution is mainly responsible for this. man, we now have reason to believe, has been evolved from infra-human ancestors, in whom pure reason hardly existed, if at all, and whose mind, so far as it can have had any function, would appear to have been an organ for adapting their movements to the impressions received from the environment, so as to escape the better from destruction. consciousness would thus seem in the first instance to be nothing but a sort of super-added biological perfection,--useless unless it prompted to useful conduct, and inexplicable apart from that consideration. deep in our own nature the biological foundations of our consciousness persist, undisguised and undiminished. our sensations are here to attract us or to deter us, our memories to warn or encourage us, our feelings to impel, and our thoughts to restrain our behavior, so that on the whole we may prosper and our days be long in the land. whatever of transmundane metaphysical insight or of practically inapplicable æsthetic perception or ethical sentiment we may carry in our interiors might at this rate be regarded as only part of the incidental excess of function that necessarily accompanies the working of every complex machine. i shall ask you now--not meaning at all thereby to close the theoretic question, but merely because it seems to me the point of view likely to be of greatest practical use to you as teachers--to adopt with me, in this course of lectures, the biological conception, as thus expressed, and to lay your own emphasis on the fact that man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life. in the learning of all matters, we have to start with some one deep aspect of the question, abstracting it as if it were the only aspect; and then we gradually correct ourselves by adding those neglected other features which complete the case. no one believes more strongly than i do that what our senses know as 'this world' is only one portion of our mind's total environment and object. yet, because it is the primal portion, it is the _sine qua non_ of all the rest. if you grasp the facts about it firmly, you may proceed to higher regions undisturbed. as our time must be so short together, i prefer being elementary and fundamental to being complete, so i propose to you to hold fast to the ultra-simple point of view. the reasons why i call it so fundamental can be easily told. first, human and animal psychology thereby become less discontinuous. i know that to some of you this will hardly seem an attractive reason, but there are others whom it will affect. second, mental action is conditioned by brain action, and runs parallel therewith. but the brain, so far as we understand it, is given us for practical behavior. every current that runs into it from skin or eye or ear runs out again into muscles, glands, or viscera, and helps to adapt the animal to the environment from which the current came. it therefore generalizes and simplifies our view to treat the brain life and the mental life as having one fundamental kind of purpose. third, those very functions of the mind that do not refer directly to this world's environment, the ethical utopias, æsthetic visions, insights into eternal truth, and fanciful logical combinations, could never be carried on at all by a human individual, unless the mind that produced them in him were also able to produce more practically useful products. the latter are thus the more essential, or at least the more primordial results. fourth, the inessential 'unpractical' activities are themselves far more connected with our behavior and our adaptation to the environment than at first sight might appear. no truth, however abstract, is ever perceived, that will not probably at some time influence our earthly action. you must remember that, when i talk of action here, i mean action in the widest sense. i mean speech, i mean writing, i mean yeses and noes, and tendencies 'from' things and tendencies 'toward' things, and emotional determinations; and i mean them in the future as well as in the immediate present. as i talk here, and you listen, it might seem as if no action followed. you might call it a purely theoretic process, with no practical result. but it _must_ have a practical result. it cannot take place at all and leave your conduct unaffected. if not to-day, then on some far future day, you will answer some question differently by reason of what you are thinking now. some of you will be led by my words into new veins of inquiry, into reading special books. these will develop your opinion, whether for or against. that opinion will in turn be expressed, will receive criticism from others in your environment, and will affect your standing in their eyes. we cannot escape our destiny, which is practical; and even our most theoretic faculties contribute to its working out. these few reasons will perhaps smooth the way for you to acquiescence in my proposal. as teachers, i sincerely think it will be a sufficient conception for you to adopt of the youthful psychological phenomena handed over to your inspection if you consider them from the point of view of their relation to the future conduct of their possessor. sufficient at any rate as a first conception and as a main conception. you should regard your professional task as if it consisted chiefly and essentially in _training the pupil to behavior_; taking behavior, not in the narrow sense of his manners, but in the very widest possible sense, as including every possible sort of fit reaction on the circumstances into which he may find himself brought by the vicissitudes of life. the reaction may, indeed, often be a negative reaction. _not_ to speak, _not_ to move, is one of the most important of our duties, in certain practical emergencies. "thou shalt refrain, renounce, abstain"! this often requires a great effort of will power, and, physiologically considered, is just as positive a nerve function as is motor discharge. iv. education and behavior in our foregoing talk we were led to frame a very simple conception of what an education means. in the last analysis it consists in the organizing of _resources_ in the human being, of powers of conduct which shall fit him to his social and physical world. an 'uneducated' person is one who is nonplussed by all but the most habitual situations. on the contrary, one who is educated is able practically to extricate himself, by means of the examples with which his memory is stored and of the abstract conceptions which he has acquired, from circumstances in which he never was placed before. education, in short, cannot be better described than by calling it _the organization of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to behavior_. to illustrate. you and i are each and all of us educated, in our several ways; and we show our education at this present moment by different conduct. it would be quite impossible for me, with my mind technically and professionally organized as it is, and with the optical stimulus which your presence affords, to remain sitting here entirely silent and inactive. something tells me that i am expected to speak, and must speak; something forces me to keep on speaking. my organs of articulation are continuously innervated by outgoing currents, which the currents passing inward at my eyes and through my educated brain have set in motion; and the particular movements which they make have their form and order determined altogether by the training of all my past years of lecturing and reading. your conduct, on the other hand, might seem at first sight purely receptive and inactive,--leaving out those among you who happen to be taking notes. but the very listening which you are carrying on is itself a determinate kind of conduct. all the muscular tensions of your body are distributed in a peculiar way as you listen. your head, your eyes, are fixed characteristically. and, when the lecture is over, it will inevitably eventuate in some stroke of behavior, as i said on the previous occasion: you may be guided differently in some special emergency in the schoolroom by words which i now let fall.--so it is with the impressions you will make there on your pupil. you should get into the habit of regarding them all as leading to the acquisition by him of capacities for behavior,--emotional, social, bodily, vocal, technical, or what not. and, this being the case, you ought to feel willing, in a general way, and without hair-splitting or farther ado, to take up for the purposes of these lectures with the biological conception of the mind, as of something given us for practical use. that conception will certainly cover the greater part of your own educational work. if we reflect upon the various ideals of education that are prevalent in the different countries, we see that what they all aim at is to organize capacities for conduct. this is most immediately obvious in germany, where the explicitly avowed aim of the higher education is to turn the student into an instrument for advancing scientific discovery. the german universities are proud of the number of young specialists whom they turn out every year,--not necessarily men of any original force of intellect, but men so trained to research that when their professor gives them an historical or philological thesis to prepare, or a bit of laboratory work to do, with a general indication as to the best method, they can go off by themselves and use apparatus and consult sources in such a way as to grind out in the requisite number of months some little pepper-corn of new truth worthy of being added to the store of extant human information on that subject. little else is recognized in germany as a man's title to academic advancement than his ability thus to show himself an efficient instrument of research. in england, it might seem at first sight as if the higher education of the universities aimed at the production of certain static types of character rather than at the development of what one may call this dynamic scientific efficiency. professor jowett, when asked what oxford could do for its students, is said to have replied, "oxford can teach an english gentleman how to _be_ an english gentleman." but, if you ask what it means to 'be' an english gentleman, the only reply is in terms of conduct and behavior. an english gentleman is a bundle of specifically qualified reactions, a creature who for all the emergencies of life has his line of behavior distinctly marked out for him in advance. here, as elsewhere, england expects every man to do his duty. v. the necessity of reactions if all this be true, then immediately one general aphorism emerges which ought by logical right to dominate the entire conduct of the teacher in the classroom. _no reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression_,--this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget. an impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears, and in no way modifies his active life, is an impression gone to waste. it is physiologically incomplete. it leaves no fruits behind it in the way of capacity acquired. even as mere impression, it fails to produce its proper effect upon the memory; for, to remain fully among the acquisitions of this latter faculty, it must be wrought into the whole cycle of our operations. its _motor consequences_ are what clinch it. some effect due to it in the way of an activity must return to the mind in the form of the _sensation of having acted_, and connect itself with the impression. the most durable impressions are those on account of which we speak or act, or else are inwardly convulsed. the older pedagogic method of learning things by rote, and reciting them parrot-like in the schoolroom, rested on the truth that a thing merely read or heard, and never verbally reproduced, contracts the weakest possible adhesion in the mind. verbal recitation or reproduction is thus a highly important kind of reactive behavior on our impressions; and it is to be feared that, in the reaction against the old parrot-recitations as the beginning and end of instruction, the extreme value of verbal recitation as an element of complete training may nowadays be too much forgotten. when we turn to modern pedagogics, we see how enormously the field of reactive conduct has been extended by the introduction of all those methods of concrete object teaching which are the glory of our contemporary schools. verbal reactions, useful as they are, are insufficient. the pupil's words may be right, but the conceptions corresponding to them are often direfully wrong. in a modern school, therefore, they form only a small part of what the pupil is required to do. he must keep notebooks, make drawings, plans, and maps, take measurements, enter the laboratory and perform experiments, consult authorities, and write essays. he must do in his fashion what is often laughed at by outsiders when it appears in prospectuses under the title of 'original work,' but what is really the only possible training for the doing of original work thereafter. the most colossal improvement which recent years have seen in secondary education lies in the introduction of the manual training schools; not because they will give us a people more handy and practical for domestic life and better skilled in trades, but because they will give us citizens with an entirely different intellectual fibre. laboratory work and shop work engender a habit of observation, a knowledge of the difference between accuracy and vagueness, and an insight into nature's complexity and into the inadequacy of all abstract verbal accounts of real phenomena, which once wrought into the mind, remain there as lifelong possessions. they confer precision; because, if you are _doing_ a thing, you must do it definitely right or definitely wrong. they give honesty; for, when you express yourself by making things, and not by using words, it becomes impossible to dissimulate your vagueness or ignorance by ambiguity. they beget a habit of self-reliance; they keep the interest and attention always cheerfully engaged, and reduce the teacher's disciplinary functions to a minimum. of the various systems of manual training, so far as woodwork is concerned, the swedish sloyd system, if i may have an opinion on such matters, seems to me by far the best, psychologically considered. manual training methods, fortunately, are being slowly but surely introduced into all our large cities. but there is still an immense distance to traverse before they shall have gained the extension which they are destined ultimately to possess. * * * * * no impression without expression, then,--that is the first pedagogic fruit of our evolutionary conception of the mind as something instrumental to adaptive behavior. but a word may be said in continuation. the expression itself comes back to us, as i intimated a moment ago, in the form of a still farther impression,--the impression, namely, of what we have done. we thus receive sensible news of our behavior and its results. we hear the words we have spoken, feel our own blow as we give it, or read in the bystander's eyes the success or failure of our conduct. now this return wave of impression pertains to the completeness of the whole experience, and a word about its importance in the schoolroom may not be out of place. it would seem only natural to say that, since after acting we normally get some return impression of result, it must be well to let the pupil get such a return impression in every possible case. nevertheless, in schools where examination marks and 'standing' and other returns of result are concealed, the pupil is frustrated of this natural termination of the cycle of his activities, and often suffers from the sense of incompleteness and uncertainty; and there are persons who defend this system as encouraging the pupil to work for the work's sake, and not for extraneous reward. of course, here as elsewhere, concrete experience must prevail over psychological deduction. but, so far as our psychological deduction goes, it would suggest that the pupil's eagerness to know how well he does is in the line of his normal completeness of function, and should never be balked except for very definite reasons indeed. acquaint them, therefore, with their marks and standing and prospects, unless in the individual case you have some special practical reason for not so doing. vi. native reactions and acquired reactions we are by this time fully launched upon the biological conception. man is an organism for reacting on impressions: his mind is there to help determine his reactions, and the purpose of his education is to make them numerous and perfect. _our education means, in short, little more than a mass of possibilities of reaction,_ acquired at home, at school, or in the training of affairs. the teacher's task is that of supervising the acquiring process. this being the case, i will immediately state a principle which underlies the whole process of acquisition and governs the entire activity of the teacher. it is this:-- _every acquired reaction is, as a rule, either a complication grafted on a native reaction, or a substitute for a native reaction, which the same object originally tended to provoke._ _the teacher's art consists in bringing about the substitution or complication, and success in the art presupposes a sympathetic acquaintance with the reactive tendencies natively there_. without an equipment of native reactions on the child's part, the teacher would have no hold whatever upon the child's attention or conduct. you may take a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink; and so you may take a child to the schoolroom, but you cannot make him learn the new things you wish to impart, except by soliciting him in the first instance by something which natively makes him react. he must take the first step himself. he must _do_ something before you can get your purchase on him. that something may be something good or something bad. a bad reaction is better than no reaction at all; for, if bad, you can couple it with consequences which awake him to its badness. but imagine a child so lifeless as to react in _no_ way to the teacher's first appeals, and how can you possibly take the first step in his education? to make this abstract conception more concrete, assume the case of a young child's training in good manners. the child has a native tendency to snatch with his hands at anything that attracts his curiosity; also to draw back his hands when slapped, to cry under these latter conditions, to smile when gently spoken to, and to imitate one's gestures. suppose now you appear before the child with a new toy intended as a present for him. no sooner does he see the toy than he seeks to snatch it. you slap the hand; it is withdrawn, and the child cries. you then hold up the toy, smiling and saying, "beg for it nicely,--so!" the child stops crying, imitates you, receives the toy, and crows with pleasure; and that little cycle of training is complete. you have substituted the new reaction of 'begging' for the native reaction of snatching, when that kind of impression comes. now, if the child had no memory, the process would not be educative. no matter how often you came in with a toy, the same series of reactions would fatally occur, each called forth by its own impression: see, snatch; slap, cry; hear, ask; receive, smile. but, with memory there, the child, at the very instant of snatching, recalls the rest of the earlier experience, thinks of the slap and the frustration, recollects the begging and the reward, inhibits the snatching impulse, substitutes the 'nice' reaction for it, and gets the toy immediately, by eliminating all the intermediary steps. if a child's first snatching impulse be excessive or his memory poor, many repetitions of the discipline may be needed before the acquired reaction comes to be an ingrained habit; but in an eminently educable child a single experience will suffice. one can easily represent the whole process by a brain-diagram. such a diagram can be little more than a symbolic translation of the immediate experience into spatial terms; yet it may be useful, so i subjoin it. [illustration: figure . the brain-processes before education.] figure shows the paths of the four successive reflexes executed by the lower or instinctive centres. the dotted lines that lead from them to the higher centres and connect the latter together, represent the processes of memory and association which the reactions impress upon the higher centres as they take place. [illustration: figure . the brain-process after education.] in figure we have the final result. the impression _see_ awakens the chain of memories, and the only reactions that take place are the _beg_ and _smile_. the thought of the _slap_, connected with the activity of centre , inhibits the _snatch_, and makes it abortive, so it is represented only by a dotted line of discharge not reaching the terminus. ditto of the _cry_ reaction. these are, as it were, short-circuited by the current sweeping through the higher centres from _see_ to _smile_. _beg_ and _smile_, thus substituted for the original reaction _snatch_, become at last the immediate responses when the child sees a snatchable object in some one's hands. the first thing, then, for the teacher to understand is the native reactive tendencies,--the impulses and instincts of childhood,--so as to be able to substitute one for another, and turn them on to artificial objects. * * * * * it is often said that man is distinguished from the lower animals by having a much smaller assortment of native instincts and impulses than they, but this is a great mistake. man, of course, has not the marvellous egg-laying instincts which some articulates have; but, if we compare him with the mammalia, we are forced to confess that he is appealed to by a much larger array of objects than any other mammal, that his reactions on these objects are characteristic and determinate in a very high degree. the monkeys, and especially the anthropoids, are the only beings that approach him in their analytic curiosity and width of imitativeness. his instinctive impulses, it is true, get overlaid by the secondary reactions due to his superior reasoning power; but thus man loses the _simply_ instinctive demeanor. but the life of instinct is only disguised in him, not lost; and when the higher brain-functions are in abeyance, as happens in imbecility or dementia, his instincts sometimes show their presence in truly brutish ways. i will therefore say a few words about those instinctive tendencies which are the most important from the teacher's point of view. vii. what the native reactions are first of all, _fear_. fear of punishment has always been the great weapon of the teacher, and will always, of course, retain some place in the conditions of the schoolroom. the subject is so familiar that nothing more need be said about it. the same is true of _love_, and the instinctive desire to please those whom we love. the teacher who succeeds in getting herself loved by the pupils will obtain results which one of a more forbidding temperament finds it impossible to secure. next, a word might be said about _curiosity_. this is perhaps a rather poor term by which to designate the _impulse toward better cognition_ in its full extent; but you will readily understand what i mean. novelties in the way of sensible objects, especially if their sensational quality is bright, vivid, startling, invariably arrest the attention of the young and hold it until the desire to know more about the object is assuaged. in its higher, more intellectual form, the impulse toward completer knowledge takes the character of scientific or philosophic curiosity. in both its sensational and its intellectual form the instinct is more vivacious during childhood and youth than in after life. young children are possessed by curiosity about every new impression that assails them. it would be quite impossible for a young child to listen to a lecture for more than a few minutes, as you are now listening to me. the outside sights and sounds would inevitably carry his attention off. and, for most people in middle life, the sort of intellectual effort required of the average schoolboy in mastering his greek or latin lesson, his algebra or physics, would be out of the question. the middle-aged citizen attends exclusively to the routine details of his business; and new truths, especially when they require involved trains of close reasoning, are no longer within the scope of his capacity. the sensational curiosity of childhood is appealed to more particularly by certain determinate kinds of objects. material things, things that move, living things, human actions and accounts of human action, will win the attention better than anything that is more abstract. here again comes in the advantage of the object-teaching and manual training methods. the pupil's attention is spontaneously held by any problem that involves the presentation of a new material object or of an activity on any one's part. the teacher's earliest appeals, therefore, must be through objects shown or acts performed or described. theoretic curiosity, curiosity about the rational relations between things, can hardly be said to awake at all until adolescence is reached. the sporadic metaphysical inquiries of children as to who made god, and why they have five fingers, need hardly be counted here. but, when the theoretic instinct is once alive in the pupil, an entirely new order of pedagogic relations begins for him. reasons, causes, abstract conceptions, suddenly grow full of zest, a fact with which all teachers are familiar. and, both in its sensible and in its rational developments, disinterested curiosity may be successfully appealed to in the child with much more certainty than in the adult, in whom this intellectual instinct has grown so torpid as usually never to awake unless it enters into association with some selfish personal interest. of this latter point i will say more anon. _imitation_. man has always been recognized as the imitative animal _par excellence_. and there is hardly a book on psychology, however old, which has not devoted at least one paragraph to this fact. it is strange, however, that the full scope and pregnancy of the imitative impulse in man has had to wait till the last dozen years to become adequately recognized. m. tarde led the way in his admirably original work, "les lois de l'imitation"; and in our own country professors royce and baldwin have kept the ball rolling with all the energy that could be desired. each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitativeness. we become conscious of what we ourselves are by imitating others--the consciousness of what the others are precedes--the sense of self grows by the sense of pattern. the entire accumulated wealth of mankind--languages, arts, institutions, and sciences--is passed on from one generation to another by what baldwin has called social heredity, each generation simply imitating the last. into the particulars of this most fascinating chapter of psychology i have no time to go. the moment one hears tarde's proposition uttered, however, one feels how supremely true it is. invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked. imitation shades imperceptibly into _emulation_. emulation is the impulse to imitate what you see another doing, in order not to appear inferior; and it is hard to draw a sharp line between the manifestations of the two impulses, so inextricably do they mix their effects. emulation is the very nerve of human society. why are you, my hearers, sitting here before me? if no one whom you ever heard of had attended a 'summer school' or teachers' institute, would it have occurred to any one of you to break out independently and do a thing so unprescribed by fashion? probably not. nor would your pupils come to you unless the children of their parents' neighbors were all simultaneously being sent to school. we wish not to be lonely or eccentric, and we wish not to be cut off from our share in things which to our neighbors seem desirable privileges. in the schoolroom, imitation and emulation play absolutely vital parts. every teacher knows the advantage of having certain things performed by whole bands of children at a time. the teacher who meets with most success is the teacher whose own ways are the most imitable. a teacher should never try to make the pupils do a thing which she cannot do herself. "come and let me show you how" is an incomparably better stimulus than "go and do it as the book directs." children admire a teacher who has skill. what he does seems easy, and they wish to emulate it. it is useless for a dull and devitalized teacher to exhort her pupils to wake up and take an interest. she must first take one herself; then her example is effective, as no exhortation can possibly be. every school has its tone, moral and intellectual. and this tone is a mere tradition kept up by imitation, due in the first instance to the example set by teachers and by previous pupils of an aggressive and dominating type, copied by the others, and passed on from year to year, so that the new pupils take the cue almost immediately. such a tone changes very slowly, if at all; and then always under the modifying influence of new personalities aggressive enough in character to set new patterns and not merely to copy the old. the classic example of this sort of tone is the often quoted case of rugby under dr. arnold's administration. he impressed his own character as a model on the imagination of the oldest boys, who in turn were expected and required to impress theirs upon the younger set. the contagiousness of arnold's genius was such that a rugby man was said to be recognizable all through life by a peculiar turn of character which he acquired at school. it is obvious that psychology as such can give in this field no precepts of detail. as in so many other fields of teaching, success depends mainly on the native genius of the teacher, the sympathy, tact, and perception which enable him to seize the right moment and to set the right example. among the recent modern reforms of teaching methods, a certain disparagement of emulation, as a laudable spring of action in the schoolroom, has often made itself heard. more than a century ago, rousseau, in his 'Ã�mile,' branded rivalry between one pupil and another as too base a passion to play a part in an ideal education. "let Ã�mile," he said, "never be led to compare himself to other children. no rivalries, not even in running, as soon as he begins to have the power of reason. it were a hundred times better that he should not learn at all what he could only learn through jealousy or vanity. but i would mark out every year the progress he may have made, and i would compare it with the progress of the following years. i would say to him: 'you are now grown so many inches taller; there is the ditch which you jumped over, there is the burden which you raised. there is the distance to which you could throw a pebble, there the distance you could run over without losing breath. see how much more you can do now!' thus i should excite him without making him jealous of any one. he would wish to surpass himself. i can see no inconvenience in this emulation with his former self." unquestionably, emulation with one's former self is a noble form of the passion of rivalry, and has a wide scope in the training of the young. but to veto and taboo all possible rivalry of one youth with another, because such rivalry may degenerate into greedy and selfish excess, does seem to savor somewhat of sentimentality, or even of fanaticism. the feeling of rivalry lies at the very basis of our being, all social improvement being largely due to it. there is a noble and generous kind of rivalry, as well as a spiteful and greedy kind; and the noble and generous form is particularly common in childhood. all games owe the zest which they bring with them to the fact that they are rooted in the emulous passion, yet they are the chief means of training in fairness and magnanimity. can the teacher afford to throw such an ally away? ought we seriously to hope that marks, distinctions, prizes, and other goals of effort, based on the pursuit of recognized superiority, should be forever banished from our schools? as a psychologist, obliged to notice the deep and pervasive character of the emulous passion, i must confess my doubts. the wise teacher will use this instinct as he uses others, reaping its advantages, and appealing to it in such a way as to reap a maximum of benefit with a minimum of harm; for, after all, we must confess, with a french critic of rousseau's doctrine, that the deepest spring of action in us is the sight of action in another. the spectacle of effort is what awakens and sustains our own effort. no runner running all alone on a race-track will find in his own will the power of stimulation which his rivalry with other runners incites, when he feels them at his heels, about to pass. when a trotting horse is 'speeded,' a running horse must go beside him to keep him to the pace. as imitation slides into emulation, so emulation slides into _ambition_; and ambition connects itself closely with _pugnacity_ and _pride_. consequently, these five instinctive tendencies form an interconnected group of factors, hard to separate in the determination of a great deal of our conduct. the _ambitious impulses_ would perhaps be the best name for the whole group. pride and pugnacity have often been considered unworthy passions to appeal to in the young. but in their more refined and noble forms they play a great part in the schoolroom and in education generally, being in some characters most potent spurs to effort. pugnacity need not be thought of merely in the form of physical combativeness. it can be taken in the sense of a general unwillingness to be beaten by any kind of difficulty. it is what makes us feel 'stumped' and challenged by arduous achievements, and is essential to a spirited and enterprising character. we have of late been hearing much of the philosophy of tenderness in education; 'interest' must be assiduously awakened in everything, difficulties must be smoothed away. _soft_ pedagogics have taken the place of the old steep and rocky path to learning. but from this lukewarm air the bracing oxygen of effort is left out. it is nonsense to suppose that every step in education _can_ be interesting. the fighting impulse must often be appealed to. make the pupil feel ashamed of being scared at fractions, of being 'downed' by the law of falling bodies; rouse his pugnacity and pride, and he will rush at the difficult places with a sort of inner wrath at himself that is one of his best moral faculties. a victory scored under such conditions becomes a turning-point and crisis of his character. it represents the high-water mark of his powers, and serves thereafter as an ideal pattern for his self-imitation. the teacher who never rouses this sort of pugnacious excitement in his pupils falls short of one of his best forms of usefulness. the next instinct which i shall mention is that of _ownership_, also one of the radical endowments of the race. it often is the antagonist of imitation. whether social progress is due more to the passion for keeping old things and habits or to the passion of imitating and acquiring new ones may in some cases be a difficult thing to decide. the sense of ownership begins in the second year of life. among the first words which an infant learns to utter are the words 'my' and 'mine,' and woe to the parents of twins who fail to provide their gifts in duplicate. the depth and primitiveness of this instinct would seem to cast a sort of psychological discredit in advance upon all radical forms of communistic utopia. private proprietorship cannot be practically abolished until human nature is changed. it seems essential to mental health that the individual should have something beyond the bare clothes on his back to which he can assert exclusive possession, and which he may defend adversely against the world. even those religious orders who make the most stringent vows of poverty have found it necessary to relax the rule a little in favor of the human heart made unhappy by reduction to too disinterested terms. the monk must have his books: the nun must have her little garden, and the images and pictures in her room. in education, the instinct of ownership is fundamental, and can be appealed to in many ways. in the house, training in order and neatness begins with the arrangement of the child's own personal possessions. in the school, ownership is particularly important in connection with one of its special forms of activity, the collecting impulse. an object possibly not very interesting in itself, like a shell, a postage stamp, or a single map or drawing, will acquire an interest if it fills a gap in a collection or helps to complete a series. much of the scholarly work of the world, so far as it is mere bibliography, memory, and erudition (and this lies at the basis of all our human scholarship), would seem to owe its interest rather to the way in which it gratifies the accumulating and collecting instinct than to any special appeal which it makes to our cravings after rationality. a man wishes a complete collection of information, wishes to know more about a subject than anybody else, much as another may wish to own more dollars or more early editions or more engravings before the letter than anybody else. the teacher who can work this impulse into the school tasks is fortunate. almost all children collect something. a tactful teacher may get them to take pleasure in collecting books; in keeping a neat and orderly collection of notes; in starting, when they are mature enough, a card catalogue; in preserving every drawing or map which they may make. neatness, order, and method are thus instinctively gained, along with the other benefits which the possession of the collection entails. even such a noisome thing as a collection of postage stamps may be used by the teacher as an inciter of interest in the geographical and historical information which she desires to impart. sloyd successfully avails itself of this instinct in causing the pupil to make a collection of wooden implements fit for his own private use at home. collecting is, of course, the basis of all natural history study; and probably nobody ever became a good naturalist who was not an unusually active collector when a boy. _constructiveness_ is another great instinctive tendency with which the schoolroom has to contract an alliance. up to the eighth or ninth year of childhood one may say that the child does hardly anything else than handle objects, explore things with his hands, doing and undoing, setting up and knocking down, putting together and pulling apart; for, from the psychological point of view, construction and destruction are two names for the same manual activity. both signify the production of change, and the working of effects, in outward things. the result of all this is that intimate familiarity with the physical environment, that acquaintance with the properties of material things, which is really the foundation of human _consciousness_. to the very last, in most of us, the conceptions of objects and their properties are limited to the notion of what we can _do with them_. a 'stick' means something we can lean upon or strike with; 'fire,' something to cook, or warm ourselves, or burn things up withal; 'string,' something with which to tie things together. for most people these objects have no other meaning. in geometry, the cylinder, circle, sphere, are defined as what you get by going through certain processes of construction, revolving a parallelogram upon one of its sides, etc. the more different kinds of things a child thus gets to know by treating and handling them, the more confident grows his sense of kinship with the world in which he lives. an unsympathetic adult will wonder at the fascinated hours which a child will spend in putting his blocks together and rearranging them. but the wise education takes the tide at the flood, and from the kindergarten upward devotes the first years of education to training in construction and to object-teaching. i need not recapitulate here what i said awhile back about the superiority of the objective and experimental methods. they occupy the pupil in a way most congruous with the spontaneous interests of his age. they absorb him, and leave impressions durable and profound. compared with the youth taught by these methods, one brought up exclusively by books carries through life a certain remoteness from reality: he stands, as it were, out of the pale, and feels that he stands so; and often suffers a kind of melancholy from which he might have been rescued by a more real education. there are other impulses, such as love of approbation or vanity, shyness and secretiveness, of which a word might be said; but they are too familiar to need it. you can easily pursue the subject by your own reflection. there is one general law, however, that relates to many of our instinctive tendencies, and that has no little importance in education; and i must refer to it briefly before i leave the subject. it has been called the law of transitoriness in instincts. many of our impulsive tendencies ripen at a certain period; and, if the appropriate objects be then and there provided, habits of conduct toward them are acquired which last. but, if the objects be not forthcoming then, the impulse may die out before a habit is formed; and later it may be hard to teach the creature to react appropriately in those directions. the sucking instincts in mammals, the following instinct in certain birds and quadrupeds, are examples of this: they fade away shortly after birth. in children we observe a ripening of impulses and interests in a certain determinate order. creeping, walking, climbing, imitating vocal sounds, constructing, drawing, calculating, possess the child in succession; and in some children the possession, while it lasts, may be of a semi-frantic and exclusive sort. later, the interest in any one of these things may wholly fade away. of course, the proper pedagogic moment to work skill in, and to clench the useful habit, is when the native impulse is most acutely present. crowd on the athletic opportunities, the mental arithmetic, the verse-learning, the drawing, the botany, or what not, the moment you have reason to think the hour is ripe. the hour may not last long, and while it continues you may safely let all the child's other occupations take a second place. in this way you economize time and deepen skill; for many an infant prodigy, artistic or mathematical, has a flowering epoch of but a few months. one can draw no specific rules for all this. it depends on close observation in the particular case, and parents here have a great advantage over teachers. in fact, the law of transitoriness has little chance of individualized application in the schools. such is the little interested and impulsive psychophysical organism whose springs of action the teacher must divine, and to whose ways he must become accustomed. he must start with the native tendencies, and enlarge the pupil's entire passive and active experience. he must ply him with new objects and stimuli, and make him taste the fruits of his behavior, so that now that whole context of remembered experience is what shall determine his conduct when he gets the stimulus, and not the bare immediate impression. as the pupil's life thus enlarges, it gets fuller and fuller of all sorts of memories and associations and substitutions; but the eye accustomed to psychological analysis will discern, underneath it all, the outlines of our simple psychophysical scheme. respect then, i beg you, always the original reactions, even when you are seeking to overcome their connection with certain objects, and to supplant them with others that you wish to make the rule. bad behavior, from the point of view of the teacher's art, is as good a starting-point as good behavior. in fact, paradoxical as it may sound to say so, it is often a better starting-point than good behavior would be. the acquired reactions must be made habitual whenever they are appropriate. therefore habit is the next subject to which your attention is invited. viii. the laws of habit it is very important that teachers should realize the importance of habit, and psychology helps us greatly at this point. we speak, it is true, of good habits and of bad habits; but, when people use the word 'habit,' in the majority of instances it is a bad habit which they have in mind. they talk of the smoking-habit and the swearing-habit and the drinking-habit, but not of the abstention-habit or the moderation-habit or the courage-habit. but the fact is that our virtues are habits as much as our vices. all our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits,--practical, emotional, and intellectual,--systematically organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be. since pupils can understand this at a comparatively early age, and since to understand it contributes in no small measure to their feeling of responsibility, it would be well if the teacher were able himself to talk to them of the philosophy of habit in some such abstract terms as i am now about to talk of it to you. i believe that we are subject to the law of habit in consequence of the fact that we have bodies. the plasticity of the living matter of our nervous system, in short, is the reason why we do a thing with difficulty the first time, but soon do it more and more easily, and finally, with sufficient practice, do it semi-mechanically, or with hardly any consciousness at all. our nervous systems have (in dr. carpenter's words) _grown_ to the way in which they have been exercised, just as a sheet of paper or a coat, once creased or folded, tends to fall forever afterward into the same identical folds. habit is thus a second nature, or rather, as the duke of wellington said, it is 'ten times nature,'--at any rate as regards its importance in adult life; for the acquired habits of our training have by that time inhibited or strangled most of the natural impulsive tendencies which were originally there. ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night. our dressing and undressing, our eating and drinking, our greetings and partings, our hat-raisings and giving way for ladies to precede, nay, even most of the forms of our common speech, are things of a type so fixed by repetition as almost to be classed as reflex actions. to each sort of impression we have an automatic, ready-made response. my very words to you now are an example of what i mean; for having already lectured upon habit and printed a chapter about it in a book, and read the latter when in print, i find my tongue inevitably falling into its old phrases and repeating almost literally what i said before. so far as we are thus mere bundles of habit, we are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves. and since this, under any circumstances, is what we always tend to become, it follows first of all that the teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him throughout life. education is for behavior, and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists. to quote my earlier book directly, the great thing in all education is to _make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy_. it is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. _for this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can_, and as carefully guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous. the more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. there is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work are subjects of express volitional deliberation. full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding or regretting of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. if there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my hearers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right. in professor bain's chapter on 'the moral habits' there are some admirable practical remarks laid down. two great maxims emerge from the treatment. the first is that in the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to _launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible_. accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall reinforce the right motives; put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelope your resolution with every aid you know. this will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all. i remember long ago reading in an austrian paper the advertisement of a certain rudolph somebody, who promised fifty gulden reward to any one who after that date should find him at the wine-shop of ambrosius so-and-so. 'this i do,' the advertisement continued, 'in consequence of a promise which i have made my wife.' with such a wife, and such an understanding of the way in which to start new habits, it would be safe to stake one's money on rudolph's ultimate success. the second maxim is, _never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life_. each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up: a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. continuity of training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly right. as professor bain says:-- "the peculiarity of the moral habits, contradistinguishing them from the intellectual acquisitions, is the presence of two hostile powers, one to be gradually raised into the ascendant over the other. it is necessary above all things, in such a situation, never to lose a battle. every gain on the wrong side undoes the effect of many conquests on the right. the essential precaution, therefore, is so to regulate the two opposing powers that the one may have a series of uninterrupted successes, until repetition has fortified it to such a degree as to enable it to cope with the opposition, under any circumstances. this is the theoretically best career of mental progress." a third maxim may be added to the preceding pair: _seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain._ it is not in the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and aspirations communicate the new 'set' to the brain. no matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. with good intentions, hell proverbially is paved. this is an obvious consequence of the principles i have laid down. a 'character,' as j.s. mill says, 'is a completely fashioned will'; and a will, in the sense in which he means it, is an aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm and prompt and definite way upon all the principal emergencies of life. a tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur, and the brain 'grows' to their use. when a resolve or a fine glow of feeling is allowed to evaporate without bearing practical fruit, it is worse than a chance lost: it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. there is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility, but never does a concrete manly deed. this leads to a fourth maxim. _don't preach too much to your pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract_. lie in wait rather for the practical opportunities, be prompt to seize those as they pass, and thus at one operation get your pupils both to think, to feel, and to do. the strokes of _behavior_ are what give the new set to the character, and work the good habits into its organic tissue. preaching and talking too soon become an ineffectual bore. * * * * * there is a passage in darwin's short autobiography which has been often quoted, and which, for the sake of its bearing on our subject of habit, i must now quote again. darwin says: "up to the age of thirty or beyond it, poetry of many kinds gave me great pleasure; and even as a schoolboy i took intense delight in shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. i have also said that pictures formerly gave me considerable, and music very great delight. but now for many years i cannot endure to read a line of poetry. i have tried lately to read shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. i have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music.... my mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts; but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, i cannot conceive.... if i had to live my life again, i would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept alive through use. the loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature." we all intend when young to be all that may become a man, before the destroyer cuts us down. we wish and expect to enjoy poetry always, to grow more and more intelligent about pictures and music, to keep in touch with spiritual and religious ideas, and even not to let the greater philosophic thoughts of our time develop quite beyond our view. we mean all this in youth, i say; and yet in how many middle-aged men and women is such an honest and sanguine expectation fulfilled? surely, in comparatively few; and the laws of habit show us why. some interest in each of these things arises in everybody at the proper age; but, if not persistently fed with the appropriate matter, instead of growing into a powerful and necessary habit, it atrophies and dies, choked by the rival interests to which the daily food is given. we make ourselves into darwins in this negative respect by persistently ignoring the essential practical conditions of our case. we say abstractly: "i mean to enjoy poetry, and to absorb a lot of it, of course. i fully intend to keep up my love of music, to read the books that shall give new turns to the thought of my time, to keep my higher spiritual side alive, etc." but we do not attack these things concretely, and we do not begin _to-day. _we forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. we postpone and postpone, until those smiling possibilities are dead. whereas ten minutes a day of poetry, of spiritual reading or meditation, and an hour or two a week at music, pictures, or philosophy, provided we began _now_ and suffered no remission, would infallibly give us in due time the fulness of all we desire. by neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities. this is a point concerning which you teachers might well give a little timely information to your older and more aspiring pupils. according as a function receives daily exercise or not, the man becomes a different kind of being in later life. we have lately had a number of accomplished hindoo visitors at cambridge, who talked freely of life and philosophy. more than one of them has confided to me that the sight of our faces, all contracted as they are with the habitual american over-intensity and anxiety of expression, and our ungraceful and distorted attitudes when sitting, made on him a very painful impression. "i do not see," said one, "how it is possible for you to live as you do, without a single minute in your day deliberately given to tranquillity and meditation. it is an invariable part of our hindoo life to retire for at least half an hour daily into silence, to relax our muscles, govern our breathing, and meditate on eternal things. every hindoo child is trained to this from a very early age." the good fruits of such a discipline were obvious in the physical repose and lack of tension, and the wonderful smoothness and calmness of facial expression, and imperturbability of manner of these orientals. i felt that my countrymen were depriving themselves of an essential grace of character. how many american children ever hear it said by parent or teacher, that they should moderate their piercing voices, that they should relax their unused muscles, and as far as possible, when sitting, sit quite still? not one in a thousand, not one in five thousand! yet, from its reflex influence on the inner mental states, this ceaseless over-tension, over-motion, and over-expression are working on us grievous national harm. i beg you teachers to think a little seriously of this matter. perhaps you can help our rising generation of americans toward the beginning of a better set of personal ideals.[b] [b] see the address on the gospel of relaxation, later in this volume. * * * * * to go back now to our general maxims, i may at last, as a fifth and final practical maxim about habits, offer something like this: _keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day._ that is, be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty, so that, when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. the tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. but, if the fire _does_ come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. so with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. he will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast. * * * * * i have been accused, when talking of the subject of habit, of making old habits appear so strong that the acquiring of new ones, and particularly anything like a sudden reform or conversion, would be made impossible by my doctrine. of course, this would suffice to condemn the latter; for sudden conversions, however infrequent they may be, unquestionably do occur. but there is no incompatibility between the general laws i have laid down and the most startling sudden alterations in the way of character. new habits _can_ be launched, i have expressly said, on condition of there being new stimuli and new excitements. now life abounds in these, and sometimes they are such critical and revolutionary experiences that they change a man's whole scale of values and system of ideas. in such cases, the old order of his habits will be ruptured; and, if the new motives are lasting, new habits will be formed, and build up in him a new or regenerate 'nature.' all this kind of fact i fully allow. but the general laws of habit are no wise altered thereby, and the physiological study of mental conditions still remains on the whole the most powerful ally of hortatory ethics. the hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. we are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. the drunken rip van winkle, in jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, "i won't count this time!" well, he may not count it, and a kind heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. of course, this has its good side as well as its bad one. as we become permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work. let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. if he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. he can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out. silently, between all the details of his business, the _power of judging_ in all that class of matter will have built itself up within him as a possession that will never pass away. young people should know this truth in advance. the ignorance of it has probably engendered more discouragement and faint-heartedness in youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put together. ix. the association of ideas in my last talk, in treating of habit, i chiefly had in mind our _motor_ habits,--habits of external conduct. but our thinking and feeling processes are also largely subject to the law of habit, and one result of this is a phenomenon which you all know under the name of 'the association of ideas.' to that phenomenon i ask you now to turn. you remember that consciousness is an ever-flowing stream of objects, feelings, and impulsive tendencies. we saw already that its phases or pulses are like so many fields or waves, each field or wave having usually its central point of liveliest attention, in the shape of the most prominent object in our thought, while all around this lies a margin of other objects more dimly realized, together with the margin of emotional and active tendencies which the whole entails. describing the mind thus in fluid terms, we cling as close as possible to nature. at first sight, it might seem as if, in the fluidity of these successive waves, everything is indeterminate. but inspection shows that each wave has a constitution which can be to some degree explained by the constitution of the waves just passed away. and this relation of the wave to its predecessors is expressed by the two fundamental 'laws of association,' so-called, of which the first is named the law of contiguity, the second that of similarity. the _law of contiguity_ tells us that objects thought of in the coming wave are such as in some previous experience were _next_ to the objects represented in the wave that is passing away. the vanishing objects were once formerly their neighbors in the mind. when you recite the alphabet or your prayers, or when the sight of an object reminds you of its name, or the name reminds you of the object, it is through the law of contiguity that the terms are suggested to the mind. the _law of similarity_ says that, when contiguity fails to describe what happens, the coming objects will prove to _resemble_ the going objects, even though the two were never experienced together before. in our 'flights of fancy,' this is frequently the case. if, arresting ourselves in the flow of reverie, we ask the question, "how came we to be thinking of just this object now?" we can almost always trace its presence to some previous object which has introduced it to the mind, according to one or the other of these laws. the entire routine of our memorized acquisitions, for example, is a consequence of nothing but the law of contiguity. the words of a poem, the formulas of trigonometry, the facts of history, the properties of material things, are all known to us as definite systems or groups of objects which cohere in an order fixed by innumerable iterations, and of which any one part reminds us of the others. in dry and prosaic minds, almost all the mental sequences flow along these lines of habitual routine repetition and suggestion. in witty, imaginative minds, on the other hand, the routine is broken through with ease at any moment; and one field of mental objects will suggest another with which perhaps in the whole history of human thinking it had never once before been coupled. the link here is usually some _analogy_ between the objects successively thought of,--an analogy often so subtle that, although we feel it, we can with difficulty analyze its ground; as where, for example, we find something masculine in the color red and something feminine in the color pale blue, or where, of three human beings' characters, one will remind us of a cat, another of a dog, the third perhaps of a cow. * * * * * psychologists have of course gone very deeply into the question of what the causes of association may be; and some of them have tried to show that contiguity and similarity are not two radically diverse laws, but that either presupposes the presence of the other. i myself am disposed to think that the phenomena of association depend on our cerebral constitution, and are not immediate consequences of our being rational beings. in other words, when we shall have become disembodied spirits, it may be that our trains of consciousness will follow different laws. these questions are discussed in the books on psychology, and i hope that some of you will be interested in following them there. but i will, on the present occasion, ignore them entirely; for, as teachers, it is the _fact_ of association that practically concerns you, let its grounds be spiritual or cerebral, or what they may, and let its laws be reducible, or non-reducible, to one. your pupils, whatever else they are, are at any rate little pieces of associating machinery. their education consists in the organizing within them of determinate tendencies to associate one thing with another,--impressions with consequences, these with reactions, those with results, and so on indefinitely. the more copious the associative systems, the completer the individual's adaptations to the world. the teacher can formulate his function to himself therefore in terms of 'association' as well as in terms of 'native and acquired reaction.' it is mainly that of _building up useful systems of association_ in the pupil's mind. this description sounds wider than the one i began by giving. but, when one thinks that our trains of association, whatever they may be, normally issue in acquired reactions or behavior, one sees that in a general way the same mass of facts is covered by both formulas. it is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association. the great problem which association undertakes to solve is, _why does just this particular field of consciousness, constituted in this particular way, now appear before my mind?_ it may be a field of objects imagined; it may be of objects remembered or of objects perceived; it may include an action resolved on. in either case, when the field is analyzed into its parts, those parts can be shown to have proceeded from parts of fields previously before consciousness, in consequence of one or other of the laws of association just laid down. those laws _run_ the mind: interest, shifting hither and thither, deflects it; and attention, as we shall later see, steers it and keeps it from too zigzag a course. to grasp these factors clearly gives one a solid and simple understanding of the psychological machinery. the 'nature,' the 'character,' of an individual means really nothing but the habitual form of his associations. to break up bad associations or wrong ones, to build others in, to guide the associative tendencies into the most fruitful channels, is the educator's principal task. but here, as with all other simple principles, the difficulty lies in the application. psychology can state the laws: concrete tact and talent alone can work them to useful results. meanwhile it is a matter of the commonest experience that our minds may pass from one object to another by various intermediary fields of consciousness. the indeterminateness of our paths of association _in concreto_ is thus almost as striking a feature of them as the uniformity of their abstract form. start from any idea whatever, and the entire range of your ideas is potentially at your disposal. if we take as the associative starting-point, or cue, some simple word which i pronounce before you, there is no limit to the possible diversity of suggestions which it may set up in your minds. suppose i say 'blue,' for example: some of you may think of the blue sky and hot weather from which we now are suffering, then go off on thoughts of summer clothing, or possibly of meteorology at large; others may think of the spectrum and the physiology of color-vision, and glide into x-rays and recent physical speculations; others may think of blue ribbons, or of the blue flowers on a friend's hat, and proceed on lines of personal reminiscence. to others, again, etymology and linguistic thoughts may be suggested; or blue may be 'apperceived' as a synonym for melancholy, and a train of associates connected with morbid psychology may proceed to unroll themselves. in the same person, the same word heard at different times will provoke, in consequence of the varying marginal preoccupations, either one of a number of diverse possible associative sequences. professor münsterberg performed this experiment methodically, using the same words four times over, at three-month intervals, as 'cues' for four different persons who were the subjects of observation. he found almost no constancy in their associations taken at these different times. in short, the entire potential content of one's consciousness is accessible from any one of its points. this is why we can never work the laws of association forward: starting from the present field as a cue, we can never cipher out in advance just what the person will be thinking of five minutes later. the elements which may become prepotent in the process, the parts of each successive field round which the associations shall chiefly turn, the possible bifurcations of suggestion, are so numerous and ambiguous as to be indeterminable before the fact. but, although we cannot work the laws of association forward, we can always work them backwards. we cannot say now what we shall find ourselves thinking of five minutes hence; but, whatever it may be, we shall then be able to trace it through intermediary links of contiguity or similarity to what we are thinking now. what so baffles our prevision is the shifting part played by the margin and focus--in fact, by each element by itself of the margin or focus--in calling up the next ideas. for example, i am reciting 'locksley hall,' in order to divert my mind from a state of suspense that i am in concerning the will of a relative that is dead. the will still remains in the mental background as an extremely marginal or ultra-marginal portion of my field of consciousness; but the poem fairly keeps my attention from it, until i come to the line, "i, the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time." the words 'i, the heir,' immediately make an electric connection with the marginal thought of the will; that, in turn, makes my heart beat with anticipation of my possible legacy, so that i throw down the book and pace the floor excitedly with visions of my future fortune pouring through my mind. any portion of the field of consciousness that has more potentialities of emotional excitement than another may thus be roused to predominant activity; and the shifting play of interest now in one portion, now in another, deflects the currents in all sorts of zigzag ways, the mental activity running hither and thither as the sparks run in burnt-up paper. * * * * * one more point, and i shall have said as much to you as seems necessary about the process of association. you just saw how a single exciting word may call up its own associates prepotently, and deflect our whole train of thinking from the previous track. the fact is that every portion of the field _tends_ to call up its own associates; but, if these associates be severally different, there is rivalry, and as soon as one or a few begin to be effective the others seem to get siphoned out, as it were, and left behind. seldom, however, as in our example, does the process seem to turn round a single item in the mental field, or even round the entire field that is immediately in the act of passing. it is a matter of _constellation_, into which portions of fields that are already past especially seem to enter and have their say. thus, to go back to 'locksley hall,' each word as i recite it in its due order is suggested not solely by the previous word now expiring on my lips, but it is rather the effect of all the previous words, taken together, of the verse. "ages," for example, calls up "in the foremost files of time," when preceded by "i, the heir of all the"--; but, when preceded by "for i doubt not through the,"--it calls up "one increasing purpose runs." similarly, if i write on the blackboard the letters a b c d e f,... they probably suggest to you g h i.... but, if i write a b a d d e f, if they suggest anything, they suggest as their complement e c t or e f i c i e n c y. the result depending on the total constellation, even though most of the single items be the same. my practical reason for mentioning this law is this, that it follows from it that, in working associations into your pupils' minds, you must not rely on single cues, but multiply the cues as much as possible. couple the desired reaction with numerous constellations of antecedents,--don't always ask the question, for example, in the same way; don't use the same kind of data in numerical problems; vary your illustrations, etc., as much as you can. when we come to the subject of memory, we shall learn still more about this. so much, then, for the general subject of association. in leaving it for other topics (in which, however, we shall abundantly find it involved again), i cannot too strongly urge you to acquire a habit of thinking of your pupils in associative terms. all governors of mankind, from doctors and jail-wardens to demagogues and statesmen, instinctively come so to conceive their charges. if you do the same, thinking of them (however else you may think of them besides) as so many little systems of associating machinery, you will be astonished at the intimacy of insight into their operations and at the practicality of the results which you will gain. we think of our acquaintances, for example, as characterized by certain 'tendencies.' these tendencies will in almost every instance prove to be tendencies to association. certain ideas in them are always followed by certain other ideas, these by certain feelings and impulses to approve or disapprove, assent or decline. if the topic arouse one of those first ideas, the practical outcome can be pretty well foreseen. 'types of character' in short are largely types of association. x. interest at our last meeting i treated of the native tendencies of the pupil to react in characteristically definite ways upon different stimuli or exciting circumstances. in fact, i treated of the pupil's instincts. now some situations appeal to special instincts from the very outset, and others fail to do so until the proper connections have been organized in the course of the person's training. we say of the former set of objects or situations that they are _interesting_ in themselves and originally. of the latter we say that they are natively uninteresting, and that interest in them has first to be acquired. no topic has received more attention from pedagogical writers than that of interest. it is the natural sequel to the instincts we so lately discussed, and it is therefore well fitted to be the next subject which we take up. since some objects are natively interesting and in others interest is artificially acquired, the teacher must know which the natively interesting ones are; for, as we shall see immediately, other objects can artificially acquire an interest only through first becoming associated with some of these natively interesting things. the native interests of children lie altogether in the sphere of sensation. novel things to look at or novel sounds to hear, especially when they involve the spectacle of action of a violent sort, will always divert the attention from abstract conceptions of objects verbally taken in. the grimace that johnny is making, the spitballs that tommy is ready to throw, the dog-fight in the street, or the distant firebells ringing,--these are the rivals with which the teacher's powers of being interesting have incessantly to cope. the child will always attend more to what a teacher does than to what the same teacher says. during the performance of experiments or while the teacher is drawing on the blackboard, the children are tranquil and absorbed. i have seen a roomful of college students suddenly become perfectly still, to look at their professor of physics tie a piece of string around a stick which he was going to use in an experiment, but immediately grow restless when he began to explain the experiment. a lady told me that one day, during a lesson, she was delighted at having captured so completely the attention of one of her young charges. he did not remove his eyes from her face; but he said to her after the lesson was over, "i looked at you all the time, and your upper jaw did not move once!" that was the only fact that he had taken in. living things, then, moving things, or things that savor of danger or of blood, that have a dramatic quality,--these are the objects natively interesting to childhood, to the exclusion of almost everything else; and the teacher of young children, until more artificial interests have grown up, will keep in touch with her pupils by constant appeal to such matters as these. instruction must be carried on objectively, experimentally, anecdotally. the blackboard-drawing and story-telling must constantly come in. but of course these methods cover only the first steps, and carry one but a little way. can we now formulate any general principle by which the later and more artificial interests connect themselves with these early ones that the child brings with him to the school? fortunately, we can: there is a very simple law that relates the acquired and the native interests with each other. _any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists. the two associated objects grow, as it were, together: the interesting portion sheds its quality over the whole; and thus things not interesting in their own right borrow an interest which becomes as real and as strong as that of any natively interesting thing._ the odd circumstance is that the borrowing does not impoverish the source, the objects taken together being more interesting, perhaps, than the originally interesting portion was by itself. this is one of the most striking proofs of the range of application of the principle of association of ideas in psychology. an idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental total. as there is no limit to the various associations into which an interesting idea may enter, one sees in how many ways an interest may be derived. you will understand this abstract statement easily if i take the most frequent of concrete examples,--the interest which things borrow from their connection with our own personal welfare. the most natively interesting object to a man is his own personal self and its fortunes. we accordingly see that the moment a thing becomes connected with the fortunes of the self, it forthwith becomes an interesting thing. lend the child his books, pencils, and other apparatus: then give them to him, make them his own, and notice the new light with which they instantly shine in his eyes. he takes a new kind of care of them altogether. in mature life, all the drudgery of a man's business or profession, intolerable in itself, is shot through with engrossing significance because he knows it to be associated with his personal fortunes. what more deadly uninteresting object can there be than a railroad time-table? yet where will you find a more interesting object if you are going on a journey, and by its means can find your train? at such times the time-table will absorb a man's entire attention, its interest being borrowed solely from its relation to his personal life. _from all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract programme for the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the child: begin with the line of his native interests, and offer him objects that have some immediate connection with these_. the kindergarten methods, the object-teaching routine, the blackboard and manual-training work,--all recognize this feature. schools in which these methods preponderate are schools where discipline is easy, and where the voice of the master claiming order and attention in threatening tones need never be heard. _next, step by step, connect with these first objects and experiences the later objects and ideas which you wish to instill. associate the new with the old in some natural and telling way, so that the interest, being shed along from point to point, finally suffuses the entire system of objects of thought._ this is the abstract statement; and, abstractly, nothing can be easier to understand. it is in the fulfilment of the rule that the difficulty lies; for the difference between an interesting and a tedious teacher consists in little more than the inventiveness by which the one is able to mediate these associations and connections, and in the dulness in discovering such transitions which the other shows. one teacher's mind will fairly coruscate with points of connection between the new lesson and the circumstances of the children's other experience. anecdotes and reminiscences will abound in her talk; and the shuttle of interest will shoot backward and forward, weaving the new and the old together in a lively and entertaining way. another teacher has no such inventive fertility, and his lesson will always be a dead and heavy thing. this is the psychological meaning of the herbartian principle of 'preparation' for each lesson, and of correlating the new with the old. it is the psychological meaning of that whole method of concentration in studies of which you have been recently hearing so much. when the geography and english and history and arithmetic simultaneously make cross-references to one another, you get an interesting set of processes all along the line. * * * * * if, then, you wish to insure the interest of your pupils, there is only one way to do it; and that is to make certain that they have something in their minds _to attend with_, when you begin to talk. that something can consist in nothing but a previous lot of ideas already interesting in themselves, and of such a nature that the incoming novel objects which you present can dovetail into them and form with them some kind of a logically associated or systematic whole. fortunately, almost any kind of a connection is sufficient to carry the interest along. what a help is our philippine war at present in teaching geography! but before the war you could ask the children if they ate pepper with their eggs, and where they supposed the pepper came from. or ask them if glass is a stone, and, if not, why not; and then let them know how stones are formed and glass manufactured. external links will serve as well as those that are deeper and more logical. but interest, once shed upon a subject, is liable to remain always with that subject. our acquisitions become in a measure portions of our personal self; and little by little, as cross-associations multiply and habits of familiarity and practice grow, the entire system of our objects of thought consolidates, most of it becoming interesting for some purposes and in some degree. an adult man's interests are almost every one of them intensely artificial: they have slowly been built up. the objects of professional interest are most of them, in their original nature, repulsive; but by their connection with such natively exciting objects as one's personal fortune, one's social responsibilities, and especially by the force of inveterate habit, they grow to be the only things for which in middle life a man profoundly cares. but in all these the spread and consolidation have followed nothing but the principles first laid down. if we could recall for a moment our whole individual history, we should see that our professional ideals and the zeal they inspire are due to nothing but the slow accretion of one mental object to another, traceable backward from point to point till we reach the moment when, in the nursery or in the schoolroom, some little story told, some little object shown, some little operation witnessed, brought the first new object and new interest within our ken by associating it with some one of those primitively there. the interest now suffusing the whole system took its rise in that little event, so insignificant to us now as to be entirely forgotten. as the bees in swarming cling to one another in layers till the few are reached whose feet grapple the bough from which the swarm depends; so with the objects of our thinking,--they hang to each other by associated links, but the _original_ source of interest in all of them is the native interest which the earliest one once possessed. xi. attention whoever treats of interest inevitably treats of attention, for to say that an object is interesting is only another way of saying that it excites attention. but in addition to the attention which any object already interesting or just becoming interesting claims--passive attention or spontaneous attention, we may call it--there is a more deliberate attention,--voluntary attention or attention with effort, as it is called,--which we can give to objects less interesting or uninteresting in themselves. the distinction between active and passive attention is made in all books on psychology, and connects itself with the deeper aspects of the topic. from our present purely practical point of view, however, it is not necessary to be intricate; and passive attention to natively interesting material requires no further elucidation on this occasion. all that we need explicitly to note is that, the more the passive attention is relied on, by keeping the material interesting; and the less the kind of attention requiring effort is appealed to; the more smoothly and pleasantly the classroom work goes on. i must say a few more words, however, about this latter process of voluntary and deliberate attention. one often hears it said that genius is nothing but a power of sustained attention, and the popular impression probably prevails that men of genius are remarkable for their voluntary powers in this direction. _but a little introspective observation will show any one that voluntary attention cannot be continuously sustained,--that it comes in beats._ when we are studying an uninteresting subject, if our mind tends to wander, we have to bring back our attention every now and then by using distinct pulses of effort, which revivify the topic for a moment, the mind then running on for a certain number of seconds or minutes with spontaneous interest, until again some intercurrent idea captures it and takes it off. then the processes of volitional recall must be repeated once more. voluntary attention, in short, is only a momentary affair. the process, whatever it is, exhausts itself in the single act; and, unless the matter is then taken in hand by some trace of interest inherent in the subject, the mind fails to follow it at all. the sustained attention of the genius, sticking to his subject for hours together, is for the most part of the passive sort. the minds of geniuses are full of copious and original associations. the subject of thought, once started, develops all sorts of fascinating consequences. the attention is led along one of these to another in the most interesting manner, and the attention never once tends to stray away. in a commonplace mind, on the other hand, a subject develops much less numerous associates: it dies out then quickly; and, if the man is to keep up thinking of it at all, he must bring his attention back to it by a violent wrench. in him, therefore, the faculty of voluntary attention receives abundant opportunity for cultivation in daily life. it is your despised business man, your common man of affairs, (so looked down on by the literary awarders of fame) whose virtue in this regard is likely to be most developed; for he has to listen to the concerns of so many uninteresting people, and to transact so much drudging detail, that the faculty in question is always kept in training. a genius, on the contrary, is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. he breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius constantly occupies his mind. voluntary attention is thus an essentially instantaneous affair. you can claim it, for your purposes in the schoolroom, by commanding it in loud, imperious tones; and you can easily get it in this way. but, unless the subject to which you thus recall their attention has inherent power to interest the pupils, you will have got it for only a brief moment; and their minds will soon be wandering again. to keep them where you have called them, you must make the subject too interesting for them to wander again. and for that there is one prescription; but the prescription, like all our prescriptions, is abstract, and, to get practical results from it, you must couple it with mother-wit. the prescription is that _the subject must be made to show new aspects of itself; to prompt new questions; in a word, to change_. from an unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away. you can test this by the simplest possible case of sensorial attention. try to attend steadfastly to a dot on the paper or on the wall. you presently find that one or the other of two things has happened: either your field of vision has become blurred, so that you now see nothing distinct at all, or else you have involuntarily ceased to look at the dot in question, and are looking at something else. but, if you ask yourself successive questions about the dot,--how big it is, how far, of what shape, what shade of color, etc.; in other words, if you turn it over, if you think of it in various ways, and along with various kinds of associates,--you can keep your mind on it for a comparatively long time. this is what the genius does, in whose hands a given topic coruscates and grows. and this is what the teacher must do for every topic if he wishes to avoid too frequent appeals to voluntary attention of the coerced sort. in all respects, reliance upon such attention as this is a wasteful method, bringing bad temper and nervous wear and tear as well as imperfect results. the teacher who can get along by keeping spontaneous interest excited must be regarded as the teacher with the greatest skill. there is, however, in all schoolroom work a large mass of material that must be dull and unexciting, and to which it is impossible in any continuous way to contribute an interest associatively derived. there are, therefore, certain external methods, which every teacher knows, of voluntarily arousing the attention from time to time and keeping it upon the subject. mr. fitch has a lecture on the art of securing attention, and he briefly passes these methods in review; the posture must be changed; places can be changed. questions, after being answered singly, may occasionally be answered in concert. elliptical questions may be asked, the pupil supplying the missing word. the teacher must pounce upon the most listless child and wake him up. the habit of prompt and ready response must be kept up. recapitulations, illustrations, examples, novelty of order, and ruptures of routine,--all these are means for keeping the attention alive and contributing a little interest to a dull subject. above all, the teacher must himself be alive and ready, and must use the contagion of his own example. but, when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence, and can make their exercises interesting, while others simply cannot. and psychology and general pedagogy here confess their failure, and hand things over to the deeper springs of human personality to conduct the task. * * * * * a brief reference to the physiological theory of the attentive process may serve still further to elucidate these practical remarks, and confirm them by showing them from a slightly different point of view. what is the attentive process, psychologically considered? attention to an object is what takes place whenever that object most completely occupies the mind. for simplicity's sake suppose the object be an object of sensation,--a figure approaching us at a distance on the road. it is far off, barely perceptible, and hardly moving: we do not know with certainty whether it is a man or not. such an object as this, if carelessly looked at, may hardly catch our attention at all. the optical impression may affect solely the marginal consciousness, while the mental focus keeps engaged with rival things. we may indeed not 'see' it till some one points it out. but, if so, how does he point it out? by his finger, and by describing its appearance,--by creating a premonitory image of _where_ to look and of _what_ to expect to see. this premonitory image is already an excitement of the same nerve-centres that are to be concerned with the impression. the impression comes, and excites them still further; and now the object enters the focus of the field, consciousness being sustained both by impression and by preliminary idea. but the maximum of attention to it is not yet reached. although we see it, we may not care for it; it may suggest nothing important to us; and a rival stream of objects or of thoughts may quickly take our mind away. if, however, our companion defines it in a significant way, arouses in the mind a set of experiences to be apprehended from it,--names it an enemy or as a messenger of important tidings,--the residual and marginal ideas now aroused, so far from being its rivals, become its associates and allies. they shoot together into one system with it; they converge upon it; they keep it steadily in focus; the mind attends to it with maximum power. the attentive process, therefore, at its maximum may be physiologically symbolized by a brain-cell played on in two ways, from without and from within. incoming currents from the periphery arouse it, and collateral currents from the centres of memory and imagination re-enforce these. in this process the incoming impression is the newer element; the ideas which re-enforce and sustain it are among the older possessions of the mind. and the maximum of attention may then be said to be found whenever we have a systematic harmony or unification between the novel and the old. it is an odd circumstance that neither the old nor the new, by itself, is interesting: the absolutely old is insipid; the absolutely new makes no appeal at all. the old _in_ the new is what claims the attention,--the old with a slightly new turn. no one wants to hear a lecture on a subject completely disconnected with his previous knowledge, but we all like lectures on subjects of which we know a little already, just as, in the fashions, every year must bring its slight modification of last year's suit, but an abrupt jump from the fashion of one decade into another would be distasteful to the eye. the genius of the interesting teacher consists in sympathetic divination of the sort of material with which the pupil's mind is likely to be already spontaneously engaged, and in the ingenuity which discovers paths of connection from that material to the matters to be newly learned. the principle is easy to grasp, but the accomplishment is difficult in the extreme. and a knowledge of such psychology as this which i am recalling can no more make a good teacher than a knowledge of the laws of perspective can make a landscape painter of effective skill. a certain doubt may now occur to some of you. a while ago, apropos of the pugnacious instinct, i spoke of our modern pedagogy as being possibly too 'soft.' you may perhaps here face me with my own words, and ask whether the exclusive effort on the teacher's part to keep the pupil's spontaneous interest going, and to avoid the more strenuous path of voluntary attention to repulsive work, does not savor also of sentimentalism. the greater part of schoolroom work, you say, must, in the nature of things, always be repulsive. to face uninteresting drudgery is a good part of life's work. why seek to eliminate it from the schoolroom or minimize the sterner law? a word or two will obviate what might perhaps become a serious misunderstanding here. it is certain that most schoolroom work, till it has become habitual and automatic, is repulsive, and cannot be done without voluntarily jerking back the attention to it every now and then. this is inevitable, let the teacher do what he will. it flows from the inherent nature of the subjects and of the learning mind. the repulsive processes of verbal memorizing, of discovering steps of mathematical identity, and the like, must borrow their interest at first from purely external sources, mainly from the personal interests with which success in mastering them is associated, such as gaining of rank, avoiding punishment, not being beaten by a difficulty and the like. without such borrowed interest, the child could not attend to them at all. but in these processes what becomes interesting enough to be attended to is not thereby attended to _without effort_. effort always has to go on, derived interest, for the most part, not awakening attention that is _easy_, however spontaneous it may now have to be called. the interest which the teacher, by his utmost skill, can lend to the subject, proves over and over again to be only an interest sufficient _to let loose the effort_. the teacher, therefore, need never concern himself about _inventing_ occasions where effort must be called into play. let him still awaken whatever sources of interest in the subject he can by stirring up connections between it and the pupil's nature, whether in the line of theoretic curiosity, of personal interest, or of pugnacious impulse. the laws of mind will then bring enough pulses of effort into play to keep the pupil exercised in the direction of the subject. there is, in fact, no greater school of effort than the steady struggle to attend to immediately repulsive or difficult objects of thought which have grown to interest us through their association as means, with some remote ideal end. the herbartian doctrine of interest ought not, therefore, in principle to be reproached with making pedagogy soft. if it do so, it is because it is unintelligently carried on. do not, then, for the mere sake of discipline, command attention from your pupils in thundering tones. do not too often beg it from them as a favor, nor claim it as a right, nor try habitually to excite it by preaching the importance of the subject. sometimes, indeed, you must do these things; but, the more you have to do them, the less skilful teacher you will show yourself to be. elicit interest from within, by the warmth with which you care for the topic yourself, and by following the laws i have laid down. if the topic be highly abstract, show its nature by concrete examples. if it be unfamiliar, trace some point of analogy in it with the known. if it be inhuman, make it figure as part of a story. if it be difficult, couple its acquisition with some prospect of personal gain. above all things, make sure that it shall run through certain inner changes, since no unvarying object can possibly hold the mental field for long. let your pupil wander from one aspect to another of your subject, if you do not wish him to wander from it altogether to something else, variety in unity being the secret of all interesting talk and thought. the relation of all these things to the native genius of the instructor is too obvious to need comment again. one more point, and i am done with the subject of attention. there is unquestionably a great native variety among individuals in the type of their attention. some of us are naturally scatterbrained, and others follow easily a train of connected thoughts without temptation to swerve aside to other subjects. this seems to depend on a difference between individuals in the type of their field of consciousness. in some persons this is highly focalized and concentrated, and the focal ideas predominate in determining association. in others we must suppose the margin to be brighter, and to be filled with something like meteoric showers of images, which strike into it at random, displacing the focal ideas, and carrying association in their own direction. persons of the latter type find their attention wandering every minute, and must bring it back by a voluntary pull. the others sink into a subject of meditation deeply, and, when interrupted, are 'lost' for a moment before they come back to the outer world. the possession of such a steady faculty of attention is unquestionably a great boon. those who have it can work more rapidly, and with less nervous wear and tear. i am inclined to think that no one who is without it naturally can by any amount of drill or discipline attain it in a very high degree. its amount is probably a fixed characteristic of the individual. but i wish to make a remark here which i shall have occasion to make again in other connections. it is that no one need deplore unduly the inferiority in himself of any one elementary faculty. this concentrated type of attention is an elementary faculty: it is one of the things that might be ascertained and measured by exercises in the laboratory. but, having ascertained it in a number of persons, we could never rank them in a scale of actual and practical mental efficiency based on its degrees. the total mental efficiency of a man is the resultant of the working together of all his faculties. he is too complex a being for any one of them to have the casting vote. if any one of them do have the casting vote, it is more likely to be the strength of his desire and passion, the strength of the interest he takes in what is proposed. concentration, memory, reasoning power, inventiveness, excellence of the senses,--all are subsidiary to this. no matter how scatter-brained the type of a man's successive fields of consciousness may be, if he really _care_ for a subject, he will return to it incessantly from his incessant wanderings, and first and last do more with it, and get more results from it, than another person whose attention may be more continuous during a given interval, but whose passion for the subject is of a more languid and less permanent sort. some of the most efficient workers i know are of the ultra-scatterbrained type. one friend, who does a prodigious quantity of work, has in fact confessed to me that, if he wants to get ideas on any subject, he sits down to work at something else, his best results coming through his mind-wanderings. this is perhaps an epigrammatic exaggeration on his part; but i seriously think that no one of us need be too much distressed at his own shortcomings in this regard. our mind may enjoy but little comfort, may be restless and feel confused; but it may be extremely efficient all the same. xii. memory we are following a somewhat arbitrary order. since each and every faculty we possess is either in whole or in part a resultant of the play of our associations, it would have been as natural, after treating of association, to treat of memory as to treat of interest and attention next. but, since we did take the latter operations first, we must take memory now without farther delay; for the phenomena of memory are among the simplest and most immediate consequences of the fact that our mind is essentially an associating machine. there is no more pre-eminent example for exhibiting the fertility of the laws of association as principles of psychological analysis. memory, moreover, is so important a faculty in the schoolroom that you are probably waiting with some eagerness to know what psychology has to say about it for your help. in old times, if you asked a person to explain why he came to be remembering at that moment some particular incident in his previous life, the only reply he could make was that his soul is endowed with a faculty called memory; that it is the inalienable function of this faculty to recollect; and that, therefore, he necessarily at that moment must have a cognition of that portion of the past. this explanation by a 'faculty' is one thing which explanation by association has superseded altogether. if, by saying we have a faculty of memory, you mean nothing more than the fact that we can remember, nothing more than an abstract name for our power inwardly to recall the past, there is no harm done: we do have the faculty; for we unquestionably have such a power. but if, by faculty, you mean a principle of _explanation of our general power to recall_, your psychology is empty. the associationist psychology, on the other hand, gives an explanation of each particular fact of recollection; and, in so doing, it also gives an explanation of the general faculty. the 'faculty' of memory is thus no real or ultimate explanation; for it is itself explained as a result of the association of ideas. nothing is easier than to show you just what i mean by this. suppose i am silent for a moment, and then say in commanding accents: "remember! recollect!" does your faculty of memory obey the order, and reproduce any definite image from your past? certainly not. it stands staring into vacancy, and asking, "what kind of a thing do you wish me to remember?" it needs in short, a _cue_. but, if i say, remember the date of your birth, or remember what you had for breakfast, or remember the succession of notes in the musical scale; then your faculty of memory immediately produces the required result: the _'cue'_ determines its vast set of potentialities toward a particular point. and if you now look to see how this happens, you immediately perceive that the cue is something _contiguously associated_ with the thing recalled. the words, 'date of my birth,' have an ingrained association with a particular number, month, and year; the words, 'breakfast this morning,' cut off all other lines of recall except those which lead to coffee and bacon and eggs; the words, 'musical scale,' are inveterate mental neighbors of do, ré, mi, fa, sol, la, etc. the laws of association govern, in fact, all the trains of our thinking which are not interrupted by sensations breaking on us from without. whatever appears in the mind must be _introduced_; and, when introduced, it is as the associate of something already there. this is as true of what you are recollecting as it is of everything else you think of. reflection will show you that there are peculiarities in your memory which would be quite whimsical and unaccountable if we were forced to regard them as the product of a purely spiritual faculty. were memory such a faculty, granted to us solely for its practical use, we ought to remember easiest whatever we most _needed_ to remember; and frequency of repetition, recency, and the like, would play no part in the matter. that we should best remember frequent things and recent things, and forget things that are ancient or were experienced only once, could only be regarded as an incomprehensible anomaly on such a view. but if we remember because of our associations, and if these are (as the physiological psychologists believe) due to our organized brain-paths, we easily see how the law of recency and repetition should prevail. paths frequently and recently ploughed are those that lie most open, those which may be expected most easily to lead to results. the laws of our memory, as we find them, therefore are incidents of our associational constitution; and, when we are emancipated from the flesh, it is conceivable that they may no longer continue to obtain. we may assume, then, that recollection is a resultant of our associative processes, these themselves in the last analysis being most probably due to the workings of our brain. descending more particularly into the faculty of memory, we have to distinguish between its potential aspect as a magazine or storehouse and its actual aspect as recollection now of a particular event. our memory contains all sorts of items which we do not now recall, but which we may recall, provided a sufficient cue be offered. both the general retention and the special recall are explained by association. an educated memory depends on an organized system of associations; and its goodness depends on two of their peculiarities: first, on the persistency of the associations; and, second, on their number. let us consider each of these points in turn. first, the persistency of the associations. this gives what may be called the _quality of native retentiveness_ to the individual. if, as i think we are forced to, we consider the brain to be the organic condition by which the vestiges of our experience are associated with each other, we may suppose that some brains are 'wax to receive and marble to retain.' the slightest impressions made on them abide. names, dates, prices, anecdotes, quotations, are indelibly retained, their several elements fixedly cohering together, so that the individual soon becomes a walking cyclopædia of information. all this may occur with no philosophic tendency in the mind, no impulse to weave the materials acquired into anything like a logical system. in the books of anecdotes, and, more recently, in the psychology-books, we find recorded instances of monstrosities, as we may call them, of this desultory memory; and they are often otherwise very stupid men. it is, of course, by no means incompatible with a philosophic mind; for mental characteristics have infinite capacities for permutation. and, when both memory and philosophy combine together in one person, then indeed we have the highest sort of intellectual efficiency. your walter scotts, your leibnitzes, your gladstones, and your goethes, all your folio copies of mankind, belong to this type. efficiency on a colossal scale would indeed seem to require it. for, although your philosophic or systematic mind without good desultory memory may know how to work out results and recollect where in the books to find them, the time lost in the searching process handicaps the thinker, and gives to the more ready type of individual the economical advantage. the extreme of the contrasted type, the type with associations of small persistency, is found in those who have almost no desultory memory at all. if they are also deficient in logical and systematizing power, we call them simply feeble intellects; and no more need to be said about them here. their brain-matter, we may imagine, is like a fluid jelly, in which impressions may be easily made, but are soon closed over again, so that the brain reverts to its original indifferent state. but it may occur here, just as in other gelatinous substances, that an impression will vibrate throughout the brain, and send waves into other parts of it. in cases of this sort, although the immediate impression may fade out quickly, it does modify the cerebral mass; for the paths it makes there may remain, and become so many avenues through which the impression may be reproduced if they ever get excited again. and its liability to reproduction will depend of course upon the variety of these paths and upon the frequency with which they are used. each path is in fact an associated process, the number of these associates becoming thus to a great degree a substitute for the independent tenacity of the original impression. as i have elsewhere written: each of the associates is a hook to which it hangs, a means to fish it up when sunk below the surface. together they form a network of attachments by which it is woven into the entire tissue of our thought. the 'secret of a good memory' is thus the secret of forming diverse and multiple associations with every fact we care to retain. but this forming of associations with a fact,--what is it but thinking _about_ the fact as much as possible? briefly, then, of two men with the same outward experiences, _the one who thinks over his experiences most_, and weaves them into the most systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory. but, if our ability to recollect a thing be so largely a matter of its associations with other things which thus becomes its cues, an important pædagogic consequence follows. _there can be no improvement of the general or elementary faculty of memory: there can only be improvement of our memory for special systems of associated things_; and this latter improvement is due to the way in which the things in question are woven into association with each other in the mind. intricately or profoundly woven, they are held: disconnected, they tend to drop out just in proportion as the native brain retentiveness is poor. and no amount of training, drilling, repeating, and reciting employed upon the matter of one system of objects, the history-system, for example, will in the least improve either the facility or the durability with which objects belonging to a wholly disparate system--the system of facts of chemistry, for instance--tend to be retained. that system must be separately worked into the mind by itself,--a chemical fact which is thought about in connection with the other chemical facts, tending then to stay, but otherwise easily dropping out. we have, then, not so much a faculty of memory as many faculties of memory. we have as many as we have systems of objects habitually thought of in connection with each other. a given object is held in the memory by the associates it has acquired within its own system exclusively. learning the facts of another system will in no wise help it to stay in the mind, for the simple reason that it has no 'cues' within that other system. we see examples of this on every hand. most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits. a college athlete, who remains a dunce at his books, may amaze you by his knowledge of the 'records' at various feats and games, and prove himself a walking dictionary of sporting statistics. the reason is that he is constantly going over these things in his mind, and comparing and making series of them. they form for him, not so many odd facts, but a concept-system, so they stick. so the merchant remembers prices, the politician other politicians' speeches and votes, with a copiousness which astonishes outsiders, but which the amount of thinking they bestow on these subjects easily explains. the great memory for facts which a darwin or a spencer reveal in their books is not incompatible with the possession on their part of a mind with only a middling degree of physiological retentiveness. let a man early in life set himself the task of verifying such a theory as that of evolution, and facts will soon cluster and cling to him like grapes to their stem. their relations to the theory will hold them fast; and, the more of these the mind is able to discern, the greater the erudition will become. meanwhile the theorist may have little, if any, desultory memory. unutilizable facts may be unnoted by him, and forgotten as soon as heard. an ignorance almost as encyclopedic as his erudition may coexist with the latter, and hide, as it were, within the interstices of its web. those of you who have had much to do with scholars and _savants_ will readily think of examples of the class of mind i mean. the best possible sort of system into which to weave an object, mentally, is a _rational_ system, or what is called a 'science.' place the thing in its pigeon-hole in a classificatory series; explain it logically by its causes, and deduce from it its necessary effects; find out of what natural law it is an instance,--and you then know it in the best of all possible ways. a 'science' is thus the greatest of labor-saving contrivances. it relieves the memory of an immense number of details, replacing, as it does, merely contiguous associations by the logical ones of identity, similarity, or analogy. if you know a 'law,' you may discharge your memory of masses of particular instances, for the law will reproduce them for you whenever you require them. the law of refraction, for example: if you know that, you can with a pencil and a bit of paper immediately discern how a convex lens, a concave lens, or a prism, must severally alter the appearance of an object. but, if you don't know the general law, you must charge your memory separately with each of the three kinds of effect. a 'philosophic' system, in which all things found their rational explanation and were connected together as causes and effects, would be the perfect mnemonic system, in which the greatest economy of means would bring about the greatest richness of results. so that, if we have poor desultory memories, we can save ourselves by cultivating the philosophic turn of mind. there are many artificial systems of mnemonics, some public, some sold as secrets. they are all so many devices for training us into certain methodical and stereotyped _ways of thinking_ about the facts we seek to retain. even were i competent, i could not here go into these systems in any detail. but a single example, from a popular system, will show what i mean. i take the number-alphabet, the great mnemonic device for recollecting numbers and dates. in this system each digit is represented by a consonant, thus: is _t_ or _d_; , _n_; , _m_; , _r_; , _l_; , _sh, j, ch_, or _g_; , _c, k, g_, or _qu_; , _f_ or _v_; , _b_ or _p_; , _s, c_, or _z_. suppose, now, you wish to remember the velocity of sound, , feet a second: _t, t, r, n_, are the letters you must use. they make the consonants of _tight run_, and it would be a 'tight run' for you to keep up such a speed. so , the date of the execution of charles i., may be remembered by the word _sharp_, which recalls the headsman's axe. apart from the extreme difficulty of finding words that are appropriate in this exercise, it is clearly an excessively poor, trivial, and silly way of 'thinking' about dates; and the way of the historian is much better. he has a lot of landmark-dates already in his mind. he knows the historic concatenation of events, and can usually place an event at its right date in the chronology-table, by thinking of it in a rational way, referring it to its antecedents, tracing its concomitants and consequences, and thus ciphering out its date by connecting it with theirs. the artificial memory-systems, recommending, as they do, such irrational methods of thinking, are only to be recommended for the first landmarks in a system, or for such purely detached facts as enjoy no rational connection with the rest of our ideas. thus the student of physics may remember the order of the spectral colours by the word _vibgyor_ which their initial letters make. the student of anatomy may remember the position of the mitral valve on the left side of the heart by thinking that l.m. stands also for 'long meter' in the hymn-books. you now see why 'cramming' must be so poor a mode of study. cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. but a thing thus learned can form but few associations. on the other hand, the same thing recurring on different days, in different contexts, read, recited on, referred to again and again, related to other things and reviewed, gets well wrought into the mental structure. this is the reason why you should enforce on your pupils habits of continuous application. there is no moral turpitude in cramming. it would be the best, because the most economical, mode of study if it led to the results desired. but it does not, and your older pupils can readily be made to see the reason why. it follows also, from what has been said, that _the popular idea that 'the memory,' in the sense of a general elementary faculty, can be improved by training, is a great mistake_. your memory for facts of a certain class can be improved very much by training in that class of facts, because the incoming new fact will then find all sorts of analogues and associates already there, and these will keep it liable to recall. but other kinds of fact will reap none of that benefit, and, unless one have been also trained and versed in _their_ class, will be at the mercy of the mere crude retentiveness of the individual, which, as we have seen, is practically a fixed quantity. nevertheless, one often hears people say: "a great sin was committed against me in my youth: my teachers entirely failed to exercise my memory. if they had only made me learn a lot of things by heart at school, i should not be, as i am now, forgetful of everything i read and hear." this is a great mistake: learning poetry by heart will make it easier to learn and remember other poetry, but nothing else; and so of dates; and so of chemistry and geography. but, after what i have said, i am sure you will need no farther argument on this point; and i therefore pass it by. but, since it has brought me to speak of learning things by heart, i think that a general practical remark about verbal memorizing may now not be out of place. the excesses of old-fashioned verbal memorizing, and the immense advantages of object-teaching in the earlier stages of culture, have perhaps led those who philosophize about teaching to an unduly strong reaction; and learning things by heart is now probably somewhat too much despised. for, when all is said and done, the fact remains that verbal material is, on the whole, the handiest and most useful material in which thinking can be carried on. abstract conceptions are far and away the most economical instruments of thought, and abstract conceptions are fixed and incarnated for us in words. statistical inquiry would seem to show that, as men advance in life, they tend to make less and less use of visual images, and more and more use of words. one of the first things that mr. galton discovered was that this appeared to be the case with the members of the royal society whom he questioned as to their mental images. i should say, therefore, that constant exercise in verbal memorizing must still be an indispensable feature in all sound education. nothing is more deplorable than that inarticulate and helpless sort of mind that is reminded by everything of some quotation, case, or anecdote, which it cannot now exactly recollect. nothing, on the other hand, is more convenient to its possessor, or more delightful to his comrades, than a mind able, in telling a story, to give the exact words of the dialogue or to furnish a quotation accurate and complete. in every branch of study there are happily turned, concise, and handy formulas which in an incomparable way sum up results. the mind that can retain such formulas is in so far a superior mind, and the communication of them to the pupil ought always to be one of the teacher's favorite tasks. in learning 'by heart,' there are, however, efficient and inefficient methods; and, by making the pupil skilful in the best method, the teacher can both interest him and abridge the task. the best method is of course not to 'hammer in' the sentences, by mere reiteration, but to analyze them, and think. for example, if the pupil should have to learn this last sentence, let him first strip out its grammatical core, and learn, "the best method is not to hammer in, but to analyze," and then add the amplificative and restrictive clauses, bit by bit, thus: "the best method is of course not to hammer in _the sentences_, but to analyze _them and think_." then finally insert the words '_by mere reiteration_,' and the sentence is complete, and both better understood and quicker remembered than by a more purely mechanical method. * * * * * in conclusion, i must say a word about the contributions to our knowledge of memory which have recently come from the laboratory-psychologists. many of the enthusiasts for scientific or brass-instrument child-study are taking accurate measurements of children's elementary faculties, and among these what we may call _immediate memory_ admits of easy measurement. all we need do is to exhibit to the child a series of letters, syllables, figures, pictures, or what-not, at intervals of one, two, three, or more seconds, or to sound a similar series of names at the same intervals, within his hearing, and then see how completely he can reproduce the list, either directly, or after an interval of ten, twenty, or sixty seconds, or some longer space of time. according to the results of this exercise, the pupils may be rated in a memory-scale; and some persons go so far as to think that the teacher should modify her treatment of the child according to the strength or feebleness of its faculty as thus made known. now i can only repeat here what i said to you when treating of attention: man is too complex a being for light to be thrown on his real efficiency by measuring any one mental faculty taken apart from its consensus in the working whole. such an exercise as this, dealing with incoherent and insipid objects, with no logical connection with each other, or practical significance outside of the 'test,' is an exercise the like of which in real life we are hardly ever called upon to perform. in real life, our memory is always used in the service of some interest: we remember things which we care for or which are associated with things we care for; and the child who stands at the bottom of the scale thus experimentally established might, by dint of the strength of his passion for a subject, and in consequence of the logical association into which he weaves the actual materials of his experience, be a very effective memorizer indeed, and do his school-tasks on the whole much better than an immediate parrot who might stand at the top of the 'scientifically accurate' list. this preponderance of interest, of passion, in determining the results of a human being's working life, obtains throughout. no elementary measurement, capable of being performed in a laboratory, can throw any light on the actual efficiency of the subject; for the vital thing about him, his emotional and moral energy and doggedness, can be measured by no single experiment, and becomes known only by the total results in the long run. a blind man like huber, with his passion for bees and ants, can observe them through other people's eyes better than these can through their own. a man born with neither arms nor legs, like the late kavanagh, m.p.--and what an icy heart his mother must have had about him in his babyhood, and how 'negative' would the laboratory-measurements of his motor-functions have been!--can be an adventurous traveller, an equestrian and sportsman, and lead an athletic outdoor life. mr. romanes studied the elementary rate of apperception in a large number of persons by making them read a paragraph as fast as they could take it in, and then immediately write down all they could reproduce of its contents. he found astonishing differences in the rapidity, some taking four times as long as others to absorb the paragraph, and the swiftest readers being, as a rule, the best immediate recollectors, too. but not,--and this is my point,--_not_ the most _intellectually capable subjects_, as tested by the results of what mr. romanes rightly names 'genuine' intellectual work; for he tried the experiment with several highly distinguished men in science and literature, and most of them turned out to be slow readers. in the light of all such facts one may well believe that the total impression which a perceptive teacher will get of the pupil's condition, as indicated by his general temper and manner, by the listlessness or alertness, by the ease or painfulness with which his school work is done, will be of much more value than those unreal experimental tests, those pedantic elementary measurements of fatigue, memory, association, and attention, etc., which are urged upon us as the only basis of a genuinely scientific pedagogy. such measurements can give us useful information only when we combine them with observations made without brass instruments, upon the total demeanor of the measured individual, by teachers with eyes in their heads and common sense, and some feeling for the concrete facts of human nature in their hearts. depend upon it, no one need be too much cast down by the discovery of his deficiency in any elementary faculty of the mind. what tells in life is the whole mind working together, and the deficiencies of any one faculty can be compensated by the efforts of the rest. you can be an artist without visual images, a reader without eyes, a mass of erudition with a bad elementary memory. in almost any subject your passion for the subject will save you. if you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. if you wish to be rich, you will be rich; if you wish to be learned, you will be learned; if you wish to be good, you will be good. only you must, then, _really_ wish these things, and wish them with exclusiveness, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly. one of the most important discoveries of the 'scientific' sort that have recently been made in psychology is that of mr. galton and others concerning the great variations among individuals in the type of their imagination. every one is now familiar with the fact that human beings vary enormously in the brilliancy, completeness, definiteness, and extent of their visual images. these are singularly perfect in a large number of individuals, and in a few are so rudimentary as hardly to exist. the same is true of the auditory and motor images, and probably of those of every kind; and the recent discovery of distinct brain-areas for the various orders of sensation would seem to provide a physical basis for such variations and discrepancies. the facts, as i said, are nowadays so popularly known that i need only remind you of their existence. they might seem at first sight of practical importance to the teacher; and, indeed, teachers have been recommended to sort their pupils in this way, and treat them as the result falls out. you should interrogate them as to their imagery, it is said, or exhibit lists of written words to their eyes, and then sound similar lists in their ears, and see by which channel a child retains most words. then, in dealing with that child, make your appeals predominantly through that channel. if the class were very small, results of some distinctness might doubtless thus be obtained by a painstaking teacher. but it is obvious that in the usual schoolroom no such differentiation of appeal is possible; and the only really useful practical lesson that emerges from this analytic psychology in the conduct of large schools is the lesson already reached in a purely empirical way, that the teacher ought always to impress the class through as many sensible channels as he can. talk and write and draw on blackboard, permit the pupils to talk, and make them write and draw, exhibit pictures, plans, and curves, have your diagrams colored differently in their different parts, etc.; and out of the whole variety of impressions the individual child will find the most lasting ones for himself. in all primary school work this principle of multiple impressions is well recognized, so i need say no more about it here. this principle of multiplying channels and varying associations and appeals is important, not only for teaching pupils to remember, but for teaching them to understand. it runs, in fact, through the whole teaching art. one word about the unconscious and unreproducible part of our acquisitions, and i shall have done with the topic of memory. professor ebbinghaus, in a heroic little investigation into the laws of memory which he performed a dozen or more years ago by the method of learning lists of nonsense syllables, devised a method of measuring the rate of our forgetfulness, which lays bare an important law of the mind. his method was to read over his list until he could repeat it once by heart unhesitatingly. the number of repetitions required for this was a measure of the difficulty of the learning in each particular case. now, after having once learned a piece in this way, if we wait five minutes, we find it impossible to repeat it again in the same unhesitating manner. we must read it over again to revive some of the syllables, which have already dropped out or got transposed. ebbinghaus now systematically studied the number of readings-over which were necessary to revive the unhesitating recollection of the piece after five minutes, half an hour, an hour, a day, a week, a month, had elapsed. the number of rereadings required he took to be a measure of the _amount of forgetting_ that had occurred in the elapsed interval. and he found some remarkable facts. the process of forgetting, namely, is vastly more rapid at first than later on. thus full half of the piece seems to be forgotten within the first half-hour, two-thirds of it are forgotten at the end of eight hours, but only four-fifths at the end of a month. he made no trials beyond one month of interval; but, if we ourselves prolong ideally the curve of remembrance, whose beginning his experiments thus obtain, it is natural to suppose that, no matter how long a time might elapse, the curve would never descend quite so low as to touch the zero-line. in other words, no matter how long ago we may have learned a poem, and no matter how complete our inability to reproduce it now may be, yet the first learning will still show its lingering effects in the abridgment of the time required for learning it again. in short, professor ebbinghaus's experiments show that things which we are quite unable definitely to recall have nevertheless impressed themselves, in some way, upon the structure of the mind. we are different for having once learned them. the resistances in our systems of brain-paths are altered. our apprehensions are quickened. our conclusions from certain premises are probably not just what they would be if those modifications were not there. the latter influence the whole margin of our consciousness, even though their products, not being distinctly reproducible, do not directly figure at the focus of the field. the teacher should draw a lesson from these facts. we are all too apt to measure the gains of our pupils by their proficiency in directly reproducing in a recitation or an examination such matters as they may have learned, and inarticulate power in them is something of which we always underestimate the value. the boy who tells us, "i know the answer, but i can't say what it is," we treat as practically identical with him who knows absolutely nothing about the answer at all. but this is a great mistake. it is but a small part of our experience in life that we are ever able articulately to recall. and yet the whole of it has had its influence in shaping our character and defining our tendencies to judge and act. although the ready memory is a great blessing to its possessor, the vaguer memory of a subject, of having once had to do with it, of its neighborhood, and of where we may go to recover it again, constitutes in most men and women the chief fruit of their education. this is true even in professional education. the doctor, the lawyer, are seldom able to decide upon a case off-hand. they differ from other men only through the fact that they know how to get at the materials for decision in five minutes or half an hour: whereas the layman is unable to get at the materials at all, not knowing in what books and indexes to look or not understanding the technical terms. be patient, then, and sympathetic with the type of mind that cuts a poor figure in examinations. it may, in the long examination which life sets us, come out in the end in better shape than the glib and ready reproducer, its passions being deeper, its purposes more worthy, its combining power less commonplace, and its total mental output consequently more important. such are the chief points which it has seemed worth while for me to call to your notice under the head of memory. we can sum them up for practical purposes by saying that the art of remembering is the art of _thinking_; and by adding, with dr. pick, that, when we wish to fix a new thing in either our own mind or a pupil's, our conscious effort should not be so much to _impress_ and _retain_ it as to _connect_ it with something else already there. the connecting _is_ the thinking; and, if we attend clearly to the connection, the connected thing will certainly be likely to remain within recall. i shall next ask you to consider the process by which we acquire new knowledge,--the process of 'apperception,' as it is called, by which we receive and deal with new experiences, and revise our stock of ideas so as to form new or improved conceptions. xiii. the acquisition of ideas the images of our past experiences, of whatever nature they may be, visual or verbal, blurred and dim, vivid and distinct, abstract or concrete, need not be memory images, in the strict sense of the word. that is, they need not rise before the mind in a marginal fringe or context of concomitant circumstances, which mean for us their _date_. they may be mere conceptions, floating pictures of an object, or of its type or class. in this undated condition, we call them products of 'imagination' or 'conception.' imagination is the term commonly used where the object represented is thought of as an individual thing. conception is the term where we think of it as a type or class. for our present purpose the distinction is not important; and i will permit myself to use either the word 'conception,' or the still vaguer word 'idea,' to designate the inner objects of contemplation, whether these be individual things, like 'the sun' or 'julius cæsar,' or classes of things, like 'animal kingdom,' or, finally, entirely abstract attributes, like 'rationality' or 'rectitude.' the result of our education is to fill the mind little by little, as experiences accrete, with a stock of such ideas. in the illustration i used at our first meeting, of the child snatching the toy and getting slapped, the vestiges left by the first experience answered to so many ideas which he acquired thereby,--ideas that remained with him associated in a certain order, and from the last one of which the child eventually proceeded to act. the sciences of grammar and of logic are little more than attempts methodically to classify all such acquired ideas and to trace certain laws of relationship among them. the forms of relation between them, becoming themselves in turn noticed by the mind, are treated as conceptions of a higher and more abstract order, as when we speak of a syllogistic relation' between propositions, or of four quantities making a 'proportion,' or of the 'inconsistency' of two conceptions, or the 'implication' of one in the other. so you see that the process of education, taken in a large way, may be described as nothing but the process of acquiring ideas or conceptions, the best educated mind being the mind which has the largest stock of them, ready to meet the largest possible variety of the emergencies of life. the lack of education means only the failure to have acquired them, and the consequent liability to be 'floored' and 'rattled' in the vicissitudes of experience. in all this process of acquiring conceptions, a certain instinctive order is followed. there is a native tendency to assimilate certain kinds of conception at one age, and other kinds of conception at a later age. during the first seven or eight years of childhood the mind is most interested in the sensible properties of material things. _constructiveness_ is the instinct most active; and by the incessant hammering and sawing, and dressing and undressing dolls, putting of things together and taking them apart, the child not only trains the muscles to co-ordinate action, but accumulates a store of physical conceptions which are the basis of his knowledge of the material world through life. object-teaching and manual training wisely extend the sphere of this order of acquisition. clay, wood, metals, and the various kinds of tools are made to contribute to the store. a youth brought up with a sufficiently broad basis of this kind is always at home in the world. he stands within the pale. he is acquainted with nature, and nature in a certain sense is acquainted with him. whereas the youth brought up alone at home, with no acquaintance with anything but the printed page, is always afflicted with a certain remoteness from the material facts of life, and a correlative insecurity of consciousness which make of him a kind of alien on the earth in which he ought to feel himself perfectly at home. i already said something of this in speaking of the constructive impulse, and i must not repeat myself. moreover, you fully realize, i am sure, how important for life,--for the moral tone of life, quite apart from definite practical pursuits,--is this sense of readiness for emergencies which a man gains through early familiarity and acquaintance with the world of material things. to have grown up on a farm, to have haunted a carpenter's and blacksmith's shop, to have handled horses and cows and boats and guns, and to have ideas and abilities connected with such objects are an inestimable part of youthful acquisition. after adolescence it is rare to be able to get into familiar touch with any of these primitive things. the instinctive propensions have faded, and the habits are hard to acquire. accordingly, one of the best fruits of the 'child-study' movement has been to reinstate all these activities to their proper place in a sound system of education. _feed_ the growing human being, feed him with the sort of experience for which from year to year he shows a natural craving, and he will develop in adult life a sounder sort of mental tissue, even though he may seem to be 'wasting' a great deal of his growing time, in the eyes of those for whom the only channels of learning are books and verbally communicated information. it is not till adolescence is reached that the mind grows able to take in the more abstract aspects of experience, the hidden similarities and distinctions between things, and especially their causal sequences. rational knowledge of such things as mathematics, mechanics, chemistry, and biology, is now possible; and the acquisition of conceptions of this order form the next phase of education. later still, not till adolescence is well advanced, does the mind awaken to a systematic interest in abstract human relations--moral relations, properly so called,--to sociological ideas and to metaphysical abstractions. this general order of sequence is followed traditionally of course in the schoolroom. it is foreign to my purpose to do more than indicate that general psychological principle of the successive order of awakening of the faculties on which the whole thing rests. i have spoken of it already, apropos of the transitoriness of instincts. just as many a youth has to go permanently without an adequate stock of conceptions of a certain order, because experiences of that order were not yielded at the time when new curiosity was most acute, so it will conversely happen that many another youth is spoiled for a certain subject of study (although he would have enjoyed it well if led into it at a later age) through having had it thrust upon him so prematurely that disgust was created, and the bloom quite taken off from future trials. i think i have seen college students unfitted forever for 'philosophy' from having taken that study up a year too soon. in all these later studies, verbal material is the vehicle by which the mind thinks. the abstract conceptions of physics and sociology may, it is true, be embodied in visual or other images of phenomena, but they need not be so; and the truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, "words, words, words," must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn. this is so even in the natural sciences, so far as these are causal and rational, and not merely confined to description. so i go back to what i said awhile ago apropos of verbal memorizing. the more accurately words are learned, the better, if only the teacher make sure that what they signify is also understood. it is the failure of this latter condition, in so much of the old-fashioned recitation, that has caused that reaction against 'parrot-like reproduction' that we are so familiar with to-day. a friend of mine, visiting a school, was asked to examine a young class in geography. glancing, at the book, she said: "suppose you should dig a hole in the ground, hundreds of feet deep, how should you find it at the bottom,--warmer or colder than on top?" none of the class replying, the teacher said: "i'm sure they know, but i think you don't ask the question quite rightly. let me try." so, taking the book, she asked: "in what condition is the interior of the globe?" and received the immediate answer from half the class at once: "the interior of the globe is in a condition of _igneous fusion_." better exclusive object-teaching than such verbal recitations as that; and yet verbal reproduction, intelligently connected with more objective work, must always play a leading, and surely _the_ leading, part in education. our modern reformers, in their books, write too exclusively of the earliest years of the pupil. these lend themselves better to explicit treatment; and i myself, in dwelling so much upon the native impulses, and object-teaching, and anecdotes, and all that, have paid my tribute to the line of least resistance in describing. yet away back in childhood we find the beginnings of purely intellectual curiosity, and the intelligence of abstract terms. the object-teaching is mainly to _launch_ the pupils, with some concrete conceptions of the facts concerned, upon the more abstract ideas. to hear some authorities on teaching, however, you would suppose that geography not only began, but ended with the school-yard and neighboring hill, that physics was one endless round of repeating the same sort of tedious weighing and measuring operation: whereas a very few examples are usually sufficient to set the imagination free on genuine lines, and then what the mind craves is more rapid, general, and abstract treatment. i heard a lady say that she had taken her child to the kindergarten, "but he is so bright that he saw through it immediately." too many school children 'see' as immediately 'through' the namby-pamby attempts of the softer pedagogy to lubricate things for them, and make them interesting. even they can enjoy abstractions, provided they be of the proper order; and it is a poor compliment to their rational appetite to think that anecdotes about little tommies and little jennies are the only kind of things their minds can digest. but here, as elsewhere, it is a matter of more or less; and, in the last resort, the teacher's own tact is the only thing that can bring out the right effect. the great difficulty with abstractions is that of knowing just what meaning the pupil attaches to the terms he uses. the words may sound all right, but the meaning remains the child's own secret. so varied forms of words must be insisted on, to bring the secret out. and a strange secret does it often prove. a relative of mine was trying to explain to a little girl what was meant by 'the passive voice': "suppose that you kill me: you who do the killing are in the active voice, and i, who am killed, am in the passive voice." "but how can you speak if you're killed?" said the child. "oh, well, you may suppose that i am not yet quite dead!" the next day the child was asked, in class, to explain the passive voice, and said, "it's the kind of voice you speak with when you ain't quite dead." in such a case as this the illustration ought to have been more varied. every one's memory will probably furnish examples of the fantastic meaning which their childhood attached to certain verbal statements (in poetry often), and which their elders, not having any reason to suspect, never corrected. i remember being greatly moved emotionally at the age of eight by the ballad of lord ullin's daughter. yet i thought that the staining of the heather by the blood was the evil chiefly dreaded, and that, when the boatman said, "i'll row you o'er the ferry. it is not for your silver bright, but for your winsome lady," he was to receive the lady for his pay. similarly, i recently found that one of my own children was reading (and accepting) a verse of tennyson's in memoriam as "ring out the _food_ of rich and poor, ring in _redness_ to all mankind," and finding no inward difficulty. the only safeguard against this sort of misconceiving is to insist on varied statement, and to bring the child's conceptions, wherever it be possible, to some sort of practical test. let us next pass to the subject of apperception. xiv. apperception 'apperception' is a word which cuts a great figure in the pedagogics of the present day. read, for example, this advertisement of a certain text-book, which i take from an educational journal:-- #what is apperception?# for an explanation of apperception see blank's psychology, vol. ---- of the ---- education series, just published. the difference between perception and apperception is explained for the teacher in the preface to blank's psychology. many teachers are inquiring, "what is the meaning of apperception in educational psychology?" just the book for them is blank's psychology in which the idea was first expounded. the most important idea in educational psychology is apperception. the teacher may find this expounded in blank's psychology. the idea of apperception is making a revolution in educational methods in germany. it is explained in blank's psychology, vol. ---- of the ---- education series, just published. blank's psychology will be mailed prepaid to any address on receipt of $ . . such an advertisement is in sober earnest a disgrace to all concerned; and such talk as it indulges in is the sort of thing i had in view when i said at our first meeting that the teachers were suffering at the present day from a certain industrious mystification on the part of editors and publishers. perhaps the word 'apperception' flourished in their eyes and ears as it nowadays often is, embodies as much of this mystification as any other single thing. the conscientious young teacher is led to believe that it contains a recondite and portentous secret, by losing the true inwardness of which her whole career may be shattered. and yet, when she turns to the books and reads about it, it seems so trivial and commonplace a matter,--meaning nothing more than the manner in which we receive a thing into our minds,--that she fears she must have missed the point through the shallowness of her intelligence, and goes about thereafter afflicted with a sense either of uncertainty or of stupidity, and in each case remaining mortified at being so inadequate to her mission. now apperception is an extremely useful word in pedagogics, and offers a convenient name for a process to which every teacher must frequently refer. but it verily means nothing more than the act of taking a thing into the mind. it corresponds to nothing peculiar or elementary in psychology, being only one of the innumerable results of the psychological process of association of ideas; and psychology itself can easily dispense with the word, useful as it may be in pedagogics. the gist of the matter is this: every impression that comes in from without, be it a sentence which we hear, an object of vision, or an effluvium which assails our nose, no sooner enters our consciousness than it is drafted off in some determinate direction or other, making connection with the other materials already there, and finally producing what we call our reaction. the particular connections it strikes into are determined by our past experiences and the 'associations' of the present sort of impression with them. if, for instance, you hear me call out a, b, c, it is ten to one that you will react on the impression by inwardly or outwardly articulating d, e, f. the impression arouses its old associates: they go out to meet it; it is received by them, recognized by the mind as 'the beginning of the alphabet.' it is the fate of every impression thus to fall into a mind preoccupied with memories, ideas, and interests, and by these it is taken in. educated as we already are, we never get an experience that remains for us completely nondescript: it always _reminds_ of something similar in quality, or of some context that might have surrounded it before, and which it now in some way suggests. this mental escort which the mind supplies is drawn, of course, from the mind's ready-made stock. we _conceive_ the impression in some definite way. we dispose of it according to our acquired possibilities, be they few or many, in the way of 'ideas.' this way of taking in the object is the process of apperception. the conceptions which meet and assimilate it are called by herbart the 'apperceiving mass.' the apperceived impression is engulfed in this, and the result is a new field of consciousness, of which one part (and often a very small part) comes from the outer world, and another part (sometimes by far the largest) comes from the previous contents of the mind. i think that you see plainly enough now that the process of apperception is what i called it a moment ago, a resultant of the association of ideas. the product is a sort of fusion of the new with the old, in which it is often impossible to distinguish the share of the two factors. for example, when we listen to a person speaking or read a page of print, much of what we think we see or hear is supplied from our memory. we overlook misprints, imagining the right letters, though we see the wrong ones; and how little we actually hear, when we listen to speech, we realize when we go to a foreign theatre; for there what troubles us is not so much that we cannot understand what the actors say as that we cannot hear their words. the fact is that we hear quite as little under similar conditions at home, only our mind, being fuller of english verbal associations, supplies the requisite material for comprehension upon a much slighter auditory hint. in all the apperceptive operations of the mind, a certain general law makes itself felt,--the law of economy. in admitting a new body of experience, we instinctively seek to disturb as little as possible our pre-existing stock of ideas. we always try to name a new experience in some way which will assimilate it to what we already know. we hate anything _absolutely_ new, anything without any name, and for which a new name must be forged. so we take the nearest name, even though it be inappropriate. a child will call snow, when he sees it for the first time, sugar or white butterflies. the sail of a boat he calls a curtain; an egg in its shell, seen for the first time, he calls a pretty potato; an orange, a ball; a folding corkscrew, a pair of bad scissors. caspar hauser called the first geese he saw horses, and the polynesians called captain cook's horses pigs. mr. rooper has written a little book on apperception, to which he gives the title of "a pot of green feathers," that being the name applied to a pot of ferns by a child who had never seen ferns before. in later life this economical tendency to leave the old undisturbed leads to what we know as 'old fogyism.' a new idea or a fact which would entail extensive rearrangement of the previous system of beliefs is always ignored or extruded from the mind in case it cannot be sophistically reinterpreted so as to tally harmoniously with the system. we have all conducted discussions with middle-aged people, overpowered them with our reasons, forced them to admit our contention, and a week later found them back as secure and constant in their old opinion as if they had never conversed with us at all. we call them old fogies; but there are young fogies, too. old fogyism begins at a younger age than we think. i am almost afraid to say so, but i believe that in the majority of human beings it begins at about twenty-five. in some of the books we find the various forms of apperception codified, and their subdivisions numbered and ticketed in tabular form in the way so delightful to the pedagogic eye. in one book which i remember reading there were sixteen different types of apperception discriminated from each other. there was associative apperception, subsumptive apperception, assimilative apperception, and others up to sixteen. it is needless to say that this is nothing but an exhibition of the crass artificiality which has always haunted psychology, and which perpetuates itself by lingering along, especially in these works which are advertised as 'written for the use of teachers.' the flowing life of the mind is sorted into parcels suitable for presentation in the recitation-room, and chopped up into supposed 'processes' with long greek and latin names, which in real life have no distinct existence. there is no reason, if we are classing the different types of apperception, why we should stop at sixteen rather than sixteen hundred. there are as many types of apperception as there are possible ways in which an incoming experience may be reacted on by an individual mind. a little while ago, at buffalo, i was the guest of a lady who, a fortnight before, had taken her seven-year-old boy for the first time to niagara falls. the child silently glared at the phenomenon until his mother, supposing him struck speechless by its sublimity, said, "well, my boy, what do you think of it?" to which, "is that the kind of spray i spray my nose with?" was the boy's only reply. that was his mode of apperceiving the spectacle. you may claim this as a particular type, and call it by the greek name of rhinotherapeutical apperception, if you like; and, if you do, you will hardly be more trivial or artificial than are some of the authors of the books. m. perez, in one of his books on childhood, gives a good example of the different modes of apperception of the same phenomenon which are possible at different stages of individual experience. a dwelling-house took fire, and an infant in the family, witnessing the conflagration from the arms of his nurse, standing outside, expressed nothing but the liveliest delight at its brilliancy. but, when the bell of the fire engine was heard approaching, the child was thrown by the sound into a paroxysm of fear, strange sounds being, as you know, very alarming to young children. in what opposite ways must the child's parents have apperceived the burning house and the engine respectively! the self-same person, according to the line of thought he may be in, or to his emotional mood, will apperceive the same impression quite differently on different occasions. a medical or engineering expert retained on one side of a case will not apperceive the facts in the same way as if the other side had retained him. when people are at loggerheads about the interpretation of a fact, it usually shows that they have too few heads of classification to apperceive by; for, as a general thing, the fact of such a dispute is enough to show that neither one of their rival interpretations is a perfect fit. both sides deal with the matter by approximation, squeezing it under the handiest or least disturbing conception: whereas it would, nine times out of ten, be better to enlarge their stock of ideas or invent some altogether new title for the phenomenon. thus, in biology, we used to have interminable discussion as to whether certain single-celled organisms were animals or vegetables, until haeckel introduced the new apperceptive name of protista, which ended the disputes. in law courts no _tertium quid_ is recognized between insanity and sanity. if sane, a man is punished: if insane, acquitted; and it is seldom hard to find two experts who will take opposite views of his case. all the while, nature is more subtle than our doctors. just as a room is neither dark nor light absolutely, but might be dark for a watchmaker's uses, and yet light enough to eat in or play in, so a man may be sane for some purposes and insane for others,--sane enough to be left at large, yet not sane enough to take care of his financial affairs. the word 'crank,' which became familiar at the time of guiteau's trial, fulfilled the need of a _tertium quid_. the foreign terms 'déséquilibré,' 'hereditary degenerate,' and 'psychopathic' subject, have arisen in response to the same need. the whole progress of our sciences goes on by the invention of newly forged technical names whereby to designate the newly remarked aspects of phenomena,--phenomena which could only be squeezed with violence into the pigeonholes of the earlier stock of conceptions. as time goes on, our vocabulary becomes thus ever more and more voluminous, having to keep up with the ever-growing multitude of our stock of apperceiving ideas. in this gradual process of interaction between the new and the old, not only is the new modified and determined by the particular sort of old which apperceives it, but the apperceiving mass, the old itself, is modified by the particular kind of new which it assimilates. thus, to take the stock german example of the child brought up in a house where there are no tables but square ones, 'table' means for him a thing in which square corners are essential. but, if he goes to a house where there are round tables and still calls them tables, his apperceiving notion 'table' acquires immediately a wider inward content. in this way, our conceptions are constantly dropping characters once supposed essential, and including others once supposed inadmissible. the extension of the notion 'beast' to porpoises and whales, of the notion 'organism' to society, are familiar examples of what i mean. but be our conceptions adequate or inadequate, and be our stock of them large or small, they are all we have to work with. if an educated man is, as i said, a group of organized tendencies to conduct, what prompts the conduct is in every case the man's conception of the way in which to name and classify the actual emergency. the more adequate the stock of ideas, the more 'able' is the man, the more uniformly appropriate is his behavior likely to be. when later we take up the subject of the will, we shall see that the essential preliminary to every decision is the finding of the right _names_ under which to class the proposed alternatives of conduct. he who has few names is in so far forth an incompetent deliberator. the names--and each name stands for a conception or idea--are our instruments for handling our problems and solving our dilemmas. now, when we think of this, we are too apt to forget an important fact, which is that in most human beings the stock of names and concepts is mostly acquired during the years of adolescence and the earliest years of adult life. i probably shocked you a moment ago by saying that most men begin to be old fogies at the age of twenty-five. it is true that a grown-up adult keeps gaining well into middle age a great knowledge of details, and a great acquaintance with individual cases connected with his profession or business life. in this sense, his conceptions increase during a very long period; for his knowledge grows more extensive and minute. but the larger categories of conception, the sorts of thing, and wider classes of relation between things, of which we take cognizance, are all got into the mind at a comparatively youthful date. few men ever do acquaint themselves with the principles of a new science after even twenty-five. if you do not study political economy in college, it is a thousand to one that its main conceptions will remain unknown to you through life. similarly with biology, similarly with electricity. what percentage of persons now fifty years old have any definite conception whatever of a dynamo, or how the trolley-cars are made to run? surely, a small fraction of one per cent. but the boys in colleges are all acquiring these conceptions. there is a sense of infinite potentiality in us all, when young, which makes some of us draw up lists of books we intend to read hereafter, and makes most of us think that we can easily acquaint ourselves with all sorts of things which we are now neglecting by studying them out hereafter in the intervals of leisure of our business lives. such good intentions are hardly ever carried out. the conceptions acquired before thirty remain usually the only ones we ever gain. such exceptional cases of perpetually self-renovating youth as mr. gladstone's only prove, by the admiration they awaken, the universality of the rule. and it may well solemnize a teacher, and confirm in him a healthy sense of the importance of his mission, to feel how exclusively dependent upon his present ministrations in the way of imparting conceptions the pupil's future life is probably bound to be. xv. the will since mentality terminates naturally in outward conduct, the final chapter in psychology has to be the chapter on the will. but the word 'will' can be used in a broader and in a narrower sense. in the broader sense, it designates our entire capacity for impulsive and active life, including our instinctive reactions and those forms of behavior that have become secondarily automatic and semi-unconscious through frequent repetition. in the narrower sense, acts of will are such acts only as cannot be inattentively performed. a distinct idea of what they are, and a deliberate _fiat_ on the mind's part, must precede their execution. such acts are often characterized by hesitation, and accompanied by a feeling, altogether peculiar, of resolve, a feeling which may or may not carry with it a further feeling of effort. in my earlier talks, i said so much of our impulsive tendencies that i will restrict myself in what follows to volition in this narrower sense of the term. all our deeds were considered by the early psychologists to be due to a peculiar faculty called the will, without whose fiat action could not occur. thoughts and impressions, being intrinsically inactive, were supposed to produce conduct only through the intermediation of this superior agent. until they twitched its coat-tails, so to speak, no outward behavior could occur. this doctrine was long ago exploded by the discovery of the phenomena of reflex action, in which sensible impressions, as you know, produce movement immediately and of themselves. the doctrine may also be considered exploded as far as ideas go. the fact is that there is no sort of consciousness whatever, be it sensation, feeling, or idea, which does not directly and of itself tend to discharge into some motor effect. the motor effect need not always be an outward stroke of behavior. it may be only an alteration of the heart-beats or breathing, or a modification in the distribution of blood, such as blushing or turning pale; or else a secretion of tears, or what not. but, in any case, it is there in some shape when any consciousness is there; and a belief as fundamental as any in modern psychology is the belief at last attained that conscious processes of any sort, conscious processes merely as such, _must_ pass over into motion, open or concealed. the least complicated case of this tendency is the case of a mind possessed by only a single idea. if that idea be of an object connected with a native impulse, the impulse will immediately proceed to discharge. if it be the idea of a movement, the movement will occur. such a case of action from a single idea has been distinguished from more complex cases by the name of 'ideo-motor' action, meaning action without express decision or effort. most of the habitual actions to which we are trained are of this ideo-motor sort. we perceive, for instance, that the door is open, and we rise and shut it; we perceive some raisins in a dish before us, and extend our hand and carry one of them to our mouth without interrupting the conversation; or, when lying in bed, we suddenly think that we shall be late for breakfast, and instantly we get up with no particular exertion or resolve. all the ingrained procedures by which life is carried on--the manners and customs, dressing and undressing, acts of salutation, etc.--are executed in this semi-automatic way unhesitatingly and efficiently, the very outermost margin of consciousness seeming to be concerned in them, while the focus may be occupied with widely different things. but now turn to a more complicated case. suppose two thoughts to be in the mind together, of which one, a, taken alone, would discharge itself in a certain action, but of which the other, b, suggests an action of a different sort, or a consequence of the first action calculated to make us shrink. the psychologists now say that the second idea, b, will probably arrest or _inhibit_ the motor effects of the first idea, a. one word, then, about 'inhibition' in general, to make this particular case more clear. one of the most interesting discoveries of physiology was the discovery, made simultaneously in france and germany fifty years ago, that nerve currents do not only start muscles into action, but may check action already going on or keep it from occurring as it otherwise might. _nerves of arrest_ were thus distinguished alongside of motor nerves. the pneumogastric nerve, for example, if stimulated, arrests the movements of the heart: the splanchnic nerve arrests those of the intestines, if already begun. but it soon appeared that this was too narrow a way of looking at the matter, and that arrest is not so much the specific function of certain nerves as a general function which any part of the nervous system may exert upon other parts under the appropriate conditions. the higher centres, for example, seem to exert a constant inhibitive influence on the excitability of those below. the reflexes of an animal with its hemispheres wholly or in part removed become exaggerated. you all know that common reflex in dogs, whereby, if you scratch the animal's side, the corresponding hind leg will begin to make scratching movements, usually in the air. now in dogs with mutilated hemispheres this scratching reflex is so incessant that, as goltz first described them, the hair gets all worn off their sides. in idiots, the functions of the hemispheres being largely in abeyance, the lower impulses, not inhibited, as they would be in normal human beings, often express themselves in most odious ways. you know also how any higher emotional tendency will quench a lower one. fear arrests appetite, maternal love annuls fear, respect checks sensuality, and the like; and in the more subtile manifestations of the moral life, whenever an ideal stirring is suddenly quickened into intensity, it is as if the whole scale of values of our motives changed its equilibrium. the force of old temptations vanishes, and what a moment ago was impossible is now not only possible, but easy, because of their inhibition. this has been well called the 'expulsive power of the higher emotion.' it is easy to apply this notion of inhibition to the case of our ideational processes. i am lying in bed, for example, and think it is time to get up; but alongside of this thought there is present to my mind a realization of the extreme coldness of the morning and the pleasantness of the warm bed. in such a situation the motor consequences of the first idea are blocked; and i may remain for half an hour or more with the two ideas oscillating before me in a kind of deadlock, which is what we call the state of hesitation or deliberation. in a case like this the deliberation can be resolved and the decision reached in either of two ways:-- ( ) i may forget for a moment the thermometric conditions, and then the idea of getting up will immediately discharge into act: i shall suddenly find that i have got up--or ( ) still mindful of the freezing temperature, the thought of the duty of rising may become so pungent that it determines action in spite of inhibition. in the latter case, i have a sense of energetic moral effort, and consider that i have done a virtuous act. all cases of wilful action properly so called, of choice after hesitation and deliberation, may be conceived after one of these latter patterns. so you see that volition, in the narrower sense, takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness. the interesting thing to note is the extreme delicacy of the inhibitive machinery. a strong and urgent motor idea in the focus may be neutralized and made inoperative by the presence of the very faintest contradictory idea in the margin. for instance, i hold out my forefinger, and with closed eyes try to realize as vividly as possible that i hold a revolver in my hand and am pulling the trigger. i can even now fairly feel my finger quivering with the tendency to contract; and, if it were hitched to a recording apparatus, it would certainly betray its state of tension by registering incipient movements. yet it does not actually crook, and the movement of pulling the trigger is not performed. why not? simply because, all concentrated though i am upon the idea of the movement, i nevertheless also realize the total conditions of the experiment, and in the back of my mind, so to speak, or in its fringe and margin, have the simultaneous idea that the movement is not to take place. the mere presence of that marginal intention, without effort, urgency, or emphasis, or any special reinforcement from my attention, suffices to the inhibitive effect. and this is why so few of the ideas that flit through our minds do, in point of fact, produce their motor consequences. life would be a curse and a care for us if every fleeting fancy were to do so. abstractly, the law of ideo-motor action is true; but in the concrete our fields of consciousness are always so complex that the inhibiting margin keeps the centre inoperative most of the time. in all this, you see, i speak as if ideas by their mere presence or absence determined behavior, and as if between the ideas themselves on the one hand and the conduct on the other there were no room for any third intermediate principle of activity, like that called 'the will.' if you are struck by the materialistic or fatalistic doctrines which seem to follow this conception, i beg you to suspend your judgment for a moment, as i shall soon have something more to say about the matter. but, meanwhile yielding one's self to the mechanical conception of the psychophysical organism, nothing is easier than to indulge in a picture of the fatalistic character of human life. man's conduct appears as the mere resultant of all his various impulsions and inhibitions. one object, by its presence, makes us act: another object checks our action. feelings aroused and ideas suggested by objects sway us one way and another: emotions complicate the game by their mutual inhibitive effects, the higher abolishing the lower or perhaps being itself swept away. the life in all this becomes prudential and moral; but the psychologic agents in the drama may be described, you see, as nothing but the 'ideas' themselves,--ideas for the whole system of which what we call the 'soul' or character' or 'will' of the person is nothing but a collective name. as hume said, the ideas are themselves the actors, the stage, the theatre, the spectators, and the play. this is the so-called 'associationist' psychology, brought down to its radical expression: it is useless to ignore its power as a conception. like all conceptions, when they become clear and lively enough, this conception has a strong tendency to impose itself upon belief; and psychologists trained on biological lines usually adopt it as the last word of science on the subject. no one can have an adequate notion of modern psychological theory unless he has at some time apprehended this view in the full force of its simplicity. let us humor it for a while, for it has advantages in the way of exposition. _voluntary action, then, is at all times a resultant of the compounding of our impulsions with our inhibitions._ from this it immediately follows that there will be two types of will, in one of which impulsions will predominate, in the other inhibitions. we may speak of them, if you like, as the precipitate and the obstructed will, respectively. when fully pronounced, they are familiar to everybody. the extreme example of the precipitate will is the maniac: his ideas discharge into action so rapidly, his associative processes are so extravagantly lively, that inhibitions have no time to arrive, and he says and does whatever pops into his head without a moment of hesitation. certain melancholiacs furnish the extreme example of the over-inhibited type. their minds are cramped in a fixed emotion of fear or helplessness, their ideas confined to the one thought that for them life is impossible. so they show a condition of perfect 'abulia,' or inability to will or act. they cannot change their posture or speech or execute the simplest command. the different races of men show different temperaments in this regard. the southern races are commonly accounted the more impulsive and precipitate: the english race, especially our new england branch of it, is supposed to be all sicklied over with repressive forms of self-consciousness, and condemned to express itself through a jungle of scruples and checks. the highest form of character, however, abstractly considered, must be full of scruples and inhibitions. but action, in such a character, far from being paralyzed, will succeed in energetically keeping on its way, sometimes overpowering the resistances, sometimes steering along the line where they lie thinnest. just as our extensor muscles act most truly when a simultaneous contraction of the flexors guides and steadies them; so the mind of him whose fields of consciousness are complex, and who, with the reasons for the action, sees the reasons against it, and yet, instead of being palsied, acts in the way that takes the whole field into consideration,--so, i say, is such a mind the ideal sort of mind that we should seek to reproduce in our pupils. purely impulsive action, or action that proceeds to extremities regardless of consequences, on the other hand, is the easiest action in the world, and the lowest in type. any one can show energy, when made quite reckless. an oriental despot requires but little ability: as long as he lives, he succeeds, for he has absolutely his own way; and, when the world can no longer endure the horror of him, he is assassinated. but not to proceed immediately to extremities, to be still able to act energetically under an array of inhibitions,--that indeed is rare and difficult. cavour, when urged to proclaim martial law in , refused to do so, saying: "any one can govern in that way. i will be constitutional." your parliamentary rulers, your lincoln, your gladstone, are the strongest type of man, because they accomplish results under the most intricate possible conditions. we think of napoleon bonaparte as a colossal monster of will-power, and truly enough he was so. but, from the point of view of the psychological machinery, it would be hard to say whether he or gladstone was the larger volitional quantity; for napoleon disregarded all the usual inhibitions, and gladstone, passionate as he was, scrupulously considered them in his statesmanship. a familiar example of the paralyzing power of scruples is the inhibitive effect of conscientiousness upon conversation. nowhere does conversation seem to have flourished as brilliantly as in france during the last century. but, if we read old french memoirs, we see how many brakes of scrupulosity which tie our tongues to-day were then removed. where mendacity, treachery, obscenity, and malignity find unhampered expression, talk can be brilliant indeed. but its flame waxes dim where the mind is stitched all over with conscientious fear of violating the moral and social proprieties. the teacher often is confronted in the schoolroom with an abnormal type of will, which we may call the 'balky will.' certain children, if they do not succeed in doing a thing immediately, remain completely inhibited in regard to it: it becomes literally impossible for them to understand it if it be an intellectual problem, or to do it if it be an outward operation, as long as this particular inhibited condition lasts. such children are usually treated as sinful, and are punished; or else the teacher pits his or her will against the child's will, considering that the latter must be 'broken.' "break your child's will, in order that it may not perish," wrote john wesley. "break its will as soon as it can speak plainly--or even before it can speak at all. it should be forced to do as it is told, even if you have to whip it ten times running. break its will, in order that its soul may live." such will-breaking is always a scene with a great deal of nervous wear and tear on both sides, a bad state of feeling left behind it, and the victory not always with the would-be will-breaker. when a situation of the kind is once fairly developed, and the child is all tense and excited inwardly, nineteen times out of twenty it is best for the teacher to apperceive the case as one of neural pathology rather than as one of moral culpability. so long as the inhibiting sense of impossibility remains in the child's mind, he will continue unable to get beyond the obstacle. the aim of the teacher should then be to make him simply forget. drop the subject for the time, divert the mind to something else: then, leading the pupil back by some circuitous line of association, spring it on him again before he has time to recognize it, and as likely as not he will go over it now without any difficulty. it is in no other way that we overcome balkiness in a horse: we divert his attention, do something to his nose or ear, lead him round in a circle, and thus get him over a place where flogging would only have made him more invincible. a tactful teacher will never let these strained situations come up at all. you perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action. psychology can state your problem in these terms, but you see how impotent she is to furnish the elements of its practical solution. when all is said and done, and your best efforts are made, it will probably remain true that the result will depend more on a certain native tone or temper in the pupil's psychological constitution than on anything else. some persons appear to have a naturally poor focalization of the field of consciousness; and in such persons actions hang slack, and inhibitions seem to exert peculiarly easy sway. but let us now close in a little more closely on this matter of the education of the will. your task is to build up a _character_ in your pupils; and a character, as i have so often said, consists in an organized set of habits of reaction. now of what do such habits of reaction themselves consist? they consist of tendencies to act characteristically when certain ideas possess us, and to refrain characteristically when possessed by other ideas. our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of ideas is which we have; and, second, on the habitual coupling of the several ideas with action or inaction respectively. how is it when an alternative is presented to you for choice, and you are uncertain what you ought to do? you first hesitate, and then you deliberate. and in what does your deliberation consist? it consists in trying to apperceive the ease successively by a number of different ideas, which seem to fit it more or less, until at last you hit on one which seems to fit it exactly. if that be an idea which is a customary forerunner of action in you, which enters into one of your maxims of positive behavior, your hesitation ceases, and you act immediately. if, on the other hand, it be an idea which carries inaction as its habitual result, if it ally itself with _prohibition_, then you unhesitatingly refrain. the problem is, you see, to find the right idea or conception for the case. this search for the right conception may take days or weeks. i spoke as if the action were easy when the conception once is found. often it is so, but it may be otherwise; and, when it is otherwise, we find ourselves at the very centre of a moral situation, into which i should now like you to look with me a little nearer. the proper conception, the true head of classification, may be hard to attain; or it may be one with which we have contracted no settled habits of action. or, again, the action to which it would prompt may be dangerous and difficult; or else inaction may appear deadly cold and negative when our impulsive feeling is hot. in either of these latter cases it is hard to hold the right idea steadily enough before the attention to let it exert its adequate effects. whether it be stimulative or inhibitive, it is _too reasonable_ for us; and the more instinctive passional propensity then tends to extrude it from our consideration. we shy away from the thought of it. it twinkles and goes out the moment it appears in the margin of our consciousness; and we need a resolute effort of voluntary attention to drag it into the focus of the field, and to keep it there long enough for its associative and motor effects to be exerted. every one knows only too well how the mind flinches from looking at considerations hostile to the reigning mood of feeling. once brought, however, in this way to the centre of the field of consciousness, and held there, the reasonable idea will exert these effects inevitably; for the laws of connection between our consciousness and our nervous system provide for the action then taking place. our moral effort, properly so called, terminates in our holding fast to the appropriate idea. if, then, you are asked, "_in what does a moral act consist_ when reduced to its simplest and most elementary form?" you can make only one reply. you can say that _it consists in the effort of attention by which we hold fast to an idea_ which but for that effort of attention would be driven out of the mind by the other psychological tendencies that are there. _to think_, in short, is the secret of will, just as it is the secret of memory. this comes out very clearly in the kind of excuse which we most frequently hear from persons who find themselves confronted by the sinfulness or harmfulness of some part of their behavior. "i never _thought_," they say. "i never _thought_ how mean the action was, i never _thought_ of these abominable consequences." and what do we retort when they say this? we say: "why _didn't_ you think? what were you there for but to think?" and we read them a moral lecture on their irreflectiveness. the hackneyed example of moral deliberation is the case of an habitual drunkard under temptation. he has made a resolve to reform, but he is now solicited again by the bottle. his moral triumph or failure literally consists in his finding the right _name_ for the case. if he says that it is a case of not wasting good liquor already poured out, or a case of not being churlish and unsociable when in the midst of friends, or a case of learning something at last about a brand of whiskey which he never met before, or a case of celebrating a public holiday, or a case of stimulating himself to a more energetic resolve in favor of abstinence than any he has ever yet made, then he is lost. his choice of the wrong name seals his doom. but if, in spite of all the plausible good names with which his thirsty fancy so copiously furnishes him, he unwaveringly clings to the truer bad name, and apperceives the case as that of "being a drunkard, being a drunkard, being a drunkard," his feet are planted on the road to salvation. he saves himself by thinking rightly. thus are your pupils to be saved: first, by the stock of ideas with which you furnish them; second, by the amount of voluntary attention that they can exert in holding to the right ones, however unpalatable; and, third, by the several habits of acting definitely on these latter to which they have been successfully trained. in all this the power of voluntarily attending is the point of the whole procedure. just as a balance turns on its knife-edges, so on it our moral destiny turns. you remember that, when we were talking of the subject of attention, we discovered how much more intermittent and brief our acts of voluntary attention are than is commonly supposed. if they were all summed together, the time that they occupy would cover an almost incredibly small portion of our lives. but i also said, you will remember, that their brevity was not in proportion to their significance, and that i should return to the subject again. so i return to it now. it is not the mere size of a thing which, constitutes its importance: it is its position in the organism to which it belongs. our acts of voluntary attention, brief and fitful as they are, are nevertheless momentous and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower destinies. the exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take place there; and the first-rate teacher, by the keenness of the remoter interests which he is able to awaken, will provide abundant opportunities for its occurrence. i hope that you appreciate this now without any further explanation. i have been accused of holding up before you, in the course of these talks, a mechanical and even a materialistic view of the mind. i have called it an organism and a machine. i have spoken of its reaction on the environment as the essential thing about it; and i have referred this, either openly or implicitly, to the construction of the nervous system. i have, in consequence, received notes from some of you, begging me to be more explicit on this point; and to let you know frankly whether i am a complete materialist, or not. now in these lectures i wish to be strictly practical and useful, and to keep free from all speculative complications. nevertheless, i do not wish to leave any ambiguity about my own position; and i will therefore say, in order to avoid all misunderstanding, that in no sense do i count myself a materialist. i cannot see how such a thing as our consciousness can possibly be _produced_ by a nervous machinery, though i can perfectly well see how, if 'ideas' do accompany the workings of the machinery, the _order_ of the ideas might very well follow exactly the _order_ of the machine's operations. our habitual associations of ideas, trains of thought, and sequences of action, might thus be consequences of the succession of currents in our nervous systems. and the possible stock of ideas which a man's free spirit would have to choose from might depend exclusively on the native and acquired powers of his brain. if this were all, we might indeed adopt the fatalist conception which i sketched for you but a short while ago. our ideas would be determined by brain currents, and these by purely mechanical laws. but, after what we have just seen,--namely, the part played by voluntary attention in volition,--a belief in free will and purely spiritual causation is still open to us. the duration and amount of this attention _seem_ within certain limits indeterminate. we _feel_ as if we could make it really more or less, and as if our free action in this regard were a genuine critical point in nature,--a point on which our destiny and that of others might hinge. the whole question of free will concentrates itself, then, at this same small point: "is or is not the appearance of indetermination at this point an illusion?" it is plain that such a question can be decided only by general analogies, and not by accurate observations. the free-willist believes the appearance to be a reality: the determinist believes that it is an illusion. i myself hold with the free-willists,--not because i cannot conceive the fatalist theory clearly, or because i fail to understand its plausibility, but simply because, if free will _were_ true, it would be absurd to have the belief in it fatally forced on our acceptance. considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should be to sustain the belief in the freedom itself. i accordingly believe freely in my freedom; i do so with the best of scientific consciences, knowing that the predetermination of the amount of my effort of attention can never receive objective proof, and hoping that, whether you follow my example in this respect or not, it will at least make you see that such psychological and psychophysical theories as i hold do not necessarily force a man to become a fatalist or a materialist. let me say one more final word now about the will, and therewith conclude both that important subject and these lectures. there are two types of will. there are also two types of inhibition. we may call them inhibition by repression or by negation, and inhibition by substitution, respectively. the difference between them is that, in the case of inhibition by repression, both the inhibited idea and the inhibiting idea, the impulsive idea and the idea that negates it, remain along with each other in consciousness, producing a certain inward strain or tension there: whereas, in inhibition by substitution, the inhibiting idea supersedes altogether the idea which it inhibits, and the latter quickly vanishes from the field. for instance, your pupils are wandering in mind, are listening to a sound outside the window, which presently grows interesting enough to claim all their attention. you can call the latter back again by bellowing at them not to listen to those sounds, but to keep their minds on their books or on what you are saying. and, by thus keeping them conscious that your eye is sternly on them, you may produce a good effect. but it will be a wasteful effect and an inferior effect; for the moment you relax your supervision the attractive disturbance, always there soliciting their curiosity, will overpower them, and they will be just as they were before: whereas, if, without saying anything about the street disturbances, you open a counter-attraction by starting some very interesting talk or demonstration yourself, they will altogether forget the distracting incident, and without any effort follow you along. there are many interests that can never be inhibited by the way of negation. to a man in love, for example, it is literally impossible, by any effort of will, to annul his passion. but let 'some new planet swim into his ken,' and the former idol will immediately cease to engross his mind. it is clear that in general we ought, whenever we can, to employ the method of inhibition by substitution. he whose life is based upon the word 'no,' who tells the truth because a lie is wicked, and who has constantly to grapple with his envious and cowardly and mean propensities, is in an inferior situation in every respect to what he would be if the love of truth and magnanimity positively possessed him from the outset, and he felt no inferior temptations. your born gentleman is certainly, for this world's purposes, a more valuable being than your "crump, with his grunting resistance to his native devils," even though in god's sight the latter may, as the catholic theologians say, be rolling up great stores of 'merit.' spinoza long ago wrote in his ethics that anything that a man can avoid under the notion that it is bad he may also avoid under the notion that something else is good. he who habitually acts _sub specie mali_, under the negative notion, the notion of the bad, is called a slave by spinoza. to him who acts habitually under the notion of good he gives the name of freeman. see to it now, i beg you, that you make freemen of your pupils by habituating them to act, whenever possible, under the notion of a good. get them habitually to tell the truth, not so much through showing them the wickedness of lying as by arousing their enthusiasm for honor and veracity. wean them from their native cruelty by imparting to them some of your own positive sympathy with an animal's inner springs of joy. and, in the lessons which you may be legally obliged to conduct upon the bad effects of alcohol, lay less stress than the books do on the drunkard's stomach, kidneys, nerves, and social miseries, and more on the blessings of having an organism kept in lifelong possession of its full youthful elasticity by a sweet, sound blood, to which stimulants and narcotics are unknown, and to which the morning sun and air and dew will daily come as sufficiently powerful intoxicants. i have now ended these talks. if to some of you the things i have said seem obvious or trivial, it is possible that they may appear less so when, in the course of a year or two, you find yourselves noticing and apperceiving events in the schoolroom a little differently, in consequence of some of the conceptions i have tried to make more clear. i cannot but think that to apperceive your pupil as a little sensitive, impulsive, associative, and reactive organism, partly fated and partly free, will lead to a better intelligence of all his ways. understand him, then, as such a subtle little piece of machinery. and if, in addition, you can also see him _sub specie boni_, and love him as well, you will be in the best possible position for becoming perfect teachers. #talks to students# i. the gospel of relaxation i wish in the following hour to take certain psychological doctrines and show their practical applications to mental hygiene,--to the hygiene of our american life more particularly. our people, especially in academic circles, are turning towards psychology nowadays with great expectations; and, if psychology is to justify them, it must be by showing fruits in the pedagogic and therapeutic lines. the reader may possibly have heard of a peculiar theory of the emotions, commonly referred to in psychological literature as the lange-james theory. according to this theory, our emotions are mainly due to those organic stirrings that are aroused in us in a reflex way by the stimulus of the exciting object or situation. an emotion of fear, for example, or surprise, is not a direct effect of the object's presence on the mind, but an effect of that still earlier effect, the bodily commotion which the object suddenly excites; so that, were this bodily commotion suppressed, we should not so much _feel_ fear as call the situation fearful; we should not feel surprise, but coldly recognize that the object was indeed astonishing. one enthusiast has even gone so far as to say that when we feel sorry it is because we weep, when we feel afraid it is because we run away, and not conversely. some of you may perhaps be acquainted with the paradoxical formula. now, whatever exaggeration may possibly lurk in this account of our emotions (and i doubt myself whether the exaggeration be very great), it is certain that the main core of it is true, and that the mere giving way to tears, for example, or to the outward expression of an anger-fit, will result for the moment in making the inner grief or anger more acutely felt. there is, accordingly, no better known or more generally useful precept in the moral training of youth, or in one's personal self-discipline, than that which bids us pay primary attention to what we do and express, and not to care too much for what we feel. if we only check a cowardly impulse in time, for example, or if we only _don't_ strike the blow or rip out with the complaining or insulting word that we shall regret as long as we live, our feelings themselves will presently be the calmer and better, with no particular guidance from us on their own account. action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. if such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can. so to feel brave, act as if we _were_ brave, use all our will to that end, and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear. again, in order to feel kindly toward a person to whom we have been inimical, the only way is more or less deliberately to smile, to make sympathetic inquiries, and to force ourselves to say genial things. one hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling. to wrestle with a bad feeling only pins our attention on it, and keeps it still fastened in the mind: whereas, if we act as if from some better feeling, the old bad feeling soon folds its tent like an arab, and silently steals away. the best manuals of religious devotion accordingly reiterate the maxim that we must let our feelings go, and pay no regard to them whatever. in an admirable and widely successful little book called 'the christian's secret of a happy life,' by mrs. hannah whitall smith, i find this lesson on almost every page. _act_ faithfully, and you really have faith, no matter how cold and even how dubious you may feel. "it is your purpose god looks at," writes mrs. smith, "not your feelings about that purpose; and your purpose, or will, is therefore the only thing you need attend to.... let your emotions come or let them go, just as god pleases, and make no account of them either way.... they really have nothing to do with the matter. they are not the indicators of your spiritual state, but are merely the indicators of your temperament or of your present physical condition." but you all know these facts already, so i need no longer press them on your attention. from our acts and from our attitudes ceaseless inpouring currents of sensation come, which help to determine from moment to moment what our inner states shall be: that is a fundamental law of psychology which i will therefore proceed to assume. * * * * * a viennese neurologist of considerable reputation has recently written about the _binnenleben_, as he terms it, or buried life of human beings. no doctor, this writer says, can get into really profitable relations with a nervous patient until he gets some sense of what the patient's _binnenleben_ is, of the sort of unuttered inner atmosphere in which his consciousness dwells alone with the secrets of its prison-house. this inner personal tone is what we can't communicate or describe articulately to others; but the wraith and ghost of it, so to speak, are often what our friends and intimates feel as our most characteristic quality. in the unhealthy-minded, apart from all sorts of old regrets, ambitions checked by shames and aspirations obstructed by timidities, it consists mainly of bodily discomforts not distinctly localized by the sufferer, but breeding a general self-mistrust and sense that things are not as they should be with him. half the thirst for alcohol that exists in the world exists simply because alcohol acts as a temporary anæsthetic and effacer to all these morbid feelings that never ought to be in a human being at all. in the healthy-minded, on the contrary, there are no fears or shames to discover; and the sensations that pour in from the organism only help to swell the general vital sense of security and readiness for anything that may turn up. consider, for example, the effects of a well-toned _motor-apparatus_, nervous and muscular, on our general personal self-consciousness, the sense of elasticity and efficiency that results. they tell us that in norway the life of the women has lately been entirely revolutionized by the new order of muscular feelings with which the use of the _ski_, or long snow-shoes, as a sport for both sexes, has made the women acquainted. fifteen years ago the norwegian women were even more than the women of other lands votaries of the old-fashioned ideal of femininity, 'the domestic angel,' the 'gentle and refining influence' sort of thing. now these sedentary fireside tabby-cats of norway have been trained, they say, by the snow-shoes into lithe and audacious creatures, for whom no night is too dark or height too giddy, and who are not only saying good-bye to the traditional feminine pallor and delicacy of constitution, but actually taking the lead in every educational and social reform. i cannot but think that the tennis and tramping and skating habits and the bicycle-craze which are so rapidly extending among our dear sisters and daughters in this country are going also to lead to a sounder and heartier moral tone, which will send its tonic breath through all our american life. i hope that here in america more and more the ideal of the well-trained and vigorous body will be maintained neck by neck with that of the well-trained and vigorous mind as the two coequal halves of the higher education for men and women alike. the strength of the british empire lies in the strength of character of the individual englishman, taken all alone by himself. and that strength, i am persuaded, is perennially nourished and kept up by nothing so much as by the national worship, in which all classes meet, of athletic outdoor life and sport. i recollect, years ago, reading a certain work by an american doctor on hygiene and the laws of life and the type of future humanity. i have forgotten its author's name and its title, but i remember well an awful prophecy that it contained about the future of our muscular system. human perfection, the writer said, means ability to cope with the environment; but the environment will more and more require mental power from us, and less and less will ask for bare brute strength. wars will cease, machines will do all our heavy work, man will become more and more a mere director of nature's energies, and less and less an exerter of energy on his own account. so that, if the _homo sapiens_ of the future can only digest his food and think, what need will he have of well-developed muscles at all? and why, pursued this writer, should we not even now be satisfied with a more delicate and intellectual type of beauty than that which pleased our ancestors? nay, i have heard a fanciful friend make a still further advance in this 'new-man' direction. with our future food, he says, itself prepared in liquid form from the chemical elements of the atmosphere, pepsinated or half-digested in advance, and sucked up through a glass tube from a tin can, what need shall we have of teeth, or stomachs even? they may go, along with our muscles and our physical courage, while, challenging ever more and more our proper admiration, will grow the gigantic domes of our crania, arching over our spectacled eyes, and animating our flexible little lips to those floods of learned and ingenious talk which will constitute our most congenial occupation. i am sure that your flesh creeps at this apocalyptic vision. mine certainly did so; and i cannot believe that our muscular vigor will ever be a superfluity. even if the day ever dawns in which it will not be needed for fighting the old heavy battles against nature, it will still always be needed to furnish the background of sanity, serenity, and cheerfulness to life, to give moral elasticity to our disposition, to round off the wiry edge of our fretfulness, and make us good-humored and easy of approach. weakness is too apt to be what the doctors call irritable weakness. and that blessed internal peace and confidence, that _acquiescentia in seipso_, as spinoza used to call it, that wells up from every part of the body of a muscularly well-trained human being, and soaks the indwelling soul of him with satisfaction, is, quite apart from every consideration of its mechanical utility, an element of spiritual hygiene of supreme significance. and now let me go a step deeper into mental hygiene, and try to enlist your insight and sympathy in a cause which i believe is one of paramount patriotic importance to us yankees. many years ago a scottish medical man, dr. clouston, a mad-doctor as they call him there, or what we should call an asylum physician (the most eminent one in scotland), visited this country, and said something that has remained in my memory ever since. "you americans," he said, "wear too much expression on your faces. you are living like an army with all its reserves engaged in action. the duller countenances of the british population betoken a better scheme of life. they suggest stores of reserved nervous force to fall back upon, if any occasion should arise that requires it. this inexcitability, this presence at all times of power not used, i regard," continued dr. clouston, "as the great safeguard of our british people. the other thing in you gives me a sense of insecurity, and you ought somehow to tone yourselves down. you really do carry too much expression, you take too intensely the trivial moments of life." now dr. clouston is a trained reader of the secrets of the soul as expressed upon the countenance, and the observation of his which i quote seems to me to mean a great deal. and all americans who stay in europe long enough to get accustomed to the spirit that reigns and expresses itself there, so unexcitable as compared with ours, make a similar observation when they return to their native shores. they find a wild-eyed look upon their compatriots' faces, either of too desperate eagerness and anxiety or of too intense responsiveness and good-will. it is hard to say whether the men or the women show it most. it is true that we do not all feel about it as dr. clouston felt. many of us, far from deploring it, admire it. we say: "what intelligence it shows! how different from the stolid cheeks, the codfish eyes, the slow, inanimate demeanor we have been seeing in the british isles!" intensity, rapidity, vivacity of appearance, are indeed with us something of a nationally accepted ideal; and the medical notion of 'irritable weakness' is not the first thing suggested by them to our mind, as it was to dr. clouston's. in a weekly paper not very long ago i remember reading a story in which, after describing the beauty and interest of the heroine's personality, the author summed up her charms by saying that to all who looked upon her an impression as of 'bottled lightning' was irresistibly conveyed. bottled lightning, in truth, is one of our american ideals, even of a young girl's character! now it is most ungracious, and it may seem to some persons unpatriotic, to criticise in public the physical peculiarities of one's own people, of one's own family, so to speak. besides, it may be said, and said with justice, that there are plenty of bottled-lightning temperaments in other countries, and plenty of phlegmatic temperaments here; and that, when all is said and done, the more or less of tension about which i am making such a fuss is a very small item in the sum total of a nation's life, and not worth solemn treatment at a time when agreeable rather than disagreeable things should be talked about. well, in one sense the more or less of tension in our faces and in our unused muscles is a small thing: not much mechanical work is done by these contractions. but it is not always the material size of a thing that measures its importance: often it is its place and function. one of the most philosophical remarks i ever heard made was by an unlettered workman who was doing some repairs at my house many years ago. "there is very little difference between one man and another," he said, "when you go to the bottom of it. but what little there is, is very important." and the remark certainly applies to this case. the general over-contraction may be small when estimated in foot-pounds, but its importance is immense on account of its _effects on the over-contracted person's spiritual life_. this follows as a necessary consequence from the theory of our emotions to which i made reference at the beginning of this article. for by the sensations that so incessantly pour in from the over-tense excited body the over-tense and excited habit of mind is kept up; and the sultry, threatening, exhausting, thunderous inner atmosphere never quite clears away. if you never wholly give yourself up to the chair you sit in, but always keep your leg- and body-muscles half contracted for a rise; if you breathe eighteen or nineteen instead of sixteen times a minute, and never quite breathe out at that,--what mental mood _can_ you be in but one of inner panting and expectancy, and how can the future and its worries possibly forsake your mind? on the other hand, how can they gain admission to your mind if your brow be unruffled, your respiration calm and complete, and your muscles all relaxed? now what is the cause of this absence of repose, this bottled-lightning quality in us americans? the explanation of it that is usually given is that it comes from the extreme dryness of our climate and the acrobatic performances of our thermometer, coupled with the extraordinary progressiveness of our life, the hard work, the railroad speed, the rapid success, and all the other things we know so well by heart. well, our climate is certainly exciting, but hardly more so than that of many parts of europe, where nevertheless no bottled-lightning girls are found. and the work done and the pace of life are as extreme an every great capital of europe as they are here. to me both of these pretended causes are utterly insufficient to explain the facts. to explain them, we must go not to physical geography, but to psychology and sociology. the latest chapter both in sociology and in psychology to be developed in a manner that approaches adequacy is the chapter on the imitative impulse. first bagehot, then tarde, then royce and baldwin here, have shown that invention and imitation, taken together, form, one may say, the entire warp and woof of human life, in so far as it is social. the american over-tension and jerkiness and breathlessness and intensity and agony of expression are primarily social, and only secondarily physiological, phenomena. they are _bad habits_, nothing more or less, bred of custom and example, born of the imitation of bad models and the cultivation of false personal ideals. how are idioms acquired, how do local peculiarities of phrase and accent come about? through an accidental example set by some one, which struck the ears of others, and was quoted and copied till at last every one in the locality chimed in. just so it is with national tricks of vocalization or intonation, with national manners, fashions of movement and gesture, and habitual expressions of face. we, here in america, through following a succession of pattern-setters whom it is now impossible to trace, and through influencing each other in a bad direction, have at last settled down collectively into what, for better or worse, is our own characteristic national type,--a type with the production of which, so far as these habits go, the climate and conditions have had practically nothing at all to do. this type, which we have thus reached by our imitativeness, we now have fixed upon us, for better or worse. now no type can be _wholly_ disadvantageous; but, so far as our type follows the bottled-lightning fashion, it cannot be wholly good. dr. clouston was certainly right in thinking that eagerness, breathlessness, and anxiety are not signs of strength: they are signs of weakness and of bad co-ordination. the even forehead, the slab-like cheek, the codfish eye, may be less interesting for the moment; but they are more promising signs than intense expression is of what we may expect of their possessor in the long run. your dull, unhurried worker gets over a great deal of ground, because he never goes backward or breaks down. your intense, convulsive worker breaks down and has bad moods so often that you never know where he may be when you most need his help,--he may be having one of his 'bad days.' we say that so many of our fellow-countrymen collapse, and have to be sent abroad to rest their nerves, because they work so hard. i suspect that this is an immense mistake. i suspect that neither the nature nor the amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and severity of our breakdowns, but that their cause lies rather in those absurd feelings of hurry and having no time, in that breathlessness and tension, that anxiety of feature and that solicitude for results, that lack of inner harmony and ease, in short, by which with us the work is so apt to be accompanied, and from which a european who should do the same work would nine times out of ten be free. these perfectly wanton and unnecessary tricks of inner attitude and outer manner in us, caught from the social atmosphere, kept up by tradition, and idealized by many as the admirable way of life, are the last straws that break the american camel's back, the final overflowers of our measure of wear and tear and fatigue. the voice, for example, in a surprisingly large number of us has a tired and plaintive sound. some of us are really tired (for i do not mean absolutely to deny that our climate has a tiring quality); but far more of us are not tired at all, or would not be tired at all unless we had got into a wretched trick of feeling tired, by following the prevalent habits of vocalization and expression. and if talking high and tired, and living excitedly and hurriedly, would only enable us to _do_ more by the way, even while breaking us down in the end, it would be different. there would be some compensation, some excuse, for going on so. but the exact reverse is the case. it is your relaxed and easy worker, who is in no hurry, and quite thoughtless most of the while of consequences, who is your efficient worker; and tension and anxiety, and present and future, all mixed up together in our mind at once, are the surest drags upon steady progress and hindrances to our success. my colleague, professor münsterberg, an excellent observer, who came here recently, has written some notes on america to german papers. he says in substance that the appearance of unusual energy in america is superficial and illusory, being really due to nothing but the habits of jerkiness and bad co-ordination for which we have to thank the defective training of our people. i think myself that it is high time for old legends and traditional opinions to be changed; and that, if any one should begin to write about yankee inefficiency and feebleness, and inability to do anything with time except to waste it, he would have a very pretty paradoxical little thesis to sustain, with a great many facts to quote, and a great deal of experience to appeal to in its proof. well, my friends, if our dear american character is weakened by all this over-tension,--and i think, whatever reserves you may make, that you will agree as to the main facts,--where does the remedy lie? it lies, of course, where lay the origins of the disease. if a vicious fashion and taste are to blame for the thing, the fashion and taste must be changed. and, though it is no small thing to inoculate seventy millions of people with new standards, yet, if there is to be any relief, that will have to be done. we must change ourselves from a race that admires jerk and snap for their own sakes, and looks down upon low voices and quiet ways as dull, to one that, on the contrary, has calm for its ideal, and for their own sakes loves harmony, dignity, and ease. so we go back to the psychology of imitation again. there is only one way to improve ourselves, and that is by some of us setting an example which the others may pick up and imitate till the new fashion spreads from east to west. some of us are in more favorable positions than others to set new fashions. some are much more striking personally and imitable, so to speak. but no living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody. thackeray somewhere says of the irish nation that there never was an irishman so poor that he didn't have a still poorer irishman living at his expense; and, surely, there is no human being whose example doesn't work contagiously in _some_ particular. the very idiots at our public institutions imitate each other's peculiarities. and, if you should individually achieve calmness and harmony in your own person, you may depend upon it that a wave of imitation will spread from you, as surely as the circles spread outward when a stone is dropped into a lake. fortunately, we shall not have to be absolute pioneers. even now in new york they have formed a society for the improvement of our national vocalization, and one perceives its machinations already in the shape of various newspaper paragraphs intended to stir up dissatisfaction with the awful thing that it is. and, better still than that, because more radical and general, is the gospel of relaxation, as one may call it, preached by miss annie payson call, of boston, in her admirable little volume called 'power through repose,' a book that ought to be in the hands of every teacher and student in america of either sex. you need only be followers, then, on a path already opened up by others. but of one thing be confident: others still will follow you. and this brings me to one more application of psychology to practical life, to which i will call attention briefly, and then close. if one's example of easy and calm ways is to be effectively contagious, one feels by instinct that the less voluntarily one aims at getting imitated, the more unconscious one keeps in the matter, the more likely one is to succeed. _become the imitable thing_, and you may then discharge your minds of all responsibility for the imitation. the laws of social nature will take care of that result. now the psychological principle on which this precept reposes is a law of very deep and wide-spread importance in the conduct of our lives, and at the same time a law which we americans most grievously neglect. stated technically, the law is this: that _strong feeling about one's self tends to arrest the free association of one's objective ideas and motor processes_. we get the extreme example of this in the mental disease called melancholia. a melancholic patient is filled through and through with intensely painful emotion about himself. he is threatened, he is guilty, he is doomed, he is annihilated, he is lost. his mind is fixed as if in a cramp on these feelings of his own situation, and in all the books on insanity you may read that the usual varied flow of his thoughts has ceased. his associative processes, to use the technical phrase, are inhibited; and his ideas stand stock-still, shut up to their one monotonous function of reiterating inwardly the fact of the man's desperate estate. and this inhibitive influence is not due to the mere fact that his emotion is _painful_. joyous emotions about the self also stop the association of our ideas. a saint in ecstasy is as motionless and irresponsive and one-idea'd as a melancholiac. and, without going as far as ecstatic saints, we know how in every one a great or sudden pleasure may paralyze the flow of thought. ask young people returning from a party or a spectacle, and all excited about it, what it was. "oh, it was _fine_! it was _fine_! it was _fine_!" is all the information you are likely to receive until the excitement has calmed down. probably every one of my hearers has been made temporarily half-idiotic by some great success or piece of good fortune. "_good_! good! good!" is all we can at such times say to ourselves until we smile at our own very foolishness. now from all this we can draw an extremely practical conclusion. if, namely, we wish our trains of ideation and volition to be copious and varied and effective, we must form the habit of freeing them from the inhibitive influence of reflection upon them, of egoistic preoccupation about their results. such a habit, like other habits, can be formed. prudence and duty and self-regard, emotions of ambition and emotions of anxiety, have, of course, a needful part to play in our lives. but confine them as far as possible to the occasions when you are making your general resolutions and deciding on your plans of campaign, and keep them out of the details. when once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome. _unclamp_, in a word, your intellectual and practical machinery, and let it run free; and the service it will do you will be twice as good. who are the scholars who get 'rattled' in the recitation-room? those who think of the possibilities of failure and feel the great importance of the act. who are those who do recite well? often those who are most indifferent. _their_ ideas reel themselves out of their memory of their own accord. why do we hear the complaint so often that social life in new england is either less rich and expressive or more fatiguing than it is in some other parts of the world? to what is the fact, if fact it be, due unless to the over-active conscience of the people, afraid of either saying something too trivial and obvious, or something insincere, or something unworthy of one's interlocutor, or something in some way or other not adequate to the occasion? how can conversation possibly steer itself through such a sea of responsibilities and inhibitions as this? on the other hand, conversation does flourish and society is refreshing, and neither dull on the one hand nor exhausting from its effort on the other, wherever people forget their scruples and take the brakes off their hearts, and let their tongues wag as automatically and irresponsibly as they will. they talk much in pedagogic circles to-day about the duty of the teacher to prepare for every lesson in advance. to some extent this is useful. but we yankees are assuredly not those to whom such a general doctrine should be preached. we are only too careful as it is. the advice i should give to most teachers would be in the words of one who is herself an admirable teacher. prepare yourself in the _subject so well that it shall be always on tap_: then in the classroom trust your spontaneity and fling away all further care. my advice to students, especially to girl-students, would be somewhat similar. just as a bicycle-chain may be too tight, so may one's carefulness and conscientiousness be so tense as to hinder the running of one's mind. take, for example, periods when there are many successive days of examination impending. one ounce of good nervous tone in an examination is worth many pounds of anxious study for it in advance. if you want really to do your best in an examination, fling away the book the day before, say to yourself, "i won't waste another minute on this miserable thing, and i don't care an iota whether i succeed or not." say this sincerely, and feel it; and go out and play, or go to bed and sleep, and i am sure the results next day will encourage you to use the method permanently. i have heard this advice given to a student by miss call, whose book on muscular relaxation i quoted a moment ago. in her later book, entitled 'as a matter of course,' the gospel of moral relaxation, of dropping things from the mind, and not 'caring,' is preached with equal success. not only our preachers, but our friends the theosophists and mind-curers of various religious sects are also harping on this string. and with the doctors, the delsarteans, the various mind-curing sects, and such writers as mr. dresser, prentice mulford, mr. horace fletcher, and mr. trine to help, and the whole band of schoolteachers and magazine-readers chiming in, it really looks as if a good start might be made in the direction of changing our american mental habit into something more indifferent and strong. worry means always and invariably inhibition of associations and loss of effective power. of course, the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith; and this, of course, you also know. the turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things. the really religious person is accordingly unshakable and full of equanimity, and calmly ready for any duty that the day may bring forth. this is charmingly illustrated by a little work with which i recently became acquainted, "the practice of the presence of god, the best ruler of a holy life, by brother lawrence, being conversations and letters of nicholas herman of lorraine, translated from the french."[c] i extract a few passages, the conversations being given in indirect discourse. brother lawrence was a carmelite friar, converted at paris in . "he said that he had been footman to m. fieubert, the treasurer, and that he was a great awkward fellow, who broke everything. that he had desired to be received into a monastery, thinking that he would there be made to smart for his awkwardness and the faults he should commit, and so he should sacrifice to god his life, with its pleasures; but that god had disappointed him, he having met with nothing but satisfaction in that state...." [c] fleming h. revell company, new york. "that he had long been troubled in mind from a certain belief that he should be damned; that all the men in the world could not have persuaded him to the contrary; but that he had thus reasoned with himself about it: _i engaged in a religious life only for the love of god, and i have endeavored to act only for him; whatever becomes of me, whether i be lost or saved, i will always continue to act purely for the love of god. i shall have this good at least, that till death i shall have done all that is in me to love him_.... that since then he had passed his life in perfect liberty and continual joy." "that when an occasion of practising some virtue offered, he addressed himself to god, saying, 'lord, i cannot do this unless thou enablest me'; and that then he received strength more than sufficient. that, when he had failed in his duty, he only confessed his fault, saying to god, 'i shall never do otherwise, if you leave me to myself; it is you who must hinder my failing, and mend what is amiss.' that after this he gave himself no further uneasiness about it." "that he had been lately sent into burgundy to buy the provision of wine for the society, which was a very unwelcome task for him, because he had no turn for business, and because he was lame, and could not go about the boat but by rolling himself over the casks. that, however, he gave himself no uneasiness about it, nor about the purchase of the wine. that he said to god, 'it was his business he was about,' and that he afterward found it well performed. that he had been sent into auvergne, the year before, upon the same account; that he could not tell how the matter passed, but that it proved very well." "so, likewise, in his business in the kitchen (to which he had naturally a great aversion), having accustomed himself to do everything there for the love of god, and with prayer upon all occasions, for his grace to do his work well, he had found everything easy during fifteen years that he had been employed there." "that he was very well pleased with the post he was now in, but that he was as ready to quit that as the former, since he was always pleasing himself in every condition, by doing little things for the love of god." "that the goodness of god assured him he would not forsake him utterly, and that he would give him strength to bear whatever evil he permitted to happen to him; and, therefore, that he feared nothing, and had no occasion to consult with anybody about his state. that, when he had attempted to do it, he had always come away more perplexed." the simple-heartedness of the good brother lawrence, and the relaxation of all unnecessary solicitudes and anxieties in him, is a refreshing spectacle. * * * * * the need of feeling responsible all the livelong day has been preached long enough in our new england. long enough exclusively, at any rate,--and long enough to the female sex. what our girl-students and woman-teachers most need nowadays is not the exacerbation, but rather the toning-down of their moral tensions. even now i fear that some one of my fair hearers may be making an undying resolve to become strenuously relaxed, cost what it will, for the remainder of her life. it is needless to say that that is not the way to do it. the way to do it, paradoxical as it may seem, is genuinely not to care whether you are doing it or not. then, possibly, by the grace of god, you may all at once find that you _are_ doing it, and, having learned what the trick feels like, you may (again by the grace of god) be enabled to go on. and that something like this may be the happy experience of all my hearers is, in closing, my most earnest wish. ii. on a certain blindness in human beings our judgments concerning the worth of things, big or little, depend on the _feelings_ the things arouse in us. where we judge a thing to be precious in consequence of the _idea_ we frame of it, this is only because the idea is itself associated already with a feeling. if we were radically feelingless, and if ideas were the only things our mind could entertain, we should lose all our likes and dislikes at a stroke, and be unable to point to any one situation or experience in life more valuable or significant than any other. now the blindness in human beings, of which this discourse will treat, is the blindness with which we all are afflicted in regard to the feelings of creatures and people different from ourselves. we are practical beings, each of us with limited functions and duties to perform. each is bound to feel intensely the importance of his own duties and the significance of the situations that call these forth. but this feeling is in each of us a vital secret, for sympathy with which we vainly look to others. the others are too much absorbed in their own vital secrets to take an interest in ours. hence the stupidity and injustice of our opinions, so far as they deal with the significance of alien lives. hence the falsity of our judgments, so far as they presume to decide in an absolute way on the value of other persons' conditions or ideals. take our dogs and ourselves, connected as we are by a tie more intimate than most ties in this world; and yet, outside of that tie of friendly fondness, how insensible, each of us, to all that makes life significant for the other!--we to the rapture of bones under hedges, or smells of trees and lamp-posts, they to the delights of literature and art. as you sit reading the most moving romance you ever fell upon, what sort of a judge is your fox-terrier of your behavior? with all his good will toward you, the nature of your conduct is absolutely excluded from his comprehension. to sit there like a senseless statue, when you might be taking him to walk and throwing sticks for him to catch! what queer disease is this that comes over you every day, of holding things and staring at them like that for hours together, paralyzed of motion and vacant of all conscious life? the african savages came nearer the truth; but they, too, missed it, when they gathered wonderingly round one of our american travellers who, in the interior, had just come into possession of a stray copy of the new york _commercial advertiser_, and was devouring it column by column. when he got through, they offered him a high price for the mysterious object; and, being asked for what they wanted it, they said: "for an eye medicine,"--that being the only reason they could conceive of for the protracted bath which he had given his eyes upon its surface. the spectator's judgment is sure to miss the root of the matter, and to possess no truth. the subject judged knows a part of the world of reality which the judging spectator fails to see, knows more while the spectator knows less; and, wherever there is conflict of opinion and difference of vision, we are bound to believe that the truer side is the side that feels the more, and not the side that feels the less. let me take a personal example of the kind that befalls each one of us daily:-- some years ago, while journeying in the mountains of north carolina, i passed by a large number of 'coves,' as they call them there, or heads of small valleys between the hills, which had been newly cleared and planted. the impression on my mind was one of unmitigated squalor. the settler had in every case cut down the more manageable trees, and left their charred stumps standing. the larger trees he had girdled and killed, in order that their foliage should not cast a shade. he had then built a log cabin, plastering its chinks with clay, and had set up a tall zigzag rail fence around the scene of his havoc, to keep the pigs and cattle out. finally, he had irregularly planted the intervals between the stumps and trees with indian corn, which grew among the chips; and there he dwelt with his wife and babes--an axe, a gun, a few utensils, and some pigs and chickens feeding in the woods, being the sum total of his possessions. the forest had been destroyed; and what had 'improved' it out of existence was hideous, a sort of ulcer, without a single element of artificial grace to make up for the loss of nature's beauty. ugly, indeed, seemed the life of the squatter, scudding, as the sailors say, under bare poles, beginning again away back where our first ancestors started, and by hardly a single item the better off for all the achievements of the intervening generations. talk about going back to nature! i said to myself, oppressed by the dreariness, as i drove by. talk of a country life for one's old age and for one's children! never thus, with nothing but the bare ground and one's bare hands to fight the battle! never, without the best spoils of culture woven in! the beauties and commodities gained by the centuries are sacred. they are our heritage and birthright. no modern person ought to be willing to live a day in such a state of rudimentariness and denudation. then i said to the mountaineer who was driving me, "what sort of people are they who have to make these new clearings?" "all of us," he replied. "why, we ain't happy here, unless we are getting one of these coves under cultivation." i instantly felt that i had been losing the whole inward significance of the situation. because to me the clearings spoke of naught but denudation, i thought that to those whose sturdy arms and obedient axes had made them they could tell no other story. but, when _they_ looked on the hideous stumps, what they thought of was personal victory. the chips, the girdled trees, and the vile split rails spoke of honest sweat, persistent toil and final reward. the cabin was a warrant of safety for self and wife and babes. in short, the clearing, which to me was a mere ugly picture on the retina, was to them a symbol redolent with moral memories and sang a very pæan of duty, struggle, and success. i had been as blind to the peculiar ideality of their conditions as they certainly would also have been to the ideality of mine, had they had a peep at my strange indoor academic ways of life at cambridge. * * * * * wherever a process of life communicates an eagerness to him who lives it, there the life becomes genuinely significant. sometimes the eagerness is more knit up with the motor activities, sometimes with the perceptions, sometimes with the imagination, sometimes with reflective thought. but, wherever it is found, there is the zest, the tingle, the excitement of reality; and there _is_ 'importance' in the only real and positive sense in which importance ever anywhere can be. robert louis stevenson has illustrated this by a case, drawn from the sphere of the imagination, in an essay which i really think deserves to become immortal, both for the truth of its matter and the excellence of its form. "toward the end of september," stevenson writes, "when school-time was drawing near, and the nights were already black, we would begin to sally from our respective villas, each equipped with a tin bull's-eye lantern. the thing was so well known that it had worn a rut in the commerce of great britain; and the grocers, about the due time, began to garnish their windows with our particular brand of luminary. we wore them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and over them, such was the rigor of the game, a buttoned top-coat. they smelled noisomely of blistered tin. they never burned aright, though they would always burn our fingers. their use was naught, the pleasure of them merely fanciful, and yet a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat asked for nothing more. the fishermen used lanterns about their boats, and it was from them, i suppose, that we had got the hint; but theirs were not bull's-eyes, nor did we ever play at being fishermen. the police carried them at their belts, and we had plainly copied them in that; yet we did not pretend to be policemen. burglars, indeed, we may have had some haunting thought of; and we had certainly an eye to past ages when lanterns were more common, and to certain story-books in which we had found them to figure very largely. but take it for all in all, the pleasure of the thing was substantive; and to be a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat was good enough for us. "when two of these asses met, there would be an anxious 'have you got your lantern?' and a gratified 'yes!' that was the shibboleth, and very needful, too; for, as it was the rule to keep our glory contained, none could recognize a lantern-bearer unless (like the polecat) by the smell. four or five would sometimes climb into the belly of a ten-man lugger, with nothing but the thwarts above them,--for the cabin was usually locked,--or chose out some hollow of the links where the wind might whistle overhead. then the coats would be unbuttoned, and the bull's-eyes discovered; and in the chequering glimmer, under the huge, windy hall of the night, and cheered by a rich steam of toasting tinware, these fortunate young gentlemen would crouch together in the cold sand of the links, or on the scaly bilges of the fishing-boat, and delight them with inappropriate talk. woe is me that i cannot give some specimens!... but the talk was but a condiment, and these gatherings themselves only accidents in the career of the lantern-bearer. the essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night, the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned, not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public,--a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool's heart, to know you had a bull's-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over the knowledge. "it is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid. it may be contended rather that a (somewhat minor) bard in almost every case survives, and is the spice of life to his possessor. justice is not done to the versatility and the unplumbed childishness of man's imagination. his life from without may seem but a rude mound of mud: there will be some golden chamber at the heart of it, in which he dwells delighted; and for as dark as his pathway seems to the observer, he will have some kind of bull's-eye at his belt." ... "there is one fable that touches very near the quick of life,--the fable of the monk who passed into the woods, heard a bird break into song, hearkened for a trill or two, and found himself at his return a stranger at his convent gates; for he had been absent fifty years, and of all his comrades there survived but one to recognize him. it is not only in the woods that this enchanter carols, though perhaps he is native there. he sings in the most doleful places. the miser hears him and chuckles, and his days are moments. with no more apparatus than an evil-smelling lantern, i have evoked him on the naked links. all life that is not merely mechanical is spun out of two strands,--seeking for that bird and hearing him. and it is just this that makes life so hard to value, and the delight of each so incommunicable. and it is just a knowledge of this, and a remembrance of those fortunate hours in which the bird _has_ sung to _us_, that fills us with such wonder when we turn to the pages of the realist. there, to be sure, we find a picture of life in so far as it consists of mud and of old iron, cheap desires and cheap fears, that which we are ashamed to remember and that which we are careless whether we forget; but of the note of that time-devouring nightingale we hear no news." ... "say that we came [in such a realistic romance] on some such business as that of my lantern-bearers on the links, and described the boys as very cold, spat upon by flurries of rain, and drearily surrounded, all of which they were; and their talk as silly and indecent, which it certainly was. to the eye of the observer they _are_ wet and cold and drearily surrounded; but ask themselves, and they are in the heaven of a recondite pleasure, the ground of which is an ill-smelling lantern." "for, to repeat, the ground of a man's joy is often hard to hit. it may hinge at times upon a mere accessory, like the lantern; it may reside in the mysterious inwards of psychology.... it has so little bond with externals ... that it may even touch them not, and the man's true life, for which he consents to live, lie together in the field of fancy.... in such a case the poetry runs underground. the observer (poor soul, with his documents!) is all abroad. for to look at the man is but to court deception. we shall see the trunk from which he draws his nourishment; but he himself is above and abroad in the green dome of foliage, hummed through by winds and nested in by nightingales. and the true realism were that of the poets, to climb after him like a squirrel, and catch some glimpse of the heaven in which he lives. and the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing." "for to miss the joy is to miss all. in the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action. that is the explanation, that the excuse. to one who has not the secret of the lanterns the scene upon the links is meaningless. and hence the haunting and truly spectral unreality of realistic books.... in each we miss the personal poetry, the enchanted atmosphere, that rainbow work of fancy that clothes what is naked and seems to ennoble what is base; in each, life falls dead like dough, instead of soaring away like a balloon into the colors of the sunset; each is true, each inconceivable; for no man lives in the external truth among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows and the storied wall."[d] [d] 'the lantern-bearers,' in the volume entitled 'across the plains.' abridged in the quotation. these paragraphs are the best thing i know in all stevenson. "to miss the joy is to miss all." indeed, it is. yet we are but finite, and each one of us has some single specialized vocation of his own. and it seems as if energy in the service of its particular duties might be got only by hardening the heart toward everything unlike them. our deadness toward all but one particular kind of joy would thus be the price we inevitably have to pay for being practical creatures. only in some pitiful dreamer, some philosopher, poet, or romancer, or when the common practical man becomes a lover, does the hard externality give way, and a gleam of insight into the ejective world, as clifford called it, the vast world of inner life beyond us, so different from that of outer seeming, illuminate our mind. then the whole scheme of our customary values gets confounded, then our self is riven and its narrow interests fly to pieces, then a new centre and a new perspective must be found. the change is well described by my colleague, josiah royce:-- "what, then, is our neighbor? thou hast regarded his thought, his feeling, as somehow different from thine. thou hast said, 'a pain in him is not like a pain in me, but something far easier to bear.' he seems to thee a little less living than thou; his life is dim, it is cold, it is a pale fire beside thy own burning desires.... so, dimly and by instinct hast thou lived with thy neighbor, and hast known him not, being blind. thou hast made [of him] a thing, no self at all. have done with this illusion, and simply try to learn the truth. pain is pain, joy is joy, everywhere, even as in thee. in all the songs of the forest birds; in all the cries of the wounded and dying, struggling in the captor's power; in the boundless sea where the myriads of water-creatures strive and die; amid all the countless hordes of savage men; in all sickness and sorrow; in all exultation and hope, everywhere, from the lowest to the noblest, the same conscious, burning, wilful life is found, endlessly manifold as the forms of the living creatures, unquenchable as the fires of the sun, real as these impulses that even now throb in thine own little selfish heart. lift up thy eyes, behold that life, and then turn away, and forget it as thou canst; but, if thou hast _known_ that, thou hast begun to know thy duty."[e] [e] the religious aspect of philosophy, pp. - (abridged). * * * * * this higher vision of an inner significance in what, until then, we had realized only in the dead external way, often comes over a person suddenly; and, when it does so, it makes an epoch in his history. as emerson says, there is a depth in those moments that constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences. the passion of love will shake one like an explosion, or some act will awaken a remorseful compunction that hangs like a cloud over all one's later day. this mystic sense of hidden meaning starts upon us often from non-human natural things. i take this passage from 'obermann,' a french novel that had some vogue in its day: "paris, march .--it was dark and rather cold. i was gloomy, and walked because i had nothing to do. i passed by some flowers placed breast-high upon a wall. a jonquil in bloom was there. it is the strongest expression of desire: it was the first perfume of the year. i felt all the happiness destined for man. this unutterable harmony of souls, the phantom of the ideal world, arose in me complete. i never felt anything so great or so instantaneous. i know not what shape, what analogy, what secret of relation it was that made me see in this flower a limitless beauty.... i shall never enclose in a conception this power, this immensity that nothing will express; this form that nothing will contain; this ideal of a better world which one feels, but which it would seem that nature has not made."[f] [f] de sénancour: obermann, lettre xxx. wordsworth and shelley are similarly full of this sense of a limitless significance in natural things. in wordsworth it was a somewhat austere and moral significance,--a 'lonely cheer.' "to every natural form, rock, fruit, or flower, even the loose stones that cover the highway, i gave a moral life: i saw them feel or linked them to some feeling: the great mass lay bedded in some quickening soul, and all that i beheld respired with inward meaning."[g] [g] the prelude, book iii. "authentic tidings of invisible things!" just what this hidden presence in nature was, which wordsworth so rapturously felt, and in the light of which he lived, tramping the hills for days together, the poet never could explain logically or in articulate conceptions. yet to the reader who may himself have had gleaming moments of a similar sort the verses in which wordsworth simply proclaims the fact of them come with a heart-satisfying authority:-- "magnificent the morning rose, in memorable pomp, glorious as ere i had beheld. in front the sea lay laughing at a distance; near the solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds, grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light; and in the meadows and the lower grounds was all the sweetness of a common dawn,-- dews, vapors, and the melody of birds, and laborers going forth to till the fields." "ah! need i say, dear friend, that to the brim my heart was full; i made no vows, but vows were then made for me; bond unknown to me was given, that i should be, else sinning greatly, a dedicated spirit. on i walked, in thankful blessedness, which yet survives."[h] [h] the prelude, book iv. as wordsworth walked, filled with his strange inner joy, responsive thus to the secret life of nature round about him, his rural neighbors, tightly and narrowly intent upon their own affairs, their crops and lambs and fences, must have thought him a very insignificant and foolish personage. it surely never occurred to any one of them to wonder what was going on inside of _him_ or what it might be worth. and yet that inner life of his carried the burden of a significance that has fed the souls of others, and fills them to this day with inner joy. richard jefferies has written a remarkable autobiographic document entitled the story of my heart. it tells, in many pages, of the rapture with which in youth the sense of the life of nature filled him. on a certain hill-top he says:-- "i was utterly alone with the sun and the earth. lying down on the grass, i spoke in my soul to the earth, the sun, the air, and the distant sea, far beyond sight.... with all the intensity of feeling which exalted me, all the intense communion i held with the earth, the sun and sky, the stars hidden by the light, with the ocean,--in no manner can the thrilling depth of these feelings be written,--with these i prayed as if they were the keys of an instrument.... the great sun, burning with light, the strong earth,--dear earth,--the warm sky, the pure air, the thought of ocean, the inexpressible beauty of all filled me with a rapture, an ecstasy, an inflatus. with this inflatus, too, i prayed.... the prayer, this soul-emotion, was in itself, not for an object: it was a passion. i hid my face in the grass. i was wholly prostrated, i lost myself in the wrestle, i was rapt and carried away.... had any shepherd accidentally seen me lying on the turf, he would only have thought i was resting a few minutes. i made no outward show. who could have imagined the whirlwind of passion that was going on in me as i reclined there!"[i] [i] _op. cit._, boston, roberts, , pp. , . surely, a worthless hour of life, when measured by the usual standards of commercial value. yet in what other _kind_ of value can the preciousness of any hour, made precious by any standard, consist, if it consist not in feelings of excited significance like these, engendered in some one, by what the hour contains? yet so blind and dead does the clamor of our own practical interests make us to all other things, that it seems almost as if it were necessary to become worthless as a practical being, if one is to hope to attain to any breadth of insight into the impersonal world of worths as such, to have any perception of life's meaning on a large objective scale. only your mystic, your dreamer, or your insolvent tramp or loafer, can afford so sympathetic an occupation, an occupation which will change the usual standards of human value in the twinkling of an eye, giving to foolishness a place ahead of power, and laying low in a minute the distinctions which it takes a hard-working conventional man a lifetime to build up. you may be a prophet, at this rate; but you cannot be a worldly success. walt whitman, for instance, is accounted by many of us a contemporary prophet. he abolishes the usual human distinctions, brings all conventionalisms into solution, and loves and celebrates hardly any human attributes save those elementary ones common to all members of the race. for this he becomes a sort of ideal tramp, a rider on omnibus-tops and ferry-boats, and, considered either practically or academically, a worthless, unproductive being. his verses are but ejaculations--things mostly without subject or verb, a succession of interjections on an immense scale. he felt the human crowd as rapturously as wordsworth felt the mountains, felt it as an overpoweringly significant presence, simply to absorb one's mind in which should be business sufficient and worthy to fill the days of a serious man. as he crosses brooklyn ferry, this is what he feels:-- flood-tide below me! i watch you, face to face; clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! i see you also face to face. crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you are to me! on the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose; and you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose. others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from shore to shore; others will watch the run of the flood-tide; others will see the shipping of manhattan north and west, and the heights of brooklyn to the south and east; others will see the islands large and small; fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high. a hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them, will enjoy the sunset, the pouring in of the flood-tide, the falling back to the sea of the ebb-tide. it avails not, neither time or place--distance avails not. just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so i felt; just as any of you is one of a living crowd, i was one of a crowd; just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, i was refresh'd; just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, i stood, yet was hurried; just as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the thick-stemmed pipes of steamboats, i looked. i too many and many a time cross'd the river, the sun half an hour high; i watched the twelfth-month sea-gulls--i saw them high in the air, with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies, i saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies, and left the rest in strong shadow, i saw the slow-wheeling circles, and the gradual edging toward the south. saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor, the sailors at work in the rigging, or out astride the spars; the scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome crests and glistening; the stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite store-houses by the docks; on the neighboring shores, the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high ... into the night, casting their flicker of black ... into the clefts of streets. these, and all else, were to me the same as they are to you.[j] [j] 'crossing brooklyn ferry' (abridged). and so on, through the rest of a divinely beautiful poem. and, if you wish to see what this hoary loafer considered the most worthy way of profiting by life's heaven-sent opportunities, read the delicious volume of his letters to a young car-conductor who had become his friend:-- "new york, oct. , . "_dear pete_,--it is splendid here this forenoon--bright and cool. i was out early taking a short walk by the river only two squares from where i live.... shall i tell you about [my life] just to fill up? i generally spend the forenoon in my room writing, etc., then take a bath fix up and go out about twelve and loafe somewhere or call on someone down town or on business, or perhaps if it is very pleasant and i feel like it ride a trip with some driver friend on broadway from rd street to bowling green, three miles each way. (every day i find i have plenty to do, every hour is occupied with something.) you know it is a never ending amusement and study and recreation for me to ride a couple of hours on a pleasant afternoon on a broadway stage in this way. you see everything as you pass, a sort of living, endless panorama--shops and splendid buildings and great windows: on the broad sidewalks crowds of women richly dressed continually passing, altogether different, superior in style and looks from any to be seen anywhere else--in fact a perfect stream of people--men too dressed in high style, and plenty of foreigners--and then in the streets the thick crowd of carriages, stages, carts, hotel and private coaches, and in fact all sorts of vehicles and many first class teams, mile after mile, and the splendor of such a great street and so many tall, ornamental, noble buildings many of them of white marble, and the gayety and motion on every side: you will not wonder how much attraction all this is on a fine day, to a great loafer like me, who enjoys so much seeing the busy world move by him, and exhibiting itself for his amusement, while he takes it easy and just looks on and observes."[k] [k] calamus, boston, , pp. , . truly a futile way of passing the time, some of you may say, and not altogether creditable to a grown-up man. and yet, from the deepest point of view, who knows the more of truth, and who knows the less,--whitman on his omnibus-top, full of the inner joy with which the spectacle inspires him, or you, full of the disdain which the futility of his occupation excites? when your ordinary brooklynite or new yorker, leading a life replete with too much luxury, or tired and careworn about his personal affairs, crosses the ferry or goes up broadway, _his_ fancy does not thus 'soar away into the colors of the sunset' as did whitman's, nor does he inwardly realize at all the indisputable fact that this world never did anywhere or at any time contain more of essential divinity, or of eternal meaning, than is embodied in the fields of vision over which his eyes so carelessly pass. there is life; and there, a step away, is death. there is the only kind of beauty there ever was. there is the old human struggle and its fruits together. there is the text and the sermon, the real and the ideal in one. but to the jaded and unquickened eye it is all dead and common, pure vulgarism, flatness, and disgust. "hech! it is a sad sight!" says carlyle, walking at night with some one who appeals to him to note the splendor of the stars. and that very repetition of the scene to new generations of men in _secula seculorum_, that eternal recurrence of the common order, which so fills a whitman with mystic satisfaction, is to a schopenhauer, with the emotional anæsthesia, the feeling of 'awful inner emptiness' from out of which he views it all, the chief ingredient of the tedium it instils. what is life on the largest scale, he asks, but the same recurrent inanities, the same dog barking, the same fly buzzing, forevermore? yet of the kind of fibre of which such inanities consist is the material woven of all the excitements, joys, and meanings that ever were, or ever shall be, in this world. to be rapt with satisfied attention, like whitman, to the mere spectacle of the world's presence, is one way, and the most fundamental way, of confessing one's sense of its unfathomable significance and importance. but how can one attain to the feeling of the vital significance of an experience, if one have it not to begin with? there is no receipt which one can follow. being a secret and a mystery, it often comes in mysteriously unexpected ways. it blossoms sometimes from out of the very grave wherein we imagined that our happiness was buried. benvenuto cellini, after a life all in the outer sunshine, made of adventures and artistic excitements, suddenly finds himself cast into a dungeon in the castle of san angelo. the place is horrible. rats and wet and mould possess it. his leg is broken and his teeth fall out, apparently with scurvy. but his thoughts turn to god as they have never turned before. he gets a bible, which he reads during the one hour in the twenty-four in which a wandering ray of daylight penetrates his cavern. he has religious visions. he sings psalms to himself, and composes hymns. and thinking, on the last day of july, of the festivities customary on the morrow in rome, he says to himself: "all these past years i celebrated this holiday with the vanities of the world: from this year henceforward i will do it with the divinity of god. and then i said to myself, 'oh, how much more happy i am for this present life of mine than for all those things remembered!'"[l] [l] vita, lib. , chap. iv. but the great understander of these mysterious ebbs and flows is tolstoï. they throb all through his novels. in his 'war and peace,' the hero, peter, is supposed to be the richest man in the russian empire. during the french invasion he is taken prisoner, and dragged through much of the retreat. cold, vermin, hunger, and every form of misery assail him, the result being a revelation to him of the real scale of life's values. "here only, and for the first time, he appreciated, because he was deprived of it, the happiness of eating when he was hungry, of drinking when he was thirsty, of sleeping when he was sleepy, and of talking when he felt the desire to exchange some words.... later in life he always recurred with joy to this month of captivity, and never failed to speak with enthusiasm of the powerful and ineffaceable sensations, and especially of the moral calm which he had experienced at this epoch. when at daybreak, on the morrow of his imprisonment, he saw [i abridge here tolstoï's description] the mountains with their wooded slopes disappearing in the grayish mist; when he felt the cool breeze caress him; when he saw the light drive away the vapors, and the sun rise majestically behind the clouds and cupolas, and the crosses, the dew, the distance, the river, sparkle in the splendid, cheerful rays,--his heart overflowed with emotion. this emotion kept continually with him, and increased a hundred-fold as the difficulties of his situation grew graver.... he learnt that man is meant for happiness, and that this happiness is in him, in the satisfaction of the daily needs of existence, and that unhappiness is the fatal result, not of our need, but of our abundance.... when calm reigned in the camp, and the embers paled, and little by little went out, the full moon had reached the zenith. the woods and the fields roundabout lay clearly visible; and, beyond the inundation of light which filled them, the view plunged into the limitless horizon. then peter cast his eyes upon the firmament, filled at that hour with myriads of stars. 'all that is mine,' he thought. 'all that is in me, is me! and that is what they think they have taken prisoner! that is what they have shut up in a cabin!' so he smiled, and turned in to sleep among his comrades."[m] [m] la guerre et la paix, paris, , vol. iii. pp. , , . the occasion and the experience, then, are nothing. it all depends on the capacity of the soul to be grasped, to have its life-currents absorbed by what is given. "crossing a bare common," says emerson, "in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, i have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. i am glad to the brink of fear." life is always worth living, if one have such responsive sensibilities. but we of the highly educated classes (so called) have most of us got far, far away from nature. we are trained to seek the choice, the rare, the exquisite exclusively, and to overlook the common. we are stuffed with abstract conceptions, and glib with verbalities and verbosities; and in the culture of these higher functions the peculiar sources of joy connected with our simpler functions often dry up, and we grow stone-blind and insensible to life's more elementary and general goods and joys. the remedy under such conditions is to descend to a more profound and primitive level. to be imprisoned or shipwrecked or forced into the army would permanently show the good of life to many an over-educated pessimist. living in the open air and on the ground, the lop-sided beam of the balance slowly rises to the level line; and the over-sensibilities and insensibilities even themselves out. the good of all the artificial schemes and fevers fades and pales; and that of seeing, smelling, tasting, sleeping, and daring and doing with one's body, grows and grows. the savages and children of nature, to whom we deem ourselves so much superior, certainly are alive where we are often dead, along these lines; and, could they write as glibly as we do, they would read us impressive lectures on our impatience for improvement and on our blindness to the fundamental static goods of life. "ah! my brother," said a chieftain to his white guest, "thou wilt never know the happiness of both thinking of nothing and doing nothing. this, next to sleep, is the most enchanting of all things. thus we were before our birth, and thus we shall be after death. thy people,... when they have finished reaping one field, they begin to plough another; and, if the day were not enough, i have seen them plough by moonlight. what is their life to ours,--the life that is as naught to them? blind that they are, they lose it all! but we live in the present."[n] [n] quoted by lotze, microcosmus, english translation, vol. ii. p. . the intense interest that life can assume when brought down to the non-thinking level, the level of pure sensorial perception, has been beautifully described by a man who _can_ write,--mr. w.h. hudson, in his volume, "idle days in patagonia." "i spent the greater part of one winter," says this admirable author, "at a point on the rio negro, seventy or eighty miles from the sea." ... "it was my custom to go out every morning on horseback with my gun, and, followed by one dog, to ride away from the valley; and no sooner would i climb the terrace, and plunge into the gray, universal thicket, than i would find myself as completely alone as if five hundred instead of only five miles separated me from the valley and river. so wild and solitary and remote seemed that gray waste, stretching away into infinitude, a waste untrodden by man, and where the wild animals are so few that they have made no discoverable path in the wilderness of thorns.... not once nor twice nor thrice, but day after day i returned to this solitude, going to it in the morning as if to attend a festival, and leaving it only when hunger and thirst and the westering sun compelled me. and yet i had no object in going,--no motive which could be put into words; for, although i carried a gun, there was nothing to shoot,--the shooting was all left behind in the valley.... sometimes i would pass a whole day without seeing one mammal, and perhaps not more than a dozen birds of any size. the weather at that time was cheerless, generally with a gray film of cloud spread over the sky, and a bleak wind, often cold enough to make my bridle-hand quite numb.... at a slow pace, which would have seemed intolerable under other circumstances, i would ride about for hours together at a stretch. on arriving at a hill, i would slowly ride to its summit, and stand there to survey the prospect. on every side it stretched away in great undulations, wild and irregular. how gray it all was! hardly less so near at hand than on the haze-wrapped horizon where the hills were dim and the outline obscured by distance. descending from my outlook, i would take up my aimless wanderings again, and visit other elevations to gaze on the same landscape from another point; and so on for hours. and at noon i would dismount, and sit or lie on my folded poncho for an hour or longer. one day in these rambles i discovered a small grove composed of twenty or thirty trees, growing at a convenient distance apart, that had evidently been resorted to by a herd of deer or other wild animals. this grove was on a hill differing in shape from other hills in its neighborhood; and, after a time, i made a point of finding and using it as a resting-place every day at noon. i did not ask myself why i made choice of that one spot, sometimes going out of my way to sit there, instead of sitting down under any one of the millions of trees and bushes on any other hillside. i thought nothing about it, but acted unconsciously. only afterward it seemed to me that, after having rested there once, each time i wished to rest again, the wish came associated with the image of that particular clump of trees, with polished stems and clean bed of sand beneath; and in a short time i formed a habit of returning, animal like, to repose at that same spot." "it was, perhaps, a mistake to say that i would sit down and rest, since i was never tired; and yet, without being tired, that noon-day pause, during which i sat for an hour without moving, was strangely grateful. all day there would be no sound, not even the rustling of a leaf. one day, while _listening_ to the silence, it occurred to my mind to wonder what the effect would be if i were to shout aloud. this seemed at the time a horrible suggestion, which almost made me shudder. but during those solitary days it was a rare thing for any thought to cross my mind. in the state of mind i was in, thought had become impossible. my state was one of _suspense_ and _watchfulness_; yet i had no expectation of meeting an adventure, and felt as free from apprehension as i feel now while sitting in a room in london. the state seemed familiar rather than strange, and accompanied by a strong feeling of elation; and i did not know that something had come between me and my intellect until i returned to my former self,--to thinking, and the old insipid existence [again]." "i had undoubtedly _gone back_; and that state of intense watchfulness or alertness, rather, with suspension of the higher intellectual faculties, represented the mental state of the pure savage. he thinks little, reasons little, having a surer guide in his [mere sensory perceptions]. he is in perfect harmony with nature, and is nearly on a level, mentally, with the wild animals he preys on, and which in their turn sometimes prey on him."[o] [o] _op. cit._, pp. - (abridged). for the spectator, such hours as mr. hudson writes of form a mere tale of emptiness, in which nothing happens, nothing is gained, and there is nothing to describe. they are meaningless and vacant tracts of time. to him who feels their inner secret, they tingle with an importance that unutterably vouches for itself. i am sorry for the boy or girl, or man or woman, who has never been touched by the spell of this mysterious sensorial life, with its irrationality, if so you like to call it, but its vigilance and its supreme felicity. the holidays of life are its most vitally significant portions, because they are, or at least should be, covered with just this kind of magically irresponsible spell. * * * * * and now what is the result of all these considerations and quotations? it is negative in one sense, but positive in another. it absolutely forbids us to be forward in pronouncing on the meaninglessness of forms of existence other than our own; and it commands us to tolerate, respect, and indulge those whom we see harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways, however unintelligible these may be to us. hands off: neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer, although each observer gains a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands. even prisons and sick-rooms have their special revelations. it is enough to ask of each of us that he should be faithful to his own opportunities and make the most of his own blessings, without presuming to regulate the rest of the vast field. iii. what makes a life significant in my previous talk, 'on a certain blindness,' i tried to make you feel how soaked and shot-through life is with values and meanings which we fail to realize because of our external and insensible point of view. the meanings are there for the others, but they are not there for us. there lies more than a mere interest of curious speculation in understanding this. it has the most tremendous practical importance. i wish that i could convince you of it as i feel it myself. it is the basis of all our tolerance, social, religious, and political. the forgetting of it lies at the root of every stupid and sanguinary mistake that rulers over subject-peoples make. the first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours. no one has insight into all the ideals. no one should presume to judge them off-hand. the pretension to dogmatize about them in each other is the root of most human injustices and cruelties, and the trait in human character most likely to make the angels weep. every jack sees in his own particular jill charms and perfections to the enchantment of which we stolid onlookers are stone-cold. and which has the superior view of the absolute truth, he or we? which has the more vital insight into the nature of jill's existence, as a fact? is he in excess, being in this matter a maniac? or are we in defect, being victims of a pathological anæsthesia as regards jill's magical importance? surely the latter; surely to jack are the profounder truths revealed; surely poor jill's palpitating little life-throbs _are_ among the wonders of creation, _are_ worthy of this sympathetic interest; and it is to our shame that the rest of us cannot feel like jack. for jack realizes jill concretely, and we do not. he struggles toward a union with her inner life, divining her feelings, anticipating her desires, understanding her limits as manfully as he can, and yet inadequately, too; for he is also afflicted with some blindness, even here. whilst we, dead clods that we are, do not even seek after these things, but are contented that that portion of eternal fact named jill should be for us as if it were not. jill, who knows her inner life, knows that jack's way of taking it--so importantly--is the true and serious way; and she responds to the truth in him by taking him truly and seriously, too. may the ancient blindness never wrap its clouds about either of them again! where would any of _us_ be, were there no one willing to know us as we really are or ready to repay us for _our_ insight by making recognizant return? we ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way. if you say that this is absurd, and that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, i merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such persons know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big. the vice of ordinary jack and jill affection is not its intensity, but its exclusions and its jealousies. leave those out, and you see that the ideal i am holding up before you, however impracticable to-day, yet contains nothing intrinsically absurd. we have unquestionably a great cloud-bank of ancestral blindness weighing down upon us, only transiently riven here and there by fitful revelations of the truth. it is vain to hope for this state of things to alter much. our inner secrets must remain for the most part impenetrable by others, for beings as essentially practical as we are are necessarily short of sight. but, if we cannot gain much positive insight into one another, cannot we at least use our sense of our own blindness to make us more cautious in going over the dark places? cannot we escape some of those hideous ancestral intolerances and cruelties, and positive reversals of the truth? for the remainder of this hour i invite you to seek with me some principle to make our tolerance less chaotic. and, as i began my previous lecture by a personal reminiscence, i am going to ask your indulgence for a similar bit of egotism now. a few summers ago i spent a happy week at the famous assembly grounds on the borders of chautauqua lake. the moment one treads that sacred enclosure, one feels one's self in an atmosphere of success. sobriety and industry, intelligence and goodness, orderliness and ideality, prosperity and cheerfulness, pervade the air. it is a serious and studious picnic on a gigantic scale. here you have a town of many thousands of inhabitants, beautifully laid out in the forest and drained, and equipped with means for satisfying all the necessary lower and most of the superfluous higher wants of man. you have a first-class college in full blast. you have magnificent music--a chorus of seven hundred voices, with possibly the most perfect open-air auditorium in the world. you have every sort of athletic exercise from sailing, rowing, swimming, bicycling, to the ball-field and the more artificial doings which the gymnasium affords. you have kindergartens and model secondary schools. you have general religious services and special club-houses for the several sects. you have perpetually running soda-water fountains, and daily popular lectures by distinguished men. you have the best of company, and yet no effort. you have no zymotic diseases, no poverty, no drunkenness, no crime, no police. you have culture, you have kindness, you have cheapness, you have equality, you have the best fruits of what mankind has fought and bled and striven for tinder the name of civilization for centuries. you have, in short, a foretaste of what human society might be, were it all in the light, with no suffering and no dark corners. i went in curiosity for a day. i stayed for a week, held spell-bound by the charm and ease of everything, by the middle-class paradise, without a sin, without a victim, without a blot, without a tear. and yet what was my own astonishment, on emerging into the dark and wicked world again, to catch myself quite unexpectedly and involuntarily saying: "ouf! what a relief! now for something primordial and savage, even though it were as bad as an armenian massacre, to set the balance straight again. this order is too tame, this culture too second-rate, this goodness too uninspiring. this human drama without a villain or a pang; this community so refined that ice-cream soda-water is the utmost offering it can make to the brute animal in man; this city simmering in the tepid lakeside sun; this atrocious harmlessness of all things,--i cannot abide with them. let me take my chances again in the big outside worldly wilderness with all its sins and sufferings. there are the heights and depths, the precipices and the steep ideals, the gleams of the awful and the infinite; and there is more hope and help a thousand times than in this dead level and quintessence of every mediocrity." such was the sudden right-about-face performed for me by my lawless fancy! there had been spread before me the realization--on a small, sample scale of course--of all the ideals for which our civilization has been striving: security, intelligence, humanity, and order; and here was the instinctive hostile reaction, not of the natural man, but of a so-called cultivated man upon such a utopia. there seemed thus to be a self-contradiction and paradox somewhere, which i, as a professor drawing a full salary, was in duty bound to unravel and explain, if i could. so i meditated. and, first of all, i asked myself what the thing was that was so lacking in this sabbatical city, and the lack of which kept one forever falling short of the higher sort of contentment. and i soon recognized that it was the element that gives to the wicked outer world all its moral style, expressiveness and picturesqueness,--the element of precipitousness, so to call it, of strength and strenuousness, intensity and danger. what excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness; with heroism, reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death. but in this unspeakable chautauqua there was no potentiality of death in sight anywhere, and no point of the compass visible from which danger might possibly appear. the ideal was so completely victorious already that no sign of any previous battle remained, the place just resting on its oars. but what our human emotions seem to require is the sight of the struggle going on. the moment the fruits are being merely eaten, things become ignoble. sweat and effort, human nature strained to its uttermost and on the rack, yet getting through alive, and then turning its back on its success to pursue another more rare and arduous still--this is the sort of thing the presence of which inspires us, and the reality of which it seems to be the function of all the higher forms of literature and fine art to bring home to us and suggest. at chautauqua there were no racks, even in the place's historical museum; and no sweat, except possibly the gentle moisture on the brow of some lecturer, or on the sides of some player in the ball-field. such absence of human nature _in extremis_ anywhere seemed, then, a sufficient explanation for chautauqua's flatness and lack of zest. but was not this a paradox well calculated to fill one with dismay? it looks indeed, thought i, as if the romantic idealists with their pessimism about our civilization were, after all, quite right. an irremediable flatness is coming over the world. bourgeoisie and mediocrity, church sociables and teachers' conventions, are taking the place of the old heights and depths and romantic chiaroscuro. and, to get human life in its wild intensity, we must in future turn more and more away from the actual, and forget it, if we can, in the romancer's or the poet's pages. the whole world, delightful and sinful as it may still appear for a moment to one just escaped from the chautauquan enclosure, is nevertheless obeying more and more just those ideals that are sure to make of it in the end a mere chautauqua assembly on an enormous scale. _was im gesang soll leben muss im leben untergehn_. even now, in our own country, correctness, fairness, and compromise for every small advantage are crowding out all other qualities. the higher heroisms and the old rare flavors are passing out of life.[p] [p] this address was composed before the cuban and philippine wars. such outbursts of the passion of mastery are, however, only episodes in a social process which in the long run seems everywhere tending toward the chautauquan ideals. with these thoughts in my mind, i was speeding with the train toward buffalo, when, near that city, the sight of a workman doing something on the dizzy edge of a sky-scaling iron construction brought me to my senses very suddenly. and now i perceived, by a flash of insight, that i had been steeping myself in pure ancestral blindness, and looking at life with the eyes of a remote spectator. wishing for heroism and the spectacle of human nature on the rack, i had never noticed the great fields of heroism lying round about me, i had failed to see it present and alive. i could only think of it as dead and embalmed, labelled and costumed, as it is in the pages of romance. and yet there it was before me in the daily lives of the laboring classes. not in clanging fights and desperate marches only is heroism to be looked for, but on every railway bridge and fire-proof building that is going up to-day. on freight-trains, on the decks of vessels, in cattle-yards and mines, on lumber-rafts, among the firemen and the policemen, the demand for courage is incessant; and the supply never fails. there, every day of the year somewhere, is human nature _in extremis_ for you. and wherever a scythe, an axe, a pick, or a shovel is wielded, you have it sweating and aching and with its powers of patient endurance racked to the utmost under the length of hours of the strain. as i awoke to all this unidealized heroic life around me, the scales seemed to fall from my eyes; and a wave of sympathy greater than anything i had ever before felt with the common life of common men began to fill my soul. it began to seem as if virtue with horny hands and dirty skin were the only virtue genuine and vital enough to take account of. every other virtue poses; none is absolutely unconscious and simple, and unexpectant of decoration or recognition, like this. these are our soldiers, thought i, these our sustainers, these the very parents of our life. many years ago, when in vienna, i had had a similar feeling of awe and reverence in looking at the peasant-women, in from the country on their business at the market for the day. old hags many of them were, dried and brown and wrinkled, kerchiefed and short-petticoated, with thick wool stockings on their bony shanks, stumping through the glittering thoroughfares, looking neither to the right nor the left, bent on duty, envying nothing, humble-hearted, remote;--and yet at bottom, when you came to think of it, bearing the whole fabric of the splendors and corruptions of that city on their laborious backs. for where would any of it have been without their unremitting, unrewarded labor in the fields? and so with us: not to our generals and poets, i thought, but to the italian and hungarian laborers in the subway, rather, ought the monuments of gratitude and reverence of a city like boston to be reared. * * * * * if any of you have been readers of tolstoï, you will see that i passed into a vein of feeling similar to his, with its abhorrence of all that conventionally passes for distinguished, and its exclusive deification of the bravery, patience, kindliness, and dumbness of the unconscious natural man. where now is _our_ tolstoï, i said, to bring the truth of all this home to our american bosoms, fill us with a better insight, and wean us away from that spurious literary romanticism on which our wretched culture--as it calls itself--is fed? divinity lies all about us, and culture is too hidebound to even suspect the fact. could a howells or a kipling be enlisted in this mission? or are they still too deep in the ancestral blindness, and not humane enough for the inner joy and meaning of the laborer's existence to be really revealed? must we wait for some one born and bred and living as a laborer himself, but who, by grace of heaven, shall also find a literary voice? and there i rested on that day, with a sense of widening of vision, and with what it is surely fair to call an increase of religious insight into life. in god's eyes the differences of social position, of intellect, of culture, of cleanliness, of dress, which different men exhibit, and all the other rarities and exceptions on which they so fantastically pin their pride, must be so small as practically quite to vanish; and all that should remain is the common fact that here we are, a countless multitude of vessels of life, each of us pent in to peculiar difficulties, with which we must severally struggle by using whatever of fortitude and goodness we can summon up. the exercise of the courage, patience, and kindness, must be the significant portion of the whole business; and the distinctions of position can only be a manner of diversifying the phenomenal surface upon which these underground virtues may manifest their effects. at this rate, the deepest human life is everywhere, is eternal. and, if any human attributes exist only in particular individuals, they must belong to the mere trapping and decoration of the surface-show. thus are men's lives levelled up as well as levelled down,--levelled up in their common inner meaning, levelled down in their outer gloriousness and show. yet always, we must confess, this levelling insight tends to be obscured again; and always the ancestral blindness returns and wraps us up, so that we end once more by thinking that creation can be for no other purpose than to develop remarkable situations and conventional distinctions and merits. and then always some new leveller in the shape of a religious prophet has to arise--the buddha, the christ, or some saint francis, some rousseau or tolstoï--to redispel our blindness. yet, little by little, there comes some stable gain; for the world does get more humane, and the religion of democracy tends toward permanent increase. this, as i said, became for a time my conviction, and gave me great content. i have put the matter into the form of a personal reminiscence, so that i might lead you into it more directly and completely, and so save time. but now i am going to discuss the rest of it with you in a more impersonal way. tolstoï's levelling philosophy began long before he had the crisis of melancholy commemorated in that wonderful document of his entitled 'my confession,' which led the way to his more specifically religious works. in his masterpiece 'war and peace,'--assuredly the greatest of human novels,--the rôle of the spiritual hero is given to a poor little soldier named karataïeff, so helpful, so cheerful, and so devout that, in spite of his ignorance and filthiness, the sight of him opens the heavens, which have been closed, to the mind of the principal character of the book; and his example evidently is meant by tolstoï to let god into the world again for the reader. poor little karataïeff is taken prisoner by the french; and, when too exhausted by hardship and fever to march, is shot as other prisoners were in the famous retreat from moscow. the last view one gets of him is his little figure leaning against a white birch-tree, and uncomplainingly awaiting the end. "the more," writes tolstoï in the work 'my confession,' "the more i examined the life of these laboring folks, the more persuaded i became that they veritably have faith, and get from it alone the sense and the possibility of life.... contrariwise to those of our own class, who protest against destiny and grow indignant at its rigor, these people receive maladies and misfortunes without revolt, without opposition, and with a firm and tranquil confidence that all had to be like that, could not be otherwise, and that it is all right so.... the more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life. we see only a cruel jest in suffering and death, whereas these people live, suffer, and draw near to death with tranquillity, and oftener than not with joy.... there are enormous multitudes of them happy with the most perfect happiness, although deprived of what for us is the sole good of life. those who understand life's meaning, and know how to live and die thus, are to be counted not by twos, threes, tens, but by hundreds, thousands, millions. they labor quietly, endure privations and pains, live and die, and throughout everything see the good without seeing the vanity. i had to love these people. the more i entered into their life, the more i loved them; and the more it became possible for me to live, too. it came about not only that the life of our society, of the learned and of the rich, disgusted me--more than that, it lost all semblance of meaning in my eyes. all our actions, our deliberations, our sciences, our arts, all appeared to me with a new significance. i understood that these things might be charming pastimes, but that one need seek in them no depth, whereas the life of the hard-working populace, of that multitude of human beings who really contribute to existence, appeared to me in its true light. i understood that there veritably is life, that the meaning which life there receives is the truth; and i accepted it."[q] [q] my confession, x. (condensed). in a similar way does stevenson appeal to our piety toward the elemental virtue of mankind. "what a wonderful thing," he writes,[r] "is this man! how surprising are his attributes! poor soul, here for so little, cast among so many hardships, savagely surrounded, savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow-lives,--who should have blamed him, had he been of a piece with his destiny and a being merely barbarous? ... [yet] it matters not where we look, under what climate we observe him, in what stage of society, in what depth of ignorance, burdened with what erroneous morality; in ships at sea, a man inured to hardship and vile pleasures, his brightest hope a fiddle in a tavern, and a bedizened trull who sells herself to rob him, and he, for all that, simple, innocent, cheerful, kindly like a child, constant to toil, brave to drown, for others;... in the slums of cities, moving among indifferent millions to mechanical employments, without hope of change in the future, with scarce a pleasure in the present, and yet true to his virtues, honest up to his lights, kind to his neighbors, tempted perhaps in vain by the bright gin-palace,... often repaying the world's scorn with service, often standing firm upon a scruple;... everywhere some virtue cherished or affected, everywhere some decency of thought and courage, everywhere the ensign of man's ineffectual goodness,--ah! if i could show you this! if i could show you these men and women all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging to some rag of honor, the poor jewel of their souls." [r] across the plains: "pulvis et umbra" (abridged). all this is as true as it is splendid, and terribly do we need our tolstoïs and stevensons to keep our sense for it alive. yet you remember the irishman who, when asked, "is not one man as good as another?" replied, "yes; and a great deal better, too!" similarly (it seems to me) does tolstoï overcorrect our social prejudices, when he makes his love of the peasant so exclusive, and hardens his heart toward the educated man as absolutely as he does. grant that at chautauqua there was little moral effort, little sweat or muscular strain in view. still, deep down in the souls of the participants we may be sure that something of the sort was hid, some inner stress, some vital virtue not found wanting when required. and, after all, the question recurs, and forces itself upon us, is it so certain that the surroundings and circumstances of the virtue do make so little difference in the importance of the result? is the functional utility, the worth to the universe of a certain definite amount of courage, kindliness, and patience, no greater if the possessor of these virtues is in an educated situation, working out far-reaching tasks, than if he be an illiterate nobody, hewing wood and drawing water, just to keep himself alive? tolstoï's philosophy, deeply enlightening though it certainly is, remains a false abstraction. it savors too much of that oriental pessimism and nihilism of his, which declares the whole phenomenal world and its facts and their distinctions to be a cunning fraud. * * * * * a mere bare fraud is just what our western common sense will never believe the phenomenal world to be. it admits fully that the inner joys and virtues are the _essential_ part of life's business, but it is sure that _some_ positive part is also played by the adjuncts of the show. if it is idiotic in romanticism to recognize the heroic only when it sees it labelled and dressed-up in books, it is really just as idiotic to see it only in the dirty boots and sweaty shirt of some one in the fields. it is with us really under every disguise: at chautauqua; here in your college; in the stock-yards and on the freight-trains; and in the czar of russia's court. but, instinctively, we make a combination of two things in judging the total significance of a human being. we feel it to be some sort of a product (if such a product only could be calculated) of his inner virtue _and_ his outer place,--neither singly taken, but both conjoined. if the outer differences had no meaning for life, why indeed should all this immense variety of them exist? they _must_ be significant elements of the world as well. just test tolstoï's deification of the mere manual laborer by the facts. this is what mr. walter wyckoff, after working as an unskilled laborer in the demolition of some buildings at west point, writes of the spiritual condition of the class of men to which he temporarily chose to belong:-- "the salient features of our condition are plain enough. we are grown men, and are without a trade. in the labor-market we stand ready to sell to the highest bidder our mere muscular strength for so many hours each day. we are thus in the lowest grade of labor. and, selling our muscular strength in the open market for what it will bring, we sell it under peculiar conditions. it is all the capital that we have. we have no reserve means of subsistence, and cannot, therefore, stand off for a 'reserve price.' we sell under the necessity of satisfying imminent hunger. broadly speaking, we must sell our labor or starve; and, as hunger is a matter of a few hours, and we have no other way of meeting this need, we must sell at once for what the market offers for our labor. "our employer is buying labor in a dear market, and he will certainly get from us as much work as he can at the price. the gang-boss is secured for this purpose, and thoroughly does he know his business. he has sole command of us. he never saw us before, and he will discharge us all when the débris is cleared away. in the mean time he must get from us, if he can, the utmost of physical labor which we, individually and collectively, are capable of. if he should drive some of us to exhaustion, and we should not be able to continue at work, he would not be the loser; for the market would soon supply him with others to take our places. "we are ignorant men, but so much we clearly see,--that we have sold our labor where we could sell it dearest, and our employer has bought it where he could buy it cheapest. he has paid high, and he must get all the labor that he can; and, by a strong instinct which possesses us, we shall part with as little as we can. from work like ours there seems to us to have been eliminated every element which constitutes the nobility of labor. we feel no personal pride in its progress, and no community of interest with our employer. there is none of the joy of responsibility, none of the sense of achievement, only the dull monotony of grinding toil, with the longing for the signal to quit work, and for our wages at the end. "and being what we are, the dregs of the labor-market, and having no certainty of permanent employment, and no organization among ourselves, we must expect to work under the watchful eye of a gang-boss, and be driven, like the wage-slaves that we are, through our tasks. "all this is to tell us, in effect, that our lives are hard, barren, hopeless lives." and such hard, barren, hopeless lives, surely, are not lives in which one ought to be willing permanently to remain. and why is this so? is it because they are so dirty? well, nansen grew a great deal dirtier on his polar expedition; and we think none the worse of his life for that. is it the insensibility? our soldiers have to grow vastly more insensible, and we extol them to the skies. is it the poverty? poverty has been reckoned the crowning beauty of many a heroic career. is it the slavery to a task, the loss of finer pleasures? such slavery and loss are of the very essence of the higher fortitude, and are always counted to its credit,--read the records of missionary devotion all over the world. it is not any one of these things, then, taken by itself,--no, nor all of them together,--that make such a life undesirable. a man might in truth live like an unskilled laborer, and do the work of one, and yet count as one of the noblest of god's creatures. quite possibly there were some such persons in the gang that our author describes; but the current of their souls ran underground; and he was too steeped in the ancestral blindness to discern it. if there _were_ any such morally exceptional individuals, however, what made them different from the rest? it can only have been this,--that their souls worked and endured in obedience to some inner _ideal_, while their comrades were not actuated by anything worthy of that name. these ideals of other lives are among those secrets that we can almost never penetrate, although something about the man may often tell us when they are there. in mr. wyckoff's own case we know exactly what the self-imposed ideal was. partly he had stumped himself, as the boys say, to carry through a strenuous achievement; but mainly he wished to enlarge his sympathetic insight into fellow-lives. for this his sweat and toil acquire a certain heroic significance, and make us accord to him exceptional esteem. but it is easy to imagine his fellows with various other ideals. to say nothing of wives and babies, one may have been a convert of the salvation army, and had a nightingale singing of expiation and forgiveness in his heart all the while he labored. or there might have been an apostle like tolstoï himself, or his compatriot bondareff, in the gang, voluntarily embracing labor as their religious mission. class-loyalty was undoubtedly an ideal with many. and who knows how much of that higher manliness of poverty, of which phillips brooks has spoken so penetratingly, was or was not present in that gang? "a rugged, barren land," says phillips brooks, "is poverty to live in,--a land where i am thankful very often if i can get a berry or a root to eat. but living in it really, letting it bear witness to me of itself, not dishonoring it all the time by judging it after the standard of the other lands, gradually there come out its qualities. behold! no land like this barren and naked land of poverty could show the moral geology of the world. see how the hard ribs ... stand out strong and solid. no life like poverty could so get one to the heart of things and make men know their meaning, could so let us feel life and the world with all the soft cushions stripped off and thrown away.... poverty makes men come very near each other, and recognize each other's human hearts; and poverty, highest and best of all, demands and cries out for faith in god.... i know how superficial and unfeeling, how like mere mockery, words in praise of poverty may seem.... but i am sure that the poor man's dignity and freedom, his self-respect and energy, depend upon his cordial knowledge that his poverty is a true region and kind of life, with its own chances of character, its own springs of happiness and revelations of god. let him resist the characterlessness which often goes with being poor. let him insist on respecting the condition where he lives. let him learn to love it, so that by and by, [if] he grows rich, he shall go out of the low door of the old familiar poverty with a true pang of regret, and with a true honor for the narrow home in which he has lived so long."[s] [s] sermons. th series, new york, , pp. , . the barrenness and ignobleness of the more usual laborer's life consist in the fact that it is moved by no such ideal inner springs. the backache, the long hours, the danger, are patiently endured--for what? to gain a quid of tobacco, a glass of beer, a cup of coffee, a meal, and a bed, and to begin again the next day and shirk as much as one can. this really is why we raise no monument to the laborers in the subway, even though they be our conscripts, and even though after a fashion our city is indeed based upon their patient hearts and enduring backs and shoulders. and this is why we do raise monuments to our soldiers, whose outward conditions were even brutaller still. the soldiers are supposed to have followed an ideal, and the laborers are supposed to have followed none. you see, my friends, how the plot now thickens; and how strangely the complexities of this wonderful human nature of ours begin to develop under our hands. we have seen the blindness and deadness to each other which are our natural inheritance; and, in spite of them, we have been led to acknowledge an inner meaning which passeth show, and which may be present in the lives of others where we least descry it. and now we are led to say that such inner meaning can be _complete_ and _valid for us also_, only when the inner joy, courage, and endurance are joined with an ideal. * * * * * but what, exactly, do we mean by an ideal? can we give no definite account of such a word? to a certain extent we can. an ideal, for instance, must be something intellectually conceived, something of which we are not unconscious, if we have it; and it must carry with it that sort of outlook, uplift, and brightness that go with all intellectual facts. secondly, there must be _novelty_ in an ideal,--novelty at least for him whom the ideal grasps. sodden routine is incompatible with ideality, although what is sodden routine for one person may be ideal novelty for another. this shows that there is nothing absolutely ideal: ideals are relative to the lives that entertain them. to keep out of the gutter is for us here no part of consciousness at all, yet for many of our brethren it is the most legitimately engrossing of ideals. now, taken nakedly, abstractly, and immediately, you see that mere ideals are the cheapest things in life. everybody has them in some shape or other, personal or general, sound or mistaken, low or high; and the most worthless sentimentalists and dreamers, drunkards, shirks and verse-makers, who never show a grain of effort, courage, or endurance, possibly have them on the most copious scale. education, enlarging as it does our horizon and perspective, is a means of multiplying our ideals, of bringing new ones into view. and your college professor, with a starched shirt and spectacles, would, if a stock of ideals were all alone by itself enough to render a life significant, be the most absolutely and deeply significant of men. tolstoï would be completely blind in despising him for a prig, a pedant and a parody; and all our new insight into the divinity of muscular labor would be altogether off the track of truth. but such consequences as this, you instinctively feel, are erroneous. the more ideals a man has, the more contemptible, on the whole, do you continue to deem him, if the matter ends there for him, and if none of the laboring man's virtues are called into action on his part,--no courage shown, no privations undergone, no dirt or scars contracted in the attempt to get them realized. it is quite obvious that something more than the mere possession of ideals is required to make a life significant in any sense that claims the spectator's admiration. inner joy, to be sure, it may _have_, with its ideals; but that is its own private sentimental matter. to extort from us, outsiders as we are, with our own ideals to look after, the tribute of our grudging recognition, it must back its ideal visions with what the laborers have, the sterner stuff of manly virtue; it must multiply their sentimental surface by the dimension of the active will, if we are to have _depth_, if we are to have anything cubical and solid in the way of character. the significance of a human life for communicable and publicly recognizable purposes is thus the offspring of a marriage of two different parents, either of whom alone is barren. the ideals taken by themselves give no reality, the virtues by themselves no novelty. and let the orientalists and pessimists say what they will, the thing of deepest--or, at any rate, of comparatively deepest--significance in life does seem to be its character of _progress_, or that strange union of reality with ideal novelty which it continues from one moment to another to present. to recognize ideal novelty is the task of what we call intelligence. not every one's intelligence can tell which novelties are ideal. for many the ideal thing will always seem to cling still to the older more familiar good. in this case character, though not significant totally, may be still significant pathetically. so, if we are to choose which is the more essential factor of human character, the fighting virtue or the intellectual breadth, we must side with tolstoï, and choose that simple faithfulness to his light or darkness which any common unintellectual man can show. * * * * * but, with all this beating and tacking on my part, i fear you take me to be reaching a confused result. i seem to be just taking things up and dropping them again. first i took up chautauqua, and dropped that; then tolstoï and the heroism of common toil, and dropped them; finally, i took up ideals, and seem now almost dropping those. but please observe in what sense it is that i drop them. it is when they pretend _singly_ to redeem life from insignificance. culture and refinement all alone are not enough to do so. ideal aspirations are not enough, when uncombined with pluck and will. but neither are pluck and will, dogged endurance and insensibility to danger enough, when taken all alone. there must be some sort of fusion, some chemical combination among these principles, for a life objectively and thoroughly significant to result. of course, this is a somewhat vague conclusion. but in a question of significance, of worth, like this, conclusions can never be precise. the answer of appreciation, of sentiment, is always a more or a less, a balance struck by sympathy, insight, and good will. but it is an answer, all the same, a real conclusion. and, in the course of getting it, it seems to me that our eyes have been opened to many important things. some of you are, perhaps, more livingly aware than you were an hour ago of the depths of worth that lie around you, hid in alien lives. and, when you ask how much sympathy you ought to bestow, although the amount is, truly enough, a matter of ideal on your own part, yet in this notion of the combination of ideals with active virtues you have a rough standard for shaping your decision. in any case, your imagination is extended. you divine in the world about you matter for a little more humility on your own part, and tolerance, reverence, and love for others; and you gain a certain inner joyfulness at the increased importance of our common life. such joyfulness is a religious inspiration and an element of spiritual health, and worth more than large amounts of that sort of technical and accurate information which we professors are supposed to be able to impart. to show the sort of thing i mean by these words, i will just make one brief practical illustration and then close. we are suffering to-day in america from what is called the labor-question; and, when you go out into the world, you will each and all of you be caught up in its perplexities. i use the brief term labor-question to cover all sorts of anarchistic discontents and socialistic projects, and the conservative resistances which they provoke. so far as this conflict is unhealthy and regrettable,--and i think it is so only to a limited extent,--the unhealthiness consists solely in the fact that one-half of our fellow-countrymen remain entirely blind to the internal significance of the lives of the other half. they miss the joys and sorrows, they fail to feel the moral virtue, and they do not guess the presence of the intellectual ideals. they are at cross-purposes all along the line, regarding each other as they might regard a set of dangerously gesticulating automata, or, if they seek to get at the inner motivation, making the most horrible mistakes. often all that the poor man can think of in the rich man is a cowardly greediness for safety, luxury, and effeminacy, and a boundless affectation. what he is, is not a human being, but a pocket-book, a bank-account. and a similar greediness, turned by disappointment into envy, is all that many rich men can see in the state of mind of the dissatisfied poor. and, if the rich man begins to do the sentimental act over the poor man, what senseless blunders does he make, pitying him for just those very duties and those very immunities which, rightly taken, are the condition of his most abiding and characteristic joys! each, in short, ignores the fact that happiness and unhappiness and significance are a vital mystery; each pins them absolutely on some ridiculous feature of the external situation; and everybody remains outside of everybody else's sight. society has, with all this, undoubtedly got to pass toward some newer and better equilibrium, and the distribution of wealth has doubtless slowly got to change: such changes have always happened, and will happen to the end of time. but if, after all that i have said, any of you expect that they will make any _genuine vital difference_ on a large scale, to the lives of our descendants, you will have missed the significance of my entire lecture. the solid meaning of life is always the same eternal thing,--the marriage, namely, of some unhabitual ideal, however special, with some fidelity, courage, and endurance; with some man's or woman's pains.--and, whatever or wherever life may be, there will always be the chance for that marriage to take place. fitz-james stephen wrote many years ago words to this effect more eloquent than any i can speak: "the 'great eastern,' or some of her successors," he said, "will perhaps defy the roll of the atlantic, and cross the seas without allowing their passengers to feel that they have left the firm land. the voyage from the cradle to the grave may come to be performed with similar facility. progress and science may perhaps enable untold millions to live and die without a care, without a pang, without an anxiety. they will have a pleasant passage and plenty of brilliant conversation. they will wonder that men ever believed at all in clanging fights and blazing towns and sinking ships and praying hands; and, when they come to the end of their course, they will go their way, and the place thereof will know them no more. but it seems unlikely that they will have such a knowledge of the great ocean on which they sail, with its storms and wrecks, its currents and icebergs, its huge waves and mighty winds, as those who battled with it for years together in the little craft, which, if they had few other merits, brought those who navigated them full into the presence of time and eternity, their maker and themselves, and forced them to have some definite view of their relations to them and to each other."[t] [t] essays by a barrister, london, , p. . in this solid and tridimensional sense, so to call it, those philosophers are right who contend that the world is a standing thing, with no progress, no real history. the changing conditions of history touch only the surface of the show. the altered equilibriums and redistributions only diversify our opportunities and open chances to us for new ideals. but, with each new ideal that comes into life, the chance for a life based on some old ideal will vanish; and he would needs be a presumptuous calculator who should with confidence say that the total sum of significances is positively and absolutely greater at any one epoch than at any other of the world. i am speaking broadly, i know, and omitting to consider certain qualifications in which i myself believe. but one can only make one point in one lecture, and i shall be well content if i have brought my point home to you this evening in even a slight degree. _there are compensations_: and no outward changes of condition in life can keep the nightingale of its eternal meaning from singing in all sorts of different men's hearts. that is the main fact to remember. if we could not only admit it with our lips, but really and truly believe it, how our convulsive insistencies, how our antipathies and dreads of each other, would soften down! if the poor and the rich could look at each other in this way, _sub specie æternatis_, how gentle would grow their disputes! what tolerance and good humor, what willingness to live and let live, would come into the world! the end. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) the mind and its education by george herbert betts, ph.d. professor of psychology in cornell college revised and enlarged edition new york d. appleton and company copyright, , , by d. appleton and company printed in the united states of america preface to the revised edition authors, no doubt, are always gratified when their works find favorable acceptance. the writer of this text has been doubly gratified, however, at the cordial reception and widespread use accorded to the present volume. this feeling does not arise from any narrow personal pride or selfish interest, but rather from the fact that the warm approval of the educational public has proved an important point; namely, that the fundamental truths of psychology, when put simply and concretely, can be made of interest and value to students of all ages from high school juniors up, and to the general public as well. more encouraging still, it has been demonstrated that the teachings of psychology can become immediately helpful, not only in study or teaching, but also in business or profession, in the control and guidance of the personal life, and in the problems met in the routine of the day's work or its play. in effecting the present revision, the salient features of the original edition have been kept. the truths presented are the most fundamental and important in the field of psychology. disputed theories and unsettled opinions are excluded. the subject matter is made concrete and practical by the use of many illustrations and through application to real problems. the style has been kept easy and familiar to facilitate the reading. in short, there has been, while seeking to improve the volume, a conscious purpose to omit none of the characteristics which secured acceptance for the former edition. on the other hand, certain changes and additions have been made which, it is believed, will add to the strength of the work. first of all, the later psychological studies and investigations have been drawn upon to insure that the matter shall at all points be abreast of the times in scientific accuracy. because of the wide use of the text in the training of teachers, a more specific educational application to schoolroom problems has been made in various chapters. exercises for the guidance of observation work and personal introspection are freely used. the chapter on sensation and perception has been separated into two chapters, and each subject given more extensive treatment. a new chapter has been added on association. the various chapters have been subdivided into numbered sections, and cut-in paragraph topics have been used to facilitate the study and teaching of the text. minor changes and additions occur throughout the volume, thus adding some forty pages to the number in the original edition. many of the modifications made in the revision are due to valuable suggestions and kindly criticisms received from many teachers of the text in various types of schools. to all who have thus helped so generously by freely giving the author the fruits of their judgment and experience he gladly renders grateful thanks. cornell college, iowa. contents chapter i the mind, or consciousness page . how the mind is to be known: personal character of consciousness--introspection the only means of discovering nature of consciousness--how we introspect--studying mental states of others through expression--learning to interpret expression. . the nature of consciousness: inner nature of the mind not revealed by introspection --consciousness as a process or stream--consciousness likened to a field--the "piling up" of consciousness is attention. . content of the mental stream: why we need minds--content of consciousness determined by function--three fundamental phases of consciousness. . where consciousness resides: consciousness works through the nervous system. . problems in observation and introspection . . . . . . . . . . chapter ii attention . nature of attention: the nature of attention--normal consciousness always in a state of attention. . the effects of attention: attention makes its object clear and definite--attention measures mental efficiency. . how we attend: attention a relating activity--the rhythms of attention. . points of failure in attention: lack of concentration--mental wandering. . types of attention: the three types of attention--interest and nonvoluntary attention--the will and voluntary attention--not really different kinds of attention--making different kinds of attention reënforce each other--the habit of attention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter iii the brain and nervous system . the relations of mind and brain: interaction of mind and brain--the brain as the mind's machine. . the mind's dependence on the external world: the mind at birth--the work of the senses. . structural elements of the nervous system: the neurone--neurone fibers--neuroglia--complexity of the brain--"gray" and "white" matter. . gross structure of the nervous system: divisions of the nervous system--the central system--the cerebellum--the cerebrum--the cortex--the spinal cord. . localization of function in the nervous system: division of labor--division of labor in the cortex. . forms of sensory stimuli: the end-organs and their response to stimuli--dependence of the mind on the senses . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter iv mental development and motor training . factors determining the efficiency of the nervous system: development and nutrition--undeveloped cells--development of nerve fibers. . development of nervous system through use: importance of stimulus and response--effect of sensory stimuli--necessity for motor activity--development of the association centers--the factors involved in a simple action. . education and the training of the nervous system: education to supply opportunities for stimulus and response--order of development in the nervous system. . importance of health and vigor of the nervous system: the influence of fatigue--the effects of worry--the factors in good nutrition. . problems for introspection and observation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter v habit . the nature of habit: the physical basis of habit--all living tissue plastic--habit a modification of brain tissue--we must form habits. . the place of habit in the economy of our lives: habit increases skill and efficiency--habit saves effort and fatigue--habit economizes moral effort--the habit of attention--habit enables us to meet the disagreeable--habit the foundation of personality--habit saves worry and rebellion. . the tyranny of habit: even good habits need to be modified--the tendency of "ruts." . habit-forming a part of education: youth the time for habit-forming--the habit of achievement. . rules for habit-forming: james's three maxims for habit-forming--the preponderance of good habits over bad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter vi sensation . how we come to know the external world: knowledge through the senses--the unity of sensory experience--the sensory processes to be explained--the qualities of objects exist in the mind--the three sets of factors. . the nature of sensation: sensation gives us our world of qualities--the attributes of sensation. . sensory qualities and their end-organs: sight--hearing--taste--smell--various sensations from the skin--the kinæsthetic senses--the organic senses. . problems in observation and retrospection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter vii perception . the function of perception: need of knowing the material world--the problem which confronts the child. . the nature of perception: how a percept is formed--the percept involves all relations of the object--the content of the percept--the accuracy of percepts depends on experience--not definitions, but first-hand contact. . the perception of space: the perceiving of distance--the perceiving of direction. . the perception of time: nature of the time sense--no perception of empty time. . the training of perception: perception needs to be trained--school training in perception. . problems in observation and introspection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter viii mental images and ideas . the part played by past experience: present thinking depends on past experience--the present interpreted by the past--the future also depends on the past--rank determined by ability to utilize past experience. . how past experience is conserved: past experience conserved in both mental and physical terms--the image and the idea--all our past experience potentially at our command. . individual differences in imagery: images to be viewed by introspection--the varied imagery suggested by one's dining table--power of imagery varies in different people--imagery types. . the function of images: images supply material for imagination and memory--imagery in the thought processes--the use of imagery in literature--points where images are of greatest service. . the cultivation of imagery: images depend on sensory stimuli--the influence of frequent recall--the reconstruction of our images. . problems in introspection and observation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter ix imagination . the place of imagination in mental economy: practical nature of imagination--imagination in the interpretation of history, literature, and art--imagination and science--everyday uses of imagination--the building of ideals and plans--imagination and conduct--imagination and thinking. . the material used by imagination: images the stuff of imagination--the two factors in imagination--imagination limited by stock of images--limited also by our constructive ability--the need of a purpose. . types of imagination: reproductive imagination--creative imagination. . training the imagination: gathering of material for imagination--we must not fail to build--we should carry our ideals into action. . problems for observation and introspection . . . . . . . . chapter x association . the nature of association: the neural basis of association--association the basis of memory--factors determining direction of recall--association in thinking--association and action. . the types of association: fundamental law of association--association by contiguity--at the mercy of our associations--association by similarity and contrast--partial, or selective, association--the remedy. . training in association: the pleasure-pain motive in association--interest as a basis for association--association and methods of learning. . problems in observation and introspection . . chapter xi memory . the nature of memory: what is retained--the physical basis of memory--how we remember--dependence of memory on brain quality. . the four factors involved in memory: registration--retention--recall--recognition. . the stuff of memory: images as the material of memory--images vary as to type--other memory material. . laws underlying memory: the law of association--the law of repetition--the law of recency--the law of vividness. . rules for using the memory: wholes versus parts--rate of forgetting--divided practice--forcing the memory to act--not a memory, but memories. . what constitutes a good memory: a good memory selects its material--a good memory requires good thinking--memory must be specialized. . memory devices: the effects of cramming--remembering isolated facts--mnemonic devices. . problems in observation and introspection . . . . . . . . chapter xii thinking . different types of thinking: chance, or idle thinking--uncritical belief--assimilative thinking--deliberative thinking. . the function of thinking: meaning depends on relations--the function of thinking is to discover relations--near and remote relations--child and adult thinking. . the mechanism of thinking: sensations and percepts as elements in thinking. . the concept: the concepts serve to group and classify--growth of a concept--definition of concept--language and the concept--the necessity for growing concepts. . judgment: nature of judgment--judgment used in percepts and concepts--judgment leads to general truths--the validity of judgments. . reasoning: nature of reasoning--how judgments function in reasoning--deduction and the syllogism--induction--the necessity for broad induction--the interrelation of induction and deduction. . problems in observation and introspection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter xiii instinct . the nature of instinct: the babe's dependence on instinct--definition of instinct--unmodified instinct is blind. . law of the appearance and disappearance of instincts: instincts appear in succession as required--many instincts are transitory--seemingly useless instincts--instincts to be utilized when they appear--instincts as starting points--the more important human instincts. . the instinct of imitation: nature of imitation--individuality in imitation--conscious and unconscious imitation--influence of environment--the influence of personality. . the instinct of play: the necessity for play--play in development and education--work and play are complements. . other useful instincts: curiosity--manipulation--the collecting instinct--the dramatic instinct--the impulse to form gangs and clubs. . fear: fear heredity--fear of the dark--fear of being left alone. . other undesirable instincts: selfishness--pugnacity, or the fighting impulse. . problems in observation and introspection . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter xiv feeling and its functions . the nature of feeling: the different feeling qualities--feeling always present in mental content--the seeming neutral feeling zone. . mood and disposition: how mood is produced--mood colors all our thinking--mood influences our judgments and decisions--mood influences effort--disposition a resultant of moods--temperament. . permanent feeling attitudes, or sentiments: how sentiments develop--the effect of experience--the influence of sentiment--sentiments as motives. . problems in observation and introspection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter xv the emotions . the producing and expressing of emotion: physiological explanation of emotion--origin of characteristic emotional reactions--the duration of an emotion--emotions accompanying crises in experience. . the control of emotions: dependence on expression--relief through expression--relief does not follow if image is held before the mind--growing tendency toward emotional control--the emotions and enjoyment--how emotions develop--the emotional factor in our environment--literature and the cultivation of the emotions--harm in emotional overexcitement. . emotions as motives: how our emotions compel us--emotional habits. . problems in observation and introspection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter xvi interest . the nature of interest: interest a selective agent--interest supplies a subjective scale of values--interest dynamic--habit antagonistic to interest. . direct and indirect interest: interest in the end versus interest in the activity--indirect interest as a motive--indirect interest alone insufficient. . transitoriness of certain interests: interests must be utilized when they appear--the value of a strong interest. . selection among our interests: the mistake of following too many interests--interests may be too narrow--specialization should not come too early--a proper balance to be sought. . interest fundamental in education: interest not antagonistic to effort--interest and character. . order of development of our interests: the interests of early childhood--the interests of later childhood--the interests of adolescence. . problems in observation and introspection . . . . . . chapter xvii the will . the nature of the will: the content of the will--the function of the will--how the will exerts its compulsion. . the extent of voluntary control over our acts: simple reflex acts--instinctive acts--automatic, or spontaneous acts--the cycle from volitional to automatic--volitional action--volition acts in the making of decisions--types of decision--the reasonable type--accidental type: external motives--accidental type: subjective motives--decision under effort. . strong and weak wills: not a will, but wills--objective tests a false measure of will power. . volitional types: the impulsive type--the obstructed will--the normal will. . training the will: will to be trained in common round of duties--school work and will-training. . freedom of the will, or the extent of its control: limitations of the will--these limitations and conditions of freedom. . problems in observation and introspection. . chapter xviii self-expression and development . interrelation of impression and expression: the many sources of impressions--all impressions lead toward expression--limitations of expression. . the place of expression in development: intellectual value of expression--moral value of expression--religious value of expression--social value of expression. . educational use of expression: easier to provide for the impression side of education--the school to take up the handicrafts--expression and character--two lines of development. . problems in introspection and observation . . . . . index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the mind and its education chapter i the mind, or consciousness we are to study the mind and its education; but how? it is easy to understand how we may investigate the great world of material things about us; for we can see it, touch it, weigh it, or measure it. but how are we to discover the nature of the mind, or come to know the processes by which consciousness works? for mind is intangible; we cannot see it, feel it, taste it, or handle it. mind belongs not to the realm of matter which is known to the senses, but to the realm of _spirit_, which the senses can never grasp. and yet the mind can be known and studied as truly and as scientifically as can the world of matter. let us first of all see how this can be done. . how mind is to be known the personal character of consciousness.--mind can be observed and known. but each one can know directly only his own mind, and not another's. you and i may look into each other's face and there guess the meaning that lies back of the smile or frown or flash of the eye, and so read something of the mind's activity. but neither directly meets the other's mind. i may learn to recognize your features, know your voice, respond to the clasp of your hand; but the mind, the consciousness, which does your thinking and feels your joys and sorrows, i can never know completely. indeed i can never know your mind at all except through your bodily acts and expressions. nor is there any way in which you can reveal your mind, your spiritual self, to me except through these means. it follows therefore that only _you_ can ever know _you_ and only _i_ can ever know _i_ in any first-hand and immediate way. between your consciousness and mine there exists a wide gap that cannot be bridged. each of us lives apart. we are like ships that pass and hail each other in passing but do not touch. we may work together, live together, come to love or hate each other, and yet our inmost selves forever stand alone. they must live their own lives, think their own thoughts, and arrive at their own destiny. introspection the only means of discovering nature of consciousness.--what, then, is mind? what is the thing that we call consciousness? no mere definition can ever make it clearer than it is at this moment to each of us. the only way to know what mind is, is to look in upon our own consciousness and observe what is transpiring there. in the language of the psychologist, we must _introspect_. for one can never come to understand the nature of mind and its laws of working by listening to lectures or reading text books alone. there is no _psychology_ in the text, but only in your living, flowing stream of thought and mine. true, the lecture and the book may tell us what to look for when we introspect, and how to understand what we find. but the statements and descriptions about our minds must be verified by our own observation and experience before they become vital truth to us. how we introspect.--introspection is something of an art; it has to be learned. some master it easily, some with more difficulty, and some, it is to be feared, never become skilled in its use. in order to introspect one must catch himself unawares, so to speak, in the very act of thinking, remembering, deciding, loving, hating, and all the rest. these fleeting phases of consciousness are ever on the wing; they never pause in their restless flight and we must catch them as they go. this is not so easy as it appears; for the moment we turn to look in upon the mind, that moment consciousness changes. the thing we meant to examine is gone, and something else has taken its place. all that is left us then is to view the mental object while it is still fresh in the memory, or to catch it again when it returns. studying mental states of others through expression.--although i can meet only my own mind face to face, i am, nevertheless, under the necessity of judging your mental states and knowing what is taking place in your consciousness. for in order to work successfully with you, in order to teach you, understand you, control you or obey you, be your friend or enemy, or associate with you in any other way, i must _know_ you. but the real you that i must know is hidden behind the physical mask that we call the body. i must, therefore, be able to understand your states of consciousness as they are reflected in your bodily expressions. your face, form, gesture, speech, the tone of voice, laughter and tears, the poise of attention, the droop of grief, the tenseness of anger and start of fear,--all these tell the story of the mental state that lies behind the senses. these various expressions are the pictures on the screen by which your mind reveals itself to others; they are the language by which the inner self speaks to the world without. learning to interpret expression.--if i would understand the workings of your mind i must therefore learn to read the language of physical expression. i must study human nature and learn to observe others. i must apply the information found in the texts to an interpretation of those about me. this study of others may be _uncritical_, as in the mere intelligent observation of those i meet; or it may be _scientific_, as when i conduct carefully planned psychological experiments. but in either case it consists in judging the inner states of consciousness by their physical manifestations. the three methods by which mind may be studied are, then: ( ) text-book _description and explanation_; ( ) _introspection_ of my own conscious processes; and ( ) _observation_ of others, either uncritical or scientific. . the nature of consciousness inner nature of the mind not revealed by introspection.--we are not to be too greatly discouraged if, even by introspection, we cannot discover exactly _what_ the mind is. no one knows what electricity is, though nearly everyone uses it in one form or another. we study the dynamo, the motor, and the conductors through which electricity manifests itself. we observe its effects in light, heat, and mechanical power, and so learn the laws which govern its operations. but we are almost as far from understanding its true nature as were the ancients who knew nothing of its uses. the dynamo does not create the electricity, but only furnishes the conditions which make it possible for electricity to manifest itself in doing the world's work. likewise the brain or nervous system does not create the mind, but it furnishes the machine through which the mind works. we may study the nervous system and learn something of the conditions and limitations under which the mind operates, but this is not studying the mind itself. as in the case of electricity, what we know about the mind we must learn through the activities in which it manifests itself--these we can know, for they are in the experience of all. it is, then, only by studying these processes of consciousness that we come to know the laws which govern the mind and its development. _what_ it is that thinks and feels and wills in us is too hard a problem for us here--indeed, has been too hard a problem for the philosophers through the ages. but the thinking and feeling and willing we can watch as they occur, and hence come to know. consciousness as a process or stream.--in looking in upon the mind we must expect to discover, then, not a _thing_, but a _process_. the _thing_ forever eludes us, but the process is always present. consciousness is like a stream, which, so far as we are concerned with it in a psychological discussion, has its rise at the cradle and its end at the grave. it begins with the babe's first faint gropings after light in his new world as he enters it, and ends with the man's last blind gropings after light in his old world as he leaves it. the stream is very narrow at first, only as wide as the few sensations which come to the babe when it sees the light or hears the sound; it grows wider as the mind develops, and is at last measured by the grand sum total of life's experience. this mental stream is irresistible. no power outside of us can stop it while life lasts. we cannot stop it ourselves. when we try to stop thinking, the stream but changes its direction and flows on. while we wake and while we sleep, while we are unconscious under an anæsthetic, even, some sort of mental process continues. sometimes the stream flows slowly, and our thoughts lag--we "feel slow"; again the stream flows faster, and we are lively and our thoughts come with a rush; or a fever seizes us and delirium comes on; then the stream runs wildly onward, defying our control, and a mad jargon of thoughts takes the place of our usual orderly array. in different persons, also, the mental stream moves at different rates, some minds being naturally slow-moving and some naturally quick in their operations. consciousness resembles a stream also in other particulars. a stream is an unbroken whole from its source to its mouth, and an observer stationed at one point cannot see all of it at once. he sees but the one little section which happens to be passing his station point at the time. the current may look much the same from moment to moment, but the component particles which constitute the stream are constantly changing. so it is with our thought. its stream is continuous from birth till death, but we cannot see any considerable portion of it at one time. when we turn about quickly and look in upon our minds, we see but the little present moment. that of a few seconds ago is gone and will never return. the thought which occupied us a moment since can no more be recalled, just as it was, than can the particles composing a stream be re-collected and made to pass a given point in its course in precisely the same order and relation to one another as before. this means, then, that we can never have precisely the same mental state twice; that the thought of the moment cannot have the same associates that it had the first time; that the thought of this moment will never be ours again; that all we can know of our minds at any one time is the part of the process present in consciousness at that moment. [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] the wave in the stream of consciousness.--the surface of our mental stream is not level, but is broken by a wave which stands above the rest; which is but another way of saying that some one thing is always more prominent in our thought than the rest. only when we are in a sleepy reverie, or not thinking about much of anything, does the stream approximate a level. at all other times some one object occupies the highest point in our thought, to the more or less complete exclusion of other things which we might think about. a thousand and one objects are possible to our thought at any moment, but all except one thing occupy a secondary place, or are not present to our consciousness at all. they exist on the margin, or else are clear off the edge of consciousness, while the one thing occupies the center. we may be reading a fascinating book late at night in a cold room. the charm of the writer, the beauty of the heroine, or the bravery of the hero so occupies the mind that the weary eyes and chattering teeth are unnoticed. consciousness has piled up in a high wave on the points of interest in the book, and the bodily sensations are for the moment on a much lower level. but let the book grow dull for a moment, and the make-up of the stream changes in a flash. hero, heroine, or literary style no longer occupies the wave. they forfeit their place, the wave is taken by the bodily sensations, and we are conscious of the smarting eyes and shivering body, while these in turn give way to the next object which occupies the wave. figs. - illustrate these changes. [illustration: fig. ] consciousness likened to a field.--the consciousness of any moment has been less happily likened to a field, in the center of which there is an elevation higher than the surrounding level. this center is where consciousness is piled up on the object which is for the moment foremost in our thought. the other objects of our consciousness are on the margin of the field for the time being, but any of them may the next moment claim the center and drive the former object to the margin, or it may drop entirely out of consciousness. this moment a noble resolve may occupy the center of the field, while a troublesome tooth begets sensations of discomfort which linger dimly on the outskirts of our consciousness; but a shooting pain from the tooth or a random thought crossing the mind, and lo! the tooth holds sway, and the resolve dimly fades to the margin of our consciousness and is gone. the "piling up" of consciousness is attention.--this figure is not so true as the one which likens our mind to a stream with its ever onward current answering to the flow of our thought; but whichever figure we employ, the truth remains the same. our mental energy is always piled up higher at one point than at others. either because our interest leads us, or because the will dictates, the mind is withdrawn from the thousand and one things we might think about, and directed to this one thing, which for the time occupies chief place. in other words, we _attend_; for this piling up of consciousness is nothing, after all, but attention. . content of the mental stream we have seen that our mental life may be likened to a stream flowing now faster, now slower, ever shifting, never ceasing. we have yet to inquire what constitutes the material of the stream, or what is the stuff that makes up the current of our thought--what is the _content_ of consciousness? the question cannot be fully answered at this point, but a general notion can be gained which will be of service. why we need minds.--let us first of all ask what mind is for, why do animals, including men, have minds? the biologist would say, in order that they may _adapt_ themselves to their environment. each individual from mollusc to man needs the amount and type of mind that serves to fit its possessor into its particular world of activity. too little mind leaves the animal helpless in the struggle for existence. on the other hand a mind far above its possessor's station would prove useless if not a handicap; a mollusc could not use the mind of a man. content of consciousness determined by function.--how much mind does man need? what range and type of consciousness will best serve to adjust us to our world of opportunity and responsibility? first of all we must _know_ our world, hence, our mind must be capable of gathering knowledge. second, we must be able to _feel_ its values and respond to the great motives for action arising from the emotions. third, we must have the power to exert self-compulsion, which is to say that we possess a _will_ to control our acts. these three sets of processes, _knowing_, _feeling_, and _willing_, we shall, therefore, expect to find making up the content of our mental stream. let us proceed at once to test our conclusion by introspection. if we are sitting at our study table puzzling over a difficult problem in geometry, _reasoning_ forms the wave in the stream of consciousness--the center of the field. it is the chief thing in our thinking. the fringe of our consciousness is made up of various sensations of the light from the lamp, the contact of our clothing, the sounds going on in the next room, some bit of memory seeking recognition, a "tramp" thought which comes along, and a dozen other experiences not strong enough to occupy the center of the field. but instead of the study table and the problem, give us a bright fireside, an easy-chair, and nothing to do. if we are aged, _memories_--images from out the past--will probably come thronging in and occupy the field to such extent that the fire burns low and the room grows cold, but still the forms from the past hold sway. if we are young, visions of the future may crowd everything else to the margin of the field, while the "castles in spain" occupy the center. our memories may also be accompanied by emotions--sorrow, love, anger, hate, envy, joy. and, indeed, these emotions may so completely occupy the field that the images themselves are for the time driven to the margin, and the mind is occupied with its sorrow, its love, or its joy. once more, instead of the problem or the memories or the "castles in spain," give us the necessity of making some decision, great or small, where contending motives are pulling us now in this direction, now in that, so that the question finally has to be settled by a supreme effort summed up in the words, _i will_. this is the struggle of the will which each one knows for himself; for who has not had a raging battle of motives occupy the center of the field while all else, even the sense of time, place and existence, gave way in the face of this conflict! this struggle continues until the decision is made, when suddenly all the stress and strain drop out and other objects may again have place in consciousness. the three fundamental phases of consciousness.--thus we see that if we could cut the stream of consciousness across as we might cut a stream of water from bank to bank with a huge knife, and then look at the cut-off section, we should find very different constituents in the stream at different times. we should at one time find the mind manifesting itself in _perceiving_, _remembering_, _imagining_, _discriminating_, _comparing_, _judging_, _reasoning_, or the acts by which we gain our knowledge; at another in _fearing_, _loving_, _hating_, _sorrowing_, _enjoying_, or the acts of feeling; at still another in _choosing_, or the act of the will. these processes would make up the stream, or, in other words, these are the acts which the mind performs in doing its work. we should never find a time when the stream consists of but one of the processes, or when all these modes of mental activity are not represented. they will be found in varying proportions, now more of knowing, now of feeling, and now of willing, but some of each is always present in our consciousness. the nature of these different elements in our mental stream, their relation to each other, and the manner in which they all work together in amazing perplexity yet in perfect harmony to produce the wonderful _mind_, will constitute the subject-matter we shall consider together in the pages which follow. . where consciousness resides i--the conscious self--dwell somewhere in this body, but where? when my finger tips touch the object i wish to examine, i seem to be in them. when the brain grows weary from overstudy, i seem to be in it. when the heart throbs, the breath comes quick, and the muscles grow tense from noble resolve or strong emotion, i seem to be in them all. when, filled with the buoyant life of vigorous youth, every fiber and nerve is a-tingle with health and enthusiasm, i live in every part of my marvelous body. small wonder that the ancients located the soul at one time in the heart, at another in the pineal gland of the brain, and at another made it coextensive with the body! consciousness works through the nervous system.--later science has taught that the _mind resides in and works through the nervous system, which has its central office in the brain_. and the reason why _i_ seem to be in every part of my body is because the nervous system extends to every part, carrying messages of sight or sound or touch to the brain, and bearing in return orders for movements, which set the feet a-dancing or the fingers a-tingling. but more of this later. this partnership between mind and body is very close. just how it happens that spirit may inhabit matter we may not know. but certain it is that they interact on each other. what will hinder the growth of one will handicap the other, and what favors the development of either will help both. the methods of their coöperation and the laws that govern their relationship will develop as our study goes on. . problems in observation and introspection one should always keep in mind that psychology is essentially a laboratory science, and not a text-book subject. the laboratory material is to be found in ourselves and in those about us. while the text should be thoroughly mastered, its statements should always be verified by reference to one's own experience, and observation of others. especially should prospective teachers constantly correlate the lessons of the book with the observation of children at work in the school. the problems suggested for observation and introspection will, if mastered, do much to render practical and helpful the truths of psychology. . think of your home as you last left it. can you see vividly just how it looked, the color of the paint on the outside, with the familiar form of the roof and all; can you recall the perfume in some old drawer, the taste of a favorite dish, the sound of a familiar voice in farewell? . what illustrations have you observed where the mental content of the moment seemed chiefly _thinking_ (knowledge process); chiefly _emotion_ (feeling process); chiefly _choosing_, or self-compulsion (willing process)? . when you say that you remember a circumstance that occurred yesterday, how do you remember it? that is, do you see in your mind things just as they were, and hear again sounds which occurred, or feel again movements which you performed? do you experience once more the emotions you then felt? . what forms of expression most commonly reveal _thought_; what reveal emotions? (i.e., can you tell what a child is _thinking about_ by the expression on his face? can you tell whether he is _angry_, _frightened_, _sorry_, by his face? is speech as necessary in expressing feeling as in expressing thought?) . try occasionally during the next twenty-four hours to turn quickly about mentally and see whether you can observe your thinking, feeling, or willing in the very act of taking place. . what becomes of our mind or consciousness while we are asleep? how are we able to wake up at a certain hour previously determined? can a person have absolutely _nothing_ in his mind? . have you noticed any children especially adept in expression? have you noticed any very backward? if so, in what form of expression in each case? . have you observed any instances of expression which you were at a loss to interpret (remember that "expression" includes every form of physical action, voice, speech, face, form, hand, etc.)? chapter ii attention how do you rank in mental ability, and how effective are your mind's grasp and power? the answer that must be given to these questions will depend not more on your native endowment than on your skill in using attention. . nature of attention it is by attention that we gather and mass our mental energy upon the critical and important points in our thinking. in the last chapter we saw that consciousness is not distributed evenly over the whole field, but "piled up," now on this object of thought, now on that, in obedience to interest or necessity. _the concentration of the mind's energy on one object of thought is attention._ the nature of attention.--everyone knows what it is to attend. the story so fascinating that we cannot leave it, the critical points in a game, the interesting sermon or lecture, the sparkling conversation--all these compel our attention. so completely is our mind's energy centered on them and withdrawn from other things that we are scarcely aware of what is going on about us. we are also familiar with another kind of attention. for we all have read the dull story, watched the slow game, listened to the lecture or sermon that drags, and taken part in conversation that was a bore. we gave these things our attention, but only with effort. our mind's energy seemed to center on anything rather than the matter in hand. a thousand objects from outside enticed us away, and it required the frequent "mental jerk" to bring us to the subject in hand. and when brought back to our thought problem we felt the constant "tug" of mind to be free again. normal consciousness always in a state of attention.--but this very effort of the mind to free itself from one object of thought that it may busy itself with another is _because attention is solicited by this other_. some object in our field of consciousness is always exerting an appeal for attention; and to attend _to_ one thing is always to attend _away from_ a multitude of other things upon which the thought might rest. we may therefore say that attention is constantly _selecting_ in our stream of thought those aspects that are to receive emphasis and consideration. from moment to moment it determines the points at which our mental energy shall be centered. . the effects of attention attention makes its object clear and definite.--whatever attention centers upon stands out sharp and clear in consciousness. whether it be a bit of memory, an "air-castle," a sensation from an aching tooth, the reasoning on an algebraic formula, a choice which we are making, the setting of an emotion--whatever be the object to which we are attending, that object is illumined and made to stand out from its fellows as the one prominent thing in the mind's eye while the attention rests on it. it is like the one building which the searchlight picks out among a city full of buildings and lights up, while the remainder are left in the semilight or in darkness. attention measures mental efficiency.--in a state of attention the mind may be likened to the rays of the sun which have been passed through a burning glass. you may let all the rays which can pass through your window pane fall hour after hour upon the paper lying on your desk, and no marked effects follow. but let the same amount of sunlight be passed through a lens and converged to a point the size of your pencil point, and the paper will at once burst into flame. what the diffused rays could not do in hours or in ages is now accomplished in seconds. likewise the mind, allowed to scatter over many objects, can accomplish but little. we may sit and dream away an hour or a day over a page or a problem without securing results. but let us call in our wits from their wool-gathering and "buckle down to it" with all our might, withdrawing our thoughts from everything else but this _one thing_, and concentrating our mind on it. more can now be accomplished in minutes than before in hours. nay, _things which could not be accomplished at all before_ now become possible. again, the mind may be compared to a steam engine which is constructed to run at a certain pressure of steam, say one hundred and fifty pounds to the square inch of boiler surface. once i ran such an engine; and well i remember a morning during my early apprenticeship when the foreman called for power to run some of the lighter machinery, while my steam gauge registered but seventy-five pounds. "surely," i thought, "if one hundred and fifty pounds will run all this machinery, seventy-five pounds should run half of it," so i opened the valve. but the powerful engine could do but little more than turn its own wheels, and refused to do the required work. not until the pressure had risen above one hundred pounds could the engine perform half the work which it could at one hundred and fifty pounds. and so with our mind. if it is meant to do its best work under a certain degree of concentration, it cannot in a given time do half the work with half the attention. further, there will be much _which it cannot do at all_ unless working under full pressure. we shall not be overstating the case if we say that as attention increases in arithmetical ratio, mental efficiency increases in geometrical ratio. it is in large measure a difference in the power of attention which makes one man a master in thought and achievement and another his humble follower. one often hears it said that "genius is but the power of sustained attention," and this statement possesses a large element of truth. . how we attend someone has said that if our attention is properly trained we should be able "to look at the point of a cambric needle for half an hour without winking." but this is a false idea of attention. the ability to look at the point of a cambric needle for half an hour might indicate a very laudable power of concentration; but the process, instead of enlightening us concerning the point of the needle, would result in our passing into a hypnotic state. voluntary attention to any one object can be sustained for but a brief time--a few seconds at best. it is essential that the object change, that we turn it over and over incessantly, and consider its various aspects and relations. sustained voluntary attention is thus a repetition of successive efforts to bring back the object to the mind. then the subject grows and develops--it is living, not dead. attention a relating activity.--when we are attending strongly to one object of thought it does not mean that consciousness sits staring vacantly at this one object, but rather that it uses it as a central core of thought, and thinks into relation with this object the things which belong with it. in working out some mathematical solution the central core is the principle upon which the solution is based, and concentration in this case consists in thinking the various conditions of the problem in relation to this underlying principle. in the accompanying diagram (fig. ) let a be the central core of some object of thought, say a patch of cloud in a picture, and let _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, etc., be the related facts, or the shape, size, color, etc., of the cloud. the arrows indicate the passing of our thought from cloud to related fact, or from related fact to cloud, and from related fact to related fact. as long as these related facts lead back to the cloud each time, that long we are attending to the cloud and thinking about it. it is when our thought fails to go back that we "wander" in our attention. then we leave _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, etc., which are related to the cloud, and, flying off to _x_, _y_, and _z,_ finally bring up heaven knows where. [illustration: fig. ] the rhythms of attention.--attention works in rhythms. this is to say that it never maintains a constant level of concentration for any considerable length of time, but regularly ebbs and flows. the explanation of this rhythmic action would take us too far afield at this point. when we remember, however, that our entire organism works within a great system of rhythms--hunger, thirst, sleep, fatigue, and many others--it is easy to see that the same law may apply to attention. the rhythms of attention vary greatly, the fluctuations often being only a few seconds apart for certain simple sensations, and probably a much greater distance apart for the more complex process of thinking. the seeming variation in the sound of a distant waterfall, now loud and now faint, is caused by the rhythm of attention and easily allows us to measure the rhythm for this particular sensation. . points of failure in attention lack of concentration.--there are two chief types of inattention whose danger threatens every person. _first_, we may be thinking about the right things, but not thinking _hard_ enough. we lack mental pressure. outside thoughts which have no relation to the subject in hand may not trouble us much, but we do not attack our problem with vim. the current in our stream of consciousness is moving too slowly. we do not gather up all our mental forces and mass them on the subject before us in a way that means victory. our thoughts may be sufficiently focused, but they fail to "set fire." it is like focusing the sun's rays while an eclipse is on. they lack energy. they will not kindle the paper after they have passed through the lens. this kind of attention means mental dawdling. it means inefficiency. for the individual it means defeat in life's battles; for the nation it means mediocrity and stagnation. a college professor said to his faithful but poorly prepared class, "judging from your worn and tired appearance, young people, you are putting in twice too many hours on study." at this commendation the class brightened up visibly. "but," he continued, "judging from your preparation, you do not study quite half hard enough." happy is the student who, starting in on his lesson rested and fresh, can study with such concentration that an hour of steady application will leave him mentally exhausted and limp. that is one hour of triumph for him, no matter what else he may have accomplished or failed to accomplish during the time. he can afford an occasional pause for rest, for difficulties will melt rapidly away before him. he possesses one key to successful achievement. mental wandering.--_second_, we may have good mental power and be able to think hard and efficiently on any one point, but lack the power to think in a straight line. every stray thought that comes along is a "will-o'-the-wisp" to lead us away from the subject in hand and into lines of thought not relating to it. who has not started in to think on some problem, and, after a few moments, been surprised to find himself miles away from the topic upon which he started! or who has not read down a page and, turning to the next, found that he did not know a word on the preceding page, his thoughts having wandered away, his eyes only going through the process of reading! instead of sticking to the _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, etc., of our topic and relating them all up to a, thereby reaching a solution of the problem, we often jump at once to _x_, _y_, _z_, and find ourselves far afield with all possibility of a solution gone. we may have brilliant thoughts about _x_, _y_, _z_, but they are not related to anything in particular, and so they pass from us and are gone--lost in oblivion because they are not attached to something permanent. such a thinker is at the mercy of circumstances, following blindly the leadings of trains of thought which are his master instead of his servant, and which lead him anywhere or nowhere without let or hindrance from him. his consciousness moves rapidly enough and with enough force, but it is like a ship without a helm. starting for the intellectual port _a_ by way of _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, he is mentally shipwrecked at last on the rocks _x_, _y_, _z_, and never reaches harbor. fortunate is he who can shut out intruding thoughts and think in a straight line. even with mediocre ability he may accomplish more by his thinking than the brilliant thinker who is constantly having his mental train wrecked by stray thoughts which slip in on his right of way. . types of attention the three types of attention.--attention may be secured in three ways: ( ) it is demanded by some sudden or intense sensory stimulus or insistent idea, or ( ) it follows interest, or ( ) it is compelled by the will. if it comes in the first way, as from a thunderclap or a flash of light, or from the persistent attempt of some unsought idea to secure entrance into the mind, it is called _involuntary_ attention. this form of attention is of so little importance, comparatively, in our mental life that we shall not discuss it further. if attention comes in the second way, following interest, it is called _nonvoluntary_ or spontaneous attention; if in the third, compelled by the will, _voluntary_ or active attention. nonvoluntary attention has its motive in some object external to consciousness, or else follows a more or less uncontrolled current of thought which interests us; voluntary attention is controlled from within--_we_ decide what we shall attend to instead of letting interesting objects of thought determine it for us. interest and nonvoluntary attention.--in nonvoluntary attention the environment largely determines what we shall attend to. all that we have to do with directing this kind of attention is in developing certain lines of interest, and then the interesting things attract attention. the things we see and hear and touch and taste and smell, the things we like, the things we do and hope to do--these are the determining factors in our mental life so long as we are giving nonvoluntary attention. our attention follows the beckoning of these things as the needle the magnet. it is no effort to attend to them, but rather the effort would be to keep from attending to them. who does not remember reading a story, perhaps a forbidden one, so interesting that when mother called up the stairs for us to come down to attend to some duty, we replied, "yes, in a minute," and then went on reading! we simply could not stop at that place. the minute lengthens into ten, and another call startles us. "yes, i'm coming;" we turn just one more leaf, and are lost again. at last comes a third call in tones so imperative that it cannot be longer ignored, and we lay the book down, but open to the place where we left off, and where we hope soon to begin further to unravel the delightful mystery. was it an effort to attend to the reading? ah, no! it took the combined force of our will and of mother's authority to drag the attention away. this is nonvoluntary attention. left to itself, then, attention simply obeys natural laws and follows the line of least resistance. by far the larger portion of our attention is of this type. thought often runs on hour after hour when we are not conscious of effort or struggle to compel us to cease thinking about this thing and begin thinking about that. indeed, it may be doubted whether this is not the case with some persons for days at a time, instead of hours. the things that present themselves to the mind are the things which occupy it; the character of the thought is determined by the character of our interests. it is this fact which makes it vitally necessary that our interests shall be broad and pure if our thoughts are to be of this type. it is not enough that we have the strength to drive from our minds a wrong or impure thought which seeks entrance. to stand guard as a policeman over our thoughts to see that no unworthy one enters, requires too much time and energy. our interests must be of such a nature as to lead us away from the field of unworthy thoughts if we are to be free from their tyranny. the will and voluntary attention.--in voluntary attention there is a conflict either between the will and interest or between the will and the mental inertia or laziness, which has to be overcome before we can think with any degree of concentration. interest says, "follow this line, which is easy and attractive, or which requires but little effort--follow the line of least resistance." will says, "quit that line of dalliance and ease, and take this harder way which i direct--cease the line of least resistance and take the one of greatest resistance." when day dreams and "castles in spain" attempt to lure you from your lessons, refuse to follow; shut out these vagabond thoughts and stick to your task. when intellectual inertia deadens your thought and clogs your mental stream, throw it off and court forceful effort. if wrong or impure thoughts seek entrance to your mind, close and lock your mental doors to them. if thoughts of desire try to drive out thoughts of duty, be heroic and insist that thoughts of duty shall have right of way. in short, see that _you_ are the master of your thinking, and do not let it always be directed without your consent by influences outside of yourself. it is just at this point that the strong will wins victory and the weak will breaks down. between the ability to control one's thoughts and the inability to control them lies all the difference between right actions and wrong actions; between withstanding temptation and yielding to it; between an inefficient purposeless life and a life of purpose and endeavor; between success and failure. for we act in accordance with those things which our thought rests upon. suppose two lines of thought represented by _a_ and _b_, respectively, lie before you; that _a_ leads to a course of action difficult or unpleasant, but necessary to success or duty, and that _b_ leads to a course of action easy or pleasant, but fatal to success or duty. which course will you follow--the rugged path of duty or the easier one of pleasure? the answer depends almost wholly, if not entirely, on your power of attention. if your will is strong enough to pull your thoughts away from the fatal but attractive _b_ and hold them resolutely on the less attractive _a_, then _a_ will dictate your course of action, and you will respond to the call for endeavor, self-denial, and duty; but if your thoughts break away from the domination of your will and allow the beckoning of your interests alone, then _b_ will dictate your course of action, and you will follow the leading of ease and pleasure. _for our actions are finally and irrevocably dictated by the things we think about._ not really different kinds of attention.--it is not to be understood, however, from what has been said, that there are _really_ different kinds of attention. all attention denotes an active or dynamic phase of consciousness. the difference is rather _in the way we secure attention_; whether it is demanded by sudden stimulus, coaxed from us by interesting objects of thought without effort on our part, or compelled by force of will to desert the more interesting and take the direction which we dictate. . improving the power of attention while attention is no doubt partly a natural gift, yet there is probably no power of the mind more susceptible to training than is attention. and with attention, as with every other power of body and mind, the secret of its development lies in its use. stated briefly, the only way to train attention is by attending. no amount of theorizing or resolving can take the place of practice in the actual process of attending. making different kinds of attention reËnforce each other.--a very close relationship and interdependence exists between nonvoluntary and voluntary attention. it would be impossible to hold our attention by sheer force of will on objects which were forever devoid of interest; likewise the blind following of our interests and desires would finally lead to shipwreck in all our lives. each kind of attention must support and reënforce the other. the lessons, the sermons, the lectures, and the books in which we are most interested, and hence to which we attend nonvoluntarily and with the least effort and fatigue, are the ones out of which, other things being equal, we get the most and remember the best and longest. on the other hand, there are sometimes lessons and lectures and books, and many things besides, which are not intensely interesting, but which should be attended to nevertheless. it is at this point that the will must step in and take command. if it has not the strength to do this, it is in so far a weak will, and steps should be taken to develop it. we are to "_keep the faculty of effort alive in us by a little gratuitous exercise every day_." we are to be systematically heroic in the little points of everyday life and experience. we are not to shrink from tasks because they are difficult or unpleasant. then, when the test comes, we shall not find ourselves unnerved and untrained, but shall be able to stand in the evil day. the habit of attention.--finally, one of the chief things in training the attention is _to form the habit of attending_. this habit is to be formed only by _attending_ whenever and wherever the proper thing to do is to attend, whether "in work, in play, in making fishing flies, in preparing for an examination, in courting a sweetheart, in reading a book." the lesson, or the sermon, or the lecture, may not be very interesting; but if they are to be attended to at all, our rule should be to attend to them completely and absolutely. not by fits and starts, now drifting away and now jerking ourselves back, but _all the time_. and, furthermore, the one who will deliberately do this will often find the dull and uninteresting task become more interesting; but if it never becomes interesting, he is at least forming a habit which will be invaluable to him through life. on the other hand, the one who fails to attend except when his interest is captured, who never exerts effort to compel attention, is forming a habit which will be the bane of his thinking until his stream of thought shall end. . problems in observation and introspection . which fatigues you more, to give attention of the nonvoluntary type, or the voluntary? which can you maintain longer? which is the more pleasant and agreeable to give? under which can you accomplish more? what bearing have these facts on teaching? . try to follow for one or two minutes the "wave" in your consciousness, and then describe the course taken by your attention. . have you observed one class alert in attention, and another lifeless and inattentive? can you explain the causes lying back of this difference? estimate the relative amount of work accomplished under the two conditions. . what distractions have you observed in the schoolroom tending to break up attention? . have you seen pupils inattentive from lack of ( ) change, ( ) pure air, ( ) enthusiasm on the part of the teacher, ( ) fatigue, ( ) ill health? . have you noticed a difference in the _habit_ of attention in different pupils? have you noticed the same thing for whole schools or rooms? . do you know of children too much given to daydreaming? are you? . have you seen a teacher rap the desk for attention? what type of attention was secured? does it pay? . have you observed any instance in which pupils' lack of attention should be blamed on the teacher? if so, what was the fault? the remedy? . visit a school room or a recitation, and then write an account of the types and degrees of attention you observed. try to explain the factors responsible for any failures in attention, and also those responsible for the good attention shown. chapter iii the brain and nervous system a fine brain, or a good mind. these terms are often used interchangeably, as if they stood for the same thing. yet the brain is material substance--so many cells and fibers, a pulpy protoplasmic mass weighing some three pounds and shut away from the outside world in a casket of bone. the mind is a spiritual thing--the sum of the processes by which we think and feel and will, mastering our world and accomplishing our destiny. . the relations of mind and brain interaction of mind and brain.--how, then, come these two widely different facts, mind and brain, to be so related in our speech? why are the terms so commonly interchanged?--it is because mind and brain are so vitally related in their processes and so inseparably connected in their work. no movement of our thought, no bit of sensation, no memory, no feeling, no act of decision but is accompanied by its own particular activity in the cells of the brain. it is this that the psychologist has in mind when he says, _no psychosis without its corresponding neurosis_. so far as our present existence is concerned, then, no mind ever works except through some brain, and a brain without a mind becomes but a mass of dead matter, so much clay. mind and brain are perfectly adapted to each other. nor is this mere accident. for through the ages of man's past history each has grown up and developed into its present state of efficiency by working in conjunction with the other. each has helped form the other and determine its qualities. not only is this true for the race in its evolution, but for every individual as he passes from infancy to maturity. the brain as the mind's machine.--in the first chapter we saw that the brain does not create the mind, but that the mind works through the brain. no one can believe that the brain secretes mind as the liver secretes bile, or that it grinds it out as a mill does flour. indeed, just what their exact relation is has not yet been settled. yet it is easy to see that if the mind must use the brain as a machine and work through it, then the mind must be subject to the limitations of its machine, or, in other words, the mind cannot be better than the brain through which it operates. a brain and nervous system that are poorly developed or insufficiently nourished mean low grade of efficiency in our mental processes, just as a poorly constructed or wrongly adjusted motor means loss of power in applying the electric current to its work. we will, then, look upon the mind and the brain as counterparts of each other, each performing activities which correspond to activities in the other, both inextricably bound together at least so far as this life is concerned, and each getting its significance by its union with the other. this view will lend interest to a brief study of the brain and nervous system. . the mind's dependence on the external world but can we first see how in a general way the brain and nervous system are primarily related to our thinking? let us go back to the beginning and consider the babe when it first opens its eyes on the scenes of its new existence. what is in its mind? what does it think about? nothing. imagine, if you can, a person born blind and deaf, and without the sense of touch, taste, or smell. let such a person live on for a year, for five years, for a lifetime. what would he know? what ray of intelligence would enter his mind? what would he think about? all would be dark to his eyes, all silent to his ears, all tasteless to his mouth, all odorless to his nostrils, all touchless to his skin. his mind would be a blank. he would have no mind. he could not get started to think. he could not get started to act. he would belong to a lower scale of life than the tiny animal that floats with the waves and the tide in the ocean without power to direct its own course. he would be but an inert mass of flesh without sense or intelligence. the mind at birth.--yet this is the condition of the babe at birth. it is born practically blind and deaf, without definite sense of taste or smell. born without anything to think about, and no way to get anything to think about until the senses wake up and furnish some material from the outside world. born with all the mechanism of muscle and nerve ready to perform the countless complex movements of arms and legs and body which characterize every child, he could not successfully start these activities without a message from the senses to set them going. at birth the child probably has only the senses of contact and temperature present with any degree of clearness; taste soon follows; vision of an imperfect sort in a few days; hearing about the same time, and smell a little later. the senses are waking up and beginning their acquaintance with the outside world. [illustration: fig. .--a neurone from a human spinal cord. the central portion represents the cell body. n, the nucleus; p, a pigmented or colored spot; d, a dendrite, or relatively short fiber,--which branches freely; a, an axon or long fiber, which branches but little.] the work of the senses.--and what a problem the senses have to solve! on the one hand the great universe of sights and sounds, of tastes and smells, of contacts and temperatures, and whatever else may belong to the material world in which we live; and on the other hand the little shapeless mass of gray and white pulpy matter called the brain, incapable of sustaining its own shape, shut away in the darkness of a bony case with no possibility of contact with the outside world, and possessing no means of communicating with it except through the senses. and yet this universe of external things must be brought into communication with the seemingly insignificant but really wonderful brain, else the mind could never be. here we discover, then, the two great factors which first require our study if we would understand the growth of the mind--_the material world without, and the brain within_. for it is the action and interaction of these which lie at the bottom of the mind's development. let us first look a little more closely at the brain and the accompanying nervous system. . structural elements of the nervous system it will help in understanding both the structure and the working of the nervous system to keep in mind that it contains _but one fundamental unit of structure_. this is the neurone. just as the house is built up by adding brick upon brick, so brain, cord, nerves and organs of sense are formed by the union of numberless neurones. [illustration: fig. .--neurones in different stages of development, from _a_ to _e_. in _a_, the elementary cell body alone is present; in _c_, a dendrite is shown projecting upward and an axon downward.--after donaldson.] the neurone.--what, then, is a neurone? what is its structure, its function, how does it act? a neurone is _a protoplasmic cell, with its outgrowing fibers_. the cell part of the neurone is of a variety of shapes, triangular, pyramidal, cylindrical, and irregular. the cells vary in size from / to / of an inch in diameter. in general the function of the cell is thought to be to generate the nervous energy responsible for our consciousness--sensation, memory, reasoning, feeling and all the rest, and for our movements. the cell also provides for the nutrition of the fibers. [illustration: fig. .--longitudinal (a) and transverse (b) section of nerve fiber. the heavy border represents the medullary, or enveloping sheath, which becomes thicker in the larger fibers.--after donaldson.] neurone fibers.--the neurone fibers are of two kinds, _dendrites_ and _axons_. the dendrites are comparatively large in diameter, branch freely, like the branches of a tree, and extend but a relatively short distance from the parent cell. axons are slender, and branch but little, and then approximately at right angles. they reach a much greater distance from the cell body than the dendrites. neurones vary greatly in length. some of those found in the spinal cord and brain are not more than / of an inch long, while others which reach from the extremities to the cord, measure several feet. both dendrites and axons are of diameter so small as to be invisible except under the microscope. neuroglia.--out of this simple structural element, the neurone, the entire nervous system is built. true, the neurones are held in place, and perhaps insulated, by a kind of soft cement called _neuroglia_. but this seems to possess no strictly nervous function. the number of the microscopic neurones required to make up the mass of the brain, cord and peripheral nervous system is far beyond our mental grasp. it is computed that the brain and cord contain some , millions of them. complexity of the brain.--something of the complexity of the brain structure can best be understood by an illustration. professor stratton estimates that if we were to make a model of the human brain, using for the neurone fibers wires so small as to be barely visible to the eye, in order to find room for all the wires the model would need to be the size of a city block on the base and correspondingly high. imagine a telephone system of this complexity operating from one switch-board! "gray" and "white" matter.--the "gray matter" of the brain and cord is made up of nerve cells and their dendrites, and the terminations of axons, which enter from the adjoining white matter. a part of the mass of gray matter also consists of the neuroglia which surrounds the nerve cells and fibers, and a network of blood vessels. the "white matter" of the central system consists chiefly of axons with their enveloping or medullary, sheath and neuroglia. the white matter contains no nerve cells or dendrites. the difference in color of the gray and the white matter is caused chiefly by the fact that in the gray masses the medullary sheath, which is white, is lacking, thus revealing the ashen gray of the nerve threads. in the white masses the medullary sheath is present. . gross structure of the nervous system divisions of the nervous system.--the nervous system may be considered in two divisions: ( ) the _central_ system, which consists of the brain and spinal cord, and ( ) the _peripheral_ system, which comprises the sensory and motor neurones connecting the periphery and the internal organs with the central system and the specialized end-organs of the senses. the _sympathetic_ system, which is found as a double chain of nerve connections joining the roots of sensory and motor nerves just outside the spinal column, does not seem to be directly related to consciousness and so will not be discussed here. a brief description of the nervous system will help us better to understand how its parts all work together in so wonderful a way to accomplish their great result. the central system.--in the brain we easily distinguish three major divisions--the _cerebrum_, the _cerebellum_ and the _medulla oblongata_. the medulla is but the enlarged upper part of the cord where it connects with the brain. it is about an inch and a quarter long, and is composed of both medullated and unmedullated fibers--that is of both "white" and "gray" matter. in the medulla, the unmedullated neurones which comprise the center of the cord are passing to the outside, and the medullated to the inside, thus taking the positions they occupy in the cerebrum. here also the neurones are crossing, or changing sides, so that those which pass up the right side of the cord finally connect with the left side of the brain, and vice versa. the cerebellum.--lying just back of the medulla and at the rear part of the base of the cerebrum is the cerebellum, or "little brain," approximately as large as the fist, and composed of a complex arrangement of white and gray matter. fibers from the spinal cord enter this mass, and others emerge and pass on into the cerebrum, while its two halves also are connected with each other by means of cross fibers. [illustration: fig. .--view of the under side of the brain. b, basis of the crura; p, pons; mo, medulla oblongata; ce, cerebellum; sc, spinal cord.] the cerebrum.--the cerebrum occupies all the upper part of the skull from the front to the rear. it is divided symmetrically into two hemispheres, the right and the left. these hemispheres are connected with each other by a small bridge of fibers called the _corpus callosum_. each hemisphere is furrowed and ridged with convolutions, an arrangement which allows greater surface for the distribution of the gray cellular matter over it. besides these irregularities of surface, each hemisphere is marked also by two deep clefts or _fissures_--the fissure of rolando, extending from the middle upper part of the hemisphere downward and forward, passing a little in front of the ear and stopping on a level with the upper part of it; and the fissure of sylvius, beginning at the base of the brain somewhat in front of the ear and extending upward and backward at an acute angle with the base of the hemisphere. [illustration: fig. .--diagrammatic side view of brain, showing cerebellum (cb) and medulla oblongata (mo). f' f'' f''' are placed on the first, second, and third frontal convolutions, respectively; af, on the ascending frontal; ap, on the ascending parietal; m, on the marginal; a, on the angular. t' t'' t''' are placed on the first, second, and third temporal convolutions. r-r marks the fissure of rolando; s-s, the fissure of sylvius; po, the parieto-occipital fissure.] the surface of each hemisphere may be thought of as mapped out into four lobes: the frontal lobe, which includes the front part of the hemisphere and extends back to the fissure of rolando and down to the fissure of sylvius; the parietal lobe, which lies back of the fissure of rolando and above that of sylvius and extends back to the occipital lobe; the occipital lobe, which includes the extreme rear portion of the hemisphere; and the temporal lobe, which lies below the fissure of sylvius and extends back to the occipital lobe. the cortex.--the gray matter of the hemispheres, unlike that of the cord, lies on the surface. this gray exterior portion of the cerebrum is called the _cortex_, and varies from one-twelfth to one-eighth of an inch in thickness. the cortex is the seat of all consciousness and of the control of voluntary movement. [illustration: fig. .--different aspects of sections of the spinal cord and of the roots of the spinal nerves from the cervical region: , different views of anterior median fissure; , posterior fissure; , anterior lateral depression for anterior roots; , posterior lateral depression for posterior roots; and , anterior and posterior roots, respectively; , complete spinal nerve, formed by the union of the anterior and posterior roots.] the spinal cord.--the spinal cord proceeds from the base of the brain downward about eighteen inches through a canal provided for it in the vertebræ of the spinal column. it is composed of white matter on the outside, and gray matter within. a deep fissure on the anterior side and another on the posterior cleave the cord nearly in twain, resembling the brain in this particular. the gray matter on the interior is in the form of two crescents connected by a narrow bar. the _peripheral_ nervous system consists of thirty-one pairs of _nerves_, with their end-organs, branching off from the cord, and twelve pairs that have their roots in the brain. branches of these forty-three pairs of nerves reach to every part of the periphery of the body and to all the internal organs. [illustration: fig. .--the projection fibers of the brain. i-ix, the first nine pairs of cranial nerves.] it will help in understanding the peripheral system to remember that a _nerve_ consists of a bundle of neurone fibers each wrapped in its medullary sheath and sheath of schwann. around this bundle of neurones, that is around the nerve, is still another wrapping, silvery-white, called the neurilemma. the number of fibers going to make up a nerve varies from about , to , . nerves can easily be identified in a piece of lean beef, or even at the edge of a serious gash in one's own flesh! bundles of sensory fibers constituting a sensory nerve root enter the spinal cord on the posterior side through holes in the vertebræ. similar bundles of motor fibers in the form of a motor nerve root emerge from the cord at the same level. soon after their emergence from the cord, these two nerves are wrapped together in the same sheath and proceed in this way to the periphery of the body, where the sensory nerve usually ends in a specialized _end-organ_ fitted to respond to some certain stimulus from the outside world. the motor nerve ends in minute filaments in the muscular organ which it governs. both sensory and motor nerves connect with fibers of like kind in the cord and these in turn with the cortex, thus giving every part of the periphery direct connection with the cortex. [illustration: fig. .--schematic diagram showing association fibers connecting cortical centers with each other.--after james and starr.] the _end-organs_ of the sensory nerves are nerve masses, some of them, as the taste buds of the tongue, relatively simple; and others, as the eye or ear, very complex. they are all alike in one particular; namely, that each is fitted for its own particular work and can do no other. thus the eye is the end-organ of sight, and is a wonderfully complex arrangement of nerve structure combined with refracting media, and arranged to respond to the rapid ether waves of light. the ear has for its essential part the specialized endings of the auditory nerve, and is fitted to respond to the waves carried to it in the air, giving the sensation of sound. the end-organs of touch, found in greatest perfection in the finger tips, are of several kinds, all very complicated in structure. and so on with each of the senses. each particular sense has some form of end-organ specially adapted to respond to the kind of stimulus upon which its sensation depends, and each is insensible to the stimuli of the others, much as the receiver of a telephone will respond to the tones of our voice, but not to the touch of our fingers as will the telegraph instrument, and _vice versa_. thus the eye is not affected by sounds, nor touch by light. yet by means of all the senses together we are able to come in contact with the material world in a variety of ways. . localization of function in the nervous system division of labor.--division of labor is the law in the organic world as in the industrial. animals of the lowest type, such as the amoeba, do not have separate organs for respiration, digestion, assimilation, elimination, etc., the one tissue performing all of these functions. but in the higher forms each organ not only has its own specific work, but even within the same organ each part has its own particular function assigned. thus we have seen that the two parts of the neurone probably perform different functions, the cells generating energy and the fibers transmitting it. it will not seem strange, then, that there is also a division of labor in the cellular matter itself in the nervous system. for example, the little masses of ganglia which are distributed at intervals along the nerves are probably for the purpose of reënforcing the nerve current, much as the battery cells in the local telegraph office reënforce the current from the central office. the cellular matter in the spinal cord and lower parts of the brain has a very important work to perform in receiving messages from the senses and responding to them in directing the simpler reflex acts and movements which we learn to execute without our consciousness being called upon, thus leaving the mind free from these petty things to busy itself in higher ways. the cellular matter of the cortex performs the highest functions of all, for through its activity we have consciousness. [illustration: fig. .--side view of left hemisphere of human brain, showing the principal localized areas.] the gray matter of the cerebellum, the medulla, and the cord may receive impressions from the senses and respond to them with movements, but their response is in all cases wholly automatic and unconscious. a person whose hemispheres had been injured in such a way as to interfere with the activity of the cortex might still continue to perform most if not all of the habitual movements of his life, but they would be mechanical and not intelligent. he would lack all higher consciousness. it is through the activity of this thin covering of cellular matter of the cerebrum, the _cortex_, that our minds operate; here are received stimuli from the different senses, and here sensations are experienced. here all our movements which are consciously directed have their origin. and here all our thinking, feeling, and willing are done. division of labor in the cortex.--nor does the division of labor in the nervous system end with this assignment of work. the cortex itself probably works essentially as a unit, yet it is through a shifting of tensions from one area to another that it acts, now giving us a sensation, now directing a movement, and now thinking a thought or feeling an emotion. localization of function is the rule here also. certain areas of the cortex are devoted chiefly to sensations, others to motor impulses, and others to higher thought activities, yet in such a way that all work together in perfect harmony, each reënforcing the other and making its work significant. thus the front portion of the cortex seems to be devoted to the higher thought activities; the region on both sides of the fissure of rolando, to motor activities; and the rear and lower parts to sensory activities; and all are bound together and made to work together by the association fibers of the brain. in the case of the higher thought activities, it is not probable that one section of the frontal lobes of the cortex is set apart for thinking, one for feeling, and one for willing, etc., but rather that the whole frontal part of the cortex is concerned in each. in the motor and sensory areas, however, the case is different; for here a still further division of labor occurs. for example, in the motor region one small area seems connected with movements of the head, one with the arm, one with the leg, one with the face, and another with the organs of speech; likewise in the sensory region, one area is devoted to vision, one to hearing, one to taste and smell, and one to touch, etc. we must bear in mind, however, that these regions are not mapped out as accurately as are the boundaries of our states--that no part of the brain is restricted wholly to either sensory or motor nerves, and that no part works by itself independently of the rest of the brain. we name a tract from the predominance of nerves which end there, or from the chief functions which the area performs. the motor localization seems to be the most perfect. indeed, experimentation on the brains of monkeys has been successful in mapping out motor areas so accurately that such small centers as those connected with the bending of one particular leg or the flexing of a thumb have been located. yet each area of the cortex is so connected with every other area by the millions of association fibers that the whole brain is capable of working together as a unit, thus unifying and harmonizing our thoughts, emotions, and acts. . forms of sensory stimuli let us next inquire how this mechanism of the nervous system is acted upon in such a way as to give us sensations. in order to understand this, we must first know that all forms of matter are composed of minute atoms which are in constant motion, and by imparting this motion to the air or the ether which surrounds them, are constantly radiating energy in the form of minute waves throughout space. these waves, or radiations, are incredibly rapid in some instances and rather slow in others. in sending out its energy in the form of these waves, the physical world is doing its part to permit us to form its acquaintance. the end-organs of the sensory nerves must meet this advance half-way, and be so constructed as to be affected by the different forms of energy which are constantly beating upon them. [illustration: fig. .--the prism's analysis of a bundle of light rays. on the right are shown the relation of vibration rates to temperature stimuli, to light and to chemical stimuli. the rates are given in billions per second.--after witmer.] the end-organs and their response to stimuli.--thus the radiations of ether from the sun, our chief source of light, are so rapid that billions of them enter the eye in a second of time, and the retina is of such a nature that its nerve cells are thrown into activity by these waves; the impulse is carried over the optic nerve to the occipital lobe of the cortex, and the sensation of sight is the result. the different colors also, from the red of the spectrum to the violet, are the result of different vibration rates in the waves of ether which strike the retina; and in order to perceive color, the retina must be able to respond to the particular vibration rate which represents each color. likewise in the sense of touch the end-organs are fitted to respond to very rapid vibrations, and it is possible that the different qualities of touch are produced by different vibration rates in the atoms of the object we are touching. when we reach the ear, we have the organ which responds to the lowest vibration rate of all, for we can detect a sound made by an object which is vibrating from twenty to thirty times a second. the highest vibration rate which will affect the ear is some forty thousand per second. thus it is seen that there are great gaps in the different rates to which our senses are fitted to respond--a sudden drop from billions in the case of the eye to millions in touch, and to thousands or even tens in hearing. this makes one wonder whether there are not many things in nature which man has never discovered simply because he has not the sense mechanism enabling him to become conscious of their existence. there are undoubtedly "more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy." dependence of the mind on the senses.--only as the senses bring in the material, has the mind anything with which to build. thus have the senses to act as messengers between the great outside world and the brain; to be the servants who shall stand at the doorways of the body--the eyes, the ears, the finger tips--each ready to receive its particular kind of impulse from nature and send it along the right path to the part of the cortex where it belongs, so that the mind can say, "a sight," "a sound," or "a touch." thus does the mind come to know the universe of the senses. thus does it get the material out of which memory, imagination, and thought begin. thus and only thus does the mind secure the crude material from which the finished superstructure is finally built. chapter iv mental development and motor training education was long looked upon as affecting the mind only; the body was either left out of account or neglected. later science has shown, however, that the mind cannot be trained _except as the nervous system is trained and developed_. for not sensation and the simpler mental processes alone, but memory, imagination, judgment, reasoning and every other act of the mind are dependent on the nervous system finally for their efficiency. the little child gets its first mental experiences in connection with certain movements or acts set up reflexly by the pre-organized nervous system. from this time on movement and idea are so inextricably bound together that they cannot be separated. the mind and the brain are so vitally related that it is impossible to educate one without performing a like office for the other; and it is likewise impossible to neglect the one without causing the other to suffer in its development. . factors determining the efficiency of the nervous system development and nutrition.--ignoring the native differences in nervous systems through the influence of heredity, the efficiency of a nervous system is largely dependent on two factors: ( ) the development of the cells and fibers of which it is composed, and ( ) its general tone of health and vigor. the actual number of cells in the nervous system increases but little if at all after birth. indeed, it is doubtful whether edison's brain and nervous system has a greater number of cells in it than yours or mine. the difference between the brain of a genius and that of an ordinary man is not in the _number_ of cells which it contains, but rather in the development of the cells and fibers which are present, potentially, at least, in every nervous system. the histologist tells us that in the nervous system of every child there are tens of thousands of cells which are so immature and undeveloped that they are useless; indeed, this is the case to some degree in every adult person's nervous system as well. thus each individual has inherent in his nervous system potentialities of which he has never taken advantage, the utilizing of which may make him a genius and the neglecting of which will certainly leave him on the plane of mediocrity. the first problem in education, then, is to take the unripe and inefficient nervous system and so develop it in connection with the growing mind that the possibilities which nature has stored in it shall become actualities. undeveloped cells.--professor donaldson tells us on this point that: "at birth, and for a long time after, many [nervous] systems contain cell elements which are more or less immature, not forming a functional part of the tissue, and yet under some conditions capable of further development.... for the cells which are continually appearing in the developing cortex no other source is known than the nuclei or granules found there in its earliest stages. these elements are metamorphosed neuroblasts--that is, elementary cells out of which the nervous matter is developed--which have shrunken to a volume less than that which they had at first, and which remain small until, in the subsequent process of enlargement necessary for their full development, they expand into well-marked cells. elements intermediate between these granules and the fully developed cells are always found, even in mature brains, and therefore it is inferred that the latter are derived from the former. the appearances there also lead to the conclusion that many elements which might possibly develop in any given case are far beyond the number that actually does so.... the possible number of cells latent and functional in the central system is early fixed. at any age this number is accordingly represented by the granules as well as by the cells which have already undergone further development. during growth the proportion of developed cells increases, and sometimes, owing to the failure to recognize potential nerve cells in the granules, the impression is carried away that this increase implies the formation of new elements. as has been shown, such is not the case."[ ] development of nerve fibers.--the nerve _fibers_, no less than the cells, must go through a process of development. it has already been shown that the fibers are the result of a branching of cells. at birth many of the cells have not yet thrown out branches, and hence the fibers are lacking; while many of those which are already grown out are not sufficiently developed to transmit impulses accurately. thus it has been found that most children at birth are able to support the weight of the body for several seconds by clasping the fingers around a small rod, but it takes about a year for the child to become able to stand. it is evident that it requires more actual strength to cling to a rod than to stand; hence the conclusion is that the difference is in the earlier development of the nerve centers which have to do with clasping than of those concerned in standing. likewise the child's first attempts to feed himself or do any one of the thousand little things about which he is so awkward, are partial failures not so much because he has not had practice as because his nervous machinery connected with those movements is not yet developed sufficiently to enable him to be accurate. his brain is in a condition which flechsig calls "unripe." how, then, shall the undeveloped cells and system ripen? how shall the undeveloped cells and fibers grow to full maturity and efficiency? . development of nervous system through use importance of stimulus and response.--like all other tissues of the body, the nerve cells and fibers are developed by judicious use. the sensory and association centers require the constant stimulus of nerve currents running in from the various end-organs, and the motor centers require the constant stimulus of currents running from them out to the muscles. in other words, the conditions upon which both motor and sensory development depend are: ( ) a rich environment of sights and sounds and tastes and smells, and everything else which serves as proper stimulus to the sense organs, and to every form of intellectual and social interest; and ( ) no less important, an opportunity for the freest and most complete forms of response and motor activity. [illustration: fig. .--schematic transverse section of the human brain showing the projection of the motor fibers, their crossing in the neighborhood of the medulla, and their termination in the different areas of localized function in the cortex. s, fissure of sylvius; m, the medulla; vii, the roots of the facial nerves.] an illustration of the effects of the lack of sensory stimuli on the cortex is well shown in the case of laura bridgman, whose brain was studied by professor donaldson after her death. laura bridgman was born a normal child, and developed as other children do up to the age of nearly three years. at this time, through an attack of scarlet fever, she lost her hearing completely and also the sight of her left eye. her right eye was so badly affected that she could see but little; and it, too, became entirely blind when she was eight. she lived in this condition until she was sixty years old, when she died. professor donaldson submitted the cortex of her brain to a most careful examination, also comparing the corresponding areas on the two hemispheres with each other. he found that as a whole the cortex was thinner than in the case of normal individuals. he found also that the cortical area connected with the left eye--namely, the right occipital region--was much thinner than that for the right eye, which had retained its sight longer than the other. he says: "it is interesting to notice that those parts of the cortex which, according to the current view, were associated with the defective sense organs were also particularly thin. the cause of this thinness was found to be due, at least in part, to the small size of the nerve cells there present. not only were the large and medium-sized cells smaller, but the impression made on the observer was that they were also less numerous than in the normal cortex." effect of sensory stimuli.--no doubt if we could examine the brain of a person who has grown up in an environment rich in stimuli to the eye, where nature, earth, and sky have presented a changing panorama of color and form to attract the eye; where all the sounds of nature, from the chirp of the insect to the roar of the waves and the murmur of the breeze, and from the softest tones of the voice to the mightiest sweep of the great orchestra, have challenged the ear; where many and varied odors and perfumes have assailed the nostrils; where a great range of tastes have tempted the palate; where many varieties of touch and temperature sensations have been experienced--no doubt if we could examine such a brain we should find the sensory areas of the cortex excelling in thickness because its cells were well developed and full sized from the currents which had been pouring into them from the outside world. on the other hand, if we could examine a cortex which had lacked any one of these stimuli, we should find some area in it undeveloped because of this deficiency. its owner therefore possesses but the fraction of a brain, and would in a corresponding degree find his mind incomplete. necessity for motor activity.--likewise in the case of the motor areas. pity the boy or girl who has been deprived of the opportunity to use every muscle to the fullest extent in the unrestricted plays and games of childhood. for where such activities are not wide in their scope, there some areas of the cortex will remain undeveloped, because unused, and the person will be handicapped later in his life from lack of skill in the activities depending on these centers. halleck says in this connection: "if we could examine the developing motor region with a microscope of sufficient magnifying power, it is conceivable that we might learn wherein the modification due to exercise consists. we might also, under such conditions, be able to say, 'this is the motor region of a piano player; the modifications here correspond precisely to those necessary for controlling such movements of the hand.' or, 'this is the motor tract of a blacksmith; this, of an engraver; and these must be the cells which govern the vocal organs of an orator.'" whether or not the microscope will ever reveal such things to us, there is no doubt that the conditions suggested exist, and that back of every inefficient and awkward attempt at physical control lies a motor area with its cells undeveloped by use. no wonder that our processes of learning physical adjustment and control are slow, for they are a growth in the brain rather than a simple "learning how." the training of the nervous system consists finally, then, in the development and coördination of the neurones of which it is composed. we have seen that the sensory cells are to be developed by the sensory stimuli pouring in upon them, and the motor cells by the motor impulses which they send out to the muscles. the sensory and the motor fibers likewise, being an outgrowth of their respective cells, find their development in carrying the impulses which result in sensation and movement. thus it is seen that the neurone is, in its development as in its work, a unit. development of the association centers.--to this simpler type of sensory and motor development which we have been considering, we must add that which comes from the more complex mental processes, such as memory, thought, and imagination. for it is in connection with these that the association fibers are developed, and the brain areas so connected that they can work together as a unit. a simple illustration will enable us to see more clearly how the nervous mechanism acts to bring this about. suppose that i am walking along a country road deeply engaged in meditation, and that i come to a puddle of water in my pathway. i may turn aside and avoid the obstruction without my attention being called to it, and without interruption of my train of thought. the act has been automatic. in this case the nerve current has passed from the eye (_s_) over an afferent fiber to a sensory center (_s_) in the nervous system below the cortex; from there it has been forwarded to a motor center (_m_) in the same region, and on out over a motor fiber to the proper muscles (_m_), which are to execute the required act. the act having been completed, the sensory nerves connected with the muscles employed report the fact back that the work is done, thus completing the circuit. this event may be taken as an illustration of literally thousands of acts which we perform daily without the intervention of consciousness, and hence without involving the hemispheres. [illustration: fig. .--diagram illustrating the paths of association.] if, however, instead of avoiding the puddle unconsciously, i do so from consideration of the danger of wet feet and the disagreeableness of soiled shoes and the ridiculous appearance i shall make, then the current cannot take the short circuit, but must pass on up to the cortex. here it awakens consciousness to take notice of the obstruction, and calls forth the images which aid in directing the necessary movements. this simple illustration may be greatly complicated, substituting for it one of the more complex problems which are continually presenting themselves to us for solution, or the associated trains of thought that are constantly occupying our minds. but the truth of the illustration still holds. whether in the simple or the complex act, there is always a forward passing of the nerve current through the sensory and thought centers, and on out through the motor centers to the organs which are to be concerned in the motor response. the factors involved in a simple action.--thus it will be seen that in the simplest act which can be considered there are the following factors: ( ) the stimulus which acts on the end-organ; ( ) the ingoing current over an afferent nerve; ( ) the sensory or interpreting cells; ( ) the fibers connecting the sensory with a motor center; ( ) the motor cells; ( ) the efferent nerve to carry the direction for the movement outward to the muscle; ( ) the motor response; and, finally, ( ) the report back that the act has been performed. with this in mind it fairly bewilders one to think of the marvelous complexity of the work that is going on in our nervous mechanism every moment of our life, even without considering the higher thought processes at all. how, with these added, the resulting complexity all works out into beautiful harmony is indeed beyond comprehension. . education and the training of the nervous system fortunately, many of the best opportunities for sensory and motor training do not depend on schools or courses of study. the world is full of stimuli to our senses and to our social natures; and our common lives are made up of the responses we make to these stimuli,--the movements, acts and deeds by which we fit ourselves into our world of environment. undoubtedly the most rapid and vital progress we make in our development is accomplished in the years before we have reached the age to go to school. yet it is the business of education to see that we do not lack any essential opportunity, to make sure that necessary lines of stimuli or of motor training have not been omitted from our development. education to supply opportunities for stimulus and response.--the great problem of education is, on the physical side, it would seem, then, to provide for ourselves and those we seek to educate as rich an environment of sensory and social stimuli as possible; one whose impressions will be full of suggestions to response in motor activity and the higher thought processes; and then to give opportunity for thought and for expression in acts and deeds in the largest possible number of lines. and added to this must be frequent and clear sensory and motor recall, a living over again of the sights and sounds and odors and the motor activities we have once experienced. there must also be the opportunity for the forming of worthy plans and ideals. for in this way the brain centers which were concerned in the original sensation or thought or movement are again brought into exercise, and their development continued. through recall and imagination we are able not only greatly to multiply the effects of the immediate sensory and motor stimuli which come to us, but also to improve our power of thinking by getting a fund of material upon which the mind can draw. order of development in the nervous system.--nature has set the order in which the powers of the nervous system shall develop. and we must follow this order if we would obtain the best results. stated in technical terms, the order is _from fundamental to accessory_. this is to say that the nerve centers controlling the larger and more general movements of the body ripen first, and those governing the finer motor adjustments later. for example, the larger body muscles of the child which are concerned with sitting up come under control earlier than those connected with walking. the arm muscles develop control earlier than the finger muscles, and the head and neck muscles earlier than the eye muscles. so also the more general and less highly specialized powers of the mind ripen sooner than the more highly specialized. perception and observation precede powers of critical judgment and association. memory and imagination ripen earlier than reasoning and the logical ability. this all means that our educational system must be planned to follow the order of nature. children of the primary grades should not be required to write with fine pencils or pens which demand delicate finger adjustments, since the brain centers for these finer coördinations are not yet developed. young children should not be set at work necessitating difficult eye control, such as stitching through perforated cardboard, reading fine print and the like, as their eyes are not yet ready for such tasks. the more difficult analytical problems of arithmetic and relations of grammar should not be required of pupils at a time when the association areas of the brain are not yet ready for this type of thinking. for such methods violate the law of nature, and the child is sure to suffer the penalty. . importance of health and vigor of the nervous system parallel with opportunities for proper stimuli and response the nervous system must possess good _tonicity_, or vigor. this depends in large degree on general health and nutrition, with freedom from overfatigue. no favorableness of environment nor excellence of training can result in an efficient brain if the nerve energy has run low from depleted health, want of proper nourishment, or exhaustion. the influence of fatigue.--histologists find that the nuclei of nerve cells are shrunk as much as fifty per cent by extreme fatigue. reasonable fatigue followed by proper recuperation is not harmful, but even necessary if the best development is to be attained; but fatigue without proper nourishment and rest is fatal to all mental operations, and indeed finally to the nervous system itself, leaving it permanently in a condition of low tone, and incapable of rallying to strong effort. for rapid and complete recuperation the cells must have not only the best of nourishment but opportunity for rest as well. extreme and long-continued fatigue is hostile to the development and welfare of any nervous system, and especially to that of children. not only does overfatigue hinder growth, but it also results in the formation of certain _toxins_, or poisons, in the organism, which are particularly harmful to nervous tissue. it is these fatigue toxins that account for many of the nervous and mental disorders which accompany breakdowns from overwork. on the whole, the evil effects from mental overstrain are more to be feared than from physical overstrain. the effects of worry.--there is, perhaps, no greater foe to brain growth and efficiency than the nervous and worn-out condition which comes from loss of sleep or from worry. experiments in the psychological laboratories have shown that nerve cells shrivel up and lose their vitality under loss of sleep. let this go on for any considerable length of time, and the loss is irreparable; for the cells can never recuperate. this is especially true in the case of children or young people. many school boys and girls, indeed many college students, are making slow progress in their studies not because they are mentally slow or inefficient, not even chiefly because they lose time that should be put on their lessons, but because they are incapacitating their brains for good service through late hours and the consequent loss of sleep. add to this condition that of worry, which often accompanies it from the fact of failure in lessons, and a naturally good and well-organized nervous system is sure to fail. worry, from whatever cause, should be avoided as one would avoid poison, if we would bring ourselves to the highest degree of efficiency. not only does worry temporarily unfit the mind for its best work, but its evil results are permanent, since the mind is left with a poorly developed or undone nervous system through which to work, even after the cause for worry has been removed and the worry itself has ceased. not only should each individual seek to control the causes of worry in his own life, but the home and the school should force upon childhood as few causes for worry as may be. children's worry over fears of the dark, over sickness and death, over prospective but delayed punishment, over the thousand and one real or imaginary troubles of childhood, should be eliminated so far as possible. school examinations that prey on the peace of mind, threats of failure of promotion, all nagging and sarcasm, and whatever else may cause continued pain or worry to sensitive minds should be barred from our schoolroom methods and practice. the price we force the child to pay for results through their use is too great for them to be tolerated. we must seek a better way. the factors in good nutrition.--for the best nutrition there is necessity first of all plenty of nourishing and healthful food. science and experience have both disproved the supposition that students should be scantily fed. o'shea claims that many brain workers are far short of their highest grade of efficiency because of starving their brains from poor diet. and not only must the food be of the right quality, but the body must be in good health. little good to eat the best of food unless it is being properly digested and assimilated. and little good if all the rest is as it should be, and the right amount of oxidation does not go on in the brain so as to remove the worn-out cells and make place for new ones. this warns us that pure air and a strong circulation are indispensable to the best working of our brains. no doubt many students who find their work too hard for them might locate the trouble in their stomachs or their lungs or the food they eat, rather than in their minds. . problems for introspection and observation . estimate the mental progress made by the child during the first five years and compare with that made during the second five years of its life. to do this make a list, so far as you are able, of the acquisitions of each period. what do you conclude as to the importance of play and freedom in early education? why not continue this method instead of sending the child to school? . which has the better opportunity for sensory training, the city child or the country child? for social training? for motor development through play? it is said by specialists that country children are not as good players as city children. why should this be the case? . observe carefully some group of children for evidences of lack of sensory training (interest in sensory objects, skill in observation, etc.). for lack of motor training (failure in motor control, awkwardness, lack of skill in play, etc.). do you find that general mental ability seems to be correlated with sensory and motor ability, or not? . what sensory training can be had from ( ) geography, ( ) agriculture, ( ) arithmetic, ( ) drawing? what lines of motor training ought the school to afford, ( ) in general, ( ) for the hand, ( ) in the grace and poise of carriage or bearing, ( ) in any other line? make observation tests of these points in one or more school rooms and report the results. . describe what you think must be the type of mental life of helen keller. (read "the world i live in," by helen keller.) . study groups of children for signs of deficiency in brain power from lack of nutrition. from fatigue. from worry. from lack of sleep. chapter v habit habit is our "best friend or worst enemy." we are "walking bundles of habits." habit is the "fly-wheel of society," keeping men patient and docile in the hard or disagreeable lot which some must fill. habit is a "cable which we cannot break." so say the wise men. let me know your habits of life and you have revealed your moral standards and conduct. let me discover your intellectual habits, and i understand your type of mind and methods of thought. in short, our lives are largely a daily round of activities dictated by our habits in this line or that. most of our movements and acts are habitual; we think as we have formed the habit of thinking; we decide as we are in the habit of deciding; we sleep, or eat, or speak as we have grown into the habit of doing these things; we may even say our prayers or perform other religious exercises as matters of habit. but while habit is the veriest tyrant, yet its good offices far exceed the bad even in the most fruitless or depraved life. . the nature of habit many people when they speak or think of habit give the term a very narrow or limited meaning. they have in mind only certain moral or personal tendencies usually spoken of as one's "habits." but in order to understand habit in any thorough and complete way we must, as suggested by the preceding paragraph, broaden our concept to include every possible line of physical and mental activity. habit may be defined as _the tendency of the nervous system to repeat any act that has been performed once or many times_. the physical basis of habit.--habit is to be explained from the standpoint of its physical basis. habits are formed because the tissues of our brains are capable of being modified by use, and of so retaining the effects of this modification that the same act is easier of performance each succeeding time. this results in the old act being repeated instead of a new one being selected, and hence the old act is perpetuated. even dead and inert matter obeys the same principles in this regard as does living matter. says m. leon dumont: "everyone knows how a garment, having been worn a certain time, clings to the shape of the body better than when it was new; there has been a change in the tissue, and this change is a new habit of cohesion; a lock works better after having been used some time; at the outset more force was required to overcome certain roughness in the mechanism. the overcoming of this resistance is a phenomenon of habituation. it costs less trouble to fold a paper when it has been folded already. this saving of trouble is due to the essential nature of habit, which brings it about that, to reproduce the effect, a less amount of the outward cause is required. the sounds of a violin improve by use in the hands of an able artist, because the fibers of the wood at last contract habits of vibration conformed to harmonic relations. this is what gives such inestimable value to instruments that have belonged to great masters. water, in flowing, hollows out for itself a channel, which grows broader and deeper; and, after having ceased to flow, it resumes when it flows again the path traced for itself before. just so, the impressions of outer objects fashion for themselves in the nervous system more and more appropriate paths, and these vital phenomena recur under similar excitements from without, when they have been interrupted for a certain time."[ ] all living tissue plastic.--what is true of inanimate matter is doubly true of living tissue. the tissues of the human body can be molded into almost any form you choose if taken in time. a child may be placed on his feet at too early an age, and the bones of his legs form the habit of remaining bent. the flathead indian binds a board on the skull of his child, and its head forms the habit of remaining flat on the top. wrong bodily postures produce curvature of the spine, and pernicious modes of dress deform the bones of the chest. the muscles may be trained into the habit of keeping the shoulders straight or letting them droop; those of the back, to keep the body well up on the hips, or to let it sag; those of locomotion, to give us a light, springy step, or to allow a shuffling carriage; those of speech, to give us a clear-cut, accurate articulation, or a careless, halting one; and those of the face, to give us a cheerful cast of countenance, or a glum and morose expression. habit a modification of brain tissue.--but the nervous tissue is the most sensitive and easily molded of all bodily tissues. in fact, it is probable that the real _habit_ of our characteristic walk, gesture, or speech resides in the brain, rather than in the muscles which it controls. so delicate is the organization of the brain structure and so unstable its molecules, that even the perfume of the flower, which assails the nose of a child, the song of a bird, which strikes his ear, or the fleeting dream, which lingers but for a second in his sleep, has so modified his brain that it will never again be as if these things had not been experienced. every sensory current which runs in from the outside world; every motor current which runs out to command a muscle; every thought that we think, has so modified the nerve structure through which it acts, that a tendency remains for a like act to be repeated. our brain and nervous system is daily being molded into fixed habits of acting by our thoughts and deeds, and thus becomes the automatic register of all we do. the old chinese fairy story hits upon a fundamental and vital truth. these celestials tell their children that each child is accompanied by day and by night, every moment of his life, by an invisible fairy, who is provided with a pencil and tablet. it is the duty of this fairy to put down every deed of the child, both good and evil, in an indelible record which will one day rise as a witness against him. so it is in very truth with our brains. the wrong act may have been performed in secret, no living being may ever know that we performed it, and a merciful providence may forgive it; but the inexorable monitor of our deeds was all the time beside us writing the record, and the history of that act is inscribed forever in the tissues of our brain. it may be repented of bitterly in sackcloth and ashes and be discontinued, but its effects can never be quite effaced; they will remain with us a handicap till our dying day, and in some critical moment in a great emergency we shall be in danger of defeat from that long past and forgotten act. we must form habits.--we _must_, then, form habits. it is not at all in our power to say whether we will form habits or not; for, once started, they go on forming themselves by day and night, steadily and relentlessly. habit is, therefore, one of the great factors to be reckoned with in our lives, and the question becomes not, shall we form habits? but _what habits we shall form._ and we have the determining of this question largely in our own power, for habits do not just happen, nor do they come to us ready made. we ourselves make them from day to day through the acts we perform, and in so far as we have control over our acts, in that far we can determine our habits. . the place of habit in the economy of our lives habit is one of nature's methods of economizing time and effort, while at the same time securing greater skill and efficiency. this is easily seen when it is remembered that habit tends towards _automatic_ action; that is, towards action governed by the lower nerve centers and taking care of itself, so to speak, without the interference of consciousness. everyone has observed how much easier in the performance and more skillful in its execution is the act, be it playing a piano, painting a picture, or driving a nail, when the movements involved have ceased to be consciously directed and become automatic. habit increases skill and efficiency.--practically all increase in skill, whether physical or mental, depends on our ability to form habits. habit holds fast to the skill already attained while practice or intelligence makes ready for the next step in advance. could we not form habits we should improve but little in our way of doing things, no matter how many times we did them over. we should now be obliged to go through the same bungling process of dressing ourselves as when we first learned it as children. our writing would proceed as awkwardly in the high school as the primary, our eating as adults would be as messy and wide of the mark as when we were infants, and we should miss in a thousand ways the motor skill that now seems so easy and natural. all highly skilled occupations, and those demanding great manual dexterity, likewise depend on our habit-forming power for the accurate and automatic movements required. so with mental skill. a great portion of the fundamentals of our education must be made automatic--must become matters of habit. we set out to learn the symbols of speech. we hear words and see them on the printed page; associated with these words are meanings, or ideas. habit binds the word and the idea together, so that to think of the one is to call up the other--and language is learned. we must learn numbers, so we practice the "combinations," and with × , or × we associate . habit secures this association in our minds, and lo! we soon know our "tables." and so on throughout the whole range of our learning. we learn certain symbols, or facts, or processes, and habit takes hold and renders these automatic so that we can use them freely, easily, and with skill, leaving our thought free for matters that cannot be made automatic. one of our greatest dangers is that we shall not make sufficiently automatic, enough of the necessary foundation material of education. failing in this, we shall at best be but blunderers intellectually, handicapped because we failed to make proper use of habit in our development. for, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, there is a limit to our mental energy and also to the number of objects to which we are able to attend. it is only when attention has been freed from the many things that can always be thought or done _in the same way_, that the mind can devote itself to the real problems that require judgment, imagination or reasoning. the writer whose spelling and punctuation do not take care of themselves will hardly make a success of writing. the mathematician whose number combinations, processes and formulæ are not automatic in his mind can never hope to make progress in mathematical thinking. the speaker who, while speaking, has to think of his gestures, his voice or his enunciation will never sway audiences by his logic or his eloquence. habit saves effort and fatigue.--we do most easily and with least fatigue that which we are accustomed to do. it is the new act or the strange task that tires us. the horse that is used to the farm wearies if put on the road, while the roadster tires easily when hitched to the plow. the experienced penman works all day at his desk without undue fatigue, while the man more accustomed to the pick and the shovel than to the pen, is exhausted by a half hour's writing at a letter. those who follow a sedentary and inactive occupation do not tire by much sitting, while children or others used to freedom and action may find it a wearisome task merely to remain still for an hour or two. not only would the skill and speed demanded by modern industry be impossible without the aid of habit, but without its help none could stand the fatigue and strain. the new workman placed at a high-speed machine is ready to fall from weariness at the end of his first day. but little by little he learns to omit the unnecessary movements, the necessary movements become easier and more automatic through habit, and he finds the work easier. we may conclude, then, that not only do consciously directed movements show less skill than the same movements made automatic by habit, but they also require more effort and produce greater fatigue. habit economizes moral effort.--to have to decide each time the question comes up whether we will attend to this lecture or sermon or lesson; whether we will persevere and go through this piece of disagreeable work which we have begun; whether we will go to the trouble of being courteous and kind to this or that poor or unlovely or dirty fellow-mortal; whether we will take this road because it looks easy, or that one because we know it to be the one we ought to take; whether we will be strictly fair and honest when we might just as well be the opposite; whether we will resist the temptation which dares us; whether we will do this duty, hard though it is, which confronts us--to have to decide each of these questions every time it presents itself is to put too large a proportion of our thought and energy on things which should take care of themselves. for all these things should early become so nearly habitual that they can be settled with the very minimum of expenditure of energy when they arise. the habit of attention.--it is a noble thing to be able to attend by sheer force of will when the interest lags, or some more attractive thing appears, but far better is it so to have formed the habit of attention that we naturally fall into that attitude when this is the desirable thing. to understand what i mean, you only have to look over a class or an audience and note the different ways which people have of finally settling down to listening. some with an attitude which says, "now here i am, ready to listen to you if you will interest me, otherwise not." others with a manner which says, "i did not really come here expecting to listen, and you will have a large task if you interest me; i never listen unless i am compelled to, and the responsibility rests on you." others plainly say, "i really mean to listen, but i have hard work to control my thoughts, and if i wander i shall not blame you altogether; it is just my way." and still others say, "when i am expected to listen, i always listen whether there is anything much to listen to or not. i have formed that habit, and so have no quarrel with myself about it. you can depend on me to be attentive, for i cannot afford to weaken my habit of attention whether you do well or not." every speaker will clasp these last listeners to his heart and feed them on the choicest thoughts of his soul; they are the ones to whom he speaks and to whom his address will appeal. habit enables us to meet the disagreeable.--to be able to persevere in the face of difficulties and hardships and carry through the disagreeable thing in spite of the protests of our natures against the sacrifice which it requires, is a creditable thing; but it is more creditable to have so formed the habit of perseverance that the disagreeable duty shall be done without a struggle, or protest, or question. horace mann testifies of himself that whatever success he was able to attain was made possible through the early habit which he formed of never stopping to inquire whether he _liked_ to do a thing which needed doing, but of doing everything equally well and without question, both the pleasant and the unpleasant. the youth who can fight out a moral battle and win against the allurements of some attractive temptation is worthy the highest honor and praise; but so long as he has to fight the same battle over and over again, he is on dangerous ground morally. for good morals must finally become habits, so ingrained in us that the right decision comes largely without effort and without struggle. otherwise the strain is too great, and defeat will occasionally come; and defeat means weakness and at last disaster, after the spirit has tired of the constant conflict. and so on in a hundred lines. good habits are more to be coveted than individual victories in special cases, much as these are to be desired. for good habits mean victories all along the line. habit the foundation of personality.--the biologist tells us that it is the _constant_ and not the _occasional_ in the environment that impresses itself on an organism. so also it is the _habitual_ in our lives that builds itself into our character and personality. in a very real sense we _are_ what we are in the habit of doing and thinking. without habit, personality could not exist; for we could never do a thing twice alike, and hence would be a new person each succeeding moment. the acts which give us our own peculiar individuality are our habitual acts--the little things that do themselves moment by moment without care or attention, and are the truest and best expression of our real selves. probably no one of us could be very sure which arm he puts into the sleeve, or which foot he puts into the shoe, first; and yet each of us certainly formed the habit long ago of doing these things in a certain way. we might not be able to describe just how we hold knife and fork and spoon, and yet each has his own characteristic and habitual way of handling them. we sit down and get up in some characteristic way, and the very poise of our heads and attitudes of our bodies are the result of habit. we get sleepy and wake up, become hungry and thirsty at certain hours, through force of habit. we form the habit of liking a certain chair, or nook, or corner, or path, or desk, and then seek this to the exclusion of all others. we habitually use a particular pitch of voice and type of enunciation in speaking, and this becomes one of our characteristic marks; or we form the habit of using barbarisms or solecisms of language in youth, and these cling to us and become an inseparable part of us later in life. on the mental side the case is no different. our thinking is as characteristic as our physical acts. we may form the habit of thinking things out logically, or of jumping to conclusions; of thinking critically and independently, or of taking things unquestioningly on the authority of others. we may form the habit of carefully reading good, sensible books, or of skimming sentimental and trashy ones; of choosing elevating, ennobling companions, or the opposite; of being a good conversationalist and doing our part in a social group, or of being a drag on the conversation, and needing to be "entertained." we may form the habit of observing the things about us and enjoying the beautiful in our environment, or of failing to observe or to enjoy. we may form the habit of obeying the voice of conscience or of weakly yielding to temptation without a struggle; of taking a reverent attitude of prayer in our devotions, or of merely saying our prayers. habit saves worry and rebellion.--habit has been called the "balance wheel" of society. this is because men readily become habituated to the hard, the disagreeable, or the inevitable, and cease to battle against it. a lot that at first seems unendurable after a time causes less revolt. a sorrow that seems too poignant to be borne in the course of time loses some of its sharpness. oppression or injustice that arouses the fiercest resentment and hate may finally come to be accepted with resignation. habit helps us learn that "what cannot be cured must be endured." . the tyranny of habit even good habits need to be modified.--but even in good habits there is danger. habit is the opposite of attention. habit relieves attention of unnecessary strain. every habitual act was at one time, either in the history of the race or of the individual, a voluntary act; that is, it was performed under active attention. as the habit grew, attention was gradually rendered unnecessary, until finally it dropped entirely out. and herein lies the danger. habit once formed has no way of being modified unless in some way attention is called to it, for a habit left to itself becomes more and more firmly fixed. the rut grows deeper. in very few, if any, of our actions can we afford to have this the case. our habits need to be progressive, they need to grow, to be modified, to be improved. otherwise they will become an incrusting shell, fixed and unyielding, which will limit our growth. it is necessary, then, to keep our habitual acts under some surveillance of attention, to pass them in review for inspection every now and then, that we may discover possible modifications which will make them more serviceable. we need to be inventive, constantly to find out better ways of doing things. habit takes care of our standing, walking, sitting; but how many of us could not improve his poise and carriage if he would? our speech has become largely automatic, but no doubt all of us might remove faults of enunciation, pronunciation or stress from our speaking. so also we might better our habits of study and thinking, our methods of memorizing, or our manner of attending. the tendency of "ruts."--but this will require something of heroism. for to follow the well-beaten path of custom is easy and pleasant, while to break out of the rut of habit and start a new line of action is difficult and disturbing. most people prefer to keep doing things as they always have done them, to continue reading and thinking and believing as they have long been in the habit of doing, not so much because they feel that their way is best, but because it is easier than to change. hence the great mass of us settle down on the plane of mediocrity, and become "old fogy." we learn to do things passably well, cease to think about improving our ways of doing them, and so fall into a rut. only the few go on. they make use of habit as the rest do, but they also continue to attend at critical points of action, and so make habit an _ally_ in place of accepting it as a _tyrant_. . habit-forming a part of education it follows from the importance of habit in our lives that no small part of education should be concerned with the development of serviceable habits. says james, "could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. we are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar." any youth who is forming a large number of useful habits is receiving no mean education, no matter if his knowledge of books may be limited; on the other hand, no one who is forming a large number of bad habits is being well educated, no matter how brilliant his knowledge may be. youth the time for habit-forming.--childhood and youth is the great time for habit-forming. then the brain is plastic and easily molded, and it retains its impressions more indelibly; later it is hard to modify, and the impressions made are less permanent. it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks; nor would he remember them if you could teach them to him, nor be able to perform them well even if he could remember them. the young child will, within the first few weeks of its life, form habits of sleeping and feeding. it may in a few days be led into the habit of sleeping in the dark, or requiring a light; of going to sleep lying quietly, or of insisting upon being rocked; of getting hungry by the clock, or of wanting its food at all times when it finds nothing else to do, and so on. it is wholly outside the power of the mother or the nurse to determine whether the child shall form habits, but largely within their power to say what habits shall be formed, since they control his acts. as the child grows older, the range of his habits increases; and by the time he has reached his middle teens, the greater number of his personal habits are formed. it is very doubtful whether a boy who has not formed habits of punctuality before the age of fifteen will ever be entirely trustworthy in matters requiring precision in this line. the girl who has not, before this age, formed habits of neatness and order will hardly make a tidy housekeeper later in her life. those who in youth have no opportunity to habituate themselves to the usages of society may study books on etiquette and employ private instructors in the art of polite behavior all they please later in life, but they will never cease to be awkward and ill at ease. none are at a greater disadvantage than the suddenly-grown-rich who attempt late in life to surround themselves with articles of art and luxury, though their habits were all formed amid barrenness and want during their earlier years. the habit of achievement.--what youth does not dream of being great, or noble, or a celebrated scholar! and how few there are who finally achieve their ideals! where does the cause of failure lie? surely not in the lack of high ideals. multitudes of young people have "excelsior!" as their motto, and yet never get started up the mountain slope, let alone toiling on to its top. they have put in hours dreaming of the glory farther up, _and have never begun to climb_. the difficulty comes in not realizing that the only way to become what we wish or dream that we may become is _to form the habit of being that thing_. to form the habit of achievement, of effort, of self-sacrifice, if need be. to form the habit of deeds along with dreams; to form the habit of _doing_. who of us has not at this moment lying in wait for his convenience in the dim future a number of things which he means to do just as soon as this term of school is finished, or this job of work is completed, or when he is not so busy as now? and how seldom does he ever get at these things at all! darwin tells that in his youth he loved poetry, art, and music, but was so busy with his scientific work that he could ill spare the time to indulge these tastes. so he promised himself that he would devote his time to scientific work and make his mark in this. then he would have time for the things that he loved, and would cultivate his taste for the fine arts. he made his mark in the field of science, and then turned again to poetry, to music, to art. but alas! they were all dead and dry bones to him, without life or interest. he had passed the time when he could ever form the taste for them. he had formed his habits in another direction, and now it was forever too late to form new habits. his own conclusion is, that if he had his life to live over again, he would each week listen to some musical concert and visit some art gallery, and that each day he would read some poetry, and thereby keep alive and active the love for them. so every school and home should be a species of habit-factory--a place where children develop habits of neatness, punctuality, obedience, politeness, dependability and the other graces of character. . rules for habit-forming james's three maxims for habit-forming.--on the forming of new habits and the leaving off of old ones, i know of no better statement than that of james, based on bain's chapter on "moral habits." i quote this statement at some length: "in the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to _launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible_. accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall reënforce right motives; put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, develop your resolution with every aid you know. this will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all. "the second maxim is: _never suffer an exception to occur until the new habit is securely rooted in your life._ each lapse is like letting fall a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. _continuity_ of training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly right.... the need of securing success nerves one to future vigor. "a third maxim may be added to the preceding pair: _seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain._ it is not in the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing _motor effects_, that resolves and aspirations communicate the new 'set' to the brain."[ ] the preponderance of good habits over bad.--and finally, let no one be disturbed or afraid because in a little time you become a "walking bundle of habits." for in so far as your good actions predominate over your bad ones, that much will your good habits outweigh your bad habits. silently, moment by moment, efficiency is growing out of all worthy acts well done. every bit of heroic self-sacrifice, every battle fought and won, every good deed performed, is being irradicably credited to you in your nervous system, and will finally add its mite toward achieving the success of your ambitions. . problems in observation and introspection . select some act which you have recently begun to perform and watch it grow more and more habitual. notice carefully for a week and see whether you do not discover some habits which you did not know you had. make a catalog of your bad habits; of the most important of your good ones. . set out to form some new habits which you desire to possess; also to break some undesirable habit, watching carefully what takes place in both cases, and how long it requires. . try the following experiment and relate the results to the matter of automatic control brought about by habit: draw a star on a sheet of cardboard. place this on a table before you, with a hand-mirror so arranged that you can see the star in the mirror. now trace the outline of the star with a pencil, looking steadily in the mirror to guide your hand. do not lift the pencil from the paper from the time you start until you finish. have others try this experiment. . study some group of pupils for their habits ( ) of attention, ( ) of speech, ( ) of standing, sitting, and walking, ( ) of study. report on your observations and suggest methods of curing bad habits observed. . make a list of "mannerisms" you have observed, and suggest how they may be cured. . make a list of from ten to twenty habits which you think the school and its work should especially cultivate. what ones of these are the schools you know least successful in cultivating? where does the trouble lie? chapter vi sensation we can best understand the problems of sensation and perception if we first think of the existence of two great worlds--the world of physical nature without and the world of mind within. on the one hand is our material environment, the things we see and hear and touch and taste and handle; and on the other hand our consciousness, the means by which we come to know this outer world and adjust ourselves to it. these two worlds seem in a sense to belong to and require each other. for what would be the meaning or use of the physical world with no mind to know or use it; and what would be the use of a mind with nothing to be known or thought about? . how we come to know the external world there is a marvel about our coming to know the external world which we shall never be able fully to understand. we have come by this knowledge so gradually and unconsciously that it now appears to us as commonplace, and we take for granted many things that it would puzzle us to explain. knowledge through the senses.--for example, we say, "of course i see yonder green tree: it is about ten rods distant." but why "of course"? why should objects at a distance from us and with no evident connection between us and them be known to us at all merely by turning our eyes in their direction when there is light? why not rather say with the blind son of professor puiseaux of paris, who, when asked if he would like to be restored to sight, answered: "if it were not for curiosity i would rather have long arms. it seems to me that my hands would teach me better what is passing in the moon than your eyes or telescopes." we listen and then say, "yes, that is a certain bell ringing in the neighboring village," as if this were the most simple thing in the world. but why should one piece of metal striking against another a mile or two away make us aware that there is a bell there at all, let alone that it is a certain bell whose tone we recognize? or we pass our fingers over a piece of cloth and decide, "that is silk." but why, merely by placing our skin in contact with a bit of material, should we be able to know its quality, much less that it is cloth and that its threads were originally spun by an insect? or we take a sip of liquid and say, "this milk is sour." but why should we be able by taking the liquid into the mouth and bringing it into contact with the mucous membrane to tell that it is milk, and that it possesses the quality which we call _sour_? or, once more, we get a whiff of air through the open window in the springtime and say, "there is a lilac bush in bloom on the lawn." yet why, from inhaling air containing particles of lilac, should we be able to know that there is anything outside, much less that it is a flower and of a particular variety which we call lilac? or, finally, we hold a heated flatiron up near the cheek and say, "this is too hot! it will burn the cloth." but why by holding this object a foot away from the face do we know that it is there, let alone knowing its temperature? the unity of sensory experience.--further, our senses come through experience to have the power of fusing, or combining their knowledge, so to speak, by which each expresses its knowledge in terms of the others. thus we take a glance out of the window and say that the day looks cold, although we well know that we cannot see _cold_. or we say that the melon sounds green, or the bell sounds cracked, although a _crack_ or _greenness_ cannot be heard. or we say that the box feels empty, although _emptiness_ cannot be felt. we have come to associate cold, originally experienced with days which look like the one we now see, with this particular appearance, and so we say we see the cold; sounds like the one coming from the bell we have come to associate with cracked bells, and that coming from the melon with green melons, until we say unhesitatingly that the bell sounds cracked and the melon sounds green. and so with the various senses. each gleans from the world its own particular bit of knowledge, but all are finally in a partnership and what is each one's knowledge belongs to every other one in so far as the other can use it. the sensory processes to be explained.--the explanation of the ultimate nature of knowledge, and how we reach it through contact with our material environment, we will leave to the philosophers. and battles enough they have over the question, and still others they will have before the matter is settled. the easier and more important problem for us is to describe the _processes_ by which the mind comes to know its environment, and to see how it uses this knowledge in thinking. this much we shall be able to do, for it is often possible to describe a process and discover its laws even when we cannot fully explain its nature and origin. we know the process of digestion and assimilation, and the laws which govern them, although we do not understand the ultimate nature and origin of _life_ which makes these possible. the qualities of objects exist in the mind.--yet even in the relatively simple description which we have proposed many puzzles confront us, and one of them appears at the very outset. this is that the qualities which we usually ascribe to objects really exist in our own minds and not in the objects at all. take, for instance, the common qualities of light and color. the physicist tells us that what we see as light is occasioned by an incredibly rapid beating of ether waves on the retina of the eye. all space is filled with this ether; and when it is light--that is, when some object like the sun or other light-giving body is present--the ether is set in motion by the vibrating molecules of the body which is the source of light, its waves strike the retina, a current is produced and carried to the brain, and we see light. this means, then, that space, the medium in which we see objects, is not filled with light (the sensation), but with very rapid waves of ether, and that the light which we see really occurs in our own minds as the mental response to the physical stimulus of ether waves. likewise with color. color is produced by ether waves of different lengths and degrees of rapidity. thus ether waves at the rate of billions a second give us the sensation of red; of billions a second, orange; of billions a second, yellow; of billions a second, green; of billions a second, blue; of billions a second, indigo; of billions a second, violet. what exists outside of us, then, is these ether waves of different rates, and not the colors (as sensations) themselves. the beautiful yellow and crimson of a sunset, the variegated colors of a landscape, the delicate pink in the cheek of a child, the blush of a rose, the shimmering green of the lake--these reside not in the objects themselves, but in the consciousness of the one who sees them. the objects possess but the quality of reflecting back to the eye ether waves of the particular rate corresponding to the color which we ascribe to them. thus "red" objects, and no others, reflect back ether waves of a rate of billions a second: "white" objects reflect all rates; "black" objects reflect none. the case is no different with regard to sound. when we speak of a sound coming from a bell, what we really mean is that the vibrations of the bell have set up waves in the air between it and our ear, which have produced corresponding vibrations in the ear; that a nerve current was thereby produced; and that a sound was heard. but the sound (i.e., sensation) is a mental thing, and exists only in our own consciousness. what passed between the sounding object and ourselves was waves in the intervening air, ready to be translated through the machinery of nerves and brain into the beautiful tones and melodies and harmonies of the mind. and so with all other sensations. the three sets of factors.--what exists outside of us therefore is a _stimulus_, some form of physical energy, of a kind suitable to excite to activity a certain end-organ of taste, or touch, or smell, or sight, or hearing; what exists within us is the _nervous machinery_ capable of converting this stimulus into a nerve current which shall produce an activity in the cortex of the brain; what results is the _mental object_ which we call a _sensation_ of taste, smell, touch, sight, or hearing. . the nature of sensation sensation gives us our world of qualities.--in actual experience sensations are never known apart from the objects to which they belong. this is to say that when we see _yellow_ or _red_ it is always in connection with some surface, or object; when we taste _sour_, this quality belongs to some substance, and so on with all the senses. yet by sensation we mean only _the simple qualities of objects known in consciousness as the result of appropriate stimuli applied to end-organs_. we shall later see how by perception these qualities fuse or combine to form objects, but in the present chapter we shall be concerned with the qualities only. sensations are, then, the simplest and most elementary knowledge we may get from the physical world,--the red, the blue, the bitter, the cold, the fragrant, and whatever other qualities may belong to the external world. we shall not for the present be concerned with the objects or sources from which the qualities may come. to quote james on the meaning of sensation: "all we can say on this point is that _what we mean by sensations are first things in the way of consciousness_. they are the _immediate_ results upon consciousness of nerve currents as they enter the brain, and before they have awakened any suggestions or associations with past experience. but it is obvious that _such immediate sensations can be realized only in the earliest days of life_." the attributes of sensation.--sensations differ from each other in at least four respects; namely, _quality_, _intensity_, _extensity_, and _duration_. it is a difference in _quality_ that makes us say, "this paper is red, and that, blue; this liquid is sweet, and that, sour." differences in quality are therefore fundamental differences in _kind_. besides the quality-differences that exist within the same general field, as of taste or vision, it is evident that there is a still more fundamental difference existing between the various fields. one can, for example, compare red with blue or sweet with sour, and tell which quality he prefers. but let him try to compare red with sweet, or blue with sour, and the quality-difference is so profound that there seems to be no basis for comparison. differences in _intensity_ of sensation are familiar to every person who prefers two lumps of sugar rather than one lump in his coffee; the sweet is of the same quality in either case, but differs in intensity. in every field of sensation, the intensity may proceed from the smallest amount to the greatest amount discernible. in general, the intensity of the sensation depends on the intensity of the stimulus, though the condition of the sense-organ as regards fatigue or adaptation to the stimulus has its effect. it is obvious that a stimulus may be too weak to produce any sensation; as, for example, a few grains of sugar in a cup of coffee or a few drops of lemon in a quart of water could not be detected. it is also true that the intensity of the stimulus may be so great that an increase in intensity produces no effect on the sensation; as, for example, the addition of sugar to a solution of saccharine would not noticeably increase its sweetness. the lowest and highest intensity points of sensation are called the lower and upper _limen_, or threshold, respectively. by _extensity_ is meant the space-differences of sensations. the touch of the point of a toothpick on the skin has a different space quality from the touch of the flat end of a pencil. low tones seem to have more volume than high tones. some pains feel sharp and others dull and diffuse. the warmth felt from spreading the palms of the hands out to the fire has a "bigness" not felt from heating one solitary finger. the extensity of a sensation depends on the number of nerve endings stimulated. the _duration_ of a sensation refers to the time it lasts. this must not be confused with the duration of the stimulus, which may be either longer or shorter than the duration of the sensation. every sensation must exist for some space of time, long or short, or it would have no part in consciousness. . sensory qualities and their end-organs all are familiar with the "five senses" of our elementary physiologies, sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. a more complete study of sensation reveals nearly three times this number, however. this is to say that the body is equipped with more than a dozen different kinds of end-organs, each prepared to receive its own particular type of stimulus. it must also be understood that some of the end-organs yield more than one sense. the eye, for example, gives not only visual but muscular sensations; the ear not only auditory, but tactual; the tongue not only gustatory, but tactual and cold and warmth sensations. sight.--vision is a _distance_ sense; we can see afar off. the stimulus is _chemical_ in its action; this means that the ether waves, on striking the retina, cause a chemical change which sets up the nerve current responsible for the sensation. the eye, whose general structure is sufficiently described in all standard physiologies, consists of a visual apparatus designed to bring the images of objects to a clear focus on the retina at the _fovea_, or area of clearest vision, near the point of entrance of the optic nerve. the sensation of sight coming from this retinal image unaided by other sensations gives us but two qualities, _light and color_. the eye can distinguish many different grades of light from purest white on through the various grays to densest black. the range is greater still in color. we speak of the seven colors of the spectrum, violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. but this is not a very serviceable classification, since the average eye can distinguish about , color effects. it is also somewhat bewildering to find that all these colors seem to be produced from the four fundamental hues, red, green, yellow, and blue, plus the various tints. these four, combined in varying proportions and with different degrees of light (i.e., different shades of gray), yield all the color effects known to the human eye. herschel estimates that the workers on the mosaics at rome must have distinguished , different color tones. the _hue_ of a color refers to its fundamental quality, as red or yellow; the _chroma_, to its saturation, or the strength of the color; and the _tint,_ to the amount of brightness (i.e., white) it contains. hearing.--hearing is also a distance sense. the action of its stimulus is mechanical, which is to say that the vibrations produced in the air by the sounding body are finally transmitted by the mechanism of the middle ear to the inner ear. here the impulse is conveyed through the liquid of the internal ear to the nerve endings as so many tiny blows, which produce the nerve current carried to the brain by the auditory nerve. the sensation of hearing, like that of sight, gives us two qualities: namely, _tones_ with their accompanying pitch and timbre, and _noises_. tones, or musical sounds, are produced by isochronous or equal-timed vibrations; thus _c_ of the first octave is produced by vibrations a second, and if this tone is prolonged the vibration rate will continue uniformly the same. noises, on the other hand, are produced by vibrations which have no uniformity of vibration rate. the ear's sensibility to pitch extends over about seven octaves. the seven-octave piano goes down to - / vibrations and reaches up to , vibrations. notes of nearly , vibrations can be heard by an average ear, however, though these are too painfully shrill to be musical. taking into account this upper limit, the range of the ear is about eleven octaves. the ear, having given us _loudness_ of tones, which depends on the amplitude of the vibrations, _pitch_, which depends on the rapidity of the vibrations, and _timbre_, or _quality_, which depends on the complexity of the vibrations, has no further qualities of sound to reveal. taste.--the sense of taste is located chiefly in the tongue, over the surface of which are scattered many minute _taste-bulbs_. these can be seen as small red specks, most plentifully distributed along the edges and at the tip of the tongue. the substance tasted must be in _solution_, and come in contact with the nerve endings. the action of the stimulus is _chemical_. the sense of taste recognizes the four qualities of _sour_, _sweet_, _salt_, and _bitter_. many of the qualities which we improperly call tastes are in reality a complex of taste, smell, touch, and temperature. smell contributes so largely to the sense of taste that many articles of food become "tasteless" when we have a catarrh, and many nauseating doses of medicine can be taken without discomfort if the nose is held. probably none of us, if we are careful to exclude all odors by plugging the nostrils with cotton, can by taste distinguish between scraped apple, potato, turnip, or beet, or can tell hot milk from tea or coffee of the same temperature. smell.--in the upper part of the nasal cavity lies a small brownish patch of mucous membrane. it is here that the olfactory nerve endings are located. the substance smelled must be volatile, that is, must exist in gaseous form, and come in direct contact with the nerve endings. chemical action results in a nerve current. the sensations of smell have not been classified so well as those of taste, and we have no distinct names for them. neither do we know how many olfactory qualities the sense of smell is capable of revealing. the only definite classification of smell qualities is that based on their pleasantness or the opposite. we also borrow a few terms and speak of _sweet_ or _fragrant_ odors and _fresh_ or _close_ smells. there is some evidence when we observe animals, or even primitive men, that the human race has been evolving greater sensibility to certain odors, while at the same time there has been a loss of keenness of what we call scent. various sensations from the skin.--the skin, besides being a protective and excretory organ, affords a lodging-place for the end-organs giving us our sense of pressure, pain, cold, warmth, tickle, and itch. _pressure_ seems to have for its end-organ the _hair-bulbs_ of the skin; on hairless regions small bulbs called the _corpuscles of meissner_ serve this purpose. _pain_ is thought to be mediated by free nerve endings. _cold_ depends on end-organs called the _bulbs of krause_; and _warmth_ on the _ruffinian corpuscles_. cutaneous or skin sensation may arise from either _mechanical_ stimulation, such as pressure, a blow, or tickling, from _thermal_ stimulation from hot or cold objects, from _electrical_ stimulation, or from the action of certain _chemicals_, such as acids and the like. stimulated mechanically, the skin gives us but two sensation qualities, _pressure_ and _pain_. many of the qualities which we commonly ascribe to the skin sensations are really a complex of cutaneous and muscular sensations. _contact_ is light pressure. _hardness_ and _softness_ depend on the intensity of the pressure. _roughness_ and _smoothness_ arise from interrupted and continuous pressure, respectively, and require movement over the rough or smooth surface. _touch_ depends on pressure accompanied by the muscular sensations involved in the movements connected with the act. pain is clearly a different sensation from pressure; but any of the cutaneous or muscular sensations may, by excessive stimulation, be made to pass over into pain. all parts of the skin are sensitive to pressure and pain; but certain parts, like the finger tips, and the tip of the tongue, are more highly sensitive than others. the skin varies also in its sensitivity to _heat_ and _cold_. if we take a hot or a very cold pencil point and pass it rather lightly and slowly over the skin, it is easy to discover certain spots from which a sensation of warmth or of cold flashes out. in this way it is possible to locate the end-organs of temperature very accurately. [illustration: fig. .--diagram showing distribution of hot and cold spots on the back of the hand. c, cold spots; h, hot spots.] the kinÆsthetic senses.--the muscles, tendons, and joints also give rise to perfectly definite sensations, but they have not been named as have the sensations from most of the other end-organs. _weight_ is the most clearly marked of these sensations. it is through the sensations connected with movements of muscles, tendons, and joints that we come to judge _form_, _size_, and _distance_. the organic senses.--finally, to the sensations mentioned so far must be added those which come from the internal organs of the body. from the alimentary canal we get the sensations of _hunger_, _thirst_, and _nausea_; from the heart, lungs, and organs of sex come numerous well-defined but unnamed sensations which play an important part in making up the feeling-tone of our daily lives. thus we see that the senses may be looked upon as the sentries of the body, standing at the outposts where nature and ourselves meet. they discover the qualities of the various objects with which we come in contact and hand them over to the mind in the form of sensations. and these sensations are the raw material out of which we begin to construct our material environment. only as we are equipped with good organs of sense, especially good eyes and ears, therefore, are we able to enter fully into the wonderful world about us and receive the stimuli necessary to our thought and action. . problems in observation and introspection . observe a schoolroom of children at work with the aim of discovering any that show defects of vision or hearing. what are the symptoms? what is the effect of inability to hear or see well upon interest and attention? . talk with your teacher about testing the eyes and ears of the children of some school. the simpler tests for vision and hearing are easily applied, and the expense for material almost nothing. what tests should be used? does your school have the test card for vision? . use a rotator or color tops for mixing discs of white and black to produce different shades of gray. fix in mind the gray made of half white and half black; three-fourths white and one-fourth black; one-fourth-white and three-fourths black. . in the same way mix the two complementaries yellow and blue to produce a gray; mix red and green in the same way. try various combinations of the four fundamental colors, and discover how different colors are produced. seek for these same colors in nature--sky, leaves, flowers, etc. . take a large wire nail and push it through a cork so that it can be handled without touching the metal with the fingers. now cool it in ice or very cold water, then dry it and move the point slowly across the back of the hand. do you feel occasional thrills of cold as the point passes over a bulb of krause? heat the nail with a match flame or over a lamp, and perform the same experiment. do you feel the thrills of heat from the corpuscles of ruffini? . try stopping the nostrils with cotton and having someone give you scraped apple, potato, onion, etc., and see whether, by taste alone, you can distinguish the difference. why cannot sulphur be tasted? chapter vii perception no young child at first sees objects as we see them, or hears sounds as we hear them. this power, the power of perception, is a gradual development. it grows day by day out of the learner's experience in his world of sights and sounds, and whatever other fields his senses respond to. . the function of perception need of knowing the material world.--it is the business of perception to give us knowledge of our world of material _objects_ and their relations in _space_ and _time_. the material world which we enter through the gateways of the senses is more marvelous by far than any fairy world created by the fancy of story-tellers; for it contains the elements of all they have conceived and much more besides. it is more marvelous than any structure planned and executed by the mind of man; for all the wonders and beauties of the coliseum or of st. peter's existed in nature before they were discovered by the architect and thrown together in those magnificent structures. the material advancement of civilization has been but the discovery of the objects, forces, and laws of nature, and their use in inventions serviceable to men. and these forces and laws of nature were discovered only as they were made manifest through objects in the material world. the problem lying before each individual who would enter fully into this rich world of environment, then, is to discover at first hand just as large a part of the material world about him as possible. in the most humble environment of the most uneventful life is to be found the material for discoveries and inventions yet undreamed of. lying in the shade of an apple tree under the open sky, newton read from a falling apple the fundamental principles of the law of gravitation which has revolutionized science; sitting at a humble tea table watt watched the gurgling of the steam escaping from the kettle, and evolved the steam engine therefrom; with his simple kite, franklin drew down the lightning from the clouds, and started the science of electricity; through studying a ball, the ancient scholars conceived the earth to be a sphere, and columbus discovered america. the problem which confronts the child.--well it is that the child, starting his life's journey, cannot see the magnitude of the task before him. cast amid a world of objects of whose very existence he is ignorant, and whose meaning and uses have to be learned by slow and often painful experience, he proceeds step by step through the senses in his discovery of the objects about him. yet, considered again, we ourselves are after all but a step in advance of the child. though we are somewhat more familiar with the use of our senses than he, and know a few more objects about us, yet the knowledge of the wisest of us is at best pitifully meager compared with the richness of nature. so impossible is it for us to know all our material environment, that men have taken to becoming specialists. one man will spend his life in the study of a certain variety of plants, while there are hundreds of thousands of varieties all about him; another will study a particular kind of animal life, perhaps too minute to be seen with the naked eye, while the world is teeming with animal forms which he has not time in his short day of life to stop to examine; another will study the land forms and read the earth's history from the rocks and geological strata, but here again nature's volume is so large that he has time to read but a small fraction of the whole. another studies the human body and learns to read from its expressions the signs of health and sickness, and to prescribe remedies for its ills; but in this field also he has found it necessary to divide the work, and so we have specialists for almost every organ of the body. . the nature of perception how a percept is formed.--how, then, do we proceed to the discovery of this world of objects? let us watch the child and learn the secret from him. give the babe a ball, and he applies every sense to it to discover its qualities. he stares at it, he takes it in his hands and turns it over and around, he lifts it, he strokes it, he punches it and jabs it, he puts it to his mouth and bites it, he drops it, he throws it and creeps after it. he leaves no stone unturned to find out what that thing really is. by means of the _qualities_ which come to him through the avenues of sense, he constructs the _object_. and not only does he come to know the ball as a material object, but he comes to know also its uses. he is forming his own best definition of a ball in terms of the sensations which he gets from it and the uses to which he puts it, and all this even before he can name it or is able to recognize its name when he hears it. how much better his method than the one he will have to follow a little later when he goes to school and learns that "a ball is a spherical body of any substance or size, used to play with, as by throwing, kicking, or knocking, etc.!" the percept involves all relations of the object.--nor is the case in the least different with ourselves. when we wish to learn about a new object or discover new facts about an old one, we do precisely as the child does if we are wise. we apply to it every sense to which it will afford a stimulus, and finally arrive at the object through its various qualities. and just in so far as we have failed to use in connection with it every sense to which it can minister, just in that degree will we have an incomplete perception of it. indeed, just so far as we have failed finally to perceive it in terms of its functions or uses, in that far also have we failed to know it completely. tomatoes were for many years grown as ornamental garden plants before it was discovered that the tomatoes could minister to the taste as well as to the sight. the clothing of civilized man gives the same sensation of texture and color to the savage that it does to its owner, but he is so far from perceiving it in the same way that he packs it away and continues to go naked. the orientals, who disdain the use of chairs and prefer to sit cross-legged on the floor, can never perceive a chair just as we do who use chairs daily, and to whom chairs are so saturated with social suggestions and associations. the content of the percept.--the percept, then, always contains a basis of _sensation_. the eye, the ear, the skin or some other sense organ must turn in its supply of sensory material or there can be no percept. but the percept contains more than just sensations. consider, for example, your percept of an automobile flashing past your windows. you really _see_ but very little of it, yet you _perceive_ it as a very familiar vehicle. all that your sense organs furnish is a more or less blurred patch of black of certain size and contour, one or more objects of somewhat different color whom you know to be passengers, and various sounds of a whizzing, chugging or roaring nature. your former experience with automobiles enables you to associate with these meager sensory details the upholstered seats, the whirling wheels, the swaying movement and whatever else belongs to the full meaning of a motor car. the percept that contained only sensory material, and lacked all memory elements, ideas and meanings, would be no percept at all. and this is the reason why a young child cannot see or hear like ourselves. it lacks the associative material to give significance and meaning to the sensory elements supplied by the end-organs. the dependence of the percept on material from past experience is also illustrated in the common statement that what one gets from an art exhibit or a concert depends on what he brings to it. he who brings no knowledge, no memory, no images from other pictures or music will secure but relatively barren percepts, consisting of little besides the mere sensory elements. truly, "to him that hath shall be given" in the realm of perception. the accuracy of percepts depends on experience.--we must perceive objects through our motor response to them as well as in terms of sensations. the boy who has his knowledge of a tennis racket from looking at one in a store window, or indeed from handling one and looking it over in his room, can never know a tennis racket as does the boy who plays with it on the court. objects get their significance not alone from their qualities, but even more from their use as related to our own activities. like the child, we must get our knowledge of objects, if we are to get it well, from the objects themselves at first hand, and not second hand through descriptions of them by others. the fact that there is so much of the material world about us that we can never hope to learn it all, has made it necessary to put down in books many of the things which have been discovered concerning nature. this necessity has, i fear, led many away from nature itself to books--away from the living reality of things to the dead embalming cases of words, in whose empty forms we see so little of the significance which resides in the things themselves. we are in danger of being satisfied with the _forms_ of knowledge without its _substance_--with definitions contained in words instead of in qualities and uses. not definitions, but first-hand contact.--in like manner we come to know distance, form and size. if we have never become acquainted with a mile by actually walking a mile, running a mile, riding a bicycle a mile, driving a horse a mile, or traveling a mile on a train, we might listen for a long time to someone tell how far a mile is, or state the distance from chicago to denver, without knowing much about it in any way except word definitions. in order to understand a mile, we must come to know it in as many ways as possible through sense activities of our own. although many children have learned that it is , miles around the earth, probably no one who has not encircled the globe has any reasonably accurate notion just how far this is. for words cannot take the place of perceptions in giving us knowledge. in the case of shorter distances, the same rule holds. the eye must be assisted by experience of the muscles and tendons and joints in actually covering distance, and learn to associate these sensations with those of the eye before the eye alone can be able to say, "that tree is ten rods distant." form and size are to be learned in the same way. the hands must actually touch and handle the object, experiencing its hardness or smoothness, the way this curve and that angle feels, the amount of muscular energy it takes to pass the hand over this surface and along that line, the eye taking note all the while, before the eye can tell at a glance that yonder object is a sphere and that this surface is two feet on the edge. . the perception of space many have been the philosophical controversies over the nature of space and our perception of it. the psychologists have even quarreled concerning whether we possess an _innate_ sense of space, or whether it is a product of experience and training. fortunately, for our present purpose we shall not need to concern ourselves with either of these controversies. for our discussion we may accept space for what common sense understands it to be. as to our sense of space, whatever of this we may possess at birth, it certainly has to be developed by use and experience to become of practical value. in the perception of space we must come to perceive _distance_, _direction_, _size_, and _form_. as a matter of fact, however, size is but so much distance, and form is but so much distance in this, that, or the other direction. the perceiving of distance.--unquestionably the eye comes to be our chief dependence in determining distance. yet the muscle and joint senses give us our earliest knowledge of distance. the babe reaches for the moon simply because the eye does not tell it that the moon is out of reach. only as the child reaches for its playthings, creeps or walks after them, and in a thousand ways uses its muscles and joints in measuring distance, does the perception of distance become dependable. at the same time the eye is slowly developing its power of judging distance. but not for several years does visual perception of distance become in any degree accurate. the eye's perception of distance depends in part on the sensations arising from the muscles controlling the eye, probably in part from the adjustment of the lens, and in part from the retinal image. if one tries to look at the tip of his nose he easily feels the muscle strain caused by the required angle of adjustment. we come unconsciously to associate distance with the muscle sensations arising from the different angles of vision. the part played by the retinal image in judging distance is easily understood in looking at two trees, one thirty feet and the other three hundred feet distant. we note that the nearer tree shows the _detail_ of the bark and leaves, while the more distant one lacks this detail. the nearer tree also reflects more _light_ and _color_ than the one farther away. these minute differences, registered as they are on the retinal image, come to stand for so much of distance. the ear also learns to perceive distance through differences in the quality and the intensity of sound. auditory perception of distance is, however, never very accurate. the perceiving of direction.--the motor senses probably give us our first perception of direction, as they do of distance. the child has to reach this way or that way for his rattle; turn the eyes or head so far in order to see an interesting object; twist the body, crawl or walk to one side or the other to secure his bottle. in these experiences he is gaining his first knowledge of direction. along with these muscle-joint experiences, the eye is also being trained. the position of the image on the retina comes to stand for direction, and the eye finally develops so remarkable a power of perceiving direction that a picture hung a half inch out of plumb is a source of annoyance. the ear develops some skill in the perception of direction, but is less dependable than the eye. . the perception of time the philosophers and psychologists agree little better about our sense of time than they do about our sense of space. of this much, however, we may be certain, our perception of time is subject to development and training. nature of the time sense.--how we perceive time is not so well understood as our perception of space. it is evident, however, that our idea of time is simpler than our idea of space--it has less of content, less that we can describe. probably the most fundamental part of our idea of time is _progression_, or change, without which it is difficult to think of time at all. the question then becomes, how do we perceive change, or succession? if one looks in upon his thought stream he finds that the movement of consciousness is not uniformly continuous, but that his thought moves in pulses, or short rushes, so to speak. when we are seeking for some fact or conclusion, there is a moment of expectancy, or poising, and then the leap forward to the desired point, or conclusion, from which an immediate start is taken for the next objective point of our thinking. it is probable that our sense of the few seconds of passing time that we call the _immediate present_ consists of the recognition of the succession of these pulsations of consciousness, together with certain organic rhythms, such as heart beat and breathing. no perception of empty time.--our perception does not therefore act upon empty time. time must be filled with a procession of events, whether these be within our own consciousness or in the objective world without. all longer periods of time, such as hours, days, or years, are measured by the events which they contain. time filled with happenings that interest and attract us seems short while passing, but longer when looked back upon. on the other hand, time relatively empty of interesting experience hangs heavy on our hands in passing, but, viewed in retrospect, seems short. a fortnight of travel passes more quickly than a fortnight of illness, but yields many more events for the memory to review as the "filling" for time. probably no one has any very accurate feeling of the length, that is, the actual _duration_ of a year--or even of a month! we therefore divide time into convenient units, as weeks, months, years and centuries. this allows us to think of time in mathematical terms where immediate perception fails in its grasp. . the training of perception in the physical world as in the spiritual there are many people who, "having eyes, see not and ears, hear not." for the ability to perceive accurately and richly in the world of physical objects depends not alone on good sense organs, but also on _interest_ and the habit of _observation_. it is easy if we are indifferent or untrained to look at a beautiful landscape, a picture or a cathedral without _seeing_ it; it is easy if we lack interest or skill to listen to an orchestra or the myriad sounds of nature without _hearing_ them. perception needs to be trained.--training in perception does not depend entirely on the work of the school. for the world about us exerts a constant appeal to our senses. a thousand sights, sounds, contacts, tastes, smells or other sensations, hourly throng in upon us, and the appeal is irresistible. we must in some degree attend. we must observe. yet it cannot be denied that most of us are relatively unskilled in perception; we do not know how, or take the trouble to observe. for example, a stranger was brought into the classroom and introduced by the instructor to a class of fifty college students in psychology. the class thought the stranger was to address them, and looked at him with mild curiosity. but, after standing before them for a few moments, he suddenly withdrew, as had been arranged by the instructor. the class were then asked to write such a description of the stranger as would enable a person who had never seen him to identify him. but so poor had been the observation of the class that they ascribed to him clothes of four different colors, eyes and hair each of three different colors, a tie of many different hues, height ranging from five feet and four inches to over six feet, age from twenty-eight to forty-five years, and many other details as wide of the mark. nor is it probable that this particular class was below the average in the power of perception. school training in perception.--the school can do much in training the perception. but to accomplish this, the child must constantly be brought into immediate contact with the physical world about him and taught to observe. books must not be substituted for things. definitions must not take the place of experiment or discovery. geography and nature study should be taught largely out of doors, and the lessons assigned should take the child into the open for observation and investigation. all things that live and grow, the sky and clouds, the sunset colors, the brown of upturned soil, the smell of the clover field, or the new mown hay, the sounds of a summer night, the distinguishing marks by which to identify each family of common birds or breed of cattle--these and a thousand other things that appeal to us from the simplest environment afford a rich opportunity for training the perception. and he who has learned to observe, and who is alert to the appeal of nature, has no small part of his education already assured. . problems in observation and introspection . test your power of observation by walking rapidly past a well-filled store window and then seeing how many of the objects you can name. . suppose a tailor, a bootblack, a physician, and a detective are standing on the street corner as you pass by. what will each one be most likely to observe about you? _why?_ . observe carefully green trees at a distance of a few rods; a quarter of a mile; a mile; several miles. describe differences ( ) in color, ( ) in brightness, or light, and ( ) in detail. . how many common birds can you identify? how many kinds of trees? of wild flowers? of weeds? . observe the work of an elementary school for the purpose of determining: a. whether the instruction in geography, nature study, agriculture, etc., calls for the use of the eyes, ears and fingers. b. whether definitions are used in place of first-hand information in any subjects. c. whether the assignment of lessons to pupils includes work that would require the use of the senses, especially out of doors. d. whether the work offered in arithmetic demands the use of the senses as well as the reason. e. whether the language lessons make use of the power of observation. chapter viii mental images and ideas as you sit thinking, a company of you together, your thoughts run in many diverse lines. yet with all this diversity, your minds possess this common characteristic: _though your thinking all takes place in what we call the present moment, it goes on largely in terms of past experiences._ . the part played by past experience present thinking depends on past experience.--images or ideas of things you have seen or heard or felt; of things you have thought of before and which now recur to you; of things you remember, such as names, dates, places, events; of things that you do not remember as a part of your past at all, but that belong to it nevertheless--these are the things which form a large part of your mental stream, and which give content to your thinking. you may think of a thing that is going on now, or of one that is to occur in the future; but, after all, you are dependent on your past experience for the material which you put into your thinking of the present moment. indeed, nothing can enter your present thinking which does not link itself to something in your past experience. the savage indian in the primeval forest never thought about killing a deer with a rifle merely by pulling a trigger, or of turning a battery of machine guns on his enemies to annihilate them--none of these things were related to his past experience; hence he could not think in such terms. the present interpreted by the past.--not only can we not think at all except in terms of our past experience, but even if we could, the present would be meaningless to us; for the present is interpreted in the light of the past. the sedate man of affairs who decries athletic sports, and has never taken part in them, cannot understand the wild enthusiasm which prevails between rival teams in a hotly contested event. the fine work of art is to the one who has never experienced the appeal which comes through beauty, only so much of canvas and variegated patches of color. paul says that jesus was "unto the greeks, foolishness." he was foolishness to them because nothing in their experience with their own gods had been enough like the character of jesus to enable them to interpret him. the future also depends on the past.--to the mind incapable of using past experience, the future also would be impossible; for we can look forward into the future only by placing in its experiences the elements of which we have already known. the savage who has never seen the shining yellow metal does not dream of a heaven whose streets are paved with gold, but rather of a "happy hunting ground." if you will analyze your own dreams of the future you will see in them familiar pictures perhaps grouped together in new forms, but coming, in their elements, from your past experience nevertheless. all that would remain to a mind devoid of a past would be the little bridge of time which we call the "present moment," a series of unconnected _nows_. thought would be impossible, for the mind would have nothing to compare and relate. personality would not exist; for personality requires continuity of experience, else we should be a new person each succeeding moment, without memory and without plans. such a mind would be no mind at all. rank determined by ability to utilize past experience.--so important is past experience in determining our present thinking and guiding our future actions, that the place of an individual in the scale of creation is determined largely by the ability to profit by past experience. the scientist tells us of many species of animals now extinct, which lost their lives and suffered their race to die out because when, long ago, the climate began to change and grow much colder, they were unable to use the experience of suffering in the last cold season as an incentive to provide shelter, or move to a warmer climate against the coming of the next and more rigorous one. man was able to make the adjustment; and, providing himself with clothing and shelter and food, he survived, while myriads of the lower forms perished. the singed moth again and again dares the flame which tortures it, and at last gives its life, a sacrifice to its folly; the burned child fears the fire, and does not the second time seek the experience. so also can the efficiency of an individual or a nation, as compared with other individuals or nations, be determined. the inefficient are those who repeat the same error or useless act over and over, or else fail to repeat a chance useful act whose repetition might lead to success. they are unable to learn their lesson and be guided by experience. their past does not sufficiently minister to their present, and through it direct their future. . how past experience is conserved past experience conserved in both mental and physical terms.--if past experience plays so important a part in our welfare, how, then, is it to be conserved so that we may secure its benefits? here, as elsewhere, we find the mind and body working in perfect unison and harmony, each doing its part to further the interests of both. the results of our past experience may be read in both our mental and our physical nature. on the physical side past experience is recorded in modified structure through the law of habit working on the tissues of the body, and particularly on the delicate tissues of the brain and nervous system. this is easily seen in its outward aspects. the stooped shoulders and bent form of the workman tell a tale of physical toil and exposure; the bloodless lips and pale face of the victim of the city sweat shop tell of foul air, long hours, and insufficient food; the rosy cheek and bounding step of childhood speak of fresh air, good food and happy play. on the mental side past experience is conserved chiefly by means of _images_, _ideas_, and _concepts_. the nature and function of concepts will be discussed in a later chapter. it will now be our purpose to examine the nature of images and ideas, and to note the part they play in the mind's activities. the image and the idea.--to understand the nature of the image, and then of the idea, we may best go back to the percept. you look at a watch which i hold before your eyes and secure a percept of it. briefly, this is what happens: the light reflected from the yellow object, on striking the retina, results in a nerve current which sets up a certain form of activity in the cells of the visual brain area, and lo! a _percept_ of the watch flashes in your mind. now i put the watch in my pocket, so that the stimulus is no longer present to your eye. then i ask you to think of my watch just as it appeared as you were looking at it; or you may yourself choose to think of it without my suggesting it to you. in either case _the cellular activity in the visual area of the cortex is reproduced_ approximately as it occurred in connection with the percept, and lo! an _image_ of the watch flashes in your mind. an image is thus an approximate copy of a former percept (or several percepts). it is aroused indirectly by means of a nerve current coming by way of some other brain center, instead of directly by the stimulation of a sense organ, as in the case of a percept. if, instead of seeking a more or less exact mental _picture_ of my watch, you only think of its general _meaning_ and relations, the fact that it is of gold, that it is for the purpose of keeping time, that it was a present to me, that i wear it in my left pocket, you then have an _idea_ of the watch. our idea of an object is, therefore, the general meaning of relations we ascribe to it. it should be remembered, however, that the terms image and idea are employed rather loosely, and that there is not yet general uniformity among writers in their use. all our past experience potentially at our command.--images may in a certain sense take the place of percepts, and we can again experience sights, sounds, tastes, and smells which we have known before, without having the stimuli actually present to the senses. in this way all our past experience is potentially available to the present. all the objects we have seen, it is potentially possible again to see in the mind's eye without being obliged to have the objects before us; all the sounds we have heard, all the tastes and smells and temperatures we have experienced, we may again have presented to our minds in the form of mental images without the various stimuli being present to the end-organs of the senses. through images and ideas the total number of objects in our experience is infinitely multiplied; for many of the things we have seen, or heard, or smelled, or tasted, we cannot again have present to the senses, and without this power we would never get them again. and besides this fact, it would be inconvenient to have to go and secure afresh each sensation or percept every time we need to use it in our thought. while _habit_, then, conserves our past experience on the physical side, the _image_ and the _idea_ do the same thing on the mental side. . individual differences in imagery images to be viewed by introspection.--the remainder of the description of images will be easier to understand, for each of you can know just what is meant in every case by appealing to your own mind. i beg of you not to think that i am presenting something new and strange, a curiosity connected with our thinking which has been discovered by scholars who have delved more deeply into the matter than we can hope to do. every day--no, more than that, every hour and every moment--these images are flitting through our minds, forming a large part of our stream of consciousness. let us see whether we can turn our attention within and discover some of our images in their flight. let us introspect. i know of no better way to proceed than that adopted by francis galton years ago, when he asked the english men of letters and science to think of their breakfast tables, and then describe the images which appeared. i am about to ask each one of you to do the same thing, but i want to warn you beforehand that the images will not be so vivid as the sensory experiences themselves. they will be much fainter and more vague, and less clear and definite; they will be fleeting, and must be caught on the wing. often the image may fade entirely out, and the idea only be left. the varied imagery suggested by one's dining table.--let each one now recall the dining table as you last left it, and then answer questions concerning it like the following: can i see clearly in my "mind's eye" the whole table as it stood spread before me? can i see all parts of it equally clearly? do i get the snowy white and gloss of the linen? the delicate coloring of the china, so that i can see where the pink shades off into the white? the graceful lines and curves of the dishes? the sheen of the silver? the brown of the toast? the yellow of the cream? the rich red and dark green of the bouquet of roses? the sparkle of the glassware? can i again hear the rattle of the dishes? the clink of the spoon against the cup? the moving up of the chairs? the chatter of the voices, each with its own peculiar pitch and quality? the twitter of a bird outside the window? the tinkle of a distant bell? the chirp of a neighborly cricket? can i taste clearly the milk? the coffee? the eggs? the bacon? the rolls? the butter? the jelly? the fruit? can i get the appetizing odor of the coffee? of the meat? the oranges and bananas? the perfume of the lilac bush outside the door? the perfume from a handkerchief newly treated to a spray of heliotrope? can i recall the touch of my fingers on the velvety peach? on the smooth skin of an apple? on the fretted glassware? the feel of the fresh linen? the contact of leather-covered or cane-seated chair? of the freshly donned garment? can i get clearly the temperature of the hot coffee in the mouth? of the hot dish on the hand? of the ice water? of the grateful coolness of the breeze wafted in through the open window? can i feel again the strain of muscle and joint in passing the heavy dish? can i feel the movement of the jaws in chewing the beefsteak? of the throat and lips in talking? of the chest and diaphragm in laughing? of the muscles in sitting and rising? in hand and arm in using knife and fork and spoon? can i get again the sensation of pain which accompanied biting on a tender tooth? from the shooting of a drop of acid from the rind of the orange into the eye? the chance ache in the head? the pleasant feeling connected with the exhilaration of a beautiful morning? the feeling of perfect health? the pleasure connected with partaking of a favorite food? power of imagery varies in different people.--it is more than probable that some of you cannot get perfectly clear images in all these lines, certainly not with equal facility; for the imagery from any one sense varies greatly from person to person. a celebrated painter was able, after placing his subject in a chair and looking at him attentively for a few minutes, to dismiss the subject and paint a perfect likeness of him from the visual image which recurred to the artist every time he turned his eyes to the chair where the sitter had been placed. on the other hand, a young lady, a student in my psychology class, tells me that she is never able to recall the looks of her mother when she is absent, even if the separation has been only for a few moments. she can get an image of the form, with the color and cut of the dress, but never the features. one person may be able to recall a large part of a concert through his auditory imagery, and another almost none. in general it may be said that the power, or at least the use, of imagery decreases with age. the writer has made a somewhat extensive study of the imagery of certain high-school students, college students, and specialists in psychology averaging middle age. almost without exception it was found that clear and vivid images played a smaller part in the thinking of the older group than of the younger. more or less abstract ideas and concepts seemed to have taken the place of the concrete imagery of earlier years. imagery types.--although there is some difference in our ability to use imagery of different sensory types, probably there is less variation here than has been supposed. earlier pedagogical works spoke of the _visual_ type of mind, or the _audile_ type, or the _motor_ type, as if the possession of one kind of imagery necessarily rendered a person short in other types. later studies have shown this view incorrect, however. the person who has good images of one type is likely to excel in all types, while one who is lacking in any one of the more important types will probably be found short in all.[ ] most of us probably make more use of visual and auditory than of other kinds of imagery, while olfactory and gustatory images seem to play a minor rôle. . the function of images binet says that the man who has not every type of imagery almost equally well developed is only the fraction of a man. while this no doubt puts the matter too strongly, yet images do play an important part in our thinking. images supply material for imagination and memory.--imagery supplies the pictures from which imagination builds its structures. given a rich supply of images from the various senses, and imagination has the material necessary to construct times and events long since past, or to fill the future with plans or experiences not yet reached. lacking images, however, imagination is handicapped, and its meager products reveal in their barrenness and their lack of warmth and reality the poverty of material. much of our memory also takes the form of images. the face of a friend, the sound of a voice, or the touch of a hand may be recalled, not as a mere fact, but with almost the freshness and fidelity of a percept. that much of our memory goes on in the form of ideas instead of images is true. but memory is often both aided in its accuracy and rendered more vital and significant through the presence of abundant imagery. imagery in the thought processes.--since logical thinking deals more with relations and meanings than with particular objects, images naturally play a smaller part in reasoning than in memory and imagination. yet they have their place here as well. students of geometry or trigonometry often have difficulty in understanding a theorem until they succeed in visualizing the surface or solid involved. thinking in the field of astronomy, mechanics, and many other sciences is assisted at certain points by the ability to form clear and accurate images. the use of imagery in literature.--facility in the use of imagery undoubtedly adds much to our enjoyment and appreciation of certain forms of literature. the great writers commonly use all types of images in their description and narration. if we are not able to employ the images they used, many of their most beautiful pictures are likely to be to us but so many words suggesting prosaic ideas. shakespeare, describing certain beautiful music, appeals to the sense of smell to make himself understood: ... it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound that breathes upon a bank of violets, stealing and giving odor! _lady macbeth_ cries: here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of arabia will not sweeten this little hand. milton has _eve_ say of her dream of the fatal apple: ... the pleasant sav'ry smell so quickened appetite, that i, methought, could not but taste. likewise with the sense of touch: ... i take thy hand, this hand as soft as dove's down, and as white as it. imagine a person devoid of delicate tactile imagery, with senseless finger tips and leaden footsteps, undertaking to interpret these exquisite lines: thus i set my printless feet o'er the cowslip's velvet head, that bends not as i tread. shakespeare thus appeals to the muscular imagery: at last, a little shaking of mine arm and thrice his head thus waving up and down, he raised a sigh so piteous and profound as it did seem to shatter all his bulk and end his being. many passages like the following appeal to the temperature images: freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, thou dost not bite so nigh as benefits forgot! to one whose auditory imagery is meager, the following lines will lose something of their beauty: how sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! here we will sit and let the sounds of music creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet harmony. note how much clear images will add to browning's words: are there not two moments in the adventure of a diver--one when a beggar he prepares to plunge, and one, when a prince he rises with his pearl? points where images are of greatest service.--beyond question, many images come flooding into our minds which are irrelevant and of no service in our thinking. no one has failed to note many such. further, we undoubtedly do much of our best thinking with few or no images present. yet we need images. where, then, are they most needed? _images are needed wherever the percepts which they represent would be of service._ whatever one could better understand or enjoy or appreciate by seeing it, hearing it, or perceiving it through some other sense, he can better understand, enjoy or appreciate through images than by means of ideas only. . the cultivation of imagery images depend on sensory stimuli.--the power of imaging can be cultivated the same as any other ability. in the first place, we may put down as an absolute requisite _such an environment of sensory stimuli as will tempt every sense to be awake and at its best_, that we may be led into a large acquaintance with the objects of our material environment. no one's stock of sensory images is greater than the sum total of his sensory experiences. no one ever has images of sights, or sounds, or tastes, or smells which he has never experienced. likewise, he must have had the fullest and freest possible liberty in motor activities. for not only is the motor act itself made possible through the office of imagery, but the motor act clarifies and makes useful the images. the boy who has actually made a table, or a desk, or a box has ever afterward a different and a better image of one of these objects than before; so also when he has owned and ridden a bicycle, his image of this machine will have a different significance from that of the image founded upon the visual perception alone of the wheel he longingly looked at through the store window or in the other boy's dooryard. the influence of frequent recall.--but sensory experiences and motor responses alone are not enough, though they are the basis of good imagery. _there must be frequent recall._ the sunset may have been never so brilliant, and the music never so entrancing; but if they are never thought of and dwelt upon after they were first experienced, little will remain of them after a very short time. it is by repeating them often in experience through imagery that they become fixed, so that they stand ready to do our bidding when we need next to use them. the reconstruction of our images.--to richness of experience and frequency of the recall of our images we must add one more factor; namely, that of their _reconstruction_ or working over. few if any images are exact recalls of former percepts of objects. indeed, such would be neither possible nor desirable. the images which we recall are recalled for a purpose, or in view of some future activity, and hence must be _selective_, or made up of the elements of several or many former related images. thus the boy who wishes to construct a box without a pattern to follow recalls the images of numerous boxes he may have seen, and from them all he has a new image made over from many former percepts and images, and this new image serves him as a working model. in this way he not only gets a copy which he can follow to make his box, but he also secures a new product in the form of an image different from any he ever had before, and is therefore by so much the richer. it is this working over of our stock of old images into new and richer and more suggestive ones that constitutes the essence of constructive imagination. the more types of imagery into which we can put our thought, the more fully is it ours and the better our images. the spelling lesson needs not only to be taken in through the eye, that we may retain a visual image of the words, but also to be recited orally, so that the ear may furnish an auditory image, and the organs of speech a motor image of the correct forms. it needs also to be written, and thus given into the keeping of the hand, which finally needs most of all to know and retain it. the reading lesson should be taken in through both the eye and the ear, and then expressed by means of voice and gesture in as full and complete a way as possible, that it may be associated with motor images. the geography lesson needs not only to be read, but to be drawn, or molded, or constructed. the history lesson should be made to appeal to every possible form of imagery. the arithmetic lesson must be not only computed, but measured, weighed, and pressed into actual service. thus we might carry the illustration into every line of education and experience, and the same truth holds. _what we desire to comprehend completely and retain well, we must apprehend through all available senses and conserve in every possible type of image and form of expression._ . problems in introspection and observation . observe a reading class and try to determine whether the pupils picture the scenes and events they read about. how can you tell? . similarly observe a history class. do the pupils realize the events as actually happening, and the personages as real, living people? . observe in a similar way a class in geography, and draw conclusions. a pupil in computing the cost of plastering a certain room based the figures on the room _filled full of plaster_. how might visual imagery have saved the error? . imagine a three-inch cube. paint it. then saw it up into inch cubes, leaving them all standing in the original form. how many inch cubes have paint on three faces? how many on two faces? how many on one face? how many have no paint on them? answer all these questions by referring to your imagery alone. . try often to recall images in the various sensory lines; determine in what classes of images you are least proficient and try to improve in these lines. . how is the singing teacher able, after his class has sung through several scores, to tell that they are flatting? . study your imagery carefully for a few days to see whether you can discover your predominating type of imagery. chapter ix imagination everyone desires to have a good imagination, yet not all would agree as to what constitutes a good imagination. if i were to ask a group of you whether you have good imaginations, many of you would probably at once fall to considering whether you are capable of taking wild flights into impossible realms of thought and evolving unrealities out of airy nothings. you would compare yourself with great imaginative writers, such as stevenson, poe, de quincey, and judge your power of imagination by your ability to produce such tales as made them famous. . the place of imagination in mental economy but such a measure for the imagination as that just stated is far too narrow. a good imagination, like a good memory, is the one which serves its owner best. if dequincey and poe and stevenson and bulwer found the type which led them into such dizzy flights the best for their particular purpose, well and good; but that is not saying that their type is the best for you, or that you may not rank as high in some other field of imaginative power as they in theirs. while you may lack in their particular type of imagination, they may have been short in the type which will one day make you famous. the artisan, the architect, the merchant, the artist, the farmer, the teacher, the professional man--all need imagination in their vocations not less than the writers need it in theirs, but each needs a specialized kind adapted to the particular work which he has to do. practical nature of imagination.--imagination is not a process of thought which must deal chiefly with unrealities and impossibilities, and which has for its chief end our amusement when we have nothing better to do than to follow its wanderings. it is, rather, a commonplace, necessary process which illumines the way for our everyday thinking and acting--a process without which we think and act by haphazard chance or blind imitation. it is the process by which the images from our past experiences are marshaled, and made to serve our present. imagination looks into the future and constructs our patterns and lays our plans. it sets up our ideals and pictures us in the acts of achieving them. it enables us to live our joys and our sorrows, our victories and our defeats before we reach them. it looks into the past and allows us to live with the kings and seers of old, or it goes back to the beginning and we see things in the process of the making. it comes into our present and plays a part in every act from the simplest to the most complex. it is to the mental stream what the light is to the traveler who carries it as he passes through the darkness, while it casts its beams in all directions around him, lighting up what otherwise would be intolerable gloom. imagination in the interpretation of history, literature, and art.--let us see some of the most common uses of the imagination. suppose i describe to you the battle of the marne. unless you can take the images which my words suggest and build them into struggling, shouting, bleeding soldiers; into forts and entanglements and breastworks; into roaring cannon and whistling bullet and screaming shell--unless you can take all these separate images and out of them get one great unified complex, then my description will be to you only so many words largely without content, and you will lack the power to comprehend the historical event in any complete way. unless you can read the poem, and out of the images suggested by the words reconstruct the picture which was in the mind of the author as he wrote "the village blacksmith" or "snowbound," the significance will have dropped out, and the throbbing scenes of life and action become only so many dead words, like the shell of the chrysalis after the butterfly has left its shroud. without the power of imagination, the history of washington's winter at valley forge becomes a mere formal recital, and you can never get a view of the snow-covered tents, the wind-swept landscape, the tracks in the snow marked by the telltale drops of blood, or the form of the heartbroken commander as he kneels in the silent wood to pray for his army. without the power to construct this picture as you read, you may commit the words, and be able to recite them, and to pass examination upon them, but the living reality of it will forever escape you. your power of imagination determines your ability to interpret literature of all kinds; for the interpretation of literature is nothing, after all, but the reconstruction on our part of the pictures with their meanings which were in the mind of the writer as he penned the words, and the experiencing of the emotions which moved him as he wrote. small use indeed to read the history of the centuries unless we can see in it living, acting people, and real events occurring in actual environments. small use to read the world's great books unless their characters are to us real men and women--our brothers and sisters, interpreted to us by the master minds of the ages. anything less than this, and we are no longer dealing with literature, but with words--like musical sounds which deal with no theme, or like picture frames in which no picture has been set. nor is the case different in listening to a speaker. his words are to you only so many sensations of sounds of such and such pitches and intensities and quality, unless your mind keeps pace with his and continually builds the pictures which fill his thought as he speaks. lacking imagination, the sculptures of michael angelo and the pictures of raphael are to you so many pieces of curiously shaped marble and ingeniously colored canvas. what the sculptor and the painter have placed before you must suggest to you images and thoughts from your own experience, to fill out and make alive the marble and the canvas, else to you they are dead. imagination and science.--nor is imagination less necessary in other lines of study. without this power of building living, moving pictures out of images, there is small use to study science beyond what is immediately present to our senses; for some of the most fundamental laws of science rest upon conceptions which can be grasped only as we have the power of imagination. the student who cannot get a picture of the molecules of matter, infinitely close to each other and yet never touching, all in vibratory motion, yet each within its own orbit, each a complete unit in itself, yet capable of still further division into smaller particles,--the student who cannot see all this in a clear visual image can never at best have more than a most hazy notion of the theory of matter. and this means, finally, that the explanations of light and heat and sound, and much besides, will be to him largely a jumble of words which linger in his memory, perchance, but which never vitally become a possession of his mind. so with the world of the telescope. you may have at your disposal all the magnificent lenses and the accurate machinery owned by modern observatories; but if you have not within yourself the power to build what these reveal to you, and what the books tell you, into the solar system and still larger systems, you can never study astronomy except in a blind and piecemeal sort of way, and all the planets and satellites and suns will never for you form themselves into a system, no matter what the books may say about it. everyday uses of imagination.--but we may consider a still more practical phase of imagination, or at least one which has more to do with the humdrum daily life of most of us. suppose you go to your milliner and tell her how you want your spring hat shaped and trimmed. and suppose you have never been able to see this hat _in toto_ in your mind, so as to get an idea of how it will look when completed, but have only a general notion, because you like red velvet, white plumes, and a turned-up rim, that this combination will look well together. suppose you have never been able to see how you would look in this particular hat with your hair done in this or that way. if you are in this helpless state shall you not have to depend finally on the taste of the milliner, or accept the "model," and so fail to reveal any taste or individuality on your own part? how many times have you been disappointed in some article of dress, because when you planned it you were unable to see it all at once so as to get the full effect; or else you could not see yourself in it, and so be able to judge whether it suited you! how many homes have in them draperies and rugs and wall paper and furniture which are in constant quarrel because someone could not see before they were assembled that they were never intended to keep company! how many people who plan their own houses, would build them just the same again after seeing them completed? the man who can see a building complete before a brick has been laid or a timber put in place, who can see it not only in its details one by one as he runs them over in his mind, but can see the building in its entirety, is the only one who is safe to plan the structure. and this is the man who is drawing a large salary as an architect, for imaginations of this kind are in demand. only the one who can see in his "mind's eye," before it is begun, the thing he would create, is capable to plan its construction. and who will say that ability to work with images of these kinds is not of just as high a type as that which results in the construction of plots upon which stories are built! the building of ideals and plans.--nor is the part of imagination less marked in the formation of our life's ideals and plans. everyone who is not living blindly and aimlessly must have some ideal, some pattern, by which to square his life and guide his actions. at some time in our life i am sure that each of us has selected the person who filled most nearly our notion of what we should like to become, and measured ourselves by this pattern. but there comes a time when we must idealize even the most perfect individual; when we invest the character with attributes which we have selected from some other person, and thus worship at a shrine which is partly real and partly ideal. as time goes on, we drop out more and more of the strictly individual element, adding correspondingly more of the ideal, until our pattern is largely a construction of our own imagination, having in it the best we have been able to glean from the many characters we have known. how large a part these ever-changing ideals play in our lives we shall never know, but certainly the part is not an insignificant one. and happy the youth who is able to look into the future and see himself approximating some worthy ideal. he has caught a vision which will never allow him to lag or falter in the pursuit of the flying goal which points the direction of his efforts. imagination and conduct.--another great field for imagination is with reference to conduct and our relations with others. over and over again the thoughtless person has to say, "i am sorry; i did not think." the "did not think" simply means that he failed to realize through his imagination what would be the consequences of his rash or unkind words. he would not be unkind, but he did not imagine how the other would feel; he did not put himself in the other's place. likewise with reference to the effects of our conduct on ourselves. what youth, taking his first drink of liquor, would continue if he could see a clear picture of himself in the gutter with bloated face and bloodshot eyes a decade hence? or what boy, slyly smoking one of his early cigarettes, would proceed if he could see his haggard face and nerveless hand a few years farther along? what spendthrift would throw away his money on vanities could he vividly see himself in penury and want in old age? what prodigal anywhere who, if he could take a good look at himself sin-stained and broken as he returns to his "father's house" after the years of debauchery in the "far country" would not hesitate long before he entered upon his downward career? imagination and thinking.--we have already considered the use of imagination in interpreting the thoughts, feelings and handiwork of others. let us now look a little more closely into the part it plays in our own thinking. suppose that, instead of reading a poem, we are writing one; instead of listening to a description of a battle, we are describing it; instead of looking at the picture, we are painting it. then our object is to make others who may read our language, or listen to our words, or view our handiwork, construct the mental images of the situation which furnished the material for our thought. our words and other modes of expression are but the description of the flow of images in our minds, and our problem is to make a similar stream flow through the mind of the listener; but strange indeed would it be to make others see a situation which we ourselves cannot see; strange if we could draw a picture without being able to follow its outlines as we draw. or suppose we are teaching science, and our object is to explain the composition of matter to someone, and make him understand how light, heat, etc., depend on the theory of matter; strange if the listener should get a picture if we ourselves are unable to get it. or, once more, suppose we are to describe some incident, and our aim is to make its every detail stand out so clearly that no one can miss a single one. is it not evident that we can never make any of these images more clear to those who listen to us or read our words than they are to ourselves? . the material used by imagination what is the material, the mental content, out of which imagination builds its structures? images the stuff of imagination.--nothing can enter the imagination the elements of which have not been in our past experience and then been conserved in the form of images. the indians never dreamed of a heaven whose streets are paved with gold, and in whose center stands a great white throne. their experience had given them no knowledge of these things; and so, perforce, they must build their heaven out of the images which they had at command, namely, those connected with the chase and the forest. so their heaven was the "happy hunting ground," inhabited by game and enemies over whom the blessed forever triumphed. likewise the valiant soldiers whose deadly arrows and keen-edged swords and battle-axes won on the bloody field of hastings, did not picture a far-off day when the opposing lines should kill each other with mighty engines hurling death from behind parapets a dozen miles away. firearms and the explosive powder were yet unknown, hence there were no images out of which to build such a picture. i do not mean that your imagination cannot construct an object which has never before been in your experience as a whole, for the work of the imagination is to do precisely this thing. it takes the various images at its disposal and builds them into _wholes_ which may never have existed before, and which may exist now only as a creation of the mind. and yet we have put into this new product not a single _element_ which was not familiar to us in the form of an image of one kind or another. it is the _form_ which is new; the _material_ is old. this is exemplified every time an inventor takes the two fundamental parts of a machine, the _lever_ and the _inclined plane_, and puts them together in relations new to each other and so evolves a machine whose complexity fairly bewilders us. and with other lines of thinking, as in mechanics, inventive power consists in being able to see the old in new relations, and so constantly build new constructions out of old material. it is this power which gives us the daring and original thinker, the newton whose falling apple suggested to him the planets falling toward the sun in their orbits; the darwin who out of the thigh bone of an animal was able to construct in his imagination the whole animal and the environment in which it must have lived, and so add another page to the earth's history. the two factors in imagination.--from the simple facts which we have just been considering, the conclusion is plain that our power of imagination depends on two factors; namely, ( ) _the materials available in the form of usable images capable of recall_, and ( ) _our constructive ability_, or the power to group these images into new _wholes, the process being guided by some purpose or end_. without this last provision, the products of our imagination are daydreams with their "castles in spain," which may be pleasing and proper enough on occasions, but which as an habitual mode of thought are extremely dangerous. imagination limited by stock of images.--that the mind is limited in its imagination by its stock of images may be seen from a simple illustration: suppose that you own a building made of brick, but that you find the old one no longer adequate for your needs, and so purpose to build a new one; and suppose, further, that you have no material for your new building except that contained in the old structure. it is evident that you will be limited in constructing your new building by the material which was in the old. you may be able to build the new structure in any one of a multitude of different forms or styles of architecture, so far as the material at hand will lend itself to that style of building, and providing, further, that you are able to make the plans. but you will always be limited finally by the character and amount of material obtainable from the old structure. so with the mind. the old building is your past experience, and the separate bricks are the images out of which you must build your new structure through the imagination. here, as before, nothing can enter which was not already on hand. nothing goes into the new structure so far as its constructive material is concerned except images, and there is nowhere to get images but from the results of our past experience. limited also by our constructive ability.--but not only is our imaginative output limited by the _amount_ of material in the way of images which we have at our command, but also and perhaps not less by our _constructive ability_. many persons might own the old pile of bricks fully adequate for the new structure, and then fail to get the new because they were unable to construct it. so, many who have had a rich and varied experience in many lines are yet unable to muster their images of these experiences in such a way that new products are obtainable from them. these have the heavy, draft-horse kind of intellect which goes plodding on, very possibly doing good service in its own circumscribed range, but destined after all to service in the narrow field with its low, drooping horizon. they are never able to take a dash at a two-minute clip among equally swift competitors, or even swing at a good round pace along the pleasant highways of an experience lying beyond the confines of the narrow _here_ and _now_. these are the minds which cannot discover relations; which cannot _think_. minds of this type can never be architects of their own fate, or even builders, but must content themselves to be hod carriers. the need of a purpose.--nor are we to forget that we cannot intelligently erect our building until we know the _purpose_ for which it is to be used. no matter how much building material we may have on hand, nor how skillful an architect we may be, unless our plans are guided by some definite aim, we shall be likely to end with a structure that is fanciful and useless. likewise with our thought structure. unless our imagination is guided by some aim or purpose, we are in danger of drifting into mere daydreams which not only are useless in furnishing ideals for the guidance of our lives, but often become positively harmful when grown into a habit. the habit of daydreaming is hard to break, and, continuing, holds our thought in thrall and makes it unwilling to deal with the plain, homely things of everyday life. who has not had the experience of an hour or a day spent in a fairyland of dreams, and awakened at the end to find himself rather dissatisfied with the prosaic round of duties which confronted him! i do not mean to say that we should _never_ dream; but i know of no more pernicious mental habit than that of daydreaming carried to excess, for it ends in our following every will-o'-the-wisp of fancy, and places us at the mercy of every chance suggestion. . types of imagination although imagination enters every field of human experience, and busies itself with every line of human interest, yet all its activities can be classed under two different types. these are ( ) _reproductive_, and ( ) _creative_ imagination. reproductive imagination.--reproductive imagination is the type we use when we seek to reproduce in our minds the pictures described by others, or pictures from our own past experience which lack the completeness and fidelity to make them true memory. the narration or description of the story book, the history or geography text; the tale of adventure recounted by traveler or hunter; the account of a new machine or other invention; fairy tales and myths--these or any other matter that may be put into words capable of suggesting images to us are the field for reproductive imagination. in this use of the imagination our business is to follow and not lead, to copy and not create. creative imagination.--but we must have leaders, originators--else we should but imitate each other and the world would be at a standstill. indeed, every person, no matter how humble his station or how humdrum his life, should be in some degree capable of initiative and originality. such ability depends in no small measure on the power to use creative imagination. creative imagination takes the images from our own past experience or those gleaned from the work of others and puts them together in new and original forms. the inventor, the writer, the mechanic or the artist who possesses the spirit of creation is not satisfied with _mere_ reproduction, but seeks to modify, to improve, to originate. true, many important inventions and discoveries have come by seeming accident, by being stumbled upon. yet it holds that the person who thus stumbles upon the discovery or invention is usually one whose creative imagination is actively at work _seeking_ to create or discover in his field. the world's progress as a whole does not come by accident, but by creative planning. creative imagination is always found at the van of progress, whether in the life of an individual or a nation. . training the imagination imagination is highly susceptible of cultivation, and its training should constitute one of the most important aims of education. every school subject, but especially such subjects as deal with description and narration--history, literature, geography, nature study and science--is rich in opportunities for the use of imagination. skillful teaching will not only find in these subjects a means of training the imagination, but will so employ imagination in their study as to make them living matter, throbbing with life and action, rather than so many dead words or uninteresting facts. gathering of material for imagination.--theoretically, then, it is not hard to see what we must do to cultivate our imagination. in the first place, we must take care to secure a large and usable _stock of images_ from all fields of perception. it is not enough to have visual images alone or chiefly, for many a time shall we need to build structures involving all the other senses and the motor activities as well. this means that we must have a first-hand contact with just as large an environment as possible--large in the world of nature with all her varied forms suited to appeal to every avenue of sense; large in our contact with people in all phases of experience, laughing with those who laugh and weeping with those who weep; large in contact with books, the interpreters of the men and events of the past. we must not only let all these kinds of environment drift in upon us as they may chance to do, but we must deliberately _seek_ to increase our stock of experience; for, after all, experience lies at the bottom of imagination as of every other mental process. and not only must we thus put ourselves in the way of acquiring new experience, but we must by recall and reconstruction, as we saw in an earlier discussion, keep our imagery fresh and usable. for whatever serves to improve our images, at the same time is bettering the very foundation of imagination. we must not fail to build.--in the second place, we must not fail _to build_. for it is futile to gather a large supply of images if we let the material lie unused. how many people there are who put in all their time gathering material for their structure, and never take time to do the building! they look and listen and read, and are so fully occupied in absorbing the immediately present that they have no time to see the wider significance of the things with which they deal. they are like the students who are too busy studying to have time to think. they are so taken up with receiving that they never perform the higher act of combining. they are the plodding fact gatherers, many of them doing good service, collecting material which the seer and the philosopher, with their constructive power, build together into the greater wholes which make our systems of thought. they are the ones who fondly think that, by reading books full of wild tales and impossible plots, they are training their imagination. for them, sober history, no matter how heroic or tragic in its quiet movements, is too tame. they have not the patience to read solid and thoughtful literature, and works of science and philosophy are a bore. these are the persons who put in all their time in looking at and admiring other people's houses, and never get time to do any building for themselves. we should carry our ideals into action.--the best training for the imagination which i know anything about is that to be obtained by taking our own material and from it building our own structure. it is true that it will help to look through other people's houses enough to discover their style of building: we should read. but just as it is not necessary for us to put in all the time we devote to looking at houses, in inspecting doll houses and chinese pagodas, so it is not best for us to get all our notions of imaginative structures from the marvelous and the unreal; we get good training for the imagination from reading "hiawatha," but so can we from reading the history of the primitive indian tribes. the pictures in "snowbound" are full of suggestion for the imagination: but so is the history of the puritans in new england. but even with the best of models before us, it is not enough to follow others' building. we must construct stories for ourselves, must work out plots for our own stories; we must have time to meditate and plan and build, not idly in the daydream, but purposefully, and then make our images real by _carrying them out in activity_, if they are of such a character that this is possible; we must build our ideals and work to them in the common course of our everyday life; we must think for ourselves instead of forever following the thinking of others; we must _initiate_ as well as imitate. . problems for observation and introspection . explain the cause and the remedy in the case of such errors as the following: children who defined mountain as land , or more feet in height said that the factory smokestack was higher than the mountain because it "went straight up" and the mountain did not. children often think of the horizon as fastened to the earth. islands are thought of as floating on the water. . how would you stimulate the imagination of a child who does not seem to picture or make real the descriptions in reading, geography, etc.? is it possible that such inability may come from an insufficient basis in observation, and hence in images? . classify the school subjects, including domestic science and manual training, as to their ability to train ( ) reproductive and ( ) creative imagination. . do you ever skip the descriptive parts of a book and read the narrative? as you read the description of a bit of natural scenery, does it rise before you? as you study the description of a battle, can you see the movements of the troops? . have you ever planned a house as you think you would like it? can you see it from all sides? can you see all the rooms in their various finishings and furnishings? . what plans and ideals have you formed, and what ones are you at present following? can you describe the process by which your plans or ideals change? do you ever try to put yourself in the other person's place? . take some fanciful unreality which your imagination has constructed and see whether you can select from it familiar elements from actual experiences. . what use do you make of imagination in the common round of duties in your daily life? what are you doing to improve your imagination? chapter x association whence came the thought that occupies you this moment, and what determines the next that is to follow? introspection reveals no more interesting fact concerning our minds than that our thoughts move in a connected and orderly array and not in a hit-and-miss fashion. our mental states do not throng the stream of consciousness like so many pieces of wood following each other at random down a rushing current, now this one ahead, now that. on the contrary, our thoughts come, one after the other, as they are beckoned or _caused_. the thought now in the focal point of your consciousness appeared because it sprouted out of the one just preceding it; and the present thought, before it departs, will determine its successor and lead it upon the scene. this is to say that our thought stream possesses not only a continuity, but also a _unity_; it has coherence and system. this coherence and system, which operates in accordance with definite laws, is brought about by what the psychologist calls _association_. . the nature of association we may define association, then, as the tendency among our thoughts to form such a system of bonds with each other that the objects of consciousness are vitally connected both ( ) as they exist at any given moment, and ( ) as they occur in succession in the mental stream. the neural basis of association.--the association of thoughts--ideas, images, memory--or of a situation with its response, rests primarily on a neural basis. association is the result of habit working in neurone groups. its fundamental law is stated by james as follows: "when two elementary brain-processes have been active together or in immediate succession, one of them, on recurring, tends to propagate its excitement into the other." this is but a technical statement of the simple fact that nerve currents flow most easily over the neurone connections that they have already used. it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks, because the old tricks employ familiar, much-used neural paths, while new tricks require the connecting up of groups of neurones not in the habit of working together; and the flow of nerve energy is more easily accomplished in the neurones accustomed to working together. one who learns to speak a foreign language late in life never attains the facility and ease that might have been reached at an earlier age. this is because the neural paths for speech are already set for his mother-tongue, and, with the lessened plasticity of age, the new paths are hard to establish. the connections between the various brain areas, or groups of neurones, are, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, accomplished by means of _association fibers_. this function requires millions of neurones, which unite every part of the cortex with every other part, thus making it possible for a neural activity going on in any particular center to extend to any other center whatsoever. in the relatively unripe brain of the child, the association fibers have not yet set up most of their connections. the age at which memory begins is determined chiefly by the development of a sufficient number of association fibers to bring about recall. the more complex reasoning, which requires many different associative connections, is impossible prior to the existence of adequate neural development. it is this fact that makes it futile to attempt to teach young children the more complicated processes of arithmetic, grammar, or other subjects. they are not yet equipped with the requisite brain machinery to grasp the necessary associations. [illustration: fig. .--diagrammatic scheme of association, in which v stands for the visual, a for the auditory, g for the gustatory, m for the motor, and t for the thought and feeling centers of the cortex.] association the basis of memory.--without the machinery and processes of association we could have no memory. let us see in a simple illustration how association works in recall. suppose you are passing an orchard and see a tree loaded with tempting apples. you hesitate, then climb the fence, pick an apple and eat it, hearing the owner's dog bark as you leave the place. the accompanying diagram will illustrate roughly the centers of the cortex which were involved in the act, and the association fibers which connect them. (see fig. .) now let us see how you may afterward remember the circumstance through association. let us suppose that a week later you are seated at your dining table, and that you begin to eat an apple whose flavor reminds you of the one which you plucked from the tree. from this start how may the entire circumstance be recalled? remember that the cortical centers connected with the sight of the apple tree, with our thoughts about it, with our movements in getting the apple, and with hearing the dog bark, were all active together with the taste center, and hence tend to be thrown into activity again from its activity. it is easy to see that we may ( ) get a visual image of the apple tree and its fruit from a current over the gustatory-visual association fibers; ( ) the thoughts, emotions, or deliberations which we had on the former occasion may again recur to us from a current over the gustatory-thought neurones; ( ) we may get an image of our movements in climbing the fence and picking the apple from a current over the gustatory-motor fibers; or ( ) we may get an auditory image of the barking of the dog from a current over the gustatory-auditory fibers. indeed, we are _sure_ to get some one or more of these unless the paths are blocked in some way, or our attention leads off in some other direction. factors determining direction of recall.--_which_ of these we get first, which of the images the taste percept calls to take its place as it drops out of consciousness, will depend, other things being equal, on which center was most keenly active in the original situation, and is at the moment most permeable. if, at the time we were eating the stolen fruit, our thoughts were keenly self-accusing for taking the apples without permission, then the current will probably discharge through the path gustatory-thought, and we shall recall these thoughts and their accompanying feelings. but if it chances that the barking of the dog frightened us badly, then more likely the discharge from the taste center will be along the path gustatory-auditory, and we shall get the auditory image of the dog's barking, which in turn may call up a visual image of his savage appearance over the auditory-visual fibers. it is clear, however, that, given any one of the elements of the entire situation back, the rest are potentially possible to us, and any one may serve as a "cue" to call up all the rest. whether, given the starting point, we get them all, depends solely on whether the paths are sufficiently open between them for the current to discharge between them, granting that the first experience made sufficient impression to be retained. since this simple illustration may be made infinitely complex by means of the millions of fibers which connect every center in the cortex with every other center, and since, in passing from one experience to another in the round of our daily activities, these various areas are all involved in an endless chain of activities so intimately related that each one can finally lead to all the others, we have here the machinery both of retention and of recall--the mechanism by which our past may be made to serve the present through being reproduced in the form of memory images or ideas. through this machinery we are unable to escape our past, whether it be good or bad; for both the good and the bad alike are brought back to us through its operations. when the repetition of a series of acts has rendered habit secure, the association is relatively certain. if i recite to you a-b-c-d, your thought at once runs on to e, f, g. if i repeat, "tell me not in mournful numbers," association leads you to follow with "life is but an empty dream." your neurone groups are accustomed to act in this way, so the sequence follows. memorizing anything from the multiplication table to the most beautiful gems of poetic fervor consists, therefore, in the setting up of the right associative connections in the brain. association in thinking.--all thinking proceeds by the discovery or recognition of relations between the terms or objects of our thought. the science of mathematics rests on the relations found to exist between numbers and quantities. the principles and laws of natural science are based on the relations established among the different forms of matter and the energy that operates in this field. so also in the realm of history, art, ethics, or any other field of human experience. each fact or event must be linked to other facts or events before it possesses significance. association therefore lies at the foundation of all thinking, whether that of the original thinker who is creating our sciences, planning and executing the events of history, evolving a system of ethics, or whether one is only learning these fields as they already exist by means of study. other things being equal, he is the best thinker who has his knowledge related part to part so that the whole forms a unified and usable system. association and action.--association plays an equally important part in all our motor responses, the acts by which we carry on our daily lives, do our work and our play, or whatever else may be necessary in meeting and adapting ourselves to our environment. some sensations are often repeated, and demand practically the same response each time. in such cases the associations soon become fixed, and the response certain and automatic. for example, we sit at the table, and the response of eating follows, with all its complex acts, as a matter of course. we lie down in bed, and the response of sleep comes. we take our place at the piano, and our fingers produce the accustomed music. it is of course obvious that the influence of association extends to moral action as well. in general, our conduct follows the trend of established associations. we are likely to do in great moral crises about as we are in the habit of doing in small ones. . the types of association fundamental law of association.--stated on the physiological side, the law of habit as set forth in the definition of association in the preceding section includes all the laws of association. in different phrasing we may say: ( ) neurone groups accustomed to acting together have the tendency to work in unison. ( ) the more frequently such groups act together the stronger will be the tendency for one to throw the other into action. also, ( ) the more intense the excitement or tension under which they act together the stronger will be the tendency for activity in one to bring about activity in the other. the corresponding facts may be expressed in psychological terms as follows: ( ) facts accustomed to being associated together in the mind have a tendency to reappear together. ( ) the more frequently these facts appear together the stronger the tendency for the presence of one to insure the presence of the other. ( ) the greater the tension, excitement or concentration when these facts appear in conjunction with each other, the more certain the presence of one is to cause the presence of the other. several different types of association have been differentiated by psychologists from aristotle down. it is to be kept in mind, however, that all association types _go back to the elementary law of habit-connections among the neurones_ for their explanation. association by contiguity.--the recurrence in our minds of many of the elements from our past experience is due to the fact that at some time, possibly at many times, the recurring facts were contiguous in consciousness with some other element or fact which happens now to be again present. all have had the experience of meeting some person whom we had not seen for several months or years, and having a whole series of supposedly forgotten incidents or events connected with our former associations flood into the mind. things we did, topics we discussed, trips we took, games we played, now recur at the renewal of our acquaintance. for these are the things that were contiguous in our consciousness with our sense of the personality and appearance of our friend. and who has not in similar fashion had a whiff of perfume or the strains of a song recall to him his childhood days! contiguity is again the explanation. at the mercy of our associations.--through the law thus operating we are in a sense at the mercy of our associations, which may be bad as well as good. we may form certain lines of interest to guide our thought, and attention may in some degree direct it, but one's mental make-up is, after all, largely dependent on the character of his associations. evil thoughts, evil memories, evil imaginations--these all come about through the association of unworthy or impure images along with the good in our stream of thought. we may try to forget the base deed and banish it forever from our thinking, but lo! in an unguarded moment the nerve current shoots into the old path, and the impure thought flashes into the mind, unsought and unwelcomed. every young man who thinks he must indulge in a little sowing of wild oats before he settles down to a correct life, and so deals in unworthy thoughts and deeds, is putting a mortgage on his future; for he will find the inexorable machinery of his nervous system grinding the hated images of such things back into his mind as surely as the mill returns to the sack of the miller what he feeds into the hopper. he may refuse to harbor these thoughts, but he can no more hinder their seeking admission to his mind than he can prevent the tramp from knocking at his door. he may drive such images from his mind the moment they are discovered, and indeed is guilty if he does not; but not taking offense at this rebuff, the unwelcome thought again seeks admission. the only protection against the return of the undesirable associations is to choose lines of thought as little related to them as possible. but even then, do the best we may, an occasional "connection" will be set up, we know not how, and the unwelcome image stands staring us in the face, as the corpse of eugene aram's victim confronted him at every turn, though he thought it safely buried. a minister of my acquaintance tells me that in the holiest moments of his most exalted thought, images rise in his mind which he loathes, and from which he recoils in horror. not only does he drive them away at once, but he seeks to lock and bar the door against them by firmly resolving that he will never think of them again. but alas! that is beyond his control. the tares have been sown among the wheat, and will persist along with it until the end. in his boyhood these images were given into the keeping of his brain cells, and they are only being faithful to their trust. association by similarity and contrast.--all are familiar with the fact that like tends to suggest like. one friend reminds us of another friend when he manifests similar traits of character, shows the same tricks of manner, or has the same peculiarities of speech or gesture. the telling of a ghost or burglar story in a company will at once suggest a similar story to every person of the group, and before we know it the conversation has settled down to ghosts or burglars. one boastful boy is enough to start the gang to recounting their real or imaginary exploits. good and beautiful thoughts tend to call up other good and beautiful thoughts, while evil thoughts are likely to produce after their own kind; like produces like. another form of relationship is, however, quite as common as similars in our thinking. in certain directions we naturally think in _opposites_. black suggests white, good suggests bad, fat suggests lean, wealth suggests poverty, happiness suggests sorrow, and so on. the tendency of our thought thus to group in similars and opposites is clear when we go back to the fundamental law of association. the fact is that we more frequently assemble our thoughts in these ways than in haphazard relations. we habitually group similars together, or compare opposites in our thinking; hence these are the terms between which associative bonds are formed. partial, or selective, association.--the past is never wholly reinstated in present consciousness. many elements, because they had formed fewer associations, or because they find some obstacle to recall, are permanently dropped out and forgotten. in other words, association is always _selective_, favoring now this item of experience, now that, above the rest. it is well that this is so; for to be unable to escape from the great mass of minutiæ and unimportant detail in one's past would be intolerable, and would so cumber the mind with useless rubbish as to destroy its usefulness. we have surely all had some experience with the type of persons whose associations are so complete and impartial that all their conversation teems with unessential and irrelevant details. they cannot recount the simplest incident in its essential points but, slaves to literalness, make themselves insufferable bores by entering upon every lane and by-path of circumstance that leads nowhere and matters not the least in their story. dickens, thackeray, george eliot, shakespeare, and many other writers have seized upon such characters and made use of them for their comic effect. james, in illustrating this mental type, has quoted the following from miss austen's "emma": "'but where could _you_ hear it?' cried miss bates. 'where could you possibly hear it, mr. knightley? for it is not five minutes since i received mrs. cole's note--no, it cannot be more than five--or at least ten--for i had got my bonnet and spencer on, just ready to come out--i was only gone down to speak to patty again about the pork--jane was standing in the passage--were not you, jane?--for my mother was so afraid that we had not any salting-pan large enough. so i said i would go down and see, and jane said: "shall i go down instead? for i think you have a little cold, and patty has been washing the kitchen." "oh, my dear," said i--well, and just then came the note.'" the remedy.--the remedy for such wearisome and fruitless methods of association is, as a matter of theory, simple and easy. it is to emphasize, intensify, and dwell upon the _significant and essential_ in our thinking. the person who listens to a story, who studies a lesson, or who is a participant in any event must apply a _sense of value_, recognizing and fixing the important and relegating the trivial and unimportant to their proper level. not to train one's self to think in this discriminating way is much like learning to play a piano by striking each key with equal force! . training in association since association is at bottom nothing but habit at work in the mental processes, it follows that it, like other forms of habit, can be encouraged or suppressed by training. certainly, no part of one's education is of greater importance than the character of his associations. for upon these will largely depend not alone the _content_ of his mental stream, the stuff of his thinking, but also its _organization_, or the use made of the thought material at hand. in fact, the whole science of education rests on the laws and principles involved in setting up right systems of associative connections in the individual. the pleasure-pain motive in association.--a general law seems to obtain throughout the animal world that associative responses accompanied by pleasure tend to persist and grow stronger, while those accompanied by pain tend to weaken and fall away. the little child of two years may not understand the gravity of the offense in tearing the leaves out of books, but if its hands are sharply spatted whenever they tear a book, the association between the sight of books and tearing them will soon cease. in fact, all punishment should have for its object the use of pain in the breaking of associative bonds between certain situations and wrong responses to them. on the other hand, the dog that is being trained to perform his tricks is rewarded with a tidbit or a pat when the right response has been made. in this way the bond for this particular act is strengthened through the use of pleasure. all matter studied and learned under the stimulus of good feeling, enthusiasm, or a pleasurable sense of victory and achievement not only tends to set up more permanent and valuable associations than if learned under opposite conditions, but it also exerts a stronger appeal to our interest and appreciation. the influence of mental attitude on the matter we study raises a question as to the wisdom of assigning the committing of poetry, or bible verses, or the reading of so many pages of a literary masterpiece as a punishment for some offense. how many of us have carried away associations of dislike and bitterness toward some gem of verse or prose or scripture because of having our learning of it linked up with the thought of an imposed task set as penance for wrong-doing! one person tells me that to this day she hates the sight of tennyson because this was the volume from which she was assigned many pages to commit in atonement for her youthful delinquencies. interest as a basis for association.--associations established under the stimulus of strong interest are relatively broad and permanent, while those formed with interest flagging are more narrow and of doubtful permanence. this statement is, of course, but a particular application of the law of attention. interest brings the whole self into action. under its urging the mind is active and alert. the new facts learned are completely registered, and are assimilated to other facts to which they are related. many associative connections are formed, hence the new matter is more certain of recall, and possesses more significance and meaning. association and methods of learning.--the number and quality of our associations depends in no small degree on our methods of learning. we may be satisfied merely to impress what we learn on our memory, committing it uncritically as so many facts to be stored away as a part of our education. we may go a step beyond this and grasp the simplest and most obvious meanings, but not seek for the deeper and more fundamental relations. we may learn separate sections or divisions of a subject, accepting each as a more or less complete unit, without connecting these sections and divisions into a logical whole. but all such methods are a mistake. they do not provide for the associative bonds between the various facts or groups of facts in our knowledge, without which our facts are in danger of becoming but so much lumber in the mind. meanings, relations, definitely recognized associations, should attach to all that we learn. better far a smaller amount of _usable_ knowledge than any quantity of unorganized and undigested information, even if the latter sometimes allows us to pass examinations and receive honor grades. in short, real mastery demands that we _think_, that is _relate_ and _associate_, instead of merely _absorbing_ as we learn. . problems in observation and introspection . test the uncontrolled associations of a group of pupils by pronouncing to the class some word, as _blue_, and having the members write down words in succession as rapidly as they can, taking in each instance the first word that occurs to them. the difference in the scope, or range, of associations, can easily be studied by applying this test to, say, a fourth grade and an eighth grade and then comparing results. . have you ever been puzzled by the appearance in your mind of some fact or incident not thought of before for years? were you able to trace out the associative connection that caused the fact to appear? why are we sometimes unable to recall, when we need them, facts that we perfectly well know? . you have observed that it is possible to be able to spell certain words when they occur in a spelling lesson, but to miss them when employing them in composition. it is possible to learn a conjugation or a declension in tabular form, and then not be able to use the correct forms of words in speech or writing. relate these facts to the laws of association, and recommend a method of instruction that will remove the discrepancy. . to test the quickness of association in a class of children, copy the following words clearly in a vertical column on a chart; have your class all ready at a given signal; then display the chart before them for sixty seconds, asking them to write down on paper the exact _opposite_ of as many words as possible in one minute. be sure that all know just what they are expected to do. bad, inside, slow, short, little, soft, black, dark, sad, true, dislike, poor, well, sorry, thick, full, peace, few, below, enemy. count the number of correct opposites got by each pupil. . can you think of garrulous persons among your acquaintance the explanation of whose tiresomeness is that their association is of the _complete_ instead of the _selective_ type? watch for such illustrations in conversation and in literature (e.g., juliet's nurse). . observe children in the schoolroom for good and poor training in association. have you ever had anything that you otherwise presumably would enjoy rendered distasteful because of unpleasant associations? pass your own methods of learning in review, and also inquire into the methods used by children in study, to determine whether they are resulting in the best possible use of association. chapter xi memory every hour of our lives we call upon memory to supply us with some fact or detail from out our past. let memory wholly fail us, and we find ourselves helpless and out of joint in a world we fail to understand. a poor memory handicaps one in the pursuit of education, hampers him in business or professional success, and puts him at a disadvantage in every relation of life. on the other hand, a good memory is an asset on which the owner realizes anew each succeeding day. . the nature of memory now that you come to think of it, you can recall perfectly well that columbus discovered america in ; that your house is painted white; that it rained a week ago today. but where were these once-known facts, now remembered so easily, while they were out of your mind? where did they stay while you were not thinking of them? the common answer is, "stored away in my memory." yet no one believes that the memory is a warehouse of facts which we pack away there when we for a time have no use for them, as we store away our old furniture. what is retained.--the truth is that the simple question i asked you is by no means an easy one, and i will answer it myself by asking you an easier one: as we sit with the sunlight streaming into our room, where is the darkness which filled it last night? and where will all this light be at midnight tonight? answer these questions, and the ones i asked about your remembered facts will be answered. while it is true that, regardless of the conditions in our little room, darkness still exists wherever there is no light, and light still exists wherever there is no darkness, yet for this particular room _there is no darkness when the sun shines in_, and _there is no light when the room is filled with darkness_. so in the case of a remembered fact. although the fact that columbus discovered america some four hundred years ago, that your house is of a white color, that it rained a week ago today, exists as a fact regardless of whether your minds think of these things at all, yet the truth remains as before: for the particular mind which remembers these things, _the facts did not exist while they were out of the mind_. _it is not the remembered fact which is retained_, but the power to reproduce the fact when we require it. the physical basis of memory.--the power to reproduce a once-known fact depends ultimately on the brain. this is not hard to understand if we go back a little and consider that brain activity was concerned in every perception we have ever had, and in every fact we have ever known. indeed, it was through a certain neural activity of the cortex that you were able originally to know that columbus discovered america, that your house is white, and that it rained on a day in the past. without this cortical activity, these facts would have existed just as truly, but _you_ would never have known them. without this neural activity in the brain there is no consciousness, and to it we must look for the recurrence in consciousness of remembered facts, as well as for those which appear for the first time. how we remember.--now, if we are to have a once-known fact repeated in consciousness, or in other words _remembered_, what we must do on the physiological side is to provide for a repetition of the neural activity which was at first responsible for the fact's appearing in consciousness. the mental accompaniment of the repeated activity _is the memory_. thus, as _memory is the approximate repetition of once-experienced mental states or facts, together with the recognition of their belonging to our past, so it is accomplished by an approximate repetition of the once-performed neural process in the cortex which originally accompanied these states or facts_. the part played by the brain in memory makes it easy to understand why we find it so impossible to memorize or to recall when the brain is fatigued from long hours of work or lack of sleep. it also explains the derangement in memory that often comes from an injury to the brain, or from the toxins of alcohol, drugs or disease. dependence of memory on brain quality.--differences in memory ability, while depending in part on the training memory receives, rest ultimately on the memory-quality of the brain. james tells us that four distinct types of brains may be distinguished, and he describes them as follows: brains that are: ( ) like _marble_ to receive and like _marble_ to retain. ( ) like _wax_ to receive and like _wax_ to retain. ( ) like _marble_ to receive and like _wax_ to retain. ( ) like _wax_ to receive and like _marble_ to retain. the first type gives us those who memorize slowly and with much heroic effort, but who keep well what they have committed. the second type represents the ones who learn in a flash, who can cram up a lesson in a few minutes, but who forget as easily and as quickly as they learn. the third type characterizes the unfortunates who must labor hard and long for what they memorize, only to see it quickly slipping from their grasp. the fourth type is a rare boon to its possessor, enabling him easily to stock his memory with valuable material, which is readily available to him upon demand. the particular type of brain we possess is given us through heredity, and we can do little or nothing to change the type. whatever our type of brain, however, we can do much to improve our memory by obeying the laws upon which all good memory depends. . the four factors involved in memory nothing is more obvious than that memory cannot return to us what has never been given into its keeping, what has not been retained, or what for any reason cannot be recalled. further, if the facts given back by memory are not recognized as belonging to our past, memory would be incomplete. memory, therefore, involves the following four factors: ( ) _registration_, ( ) _retention_, ( ) _recall_, ( ) _recognition_. registration.--by registration we mean the learning or committing of the matter to be remembered. on the brain side this involves producing in the appropriate neurones the activities which, when repeated again later, cause the fact to be recalled. it is this process that constitutes what we call "impressing the facts upon the brain." nothing is more fatal to good memory than partial or faulty registration. a thing but half learned is sure to be forgotten. we often stop in the mastery of a lesson just short of the full impression needed for permanent retention and sure recall. we sometimes say to our teachers, "i cannot remember," when, as a matter of fact, we have never learned the thing we seek to recall. retention.--retention, as we have already seen, resides primarily in the brain. it is accomplished through the law of habit working in the neurones of the cortex. here, as elsewhere, habit makes an activity once performed more easy of performance each succeeding time. through this law a neural activity once performed tends to be repeated; or, in other words, a fact once known in consciousness tends to be remembered. that so large a part of our past is lost in oblivion, and out of the reach of our memory, is probably much more largely due to a failure to _recall_ than to _retain_. we say that we have forgotten a fact or a name which we cannot recall, try as hard as we may; yet surely all have had the experience of a long-striven-for fact suddenly appearing in our memory when we had given it up and no longer had use for it. it was retained all the time, else it never could have come back at all. an aged man of my acquaintance lay on his deathbed. in his childhood he had first learned to speak german; but, moving with his family when he was eight or nine years of age to an english-speaking community, he had lost his ability to speak german, and had been unable for a third of a century to carry on a conversation in his mother tongue. yet during the last days of his sickness he lost almost wholly the power to use the english language, and spoke fluently in german. during all these years his brain paths had retained the power to reproduce the forgotten words, even though for so long a time the words could not be recalled. james quotes a still more striking case of an aged woman who was seized with a fever and, during her delirious ravings, was heard talking in latin, hebrew and greek. she herself could neither read nor write, and the priests said she was possessed of a devil. but a physician unraveled the mystery. when the girl was nine years of age, a pastor, who was a noted scholar, had taken her into his home as a servant, and she had remained there until his death. during this time she had daily heard him read aloud from his books in these languages. her brain had indelibly retained the record made upon it, although for years she could not have recalled a sentence, if, indeed, she had ever been able to do so. recall.--recall depends entirely on association. there is no way to arrive at a certain fact or name that is eluding us except by means of some other facts, names, or what-not so related to the missing term as to be able to bring it into the fold. memory arrives at any desired fact only over a bridge of associations. it therefore follows that the more associations set up between the fact to be remembered and related facts already in the mind, the more certain the recall. historical dates and events should when learned be associated with important central dates and events to which they naturally attach. geographical names, places or other information should be connected with related material already in the mind. scientific knowledge should form a coherent and related whole. in short, everything that is given over to the memory for its keeping should be linked as closely as possible to material of the same sort. this is all to say that we should not expect our memory to retain and reproduce isolated, unrelated facts, but should give it the advantage of as many logical and well grounded associations as possible. recognition.--a fact reproduced by memory but not recognized as belonging to our past experience would impress us as a new fact. this would mean that memory would fail to link the present to the past. often we are puzzled to know whether we have before met a certain person, or on a former occasion told a certain story, or previously experienced a certain present state of mind which seems half familiar. such baffling mental states are usually but instances of partial and incomplete recognition. recognition no longer applies to much of our knowledge; for example, we say we remember that four times six is twenty-four, but probably none of us can recall when and where we learned this fact--we cannot _recognize_ it as belonging to our past experience. so with ten thousand other things, which we _know_ rather than remember in the strict sense. . the stuff of memory what are the forms in which memory presents the past to us? what are the elements with which it deals? what is the stuff of which it consists? images as the material of memory.--in the light of our discussion upon mental imagery, and with the aid of a little introspection, the answer is easy. i ask you to remember your home, and at once a visual image of the familiar house, with its well-known rooms and their characteristic furnishings, comes to your mind. i ask you to remember the last concert you attended, or the chorus of birds you heard recently in the woods; and there comes a flood of images, partly visual, but largely auditory, from the melodies you heard. or i ask you to remember the feast of which you partook yesterday, and gustatory and olfactory images are prominent among the others which appear. and so i might keep on until i had covered the whole range of your memory; and, whether i ask you for the simple trivial experiences of your past, for the tragic or crucial experiences, or for the most abstruse and abstract facts which you know and can recall, the case is the same: much of what memory presents to you comes in the form of _images_ or of _ideas_ of your past. images vary as to type.--we do not all remember what we call the same fact in like images or ideas. when you remembered that columbus discovered america in , some of you had an image of columbus the mariner standing on the deck of his ship, as the old picture shows him; and accompanying this image was an idea of "long agoness." others, in recalling the same fact, had an image of the coast on which he landed, and perchance felt the rocking of the boat and heard it scraping on the sand as it neared the shore. and still others saw on the printed page the words stating that columbus discovered america in . and so in an infinite variety of images or ideas we may remember what we call the same fact, though of course the fact is not really the same fact to any two of us, nor to any one of us when it comes to us on different occasions in different images. other memory material.--but sensory images are not the only material with which memory has to deal. we may also recall the bare fact that it rained a week ago today without having images of the rain. we may recall that columbus discovered america in without visual or other images of the event. as a matter of fact we do constantly recall many facts of abstract nature, such as mathematical or scientific formulæ with no imagery other than that of the words or symbols, if indeed these be present. memory may therefore use as its stuff not only images, but also a wide range of facts, ideas and meanings of all sorts. . laws underlying memory the development of a good memory depends in no small degree on the closeness with which we follow certain well-demonstrated laws. the law of association.--the law of association, as we have already seen, is fundamental. upon it the whole structure of memory depends. stating this law in neural terms we may say: brain areas which are _active together at the same time tend to establish associative paths_, so that when one of them is again active the other is also brought into activity. expressing the same truth in mental terms: if two facts or experiences _occur together in consciousness_, and one of them is later recalled, it tends to cause the other to appear also. the law of repetition.--the law of repetition is but a restatement of the law of habit, and may be formulated as follows: the _more frequently_ a certain cortical activity occurs, the more easily is its repetition brought about. stating this law in mental terms we may say: the more often a fact is recalled in consciousness the easier and more certain the recall becomes. it is upon the law of repetition that reviews and drills to fix things in the memory are based. the law of recency.--we may state the law of recency in physiological terms as follows: the _more recently_ brain centers have been employed in a certain activity, the more easily are they thrown into the same activity. this, on the mental side, means: the more recently any facts have been present in consciousness the more easily are they recalled. it is in obedience to this law that we want to rehearse a difficult lesson just before the recitation hour, or cram immediately before an examination. the working of this law also explains the tendency of all memories to fade out as the years pass by. the law of vividness.--the law of vividness is of primary importance in memorizing. on the physical side it may be expressed as follows: the _higher the tension_ or the more intense the activity of neural centers the more easily the activity is repeated. the counterpart of this law in mental terms is: _the higher the degree of attention_ or concentration when the fact is registered the more certain it is of recall. better far one impression of a high degree of vividness than several repetitions with the attention wandering or the brain too fatigued to respond. not drill alone, but drill with concentration, is necessary to sure memory,--in proof of which witness the futile results on the part of the small boy who "studies his spelling lesson over fifteen times," the while he is at the same time counting his marbles. . rules for using the memory much careful and fruitful experimentation in the field of memory has taken place in recent years. the scientists are now able to give us certain simple rules which we can employ in using our memories, even if we lack the time or opportunity to follow all their technical discussions. wholes versus parts.--probably most people in setting to work to commit to memory a poem, oration, or other such material, have a tendency to learn it first by stanzas or sections and then put the parts together to form the whole. many tests, however, have shown this to be a less effective method than to go over the whole poem or oration time after time, finally giving special attention to any particularly difficult places. the only exception to this rule would seem to be in the case of very long productions, which may be broken up into sections of reasonable length. the method of committing by wholes instead of parts not only economizes time and effort in the learning, but also gives a better sense of unity and meaning to the matter memorized. rate of forgetting.--the rate of forgetting is found to be very much more rapid immediately following the learning than after a longer time has elapsed. this is to say that of what one is going to forget of matter committed to memory approximately one-half will fall away within the first twenty-four hours and three-fourths within the first three days. since it is always economy to fix afresh matter that is fading out before it has been wholly forgotten, it will manifestly pay to review important memory material within the first day or two after it has once been memorized. divided practice.--if to commit a certain piece of material we must go over it, say, ten different times, the results are found to be much better when the entire number of repetitions are not had in immediate succession, but with reasonable intervals between. this is due, no doubt, to the well-known fact that associations tend to take form and grow more secure even after we have ceased to think specifically of the matter in hand. the intervals allow time for the associations to form their connections. it is in this sense that james says we "learn to swim during the winter and to skate during the summer." forcing the memory to act.--in committing matter by reading it, the memory should be forced into activity just as fast as it is able to carry part of the material. if, after reading a poem over once, parts of it can be repeated without reference to the text, the memory should be compelled to reproduce these parts. so with all other material. re-reading should be applied only at such points as the memory has not yet grasped. not a memory, but memories.--professor james has emphasized the fact, which has often been demonstrated by experimental tests, that we do not possess a memory, but a collection of memories. our memory may be very good in one line and poor in another. nor can we "train our memory" in the sense of practicing it in one line and having the improvement extend equally to other lines. committing poetry may have little or no effect in strengthening the memory for historical or scientific data. in general, the memory must be trained in the specific lines in which it is to excel. general training will not serve except as it may lead to better modes of learning what is to be memorized. . what constitutes a good memory let us next inquire what are the qualities which enter into what we call a good memory. the merchant or politician will say, "ability to remember well people's faces and names"; the teacher of history, "the ability to recall readily dates and events"; the teacher of mathematics, "the power to recall mathematical formulæ"; the hotel waiter, "the ability to keep in mind half-a-dozen orders at a time"; the manager of a corporation, "the ability to recall all the necessary details connected with the running of the concern." while these answers are very divergent, yet they may all be true for the particular person testifying; for out of them all there emerges this common truth, that _the best memory is the one which best serves its possessor_. that is, one's memory not only must be ready and exact, but must produce the right kind of material; it must bring to us what we need in our thinking. a very easy corollary at once grows out of this fact; namely, that in order to have the memory return to us the right kind of matter, we must store it with the right kind of images and ideas, for the memory cannot give back to us anything which we have not first given into its keeping. a good memory selects its material.--the best memory is not necessarily the one which impartially repeats the largest number of facts of past experience. everyone has many experiences which he never needs to have reproduced in memory; useful enough they may have been at the time, but wholly useless and irrelevant later. they have served their purpose, and should henceforth slumber in oblivion. they would be but so much rubbish and lumber if they could be recalled. everyone has surely met that particular type of bore whose memory is so faithful to details that no incident in the story he tells, no matter however trivial, is ever omitted in the recounting. his associations work in such a tireless round of minute succession, without ever being able to take a jump or a short cut, that he is powerless to separate the wheat from the chaff; so he dumps the whole indiscriminate mass into our long-suffering ears. dr. carpenter tells of a member of parliament who could repeat long legal documents and acts of parliament after one reading. when he was congratulated on his remarkable gift, he replied that, instead of being an advantage to him, it was often a source of great inconvenience, because when he wished to recollect anything in a document he had read, he could do it only by repeating the whole from the beginning up to the point which he wished to recall. maudsley says that the kind of memory which enables a person "to read a photographic copy of former impressions with his mind's eye is not, indeed, commonly associated with high intellectual power," and gives as a reason that such a mind is hindered by the very wealth of material furnished by the memory from discerning the relations between separate facts upon which judgment and reasoning depend. it is likewise a common source of surprise among teachers that many of the pupils who could outstrip their classmates in learning and memory do not turn out to be able men. but this, says whately, "is as reasonable as to wonder that a cistern if filled should not be a perpetual fountain." it is possible for one to be so lost in a tangle of trees that he cannot see the woods. a good memory requires good thinking.--it is not, then, mere re-presentation of facts that constitutes a good memory. the pupil who can reproduce a history lesson by the page has not necessarily as good a memory as the one who remembers fewer facts, but sees the relations between those remembered, and hence is _able to choose what he will remember_. memory must be _discriminative_. it must fasten on that which is important and keep that for us. therefore we can agree that "_the art of remembering is the art of thinking_." discrimination must select the important out of our mental stream, and these images must be associated with as many others as possible which are already well fixed in memory, and hence are sure of recall when needed. in this way the old will always serve as a cue to call up the new. memory must be specialized.--and not only must memory, if it is to be a good memory, omit the generally worthless, or trivial, or irrelevant, and supply the generally useful, significant, and relevant, but it must in some degree be a _specialized memory_. it must minister to the particular needs and requirements of its owner. small consolation to you if you are a latin teacher, and are able to call up the binomial theorem or the date of the fall of constantinople when you are in dire need of a conjugation or a declension which eludes you. it is much better for the merchant and politician to have a good memory for names and faces than to be able to repeat the succession of english monarchs from alfred the great to edward vii and not be able to tell john smith from tom brown. it is much more desirable for the lawyer to be able to remember the necessary details of his case than to be able to recall all the various athletic records of the year; and so on. in order to be a good memory for _us_, our memory must be faithful in dealing with the material which constitutes the needs of our vocations. our memory may, and should, bring to us many things outside of our immediate vocations, else our lives will be narrow; but its chief concern and most accurate work must be along the path of our everyday requirements at its hands. and this works out well in connection with the physiological laws which were stated a little while since, providing that our vocations are along the line of our interests. for the things with which we work daily, and in which we are interested, will be often thought of together, and hence will become well associated. they will be frequently recalled, and hence more easily remembered; they will be vividly experienced as the inevitable result of interest, and this goes far to insure recall. . memory devices many devices have been invented for training or using the memory, and not a few worthless "systems" have been imposed by conscienceless fakers upon uninformed people. all memorizing finally must go back to the fundamental laws of brain activity and the rules growing out of these laws. there is no "royal road" to a good memory. the effects of cramming.--not a few students depend on cramming for much of their learning. if this method of study would yield as valuable permanent results, it would be by far the most sensible and economical method to use; for under the stress of necessity we often are able to accomplish results much faster than when no pressure is resting upon us. the difficulty is, however, that the results are not permanent; the facts learned do not have time to seek out and link themselves to well-established associates; learned in an hour, their retention is as ephemeral as the application which gave them to us. facts which are needed but temporarily and which cannot become a part of our body of permanent knowledge may profitably be learned by cramming. the lawyer needs many details for the case he is trying, which not only are valueless to him as soon as the case is decided, but would positively be in his way. he may profitably cram such facts. but those facts which are to become a permanent part of his mental equipment, such as the fundamental principles of law, he cannot cram. these he must have in a logical chain which will not leave their recall dependent upon a chance cue. crammed facts may serve us during a recitation or an examination, but they never really become a part of us. nothing can take the place of the logical placing of facts if they are to be remembered with facility, and be usable in thinking when recalled. remembering isolated facts.--but after all this is taken into consideration there still remain a large number of facts which refuse to fit into any connected or logical system. or, if they do belong with some system, their connection is not very close, and we have more need for the few individual facts than for the system as a whole. hence we must have some means of remembering such facts other than by connecting them with their logical associations. such facts as may be typified by the multiplication table, certain dates, events, names, numbers, errands, and engagements of various kinds--all these need to be remembered accurately and quickly when the occasion for them arises. we must be able to recall them with facility, so that the occasion will not have passed by before we can secure them and we have failed to do our part because of the lapse. with facts of this type the means of securing a good memory are the same as in the case of logical memory, except that we must of necessity forego the linking to naturally related associates. we can, however, take advantage of the three laws which have been given. if these methods are used faithfully, then we have done what we can in the way of insuring the recall of facts of this type, unless we associate them with some artificial cue, such as tying a thread around our finger to remember an errand, or learning the multiplication table by singing it. we are not to be too ready to excuse ourselves, however, if we have forgotten to mail the letter or deliver the message; for our attention may have been very lax when we recorded the direction in the first place, and we may never have taken the trouble to think of the matter between the time it was given into our keeping and the time we were to perform the errand. mnemonic devices.--many ingenious devices have been invented to assist the memory. no doubt each one of you has some way of your own of remembering certain things committed to you, or some much-needed fact which has a tendency to elude you. you may not tie the traditional string around your finger or place your watch in the wrong pocket; but if not, you have invented some method which suits your convenience better. while many books have been written, and many lectures given exploiting mnemonic systems, they are, however, all founded upon the same general principle: namely, that of _association of ideas_ in the mind. they all make use of the same basis for memory that any of us use every time we remember anything, from the commonest event which occurred last hour to the most abstruse bit of philosophy which we may have in our minds. they all tie the fact to be remembered to some other fact which is sure of recall, and then trust the old fact to bring the new along with it when it again comes into the mind. artificial devices may be permissible in remembering the class of facts which have no logical associates in which we can relate them; but even then i cannot help feeling that if we should use the same care and ingenuity in carefully recording the seemingly unrelated facts that we do in working out the device and making the association in it, we should discover hidden relations for most of the facts we wish to remember, and we should be able to insure their recall as certainly and in a better way than through the device. then, also, we should not be in danger of handing over to the device various facts for which we should discover relations, thus placing them in the logical body of our usable knowledge where they belong. . problems in observation and introspection . carefully consider your own powers of memory and see whether you can decide which of the four types of brain you have. apply similar tests to your classmates or a group of school children whom you have a chance to observe. be sure to take into account the effects of past training or habits of memory. . watch in your own memorizing and also that of school children for failures in recall caused by lack of proper associations. why is it particularly hard to commit what one does not understand? . observe a class in a recitation or an examination and seek to discover whether any defects of memory revealed are to be explained by lack of ( ) repetition, ( ) recency, ( ) vividness in learning. . make a study of your own class and also of a group of children in school to discover their methods of memorizing. have in mind the rules for memorizing given in section of this chapter. . observe by introspection your method of recall of historical events you have studied, and note whether _images_ form an important part of your memory material; or does your recall consist chiefly of bare _facts_? in how far does this depend on your method of _learning_ the facts in the first place? . carefully consider your experience from cramming your lessons. does the material learned in this way stay with you? do you _understand_ it and find yourself able to _use_ it as well as stuff learned during a longer interval and with more time for associations to form? chapter xii thinking no word is more constantly on our lips than the word _think_. a hundred times a day we tell what we think about this thing or that. any exceptional power of thought classes us among the efficient of our generation. it is in their ability to think that men stand preëminently above the animals. . different types of thinking the term _think_, or _thinking_, is employed in so many different senses that it will be well first of all to come to an understanding as to its various uses. four different types of thinking which we shall note are:[ ] ( ) _chance_, or idle, thinking; ( ) thinking in the form of _uncritical belief_; ( ) _assimilative_ thinking; and ( ) _deliberative_ thinking. chance or idle thinking.--our thinking is of the chance or idle kind when we think to no conscious end. no particular problem is up for solution, and the stream of thought drifts along in idleness. in such thinking, immediate interest, some idle fancy, the impulse of the moment, or the suggestions from our environment determine the train of associations and give direction to our thought. in a sense, we surrender our mental bark to the winds of circumstance to drive it whithersoever they will without let or hindrance from us. since no results are sought from our thinking, none are obtained. the best of us spend more time in these idle trains of thought than we would like to admit, while inferior and untrained minds seldom rise above this barren thought level. not infrequently even when we are studying a lesson which demands our best thought power we find that an idle chain of associations has supplanted the more rigid type of thinking and appropriated the field. uncritical belief.--we often say that we think a certain thing is true or false when we have, as a matter of fact, done little or no thinking about it. we only _believe_, or uncritically accept, the common point of view as to the truth or untruth of the matter concerned. the ancients believed that the earth was flat, and the savages that eclipses were caused by animals eating up the moon. not a few people today believe that potatoes and other vegetables should be planted at a certain phase of the moon, that sickness is a visitation of providence, and that various "charms" are potent to bring good fortune or ward off disaster. probably not one in a thousand of those who accept such beliefs could give, or have ever tried to give, any rational reason for their point of view. but we must not be too harsh toward such crude illustrations of uncritical thinking. it is entirely possible that not all of us who pride ourselves on our trained powers of thought could give good reasons discovered by our own thinking why we think our political party, our church, or our social organization is better than some other one. how few of us, after all, really _discover_ our creed, _join_ a church, or _choose_ a political party! we adopt the points of view of our nation or our group much as we adopt their customs and dress--not because we are convinced by thinking that they are best, but because they are less trouble. assimilative thinking.--it is this type of thinking that occupies us when we seek to appropriate new facts or ideas and understand them; that is, relate them to knowledge already on hand. we think after this fashion in much of our study in schools and textbooks. the problem for our thought is not so much one of invention or discovery as of grasp and assimilation. our thinking is to apprehend meanings and relations, and so unify and give coherence to our knowledge. in the absence of this type of thinking one may commit to memory many facts that he does not understand, gather much information that contains little meaning to him, and even achieve very creditable scholastic grades that stand for a small amount of education or development. for all information, to become vital and usable, must be thought into relation to our present active, functioning body of knowledge; therefore assimilative thinking is fundamental to true mastery and learning. deliberative thinking.--deliberative thinking constitutes the highest type of thought process. in order to do deliberative thinking there is necessary, first of all, what dewey calls a "split-road" situation. a traveler going along a well-beaten highway, says dr. dewey, does not deliberate; he simply keeps on going. but let the highway split into two roads at a fork, only one of which leads to the desired destination, and now a problem confronts him; he must take one road or the other, but _which_? the intelligent traveler will at once go to _seeking for evidence_ as to which road he should choose. he will balance this fact against that fact, and this probability against that probability, in an effort to arrive at a solution of his problem. before we can engage in deliberative thinking we must be confronted by some problem, some such "_split-road_" situation in our mental stream--we must have something to think about. it is this fact that makes one writer say that the great purpose of one's education is not to solve all his problems for him. it is rather to help him ( ) to _discover_ problems, or "_split-road_" situations, ( ) to assist him in gathering the facts necessary for their solution, and ( ) to train him in the weighing of his facts or evidence, that is, in deliberative thinking. only as we learn to recognize the true problems that confront us in our own lives and in society about us can we become thinkers in the best sense. our own plans and projects, the questions of right and wrong that are constantly arising, the social, political and religious problems awaiting solution, all afford the opportunity and the necessity for deliberative thinking. and unhappy is the pupil whose school work does not set the problems and employ the methods which will insure training in this as well as in the assimilative type of thinking. every school subject, besides supplying certain information to be "learned," should present its problems requiring true deliberative thinking within the range of development and ability of the pupil, and no subject--literature, history, science, language--is without many such problems. . the function of thinking all true thinking is for the purpose of discovering relations between the things we think about. imagine a world in which nothing is related to anything else; in which every object perceived, remembered, or imagined, stands absolutely by itself, independent and self-sufficient! what a chaos it would be! we might perceive, remember, and imagine all the various objects we please, but without the power to think them together, they would all be totally unrelated, and hence have no meaning. meaning depends on relations.--to have a rational meaning for us, things must always be defined in terms of other things, or in terms of their uses. _fuel_ is that which feeds _fire_. _food_ is what is eaten for _nourishment_. a _locomotive_ is a machine for _drawing a train_. _books_ are to _read_, _pianos_ to _play_, _balls_ to _throw_, _schools_ to _instruct_, _friends_ to _enjoy_, and so on through the whole list of objects which we know or can define. everything depends for its meaning on its relation to other things; and the more of these relations we can discover, the more fully do we see the meaning. thus balls may have other uses than to throw, schools other functions than to instruct, and friends mean much more to us than mere enjoyment. and just in the degree in which we have realized these different relations, have we defined the object, or, in other words, have we seen its meaning. the function of thinking is to discover relations.--now it is by _thinking_ that these relations are discovered. this is the function of thinking. thinking takes the various separate items of our experience and discovers to us the relations existing among them, and builds them together into a unified, related, and usable body of knowledge, threading each little bit on the string of relationship which runs through the whole. it was, no doubt, this thought which tennyson had in mind when he wrote: flower in the crannied wall, i pluck you out of the crannies, i hold you here, root and all, in my hand, little flower--but if i could understand what you are, root and all, and all in all, i should know what god and man is. starting in with even so simple a thing as a little flower, if he could discover all the relations which every part bears to every other part and to all other things besides, he would finally reach the meaning of god and man. for each separate thing, be it large or small, forms a link in an unbroken chain of relationships which binds the universe into an ordered whole. near and remote relations.--the relations discovered through our thinking may be very close and simple ones, as when a child sees the relation between his bottle and his dinner; or they may be very remote ones, as when newton saw the relation between the falling of an apple and the motion of the planets in their orbits. but whether simple or remote, the seeing of the relationships is in both cases alike thinking; for thinking is nothing, in its last analysis, but the discovering of the relationships which exist between the various objects in our mental stream. thinking passes through all grades of complexity, from the first faint dawnings in the mind of the babe when it sees the relation between the mother and its feeding, on to the mighty grasp of the sage who is able to "think god's thoughts after him." but it all comes to the same end finally--the bringing to light of new meanings through the discovery of new relations. and whatever does this is thinking. child and adult thinking.--what constitutes the difference in the thinking of the child and that of the sage? let us see whether we can discover this difference. in the first place the relations seen by the child are _immediate_ relations: they exist between simple percepts or images; the remote and the general are beyond his reach. he has not had sufficient experience to enable him to discover remote relations. he cannot think things which are absent from him, or which he has never known. the child could by no possibility have seen in the falling apple what newton saw; for the child knew nothing of the planets in their orbits, and hence could not see relations in which these formed one of the terms. the sage, on the other hand, is not limited to his immediate percepts or their images. he can see remote relations. he can go beyond individuals, and think in classes. the falling apple is not a mere falling apple to him, but one of a _class of falling bodies_. besides a rich experience full of valuable facts, the trained thinker has acquired also the habit of looking out for relations; he has learned that this is the method _par excellence_ of increasing his store of knowledge and of rendering effective the knowledge he has. he has learned how to think. the chief business of the child is the collection of the materials of thought, seeing only the more necessary and obvious relations as he proceeds; his chief business when older grown is to seek out the network of relations which unites this mass of material, and through this process to systematize and give new meanings to the whole. . the mechanism of thinking it is evident from the foregoing discussion that we may include under the term thinking all sorts of mental processes by which relations are apprehended between different objects of thought. thus young children think as soon as they begin to understand something of the meaning of the objects of their environment. even animals think by means of simple and direct associations. thinking may therefore go on in terms of the simplest and most immediate, or the most complex and distant relationships. sensations and percepts as elements in thinking.--relations seen between sensations would mean something, but not much; relations seen between _objects_ immediately present to the senses would mean much more; but our thinking must go far beyond the present, and likewise far beyond individual objects. it must be able to annihilate both time and space, and to deal with millions of individuals together in one group or class. only in this way can our thinking go beyond that of the lower animals; for a wise rat, even, may come to see the relation between a trap and danger, or a horse the relation between pulling with his teeth at the piece of string on the gate latch, and securing his liberty. but it takes the farther-reaching mind of man to _invent_ the trap and the latch. perception alone does not go far enough. it is limited to immediately present objects and their most obvious relations. the perceptual image is likewise subject to similar limitations. while it enables us to dispense with the immediate presence of the object, yet it deals with separate individuals; and the world is too full of individual objects for us to deal with them separately. it is in _conception_, _judgment_, and _reasoning_ that true thinking takes place. our next purpose will therefore be to study these somewhat more closely, and see how they combine in our thinking. . the concept fortunately for our thinking, the great external world, with its millions upon millions of individual objects, is so ordered that these objects can be grouped into comparatively few great classes; and for many purposes we can deal with the class as a whole instead of with the separate individuals of the class. thus there are an infinite number of individual objects in the world which are composed of _matter_. yet all these myriads of individuals may be classed under the two great heads of _inanimate_ and _animate_. taking one of these again: all animate forms may be classed as either _plants_ or _animals_. and these classes may again be subdivided indefinitely. animals include mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, mollusks, and many other classes besides, each class of which may be still further separated into its _orders_, _families_, _genera_, _species_, and _individuals_. this arrangement economizes our thinking by allowing us to think in large terms. the concepts serve to group and classify.--but the somewhat complicated form of classification just described did not come to man ready-made. someone had to _see_ the relationship existing among the myriads of animals of a certain class, and group these together under the general term _mammals_. likewise with birds, reptiles, insects, and all the rest. in order to accomplish this, many individuals of each class had to be observed, the qualities common to all members of the class discriminated from those not common, and the common qualities retained as the measure by which to test the admission of other individuals into this class. the process of classification is made possible by what the psychologist calls the _concept_. the concept enables us to think _birds_ as well as bluebirds, robins, and wrens; it enables us to think _men_ as well as tom, dick, and harry. in other words, _the concept lies at the bottom of all thinking which rises above the seeing of the simplest relations between immediately present objects_. growth of a concept.--we can perhaps best understand the nature of the concept if we watch its growth in the thinking of a child. let us see how the child forms the concept _dog_, under which he is able finally to class the several hundred or the several thousand different dogs with which his thinking requires him to deal. the child's first acquaintance with a dog is, let us suppose, with a pet poodle, white in color, and named _gyp_. at this stage in the child's experience, _dog_ and _gyp_ are entirely synonymous, including gyp's color, size, and all other qualities which the child has discovered. but now let him see another pet poodle which is like gyp except that it is black in color. here comes the first cleavage between _gyp_ and _dog_ as synonyms: _dog_ no longer means white, but may mean _black_. next let the child see a brown spaniel. not only will white and black now no longer answer to _dog_, but the roly-poly poodle form also has been lost; for the spaniel is more slender. let the child go on from this until he has seen many different dogs of all varieties: poodles, bulldogs, setters, shepherds, cockers, and a host of others. what has happened to his _dog_, which at the beginning meant the one particular little individual with which he played? _dog_ is no longer white or black or brown or gray: _color_ is not an essential quality, so it has dropped out; _size_ is no longer essential except within very broad limits; _shagginess_ or _smoothness_ of coat is a very inconstant quality, so this is dropped; _form_ varies so much from the fat pug to the slender hound that it is discarded, except within broad limits; _good nature_, _playfulness_, _friendliness_, and a dozen other qualities are likewise found not to belong in common to _all_ dogs, and so have had to go; and all that is left to his _dog_ is _four-footedness_, and a certain general _form_, and a few other dog qualities of habit of life and disposition. as the term _dog_ has been gaining in _extent_, that is, as more individuals have been observed and classed under it, it has correspondingly been losing in _content_, or it has been losing in the specific qualities which belong to it. yet it must not be thought that the process is altogether one of elimination; for new qualities which are present in all the individuals of a class, but at first overlooked, are continually being discovered as experience grows, and built into the developing concept. definition of concept.--a concept, then, is _our general idea or notion of a class of individual objects_. its function is to enable us to classify our knowledge, and thus deal with classes or universals in our thinking. often the basis of a concept consists of an _image_, as when you get a hazy visual image of a mass of people when i suggest _mankind_ to you. yet the core, or the vital, functioning part of a concept is its _meaning_. whether this meaning attaches to an image or a word or stands relatively or completely independent of either, does not so much matter; but our meanings must be right, else all our thinking is wrong. language and the concept.--we think in words. none has failed to watch the flow of his thought as it is carried along by words like so many little boats moving along the mental stream, each with its freight of meaning. and no one has escaped the temporary balking of his thought by failure to find a suitable word to convey the intended meaning. what the grammarian calls the _common nouns_ of our language are the words by which we name our concepts and are able to speak of them to others. we define a common noun as "the name of a class," and we define a concept as the meaning or idea we have of a class. it is easy to see that when we have named these class _ideas_ we have our list of common nouns. the study of the language of a people may therefore reveal much of their type of thought. the necessity for growing concepts.--the development of our concepts constitutes a large part of our education. for it is evident that, since thinking rests so fundamentally on concepts, progress in our mental life must depend on a constant growth in the number and character of our concepts. not only must we keep on adding new concepts, but the old must not remain static. when our concepts stop growing, our minds have ceased to grow--we no longer learn. this arrest of development is often seen in persons who have settled into a life of narrow routine, where the demands are few and of a simple nature. unless they rise above their routine, they early become "old fogies." their concepts petrify from lack of use and the constant reconstruction which growth necessitates. on the other hand, the person who has upon him the constant demand to meet new situations or do better in old ones will keep on enriching his old concepts and forming new ones, or else, unable to do this, he will fail in his position. and the person who keeps on steadily enriching his concepts has discovered the secret of perpetual youth so far as his mental life is concerned. for him there is no old age; his thought will be always fresh, his experience always accumulating, and his knowledge growing more valuable and usable. . judgment but in the building up of percepts and concepts, as well as in making use of them after they are formed, another process of thinking enters; namely, the process of _judging_. nature of judgment.--judging enters more or less into all our thinking, from the simplest to the most complex. the babe lies staring at his bottle, and finally it dawns on his sluggish mind that this is the object from which he gets his dinner. he has performed a judgment. that is, he has alternately directed his attention to the object before him and to his image of former nursing, discovered the relation existing between the two, and affirmed to himself, "this is what gives me my dinner." "bottle" and "what-gives-me-my-dinner" are essentially identical to the child. _judgment is, then, the affirmation of the essential identity of meaning of two objects of thought._ even if the proposition in which we state our judgment has in it a negative, the definition will still hold, for the mental process is the same in either case. it is as much a judgment if we say, "the day is not-cold," as if we say, "the day is cold." judgment used in percepts and concepts.--how judgment enters into the forming of our percepts may be seen from the illustration just given. the act by which the child perceived his bottle had in it a large element of judging. he had to compare two objects of thought--the one from past experience in the form of images, and the other from the present object, in the form of sensations from the bottle--and then affirm their essential identity. of course it is not meant that what i have described _consciously_ takes place in the mind of the child; but some such process lies at the bottom of every perception, whether of the child or anyone else. likewise it may be seen that the forming of concepts depends on judgment. every time that we meet a new object which has to be assigned its place in our classification, judgment is required. suppose the child, with his immature concept _dog_, sees for the first time a greyhound. he must compare this new specimen with his concept _dog_, and decide that this is or is not a dog. if he discovers the identity of meaning in the essentials of the two objects of thought, his judgment will be affirmative, and his concept will be modified in whatever extent _greyhound_ will affect it. judgment leads to general truths.--but judgment goes much farther than to assist in building percepts and concepts. it takes our concepts after they are formed and discovers and affirms relations between them, thus enabling us finally to relate classes as well as individuals. it carries our thinking over into the realm of the universal, where we are not hampered by particulars. let us see how this is done. suppose we have the concept _man_ and the concept _animal_, and that we think of these two concepts in their relation to each other. the mind analyzes each into its elements, compares them, and finds the essential identity of meaning in a sufficient number to warrant the judgment, _man is an animal_. this judgment has given a new bit of knowledge, in that it has discovered to us a new relation between two great classes, and hence given both, in so far, a new meaning and a wider definition. and as this new relation does not pertain to any particular man or any particular animal, but includes all individuals in each class, it has carried us over into universals, so that we have a _general_ truth and will not have to test each individual man henceforth to see whether he fits into this relation. judgments also, as we will see later, constitute the material for our reasoning. hence upon their validity will depend the validity of our reasoning. the validity of judgments.--now, since every judgment is made up of an affirmation of relation existing between two terms, it is evident that the validity of the judgment will depend on the thoroughness of our knowledge of the terms compared. if we know but few of the attributes of either term of the judgment, the judgment is clearly unsafe. imperfect concepts lie at the basis of many of our wrong judgments. a young man complained because his friend had been expelled from college for alleged misbehavior. he said, "mr. a---- was the best boy in the institution." it is very evident that someone had made a mistake in judgment. surely no college would want to expel the best boy in the institution. either my complainant or the authorities of the college had failed to understand one of the terms in the judgment. either "mr. a----" or "the best boy in the institution" had been wrongly interpreted by someone. likewise, one person will say, "jones is a good man," while another will say, "jones is a rascal." such a discrepancy in judgment must come from a lack of acquaintance with jones or a lack of knowledge of what constitutes a good man or a rascal. no doubt most of us are prone to make judgments with too little knowledge of the terms we are comparing, and it is usually those who have the least reason for confidence in their judgments who are the most certain that they cannot be mistaken. the remedy for faulty judgments is, of course, in making ourselves more certain of the terms involved, and this in turn sends us back for a review of our concepts or the experience upon which the terms depend. it is evident that no two persons can have just the same concepts, for all have not had the same experience out of which their concepts came. the concepts may be named the same, and may be nearly enough alike so that we can usually understand each other; but, after all, i have mine and you have yours, and if we could each see the other's in their true light, no doubt we should save many misunderstandings and quarrels. . reasoning all the mental processes which we have so far described find their culmination and highest utility in _reasoning_. not that reasoning comes last in the list of mental activities, and cannot take place until all the others have been completed, for reasoning is in some degree present almost from the dawn of consciousness. the difference between the reasoning of the child and that of the adult is largely one of degree--of reach. reasoning goes farther than any of the other processes of cognition, for it takes the relations expressed in judgments and out of these relations evolves still other and more ultimate relations. nature of reasoning.--it is hard to define reasoning so as to describe the precise process which occurs; for it is so intermingled with perception, conception, and judgment, that one can hardly separate them even for purposes of analysis, much less to separate them functionally. we may, however, define reasoning provisionally as _thinking by means of a series of judgments with the purpose of arriving at some definite end or conclusion_. what does this mean? professor angell has stated the matter so clearly that i will quote his illustration of the case: "suppose that we are about to make a long journey which necessitates the choice from among a number of possible routes. this is a case of the genuinely problematic kind. it requires reflection, a weighing of the _pros_ and _cons_, and giving of the final decision in favor of one or other of several alternatives. in such a case the procedure of most of us is after this order. we think of one route as being picturesque and wholly novel, but also as being expensive. we think of another as less interesting, but also as less expensive. a third is, we discover, the most expedient, but also the most costly of the three. we find ourselves confronted, then, with the necessity of choosing with regard to the relative merits of cheapness, beauty, and speed. we proceed to consider these points in the light of all our interests, and the decision more or less makes itself. we find, for instance, that we must, under the circumstances, select the cheapest route." how judgments function in reasoning.--such a line of thinking is very common to everyone, and one that we carry out in one form or another a thousand times every day we live. when we come to look closely at the steps involved in arriving at a conclusion, we detect a series of judgments--often not very logically arranged, to be sure, but yet so related that the result is safely reached in the end. we compare our concept of, say, the first route and our concept of picturesqueness, decide they agree, and affirm the judgment, "this route is picturesque." likewise we arrive at the judgment, "this route is also expensive, it is interesting, etc." then we take the other routes and form our judgments concerning them. these judgments are all related to each other in some way, some of them being more intimately related than others. which judgments remain as the significant ones, the ones which are used to solve the problem finally, depends on which concepts are the most vital for us with reference to the ultimate end in view. if time is the chief element, then the form of our reasoning would be something like this: "two of the routes require more than three days: hence i must take the third route." if economy is the important end, the solution would be as follows: "two routes cost more than $ , ; i cannot afford to pay more than $ ; i therefore must patronize the third route." in both cases it is evident that the conclusion is reached through a comparison of two or more judgments. this is the essential difference between judgment and reasoning. whereas judgment discovers relations between concepts, _reasoning discovers relations between judgments, and from this evolves a new judgment which is the conclusion sought_. the example given well illustrates the ordinary method by which we reason to conclusions. deduction and the syllogism.--logic may take the conclusion, with the two judgments on which it is based, and form the three into what is called a _syllogism_, of which the following is a classical type: all men are mortal; socrates is a man, therefore socrates is mortal. the first judgment is in the form of a proposition which is called the _major premise_, because it is general in its nature, including all men. the second is the _minor premise_, since it deals with a particular man. the third is the _conclusion_, in which a new relation is discovered between socrates and mortality. this form of reasoning is _deductive_, that is, it proceeds from the general to the particular. much of our reasoning is an abbreviated form of the syllogism, and will readily expand into it. for instance, we say, "it will rain tonight, for there is lightning in the west." expanded into the syllogism form it would be, "lightning in the west is a sure sign of rain; there is lightning in the west this evening; therefore, it will rain tonight." while we do not commonly think in complete syllogisms, it is often convenient to cast our reasoning in this form to test its validity. for example, a fallacy lurks in the generalization, "lightning in the west is a sure sign of rain." hence the conclusion is of doubtful validity. induction.--deduction is a valuable form of reasoning, but a moment's reflection will show that something must precede the syllogism in our reasoning. the _major premise must be accounted for_. how are we able to say that all men are mortal, and that lightning in the west is a sure sign of rain? how was this general truth arrived at? there is only one way, namely, through the observation of a large number of particular instances, or through _induction_. induction is the method of proceeding from the particular to the general. many men are observed, and it is found that all who have been observed have died under a certain age. it is true that not all men have been observed to die, since many are now living, and many more will no doubt come and live in the world whom _we_ cannot observe, since mortality will have overtaken us before their advent. to this it may be answered that the men now living have not yet lived up to the limit of their time, and, besides, they have within them the causes working whose inevitable effect has always been and always will be death; likewise with the men yet unborn, they will possess the same organism as we, whose very nature necessitates mortality. in the case of the premonitions of rain, the generalization is not so safe, for there have been exceptions. lightning in the west at night is not always followed by rain, nor can we find inherent causes as in the other case which necessitates rain as an effect. the necessity for broad induction.--thus it is seen that our generalizations, or major premises, are of all degrees of validity. in the case of some, as the mortality of man, millions of cases have been observed and no exceptions found, but on the contrary, causes discovered whose operation renders the result inevitable. in others, as, for instance, in the generalization once made, "all cloven-footed animals chew their cud," not only had the examination of individual cases not been carried so far as in the former case when the generalization was made, but there were found no inherent causes residing in cloven-footed animals which make it necessary for them to chew their cud. that is, cloven feet and cud-chewing do not of necessity go together, and the case of the pig disproves the generalization. in practically no instance, however, is it possible for us to examine every case upon which a generalization is based; after examining a sufficient number of cases, and particularly if there are supporting causes, we are warranted in making the "inductive leap," or in proceeding at once to state our generalization as a working hypothesis. of course it is easy to see that if we have a wrong generalization, if our major premise is invalid, all that follows in our chain of reasoning will be worthless. this fact should render us careful in making generalizations on too narrow a basis of induction. we may have observed that certain red-haired people of our acquaintance are quick-tempered, but we are not justified from this in making the general statement that all red-haired people are quick-tempered. not only have we not examined a sufficient number of cases to warrant such a conclusion, but we have found in the red hair not even a cause of quick temper, but only an occasional concomitant. the interrelation of induction and deduction.--induction and deduction must go hand in hand in building up our world of knowledge. induction gives us the particular facts out of which our system of knowledge is built, furnishes us with the data out of which general truths are formed; deduction allows us to start with the generalization furnished us by induction, and from this vantage ground to organize and systematize our knowledge and, through the discovery of its relations, to unify it and make it usable. deduction starts with a general truth and asks the question, "what new relations are made necessary among particular facts by this truth?" induction starts with particulars, and asks the question, "to what general truth do these separate facts lead?" each method of reasoning needs the other. deduction must have induction to furnish the facts for its premises; induction must have deduction to organize these separate facts into a unified body of knowledge. "he only sees well who sees the whole in the parts, and the parts in the whole." . problems in observation and introspection . watch your own thinking for examples of each of the four types described. observe a class of children in a recitation or at study and try to decide which type is being employed by each child. what proportion of the time supposedly given to study is given over to _chance_ or idle thinking? to _assimilative_ thinking? to _deliberative_ thinking? . observe children at work in school with the purpose of determining whether they are being taught to _think_, or only to memorize certain facts. do you find that definitions whose meaning is not clear are often required of children? which should come first, the definition or the meaning and application of it? . it is of course evident from the relation of induction and deduction that the child's natural mode of learning a subject is by induction. observe the teaching of children to determine whether inductive methods are commonly used. outline an inductive lesson in arithmetic, physiology, geography, civics, etc. . what concepts have you now which you are aware are very meager? what is your concept of _mountain?_ how many have you seen? have you any concepts which you are working very hard to enrich? . recall some judgment which you have made and which proved to be false, and see whether you can now discover what was wrong with it. do you find the trouble to be an inadequate concept? what constitutes "good judgment"? "poor judgment"? did you ever make a mistake in an example in, say, percentage, by saying "this is the base," when it proved not to be? what was the cause of the error? . can you recall any instance in which you made too hasty a generalization when you had observed but few cases upon which to base your premise? what of your reasoning which followed? . see whether you can show that validity of reasoning rests ultimately on correct perceptions. what are you doing at present to increase your power of thinking? . how ought this chapter to help one in making a better teacher? a better student? chapter xiii instinct nothing is more wonderful than nature's method of endowing each individual at the beginning with all the impulses, tendencies and capacities that are to control and determine the outcome of the life. the acorn has the perfect oak tree in its heart; the complete butterfly exists in the grub; and man at his highest powers is present in the babe at birth. education _adds_ nothing to what heredity supplies, but only develops what is present from the first. we are a part of a great unbroken procession of life, which began at the beginning and will go on till the end. each generation receives, through heredity, the products of the long experience through which the race has passed. the generation receiving the gift today lives its own brief life, makes its own little contribution to the sum total and then passes on as millions have done before. through heredity, the achievements, the passions, the fears, and the tragedies of generations long since moldered to dust stir our blood and tone our nerves for the conflict of today. . the nature of instinct every child born into the world has resting upon him an unseen hand reaching out from the past, pushing him out to meet his environment, and guiding him in the start upon his journey. this impelling and guiding power from the past we call _instinct_. in the words of mosso: "instinct is the voice of past generations reverberating like a distant echo in the cells of the nervous system. we feel the breath, the advice, the experience of all men, from those who lived on acorns and struggled like wild beasts, dying naked in the forests, down to the virtue and toil of our father, the fear and love of our mother." the babe's dependence on instinct.--the child is born ignorant and helpless. it has no memory, no reason, no imagination. it has never performed a conscious act, and does not know how to begin. it must get started, but how? it has no experience to direct it, and is unable to understand or imitate others of its kind. it is at this point that instinct comes to the rescue. the race has not given the child a mind ready made--that must develop; but it has given him a ready-made nervous system, ready to respond with the proper movements when it receives the touch of its environment through the senses. and this nervous system has been so trained during a limitless past that its responses are the ones which are necessary for the welfare of its owner. it can do a hundred things without having to wait to learn them. burdette says of the new-born child, "nobody told him what to do. nobody taught him. he knew. placed suddenly on the guest list of this old caravansary, he knew his way at once to two places in it--his bedroom and the dining-room." a thousand generations of babies had done the same thing in the same way, and each had made it a little easier for this particular baby to do his part without learning how. definition of instinct.--_instincts are the tendency to act in certain definite ways, without previous education and without a conscious end in view._ they are a tendency to _act_; for some movement, or motor adjustment, is the response to an instinct. they do not require previous _education_, for none is possible with many instinctive acts: the duck does not have to be taught to swim or the baby to suck. they have no conscious _end_ in view, though the result may be highly desirable. says james: "the cat runs after the mouse, runs or shows fight before the dog, avoids falling from walls and trees, shuns fire and water, etc., not because he has any notion either of life or death, or of self, or of preservation. he has probably attained to no one of these conceptions in such a way as to react definitely upon it. he acts in each case separately, and simply because he cannot help it; being so framed that when that particular running thing called a mouse appears in his field of vision he _must_ pursue; that when that particular barking and obstreperous thing called a dog appears he _must_ retire, if at a distance, and scratch if close by; that he _must_ withdraw his feet from water and his face from flame, etc. his nervous system is to a great extent a pre-organized bundle of such reactions. they are as fatal as sneezing, and exactly correlated to their special excitants as it to its own."[ ] you ask, why does the lark rise on the flash of a sunbeam from his meadow to the morning sky, leaving a trail of melody to mark his flight? why does the beaver build his dam, and the oriole hang her nest? why are myriads of animal forms on the earth today doing what they were countless generations ago? why does the lover seek the maid, and the mother cherish her young? _because the voice of the past speaks to the present, and the present has no choice but to obey._ instincts are racial habits.--instincts are the habits of the race which it bequeaths to the individual; the individual takes these for his start, and then modifies them through education, and thus adapts himself to his environment. through his instincts, the individual is enabled to short-cut racial experience, and begin at once on life activities which the race has been ages in acquiring. instinct preserves to us what the race has achieved in experience, and so starts us out where the race left off. unmodified instinct is blind.--many of the lower animal forms act on instinct blindly, unable to use past experience to guide their acts, incapable of education. some of them carry out seemingly marvelous activities, yet their acts are as automatic as those of a machine and as devoid of foresight. a species of mud wasp carefully selects clay of just the right consistency, finds a somewhat sheltered nook under the eaves, and builds its nest, leaving one open door. then it seeks a certain kind of spider, and having stung it so as to benumb without killing, carries it into the new-made nest, lays its eggs on the body of the spider so that the young wasps may have food immediately upon hatching out, then goes out and plasters the door over carefully to exclude all intruders. wonderful intelligence? not intelligence at all. its acts were dictated not by plans for the future, but by pressure from the past. let the supply of clay fail, or the race of spiders become extinct, and the wasp is helpless and its species will perish. likewise the _race_ of bees and ants have done wonderful things, but _individual_ bees and ants are very stupid and helpless when confronted by any novel conditions to which their race has not been accustomed. man starts in as blindly as the lower animals; but, thanks to his higher mental powers, this blindness soon gives way to foresight, and he is able to formulate purposeful ends and adapt his activities to their accomplishment. possessing a larger number of instincts than the lower animals have, man finds possible a greater number of responses to a more complex environment than do they. this advantage, coupled with his ability to reconstruct his experience in such a way that he secures constantly increasing control over his environment, easily makes man the superior of all the animals, and enables him to exploit them for his own further advancement. . law of the appearance and disappearance of instincts no child is born with all its instincts ripe and ready for action. yet each individual contains within his own inner nature the law which determines the order and time of their development. instincts appear in succession as required.--it is not well that we should be started on too many different lines of activity at once, hence our instincts do not all appear at the same time. only as fast as we need additional activities do they ripen. our very earliest activities are concerned chiefly with feeding, hence we first have the instincts which prompt us to take our food and to cry for it when we are hungry. also we find useful such abbreviated instincts, called _reflexes_, as sneezing, snuffling, gagging, vomiting, starting, etc.; hence we have the instincts enabling us to do these things. soon comes the time for teething, and, to help the matter along, the instinct of biting enters, and the rubber ring is in demand. the time approaches when we are to feed ourselves, so the instinct arises to carry everything to the mouth. now we have grown strong and must assume an erect attitude, hence the instinct to sit up and then to stand. locomotion comes next, and with it the instinct to creep and walk. also a language must be learned, and we must take part in the busy life about us and do as other people do; so the instinct to imitate arises that we may learn things quickly and easily. we need a spur to keep us up to our best effort, so the instinct of emulation emerges. we must defend ourselves, so the instinct of pugnacity is born. we need to be cautious, hence the instinct of fear. we need to be investigative, hence the instinct of curiosity. much self-directed activity is necessary for our development, hence the play instinct. it is best that we should come to know and serve others, so the instincts of sociability and sympathy arise. we need to select a mate and care for offspring, hence the instinct of love for the other sex, and the parental instinct. this is far from a complete list of our instincts, and i have not tried to follow the order of their development, but i have given enough to show the origin of many of our life's most important activities. many instincts are transitory.--not only do instincts ripen by degrees, entering our experience one by one as they are needed, but they drop out when their work is done. some, like the instinct of self-preservation, are needed our lifetime through, hence they remain to the end. others, like the play instinct, serve their purpose and disappear or are modified into new forms in a few years, or a few months. the life of the instinct is always as transitory as is the necessity for the activity to which it gives rise. no instinct remains wholly unaltered in man, for it is constantly being made over in the light of each new experience. the instinct of self-preservation is modified by knowledge and experience, so that the defense of the man against threatened danger would be very different from that of the child; yet the instinct to protect oneself in _some_ way remains. on the other hand, the instinct to romp and play is less permanent. it may last into adult life, but few middle-aged or old people care to race about as do children. their activities are occupied in other lines, and they require less physical exertion. contrast with these two examples such instincts as sucking, creeping, and crying, which are much more fleeting than the play instinct, even. with dentition comes another mode of eating, and sucking is no more serviceable. walking is a better mode of locomotion than creeping, so the instinct to creep soon dies. speech is found a better way than crying to attract attention to distress, so this instinct drops out. many of our instincts not only would fail to be serviceable in our later lives, but would be positively in the way. each serves its day, and then passes over into so modified a form as not to be recognized, or else drops out of sight altogether. seemingly useless instincts.--indeed it is difficult to see that some instincts serve a useful purpose at any time. the pugnacity and greediness of childhood, its foolish fears, the bashfulness of youth--these seem to be either useless or detrimental to development. in order to understand the workings of instinct, however, we must remember that it looks in two directions; into the future for its application, and into the past for its explanation. we should not be surprised if the experiences of a long past have left behind some tendencies which are not very useful under the vastly different conditions of today. nor should we be too sure that an activity whose precise function in relation to development we cannot discover has no use at all. each instinct must be considered not alone in the light of what it means to its possessor today, but of what it means to all his future development. the tail of a polliwog seems a very useless appendage so far as the adult frog is concerned, yet if the polliwog's tail is cut off a perfect frog never develops. instincts to be utilized when they appear.--a man may set the stream to turning his mill wheels today or wait for twenty years--the power is there ready for him when he wants it. instincts must be utilized when they present themselves, else they disappear--never, in most cases, to return. birds kept caged past the flying time never learn to fly well. the hunter must train his setter when the time is ripe, or the dog can never be depended upon. ducks kept away from the water until full grown have almost as little inclination for it as chickens. the child whom the pressure of circumstances or unwise authority of parents keeps from mingling with playmates and participating in their plays and games when the social instinct is strong upon him, will in later life find himself a hopeless recluse to whom social duties are a bore. the boy who does not hunt and fish and race and climb at the proper time for these things, will find his taste for them fade away, and he will become wedded to a sedentary life. the youth and maiden must be permitted to "dress up" when the impulse comes to them, or they are likely ever after to be careless in their attire. instincts as starting points.--most of our habits have their rise in instincts, and all desirable instincts should be seized upon and transformed into habits before they fade away. says james in his remarkable chapter on instinct: "in all pedagogy the great thing is to strike while the iron is hot, and to seize the wave of the pupils' interest in each successive subject before its ebb has come, so that knowledge may be got and a habit of skill acquired--a headway of interest, in short, secured, on which afterwards the individual may float. there is a happy moment for fixing skill in drawing, for making boys collectors in natural history, and presently dissectors and botanists; then for initiating them into the harmonies of mechanics and the wonders of physical and chemical law. later, introspective psychology and the metaphysical and religious mysteries take their turn; and, last of all, the drama of human affairs and worldly wisdom in the widest sense of the term. in each of us a saturation point is soon reached in all these things; the impetus of our purely intellectual zeal expires, and unless the topic is associated with some urgent personal need that keeps our wits constantly whetted about it, we settle into an equilibrium, and live on what we learned when our interest was fresh and instinctive, without adding to the store." there is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. the more important human instincts.--it will be impossible in this brief statement to give a complete catalogue of the human instincts, much less to discuss each in detail. we must content ourselves therefore with naming the more important instincts, and finally discussing a few of them: _sucking_, _biting_, _chewing_, _clasping objects with the fingers_, _carrying to the mouth_, _crying_, _smiling_, _sitting up_, _standing_, _locomotion_, _vocalization_, _imitation_, _emulation_, _pugnacity_, _resentment_, _anger_, _sympathy_, _hunting and fighting_, _fear_, _acquisitiveness_, _play_, _curiosity_, _sociability_, _modesty_, _secretiveness_, _shame_, _love_, _and jealousy_ may be said to head the list of our instincts. it will be impossible in our brief space to discuss all of this list. only a few of the more important will be noticed. . the instinct of imitation no individual enters the world with a large enough stock of instincts to start him doing all the things necessary for his welfare. instinct prompts him to eat when he is hungry, but does not tell him to use a knife and fork and spoon; it prompts him to use vocal speech, but does not say whether he shall use english, french, or german; it prompts him to be social in his nature, but does not specify that he shall say please and thank you, and take off his hat to ladies. the race did not find the specific _modes_ in which these and many other things are to be done of sufficient importance to crystallize them in instincts, hence the individual must learn them as he needs them. the simplest way of accomplishing this is for each generation to copy the ways of doing things which are followed by the older generation among whom they are born. this is done largely through _imitation_. nature of imitation.--_imitation is the instinct to respond to a suggestion from another by repeating his act._ the instinct of imitation is active in the year-old child, it requires another year or two to reach its height, then it gradually grows less marked, but continues in some degree throughout life. the young child is practically helpless in the matter of imitation. instinct demands that he shall imitate, and he has no choice but to obey. his environment furnishes the models which he must imitate, whether they are good or bad. before he is old enough for intelligent choice, he has imitated a multitude of acts about him; and habit has seized upon these acts and is weaving them into conduct and character. older grown we may choose what we will imitate, but in our earlier years we are at the mercy of the models which are placed before us. if our mother tongue is the first we hear spoken, that will be our language; but if we first hear chinese, we will learn that with almost equal facility. if whatever speech we hear is well spoken, correct, and beautiful, so will our language be; if it is vulgar, or incorrect, or slangy, our speech will be of this kind. if the first manners which serve us as models are coarse and boorish, ours will resemble them; if they are cultivated and refined, ours will be like them. if our models of conduct and morals are questionable, our conduct and morals will be of like type. our manner of walking, of dressing, of thinking, of saying our prayers, even, originates in imitation. by imitation we adopt ready-made our social standards, our political faith, and our religious creeds. our views of life and the values we set on its attainments are largely a matter of imitation. individuality in imitation.--yet, given the same model, no two of us will imitate precisely alike. your acts will be yours, and mine will be mine. this is because no two of us have just the same heredity, and hence cannot have precisely similar instincts. there reside in our different personalities different powers of invention and originality, and these determine by how much the product of imitation will vary from the model. some remain imitators all their lives, while others use imitation as a means to the invention of better types than the original models. the person who is an imitator only, lacks individuality and initiative; the nation which is an imitator only is stagnant and unprogressive. while imitation must be blind in both cases at first, it should be increasingly intelligent as the individual or the nation progresses. conscious and unconscious imitation.--the much-quoted dictum that "all consciousness is motor" has a direct application to imitation. it only means that _we have a tendency to act on whatever idea occupies the mind_. think of yawning or clearing the throat, and the tendency is strong to do these things. we naturally respond to smile with smile and to frown with frown. and even the impressions coming to us from our material environment have their influence on our acts. our response to these ideas may be a conscious one, as when a boy purposely stutters in order to mimic an unfortunate companion; or it may be unconscious, as when the boy unknowingly falls into the habit of stammering from hearing this kind of speech. the child may consciously seek to keep himself neat and clean so as to harmonize with a pleasant and well-kept home, or he may unconsciously become slovenly and cross-tempered from living in an ill-kept home where constant bickering is the rule. often we deliberately imitate what seems to us desirable in other people, but probably far the greater proportion of the suggestions to which we respond are received and acted upon unconsciously. in conscious imitation we can select what models we shall imitate, and therefore protect ourselves in so far as our judgment of good and bad models is valid. in unconscious imitation, however, we are constantly responding to a stream of suggestions pouring in upon us hour after hour and day after day, with no protection but the leadings of our interests as they direct our attention now to this phase of our environment, and now to that. influence of environment.--no small part of the influences which mold our lives comes from our material environment. good clothes, artistic homes, beautiful pictures and decoration, attractive parks and lawns, well-kept streets, well-bound books--all these have a direct moral and educative value; on the other hand, squalor, disorder, and ugliness are an incentive to ignorance and crime. hawthorne tells in "the great stone face" of the boy ernest, listening to the tradition of a coming wise man who one day is to rule over the valley. the story sinks deep into the boy's heart, and he thinks and dreams of the great and good man; and as he thinks and dreams, he spends his boyhood days gazing across the valley at a distant mountain side whose rocks and cliffs nature had formed into the outlines of a human face remarkable for the nobleness and benignity of its expression. he comes to love this face and looks upon it as the prototype of the coming wise man, until lo! as he dwells upon it and dreams about it, the beautiful character which its expression typifies grows into his own life, and he himself becomes the long-looked-for wise man. the influence of personality.--more powerful than the influence of material environment, however, is that of other personalities upon us--the touch of life upon life. a living personality contains a power which grips hold of us, electrifies us, inspires us, and compels us to new endeavor, or else degrades and debases us. none has failed to feel at some time this life-touch, and to bless or curse the day when its influence came upon him. either consciously or unconsciously such a personality becomes our ideal and model; we idolize it, idealize it, and imitate it, until it becomes a part of us. not only do we find these great personalities living in the flesh, but we find them also in books, from whose pages they speak to us, and to whose influence we respond. and not in the _great_ personalities alone does the power to influence reside. from _every life_ which touches ours, a stream of influence great or small is entering our life and helping to mold it. nor are we to forget that this influence is reciprocal, and that we are reacting upon others up to the measure of the powers that are in us. . the instinct of play small use to be a child unless one can play. says karl groos: "perhaps the very existence of youth is due in part to the necessity for play; the animal does not play because he is young, but he is young because he must play." play is a constant factor in all grades of animal life. the swarming insects, the playful kitten, the frisking lambs, the racing colt, the darting swallows, the maddening aggregation of blackbirds--these are but illustrations of the common impulse of all the animal world to play. wherever freedom and happiness reside, there play is found; wherever play is lacking, there the curse has fallen and sadness and oppression reign. play is the natural rôle in the paradise of youth; it is childhood's chief occupation. to toil without play, places man on a level with the beasts of burden. the necessity for play.--but why is play so necessary? why is this impulse so deep-rooted in our natures? why not compel our young to expend their boundless energy on productive labor? why all this waste? why have our child labor laws? why not shut recesses from our schools, and so save time for work? is it true that all work and no play makes jack a dull boy? too true. for proof we need but gaze at the dull and lifeless faces of the prematurely old children as they pour out of the factories where child labor is employed. we need but follow the children, who have had a playless childhood, into a narrow and barren manhood. we need but to trace back the history of the dull and brutish men of today, and find that they were the playless children of yesterday. play is as necessary to the child as food, as vital as sunshine, as indispensable as air. the keynote of play is _freedom_, freedom of physical activity, and mental initiative. in play the child makes his own plans, his imagination has free rein, originality is in demand, and constructive ability is placed under tribute. here are developed a thousand tendencies which would never find expression in the narrow treadmill of labor alone. the child needs to learn to work; but along with his work must be the opportunity for free and unrestricted activity, which can come only through play. the boy needs a chance to be a barbarian, a hero, an indian. he needs to ride his broomstick on a dangerous raid, and to charge with lath sword the redoubts of a stubborn enemy. he needs to be a leader as well as a follower. in short, without in the least being aware of it, he needs to develop himself through his own activity--he needs freedom to play. if the child be a girl, there is no difference except in the character of the activities employed. play in development and education.--and it is precisely out of these play activities that the later and more serious activities of life emerge. play is the gateway by which we best enter the various fields of the world's work, whether our particular sphere be that of pupil or teacher in the schoolroom, of man in the busy marts of trade or in the professions, or of farmer or mechanic. play brings the _whole self_ into the activity; it trains to habits of independence and individual initiative, to strenuous and sustained effort, to endurance of hardship and fatigue, to social participation and the acceptance of victory and defeat. and these are the qualities needed by the man of success in his vocation. these facts make the play instinct one of the most important in education. froebel was the first to recognize the importance of play, and the kindergarten was an attempt to utilize its activities in the school. the introduction of this new factor into education has been attended, as might be expected, by many mistakes. some have thought to recast the entire process of education into the form of games and plays, and thus to lead the child to possess the "promised land" through aimlessly chasing butterflies in the pleasant fields of knowledge. it is needless to say that they have not succeeded. others have mistaken the shadow for the substance, and introduced games and plays into the schoolroom which lack the very first element of play; namely, _freedom of initiative and action_ on the part of the child. educational theorists and teachers have invented games and occupations and taught them to the children, who go through with them much as they would with any other task, enjoying the activity but missing the development which would come through a larger measure of self-direction. work and play are complements.--work cannot take the place of play, neither can play be substituted for work. nor are the two antagonistic, but each is the complement of the other; for the activities of work grow immediately out of those of play, and each lends zest to the other. those who have never learned to work and those who have never learned to play are equally lacking in their development. further, it is not the name or character of an activity which determines whether it is play for the participant, but _his attitude toward the activity_. if the activity is performed for its own sake and not for some ulterior end, if it grows out of the interest of the child and involves the free and independent use of his powers of body and mind, if it is _his_, and not someone's else--then the activity possesses the chief characteristics of play. lacking these, it cannot be play, whatever else it may be. play, like other instincts, besides serving the present, looks in two directions, into the past and into the future. from the past come the shadowy interests which, taking form from the touch of our environment, determine the character of the play activities. from the future come the premonitions of the activities that are to be. the boy adjusting himself to the requirements of the game, seeking control over his companions or giving in to them, is practicing in miniature the larger game which he will play in business or profession a little later. the girl in her playhouse, surrounded by a nondescript family of dolls and pets, is unconsciously looking forward to a more perfect life when the responsibilities shall be a little more real. so let us not grudge our children the play day of youth. . other useful instincts many other instincts ripen during the stage of youth and play their part in the development of the individual. curiosity.--it is inherent in every normal person to want to investigate and _know_. the child looks out with wonder and fascination on a world he does not understand, and at once begins to ask questions and try experiments. every new object is approached in a spirit of inquiry. interest is omnivorous, feeding upon every phase of environment. nothing is too simple or too complex to demand attention and exploration, so that it vitally touches the child's activities and experience. the momentum given the individual by curiosity toward learning and mastering his world is incalculable. imagine the impossible task of teaching children what they had no desire or inclination to know! think of trying to lead them to investigate matters concerning which they felt only a supreme indifference! indeed one of the greatest problems of education is to keep curiosity alive and fresh so that its compelling influence may promote effort and action. one of the greatest secrets of eternal youth is also found in retaining the spontaneous curiosity of youth after the youthful years are past. manipulation.--this is the rather unsatisfactory name for the universal tendency to _handle_, _do_ or _make_ something. the young child builds with its blocks, constructs fences and pens and caves and houses, and a score of other objects. the older child, supplied with implements and tools, enters upon more ambitious projects and revels in the joy of creation as he makes boats and boxes, soldiers and swords, kites, play-houses and what-not. even as adults we are moved by a desire to express ourselves through making or creating that which will represent our ingenuity and skill. the tendency of children to destroy is not from wantonness, but rather from a desire to manipulate. education has but recently begun to make serious use of this important impulse. the success of all laboratory methods of teaching, and of such subjects as manual training and domestic science, is abundant proof of the adage that we learn by doing. we would rather construct or manipulate an object than merely learn its verbal description. our deepest impulses lead to creation rather than simple mental appropriation of facts and descriptions. the collecting instinct.--the words _my_ and _mine_ enter the child's vocabulary at a very early age. the sense of property ownership and the impulse to make collections of various kinds go hand in hand. probably there are few of us who have not at one time or another made collections of autographs, postage stamps, coins, bugs, or some other thing of as little intrinsic value. and most of us, if we have left youth behind, are busy even now in seeking to collect fortunes, works of art, rare volumes or other objects on which we have set our hearts. the collecting instinct and the impulse to ownership can be made important agents in the school. the child who, in nature study, geography or agriculture, is making a collection of the leaves, plants, soils, fruits, or insects used in the lessons has an incentive to observation and investigation impossible from book instruction alone. one who, in manual training or domestic science, is allowed to own the article made will give more effort and skill to its construction than if the work be done as a mere school task. the dramatic instinct.--every person is, at one stage of his development, something of an actor. all children like to "dress up" and impersonate someone else--in proof of which, witness the many play scenes in which the character of nurse, doctor, pirate, teacher, merchant or explorer is taken by children who, under the stimulus of their spontaneous imagery and as yet untrammeled by self-consciousness, freely enter into the character they portray. the dramatic impulse never wholly dies out. when we no longer aspire to do the acting ourselves we have others do it for us in the theaters or the movies. education finds in the dramatic instinct a valuable aid. progressive teachers are using it freely, especially in the teaching of literature and history. its application to these fields may be greatly increased, and also extended more generally to include religion, morals, and art. the impulse to form gangs and clubs.--few boys and girls grow up without belonging at some time to a secret gang, club or society. usually this impulse grows out of two different instincts, the _social_ and the _adventurous_. it is fundamental in our natures to wish to be with our kind--not only our human kind, but those of the same age, interests and ambitions. the love of secrecy and adventure is also deep seated in us. so we are clannish; and we love to do the unusual, to break away from the commonplace and routine of our lives. there is often a thrill of satisfaction--even if it be later followed by remorse--in doing the forbidden or the unconventional. the problem here as in the case of many other instincts is one of guidance rather than of repression. out of the gang impulse we may develop our athletic teams, our debating and dramatic clubs, our tramping clubs, and a score of other recreational, benevolent, or social organizations. not repression, but proper expression should be our ideal. . fear probably in no instinct more than in that of fear can we find the reflections of all the past ages of life in the world with its manifold changes, its dangers, its tragedies, its sufferings, and its deaths. fear heredity.--the fears of childhood "are remembered at every step," and so are the fears through which the race has passed. says chamberlain: "every ugly thing told to the child, every shock, every fright given him, will remain like splinters in the flesh, to torture him all his life long. the bravest old soldier, the most daring young reprobate, is incapable of forgetting them all--the masks, the bogies, ogres, hobgoblins, witches, and wizards, the things that bite and scratch, that nip and tear, that pinch and crunch, the thousand and one imaginary monsters of the mother, the nurse, or the servant, have had their effect; and hundreds of generations have worked to denaturalize the brains of children. perhaps no animal, not even those most susceptible to fright, has behind it the fear heredity of the child." president hall calls attention to the fact that night is now the safest time of the twenty-four hours; serpents are no longer our most deadly enemies; strangers are not to be feared; neither are big eyes or teeth; there is no adequate reason why the wind, or thunder, or lightning should make children frantic as they do. but "the past of man forever seems to linger in his present"; and the child, in being afraid of these things, is only summing up the fear experiences of the race and suffering all too many of them in his short childhood. fear of the dark.--most children are afraid in the dark. who does not remember the terror of a dark room through which he had to pass, or, worse still, in which he had to go to bed alone, and there lie in cold perspiration induced by a mortal agony of fright! the unused doors which would not lock, and through which he expected to see the goblin come forth to get him! the dark shadows back under the bed where he was afraid to look for the hidden monster which he was sure was hiding there and yet dare not face! the lonely lane through which the cows were to be driven late at night, while every fence corner bristled with shapeless monsters lying in wait for boys! and that hated dark closet where he was shut up "until he could learn to be good!" and the useless trapdoor in the ceiling. how often have we lain in the dim light at night and seen the lid lift just a peep for ogre eyes to peer out, and, when the terror was growing beyond endurance, close down, only to lift once and again, until from sheer weariness and exhaustion we fell into a troubled sleep and dreamed of the hideous monster which inhabited the unused garret! tell me that the old trapdoor never bent its hinges in response to either man or monster for twenty years? i know it is true, and yet i am not convinced. my childish fears have left a stronger impression than proof of mere facts can ever overrule. fear of being left alone.--and the fear of being left alone. how big and dreadful the house seemed with the folks all gone! how we suddenly made close friends with the dog or the cat, even, in order that this bit of life might be near us! or, failing in this, we have gone out to the barn among the chickens and the pigs and the cows, and deserted the empty house with its torture of loneliness. what was there so terrible in being alone? i do not know. i know only that to many children it is a torture more exquisite than the adult organism is fitted to experience. but why multiply the recollections? they bring a tremor to the strongest of us today. who of us would choose to live through those childish fears again? dream fears, fears of animals, fears of furry things, fears of ghosts and of death, dread of fatal diseases, fears of fire and of water, of strange persons, of storms, fears of things unknown and even unimagined, but all the more fearful! would you all like to relive your childhood for its pleasures if you had to take along with them its sufferings? would the race choose to live its evolution over again? i do not know. but, for my own part, i should very much hesitate to turn the hands of time backward in either case. would that the adults at life's noonday, in remembering the childish fears of life's morning, might feel a sympathy for the children of today, who are not yet escaped from the bonds of the fear instinct. would that all might seek to quiet every foolish childish fear, instead of laughing at it or enhancing it! . other undesirable instincts we are all provided by nature with some instincts which, while they may serve a good purpose in our development, need to be suppressed or at least modified when they have done their work. selfishness.--all children, and perhaps all adults, are selfish. the little child will appropriate all the candy, and give none to his playmate. he will grow angry and fight rather than allow brother or sister to use a favorite plaything. he will demand the mother's attention and care even when told that she is tired or ill, and not able to minister to him. but all of this is true to nature and, though it needs to be changed to generosity and unselfishness, is, after all, a vital factor in our natures. for it is better in the long run that each one _should_ look out for himself, rather than to be so careless of his own interests and needs as to require help from others. the problem in education is so to balance selfishness and greed with unselfishness and generosity that each serves as a check and a balance to the other. not elimination but equilibrium is to be our watchword. pugnacity, or the fighting impulse.--almost every normal child is a natural fighter, just as every adult should possess the spirit of conquest. the long history of conflict through which our race has come has left its mark in our love of combat. the pugnacity of children, especially of boys, is not so much to be deprecated and suppressed as guided into right lines and rendered subject to right ideals. the boy who picks a quarrel has been done a kindness when given a drubbing that will check this tendency. on the other hand, one who risks battle in defense of a weaker comrade does no ignoble thing. children need very early to be taught the baseness of fighting for the sake of conflict, and the glory of going down to defeat fighting in a righteous cause. the world could well stand more of this spirit among adults! * * * * * let us then hear the conclusion of the whole matter. the undesirable instincts do not need encouragement. it is better to let them fade away from disuse, or in some cases even by attaching punishment to their expression. they are echoes from a distant past, and not serviceable in this better present. _the desirable instincts we are to seize upon and utilize as starting points for the development of useful interests, good habits, and the higher emotional life. we should take them as they come, for their appearance is a sure sign that the organism is ready for and needs the activity they foreshadow; and, furthermore, if they are not used when they present themselves, they disappear, never to return._ . problems in observation and introspection . what instincts have you noticed developing in children? what ones have you observed to fade away? can you fix the age in both cases? apply these questions to your own development as you remember it or can get it by tradition from your elders. . what use of imitation may be made in teaching ( ) literature, ( ) composition, ( ) music, ( ) good manners, ( ) morals? . should children be _taught_ to play? make a list of the games you think all children should know and be able to play. it has been said that it is as important for a people to be able to use their leisure time wisely as to use their work time profitably. why should this be true? . observe the instruction of children to discover the extent to which use is made of the _constructive_ instinct. the _collecting_ instinct. the _dramatic_ instinct. describe a plan by which each of these instincts can be successfully used in some branch of study. . what examples can you recount from your own experience of conscious imitation? of unconscious imitation? of the influence of environment? what is the application of the preceding question to the esthetic quality of our school buildings? . have you ever observed that children under a dozen years of age usually cannot be depended upon for "team work" in their games? how do you explain this fact? chapter xiv feeling and its functions in the psychical world as well as the physical we must meet and overcome inertia. our lives must be compelled by motive forces strong enough to overcome this natural inertia, and enable us besides to make headway against many obstacles. _the motive power that drives us consists chiefly of our feelings and emotions._ knowledge, cognition, supplies the rudder that guides our ship, but feeling and emotion supply the power. to convince one's head is, therefore, not enough; his feelings must be stirred if you would be sure of moving him to action. often have we _known_ that a certain line of action was right, but failed to follow it because feeling led in a different direction. when decision has been hanging in the balance we have piled on one side obligation, duty, sense of right, and a dozen other reasons for action, only to have them all outweighed by the one single: _it is disagreeable._ judgment, reason, and experience may unite to tell us that a contemplated course is unwise, and imagination may reveal to us its disastrous consequences, and yet its pleasures so appeal to us that we yield. our feelings often prove a stronger motive than knowledge and will combined; they are a factor constantly to be reckoned with among our motives. . the nature of feeling it will be our purpose in the next few chapters to study the _affective_ content of consciousness--the feelings and emotions. the present chapter will be devoted to the feelings and the one that follows to the emotions. the different feeling qualities.--at least six (some writers say even more) distinct and qualitatively different feeling states are easily distinguished. these are: _pleasure_, _pain_; _desire_, _repugnance_; _interest_, _apathy._ pleasure and pain, and desire and repugnance, are directly opposite or antagonistic feelings. interest and apathy are not opposites in a similar way, since apathy is but the absence of interest, and not its antagonist. in place of the terms pleasure and pain, the _pleasant_ and the _unpleasant_, or the _agreeable_ and the _disagreeable_, are often used. _aversion_ is frequently employed as a synonym for repugnance. it is somewhat hard to believe on first thought that feeling comprises but the classes given. for have we not often felt the pain from a toothache, from not being able to take a long-planned trip, from the loss of a dear friend? surely these are very different classes of feelings! likewise we have been happy from the very joy of living, from being praised for some well-doing, or from the presence of friend or lover. and here again we seem to have widely different classes of feelings. we must remember, however, that feeling is always based on something _known_. it never appears alone in consciousness as _mere_ pleasures or pains. the mind must have something about which to feel. the "what" must precede the "how." what we commonly call a feeling _is a complex state of consciousness in which feeling predominates_, but which has, nevertheless, _a basis of sensation, or memory, or some other cognitive process_. and what so greatly varies in the different cases of the illustrations just given is precisely this knowledge element, and not the feeling element. a feeling of unpleasantness is a feeling of unpleasantness whether it comes from an aching tooth or from the loss of a friend. it may differ in degree, and the entire mental states of which the feeling is a part may differ vastly, but the simple feeling itself is of the same quality. feeling always present in mental content.--no phase of our mental life is without the feeling element. we look at the rainbow with its beautiful and harmonious blending of colors, and a feeling of pleasure accompanies the sensation; then we turn and gaze at the glaring sun, and a disagreeable feeling is the result. a strong feeling of pleasantness accompanies the experience of the voluptuous warmth of a cozy bed on a cold morning, but the plunge between the icy sheets on the preceding evening was accompanied by the opposite feeling. the touch of a hand may occasion a thrill of ecstatic pleasure, or it may be accompanied by a feeling equally disagreeable. and so on through the whole range of sensation; we not only _know_ the various objects about us through sensation and perception, but we also _feel_ while we know. cognition, or the knowing processes, gives us our "whats"; and feeling, or the affective processes, gives us our "hows." what is yonder object? a bouquet. how does it affect you? pleasurably. if, instead of the simpler sensory processes which we have just considered, we take the more complex processes, such as memory, imagination, and thinking, the case is no different. who has not reveled in the pleasure accompanying the memories of past joys? on the other hand, who is free from all unpleasant memories--from regrets, from pangs of remorse? who has not dreamed away an hour in pleasant anticipation of some desired object, or spent a miserable hour in dreading some calamity which imagination pictured to him? feeling also accompanies our thought processes. everyone has experienced the feeling of the pleasure of intellectual victory over some difficult problem which had baffled the reason, or over some doubtful case in which our judgment proved correct. and likewise none has escaped the feeling of unpleasantness which accompanies intellectual defeat. whatever the contents of our mental stream, "we find in them, everywhere present, a certain color of passing estimate, an immediate sense that they are worth something to us at any given moment, or that they then have an interest to us." the seeming neutral feeling zone.--it is probable that there is so little feeling connected with many of the humdrum and habitual experiences of our everyday lives, that we are but slightly, if at all, aware of a feeling state in connection with them. yet a state of consciousness with absolutely no feeling side to it is as unthinkable as the obverse side of a coin without the reverse. some sort of feeling tone or mood is always present. the width of the affective neutral zone--that is, of a feeling state so little marked as not to be discriminated as either pleasure or pain, desire or aversion--varies with different persons, and with the same person at different times. it is conditioned largely by the amount of attention given in the direction of feeling, and also on the fineness of the power of feeling discrimination. it is safe to say that the zero range is usually so small as to be negligible. . mood and disposition the sum total of all the feeling accompanying the various sensory and thought processes at any given time results in what we may call our _feeling tone_, _or mood._ how mood is produced.--during most of our waking hours, and, indeed, during our sleeping hours as well, a multitude of sensory currents are pouring into the cortical centers. at the present moment we can hear the rumble of a wagon, the chirp of a cricket, the chatter of distant voices, and a hundred other sounds besides. at the same time the eye is appealed to by an infinite variety of stimuli in light, color, and objects; the skin responds to many contacts and temperatures; and every other type of end-organ of the body is acting as a "sender" to telegraph a message in to the brain. add to these the powerful currents which are constantly being sent to the cortex from the visceral organs--those of respiration, of circulation, of digestion and assimilation. and then finally add the central processes which accompany the flight of images through our minds--our meditations, memories, and imaginations, our cogitations and volitions. thus we see what a complex our feelings must be, and how impossible to have any moment in which some feeling is not present as a part of our mental stream. it is this complex, now made up chiefly on the basis of the sensory currents coming in from the end-organs or the visceral organs, and now on the basis of those in the cortex connected with our thought life, which constitutes the entire feeling tone, or _mood_. mood colors all our thinking.--mood depends on the character of the aggregate of nerve currents entering the cortex, and changes as the character of the current varies. if the currents run on much the same from hour to hour, then our mood is correspondingly constant; if the currents are variable, our mood also will be variable. not only is mood dependent on our sensations and thoughts for its quality, but it in turn colors our entire mental life. it serves as a background or setting whose hue is reflected over all our thinking. let the mood be somber and dark, and all the world looks gloomy; on the other hand, let the mood be bright and cheerful, and the world puts on a smile. it is told of one of the early circuit riders among the new england ministry, that he made the following entries in his diary, thus well illustrating the point: "wed. eve. arrived at the home of bro. brown late this evening, hungry and tired after a long day in the saddle. had a bountiful supper of cold pork and beans, warm bread, bacon and eggs, coffee, and rich pastry. i go to rest feeling that my witness is clear; the future is bright; i feel called to a great and glorious work in this place. bro. brown's family are godly people." the next entry was as follows: "thur. morn. awakened late this morning after a troubled night. i am very much depressed in soul; the way looks dark; far from feeling called to work among this people, i am beginning to doubt the safety of my own soul. i am afraid the desires of bro. brown and his family are set too much on carnal things." a dyspeptic is usually a pessimist, and an optimist always keeps a bright mood. mood influences our judgments and decisions.--the prattle of children may be grateful music to our ears when we are in one mood, and excruciatingly discordant noise when we are in another. what appeals to us as a good practical joke one day, may seem a piece of unwarranted impertinence on another. a proposition which looks entirely plausible under the sanguine mood induced by a persuasive orator, may appear wholly untenable a few hours later. decisions which seemed warranted when we were in an angry mood, often appear unwise or unjust when we have become more calm. motives which easily impel us to action when the world looks bright, fail to move us when the mood is somber. the feelings of impending peril and calamity which are an inevitable accompaniment of the "blues," are speedily dissipated when the sun breaks through the clouds and we are ourselves again. mood influences effort.--a bright and hopeful mood quickens every power and enhances every effort, while a hopeless mood limits power and cripples effort. the football team which goes into the game discouraged never plays to the limit. the student who attacks his lesson under the conviction of defeat can hardly hope to succeed, while the one who enters upon his work confident of his power to master it has the battle already half won. the world's best work is done not by those who live in the shadow of discouragement and doubt, but by those in whose breast hope springs eternal. the optimist is a benefactor of the race if for no other reason than the sheer contagion of his hopeful spirit; the pessimist contributes neither to the world's welfare nor its happiness. youth's proverbial enthusiasm and dauntless energy rest upon the supreme hopefulness which characterizes the mood of the young. for these reasons, if for no other, the mood of the schoolroom should be one of happiness and good cheer. disposition a resultant of moods.--the sum total of our moods gives us our _disposition_. whether these are pleasant or unpleasant, cheerful or gloomy, will depend on the predominating character of the moods which enter into them. as well expect to gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles, as to secure a desirable disposition out of undesirable moods. a sunny disposition never comes from gloomy moods, nor a hopeful one out of the "blues." and it is our disposition, more than the power of our reason, which, after all, determines our desirability as friends and companions. the person of surly disposition can hardly make a desirable companion, no matter what his intellectual qualities may be. we may live very happily with one who cannot follow the reasoning of a newton, but it is hard to live with a person chronically subject to "black moods." nor can we put the responsibility for our disposition off on our ancestors. it is not an inheritance, but a growth. slowly, day by day, and mood by mood, we build up our disposition until finally it comes to characterize us. temperament.--some are, however, more predisposed to certain types of mood than are others. the organization of our nervous system which we get through heredity undoubtedly has much to do with the feeling tone into which we most easily fall. we call this predisposition _temperament_. on the effects of temperament, our ancestors must divide the responsibility with us. i say _divide_ the responsibility, for even if we find ourselves predisposed toward a certain undesirable type of moods, there is no reason why we should give up to them. even in spite of hereditary predispositions, we can still largely determine for ourselves what our moods are to be. if we have a tendency toward cheerful, quiet, and optimistic moods, the psychologist names our temperament the _sanguine_; if we are tense, easily excited and irritable, with a tendency toward sullen or angry moods, the _choleric_; if we are given to frequent fits of the "blues," if we usually look on the dark side of things and have a tendency toward moods of discouragement and the "dumps," the _melancholic_; if hard to rouse, and given to indolent and indifferent moods, the _phlegmatic_. whatever be our temperament, it is one of the most important factors in our character. . permanent feeling attitudes, or sentiments besides the more or less transitory feeling states which we have called moods, there exists also a class of feeling attitudes, which contain more of the complex intellectual element, are withal of rather a higher nature, and much more permanent than our moods. we may call these our _sentiments_, or _attitudes_. our sentiments comprise the somewhat constant level of feeling combined with cognition, which we name _sympathy_, _friendship_, _love_, _patriotism_, _religious faith_, _selfishness_, _pride_, _vanity, etc._ like our dispositions, our sentiments are a growth of months and years. unlike our dispositions, however, our sentiments are relatively independent of the physiological undertone, and depend more largely upon long-continued experience and intellectual elements as a basis. a sluggish liver might throw us into an irritable mood and, if the condition were long continued, might result in a surly disposition; but it would hardly permanently destroy one's patriotism and make him turn traitor to his country. one's feeling attitude on such matters is too deep seated to be modified by changing whims. how sentiments develop.--sentiments have their beginning in concrete experiences in which feeling is a predominant element, and grow through the multiplication of these experiences much as the concept is developed through many percepts. there is a residual element left behind each separate experience in both cases. in the case of the concept the residual element is intellectual, and in the case of the sentiment it is a complex in which the feeling element is predominant. how this comes about is easily seen by means of an illustration or two. the mother feeds her child when he is hungry, and an agreeable feeling is produced; she puts him into the bath and snuggles him in her arms, and the experiences are pleasant. the child comes to look upon the mother as one whose especial function is to make things pleasant for him, so he comes to be happy in her presence, and long for her in her absence. he finally grows to love his mother not alone for the countless times she has given him pleasure, but for what she herself is. the feelings connected at first wholly with pleasant experiences coming through the ministrations of the mother, strengthened no doubt by instinctive tendencies toward affection, and later enhanced by a fuller realization of what a mother's care and sacrifice mean, grow at last into a deep, forceful, abiding sentiment of love for the mother. the effect of experience.--likewise with the sentiment of patriotism. in so far as our patriotism is a true patriotism and not a noisy clamor, it had its rise in feelings of gratitude and love when we contemplated the deeds of heroism and sacrifice for the flag, and the blessings which come to us from our relations as citizens to our country. if we have had concrete cases brought to our experience, as, for example, our property saved from destruction at the hands of a mob or our lives saved from a hostile foreign foe, the patriotic sentiment will be all the stronger. so we may carry the illustration into all the sentiments. our religious sentiments of adoration, love, and faith have their origin in our belief in the care, love, and support from a higher being typified to us as children by the care, love, and support of our parents. pride arises from the appreciation or over-appreciation of oneself, his attainments, or his belongings. selfishness has its genesis in the many instances in which pleasure results from ministering to self. in all these cases it is seen that our sentiments develop out of our experiences: they are the permanent but ever-growing results which we have to show for experiences which are somewhat long continued, and in which a certain feeling quality is a strong accompaniment of the cognitive part of the experience. the influence of sentiment.--our sentiments, like our dispositions, are not only a natural growth from the experiences upon which they are fed, but they in turn have large influence in determining the direction of our further development. our sentiments furnish the soil which is either favorable or hostile to the growth of new experiences. one in whom the sentiment of true patriotism is deep-rooted will find it much harder to respond to a suggestion to betray his country's honor on battlefield, in legislative hall, or in private life, than one lacking in this sentiment. the boy who has a strong sentiment of love for his mother will find this a restraining influence in the face of temptation to commit deeds which would wound her feelings. a deep and abiding faith in god is fatal to the growth of pessimism, distrust, and a self-centered life. one's sentiments are a safe gauge of his character. let us know a man's attitude or sentiments on religion, morality, friendship, honesty, and the other great questions of life, and little remains to be known. if he is right on these, he may well be trusted in other things; if he is wrong on these, there is little to build upon. literature has drawn its best inspiration and choicest themes from the field of our sentiments. the sentiment of friendship has given us our david and jonathan, our damon and pythias, and our tennyson and hallam. the sentiment of love has inspired countless masterpieces; without its aid most of our fiction would lose its plot, and most of our poetry its charm. religious sentiment inspired milton to write the world's greatest epic, "paradise lost." the sentiment of patriotism has furnished an inexhaustible theme for the writer and the orator. likewise if we go into the field of music and art, we find that the best efforts of the masters are clustered around some human sentiment which has appealed to them, and which they have immortalized by expressing it on canvas or in marble, that it may appeal to others and cause the sentiment to grow in us. sentiments as motives.--the sentiments furnish the deepest, the most constant, and the most powerful motives which control our lives. such sentiments as patriotism, liberty, and religion have called a thousand armies to struggle and die on ten thousand battlefields, and have given martyrs courage to suffer in the fires of persecution. sentiments of friendship and love have prompted countless deeds of self-sacrifice and loving devotion. sentiments of envy, pride, and jealousy have changed the boundary lines of nations, and have prompted the committing of ten thousand unnamable crimes. slowly day by day from the cradle to the grave we are weaving into our lives the threads of sentiment, which at last become so many cables to bind us to good or evil. . problems in observation and introspection . are you subject to the "blues," or other forms of depressed feeling? are your moods very changeable, or rather constant? what kind of a disposition do you think you have? how did you come by it; that is, in how far is it due to hereditary temperament, and in how far to your daily moods? . can you recall an instance in which some undesirable mood was caused by your physical condition? by some disturbing mental condition? what is your characteristic mood in the morning after sleeping in an ill-ventilated room? after sitting for half a day in an ill-ventilated schoolroom? after eating indigestible food before going to bed? . observe a number of children or your classmates closely and see whether you can determine the characteristic mood of each. observe several different schools and see whether you can note a characteristic mood for each room. try to determine the causes producing the differences noted. (physical conditions in the room, personality of the teacher, methods of governing, teaching, etc.) . when can you do your best work, when you are happy, or unhappy? cheerful, or "blue"? confident and hopeful, or discouraged? in a spirit of harmony and coöperation with your teacher, or antagonistic? now relate your conclusions to the type of atmosphere that should prevail in the schoolroom or the home. formulate a statement as to why the "spirit" of the school is all-important. (effect on effort, growth, disposition, sentiments, character, etc.) . can you measure more or less accurately the extent to which your feelings serve as _motives_ in your life? are feelings alone a safe guide to action? make a list of the important sentiments that should be cultivated in youth. now show how the work of the school may be used to strengthen worthy sentiments. chapter xv the emotions feeling and emotion are not to be looked upon as two different _kinds_ of mental processes. in fact, emotion is but _a feeling state of a high degree of intensity and complexity_. emotion transcends the simpler feeling states whenever the exciting cause is sufficient to throw us out of our regular routine of affective experience. the distinction between emotion and feeling is a purely arbitrary one, since the difference is only one of complexity and degree, and many feelings may rise to the intensity of emotions. a feeling of sadness on hearing of a number of fatalities in a railway accident may suddenly become an emotion of grief if we learn that a member of our family is among those killed. a feeling of gladness may develop into an emotion of joy, or a feeling of resentment be kindled into an emotion of rage. . the producing and expressing of emotion nowhere more than in connection with our emotions are the close inter-relations of mind and body seen. all are familiar with the fact that the emotion of anger tends to find expression in the blow, love in the caress, fear in flight, and so on. but just how our organism acts in _producing_ an emotion is less generally understood. professor james and professor lange have shown us that emotion not only tends to produce some characteristic form of response, but that _the emotion is itself caused by certain deep-seated physiological reactions_. let us seek to understand this statement a little more fully. physiological explanation of emotion.--we must remember first of all that _all_ changes in mental states are accompanied by corresponding physiological changes. hard, concentrated thinking quickens the heart beat; keen attention is accompanied by muscular tension; certain sights or sounds increase the rate of breathing; offensive odors produce nausea, and so on. so complete and perfect is the response of our physical organism to mental changes that one psychologist declares it possible, had we sufficiently delicate apparatus, to measure the reactions caused throughout the body of a sleeping child by the shadow from a passing cloud falling upon the closed eyelids. the order of the entire event resulting in an emotion is as follows: ( ) something is _known_; some object enters consciousness coming either from immediate perception or through memory or imagination. this fact, or thing known, must be of such nature that it will, ( ) set up deep-seated and characteristic _organic response_; ( ) the feeling _accompanying and caused by these physiological reactions constitutes the emotion_. for example, we may be passing along the street in a perfectly calm and equable state of mind, when we come upon a teamster who is brutally beating an exhausted horse because it is unable to draw an overloaded wagon up a slippery incline. the facts grasped as we take in the situation constitute the _first_ element in an emotional response developing in our consciousness. but instantly our muscles begin to grow tense, the heart beat and breath quicken, the face takes on a different expression, the hands clench--the entire organism is reacting to the disturbing situation; the _second_ factor in the rising emotion, the physiological response, thus appears. along with our apprehension of the cruelty and the organic disturbances which result we feel waves of indignation and anger surging through us. this is the _third_ factor in the emotional event, or the emotion itself. in some such way as this are all of our emotions aroused. origin of characteristic emotional reactions.--why do certain facts or objects of consciousness always cause certain characteristic organic responses? in order to solve this problem we shall have first to go beyond the individual and appeal to the history of the race. what the race has found serviceable, the individual repeats. but even then it is hard to see why the particular type of physical response such as shrinking, pallor, and trembling, which naturally follow stimuli threatening harm, should be the best. it is easy to see, however, that the feeling which prompts to flight or serves to deter from harm's way might be useful. it is plain that there is an advantage in the tense muscle, the set teeth, the held breath, and the quickened pulse which accompany the emotion of anger, and also in the feeling of anger itself, which prompts to the conflict. but even if we are not able in every case to determine at this day why all the instinctive responses and their correlate of feeling were the best for the life of the race, we may be sure that such was the case; for nature is inexorable in her dictates that only that shall persist which has proved serviceable in the largest number of cases. an interesting question arises at this point as to why we feel emotion accompanying some of our motor responses, and not others. perceptions are crowding in upon us hour after hour; memory, thought, and imagination are in constant play; and a continuous motor discharge results each moment in physical expressions great or small. yet, in spite of these facts, feeling which is strong enough to rise to an emotion is only an occasional thing. if emotion accompanies any form of physical expression, why not all? let us see whether we can discover any reason. one day i saw a boy leading a dog along the street. all at once the dog slipped the string over its head and ran away. the boy stood looking after the dog for a moment, and then burst into a fit of rage. what all had happened? the moment before the dog broke away everything was running smoothly in the experience of the boy. there was no obstruction to his thought or his plans. then in an instant the situation changes. the smooth flow of experience is checked and baffled. the discharge of nerve currents which meant thought, plans, action, is blocked. a crisis has arisen which requires readjustment. the nerve currents must flow in new directions, giving new thought, new plans, new activities--the dog must be recaptured. it is in connection with this damming up of nerve currents from following their wonted channels that the emotion emerges. or, putting it into mental terms, the emotion occurs when the ordinary current of our thought is violently disturbed--when we meet with some crisis which necessitates a readjustment of our thought relations and plans, either temporarily or permanently. the duration of an emotion.--if the required readjustment is but temporary, then the emotion is short-lived, while if the readjustment is necessarily of longer duration, the emotion also will live longer. the fear which follows the thunder is relatively brief; for the shock is gone in a moment, and our thought is but temporarily disturbed. if the impending danger is one that persists, however, as of some secret assassin threatening our life, the fear also will persist. the grief of a child over the loss of someone dear to him is comparatively short, because the current of the child's life has not been so closely bound up in a complexity of experiences with the lost object as in the case of an older person, and hence the readjustment is easier. the grief of an adult over the loss of a very dear friend lasts long, for the object grieved over has so become a part of the bereaved one's experience that the loss requires a very complete readjustment of the whole life. in either case, however, as this readjustment is accomplished the emotion gradually fades away. emotions accompanying crises in experience.--if our description of the feelings has been correct, it will be seen that the simpler and milder feelings are for the common run of our everyday experience; they are the common valuers of our thought and acts from hour to hour. the emotions, or more intense feeling states, are, however, the occasional high tide of feeling which occurs in crises or emergencies. we are angry on some particular provocation, we fear some extraordinary factor in our environment, we are joyful over some unusual good fortune. . the control of emotions dependence on expression.--since all emotions rest upon some form of physical or physiological expression primarily, and upon some thought back of this secondarily, it follows that the first step in controlling an emotion is to secure _the removal of the state of consciousness_ which serves as its basis. this may be done, for instance, with a child, either by banishing the terrifying dog from his presence, or by convincing him that the dog is harmless. the motor response will then cease, and the emotion pass away. if the thought is persistent, however, through the continuance of its stimulus, then what remains is to seek to control the physical expression, and in that way suppress the emotion. if, instead of the knit brow, the tense muscles, the quickened heart beat, and all the deeper organic changes which go along with these, we can keep a smile on the face, the muscles relaxed, the heart beat steady, and a normal condition in all the other organs, we shall have no cause to fear an explosion of anger. if we are afraid of mice and feel an almost irresistible tendency to mount a chair every time we see a mouse, we can do wonders in suppressing the fear by resolutely refusing to give expression to these tendencies. inhibition of the expression inevitably means the death of the emotion. this fact has its bad side as well as its good in the feeling life, for it means that good emotions as well as bad will fade out if we fail to allow them expression. we are all perfectly familiar with the fact in our own experience that an interest which does not find means of expression soon passes away. sympathy unexpressed ere long passes over into indifference. even love cannot live without expression. religious emotion which does not go out in deeds of service cannot persist. the natural end and aim of our emotions is to serve as motives to activity; and missing this opportunity, they have not only failed in their office, but will themselves die of inaction. relief through expression.--emotional states not only have their rise in organic reactions, but they also tend to result in acts. when we are angry, or in love, or in fear, we have the impulse _to do something about it_. and, while it is true that emotion may be inhibited by suppressing the physical expressions on which it is founded, so may a state of emotional tension be relieved by some forms of expression. none have failed to experience the relief which comes to the overcharged nervous system from a good cry. there is no sorrow so bitter as a dry sorrow, when one cannot weep. a state of anger or annoyance is relieved by an explosion of some kind, whether in a blow or its equivalent in speech. we often feel better when we have told a man "what we think of him." at first glance this all seems opposed to what we have been laying down as the explanation of emotion. yet it is not so if we look well into the case. we have already seen that emotion occurs when there is a blocking of the usual pathways of discharge for the nerve currents, which must then seek new outlets, and thus result in the setting up of new motor responses. in the case of grief, for example, there is a disturbance in the whole organism; the heart beat is deranged, the blood pressure diminished, and the nerve tone lowered. what is needed is for the currents which are finding an outlet in directions resulting in these particular responses to find a pathway of discharge which will not produce such deep-seated results. this may be found in crying. the energy thus expended is diverted from producing internal disturbances. likewise, the explosion in anger may serve to restore the equilibrium of disturbed nerve currents. relief does not follow if image is held before the mind.--all this is true, however, only when the expression does not serve to keep the idea before the mind which was originally responsible for the emotion. a person may work himself into a passion of anger by beginning to talk about an insult and, as he grows increasingly violent, bringing the situation more and more sharply into his consciousness. the effect of terrifying images is easily to be observed in the case of one's starting to run when he is afraid after night. there is probably no doubt that the running would relieve his fear providing he could do it and not picture the threatening something as pursuing him. but, with his imagination conjuring up dire images of frightful catastrophes at every step, all control is lost and fresh waves of terror surge over the shrinking soul. growing tendency toward emotional control.--among civilized peoples there is a constantly growing tendency toward emotional control. primitive races express grief, joy, fear, or anger much more freely than do civilized races. this does not mean that primitive man feels more deeply than civilized man; for, as we have already seen, the crying, laughing, or blustering is but a small part of the whole physical expression, and one's entire organism may be stirred to its depths without any of these outward manifestations. man has found it advisable as he has advanced in civilization not to reveal all he feels to those around him. the face, which is the most expressive part of the body, has come to be under such perfect control that it is hard to read through it the emotional state, although the face of civilized man is capable of expressing far more than is that of the savage. the same difference is observable between the child and the adult. the child reveals each passing shade of emotion through his expression, while the adult may feel much that he does not show. . cultivation of the emotions there is no other mental factor which has more to do with the enjoyment we get out of life than our feelings and emotions. the emotions and enjoyment.--few of us would care to live at all, if all feeling were eliminated from human experience. true, feeling often makes us suffer; but in so far as life's joys triumph over its woes, do our feelings minister to our enjoyment. without sympathy, love, and appreciation, life would be barren indeed. moreover, it is only through our own emotional experience that we are able to interpret the feeling side of the lives about us. failing in this, we miss one of the most significant phases of social experience, and are left with our own sympathies undeveloped and our life by so much impoverished. the interpretation of the subtler emotions of those about us is in no small degree an art. the human face and form present a constantly changing panorama of the soul's feeling states to those who can read their signs. the ability to read the finer feelings, which reveal themselves in expression too delicate to be read by the eye of the gross or unsympathetic observer, lies at the basis of all fine interpretation of personality. feelings are often too deep for outward expression, and we are slow to reveal our deepest selves to those who cannot appreciate and understand them. how emotions develop.--emotions are to be cultivated as the intellect or the muscles are to be cultivated; namely, through proper exercise. our thought is to dwell on those things to which proper emotions attach, and to shun lines which would suggest emotions of an undesirable type. emotions which are to be developed must, as has already been said, find expression; we must act in response to their leadings, else they become but idle vaporings. if love prompts us to say a kind word to a suffering fellow mortal, the word must be spoken or the feeling itself fades away. on the other hand, the emotions which we wish to suppress are to be refused expression. the unkind and cutting word is to be left unsaid when we are angry, and the fear of things which are harmless left unexpressed and thereby doomed to die. the emotional factor in our environment.--much material for the cultivation of our emotions lies in the everyday life all about us if we can but interpret it. few indeed of those whom we meet daily but are hungering for appreciation and sympathy. lovable traits exist in every character, and will reveal themselves to the one who looks for them. miscarriages of justice abound on all sides, and demand our indignation and wrath and the effort to right the wrong. evil always exists to be hated and suppressed, and dangers to be feared and avoided. human life and the movement of human affairs constantly appeal to the feeling side of our nature if we understand at all what life and action mean. a certain blindness exists in many people, however, which makes our own little joys, or sorrows, or fears the most remarkable ones in the world, and keeps us from realizing that others may feel as deeply as we. of course this self-centered attitude of mind is fatal to any true cultivation of the emotions. it leads to an emotional life which lacks not only breadth and depth, but also perspective. literature and the cultivation of the emotions.--in order to increase our facility in the interpretation of the emotions through teaching us what to look for in life and experience, we may go to literature. here we find life interpreted for us in the ideal by masters of interpretation; and, looking through their eyes, we see new depths and breadths of feeling which we had never before discovered. indeed, literature deals far more in the aggregate with the feeling side than with any other aspect of human life. and it is just this which makes literature a universal language, for the language of our emotions is more easily interpreted than that of our reason. the smile, the cry, the laugh, the frown, the caress, are understood all around the world among all peoples. they are universal. there is always this danger to be avoided, however. we may become so taken up with the overwrought descriptions of the emotions as found in literature or on the stage that the common humdrum of everyday life around us seems flat and stale. the interpretation of the writer or the actor is far beyond what we are able to make for ourselves, so we take their interpretation rather than trouble ourselves to look in our own environment for the material which might appeal to our emotions. it is not rare to find those who easily weep over the woes of an imaginary person in a book or on the stage unable to feel sympathy for the real suffering which exists all around them. the story is told of a lady at the theater who wept over the suffering of the hero in the play; and at the moment she was shedding the unnecessary tears, her own coachman, whom she had compelled to wait for her in the street, was frozen to death. our seemingly prosaic environment is full of suggestions to the emotional life, and books and plays should only help to develop in us the power rightly to respond to these suggestions. harm in emotional overexcitement.--danger may exist also in still another line; namely, that of emotional overexcitement. there is a great nervous strain in high emotional tension. nothing is more exhausting than a severe fit of anger; it leaves its victim weak and limp. a severe case of fright often incapacitates one for mental or physical labor for hours, or it may even result in permanent injury. the whole nervous tone is distinctly lowered by sorrow, and even excessive joy may be harmful. in our actual, everyday life, there is little danger from emotional overexcitement unless it be in the case of fear in children, as was shown in the discussion on instincts, and in that of grief over the loss of objects that are dear to us. most of our childish fears we could just as well avoid if our elders were wiser in the matter of guarding us against those that are unnecessary. the griefs we cannot hope to escape, although we can do much to control them. long-continued emotional excitement, unless it is followed by corresponding activity, gives us those who weep over the wrongs of humanity, but never do anything to right them; who are sorry to the point of death over human suffering, but cannot be induced to lend their aid to its alleviation. we could very well spare a thousand of those in the world who merely feel, for one who acts, james tells us. we should watch, then, that our good feelings do not simply evaporate as feelings, but that they find some place to apply themselves to accomplish good; that we do not, like hamlet, rave over wrongs which need to be righted, but never bring ourselves to the point where we take a hand in their righting. if our emotional life is to be rich and deep in its feeling and effective in its results on our acts and character, it must find its outlet in deeds. . emotions as motives emotion is always dynamic, and our feelings constitute our strongest motives to action and achievement. how our emotions compel us.--love has often done in the reformation of a fallen life what strength of will was not able to accomplish; it has caused dynasties to fall, and has changed the map of nations. hatred is a motive hardly less strong. fear will make savage beasts out of men who fall under its sway, causing them to trample helpless women and children under feet, whom in their saner moments they would protect with their lives. anger puts out all the light of reason, and prompts peaceful and well-meaning men to commit murderous acts. thus feeling, from the faintest and simplest feeling of interest, the various ranges of pleasures and pain, the sentiments which underlie all our lives, and so on to the mighty emotions which grip our lives with an overpowering strength, constitutes a large part of the motive power which is constantly urging us on to do and dare. hence it is important from this standpoint, also, that we should have the right type of feelings and emotions well developed, and the undesirable ones eliminated. emotional habits.--emotion and feeling are partly matters of habit. that is, we can form emotional as well as other habits, and they are as hard to break. anger allowed to run uncontrolled leads into habits of angry outbursts, while the one who habitually controls his temper finds it submitting to the habit of remaining within bounds. one may cultivate the habit of showing his fear on all occasions, or of discouraging its expression. he may form the habit of jealousy or of confidence. it is possible even to form the habit of falling in love, or of so suppressing the tender emotions that love finds little opportunity for expression. and here, as elsewhere, habits are formed through performing the acts upon which the habit rests. if there are emotional habits we are desirous of forming, what we have to do is to indulge the emotional expression of the type we desire, and the habit will follow. if we wish to form the habit of living in a chronic state of the blues, then all we have to do is to be blue and act blue sufficiently, and this form of emotional expression will become a part of us. if we desire to form the habit of living in a happy, cheerful state, we can accomplish this by encouraging the corresponding expression. . problems in observation and introspection . what are the characteristic bodily expressions by which you can recognize a state of anger? fear? jealousy? hatred? love? grief? do you know persons who are inclined to be too expressive emotionally? who show too little emotional expression? how would you classify yourself in this respect? . are you naturally responsive to the emotional tone of others; that is, are you sympathetic? are you easily affected by reading emotional books? by emotional plays or other appeals? what is the danger from overexciting the emotions without giving them a proper outlet in some practical activity? . have you observed a tendency among adults not to take seriously the emotions of a child; for example, to look upon childish grief as trivial, or fear as something to be laughed at? is the child's emotional life as real as that of the adult? (see ch. ix, betts, "fathers and mothers.") . have you known children to repress their emotions for fear of being laughed at? have you known parents or others to remark about childish love affairs to the children themselves in a light or joking way? ought this ever to be done? . note certain children who give way to fits of anger; what is the remedy? note other children who cry readily; what would you suggest as a cure? (why should ridicule not be used?) . have you observed any teacher using the lesson in literature or history to cultivate the finer emotions? what emotions have you seen appealed to by a lesson in nature study? what emotions have you observed on the playground that needed restraint? do you think that on the whole the emotional life of the child receives enough consideration in the school? in the home? chapter xvi interest the feeling that we call interest is so important a motive in our lives and so colors our acts and gives direction to our endeavors that we will do well to devote a chapter to its discussion. . the nature of interest we saw in an earlier chapter that personal habits have their rise in race habits or instincts. let us now see how interest helps the individual to select from his instinctive acts those which are useful to build into personal habits. instinct impartially starts the child in the performance of many different activities, but does not dictate what particular acts shall be retained to serve as the basis for habits. interest comes in at this point and says, "this act is of more value than that act; continue this act and drop that." instinct prompts the babe to countless movements of body and limb. interest picks out those that are most vitally connected with the welfare of the organism, and the child comes to prefer these rather than the others. thus it is that out of the random movements of arms and legs and head and body we finally develop the coördinated activities which are infinitely more useful than the random ones were. and these activities, originating in instincts, and selected by interest, are soon crystallized into habits. interest a selective agent.--the same truth holds for mental activities as for physical. a thousand channels lie open for your stream of thought at this moment, but your interest has beckoned it into the one particular channel which, for the time, at least, appears to be of the greatest subjective value; and it is now following that channel unless your will has compelled it to leave that for another. your thinking as naturally follows your interest as the needle does the magnet, hence your thought activities are conditioned largely by your interests. this is equivalent to saying that your mental habits rest back finally upon your interests. everyone knows what it is to be interested; but interest, like other elementary states of consciousness, cannot be rigidly defined. ( ) subjectively considered, interest may be looked upon as _a feeling attitude which assigns our activities their place in a subjective scale of values_, and hence selects among them. ( ) objectively considered, an interest is _the object which calls forth the feeling_. ( ) functionally considered, interest is _the dynamic phase of consciousness_. interest supplies a subjective scale of values.--if you are interested in driving a horse rather than in riding a bicycle, it is because the former has a greater subjective value to you than the latter. if you are interested in reading these words instead of thinking about the next social function or the last picnic party, it is because at this moment the thought suggested appeals to you as of more value than the other lines of thought. from this it follows that your standards of values are revealed in the character of your interests. the young man who is interested in the race track, in gaming, and in low resorts confesses by the fact that these things occupy a high place among the things which appeal to him as subjectively valuable. the mother whose interests are chiefly in clubs and other social organizations places these higher in her scale of values than her home. the reader who can become interested only in light, trashy literature must admit that matter of this type ranks higher in his subjective scale of values than the works of the masters. teachers and students whose strongest interest is in grade marks value these more highly than true attainment. for, whatever may be our claims or assertions, interest is finally an infallible barometer of the values we assign to our activities. in the case of some of our feelings it is not always possible to ascribe an objective side to them. a feeling of ennui, of impending evil, or of bounding vivacity, may be produced by an unanalyzable complex of causes. but interest, while it is related primarily to the activities of the self, is carried over from the activity to the object which occasions the activity. that is, interest has both an objective and a subjective side. on the subjective side a certain activity connected with self-expression is worth so much; on the objective side a certain object is worth so much as related to this self-expression. thus we say, i have an interest in books or in business; my daily activities, my self-expression, are governed with reference to these objects. they are my interests. interest dynamic.--many of our milder feelings terminate within ourselves, never attaining sufficient force as motives to impel us to action. not so with interest. its very nature is dynamic. whatever it seizes upon becomes _ipso facto_ an object for some activity, for some form of expression of the self. are we interested in a new book, we must read it; in a new invention, we must see it, handle it, test it; in some vocation or avocation, we must pursue it. interest is impulsive. it gives its possessor no opportunity for lethargic rest and quiet, but constantly urges him to action. grown ardent, interest becomes enthusiasm, "without which," says emerson, "nothing great was ever accomplished." are we an edison, with a strong interest centered in mechanical invention, it will drive us day and night in a ceaseless activity which scarcely gives us time for food and sleep. are we a lincoln, with an undying interest in the union, this motive will make possible superhuman efforts for the accomplishment of our end. are we man or woman anywhere, in any walk of life, so we are dominated by mighty interests grown into enthusiasm for some object, we shall find great purposes growing within us, and our life will be one of activity and achievement. on the contrary, a life which has developed no great interest lacks motive power. of necessity such a life must be devoid of purpose and hence barren of results, counting little while it is being lived, and little missed by the world when it is gone. habit antagonistic to interest.--while, as we have seen, interest is necessary to the formation of habits, yet habits once formed are antagonistic to interest. that is, acts which are so habitually performed that they "do themselves" are accompanied by a minimum of interest. they come to be done without attentive consciousness, hence interest cannot attach to their performance. many of the activities which make up the daily round of our lives are of this kind. as long as habit is being modified in some degree, as long as we are improving in our ways of doing things, interest will still cling to the process; but let us once settle into an unmodified rut, and interest quickly fades away. we then have the conditions present which make of us either a machine or a drudge. . direct and indirect interest we may have an interest either ( ) in the doing of an act, or ( ) in the end sought through the doing. in the first instance we call the interest _immediate_ or _direct_; in the second instance, _mediate_ or _indirect_. interest in the end versus interest in the activity.--if we do not find an interest in the doing of our work, or if it has become positively disagreeable so that we loathe its performance, then there must be some ultimate end for which the task is being performed, and in which there is a strong interest, else the whole process will be the veriest drudgery. if the end is sufficiently interesting it may serve to throw a halo of interest over the whole process connected with it. the following instance illustrates this fact: a twelve-year-old boy was told by his father that if he would make the body of an automobile at his bench in the manual training school, the father would purchase the running gear for it and give the machine to the boy. in order to secure the coveted prize, the boy had to master the arithmetic necessary for making the calculations, and the drawing necessary for making the plans to scale before the teacher in manual training would allow him to take up the work of construction. the boy had always lacked interest in both arithmetic and drawing, and consequently was dull in them. under the new incentive, however, he took hold of them with such avidity that he soon surpassed all the remainder of the class, and was able to make his calculations and drawings within a term. he secured his automobile a few months later, and still retained his interest in arithmetic and drawing. indirect interest as a motive.--interest of the indirect type, which does not attach to the process, but comes from some more or less distant end, most of us find much less potent than interest which is immediate. this is especially true unless the end be one of intense desire and not too distant. the assurance to a boy that he must get his lessons well because he will need to be an educated man ten years hence when he goes into business for himself does not compensate for the lack of interest in the lessons of today. yet it is necessary in the economy of life that both children and adults should learn to work under the incitement of indirect interests. much of the work we do is for an end which is more desirable than the work itself. it will always be necessary to sacrifice present pleasure for future good. ability to work cheerfully for a somewhat distant end saves much of our work from becoming drudgery. if interest is removed from both the process and the end, no inducement is left to work except compulsion; and this, if continued, results in the lowest type of effort. it puts a man on a level with the beast of burden, which constantly shirks its work. indirect interest alone insufficient.--interest coming from an end instead of inhering in the process may finally lead to an interest in the work itself; but if it does not, the worker is in danger of being left a drudge at last. to be more than a slave to his work one must ultimately find the work worth doing for its own sake. the man who performs his work solely because he has a wife and babies at home will never be an artist in his trade or profession; the student who masters a subject only because he must know it for an examination is not developing the traits of a scholar. the question of interest in the process makes the difference between the one who works because he loves to work and the one who toils because he must--it makes the difference between the artist and the drudge. the drudge does only what he must when he works, the artist all he can. the drudge longs for the end of labor, the artist for it to begin. the drudge studies how he may escape his labor, the artist how he may better his and ennoble it. to labor when there is joy in the work is elevating, to labor under the lash of compulsion is degrading. it matters not so much what a man's occupation as how it is performed. a coachman driving his team down the crowded street better than anyone else could do it, and glorying in that fact, may be a true artist in his occupation, and be ennobled through his work. a statesman molding the affairs of a nation as no one else could do it, or a scholar leading the thought of his generation is subject to the same law; in order to give the best grade of service of which he is capable, man must find a joy in the performance of the work as well as in the end sought through its performance. no matter how high the position or how refined the work, the worker becomes a slave to his labor unless interest in its performance saves him. . transitoriness of certain interests since our interests are always connected with our activities it follows that many interests will have their birth, grow to full strength, and then fade away as the corresponding instincts which are responsible for the activities pass through these same stages. this only means that interest in play develops at the time when the play activities are seeking expression; that interest in the opposite sex becomes strong when instinctive tendencies are directing the attention to the choice of a mate; and that interest in abstract studies comes when the development of the brain enables us to carry on logical trains of thought. all of us can recall many interests which were once strong, and are now weak or else have altogether passed away. hide-and-seek, pussy-wants-a-corner, excursions to the little fishing pond, securing the colored chromo at school, the care of pets, reading blood-and-thunder stories or sentimental ones--interest in these things belongs to our past, or has left but a faint shadow. other interests have come, and these in turn will also disappear and other new ones yet appear as long as we keep on acquiring new experience. interests must be utilized when they appear.--this means that we must take advantage of interests when they appear if we wish to utilize and develop them. how many people there are who at one time felt an interest impelling them to cultivate their taste for music, art, or literature and said they would do this at some convenient season, and finally found themselves without a taste for these things! how many of us have felt an interest in some benevolent work, but at last discovered that our inclination had died before we found time to help the cause! how many of us, young as we are, do not at this moment lament the passing of some interest from our lives, or are now watching the dying of some interest which we had fondly supposed was as stable as gibraltar? the drawings of every interest which appeals to us is a voice crying, "now is the appointed time!" what impulse urges us today to become or to do, we must begin at once to be or perform, if we would attain to the coveted end. the value of a strong interest.--nor are we to look upon these transitory interests as useless. they come to us not only as a race heritage, but they impel us to activities which are immediately useful, or else prepare us for the later battles of life. but even aside from this important fact it is worth everything just to be interested. for it is only through the impulsion of interest that we first learn to put forth effort in any true sense of the word, and interest furnishes the final foundation upon which volition rests. without interest the greatest powers may slumber in us unawakened, and abilities capable of the highest attainment rest satisfied with commonplace mediocrity. no one will ever know how many gladstones and leibnitzes the world has lost simply because their interests were never appealed to in such a way as to start them on the road to achievement. it matters less what the interest be, so it be not bad, than that there shall be some great interest to compel endeavor, test the strength of endurance, and lead to habits of achievement. . selection among our interests i said early in the discussion that interest is selective among our activities, picking out those which appear to be of the most value to us. in the same manner there must be a selection among our interests themselves. the mistake of following too many interests.--it is possible for us to become interested in so many lines of activity that we do none of them well. this leads to a life so full of hurry and stress that we forget life in our busy living. says james with respect to the necessity of making a choice among our interests: "with most objects of desire, physical nature restricts our choice to but one of many represented goods, and even so it is here. i am often confronted by the necessity of standing by one of my empirical selves and relinquishing the rest. not that i would not, if i could, be both handsome and fat, and well dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a year; be a wit, a bon vivant, and a lady-killer, as well as a philosopher; a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and african explorer, as well as a 'tone poet' and saint. but the thing is simply impossible. the millionaire's work would run counter to the saint's; the bon vivant and the philosopher and the lady-killer could not well keep house in the same tenement of clay. such different characters may conceivably at the outset of life be alike possible to man. but to make any one of them actual, the rest must more or less be suppressed. the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully, and pick out the one on which to stake his salvation." interests may be too narrow.--on the other hand, it is just as possible for our interests to be too narrow as too broad. the one who has cultivated no interests outside of his daily round of humdrum activities does not get enough out of life. it is possible to become so engrossed with making a living that we forget to live--to become so habituated to some narrow treadmill of labor with the limited field of thought suggested by its environment, that we miss the richest experiences of life. many there are who live a barren, trivial, and self-centered life because they fail to see the significant and the beautiful which lie just beyond where their interests reach! many there are so taken up with their own petty troubles that they have no heart or sympathy for fellow humanity! many there are so absorbed with their own little achievements that they fail to catch step with the progress of the age! specialization should not come too early.--it is not well to specialize too early in our interests. we miss too many rich fields which lie ready for the harvesting, and whose gleaning would enrich our lives. the student who is so buried in books that he has no time for athletic recreations or social diversions is making a mistake equally with the one who is so enthusiastic an athlete and social devotee that he neglects his studies. likewise, the youth who is so taken up with the study of one particular line that he applies himself to this at the expense of all other lines is inviting a distorted growth. youth is the time for pushing the sky line back on all sides; it is the time for cultivating diverse and varied lines of interests if we would grow into a rich experience in our later lives. the physical must be developed, but not at the expense of the mental, and vice versa. the social must not be neglected, but it must not be indulged to such an extent that other interests suffer. interest in amusements and recreations should be cultivated, but these should never run counter to the moral and religious. specialization is necessary, but specialization in our interests should rest upon a broad field of fundamental interests, in order that the selection of the special line may be an intelligent one, and that our specialty shall not prove a rut in which we become so deeply buried that we are lost to the best in life. a proper balance to be sought.--it behooves us, then, to find a proper balance in cultivating our interests, making them neither too broad nor too narrow. we should deliberately seek to discover those which are strong enough to point the way to a life vocation, but this should not be done until we have had an opportunity to become acquainted with various lines of interests. otherwise our decision in this important matter may be based merely on a whim. we should also decide what interests we should cultivate for our own personal development and happiness, and for the service we are to render in a sphere outside our immediate vocation. we should consider avocations as well as vocations. whatever interests are selected should be carried to efficiency. better a reasonable number of carefully selected interests well developed and resulting in efficiency than a multitude of interests which lead us into so many fields that we can at best get but a smattering of each, and that by neglecting the things which should mean the most to us. our interests should lead us to live what wagner calls a "simple life," but not a narrow one. . interest fundamental in education some educators have feared that in finding our occupations interesting, we shall lose all power of effort and self-direction; that the will, not being called sufficiently into requisition, must suffer from non-use; that we shall come to do the interesting and agreeable things well enough, but fail before the disagreeable. interest not antagonistic to effort.--the best development of the will does not come through our being forced to do acts in which there is absolutely no interest. work done under compulsion never secures the full self in its performance. it is done mechanically and usually under such a spirit of rebellion on the part of the doer, that the advantage of such training may well be doubted. nor are we safe in assuming that tasks done without interest as the motive are always performed under the direction of the will. it is far more likely that they are done under some external compulsion, and that the will has, after all, but very little to do with it. a boy may get an uninteresting lesson at school without much pressure from his will, providing he is sufficiently afraid of the master. in order that the will may receive training through compelling the performance of certain acts, it must have a reasonably free field, with external pressure removed. the compelling force must come from within, and not from without. on the other hand, there is not the least danger that we shall ever find a place in life where all the disagreeable is removed, and all phases of our work made smooth and interesting. the necessity will always be rising to call upon effort to take up the fight and hold us to duty where interest has failed. and it is just here that there must be no failure, else we shall be mere creatures of circumstance, drifting with every eddy in the tide of our life, and never able to breast the current. interest is not to supplant the necessity for stern and strenuous endeavor but rather to call forth the largest measure of endeavor of which the self is capable. it is to put at work a larger amount of power than can be secured in any other way; in place of supplanting the will, it is to give it its point of departure and render its service all the more effective. interest and character.--finally, we are not to forget that bad interests have the same propulsive power as good ones, and will lead to acts just as surely. and these acts will just as readily be formed into habits. it is worth noticing that back of the act lies an interest; in the act lies the seed of a habit; ahead of the act lies behavior, which grows into conduct, this into character, and character into destiny. bad interests should be shunned and discouraged. but even that is not enough. good interests must be installed in the place of the bad ones from which we wish to escape, for it is through substitution rather than suppression that we are able to break from the bad and adhere to the good. our interests are an evolution. out of the simple interests of the child grow the more complex interests of the man. lacking the opportunity to develop the interests of childhood, the man will come somewhat short of the full interests of manhood. the great thing, then, in educating a child is to discover the fundamental interests which come to him from the race and, using these as a starting point, direct them into constantly broadening and more serviceable ones. out of the early interest in play is to come the later interest in work; out of the early interest in collecting treasure boxes full of worthless trinkets and old scraps comes the later interest in earning and retaining ownership of property; out of the interest in chums and playmates come the larger social interests; out of interest in nature comes the interest of the naturalist. and so one by one we may examine the interests which bear the largest fruit in our adult life, and we find that they all have their roots in some early interest of childhood, which was encouraged and given a chance to grow. . order of development of our interests the order in which our interests develop thus becomes an important question in our education. nor is the order an arbitrary one, as might appear on first thought; for interest follows the invariable law of attaching to the activity for which the organism is at that time ready, and which it then needs in its further growth. that we are sometimes interested in harmful things does not disprove this assertion. the interest in its fundamental aspect is good, and but needs more healthful environment or more wise direction. while space forbids a full discussion of the genetic phase of interest here, yet we may profit by a brief statement of the fundamental interests of certain well-marked periods in our development. the interests of early childhood.--the interests of early childhood are chiefly connected with ministering to the wants of the organism as expressed in the appetites, and in securing control of the larger muscles. activity is the preëminent thing--racing and romping are worth doing for their own sake alone. imitation is strong, curiosity is rising, and imagination is building a new world. speech is a joy, language is learned with ease, and rhyme and rhythm become second nature. the interests of this stage are still very direct and immediate. a distant end does not attract. the thing must be worth doing for the sake of the doing. since the young child's life is so full of action, and since it is out of acts that habits grow, it is doubly desirous during this period that environment, models, and teaching should all direct his interests and activities into lines that will lead to permanent values. the interests of later childhood.--in the period from second dentition to puberty there is a great widening in the scope of interests, as well as a noticeable change in their character. activity is still the keynote; but the child is no longer interested merely in the doing, but is now able to look forward to the end sought. interests which are somewhat indirect now appeal to him, and the how of things attracts his attention. he is beginning to reach outside of his own little circle, and is ready for handicraft, reading, history, and science. spelling, writing, and arithmetic interest him partly from the activities involved, but more as a means to an end. interest in complex games and plays increases, but the child is not yet ready for games which require team work. he has not come to the point where he is willing to sacrifice himself for the good of all. interest in moral questions is beginning, and right and wrong are no longer things which may or may not be done without rebuke or punishment. the great problem at this stage is to direct the interest into ways of adapting the means to ends and into willingness to work under voluntary attention for the accomplishment of the desired end. the interests of adolescence.--finally, with the advent of puberty, comes the last stage in the development of interests before adult life. this period is not marked by the birth of new interests so much as by a deepening and broadening of those already begun. the end sought becomes an increasingly larger factor, whether in play or in work. mere activity itself no longer satisfies. the youth can now play team games; for his social interests are taking shape, and he can subordinate himself for the good of the group. interest in the opposite sex takes on a new phase, and social form and mode of dress receive attention. a new consciousness of self emerges, and the youth becomes introspective. questions of the ultimate meaning of things press for solution, and what and who am i, demands an answer. at this age we pass from a régime of obedience to one of self-control, from an ethics of authority to one of individualism. all the interests are now taking on a more definite and stable form, and are looking seriously toward life vocations. this is a time of big plans and strenuous activity. it is a crucial period in our life, fraught with pitfalls and dangers, with privileges and opportunities. at this strategic point in our life's voyage we may anchor ourselves with right interests to a safe manhood and a successful career; or we may, with wrong interests, bind ourselves to a broken life of discouragement and defeat. . problems in observation and introspection . try making a list of your most important interests in order of their strength. suppose you had made such a list five years ago, where would it have differed from the present list? are you ever obliged to perform any activities in which you have little or no interest, either directly or indirectly? can you name any activities in which you once had a strong interest but which you now perform chiefly from force of habit and without much interest? . have you any interests of which you are not proud? on the other hand, do you lack certain interests which you feel that you should possess? what interests are you now trying especially to cultivate? to suppress? have you as broad a field of interests as you can well take care of? have you so many interests that you are slighting the development of some of the more important ones? . observe several recitations for differences in the amount of interest shown. account for these differences. have you ever observed an enthusiastic teacher with an uninterested class? a dull, listless teacher with an interested class? . a father offers his son a dollar for every grade on his term report which is above ninety; what type of interest relative to studies does this appeal to? what do you think of the advisability of giving prizes in connection with school work? . most children in the elementary school are not interested in technical grammar; why not? histories made up chiefly of dates and lists of kings or presidents are not interesting; what is the remedy? would you call any teaching of literature, history, geography, or science successful which fails to develop an interest in the subject? . after careful observation, make a statement of the differences in the typical play interests of boys and girls; of children of the third grade and the eighth grade. chapter xvii the will the fundamental fact in all ranges of life from the lowest to the highest is _activity_, _doing_. every individual, either animal or man, is constantly meeting situations which demand response. in the lower forms of life, this response is very simple, while in the higher forms, and especially in man, it is very complex. the bird sees a nook favorable for a nest, and at once appropriates it; a man sees a house that strikes his fancy, and works and plans and saves for months to secure money with which to buy it. it is evident that the larger the possible number of responses, and the greater their diversity and complexity, the more difficult it will be to select and compel the right response to any given situation. man therefore needs some special power of control over his acts--he requires a _will._ . the nature of the will there has been much discussion and not a little controversy as to the true nature of the will. just what _is_ the will, and what is the content of our mental stream when we are in the act of willing? is there at such times a new and distinctly different content which we do not find in our processes of knowledge or emotion--such as perception, memory, judgment, interest, desire? or do we find, when we are engaged in an act of the will, that the mental stream contains only the familiar old elements of attention, perception, judgment, desire, purpose, etc., _all organized or set for the purpose of accomplishing or preventing some act_? the content of the will.--we shall not attempt here to settle the controversy suggested by the foregoing questions, nor, for immediately practical purposes, do we need to settle it. it is perhaps safe to say, however, that whenever we are willing the mental content consists of elements of cognition and feeling _plus a distinct sense of effort_, with which everyone is familiar. whether this sense of effort is a new and different element, or only a complex of old and familiar mental processes, we need not now decide. the function of the will.--concerning the function of the will there can be no haziness or doubt. _volition concerns itself wholly with acts, responses._ the will always has to do with causing or inhibiting some action, either physical or mental. we need to go to the dentist, tell some friend we were in the wrong, hold our mind to a difficult or uninteresting task, or do some other disagreeable thing from which we shirk. it is at such points that we must call upon the will. again, we must restrain our tongue from speaking the unkind word, keep from crying out when the dentist drills the tooth, check some unworthy line of thought. we must here also appeal to the will. we may conclude then that the will is needed whenever the physical or mental activity must be controlled _with effort_. some writers have called the work of the will in compelling action its _positive_ function, and in inhibiting action its _negative_ function. how the will exerts its compulsion.--how does the will bring its compulsion to bear? it is not a kind of mental policeman who can take us by the collar, so to speak, and say _do this_, or _do not do that_. the secret of the will's power of control lies in _attention_. it is the line of action that we hold the mind upon with an attitude of intending to perform it that we finally follow. it is the thing we keep thinking about that we finally do. on the other hand, let us resolutely hold the mind away from some attractive but unsuitable line of action, directing our thoughts to an opposite course, or to some wholly different subject, and we have effectually blocked the wrong response. to control our acts is therefore to control our thoughts, and strength of will can be measured by our ability to direct our attention. . the extent of voluntary control over our acts a relatively small proportion of our acts, or responses, are controlled by volition. nature, in her wise economy, has provided a simpler and easier method than to have all our actions performed or checked with conscious effort. classes of acts or response.--movements or acts, like other phenomena, do not just happen. they never occur without a cause back of them. whether they are performed with a conscious end in view or without it, the fact remains the same--something must lie back of the act to account for its performance. during the last hour, each of us has performed many simple movements and more or less complex acts. these acts have varied greatly in character. of many we were wholly unconscious. others were consciously performed, but without feeling of effort on our part. still others were accomplished only with effort, and after a struggle to decide which of two lines of action we should take. some of our acts were reflex, some were chiefly instinctive, and some were volitional. simple reflex acts.--first, there are going on within every living organism countless movements of which he is in large part unconscious, which he does nothing to initiate, and which he is largely powerless to prevent. some of them are wholly, and others almost, out of the reach and power of his will. such are the movements of the heart and vascular system, the action of the lungs in breathing, the movements of the digestive tract, the work of the various glands in their process of secretion. the entire organism is a mass of living matter, and just because it is living no part of it is at rest. movements of this type require no external stimulus and no direction, they are _reflex_; they take care of themselves, as long as the body is in health, without let or hindrance, continuing whether we sleep or wake, even if we are in hypnotic or anæsthetic coma. with movements of reflex type we shall have no more concern, since they are almost wholly physiological, and come scarcely at all within the range of the consciousness. instinctive acts.--next there are a large number of such acts as closing the eyes when they are threatened, starting back from danger, crying out from pain or alarm, frowning and striking when angry. these may roughly be classed as instinctive, and have already been discussed under that head. they differ from the former class in that they require some stimulus to set the act off. we are fully conscious of their performance, although they are performed without a conscious end in view. winking the eyes serves an important purpose, but that is not why we wink; starting back from danger is a wise thing to do, but we do not stop to consider this before performing the act. and so it is with a multitude of reflex and instinctive acts. they are performed immediately upon receiving an appropriate stimulus, because we possess an organism calculated to act in a definite way in response to certain stimuli. there is no need for, and indeed no place for, anything to come in between the stimulus and the act. the stimulus pulls the trigger of the ready-set nervous system, and the act follows at once. acts of these reflex and instinctive types do not come properly within the range of volition, hence we will not consider them further. automatic or spontaneous acts.--growing out of these reflex and instinctive acts is a broad field of action which may be called _automatic_ or _spontaneous_. the distinguishing feature of this type of action is that all such acts, though performed now largely without conscious purpose or intent, were at one time purposed acts, performed with effort; this is to say that they were volitional. such acts as writing, or fingering the keyboard of a piano, were once consciously purposed, volitional acts selected from many random or reflex movements. the effects of experience and habit are such, however, that soon the mere presence of pencil and paper, or the sight of the keyboard, is enough to set one scribbling or playing. stated differently, certain objects and situations come to suggest certain characteristic acts or responses so strongly that the action follows immediately on the heels of the percept of the object, or the idea of the act. james calls such action _ideo-motor_. many illustrations of this type of acts will occur to each of us: a door starts to blow shut, and we spring up and avert the slam. the memory of a neglected engagement comes to us, and we have started to our feet on the instant. a dish of nuts stands before us, and we find ourselves nibbling without intending to do so. the cycle from volitional to automatic.--it is of course evident that no such acts, though they were at one time in our experience volitional, now require effort or definite intention for their performance. the law covering this point may be stated as follows: _all volitional acts, when repeated, tend, through the effects of habit, to become automatic, and thus relieve the will from the necessity of directing them._ [illustration: fig. .--star for mirror drawing. the mirror breaks up the automatic control previously developed, and requires one to start out much as the child does at the beginning. see text for directions.] to illustrate this law try the following experiment: draw on a piece of cardboard a star, like figure , making each line segment two inches. seat yourself at a table with the star before you, placing a mirror back of the star so that it can be seen in the mirror. have someone hold a screen a few inches above the table so as to hide the star from your direct view, but so that you can see it in the mirror. now reach your hand under the screen and trace with a pencil around the star from left to right, not taking your pencil off the paper until you get clear around. keep track of how long it takes to go around and also note the irregular wanderings of your pencil. try this experiment five times over, noting the decrease in time and effort required, and the increase in efficiency as the movements tend to become automatic. volitional action.--while it is obvious that the various types of action already described include a very large proportion of all our acts, yet they do not include all. for there are some acts that are neither reflex nor instinctive nor automatic, but that have to be performed under the stress of compulsion and effort. we constantly meet situations where the necessity for action or restraint runs counter to our inclinations. we daily are confronted by the necessity of making decisions in which the mind must be compelled by effort to take this direction or that direction. conflicting motives or tendencies create frequent necessity for coercion. it is often necessary to drive our bark counter to the current of our desires or our habits, or to enter into conflict with a temptation. volition acts in the making of decisions.--everyone knows for himself the state of inward unrest which we call indecision. a thought enters the mind which would of itself prompt an act; but before the act can occur, a contrary idea appears and the act is checked; another thought comes favoring the act, and is in turn counterbalanced by an opposing one. the impelling and inhibiting ideas we call _motives_ or _reasons_ for and against the proposed act. while we are balancing the motives against each other, we are said to _deliberate_. this process of deliberation must go on, if we continue to think about the matter at all, until one set of ideas has triumphed over the other and secured the attention. when this has occurred, we have _decided_, and the deliberation is at an end. we have exercised the highest function of the will and made a _choice_. sometimes the battle of motives is short, the decision being reached as soon as there is time to summon all the reasons on both sides of the question. at other times the conflict may go on at intervals for days or weeks, neither set of motives being strong enough to vanquish the other and dictate the decision. when the motives are somewhat evenly balanced we wisely pause in making a decision, because when one line of action is taken, the other cannot be, and we hesitate to lose either opportunity. a state of indecision is usually highly unpleasant, and no doubt more than one decision has been hastened in our lives simply that we might be done with the unpleasantness attendant on the consideration of two contrary and insistent sets of motives. it is of the highest importance when making a decision of any consequence that we should be fair in considering all the reasons on both sides of the question, allowing each its just weight. nor is this as easy as it might appear; for, as we saw in our study of the emotions, our feeling attitude toward any object that occupies the mind is largely responsible for the subjective value we place upon it. it is easy to be so prejudiced toward or against a line of action that the motives bearing upon it cannot get fair consideration. to be able to eliminate this personal factor to such an extent that the evidence before us on a question may be considered on its merits is a rare accomplishment. types of decision.--a decision may be reached in a variety of ways, the most important ones of which may now briefly be described after the general plan suggested by professor james: the reasonable type.--one of the simplest types of decision is that in which the preponderance of motives is clearly seen to be on one side or the other, and the only rational thing to do is to decide in accordance with the weight of evidence. decisions of this type are called _reasonable_. if we discover ten reasons why we should pursue a certain course of action, and only one or two reasons of equal weight why we should not, then the decision ought not to be hard to make. the points to watch in this case are (a) that we have really discovered all the important reasons on both sides of the case, and (b) that our feelings of personal interest or prejudice have not given some of the motives an undue weight in our scale of values. accidental type: external motives.--it is to be doubted whether as many of our decisions are made under immediate stress of volition as we think. we may be hesitating between two sets of motives, unable to decide between them, when a third factor enters which is not really related to the question at all, but which finally dictates the decision nevertheless. for example, we are considering the question whether we shall go on an excursion or stay at home and complete a piece of work. the benefits coming from the recreation, and the pleasures of the trip, are pitted against the expense which must be incurred and the desirability of having the work done on time. at this point, while as yet we have been unable to decide, a friend comes along, and we seek to evade the responsibility of making our own decision by appealing to him, "you tell me what to do!" how few of us have never said in effect if not in words, "i will do this or that if you will"! how few have never taken advantage of a rainy day to stay from church or shirk an undesirable engagement! how few have not allowed important questions to be decided by some trivial or accidental factor not really related to the choice in the least! this form of decision is _accidental decision_. it does not rest on motives which are vitally related to the case, but rather on the accident of external circumstances. the person who habitually makes his decisions in this way lacks power of will. he does not hold himself to the question until he has gathered the evidence before him, and then himself direct his attention to the best line of action and so secure its performance. he drifts with the tide, he goes with the crowd, he shirks responsibility. accidental type: subjective motives.--a second type of _accidental_ decision may occur when we are hesitating between two lines of action which are seemingly about equally desirable, and no preponderating motive enters the field; when no external factor appears, and no advising friend comes to the rescue. then, with the necessity for deciding thrust upon us, we tire of the worry and strain of deliberation and say to ourselves, "this thing must be settled one way or the other pretty soon; i am tired of the whole matter." when we have reached this point we are likely to shut our eyes to the evidence in the case, and decide largely upon the whim or mood of the moment. very likely we regret our decision the next instant, but without any more cause for the regret than we had for the decision. it is evident that such a decision as this does not rest on valid motives but rather on the accident of subjective conditions. habitual decisions of this type are an evidence of a mental laziness or a mental incompetence which renders the individual incapable of marshaling the facts bearing on a case. he cannot hold them before his mind and weigh them against each other until one side outweighs the other and dictates the decision. of course the remedy for this weakness of decision lies in not allowing oneself to be pushed into a decision simply to escape the unpleasantness of a state of indecision, or the necessity of searching for further evidence which will make the decision easier. on the other hand, it is possible to form a habit of _indecision_, of undue hesitancy in coming to conclusions when the evidence is all before us. this gives us the mental dawdler, the person who will spend several minutes in an agony of indecision over whether to carry an umbrella on this particular trip; whether to wear black shoes or tan shoes today; whether to go calling or to stay at home and write letters this afternoon. such a person is usually in a stew over some inconsequential matter, and consumes so much time and energy in fussing over trivial things that he is incapable of handling larger ones. if we are certain that we have all the facts in a given case before us, and have given each its due weight so far as our judgment will enable us to do, then there is nothing to be gained by delaying the decision. nor is there any occasion to change the decision after it has once been made unless new evidence is discovered bearing on the case. decision under effort.--the highest type of decision is that in which effort is the determining factor. the pressure of external circumstances and inward impulse is not enough to overcome a calm and determined _i will_. two possible lines of action may lie open before us. every current of our being leads toward the one; in addition, inclination, friends, honors, all beckon in the same direction. from the other course our very nature shrinks; duty alone bids us take this line, and promises no rewards except the approval of conscience. here is the crucial point in human experience; the supreme test of the individual; the last measure of man's independence and power. winning at this point man has exercised his highest prerogative--that of independent choice; failing here, he reverts toward the lower forms and is a creature of circumstance, no longer the master of his own destiny, but blown about by the winds of chance. and it behooves us to win in this battle. we may lose in a contest or a game and yet not fail, because we have done our best; if we fail in the conflict of motives we have planted a seed of weakness from which we shall at last harvest defeat. jean valjean, the galley slave of almost a score of years, escapes and lives an honest life. he wins the respect and admiration of friends; he is elected mayor of his town, and honors are heaped on him. at the height of his prosperity he reads one day that a man has been arrested in another town for the escaped convict, jean valjean, and is about to be sent to the galleys. now comes the supreme test in jean valjean's life. shall he remain the honored, respected citizen and let an innocent man suffer in his stead, or shall he proclaim himself the long-sought criminal and again have the collar riveted on his neck and take his place at the oars? he spends one awful night of conflict in which contending motives make a battle ground of his soul. but in the morning he has won. he has saved his manhood. his conscience yet lives--and he goes and gives himself up to the officers. nor could he do otherwise and still remain a _man_. . strong and weak wills many persons will admit that their memory or imagination or power of perception is not good, but few will confess to a weak will. strength of will is everywhere lauded as a mark of worth and character. how can we tell whether our will is strong or weak? not a will, but wills.--first of all we need to remember that, just as we do not have a memory, but a system of memories, so we do not possess a will, but many different wills. by this i mean that the will must be called upon and tested at every point of contact in experience before we have fully measured its strength. our will may have served us reasonably well so far, but we may not yet have met any great number of hard tests because our experience and temptations have been limited. nor must we forget to take into account both the negative and the positive functions of the will. many there are who think of the will chiefly in its negative use, as a kind of a check or barrier to save us _from_ doing certain things. that this is an important function cannot be denied. but the positive is the higher function. there are many men and women who are able to resist evil, but able to do little good. they are good enough, but not good for much. they lack the power of effort and self-compulsion to hold them up to the high standards and stern endeavor necessary to save them from inferiority or mediocrity. it is almost certain that for most who read these words the greatest test of their will power will be in the positive instead of the negative direction. objective tests a false measure of will power.--the actual amount of volition exercised in making a decision cannot be measured by objective results. the fact that you follow the pathway of duty, while i falter and finally drift into the byways of pleasure, is not certain evidence that you have put forth the greater power of will. in the first place, the allurements which led me astray may have had no charms for you. furthermore, you may have so formed the habit of pursuing the pathway of duty when the two paths opened before you, that your well-trained feet unerringly led you into the narrow way without a struggle. of course you are on safer ground than i, and on ground that we should all seek to attain. but, nevertheless, i, although i fell when i should have stood, may have been fighting a battle and manifesting a power of resistance of which you, under similar temptation, would have been incapable. the only point from which a conflict of motives can be safely judged is that of the soul which is engaged in the struggle. . volitional types several fairly well-marked volitional types may be discovered. it is, of course, to be understood that these types all grade by insensible degrees into each other, and that extreme types are the exception rather than the rule. the impulsive type.--the _impulsive_ type of will goes along with a nervous organism of the hair-trigger kind. the brain is in a state of highly unstable equilibrium, and a relatively slight current serves to set off the motor centers. action follows before there is time for a counteracting current to intervene. putting it in mental terms, we act on an idea which presents itself before an opposing one has opportunity to enter the mind. hence _the action is largely or wholly ideo-motor and but slightly or not at all deliberate_. it is this type of will which results in the hasty word or deed, or the rash act committed on the impulse of the moment and repented of at leisure; which compels the frequent, "i didn't think, or i would not have done it!" the impulsive person may undoubtedly have credited up to him many kind words and noble deeds. in addition, he usually carries with him an air of spontaneity and whole-heartedness which goes far to atone for his faults. the fact remains, however, that he is too little the master of his acts, that he is guided too largely by external circumstances or inward caprice. he lacks balance. impulsive action is not to be confused with quick decision and rapid action. many of the world's greatest and safest leaders have been noted for quickness of decision and for rapidity of action in carrying out their decisions. it must be remembered, however, that these men were making decisions in fields well known to them. they were specialists in this line of deliberation. the motives for and against certain lines of action had often been dwelt upon. all possible contingencies had been imaged many times over, and a valuation placed upon the different decisions. the various concepts had long been associated with certain definite lines of action. deliberation under such conditions can be carried on with lightning rapidity, each motive being checked off as worth so much the instant it presents itself, and action can follow immediately when attention settles on the proper motive to govern the decision. this is not impulse, but abbreviated deliberation. these facts suggest to us that we should think much and carefully over matters in which we are required to make quick decisions. of course the remedy for the over-impulsive type is to cultivate deliberative action. when the impulse comes to act without consideration, pause to give the other side of the question an opportunity to be heard. check the motor response to ideas that suggest action until you have reviewed the field to see whether there are contrary reasons to be taken into account. form the habit of waiting for all evidence before deciding. "think twice" before you act. the obstructed will.--the opposite of the impulsive type of will is the _obstructed_ or _balky_ will. in this type there is too much inhibition, or else not enough impulsion. images which should result in action are checkmated by opposing images, or do not possess vitality enough as motives to overcome the dead weight of inertia which clogs mental action. the person knows well enough what he should do, but he cannot get started. he "cannot get the consent of his will." it may be the student whose mind is tormented by thoughts of coming failure in recitation or examination, but who yet cannot force himself to the exertion necessary safely to meet the ordeal. it may be the dissolute man who tortures himself in his sober moments with remorse and the thought that he was intended for better things, but who, waking from his meditations, goes on in the same old way. it may be the child undergoing punishment, who is to be released from bondage as soon as he will promise to be good, but who cannot bring himself to say the necessary words. it not only may be, but is, man or woman anywhere who has ideals which are known to be worthy and noble, but which fail to take hold. it is anyone who is following a course of action which he knows is beneath him. no one can doubt that the moral tragedies, the failures and the shipwrecks in life come far more from the breaking of the bonds which should bind right ideals to action than from a failure to perceive the truth. men differ far more in their deeds than in their standards of action. the remedy for this diseased type of will is much easier to prescribe than to apply. it is simply to refuse to attend to the contrary thoughts which are blocking action, and to cultivate and encourage those which lead to action of the right kind. it is seeking to vitalize our good impulses and render them effective by acting on them whenever opportunity offers. nothing can be accomplished by moodily dwelling on the disgrace of harboring the obstructing ideas. thus brooding over them only encourages them. what we need is to get entirely away from the line of thought in which we have met our obstruction, and approach the matter from a different direction. the child who is in a fit of sulks does not so much need a lecture on the disagreeable habit he is forming as to have his thoughts led into lines not connected with the grievance which is causing him the trouble. the stubborn child does not need to have his will "broken," but rather to have it strengthened. he may be compelled to do what he does not want to do; but if this is accomplished through physical force instead of by leading to thoughts connected with the performance of the act, it may be doubted whether the will has in any degree been strengthened. indeed it may rather be depended upon that the will has been weakened; for an opportunity for self-control, through which alone the will develops, has been lost. the ultimate remedy for rebellion often lies in greater freedom at the proper time. this does not mean that the child should not obey rightful authority promptly and explicitly, but that just as little external authority as possible should intervene to take from the child the opportunity for _self_-compulsion. the normal will.--the golden mean between these two abnormal types of will may be called the _normal_ or _balanced_ will. here there is a proper ratio between impulsion and inhibition. ideas are not acted upon the instant they enter the mind without giving time for a survey of the field of motives, neither is action "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought" to such an extent that it becomes impossible. the evidence is all considered and each motive fully weighed. but this once done, decision follows. no dilatory and obstructive tactics are allowed. the fleeting impulse is not enough to persuade to action, neither is action unduly delayed after the decision is made. . training the will the will is to be trained as we train the other powers of the mind--through the exercise of its normal function. the function of the will is to direct or control in the actual affairs of life. many well-meaning persons speak of training the will as if we could separate it from the interests and purposes of our daily living, and in some way put it through its paces merely for the sake of adding to its general strength. this view is all wrong. there is, as we have seen, no such thing as _general_ power of will. will is always required in specific acts and emergencies, and it is precisely upon such matters that it must be exercised if it is to be cultivated. will to be trained in common round of duties.--what is needed in developing the will is a deep moral interest in whatever we set out to do, and a high purpose to do it up to the limit of our powers. without this, any artificial exercises, no matter how carefully they are devised or how heroically they are carried out, cannot but fail to fit us for the real tests of life; with it, artificial exercises are superfluous. it matters not so much what our vocation as how it is performed. the most commonplace human experience is rich in opportunities for the highest form of expression possible to the will--that of directing us into right lines of action, and of holding us to our best in the accomplishment of some dominant purpose. there is no one set form of exercise which alone will serve to train the will. the student pushing steadily toward his goal in spite of poverty and grinding labor; the teacher who, though unappreciated and poorly paid, yet performs every duty with conscientious thoroughness; the man who stands firm in the face of temptation; the person whom heredity or circumstance has handicapped, but who, nevertheless, courageously fights his battle; the countless men and women everywhere whose names are not known to fame, but who stand in the hard places, bearing the heat and the toil with brave, unflinching hearts--these are the ones who are developing a moral fiber and strength of will which will stand in the day of stress. better a thousand times such training as this in the thick of life's real conflicts than any volitional calisthenics or priggish self-denials entered into solely for the training of the will! school work and will training.--the work of the school offers as good an opportunity for training powers of will as of memory or reasoning. on the side of inhibition there is always the necessity for self-restraint and control so that the rights of others may not be infringed upon. temptations to unfairness or insincerity in lessons and examinations are always to be met. the social relations of the school necessitate the development of personal poise and independence. on the positive side the opportunities for the exercise of will power are always at hand in the school. every lesson gives the pupil a chance to measure his strength and determination against the resistance of the task. high standards are to be built up, ideals maintained, habits rendered secure. the great problem for the teacher in this connection is so to organize both control and instruction that the largest possible opportunity is given to pupils for the exercise of their own powers of will in all school relations. . freedom of the will, or the extent of its control we have seen in this discussion that will is a mode of control--control of our thoughts and, through our thoughts, of our actions. will may be looked upon, then, as the culmination of the mental life, the highest form of directive agent within us. beginning with the direction of the simplest movements, it goes on until it governs the current of our life in the pursuit of some distant ideal. limitations of the will.--just how far the will can go in its control, just how far man is a free moral agent, has long been one of the mooted questions among the philosophers. but some few facts are clear. if the will can exercise full control over all our acts, it by this very fact determines our character; and character spells destiny. there is not the least doubt, however, that the will in thus directing us in the achievement of a destiny works under two limitations: _first_, every individual enters upon life with a large stock of _inherited tendencies_, which go far to shape his interests and aspirations. and these are important factors in the work of volition. _second_, we all have our setting in the midst of a great _material and social environment_, which is largely beyond our power to modify, and whose influences are constantly playing upon us and molding us according to their type. these limitations the conditions of freedom.--yet there is nothing in this thought to discourage us. for these very limitations have in them our hope of a larger freedom. man's heredity, coming to him through ages of conflict with the forces of nature, with his brother man, and with himself, has deeply instilled in him the spirit of independence and self-control. it has trained him to deliberate, to choose, to achieve. it has developed in him the power _to will_. likewise man's environment, in which he must live and work, furnishes the problems which his life work is to solve, and _out of whose solution will receives its only true development_. it is through the action and interaction of these two factors, then, that man is to work out his destiny. what he _is_, coupled with what he may _do_, leads him to what he may _become_. every man possesses in some degree a spark of divinity, a sovereign individuality, a power of independent initiative. this is all he needs to make him free--free to do his best in whatever walk of life he finds himself. if he will but do this, the doing of it will lead him into a constantly growing freedom, and he can voice the cry of every earnest heart: build thee more stately mansions, o my soul! as the swift seasons roll! leave thy low-vaulted past! let each new temple, nobler than the last, shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, till thou at length art free, leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! . problems in observation and introspection . give illustrations from your own experience of the various types of action mentioned in this discussion. from your own experience of the last hour, what examples of impulsive action can you give? would it have been better in some cases had you stopped to deliberate? . are you easily influenced by prejudice or personal preference in making decisions? what recent decisions have been thus affected? can you classify the various ones of your decisions which you can recall under the four types mentioned in the text? under which class does the largest number fall? have you a tendency to drift with the crowd? are you independent in deciding upon and following out a line of action? what is the value of advice? ought advice to do more than to assist in getting all the evidence on a case before the one who is to decide? . can you judge yourself well enough to tell to which volitional type you belong? are you over-impulsive? are you stubborn? what is the difference between stubbornness and firmness? suppose you ask your instructor, or a friend, to assist you in classifying yourself as to volitional type. are you troubled with indecision; that is, do you have hard work to decide in trivial matters even after you know all the facts in the case? what is the cause of these states of indecision? the remedy? . have you a strong power of will? can you control your attention? do you submit easily to temptation? can you hold yourself up to a high degree of effort? can you persevere? have you ever failed in the attainment of some cherished ideal because you could not bring yourself to pay the price in the sacrifice or effort necessary? . consider the class work and examinations of schools that you know. does the system of management and control throw responsibility on the pupils in a way to develop their powers of will? . what motives or incentives can be used to encourage pupils to use self-compulsion to maintain high standards of excellence in their studies and conduct? does it pay to be heroic in one's self-control? chapter xviii self-expression and development we have already seen that the mind and the body are associated in a copartnership in which each is an indispensable and active member. we have seen that the body gets its dignity and worth from its relation with the mind, and that the mind is dependent on the body for the crude material of its thought, and also for the carrying out of its mandates in securing adaptation to our environment. we have seen as a corollary of these facts that the efficiency of both mind and body is conditioned by the manner in which each carries out its share of the mutual activities. let us see something more of this interrelation. . inter-relation of impression and expression _no impression without corresponding expression_ has become a maxim in both physiology and psychology. inner life implies self-expression in external activities. the stream of impressions pouring in upon us hourly from our environment must have means of expression if development is to follow. we cannot be passive recipients, but must be active participants in the educational process. we must not only be able to _know_ and _feel_, but to _do_. [illustration: fig. ] the many sources of impressions.--the nature of the impressions which come to us and how they all lead on toward ultimate expression is shown in the accompanying diagram (fig. ). our material environment is thrusting impressions upon us every moment of our life; also, the material objects with which we deal have become so saturated with social values that each comes to us with a double significance, and what an object _means_ often stands for more than what it _is_. from the lives of people with whom we daily mingle; from the wider circle whose lives do not immediately touch ours, but who are interpreted to us by the press, by history and literature; from the social institutions into which have gone the lives of millions, and of which our lives form a part, there come to us constantly a flood of impressions whose influence cannot be measured. so likewise with religious impressions. god is all about us and within us. he speaks to us from every nook and corner of nature, and communes with us through the still small voice from within, if we will but listen. the bible, religious instruction, and the lives of good people are other sources of religious impressions constantly tending to mold our lives. the beautiful in nature, art, and human conduct constantly appeals to us in æssthetic impressions. all impressions lead toward expression.--each of these groups of impressions may be subdivided and extended into an almost indefinite number and variety, the different groups meeting and overlapping, it is true, yet each preserving reasonably distinct characteristics. a common characteristic of them all, as shown in the diagram, is that they all point toward expression. the varieties of light, color, form, and distance which we get through vision are not merely that we may know these phenomena of nature, but that, knowing them, we may use the knowledge in making proper responses to our environment. our power to know human sympathy and love through our social impressions are not merely that we may feel these emotions, but that, feeling them, we may act in response to them. it is impossible to classify logically in any simple scheme all the possible forms of expression. the diagram will serve, however, to call attention to some of the chief modes of bodily expression, and also to the results of the bodily expressions in the arts and vocations. here again the process of subdivision and extension can be carried out indefinitely. the laugh can be made to tell many different stories. crying may express bitter sorrow or uncontrollable joy. vocal speech may be carried on in a thousand tongues. dramatic action may be made to portray the whole range of human feelings. plays and games are wide enough in their scope to satisfy the demands of all ages and every people. the handicrafts cover so wide a range that the material progress of civilization can be classed under them, and indeed without their development the arts and vocations would be impossible. architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature have a thousand possibilities both in technique and content. likewise the modes of society, conduct, and religion are unlimited in their forms of expression. limitations of expression.--while it is more blessed to give than to receive, it is somewhat harder in the doing; for more of the self is, after all, involved in expression than in impression. expression needs to be cultivated as an art; for who can express all he thinks, or feels, or conceives? who can do his innermost self justice when he attempts to express it in language, in music, or in marble? the painter answers when praised for his work, "if you could but see the picture i intended to paint!" the pupil says, "i know, but i cannot tell." the friend says, "i wish i could tell you how sorry i am." the actor complains, "if i could only portray the passion as i feel it, i could bring all the world to my feet!" the body, being of grosser structure than the mind, must always lag somewhat behind in expressing the mind's states; yet, so perfect is the harmony between the two, that with a body well trained to respond to the mind's needs, comparatively little of the spiritual need be lost in its expression through the material. . the place of expression in development nor are we to think that cultivation of expression results in better power of expression alone, or that lack of cultivation results only in decreased power of expression. intellectual value of expression.--there is a distinct mental value in expression. an idea always assumes new clearness and wider relations when it is expressed. michael angelo, making his plans for the great cathedral, found his first concept of the structure expanding and growing more beautiful as he developed his plans. the sculptor, beginning to model the statue after the image which he has in his mind, finds the image growing and becoming more expressive and beautiful as the clay is molded and formed. the writer finds the scope and worth of his book growing as he proceeds with the writing. the student, beginning doubtfully on his construction in geometry, finds the truth growing clearer as he proceeds. the child with a dim and hazy notion of the meaning of the story in history or literature discovers that the meaning grows clear as he himself works out its expression in speech, in the handicrafts, or in dramatic representation. so we may apply the test to any realm of thought whatever, and the law holds good: _it is not in its apprehension, but in its expression, that a truth finally becomes assimilated to our body of usable knowledge._ and this means that in all training of the body through its motor expression we are to remember that the mind must be behind the act; that the intellect must guide the hand; that the object is not to make skillful fingers alone, but to develop clear and intelligent thought as well. moral value of expression.--expression also has a distinct moral value. there are many more people of good intentions than of moral character in the world. the rugged proverb tells us that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. and how easy it is to form good resolutions. who of us has not, after some moral struggle, said, "i will break the bonds of this habit: i will enter upon that heroic line of action!" and then, satisfied for the time with having made the resolution, continued in the old path, until we were surprised later to find that we had never got beyond the resolution. it is not in the moment of the resolve but in the moment when the resolve is carried out in action that the moral value inheres. to take a stand on a question of right and wrong means more than to show one's allegiance to the right--it clears one's own moral vision and gives him command of himself. expression is, finally, the only true test for our morality. lacking moral expression, we may stand in the class of those who are merely good, but we can never enter the class of those who are good for something. one cannot but wonder what would happen if all the people in the world who are morally right should give expression to their moral sentiments, not in words alone, but in deeds. surely the millennium would speedily come, not only among the nations, but in the lives of men. religious value of expression.--true religious experience demands expression. the older conception of a religious life was to escape from the world and live a life of communion and contemplation in some secluded spot, ignoring the world thirsting without. later religious teaching, however, recognized the fact that religion cannot consist in drinking in blessings alone, no matter how ecstatic the feeling which may accompany the process; that it is not the receiving, but this along with the giving that enriches the life. to give the cup of cold water, to visit the widow and the fatherless, to comfort and help the needy and forlorn--this is not only scriptural but it is psychological. only as religious feeling goes out into religious expression, can we have a normal religious experience. social value of expression.--the criterion of an education once was, how much does he know? the world did not expect an educated man to _do_ anything; he was to be put on a pedestal and admired from a distance. but this criterion is now obsolete. society cares little how much we know if it does not enable us to do. people no longer admire mere knowledge, but insist that the man of education shall put his shoulder to the wheel and lend a hand wherever help is needed. education is no longer to set men apart from their fellows, but to make them more efficient comrades and helpers in the world's work. not the man who _knows_ chemistry and botany, but he who can use this knowledge to make two blades of grass grow where but one grew before, is the true benefactor of his race. in short, the world demands services returned for opportunities afforded; it expects social expression to result from education. and this is also best for the individual, for only through social service can we attain to a full realization of the social values in our environment. only thus can we enter fully into the social heritage of the ages which we receive from books and institutions; only thus can we come into the truest and best relations with humanity in a common brotherhood; only thus can we live the broader and more significant life, and come to realize the largest possible social self. . educational use of expression the educational significance of the truths illustrated in the diagram and the discussion has been somewhat slow in taking hold in our schools. this has been due not alone to the slowness of the educational world to grasp a new idea, but also to the practical difficulties connected with adapting the school exercises as well to the expression side of education as to the impression. from the fall of athens on down to the time of froebel the schools were constituted on the theory that pupils were to _receive_ education; that they were to _drink in_ knowledge, that their minds were to be _stored_ with facts. children were to "be seen and not heard." education was largely a process of gorging the memory with information. easier to provide for the impression side of education.--now it is evident that it is far easier to provide for the passive side of education than for the active side. all that is needed in the former case is to have teachers and books reasonably full of information, and pupils sufficiently docile to receive it. but in the latter case, the equipment must be more extensive. if the child is to be allowed to carry out his impressions into action, if he is actually to _do_ something himself, then he must be supplied with adequate equipment. so far as the home life was concerned, the child of several generations ago was at a decided advantage over the child of today on the expression side of his education. the homes of that day were beehives of industry, in which a dozen handicrafts were taught and practiced. the buildings, the farm implements, and most of the furniture of the home were made from the native timber. the material for the clothing of the family was produced on the farm, made into cloth, and finally into garments in the home. nearly all the supplies for the table came likewise from the farm. these industries demanded the combined efforts of the family, and each child did his or her part. but that day is past. one-half of our people live in cities and towns, and even in the village and on the farm the handicrafts of the home have been relegated to the factory, and everything comes into the home ready for use. the telephone, the mail carrier, and the deliveryman do all the errands even, and the child in the home is deprived of responsibility and of nearly all opportunity for manual expression. this is no one's fault, for it is just one phase of a great industrial readjustment in society. yet the fact remains that the home has lost an important element in education, which the school must supply if we are not to be the losers educationally by the change. the school to take up the handicrafts.--and modern educational method is insisting precisely on this point. a few years ago the boy caught whittling in school was a fit subject for a flogging; the boy is today given bench and tools, and is instructed in their use. then the child was punished for drawing pictures; now we are using drawing as one of the best modes of expression. then instruction in singing was intrusted to an occasional evening class, which only the older children could attend, and which was taught by some itinerant singing master; today we make music one of our most valuable school exercises. then all play time was so much time wasted; now we recognize play as a necessary and valuable mode of expression and development. then dramatic representation was confined to the occasional exhibition or evening entertainment; now it has become a recognized part of our school work. then it was a crime for pupils to communicate with each other in school; now a part of the school work is planned so that pupils work in groups, and thus receive social training. then our schoolrooms were destitute of every vestige of beauty; today many of them are artistic and beautiful. this statement of the case is rather over-optimistic if applied to our whole school system, however. for there are still many schools in which all forms of handicraft are unknown, and in which the only training in artistic expression is that which comes from caricaturing the teacher. singing is still an unknown art to many teachers. the play instinct is yet looked upon with suspicion and distrust in some quarters. a large number of our schoolrooms are as barren and ugly today as ever, and contain an atmosphere as stifling to all forms of natural expression. we can only comfort ourselves with holmes's maxim, that it matters not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving. and we certainly are moving toward a larger development and greater efficiency in expression on the part of those who pass through our schools. expression and character.--finally, all that has been said in this discussion has direct reference to what we call character--that mysterious something which we so often hear eulogized and so seldom analyzed. character has two distinct phases, which may be called the _subjective_ phase and the _social_ phase; or, stating it differently, character is both what we _are_ and what we _do_. the first of these has to do with the nature of the real, innermost self; and the last, with the modes in which this self finds expression. and it is fair to say that those about us are concerned with what we are chiefly from its relation to what we do. character is not a thing, but a process; it is the succession of our thoughts and acts from hour to hour. it is not something which we can hoard and protect and polish unto a more perfect day, but it is the everyday self in the process of living. and the only way in which it can be made or marred is through the nature of this stream of thoughts and acts which constitute the day's life--is through _being_ or _doing_ well or ill. two lines of development.--the cultivation of character must, then, ignore neither of these two lines. to neglect the first is to forget that it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks; that a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit; that the act is the true index of the soul. to omit the second is to leave the character half formed, the will weak, and the life inefficient and barren of results. the mind must be supplied with noble ideas and high ideals, with right emotions and worthy ambitions. on the other hand, the proper connection must be established between these mental states and appropriate acts. and the acts must finally grow into habits, so that we naturally and inevitably translate our ideas and ideals, our emotions and ambitions into deeds. our character must be strong not in thought and feeling alone, but also in the power to return to the world its finished product in the form of service. . problems in introspection and observation . do you find that you understand better some difficult point or problem after you have succeeded in stating it? do you remember better what you have expressed? . in which particular ones of your studies do you think you could have done better if you had been given more opportunity for expression? explain the psychology of the maxim, we learn to do by doing. . observe various schools at work for the purpose of determining whether opportunities for expression in the recitations are adequate. have you ever seen a class when listless from listening liven up when they were given something to _do_ themselves? . make a study of the types of laughter you hear. why is some laughter much more pleasant than other laughter? what did a noted sculptor mean when he said that a smile at the eyes cannot be depended upon as can one at the mouth? . what examples have you observed in children's plays showing their love for dramatic representation? what handicrafts are the most suitable for children of primary grades? for the grammar school? for the high school? . do you number those among your acquaintance who seem bright enough, so far as learning is concerned, but who cannot get anything accomplished? is the trouble on the expression side of their character? what are you doing about your own powers of expression? are you seeking to cultivate expression in new lines? is there danger in attempting too many lines? index action, automatic, classes of, factors involved in, reflex, volitional, activity, necessity for motor, adolescence, interests of, association, and action, chapter on, development of centers, laws of, and methods of learning, and memory, nature of, neural basis of, partial or selective, pleasure-pain motive in, and thinking, training in, types of, attention, chapter on, effects of, and efficiency, points of failure in, habit of, , improvement of, method of, attention, nature of, rhythms of, types of, belief, in thinking, brain, chapter on, and nervous system, quality and memory, relations of mind and, cerebellum, the, cerebrum, the, concept, the, definition of, function of, growth of, and language, consciousness, content of, known by introspection, the mind or, nature of, personal character of, as a stream, where it resides, cord, the spinal, cortex, the, division of labor in, decision, under effort, types of, decision and will, deduction, development, of association centers, chapter on, and instinct, mental and motor training, of nervous system, through play, direction, perception of, disposition, and mood, , and temperament, education, as habit forming, emotion, chapter on, control of, , cultivation of, and feeling, james-lange theory of, as a motive, physiological explanation of, end-organ(s) of hearing, kinæsthetic, and sensory qualities, of skin, of smell, of taste, of vision, environment, influence of, expression, and character, educational use of, expression, and impression, learning to interpret, limitations of, self-, and development, , fatigue, and habit, and nervous system, fear, instinct of, types of, feeling, chapter on, effects of, and mood, nature of, qualities, forgetting, rate of, habit, of attention, , chapter on, effects of, emotional, forming as education, and life economy, nature of, and personality, physical basis of, rules for forming, tyranny of, handicrafts, and education, hearing, idea, and image, , image(ry), ability in, chapter on, classes of, image(ry), cultivation of, and past experience, functions of, and ideas, , and imagination, types of, imagination, chapter on, and conduct, cultivation of, , function of, the stuff of, and thinking, types of, imitation, conscious and unconscious, individuality in, the instinct of, in learning, induction, instinct(s), chapter on, definition of, of fear, of imitation, laws of, nature of, of play, as starting points in development, transitory nature of, various undesirable, various useful, interest(s), chapter on, direct and indirect, and education, and habit, nature of, interest(s) and nonvoluntary attention, order of development of, selection among, transitoriness of certain, introspection, and imagery, method of, james, quoted, theory of emotion, judgment, functions of, nature of, in percepts and concepts, and reasoning, validity of, knowledge, raw material of, through senses, language, and the concept, laws, of association, of instinct, of memory, learning, and association, localization of function in cortex, meaning, dependence on relations, memorizing, rules for, memory, and association, and brain quality, chapter on, devices, factors involved in, what constitutes good, laws of, material of, nature of, physical basis of, mind, or consciousness, at birth, and brain, chapter on, dependence on senses, and external world, mood, and disposition, , influence of, how produced, motive, emotion as a, neuroglia, neurone, the, nerve cells, and nutrition, undeveloped, nerve fibers, nervous system, and association, and consciousness, division of labor in, factors determining efficiency of, and fatigue, gross structure of, nervous system, and nutrition, order of development, structural elements in, and worry, objects, defined through perception, physical qualities of, , percept, content of, functions of, perception, chapter on, of direction, function of, nature of, of space, of time, training of, personality, and habit, influence of, play, and education, instinct of, and work, qualities, sensory, auditory, cutaneous, kinæsthetic, objects known through, olfactory, organic, taste, visual, reason, and judgment, nature of, and the syllogism, registration, and attention, and memory, recall, recognition, rhythm, of attention, self expression and development, sensation, attributes of, chapter on, cutaneous, factors conditioning, kinæsthetic, nature of, organic, qualities of, qualities of auditory, qualities of olfactory, qualities of taste, qualities of visual, senses, dependence of mind on, knowledge through, work of, sentiments, development of, influence of, nature of, smell, space, perception of, stimuli, education and, effects of sensory, end-organs and, sensory, stimuli, and response, syllogism, the taste, temperament, thinking, and association, chapter on, child and adult, elements in, good and memory, types of, time, perception of, validity, of judgment, vision, volition, see will, and decision, volitional types, will, and attention, chapter on, content of, freedom of, function of, measure of power, nature of, strong and weak, training of, types of, work, and play, worry, effects of, youth, and habit-forming, * * * * * * a valuable book for teachers principles of educational practice by paul klapper, ph.d., department of education, college of the city of new york. vo, cloth, $ . . this book studies the basic principles underlying sound and progressive pedagogy. in its scope and organization it aims to give ( ) a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the principles of education, ( ) the modern trend and interpretation of educational thought, ( ) a transition from pure psychology to methods of teaching and discipline, and ( ) practical applications of educational theory to the problems that confront the teacher in the course of daily routine. every practical pedagogical solution that is offered has actually stood the test of classroom demonstration. the book opens with a study of the function of education and a contrast of the modern social conception with those aims which have been guiding ideals in previous educational systems. part ii deals with the physiological aspects of education. part iii is taken up with the problem of socializing the child through the curriculum and the school discipline. the last part of the book, part iv, the mental aspect of education, is developed under the following sections: _section a._ the instinctive aspect of mind. mind and its development through self-expression. self-activity. instincts. _section b._ intellectual aspect of mind. the functions of intellect, perception, apperception, memory, imagination, thought activities. the doctrine of formal discipline and its influence upon educational endeavor. _section c._ emotional aspect of mind. _section d._ volitional aspect of mind. study of will, kinds of volitional action, habit vs. deliberative consciousness. the education of the will. education and social responsibility, the problems of ethical instruction, and the social functions of the school. in order to increase the usefulness of the book to teachers of education there is added a classified bibliography for systematic, intensive reference reading and a list of suggested problems suitable for advanced work. d. appleton and company new york--chicago * * * * * * appletons' new teachers' books a student's text-book in the history of education by stephen pierce duggan, ph. d. head of the department of education, college of the city of new york mo., cloth, $ . net professor duggan has produced the text-book in the history of education which has been such a need in our pedagogical work. growing out of his work as a teacher and lecturer, this book combines the practical pedagogy of a teacher with the scholarship of an undisputed authority on education and its study. there is no book in this field containing such a fund of useful material arranged along such a skillful outline. an experience of years is here condensed and solidified into a splendid unit. "a student's text-book in the history of education" presents an authentic account of every educational system which has influenced our present-day scheme of pedagogy from the times of the hebrews to the age of the montessori method. no time is wasted on detailed considerations of other systems. professor duggan's book aids the teacher by giving him a better understanding of present-day problems in education; by explaining how western civilization developed the educational ideals, content, organization, and practices which characterize it today; and by developing the manner in which each people has worked out the solution of the great problem of reconciling individual liberty with social stability. d. appleton and company new york--chicago * * * * * * appletons' new teachers' books education for social efficiency by irving king, ph. d. _professor of education, the state university of iowa, iowa city, iowa_. mo., cloth, $ . net written not so much for the educational specialist as for the practical needs of busy teachers, "education for social efficiency" presents through the medium of illustration, a social view of education which is very prominent. it shows concretely various ways in which parents as well as teachers may contribute something towards the realization of the ideal of social efficiency as the goal of our educational enterprise. the idea that the school, especially the country school, should provide more than instruction in lessons for the scholars is professor king's main point. excellent chapters are included on the school as a social center, the school and social progress, and the social aim of education. in discussing the rural schools particularly, the author writes on the rural school and the rural community, adapting the country school to country needs, and an especially valuable chapter on the consolidated school and socially efficient education for the country. the response with which professor king's "education for social efficiency" has met throughout the country is evidenced by the fact that the states of iowa, missouri, tennessee, south dakota, and virginia have adopted it for reading circle use. it has also been adopted by the national bureau of education for use in its rural teachers' reading circles. d. appleton and company new york--chicago * * * * * * footnotes: footnote : donaldson, "the growth of the brain," pp. , . footnote : quoted by james, "psychology," briefer course, p. . footnote : "psychology," vol. i, pp. , ; also, "briefer course," p. . footnote : see betts, "the distribution and functions of mental imagery." footnote : cf. dewey, "how we think," p. ff. footnote : "psychology," p. . +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | transcriber's note | | | | eight printer errors have been corrected, all of them wrong or | | missing full-stops or commas. also, in the completion tests which | | start at line , the words to be omitted, which were italicised | | in the original, have instead been surrounded by curly brackets | | to aid readability. in all other cases, italics are denoted by | | underscores and bold by equals signs. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ teacher training series edited by w. w. charters _professor of education, carnegie institute of technology_ the science of human nature _a psychology for beginners_ by william henry pyle professor of educational psychology university of missouri silver, burdett & company boston new york chicago copyright, , by silver, burdett & company. author's preface this book is written for young students in high schools and normal schools. no knowledge can be of more use to a young person than a knowledge of himself; no study can be more valuable to him than a study of himself. a study of the laws of human behavior,--that is the purpose of this book. what is human nature like? why do we act as we do? how can we make ourselves different? how can we make others different? how can we make ourselves more efficient? how can we make our lives more worth while? this book is a manual intended to help young people to obtain such knowledge of human nature as will enable them to answer these questions. i have not attempted to write a complete text on psychology. there are already many such books, and good ones too. i have selected for treatment only such topics as young students can study with interest and profit. i have tried to keep in mind all the time the practical worth of the matters discussed, and the ability and experience of the intended readers. to the teacher this book can be only a guide to you. you are to help your students study human nature. you must, to some extent, be a psychologist yourself before you can teach psychology. you must yourself be a close and scientific student of human nature. develop in the students the spirit of inquiry and investigation. teach them to look to their own minds and their neighbor's actions for verification of the statements of the text. let the students solve by observation and experiment the questions and problems raised in the text and the exercises. the exercises should prove to be the most valuable part of the book. the first two chapters are the most difficult but ought to be read before the rest of the book is studied. if you think best, merely read these two chapters with the pupils, and after the book is finished come back to them for careful study. in the references, i have given parallel readings, for the most part to titchener, pillsbury, and münsterberg. i have purposely limited the references, partly because a library will not be available to many who may use the book, and partly because the young student is likely to be confused by much reading from different sources before he has worked out some sort of system and a point of view of his own. only the most capable members of a high school class will be able to profit much from the references given. to the student you are beginning the study of human nature. you can not study human nature from a book, you must study yourself and your neighbors. this book may help you to know what to look for and to understand what you find, but it can do little more than this. it is true, this text gives you many facts learned by psychologists, but you must verify the statements, or at least see their significance to _you_, or they will be of no worth to you. however, the facts considered here, properly understood and assimilated, ought to prove of great value to you. but perhaps of greater value will be the psychological frame of mind or attitude which you should acquire. the psychological attitude is that of seeking to find and understand the _causes of human action, and the causes, consequences, and significance of the processes of the human mind_. if your first course in psychology teaches you to look for these things, gives you some skill in finding them and in using the knowledge after you have it, your study should be quite worth while. w. h. pyle. editor's preface there are at least two possible approaches to the study of psychology by teacher-training students in high schools and by beginning students in normal schools. one of these is through methods of teaching and subject matter. the other aims to give the simple, concrete facts of psychology as the science of the mind. the former presupposes a close relationship between psychology and methods of teaching and assumes that psychology is studied chiefly as an aid to teaching. the latter is less complicated. the plan contemplates the teaching of the simple fundamentals at first and applying them incidentally as the occasion demands. this latter point of view is in the main the point of view taken in the text. the author has taught the material of the text to high school students to the end that he might present the fundamental facts of psychology in simple form. w. w. c. contents page chapter i. introduction chapter ii. development of the race and of the individual chapter iii. mind and body chapter iv. inherited tendencies chapter v. feeling and attention chapter vi. habit chapter vii. memory chapter viii. thinking chapter ix. individual differences chapter x. applied psychology glossary index the science of human nature chapter i introduction =science.= before attempting to define psychology, it will be helpful to make some inquiry into the nature of science in general. science is knowledge; it is what we know. but mere knowledge is not science. for a bit of knowledge to become a part of science, its relation to other bits of knowledge must be found. in botany, for example, bits of knowledge about plants do not make a science of botany. to have a science of botany, we must not only know about leaves, roots, flowers, seeds, etc., but we must know the relations of these parts and of all the parts of a plant to one another. in other words, in science, we must not only _know_, we must not only have _knowledge_, but we must know the significance of the knowledge, must know its _meaning_. this is only another way of saying that we must have knowledge and know its relation to other knowledge. a scientist is one who has learned to organize his knowledge. the main difference between a scientist and one who is not a scientist is that the scientist sees the significance of facts, while the non-scientific man sees facts as more or less unrelated things. as one comes to hunt for causes and inquire into the significance of things, one becomes a scientist. a thing or an event always points beyond itself to something else. this something else is what goes before it or comes after it,--is its cause or its effect. this causal relationship that exists between events enables a scientist to prophesy. by carefully determining what always precedes a certain event, a certain type of happening, a scientist is able to predict the event. all that is necessary to be able to predict an event is to have a clear knowledge of its true causes. whenever, beyond any doubt, these causes are found to be present, the scientist knows the event will follow. of course, all that he really _knows_ is that such results have always followed similar causes in the past. but he has come to have faith in the uniformity and regularity of nature. the chemist does not find sulphur, or oxygen, or any other element acting one way one day under a certain set of conditions, and acting another way the next day under exactly the same conditions. nor does the physicist find the laws of mechanics holding good one day and not the next. the scientist, therefore, in his thinking brings order out of chaos in the world. if we do not know the causes and relations of things and events, the world seems a very mixed-up, chaotic place, where anything and everything is happening. but as we come to know causes and relations, the world turns out to be a very orderly and systematic place. it is a lawful world; it is not a world of chance. everything is related to everything else. now, the non-scientific mind sees things as more or less unrelated. the far-reaching causal relations are only imperfectly seen by it, while the scientific mind not only sees things, but inquires into their causes and effects or consequences. the non-scientific man, walking over the top of a mountain and noticing a stone there, is likely to see in it only a stone and think nothing of how it came to be there; but the scientific man sees quite an interesting bit of history in the stone. he reads in the stone that millions of years ago the place where the rock now lies was under the sea. many marine animals left their remains in the mud underneath the sea. the mud was afterward converted into rock. later, the shrinking and warping earth-crust lifted the rock far above the level of the sea, and it may now be found at the top of the mountain. the one bit of rock tells its story to one who inquires into its causes. the scientific man, then, sees more significance, more meaning, in things and events than does the non-scientific man. each science has its own particular field. zoölogy undertakes to answer every reasonable question about animals; botany, about plants; physics, about motion and forces; chemistry, about the composition of matter; astronomy, about the heavenly bodies, etc. the world has many aspects. each science undertakes to describe and explain some particular aspect. to understand all the aspects of the world, we must study all the sciences. =a scientific law.= by _law_ a scientist has reference to uniformities which he notices in things and events. he does not mean that necessities are imposed upon things as civil law is imposed upon man. he means only that in certain well-defined situations certain events always take place, according to all previous observations. the law of falling bodies may be cited as an example. by this law, the physicist means that in observing falling bodies in the past, he has noticed that they fall about sixteen feet in the first second and acquire in this time a velocity of thirty-two feet. he has noted that, taking into account the specific gravity of the object and the resistance of the air, this way of falling holds true of all objects at about the level of the sea. the more we carefully study the events of the world, the more strongly we come to feel that definite causes, under the same circumstances, always produce precisely the same result. the scientist has faith that events will continue to happen during all the future in the same order of cause and effect in which they have been happening during all the past. the astronomer, knowing the relations of the members of the solar system--the sun and planets--can successfully predict the occurrence of lunar and solar eclipses. in other fields, too, the scientist can predict with as much certainty as does the astronomer, provided his knowledge of the factors concerned is as complete as is the knowledge which the astronomer has of the solar system. even in the case of human beings, uncertain as their actions seem to be, we can predict their actions when our knowledge of the factors is sufficiently complete. in a great many instances we do make such predictions. for example, if we call a person by name, we expect him to turn, or make some other movement in response. our usual inability to make such predictions in the case of human beings is not because human beings are not subject to the law of cause and effect, it is not that their acts are due to chance, but that the factors involved are usually many, and it is difficult for us to find out all of them. =the science of psychology.= now, let us ask, what is the science of psychology? what kind of problems does it try to solve? what aspect of the world has it taken for its field of investigation? we have said that each science undertakes to describe some particular aspect of the world. human psychology is the science of human nature. but human nature has many aspects. to some extent, our bodies are the subject matter for physiology, anatomy, zoölogy, physics, and chemistry. our bodies may be studied in the same way that a rock or a table might be studied. but a human being presents certain problems that a rock or table does not present. if we consider the differences between a human being and a table, we shall see at once the special field of psychology. if we stick a pin into a leg of the table, we get no response. if we stick a pin into a leg of a man, we get a characteristic response. the man moves, he cries out. this shows two very great differences between a man and a table. the man is _sensitive_ and has the power of action, the power of _moving himself_. the table is not sensitive, nor can it move itself. if the pin is thrust into one's own leg, one has _pain_. human beings, then, are sensitive, conscious, acting beings. and the study of sensitivity, action, and consciousness is the field of psychology. these three characteristics are not peculiar to man. many, perhaps all, animals possess them. there is, therefore, an animal psychology as well as human psychology. a study of the human body shows us that the body-surface and many parts within the body are filled with sensitive nerve-ends. these sensitive nerve-ends are the sense organs, and on them the substances and forces of the world are constantly acting. in the sense organs, the nerve-ends are so modified or changed as to be affected by some particular kind of force or substance. vibrations of ether affect the eye. vibrations of air affect the ear. liquids and solutions affect the sense of taste. certain substances affect the sense of smell. certain organs in the skin are affected by low temperatures; others, by high temperatures; others, by mechanical pressure. similarly, each sense organ in the body is affected by a definite kind of force or substance. this affecting of a sense organ is known technically as _stimulation_, and that which affects the organ is known as the _stimulus_. two important consequences ordinarily follow the stimulation of a sense organ. one of these is movement. the purpose of stimulation is to bring about movement. to be alive is to respond to stimulation. when one ceases to respond to stimulation, he is dead. if we are to continue alive, we must constantly adjust ourselves to the forces of the world in which we live. generally speaking, we may say that every nerve has one end in a sense organ and the other in a muscle. this arrangement of the nerves and muscles shows that man is essentially a sensitive-action machine. the problems connected with sensitivity and action and the relation of each to the other constitute a large part of the field of psychology. we said just now, that a nerve begins in a sense organ and ends in a muscle. this statement represents the general scheme well enough, but leaves out an important detail. the nerve does not extend directly to a muscle, but ordinarily goes by way of the brain. the brain is merely a great group of nerve cells and fibers which have developed as a central organ where a stimulation may pass from almost any sense organ to almost any muscle. but another importance attaches to the brain. when a sense organ is stimulated and this stimulation passes on to the brain and agitates a cell or group of cells there, _we are conscious_. consciousness shifts and changes with every shift and change of the stimulation. the brain has still another important characteristic. after it has been stimulated through sense organ and nerve, a similar brain activity can be revived later, and this revival is the basis of _memory_. when the brain is agitated through the medium of a sense organ, we have _sensation_; when this agitation is revived later, we have a _memory idea_. a study of consciousness, or mind, the conditions under which it arises, and all the other problems involved, give us the other part of the field of psychology. we are not merely acting beings; we are _conscious_ acting beings. psychology must study human nature from both points of view. we must study man not only from the outside; that is, objectively, in the same way that we study a stone or a tree or a frog, but we must study him from the inside or subjectively. it is of importance to know not only how a man _acts_, but also how he _thinks and feels_. it must be clear now, that human action, human behavior, is the main field of psychology. for, even though our main interests in people were in their minds, we could learn of the minds only through the actions. but our interests in other human beings are not in their minds but in _what they do_. it is true that our interest in ourselves is in our minds, and we can know these minds directly; but we cannot know directly the mind of another person, we can only guess what it is from the person's actions. =the problems of psychology.= let us now see, in some detail, what the various problems of psychology are. if we are to understand human nature, we must know something of man's past; we must therefore treat of the origin and development of the human race. the relation of one generation to that preceding and to the one following makes necessary a study of heredity. we must find out how our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and ideas are dependent upon a physical body and its organs. a study of human actions shows that some actions are unlearned while others are learned or acquired. the unlearned acts are known as _instincts_ and the acquired acts are known as _habits_. our psychology must, therefore, treat of instincts and habits. how man gets experience, and retains and organizes this experience must be our problem in the chapters on sensations, ideas, memory, and thinking. individual differences in human capacity make necessary a treatment of the different types and grades of intelligence, and the compilation of tests for determining these differences. we must also treat of the application of psychology to those fields where a knowledge of human nature is necessary. =applied psychology.= at the beginning of a subject it is legitimate to inquire concerning the possibility of applying the principles studied to practical uses, and it is very proper to make this inquiry concerning psychology. psychology, being the science of human nature, ought to be of use in all fields where one needs to know the causes of human action. and psychology is applicable in these fields to the extent that the psychologist is able to work out the laws and principles of human action. in education, for example, we wish to influence children, and we must go to psychology to learn about the nature of children and to find out how we can influence them. psychology is therefore the basis of the science of education. since different kinds of work demand, in some cases, different kinds of ability, the psychology of individual differences can be of service in selecting people for special kinds of work. that is to say, we must have sometime, if we do not now, a psychology of professions and vocations. psychological investigations of the reliability of human evidence make the science of service in the court room. the study of the laws of attention and interest give us the psychology of advertising. the study of suggestion and abnormal states make psychology of use in medicine. it may be said, therefore, that psychology, once abstract and unrelated to any practical interests, will become the most useful of all sciences, as it works out its problems and finds the laws of human behavior. at present, the greatest service of psychology is to education. so true is this that a department has grown up called "educational psychology," which constitutes at the present time the most important subdivision of psychology. while in this book we treat briefly of the various applications of psychology, we shall have in mind chiefly its application to education. =the science of education.= owing to the importance which psychology has in the science of education, it will be well for us to make some inquiry into the nature of education. if the growth, development, and learning of children are all controlled and determined by definite causal factors, then a systematic statement of all these factors would constitute the science of education. in order to see clearly whether there is such a science, or whether there can be, let us inquire more definitely as to the kind of problems a science of education would be expected to solve. there are four main questions which the science of education must solve: ( ) what is the aim of education? ( ) what is the nature of education? ( ) what is the nature of the child? ( ) what are the most economical methods of changing the child from what it is into what it ought to be? the first question is a sociological question, and it is not difficult to find the answer. we have but to inquire what the people wish their children to become. there is a pretty general agreement, at least in the same community, that children should be trained in a way that will make them socially efficient. parents generally wish their children to become honest, truthful, sympathetic, and industrious. it should be the aim of education to accomplish this social ideal. it should be the aim of the home and the school to subject children to such influences as will enable them to make a living when grown and to do their proper share of work for the community and state, working always for better things, and having a sympathetic attitude toward neighbors. education should also do what it can to make people able to enjoy the world and life to the fullest and highest extent. some such aim of education as this is held by all our people. the second question is also answered. psychological analysis reveals the fact that education is a process of becoming adjusted to the world. it is the process of acquiring the habits, knowledge, and ideals suited to the life we are to live. the child in being educated learns what the world is and how to act in it--how to act in all the various situations of life. the third question--concerning the nature of the child--cannot be so briefly answered. in fact, it cannot be fully answered at the present time. we must know what the child's original nature is. this means that we must know the instincts and all the other inherited capacities and tendencies. we must know the laws of building up habits and of acquiring knowledge, the laws of retention and the laws of attention. these problems constitute the subject matter of educational psychology, and at present can be only partially solved. we have, however, a very respectable body of knowledge in this field, though it is by no means complete. the answer to the fourth question is in part dependent upon the progress in answering the third. economical methods of training children must be dependent upon the nature of children. but in actual practice, we are trying to find out the best procedure of doing each single thing in school work; we are trying to find out by experimentation. the proper way to teach children to read, to spell, to write, etc., must be determined in each case by independent investigation, until our knowledge of the child becomes sufficient for us to infer from general laws of procedure what the procedure in a particular case should be. we venture to infer what ought to be done in some cases, but generally we feel insecure till we have proved our inference correct by trying out different methods and measuring the results. education will not be fully scientific till we have definite knowledge to guide us at every step. what should we teach? when should we teach it? how should we teach it? how poorly we answer these questions at the present time! how inefficient and uneconomical our schools, because we cannot fully answer them! but they are answerable. we can answer them in part now, and we know how to find out the answer in full. it is just a matter of patient and extensive investigation. we must say, then, that we have only the beginnings of a science of education. the problems which a science of education must solve are almost wholly psychological problems. they could not be solved till we had a science of psychology. experimental psychology is but a half-century old; educational psychology, less than a quarter-century old. in the field of education, the science of psychology may expect to make its most important practical contribution. let us, then, consider very briefly the problems of educational psychology. =educational psychology.= educational psychology is that division of psychology which undertakes to discover those aspects of human nature most closely related to education. these are ( ) the original nature of the child--what it is and how it can be modified; ( ) the problem of acquiring and organizing experience--habit-formation, memory, thinking, and the various factors related to these processes. there are many subordinate problems, such as the problem of individual differences and their bearing on the education of subnormal and supernormal children. educational psychology is not, then, merely the application of psychology to education. it is a distinct science in itself, and its aim is the solving of those educational problems which for their solution depend upon a knowledge of the nature of the child. =the method of psychology.= we have enumerated the various problems of psychology, now how are they solved? the method of psychology is the same as that of all other sciences; namely, the method of observation and experiment. we learn human nature by observing how human beings act in all the various circumstances of life. we learn about the human mind by observing our own mind. we learn that we _see_ under certain objective conditions, _hear_ under certain objective conditions, _taste_, _smell_, _feel cold_ and _warm_ under certain objective conditions. in the case of ourselves, we can know both our _actions_ and our _mind_. in the case of others, we can know only their _actions_, and must infer their mental states from our own in similar circumstances. with certain restrictions and precautions this inference is legitimate. we said the method of psychology is that of observation and experiment. the experiment is observation still, but observation subjected to exact methodical procedure. in a psychological experiment we set out to provide the necessary conditions, eliminating some and supplying others according to our object. the experiment has certain advantages. it enables us to isolate the phenomena to be studied, it enables us to vary the circumstances and conditions to suit our purposes, it enables us to repeat the observation as often as we like, and it enables us to measure exactly the factors of the phenomena studied. =a psychological experiment.= let us illustrate psychological method by a typical experiment. suppose we wish to measure the individual differences among the members of a class with respect to a certain ability; namely, the muscular speed of the right hand. psychological laboratories have delicate apparatus for making such a study. but let us see how we can do it, roughly at least, without any apparatus. let each member of the class take a sheet of paper and a pencil, and make as many strokes as possible in a half-minute, as shown in figure i. the instructor can keep the time with a stop watch, or less accurately with the second hand of an ordinary watch. before beginning the experiment, the instructor should have each student taking the test try it for a second or two. this is to make sure that all understand what they are to do. when the instructor is sure that all understand, he should have the students hold their pencils in readiness above the paper, and at the signal, "begin," all should start at the same time and make as many marks as possible in the half-minute. the strokes can then be counted and the individual scores recorded. the experiment should be repeated several times, say six or eight, and the average score for each individual recorded. [illustration: figure i.--strokes made in thirty seconds a test of muscular speed] whether the result in such a performance as this varies from day to day, and is accidental, or whether it is constant and fundamental, can be determined by repeating the experiment from day to day. this repetition will also show whether improvement comes from practice. if it is decided to repeat the experiment in order to study these factors, constancy and the effects of practice, some method of studying and interpreting the results must be found. elaborate methods of doing this are known to psychologists, but the beginner must use a simpler method. when the experiment is performed for the first time, the students can be ranked with reference to their abilities, the fastest one being called "first," the second highest, "second," and so on down to the slowest performer. then after the experiment has been performed the second time, the students can be again ranked. a rough comparison can then be made as follows: determine how many who were in the best half in the first experiment are among the best half in the second experiment. if most who were among the best half the first time are among the best half in the second experiment, constancy in this performance is indicated. or we might determine how many change their ranks and how much they change. suppose there are thirty in the class and only four improve their ranks and these to the extent of only two places each. this would indicate a high degree of constancy. two different performances can be compared as above described. the abilities on successive days can be determined by taking the average rank of the first day and comparing it with the average rank of the second day. if the effects of practice are to be studied, the experiments must be kept up for many days, and each student's work on the first day compared with his work on succeeding days. then a graph can be plotted to show the improvement from day to day. the average daily speed of the class can be taken and a graph made to show the improvement of the class as a whole. this might be plotted in black ink, then each individual student could put on his improvement in red ink, for comparison. a group of thirty may be considered as furnishing a fair average or norm in this kind of performance. in connection with this simple performance, making marks as fast as possible, it is evident that many problems arise. it would take several months to solve anything like all of them. it might be interesting, for example, to determine whether one's speed in writing is related to this simple speed in marking. each member of the class might submit a plan for making such a study. the foregoing simple study illustrates the procedure of psychology in all experimentation. a psychological experiment is an attempt to find out the truth in regard to some aspect of human nature. in finding out this truth, we must throw about the experiment all possible safeguards. every source of error must be discovered and eliminated. in the above experiment, for example, the work must be done at the same time of day, or else we must prove that doing it at different times of day makes no difference. nothing must be taken for granted, and nothing must be assumed. psychology, then, is like all the other sciences, in that its method of getting its facts is by observation and experiment. summary. science is systematic, related knowledge. each science has a particular field which it attempts to explore and describe. the field of psychology is the study of sensitivity, action, and consciousness, or briefly, human behavior. its main problems are development, heredity, instincts, habits, sensation, memory, thinking, and individual differences. its method is observation and experiment, the same as in all other sciences. class exercises . make out a list of things about human nature which you would like to know. paste your list in the front of this book, and as you find your questions answered in this book, or in other books which you may read, check them off. at the end of the course, note how many remain unanswered. find out whether those not answered can be answered at the present time. . does everything you do have a cause? what kind of cause? . human nature is shown in human action. human action consists in muscular contraction. what makes a muscle contract? . plan an experiment the object of which shall be to learn something about yourself. . enumerate the professions and occupations in which a knowledge of some aspect of human nature would be valuable. state in what way it would be valuable. . make a list of facts concerning a child, which a teacher ought to know. . make a complete outline of chapter i. references for class reading mÜnsterberg: _psychology, general and applied_, chapters i, ii, and v. pillsbury: _essentials of psychology_, chapter i. pyle: _the outlines of educational psychology_, chapter i. titchener: _a beginner's psychology_, chapter i. chapter ii development of the race and of the individual =racial development.= the purpose of this chapter is to make some inquiry concerning the origin of the race and of the individual. in doing this, it is necessary for us first of all to fix in our minds the idea of causality. according to the view of all modern science, everything has a cause. nothing is uncaused. one event is the result of other previous events, and is in turn the cause of other events that follow. yesterday flowed into to-day, and to-day flows into to-morrow. the world as it exists to-day is the result of the world as it existed yesterday. this is true not only of the inorganic world--the world of physics and chemistry--but it is true of living things as well. the animals and plants that exist to-day are the descendants of others that lived before. there is probably an unbroken line of descent from the first life that existed on the earth to the living forms of to-day. not only does the law of causality hold true in the case of our bodies, but of our minds as well. our minds have doubtless developed from simpler minds just as our bodies have developed from simpler bodies. that different grades and types of minds are to be found among the various classes of animals now upon the earth, no one can doubt, for the different forms certainly show different degrees of mentality. according to the evidence of those scientists who have studied the remains of animals found in the earth's crust, there is a gradual development of animal forms shown in successive epochs. in the very oldest parts of the earth's crust, the remains of animal life found are very simple. in later formations, the remains show an animal life more complex. the highest forms of animals, the mammals, are found only in the more recent formations. the remains of man are found only in the latest formations. putting these two facts together--( ) that the higher types of mind are found to-day only in the higher types of animals, and ( ) that a gradual development of animal forms is shown by the remains in the earth's crust--the conclusion is forced upon us that mind has passed through many stages of development from the appearance of life upon the earth to the present time. among the lower forms of animals to-day one sees evidence of very simple minds. in amoebas, worms, insects, and fishes, mind is very simple. in birds, it is higher. in mammals, it is higher still. among the highest mammals below man, we see manifestations of mind somewhat like our own. these grades of mentality shown in the animals of to-day represent the steps in the development of mind in the animals of the past. we cannot here go into the proof of the doctrine of development. for this proof, the reader must be referred to zoölogy. one further point, however, may be noted. if it is difficult for the reader to conceive of the development of mind on the earth similar to the development of animals in the past, let him think of the development of mind in the individual. there can certainly be no doubt of the development of mind in an individual human being. the infant, when born, shows little manifestation of mentality; but as its body grows, its mind develops, becoming more and more complex as the individual grows to maturity. =the world as dynamic.= the view of the world outlined above, and held by all scientific men of the present time, may be termed the _dynamic_ view. man formerly looked upon the world as static, a world where everything was fixed and final. each thing existed in itself and for itself, and in large measure independent of all other things. we now look upon things and events as related and dependent. each thing is dependent upon others, related to others. man not only _lives in_ such a world, but is _part of_ such a world. in this world of constant and ceaseless change, man is most sensitive and responsive. everything may affect him. to all of the constant changes about him he must adjust himself. he has been produced by this world, and to live in it he must meet its every condition and change. we must, then, look upon human nature as something coming out of the past and as being influenced every moment by the things and forces of the present. man is not an independent being, unaffected by everything that happens; on the contrary, he is affected by all influences that act upon him. among these influences may be mentioned weather, climate, food, and social forces. the condition of the various organs of a child's body determine, to some extent, the effect which these various forces have upon it. if a child's eyes are in any way defective, making vision poor, this tremendously influences his life. not only is such a child unable to see the world as it really is, but the eyestrain resulting from poor vision has serious effects on the child, producing all sorts of disorders. if a child cannot hear well or is entirely deaf, many serious consequences follow. in fact, every condition or characteristic of a child that is in any way abnormal may lead on to other conditions and characteristics, often of a serious nature. the growth of adenoids, for example, may lead to a serious impairment of the mind. poor vision may affect the whole life and character of the individual. the influence of a parent, teacher, or friend may determine the interest of a child and affect his whole life. the correct view of child life is that the child is affected, in greater or less degree, by every influence which acts upon him. =significance of development and causality.= what are the consequences of the view just set forth? what is the significance of the facts that have been enumerated? it is of great consequence to our thinking when we come to recognize fully the idea of causality. we then fully accept the fact that man's body and mind are part of a causal and orderly world. let us consider, for example, the movement of a muscle. every such movement must be caused. the physiologist has discovered what this cause is. ordinarily and normally, a muscle contracts only when stimulated by a nerve current. tiny nerve fibrils penetrate every muscle, ending in the muscle fibers. the nerve-impulse passing into the fibers of the muscles causes them to contract. the nerve stimulus itself has a cause; it ordinarily arises directly or indirectly from the stimulation of a sense organ. and the sense organs are stimulated by outside influences, as was explained previously. not only are our movements caused, but our sensations, our ideas, and our feelings follow upon or are dependent upon some definite bodily state or condition. the moment that we recognize this we see that our sensations, ideas, and feelings are subject to control. it is only because our minds are in a world of causality, and subject to its laws, that education is possible. we can bring causes to bear upon a child and change the child. it is possible to build up ideas, ideals, and habits. and ideas, ideals, and habits constitute the man. training is possible only because a child is a being that can be influenced. what any child will be when grown depends upon what kind of child it was at the beginning and upon the influences that affect it during its early life while it is growing into maturity. we need have no doubt about the outcome of any particular child if we know, with some degree of completeness, the two sets of factors that determine his life--his inheritance and the forces that affect this inheritance. we can predict the future of a child to the extent that we know and understand the forces that will be effective in his life. the notion of causality puts new meaning into our view of the _training_ of a child. the doctrine of development puts new meaning into our notion of the _nature_ of a child. we can understand man only when we view him genetically, that is, in the light of his origin. we can understand a child only in the light of what his ancestors have been. as these lines are being written, the greatest, the bloodiest war of history is in progress. men are killing men by thousands and hundreds of thousands. how can we explain such actions? observation of children shows that they are selfish, envious, and quarrelsome. they will fight and steal until they are taught not to do such things. how can we understand this? there is no way of understanding such actions until we come to see that the children and men of to-day are such as they are because of their ancestors. it has been only a few generations, relatively speaking, since our ancestors were naked savages, killing their enemies and eating their enemies' bodies. the civilized life of our ancestors covers a period of only a few hundred years. the pre-civilized life of our ancestors goes back probably thousands and thousands of years. in the relatively short period of civilization, our real, original nature has been little changed, perhaps none at all. the modern man is, at heart, the same old man of the woods. the improvements of civilization form what is called a social heritage, which must be impressed upon the original nature of each individual in order to have any effect. every child has to learn to speak, to write, to dress, to eat with knife and fork; he must learn the various social customs, and to act morally as older people dictate. the child is by nature bad, in the sense that the nature which he inherits from the past fits him better for the original kind of life which man used to live than it does for the kind of life which we are trying to live now. this view makes us see that training a child is, in a very true sense, _making him over again_. the child must be trained to subdue and control his original impulses. habits and ideals that will be suitable for life in civilized society _must be built up_. the doctrine of the bible in regard to the original nature of man being sinful, and the necessity of regeneration, is fundamentally correct. but this regeneration is not so much a sudden process as it is the result of long and patient building-up of habits and ideals. one should not despair of this view of child-life. neither should one use it as an excuse for being bad, or for neglecting the training of children. on the contrary, taking the genetic view of childhood should give us certain advantages. it makes us see more clearly the _necessity_ of training. every child must be trained, or he will remain very much a savage. in the absence of training, all children are much alike, and all alike bad from our present point of view. the chief differences in children in politeness and manners generally, in morals, in industry, etc., are due, in the main, to differences in training. it is a great help merely to know how difficult the task of training is, and that training there must be if we are to have a civilized child. we must take thought and plan for the education and training of our children. the task of education is in part one of changing human nature. this is no light task. it is one that requires, in the case of each child, some twenty years of hard, patient, persistent work. =individual development.= heredity is a corollary of evolution. individual development is intimately related to racial development. indeed, racial development would be impossible without heredity in the individual. the individual must carry on and transmit what the race hands down to him. this will be evident when we explain what heredity means. by heredity we mean the likeness between parent and offspring. this likeness is a matter of form and structure as well as likeness of action or response. animals and plants are like the parents in form and structure, and to a certain extent their responses are alike when the individuals are placed in the same situation. a robin is like the parent robins in size, shape, and color. it also hops like the parent birds, sings as they do, feeds as they do, builds a similar nest, etc. but the likeness in action is dependent upon likeness in structure. the young robin acts as does the old robin, because the nervous mechanism is the same, and therefore a similar stimulus brings about a similar response. most of the scientific work in heredity has been done in the study of the transmission of physical characteristics. the main facts of heredity are evident to everybody, but not many people realize how far-reaching is the principle of resemblance between parent and offspring. from horses we raise horses. from cows we raise cows. the children of human beings are human. not only is this true, but the offspring of horses are of the same stock as the parents. not only are the colts of the same stock as the parents, but they resemble the parents in small details. this is also true of human beings. we expect a child to be not only of the same race as the parents, but to have family resemblances to the parents--the same color of hair, the same shape of head, the same kind of nose, the same color of eyes, and to have such resemblances as moles in the same places on the skin, etc. a very little investigation reveals likenesses between parent and offspring which we may not have expected before. however, if we start out to hunt for facts of heredity, we shall perhaps be as much impressed by differences between parent and child as we shall by the resemblances. in the first place, every child has two parents, and it is often impossible to resemble both. one cannot, for example, be both short and tall; one cannot be both fair and dark; one cannot be both slender and heavy; one cannot have both brown eyes and blue. in some cases, the child resembles one parent and not the other. in other cases, the child looks somewhat like both parents but not exactly like either. if one parent is white and the other black, the child is neither as white as the one parent nor as black as the other. the parents of a child are themselves different, but there are four grandparents, and each of them different from the others. there are eight great grandparents, and all of them different. if we go back only seven generations, covering a period of perhaps only a hundred and fifty years, we have one hundred and twenty-eight ancestors. if we go back ten generations, we have over a thousand ancestors in our line of descent. each of these people was, in some measure, different from the others. our inheritance comes from all of them and from each of them. how do all of these diverse characteristics work out in the child? in the first place, it seems evident that we do not inherit our bodies as wholes, but in parts or units. we may think of the human race as a whole being made up of a great number of unit characters. no one person possesses all of them. every person is lacking in some of them. his neighbor may be lacking in quite different ones. now one parent transmits to the child a certain combination of unit characters; the other parent, a different combination. these characteristics may not all appear in the child, but all are transmitted through it to the next generation, and they are transmitted purely. by being transmitted purely, we mean that the characteristic does not seem to lose its identity and disappear in fusions or mixtures. the essential point in this doctrine of heredity is known as mendelism; it is the principle of inheritance through the pure transmission of unit characters. an illustration will probably make the mendelian principle clear. let us select our illustration from the plant world. it is found that if white and yellow corn are crossed, all the corn the first year, resulting from this crossing, will be yellow. now, if this hybrid yellow corn is planted the second year, and freely cross-fertilized, it turns out that one fourth of it will be white and three fourths yellow. but this yellow consists of three parts: one part being pure yellow which will breed true, producing nothing but yellow; the other two parts transmit white and yellow in equal ratio. that is to say, these two parts are hybrids, the result of crossing white with yellow. it is not meant that one can actually distinguish these two kinds of yellow, the pure yellow and the hybrid yellow, but the results from planting it show that one third of the yellow is pure and that the other two thirds transmit white and yellow in equal ratio. the main point to notice in all this is that when two individuals having diverse characteristics are crossed, the characteristics do not fuse and disappear ultimately, but that the two characteristics are transmitted in equal ratio, and each will appear in succeeding generations, and will appear pure, just as if it had not been crossed with something different. the first offspring resulting from the cross--known as hybrids--may show either one or the other of the diverse characteristics, or, when such a thing is possible, even a blending of the two characteristics. but whatever the actual appearance of the first generation of offspring resulting from crossing parents having diverse characteristics, their germ-cells transmit the diverse characteristics in equal proportion, as explained above. when one of the diverse characteristics appears in the first generation of offspring and the other does not appear, or is not apparent, the one that appears is said to be _dominant_, while the one not appearing is said to be _recessive_. in our example of the yellow and white corn, yellow is dominant and white recessive. and it must be remembered that the white corn that appears in the second generation will breed true just as if it had never been crossed with the yellow corn. one third of the yellow of the second generation would also breed true if it could be separated from the other two thirds. it is not here claimed that mendelism is a universal principle, that all characteristics are transmitted in this way. however, the results of the numerous experiments in heredity lead one to expect this to be the case. most of the experiments have been with lower animals and with plants, but recent experiments and statistical studies show that mendelism is an important factor in human heredity, in such characteristics as color of hair and eyes and skin, partial color blindness, defects of eye, ear, and other important organs. the studies that have been made of human heredity have been, for the most part, studies of the transmission of physical characteristics. very little has been done that bears directly upon the transmission of mental characteristics. but our knowledge of the dependence of mind upon body should prepare us to infer mental heredity from physical heredity. such studies as throw light on the question bear us out in making such an inference. the studies that have been more directly concerned with mental heredity are those dealing with the resemblances of twins, studies of heredity in royalty, studies of the inheritance of genius, and studies of the transmission of mental defects and defects of sense organs. the results of all these studies indicate the inheritance of mental characteristics in the same way that physical characteristics are transmitted. not only are human mental characteristics transmitted from parent to offspring, but they seem to be transmitted in mendelian fashion. feeble-mindedness, for example, seems to be a mendelian character and recessive. from the studies that have been made, it seems that two congenitally feeble-minded parents will have only feeble-minded children. feeble-mindedness acts in heredity as does the white corn in the example given above. if one parent only is feeble-minded, the other being normal, all of the children will be normal, just as all of the corn, in the first generation after the crossing, was yellow. but these children whose parents are the one normal and the other feeble-minded, while themselves normal, transmit feeble-mindedness in equal ratio with normality. it works out as follows: if a feeble-minded person marry a person of sound mind and sound stock, the children will all be of sound, normal mind. if these children take as husbands and wives men and women who had for parents one normal and one feeble-minded person, their children will be one fourth feeble-minded and three fourths of them normal. to summarize the various conditions: if a feeble-minded person marry a feeble-minded person, all the children will be feeble-minded. if a feeble-minded person marry a sound, normal person (pure stock), all the children will be normal. if the children, in the last case, marry others like themselves as to origin, one fourth of their offspring will be feeble-minded. if such hybrid children marry feeble-minded persons, one half of the offspring will be feeble-minded. it is rash to prophesy, but future studies of heredity may show that mendelism, or some modification of the principle, always holds true of mind as well as of body. little can be said about the transmission of particular definite mental traits, such as the various aspects of memory, association, attention, temperament, etc. before we can speak with any certainty here, we must make very careful experimental studies of these mental traits in parents and offspring. no such work has been done. all we have at the present time is the result of general observation. =improvement of the race.= eugenics is the science of improvement of the human race by breeding. while we can train children and thereby make them much better than they would be without such training, this training does not improve the stock. the improvement of the stock can be accomplished only through breeding from the best and preventing the poor stock from leaving offspring. this is a well-known principle in the breeding of domestic animals. it is doubtless just as true in the case of human beings. the hygienic and scientific rearing of children is good for the children and makes their lives better, but probably does not affect their offspring. we should not forget that all the social and educational influences die with the generation that receives them. they must be impressed by training on the next generation or that generation will receive no influence from them. the characters which we acquire in our lifetime seem not to be transmitted to our children, except through what is known as social heredity, which is merely the taking on of characteristics through imitation. our children must go through all the labor of learning to read, write, spell, add, multiply, subtract, and divide, which we went through. moral traits, manners and customs, and other habits and ideals of social importance must be acquired by each successive generation. =heredity _versus_ environment.= the question is often asked whether heredity or the influence of environment has the most to do with the final outcome of one's life. it is a rather useless question to ask, for what a human being or anything else in the world does depends upon what it is itself and what the things and forces are that act upon it. heredity sets a limitation for us, fixes the possibilities. the circumstances of life determine what we will do with our inherited abilities and characteristics. hereditary influences incline us to be tall or short, fat or lean, light or dark. the characteristics of our memory, association, imagination, our learning capacity, etc., are determined by heredity. of course, how far these various aspects develop is to some extent dependent upon the favorable or unfavorable influences of the environment. what is possible for us to do is settled by heredity; what we may actually do, what we may have the opportunity to do, is largely a matter of the circumstances of life. in certain parts of new england, the number of men who become famous in art, science, or literature is very great compared to the number in some other parts of our country. as far as we have any evidence, the native stocks are the same in the two cases, but in new england the influences turn men into the direction of science, art, and literature. everything there is favorable. in other parts of the country, the influences turn men into other spheres of activity. they become large landowners, men of business and affairs. the question may be asked whether genius makes its way to the front in spite of unfavorable circumstances. sometimes it doubtless does. but pugnacity and perseverance are not necessarily connected with intellectual genius. genius may be as likely to be timid as belligerent. therefore unfavorable circumstances may crush many a genius. the public schools ought to be on the watch for genius in any and all kinds of work. when a genius is found, proper training ought to be provided to develop this genius for the good of society as well as for the good of the individual himself. a few children show ability in drawing and painting, others in music, others in mechanical invention, some in literary construction. when it is found that this ability is undoubtedly a native gift and not a passing whim, special opportunity should be provided for its development and training. it will be better for the general welfare, as well as for individual happiness, if each does in life that for which he is by nature best fitted. for most of us, however, there is not much difference in our abilities. we can do one thing as well as we can many other things. but in a few there are undoubted special native gifts. summary. this is an orderly world, in which everything has a cause. all events are connected in a chain of causes and effects. human beings live in this world of natural law and are subject to it. human life is completely within this world of law and order and is a part of it. education is possible only because we can change human beings by having influences act upon them. individuals receive their original traits from their ancestors, probably as parts or units. mendelism is the doctrine of the pure transmission of unit characters. eugenics is the science of improving the human race by selective breeding. an individual's life is the result of the interaction of his hereditary characteristics and his environment. class exercises . try to find rock containing the remains of animals. you can get information on such matters from a textbook on geology. . read in a geology about the different geological epochs in the history of the earth. . make a comparison of the length of infancy in the lower animals and in man. what is the significance of what you find? what advantage does it give man? . what is natural selection? how does it lead to change in animals? does natural selection still operate among human beings? (see a modern textbook on zoölogy.) . by observation and from consulting a zoölogy, learn about the different classes of animal forms, from low forms to high forms. . by studying domestic animals, see what you can learn about heredity. enumerate all the points that you find bearing upon heredity. . in a similar way, make a study of heredity in your family. consider such characteristics as height, weight, shape of head, shape of nose, hair and eye color. can you find any evidence of the inheritance of mental traits? . make a complete outline of chapter ii. references for class reading davenport: _heredity in relation to eugenics_. kellicott: _the social direction of human evolution_. chapter iii mind and body =gross dependence.= the relation of mind to body has always been an interesting one to man. this is partly because of the connection of the question with that of life after death. an old idea of this relation, almost universally held till recently, was that the mind or spirit lived in the body but was more or less independent of the body. the body has been looked upon as a hindrance to the mind or spirit. science knows nothing about the existence of spirits apart from bodies. the belief that after death the mind lives on is a matter of faith and not of science. whether one believes in an existence of the mind after death of the body, depends on one's religious faith. there is no scientific evidence one way or the other. the only mind that science knows anything about is bound up very closely with body. this is not saying that there is no existence of spirit apart from body, but that at present such existence is beyond the realm of science. the dependence of mind upon body in a general way is evident to every one, upon the most general observation and thought. we know the effect on the mind of disease, of good health, of hunger, of fatigue, of overwork, of severe bodily injury, of blindness or deafness. we have, perhaps, seen some one struck upon the head by a club, or run over by an automobile, and have noted the tremendous consequences to the person's mind. in such cases it sometimes happens that, as far as we can see, there is no longer any mind in connection with that body. the most casual observation, then, shows that mind and body are in some way most intimately related. =finer dependence.= let us note this relation more in detail, and, in particular, see just which part of the body it is that is connected with the mind. first of all, we note the dependence of mind upon sense organs. we see only with our eyes. if we close the eyelids, we cannot see. if we are born blind, or if injury or disease destroys the retinas of the eyes or makes the eyes opaque so that light cannot pass through to the retinas, then we cannot see. similarly, we hear only by means of the ears. if we are born deaf, or if injury destroys some important part of the hearing mechanism, then we cannot hear. in like manner, we taste only by means of the taste organs in the mouth, and smell only with the organs of smell in the nose. in a word, our primary knowledge of the world comes only through the sense organs. we shall see presently just how this sensing or perceiving is accomplished. =dependence of mind on nerves and brain.= we have seen how in a general way the mind is dependent on the body. we have seen how in a more intimate way it is dependent on the special sense organs. but the part of the body to which the mind is most directly and intimately related is the nervous system. the sense organs themselves are merely modifications of the nerve ends together with certain mechanisms for enabling stimuli to act on the nerve ends. the eye is merely the optic nerve spread out to form the retina and modified in certain ways to make it sensitive to ether vibrations. in addition to this, there is, of course, the focusing mechanism of the eye. so for all the sense organs; they are, each of them, some sort of modification of nerve-endings which makes them sensitive to some particular force or substance. let us make the matter clear by an illustration. suppose i see a picture on the wall. my eyes are directed toward the picture. light from the picture is refracted within the eyes, forming an image on each retina. the retina is sensitive to the light. the light produces chemical changes on the retina. these changes set up an excitation in the optic nerves, which is conducted to a certain place in the brain, causing an excitation in the brain. now the important point is that when this excitation is going on in the brain, _we are conscious, we see the picture_. as far as science can determine, we do not see, nor hear, nor taste, nor smell, nor have any other sensation unless a sense organ is excited and produces the excitation in the brain. there can be no doubt about our primary, sensory experience. by primary, sensory experience is meant our immediate, direct knowledge of any aspect of the world. in this field of our conscious life, we are entirely dependent upon sense organs and nerves and brain. injuries to the eyes destroying their power to perform their ordinary work, or injuries to the optic nerve or to the visual center in the brain, make it impossible for us to see. these facts are so self-evident that it seems useless to state them. one has but to hold his hands before his eyes to convince himself that the mind sees by means of eyes, which are physical sense organs. one has but to hold his hands tight over his ears to find out that he hears by means of ears--again, physical sense organs. but simple and self-evident as the facts are, their acceptance must have tremendous consequences to our thinking, and to our view of human nature. if the mind is dependent in every feature on the body with its sense organs, this must give to this body and its sense organs an importance in our thought and scheme of things that they did not have before. this close dependence of mind upon body must give to the body a place in our scheme of education that it would not have under any other view of the mind. we wish to emphasize here that this statement of the close relation of the mind and body is not a theory which one may accept or not. it is a simple statement of fact. it is a presupposition of psychology. by "presupposition" is meant a fundamental principle which the psychologist always has in mind. it is axiomatic, and has the same place in psychology that axioms have in mathematics. all explanations of the working of the mind must be stated in terms of nerve and brain action, and stimulation of sense organs. since the sense organs are the primary and fundamental organs through which we get experience, and since the sensations are the elementary experiences out of which all mental life is built, it is necessary for us to have a clear idea of the sense organs, their structure and functions, and of the nature of sensations. =vision.= _the visual sense organs._ the details of the anatomy of the eye can be looked up in a physiological textbook. the essential principles are very simple. the eye is made on the principle of a photographer's camera. the retina corresponds to the sensitive plate of the camera. the light coming from objects toward which the eyes are directed is focused on the retina, forming there an image of the object. the light thus focused on the retina sets up a chemical change in the delicate nerve tissue; this excitation is transmitted through the optic nerve to the occipital (back) part of the brain, and sets up brain action there. then we have visual sensation; we see the object. the different colors that we see are dependent upon the vibration frequency of the ether. the higher frequencies give us the colors blue and green, and the lower frequencies give us the colors yellow and red. the intermediate frequencies give us the intermediate colors blue-green and orange. by vibration frequencies is meant the rate at which the ether vibrates, the number of vibrations a second. if the reader wishes to know something about these frequencies, such information can be found in a textbook on physics. it will be found that the vibration rates of the ether are very great. it is only within a certain range of vibration frequency that sunlight affects the retina. slower rates of vibration than that producing red do not affect the eye, and faster than that producing violet do not affect the eye. the lightness and darkness of a color are dependent upon the intensity of the vibration. red, for example, is produced by a certain vibration frequency. the more intense the vibration, the brighter the red; the less intense, the darker the red. when all the vibration frequencies affect the eyes at the same time, we see no color at all but only brightness. this is due to the fact that certain vibration frequencies neutralize each other in their effect on the retina, so far as producing color is concerned. red neutralizes green, blue neutralizes yellow, violet neutralizes yellowish green, orange neutralizes bluish green. all variations in vision as far as color and brightness are concerned are due to variations in the stimulus. changes in vibration frequency give the different colors. changes in intensity give the different brightnesses: black, gray, and white. all explanations of the many interesting phenomena of vision are to be sought in the physiological action of the eye. besides the facts of color and light and shade, already mentioned, some further interesting visual phenomena may be mentioned here. _visual contrast._ every color makes objects near it take on the antagonistic or complementary color. red makes objects near appear green, green makes them appear red. blue makes near objects appear yellow, while yellow makes them appear blue. orange induces greenish blue, and greenish blue induces orange. violet induces yellowish green, and yellowish green induces violet. these color-pairs are known as antagonistic or complementary colors. each one of a pair enhances the effect of its complementary when the two colors are brought close together. in a similar way, light and dark tints act as complementaries. light objects make dark objects near appear darker, and dark objects make light objects near seem lighter. these universal principles of contrast are of much practical significance. they must be taken account of in all arrangements of colors and tints, for example, in dress, in the arrangement of flowers and shrubs, in painting. _color-mixture._ if, on a rotating motor, disks of different colors--say red and yellow--are placed and rotated, one sees on looking at them not red or yellow but orange. this phenomenon is known as _color-mixture_. the result is due to the simultaneous stimulation of the retina by two kinds of ether vibration. if the colors used are a certain red and a certain green, they neutralize each other and produce only gray. all the pairs of complementary colors mentioned above act in the same way, producing, if mixed in the right proportion, no color, but gray. if colored disks not complementary are mixed by rotation on a motor, they produce an intermediate color. red and yellow give orange. blue and green give bluish green. yellow and green give yellowish green. red and blue give violet or purple, depending on the proportion. mixing pigments gives, in general, the same results as mixing by means of rotating the disks. the ordinary blue and yellow pigments give green when mixed, because each of the two pigments contains green. the blue and yellow neutralize each other, leaving green. _visual after-images._ the stimulation of the retina has interesting after effects. we shall mention here only the one known as _negative after-images_. if one will place on the table a sheet of white paper, and on this white paper lay a small piece of colored paper, and if he will then gaze steadily at the colored paper for a half-minute, it will be found that if the colored paper is removed one sees its complementary color. if the head is not moved, this complementary color has the same size and shape as the original colored piece of paper. the negative after-image can be projected on a background at different distances, its size depending on the distance of the background. the after-image will be found to mix with an objective color in accordance with the principles of color-mixture mentioned above. after-image phenomena have some practical consequences. if one has been looking at a certain color for some time, a half-minute or more, then looks at some other color, the after-image of the first color mixes with the second color. _adaptation._ the fact last mentioned leads us to the subject of adaptation. if the eyes are stimulated by the same kind of light for some time, the eyes become adapted to that light. if the light is yellow, at first objects seem yellow, but after a time they look as if they were illuminated with white light, losing the yellow aspect. but if one then goes out into white light, everything looks bluish. the negative after-image of the yellow being cast upon everything makes the surroundings look blue, for the after-image of yellow is blue. all the other colors act in a similar way, as do also black and white. if one has been for some time in a dark room and then goes out to a lighter place, it seems unusually light. and if one goes from the light to a dark room, it seems unusually dark. =hearing or audition.= just as the eye is an organ sensitive to certain frequencies of ether vibration, so the ear is an organ sensitive to certain air vibrations. the reader should familiarize himself with the physiology of the ear by reference to physiologies. the drum-skin, the three little bones of the middle ear, and the cochlea of the inner ear are all merely mechanical means of making possible the stimulation of the specialized endings of the auditory nerve by vibrations of air. as the different colors are due to different vibration frequencies of the ether, so different pitches of sound are due to differences in the rates of the air vibrations. the low bass notes are produced by the low vibration frequencies. the high notes are produced by the high vibration frequencies. the lowest notes that we can hear are produced by about twenty vibrations a second, and the highest by about forty thousand vibrations a second. =other sense organs.= we need not give a detailed statement of the facts concerning the other senses. in each case the sense organ is some special adaptation of the nerve-endings with appropriate apparatus in connection to enable it to be affected by some special thing or force in the environment. in the case of taste, we find in the mouth, chiefly on the back and edges of the tongue, organs sensitive to sweet, sour, salt, and bitter. in the nose we have an organ that is sensitive to the tiny particles of substances that float in the air which we breathe in through the nose. in the skin we find several kinds of sense organs that give us the sensations of cold and warmth, of pressure and pain. these are all special and definite sensations produced by different kinds of organs. the sense of warmth is produced by different organs from those which produce the sense of cold. these organs can be detected and localized on the skin. so, also, pain and touch or pressure have each its particular organ. within the body itself we have sense organs also, particularly in the joints and tendons and in the muscles. these give us the sensations which are the basis of our perception of motion, and of the position of the body and its members. in the semicircular canals of the inner ear are organs that give us the sense of dizziness, and enable us to maintain our equilibrium and to know up from down. the general nature of the sense organs and of sensation should now be apparent. the nervous system reaches out its myriad fingers to every portion of the surface of the body, and within the body as well. these nerve-endings are specially adapted to receive each its particular form of stimulation. this stimulation of our sense organs is the basis or cause of our sensations. and our sensations are the elementary stuff of all our experience. whatever thoughts we have, whatever ideas or images we have, they come originally from our sensations. they are built up out of our sensations or from these sensations as they exist in memory. =defects of sense organs.= the organs of sight and hearing are now by far the most important of our sense organs. they enable us to sense things that are at a distance. we shall therefore discuss defects of these two organs only. since sensations are the primary stuff out of which mind is made, and since sight and hearing are the most important sense organs, it is evident that our lives are very much dependent on these organs. if they cannot do their work well, then we are handicapped. and this is often the case. the making of the human eye is one of the most remarkable achievements of nature. but the making of a perfect eye is too big a task for nature. she never makes a perfect eye. there is always some defect, large or small. to take plastic material and make lenses and shutters and curtains is a great task. the curvature of the front of the eye and of the front and back of the crystalline lens is never quite perfect, but in the majority of cases it is nearly enough perfect to give us good vision. however, in about one third of school children the defect is great enough to need to be corrected by glasses. the principle of the correction of sight by means of glasses is merely this:[ ] when the focusing apparatus of the eye is not perfect, it can be made so by putting in front of the eye the proper kind of lens. there is nothing strange or mysterious about it. in some cases, the eye focuses the light before it reaches the retina. such cases are known as nearsightedness and are corrected by having placed in front of the eyes concave lenses of the proper strength. these lenses diverge the rays and make them focus on the retina. in other cases, the eye is not able to focus the rays by the time they reach the retina. in these cases, the eyes need the help of convex lenses of the proper strength to make the focus fall exactly on the retina. [ ] the teacher should explain these principles and illustrate by drawings. consult a good text in physiology. noyes' university of missouri extension bulletin on eye and ear defects will be found most useful. another defect of the eye, known as astigmatism, is due to the fact that the eye does not always have a perfectly spherical front (cornea). the curvature in one direction is different from that in others. for example, the vertical curvature may be more convex than the horizontal. such a condition produces a serious defect of vision. it can be corrected by means of cylindrical lenses of the proper strength so placed before the eye as to correct the defect in curvature. still another defect of vision is known as presbyopia or farsightedness due to old age. it has the following explanation: in early life, when we look at near objects, the crystalline lens automatically becomes thicker, more convex. this adjustment brings the rays to a focus on the retina, which is required for good vision. as we get old, the crystalline lens loses its power to change its adjustment for near objects, although the eye may see at a distance as well as ever. the old person, therefore, must wear convex glasses when looking at near objects, as in reading and sewing. another visual defect of a different nature is known as partial color blindness. the defects described above are due to misshapen eyes. partial color blindness is due to a defect of the retina which makes it unable to be affected by light waves producing red and green. a person with this defect confuses red and green. while only a small percentage of the population has this defect, it is nevertheless very important that those having it be detected. people having the defect should not be allowed to enter occupations in which the seeing of red and green is important. it was recently brought to the author's attention that a partially color-blind man was selling stamps in a post office. since two denominations of stamps are distinguished by red and green colors, this man made frequent mistakes. he was doing one of the things for which he was specially unfitted. it is easy to detect color blindness by simple tests. so great is the importance of good vision in school work and the later work of life, that every teacher should know how to make simple tests to determine visual defects. children showing any symptoms of eyestrain should be required to have their visual defects corrected by a competent oculist, and should be warned not to have the correction made by a quack. there is great popular ignorance and even prejudice concerning visual defects, and it is very important that teachers have a clear understanding of the facts. =defects of hearing.= hearing defects are only about half as frequent as those of sight. they are nearly all due to catarrhal infection of the middle ear through the eustachian tube. the careful and frequent medical examination of school children cannot, therefore, be too strongly emphasized. the deafness or partial deafness that comes from this catarrhal infection can seldom be cured; it must be prevented by the early treatment of the troubles which cause it. summary. the mind is closely related to the body. especially is it dependent upon the brain, nerves, and sense organs. the sense organs are special adaptations of the nerve-ends for receiving impressions. each sense organ receives only its particular type of impression. the main visual phenomena are those of color-mixture, after-images, adaptation, and contrast. since sensation is the basis of mental life, defects of the sense organs are serious handicaps and should be corrected if possible. visual defects are usually due to a misshapen eyeball and can be corrected by proper glasses, which should be fitted by an oculist. hearing defects usually arise from catarrhal trouble in the middle ear. class exercises . make a study of the relation of the mind to the body. enumerate the different lines of evidence which you may find indicating their close relationship. . can you find any evidence tending to show that the mind is independent of the body? . _color-mixture._ colored disks can be procured from c. h. stoelting company, chicago. if a small motor is available, the disks can be rotated on the motor and the colors mixed. mix pairs of complementary colors, also pairs of non-complementary colors, and note the result. a simple device can be made for mixing colors, as follows: on a board stand a pane of glass. on one side of the glass put a colored paper and on the other side of the glass put a different color. by looking through the glass you can see one color through transmitted light and the other color through reflected light. by inclining the glass at different angles you can get different proportions of the mixture, now more of one color, now more of the other. . _negative after-images._ cut out pieces of colored paper a half inch square. put one of these on a white background on the table. with elbows on the table, hold the head in the hands and gaze at the colored paper for about a half-minute, then blow the paper away and continue to gaze at the white background. note the color that appears. use different colors and tabulate the results. try projecting the after-images at different distances. project the after-images on different colored papers. do the after-images mix with the colors of the papers? . an interesting experiment with positive after-images can be performed as follows: shut yourself in a dark closet for fifteen or twenty minutes to remove all trace of stimulation of the retina. with the eyes covered with several folds of thick black cloth go to a window, uncover the eyes and take a momentary look at the landscape, immediately covering the eyes again. the landscape will appear as a positive after-image, with the positive colors and lights and shades. the experiment is best performed on a bright day. . _adaptation._ put on colored glasses or hold before the eyes a large piece of colored glass. note that at first everything takes on the color of the glass. what change comes over objects after the glasses have been worn for fifteen or twenty minutes? describe your experience after removing the glasses. plan and perform other experiments showing adaptation. for illustration, go from a very bright room into a dark room. go from a very dark room to a light one. describe your experience. . _contrast._ take a medium gray paper and lay it on white and various shades of gray and black paper. describe and explain what you find. . _color contrast._ darken a room by covering all the windows except one window pane. cover it with cardboard. in the cardboard cut two windows six inches long and one inch wide. over one window put colored glass or any other colored material through which some light will pass. by holding up a pencil you can cast two shadows on a piece of paper. what color are the shadows? one is a contrast color induced by the other; which one? explain the results. . make a study of the way in which women dress. what do you learn about color effects? . from the stoelting company you can obtain the holmgren worsteds for studying color blindness. . _defective vision._ procure a snellen's test chart and determine the visual acuity of the members of the class. seat the subject twenty feet from the chart, which should be placed in a good light. while testing one eye, cover the other with a piece of cardboard. above each row of letters on the chart is a number which indicates the distance at which it can be read by a normal eye. if the subject can read only the thirty-foot line, his vision is said to be / ; if only the forty-foot line, the vision is / . if the subject can read above the twenty-foot line and complains of headache from reading, farsightedness is indicated. if the subject cannot read up to the twenty-foot line, nearsightedness or astigmatism is indicated. . _hearing._ by consultation with the teacher of physics, plan an experiment to show that the pitch of tones depends on vibration frequency. such an experiment can be very simply performed by rotating a wheel having spokes. hold a light stick against the spokes so that it strikes each spoke. if the wheel is rotated so as to give twenty or thirty strokes a second, a very low tone will be heard. by rotating the wheel faster you get a higher tone. other similar experiments can be performed. . acuity of hearing can be tested by finding the distance at which the various members of the class can hear a watch-tick. the teacher can plan an experiment using whispering instead of the watch-tick. (see the author's _examination of school children_.) . by using the point of a nail, one can find the "cold spots" on the skin. warm the nail to about  degrees centigrade and you can find the "warm spots." . by touching the hairs on the back of the hand, you can stimulate the "pressure spots." . by pricking the skin with the point of a needle, you can stimulate the "pain spots." . the sense of taste is sensitive only to solutions that are sweet, sour, salt, or bitter. plan experiments to verify this point. what we call the "taste" of many things is due chiefly to odor. therefore in experiments with taste, the nostrils should be stopped up with cotton. it will be found, for example, that quinine and coffee are indistinguishable if their odors be eliminated by stopping the nose. the student should compare the taste of many substances put into the mouth with the nostrils open with the taste of the same substances with the nostrils closed. references for class reading colvin and bagley: _human behavior_, chapters vii and xii. mÜnsterberg: _psychology, general and applied_, chapters iii, iv, vi, and vii. pillsbury: _essentials of psychology_, chapters ii, iii, and iv. pyle: _the outlines of educational psychology_, chapter ii. titchener: _a beginner's psychology_, chapter i, par.  ; also chapter ii. chapter iv inherited tendencies =stimulus and response.= we have learned something about the sense organs and their functions. we have seen that it is through the sense organs that the world affects us, stimulates us. and we have said that we are stimulated in order that we may respond. we must now inquire into the nature of our responses. we are moving, active beings. but how do we move, how do we act when stimulated? why do we do one thing rather than another? why do we do one thing at one time and a different thing at another time? before we answer these questions it will be necessary for us to get a more definite and complete idea of the nature of stimulus and response. we have already used these terms, but we must now give a more definite account of them. it was said in the preceding chapter that when a muscle contracts, it must first receive a nerve-impulse. now, anything which starts this nerve-impulse is called the stimulus. the muscular movement which follows is, of course, the response. the nervous system forms the connection between the stimulus and response. the stimulus which brings about a response may be very simple. or, on the other hand, it may be very complex. if one blows upon the eyelids of a baby, the lids automatically close. the blowing is the stimulus and the closing of the lids is the response. both stimulus and response are here very simple. but sometimes the stimulus is more complex, not merely the simple excitation of one sense organ, but a complicated stimulation of an organ, or the simultaneous stimulation of several organs. in playing ball, the stimulus for the batter is the on-coming ball. the response is the stroke. this case is much more complex than the reflex closing of the eyelids. the ball may be pitched in many different ways and the response changes with these variations. in piano playing, the stimulus is the notes written in their particular places on the staff. not only must the position of the notes on the staff be taken into account, but also many other things, such as sharps and flats, and various characters which give directions as to the manner in which the music is to be played. the striking of the notes in the proper order, in the proper time, and with the proper force, is the response. in typewriting, the stimulus is the copy, or the idea of what is to be written, and the response is the striking of the keys in the proper order. speaking generally, we may say that the stimulus is the force or forces which excite the sense organs, and thereby, through the nervous system, bring about a muscular response. this is the ordinary type of action, but we have already indicated a different type. in speaking of typewriting we said the stimulus might be either the copy or ideas. one can write from copy or dictation, in which the stimulus is the written or spoken word, but one can also write as one thinks of what one wishes to write. the latter is known as _centrally initiated action_. that is to say, the stimulus comes from within, in the brain, rather than from without. let us explain this kind of stimulation a little further. suppose i am sitting in my chair reading. i finish a chapter and look at my watch. i notice that it is three o'clock, and recall that i was to meet a friend at that time. the stimulus in this case is in the brain itself; it is the nervous activity which corresponds to the idea of meeting my friend. if we disregard the distinction between mind and body, we may say that the stimulus for a response may be an idea as well as a perception, the perception arising from the immediate stimulation of a sense organ, and the idea arising from an excitation of the brain not caused by an immediate stimulation of a sense organ. =instincts and habits.= in human action it is evident that there is always a stimulus to start the nerve-impulse which causes the action. if we make inquiry concerning the connection between the stimulus and response; if we ask how it has come about that a particular stimulus causes a particular response rather than some other possible response, we find two kinds of causes. in one case the causal connection is established through heredity; in the other, the causal connection is established during a person's lifetime through training. a chicken, for example, hides under some cover the first time it hears the cry of a hawk; it scratches the first time its feet touch sand or gravel; it pecks the first time it sees an insect near by. an infant closes its eyes the first time it feels cold wind blow upon them; it cries the first time it feels pain; it clasps its fingers together the first time a touch is felt inside them. the child's nervous system is so organized that, in each of the cases named, the stimulus brings forth the particular, definite response. these acts do not have to be learned. but it is quite different in typewriting and piano playing. one _must learn_ what keys on the piano to strike in response to the various situations of the notes as written in the music. one must also learn the keys on the typewriter before he can operate a typewriter. and in the case of other habits, we find, for example, that one does not respond by saying " " for times ; nor " " for plus ; nor " " for minus ; nor " " for the square root of ; nor " " for the square of , etc., until one has learned in each case. some connections between stimulus and response we have through inheritance; all others are built up and established in one's lifetime, particularly in the first thirty years of one's life. we have spoken of bonds between stimulus and response, but have not explained just what can be meant by a _bond_. in what sense are stimulus and response bound together? a bond is a matter of greater permeability, of less resistance in one direction through the nervous system than in other directions. nerves are conductors for nerve-currents. when a nerve-current is started in a sense organ, it passes on through the path of least resistance. now, some nerves are so organized and connected through inheritance as to offer small resistance. this forms a ready-made connection between stimulus and response. muscular responses that are connected with their stimuli through inherited bonds, by inherited nerve structure, are called instincts. those that are connected by acquired bonds are called habits. sucking, crying, laughing, are instinctive acts. adding, typewriting, piano playing, are habits. the term _instinct_ may be given to the act depending upon inherited structure, an inherited bond, or it may be given to the inherited bond itself. similarly, the term _habit_ may be given to an act that we have had to learn or to the bond which we ourselves establish between response and stimulus. in this book we shall usually mean by instinct an action depending upon inherited structure and by habit an act depending upon a bond established during lifetime. a good part of our early lives is spent in building up bonds between stimuli and responses. this establishing of bonds or connections is called _learning_. =appearance of inherited tendencies.= not all of our inherited tendencies are manifested immediately after birth, nor indeed in the earliest years of childhood, but appear at different stages of the child's growth. it has already been said that a child, soon after birth, will close its eyelids when they are blown upon. the lids do not close at this time if one strikes at them, but they will do this later. the proper working of an instinct or an inherited tendency, then, depends upon the child's having reached a certain state of development. the maturing of an instinct depends upon both age and use, that is to say, upon the age of the animal and the amount of use or exercise that the instinctive activity has had. the most important factor, however, seems to be age. while our knowledge of the dependence of an instinct upon the age of the animal is not quite so definite in the case of human instincts, the matter has been worked out in the case of chickens. the experiment was as follows: chickens were taken at the time of hatching, and some allowed to peck from the first, while others were kept in a dark room and not allowed to peck. when the chickens were taken out of the dark room at the end of one, two, three, and four days, it was found that in a few hours they were pecking as well as those that had been pecking from birth. it seems probable, if we may judge from our limited knowledge, that in the human child, activities are for the most part dependent upon the age of the child, and upon the state of development of the nervous system and of the organs of the body. =significance of inherited tendencies.= although human nature is very complex, although human action nearly always has some element of habit in it, nevertheless, inborn tendencies are throughout life powerful factors in determining action. this will at once be apparent if we consider how greatly we are influenced by anger, jealousy, love, fear, and competition. now we do not have to learn to be jealous, to hate, to love, to be envious, to fight, or to fear. these are emotions common to all members of the human race, and their expression is an inborn tendency. throughout life no other influences are so powerful in determining our action as are these. so, although most of our detailed actions in life are habits which we learn or acquire, the fundamental influences which decide the course of our action are inherited tendencies. =classification of instincts.= for convenience in treatment the instincts are grouped in classes. those instincts most closely related to individual survival are called _individualistic_ instincts. those more closely related to the survival of the group are called _socialistic_. those individualistic tendencies growing out of periodic changes of the environment may be called _environmental_ instincts. those closely related to human infancy, adapting and adjusting the child to the world in which he lives, may be called _adaptive_. there is still another group of inherited tendencies connected with sex and reproduction, which are not discussed in this book. we shall give a brief discussion of the instincts falling under these various classes. it must be remembered, however, that the psychology of the instincts is indefinite and obscure. it is difficult to bring the instincts into the laboratory for accurate study. for our knowledge of the instincts we are dependent, for the most part, on general observation. we have had a few careful studies of the very earliest years of childhood. however, although from the theoretical point of view our knowledge of the instincts is incomplete, it is sufficient to be of considerable practical value. =the individualistic instincts.= man's civilized life has covered but a short period of time, only a few hundred or a few thousand years. his pre-civilized life doubtless covered a period of millions of years. the inborn tendencies in us are such as were developed in the long period of savage life. during all of man's life in the time before civilization, he was always in danger. he had many enemies, and most of these enemies had the advantage of him in strength and natural means of defense. unaided by weapons, he could hardly hold his own against any of the beasts of prey. so there were developed in man by the process of natural selection many inherited responses which we group under the head of _fear_ responses. just what the various situations are that bring forth these responses has never been carefully worked out. but any situation that suddenly puts an individual in danger of losing his life brings about characteristic reactions. the most characteristic of the responses are shown in connection with circulation and respiration. both of these processes are much interfered with. sometimes the action is accelerated, at other times it is retarded, and in some cases the respiratory and circulatory organs are almost paralyzed. also the small muscles of the skin are made to contract, producing the sensation of the hair standing on end. just what the original use of all these responses was it is difficult now to work out, but doubtless each served some useful purpose. whether any particular situations now call forth inherited fear responses in us is not definitely established. but among lower animals there are certain definite and particular situations which do call forth fear responses. on the whole, the evidence rather favors the idea of definite fear situations among children. it seems that certain situations do invariably arouse fear responses. to be alone in the dark, to be in a strange place, to hear loud and sudden noises, to see large, strange animals coming in threatening manner, seem universally to call forth fear responses in children. however, the whole situation must always be considered. a situation in which the father or mother is present is quite different from one in which they are both absent. but it is certain that these and other fears are closely related to the age and development of the child. in the earlier years of infancy, certain fears are not present that are present later. and it can be demonstrated that the fears that do arise as infancy passes on are natural and inherited and not the result of experience. few of the original causes of fear now exist. the original danger was from wild animals chiefly. seldom are we now in such danger. but of course this has been the case for only a short time. our bodies are the same sort of bodies that our ancestors had, therefore we are full of needless fears. during the early years of a child's life, wise treatment causes most of the fear tendencies to disappear because of disuse. on the other hand, unwise treatment may accentuate and perpetuate them, causing much misery and unhappiness. neither the home nor the school should play upon these ancestral fears. we should not try to get a child to be good by frightening him; nor should we often use fear of pain as an incentive to get a child to do his work. man has always been afraid, but he has also always been a fighter. he has always had to fight for his life against the lower animals, and he has also fought his fellow man. the fighting response is connected with the emotions of anger, envy, and jealousy. a man is angered by anything that interferes with his life, with his purposes, with whatever he calls his own. we become angry if some one strikes our bodies, or attacks our beliefs, or the beliefs of our dear friends, particularly of our families. the typical responses connected with anger are such as faster heart-beat, irregular breathing, congestion of the blood in the face and head, tightening of the voluntary muscles, particularly a setting of the teeth and a clinching of the fists. these responses are preparatory to actual combat. anger, envy, and jealousy, and the responses growing out of them, have always played a large part in the life of man. a great part of history is a record of the fights of nations, tribes, and individuals. if the records of wars and strifes, and the acts growing out of envy and jealousy and other similar emotions should be taken out of history, there would not be much left. much of literature and art depict those actions of man which grew out of these individualistic aspects of his nature. competition, which is an aspect of fighting, even to the present day, continues to be one of the main factors in business and in life generally. briefly, fighting responses growing out of man's selfishness are as old as man himself, and the inherited tendencies connected with them are among the strongest of our natures. in the training of children, one of the most difficult tasks is to help them to get control over the fighting instinct and other selfish tendencies. these tendencies are so deeply rooted in our natures that it is hard to get control of them. in fact, the control which we do get over them is always relative. the best we can hope to do is to get control over our fighting tendencies in ordinary circumstances. it is doubtful whether it would be good for us if the fighting spirit should disappear from the race. it puts vim and determination into the life of man. but our fighting should not be directed against our fellow man. the fighting spirit can be retained and directed against evil and other obstacles. we can learn to attack our tasks in a fighting spirit. but surely the time has come when we should cease fighting against our neighbors. =social tendencies.= over against our fighting tendencies we may set the socialistic tendencies. coöperative and sympathetic actions grow out of original nature, just as truly as do the selfish acts. but the socialistic tendencies are not, in general, as strong as are the individualistic ones. what society needs is the strengthening of the socialistic tendencies by use, and a weakening of at least some of the individualistic tendencies, by control and disuse. socialistic tendencies show themselves in gangs and clubs formed by children and adults. it is, therefore, a common practice now to speak of the "gang" instinct. human beings are pleased and content when with other human beings and not content, not satisfied, when alone. of course circumstances make a difference in the desires of men, but the general original tendency is as stated. the gang of the modern city has the following explanation: boys like to be with other boys. moreover, they like to be active; they want to be doing something. the city does not provide proper means for the desired activities, such as hunting, fishing, tramping, and boating. it does not provide experiences with animals, such as boys have on the farm. much of the boy's day is spent in school in a kind of work not at all like what he would do by choice. there is not much home life. usually there is not the proper parental control. seldom do the parents interest themselves in planning for the activities of their children. the result is that the boys come together on the streets and form a club or gang. through this organization the boy's nature expresses itself. without proper guidance from older people, this expression takes a direction not good for the future character and usefulness of the boy. the social life of children should be provided for by the school in coöperation with the home. the school or the schoolroom should constitute a social unit. the teacher with the parents should plan the social life of the children. the actual work of the school can be very much socialized. there can be much more coöperation and much more group work can be done in the school than is the case at present. and many other social activities can be organized in connection with the school and its work. excursions, pageants, shows, picnics, and all sorts of activities should be undertaken. the schoolhouse should be used by the community as the place for many of its social acts and performances. almost every night, and throughout the summer as well as in the winter, the people, young and old, should meet at the school for some sort of social work or play. the boy scouts should be brought under the control of the school to help fulfill some of its main purposes. =environmental instincts.= in this class there are at least two tendencies which seem to be part of the original nature of man; namely, the _wandering_ and the _collecting_ tendencies. _wandering._ the long life that our ancestors lived free and unrestrained in the woods has left its effect within us. one of the greatest achievements of civilization has been to overcome the inherited tendencies to roam and wander, to the extent that for the most part we live out our lives in one home, in one family, doing often but one kind of work all our lives. originally, man had much more freedom to come and go and do whatever he wished. truancies and runaways are the result of original tendencies and desires expressing themselves in spite of training, perhaps sometimes because of the lack of training. in childhood and youth these original tendencies should, to some extent, be satisfied in legitimate ways. excursions and picnics can be planned both for work and for play. if the child's desires and needs can be satisfied in legitimate ways, then he will not have to satisfy them illegitimately. the teaching itself can be done better by following, to some extent, the lead of the child's nature. much early education consists in learning the world. now, most of the world is out of doors and the child must go out to find it. the teacher should make use of the natural desires of the children to wander and explore, as a means of educating them. the school work should be of such a nature that much outdoor work will need to be done. _collecting._ it is in the nature of children to seize and, if possible, carry away whatever attracts attention. this tendency is the basis of what is called the collecting instinct. if one will take a walk with a child, one can observe the operation of the collecting tendency, particularly if the walk is in the fields and woods. the child will be observed to take leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, nuts, pebbles, and in fact everything that is loose or can be gotten loose. they are taken at first aimlessly, merely because they attract attention. the original, natural response of the child toward that which attracts attention is usually to get it, get possession of it and take it along. it is easy to see why such tendencies were developed in man. in his savage state it was highly useful for him to do this. he must always have been on the lookout for things which could be used as food or as weapons. he had to do this to live. but one need not take a child to the woods to observe this tendency. one can go to the stores. till a child is trained not to do it, he seizes and takes whatever attracts attention. just as the wandering tendencies can be used for the benefit of the child, so can the collecting tendencies. not only should the children make expeditions to learn of the world, but specimens should be collected so that they can be used to form a museum at the school which will represent the surrounding locality. geological, geographical, botanical, and zoölogical specimens should be collected. the children will learn much while making the collections, and much from the collections after they are made. "education could profit greatly by making large demands upon the collecting instinct. it seems clear that in their childhood is the time when children should be sent forth to the fields and woods, to study what they find there and to gather specimens. the children can form naturalists' clubs for the purpose of studying the natural environment. such study should embrace rocks, soils, plants, leaves, flowers, fruits, and specimens of the wood of the various trees. birds and insects can be studied and collected. the work of such a club would have a twofold value. ( ) the study and collecting acquaint the child with his natural environment, and in doing it, afford a sphere for the activity of many aspects of his nature. they take him out of doors and give an opportunity for exploring every nook and corner of the natural environment. the collecting can often be done in such a way as to appeal to the group instincts. for example, the club could hold meetings for exhibiting and studying the specimens, and sometimes the actual collecting could be done in groups. ( ) the specimens collected should be put into the school museum, and the aim of this museum should be to represent completely the local environment, the natural and physical environment, and also the industrial, civil, and social environment. the museum should be completely illustrative of the child's natural, physical, and social surroundings. the museum would therefore be educative in its making, and when it is made, it would have immense value to the community, not only to the children but to all the people. in this museum, of course, should be found the minerals, rocks, soils, insects,--particularly those of economic importance,--birds, and also specimens of the wild animals of the locality. if proper appeal is made to the natural desire of the children, this instinct would soon be made of service in producing a very valuable collection. the school museum in which these specimens are placed should also include other classes of specimens. there should be specimens showing industrial evolution, the stages of manufacture of raw material, specimens of local historical interest, pictures, documents, books. the museum should be made of such a nature that parents would go there nearly as often as the children. the school should be for the instruction of all the people of the community. it should be the experiment station, the library, the debating club, the art gallery for the whole community."[ ] [ ] pyle's _outlines of educational psychology_, pp.  - . =imitation.= one of the fundamental original traits of human nature is the tendency to imitate. imitation is not instinctive in the strict meaning of the word. seeing a certain act performed does not, apart from training and experience, serve as a stimulus to make a child perform a similar act. hearing a certain sound does not serve as a stimulus for the production of the same sound. nevertheless, there is in the human child a tendency or desire to do what it sees others doing. a few hours spent in observing children ought to convince any one of the universality and of the strength of this tendency. as our experience becomes organized, the idea of an act usually serves as the stimulus to call it forth. however, this is not because the idea of an act, of necessity, always produces the act. it is merely a matter of the stimulus and the response _becoming connected in that way_ as the result of experience. our meaning is that an act can be touched off or prompted by any stimulus. our nervous organization makes this possible. the particular stimulus that calls forth a particular response depends upon how we have been trained, how we have learned. in most cases our acts are coupled up with the ideas of the acts. we learn them that way. in early life particularly, the connection between stimulus and response is very close. when a child gets the idea of an act, he immediately performs the act, if he knows how. now, seeing another perform an act brings the act clearly into the child's consciousness, and he proceeds to perform it. but the act must be one which the child already knows how to perform, otherwise his performance of it will be faulty and incomplete. if he has never performed the particular act, seeing another perform the act sets him to trying to do it and he may soon learn it. if he successfully performs an act when he sees it done by another, the act must be one which he already knows how to perform, and for whose performance the idea has already served as a stimulus. now if imitation were instinctive in the strict sense, one could perform the act for the first time merely from seeing another do it, without any previous experience or learning. it is doubtful whether there are any such inherited connections. it is, however, true that human beings are of such a nature that, particularly in early life, they _like_ to do and _want_ to do what they see others doing. this is one of the most important aspects of human nature, as we shall see. =function and importance of imitation in life.= natural selection has developed few aspects of human nature so important for survival as the tendency to imitate, for this tendency quickly leads to a successful adjustment of the child to the world in which he lives. adult men and women are successfully adjusted to their environment. their adjustment might be better, but it is good enough to keep them alive for a time. now, if children do as they see their parents doing, they will reach a satisfactory adjustment. we may, therefore, say that the tendency to imitate serves to adjust the child to his environment. it is for this reason that imitation has been called an _adaptive instinct_. it would perhaps be better to say merely that the _tendency_ to imitate is part of the _original equipment of man_. imitation is distinctively a human trait. while it occurs in lower animals it is probably not an important factor in adjusting them to their environment. but in the human race it is one of the chief factors in adjustment to environment. imitation is one of the main factors in education. usually the quickest way to teach a child to do a thing is to show him how. through imitation we acquire our language, manners, and customs. ideals, beliefs, prejudices, attitudes, we take on through imitation. the tendency to imitate others coupled with the desire to be thought well of by others is one of the most powerful factors in producing conformity. they are the whips which keep us within the bounds of custom and conventionality. the tendency to imitate is so strong that its results are almost as certain as are those of inherited tendencies. it is almost as certain that a child will be like his parents in speech, manners, customs, superstitions, etc., as it is that he will be like them in form of body. he not only walks and talks and acts like his parents, but he thinks as they do. we, therefore, have the term _social heredity_, meaning the taking on of all sorts of social habits and ideals through imitation. the part that imitation plays in the education of a child may be learned by going to a country home and noting how the boy learns to do all the many things about the farm by imitating his father, and how the girl learns to do all the housework by imitating her mother. imitation is the basis of much of the play of children, in that their play consists in large part of doing what they see older people doing. this imitative play gives them skill and is a large factor in preparing for the work of life. =dramatization.= dramatization is an aspect of imitation, and is a means of making ideas more real than they would otherwise be. there is nothing that leads us so close to reality as action. we never completely know an act till we have done it. dramatization is a matter of carrying an idea out into action. ideas give to action its greatest fullness of meaning. dramatic representation should, therefore, have a prominent place in the schools, particularly in the lower grades. if the child is allowed to mimic the characters in the reading lesson, the meaning of the lesson becomes fuller. later on in the school course, dramatic representation of the characters in literature and history is a means of getting a better conception of these characters. in geography, the study of the manners and customs and occupations of foreign peoples can be much facilitated through dramatic representation. children naturally have the dramatic tendency; it is one aspect of the tendency to imitate. we have only to encourage it and make use of it throughout the school course. =imitation in ideals.= imitation is of importance not only in acquiring the actions of life but also in getting our ideals. habits of thinking are no less an aspect of our lives than are habits of acting. our attitudes, our prejudices, our beliefs, our moral, religious, and political ideals are in large measure copied from people about us. the family and social atmosphere in which one lives is a mold in which one's mind is formed and shaped. we cannot escape the influence of this atmosphere if we would. one takes on a belief that his father has, one clings to this belief and interprets the world in the light of it. this belief becomes a part of one's nature. it is a mental habit, a way of looking at the world. it is as much a part of one as red hair or big feet or a crooked nose. probably no other influence has so much to do with making us what we are as social beings as the influence of imitation. =play.= play is usually considered to be a part of the original equipment of man. it is essentially an expression of the ripening instincts of children, and not a specific instinct itself. it is rather a sort of make-believe activity of all the instincts. kittens and dogs may be seen in play to mimic fighting. they bite and chew each other as in real fighting, but still they are not fighting. as the structures and organs of children mature, they demand activity. this early activity is called play. it has several characteristics. the main one is that it is pleasurable. play activity is pleasurable in itself. we do not play that we may get something else which we like, as is the case with the activity which we call work. play is an end in itself. it is not a means to get something else which is intrinsically valuable. one of the chief values of play comes from its activity aspect. we are essentially motor beings. we grow and develop only through exercise. in early life we do not have to exert ourselves to get a living. play is nature's means of giving our organs the exercise which they must have to bring them to maturity. play is an expression of the universal tendency to action in early life. without play, the child would not develop, would not become a normal human being. all day long the child is ceaselessly active. the value of this activity can hardly be overestimated. it not only leads to healthy growth, but is a means through which the child learns himself and the world. everything that the child sees excites him to react to it or upon it. he gets possession of it. he bites it. he pounds it. he throws it. in this way he learns the properties of things and the characteristics of forces. through play and imitation, in a very few years the child comes to a successful adjustment in his world. play and imitation are the great avenues of activity in early life. even in later life, we seldom accomplish anything great or worth while until the thing becomes play to us, until we throw our whole being into it as we do in play, until it is an expression of ourselves as play is in our childhood. the proper use of play gives us the solution of many of the problems of early education. play has two functions in the school: ( ) motor play is necessary to growth, development, and health. the constant activity of the child is what brings about healthy growth. in the country it is not difficult for children to get plenty of the proper kind of exercise, but in the larger cities it is difficult. nevertheless, opportunity for play should be provided for every child, no matter what the trouble or expense, for without play children cannot become normal human beings. everywhere parents and teachers should plan for the play life of the children. ( ) in the primary grades play can have a large place in the actual work of the school. the early work of education is to a large extent getting the tools of knowledge and thought and work--reading, spelling, writing, correct speech, correct writing, the elementary processes of arithmetic, etc. in many ways play can be used in acquiring these tools. one aspect of play particularly should have a large place in education; namely, the manipulative tendencies of children. this is essentially play. children wish to handle and manipulate everything that attracts their attention. they wish to tear it to pieces and to put it together. this is nature's way of teaching, and by it children learn the properties and structures of things. they thereby learn what things do and what can be done with them. teachers and parents should foster these manipulative tendencies and use them for the child's good. these tendencies are an aspect of curiosity. we want to know. we are unhappy as long as a thing is before us which we do not understand, which has some mystery about it. nature has developed these tendencies in us, for without a knowledge of our surroundings we could not live. the child therefore has in his nature the basis of his education. we have but to know this nature and wisely use and manipulate it to achieve the child's education. summary. instincts are inherited tendencies to specific actions. they fall under the heads: individualistic, socialistic, environmental, adaptive, sexual or mating instincts. these inherited tendencies are to a large extent the foundation on which we build education. the educational problem is to control and guide them, suppressing some, fostering others. in everything we undertake for a child we must take into account these instincts. class exercises . make a study of the instincts of several animals, such as dogs, cats, chickens. make a list showing the stimuli and the inherited responses. . make a study of the instincts of a baby. see how many inherited responses you can observe. the simpler inherited responses are known as _reflexes_. the closing of the eyelids mentioned in the text is an example. how many such reflexes can you find in a child? . make a special study of the fears of very young children. how many definite situations can you find which excite fear responses in all children? each member of the class can make a list of his own fears. it may then be seen whether any fears are common to all members of the class and whether there are any sex differences. . similarly, make a study of anger and fighting. what situations invariably arouse the fighting response? in what definite, inherited ways is anger shown? do your studies and observations convince you that the fighting instinct and other inherited responses concerned with individual survival are among the strongest of inherited tendencies? can the fighting instinct be eliminated from the human race? is it desirable to eliminate it? . make a study of children's collections. take one of the grades and find what collections the children have made. what different objects are collected? . outline a plan for using the collecting instinct in various school studies. . with the help of the principal of the school make a study of some specific cases of truancy. what does your finding show? . make a study of play by watching children of various ages play. make a list of the games that are universal for infancy, those for childhood, and those for youth. (consult johnson's _plays and games_.) . what are the two main functions of play in education? why should we play after we are mature? . study imitation in very young children. do this by watching the spontaneous play of children under six. what evidences of imitation do you find? . outline the things we learn by imitation. what is your opinion of the place which imitation has in our education? . make a study of imitation as a factor in the lives of grown people. consider styles, fashions, manners, customs, beliefs, prejudices, religious ideas, etc. . on the whole, is imitation a good thing or a bad thing? . make a plan of the various ways in which dramatization can be profitably used in the schools. . make a study of your own ideals. what ideals do you have? where did you get them? what ideals did you get from your parents? what from books? what from teachers? what from friends? . show that throughout life inherited tendencies are the fundamental bases from which our actions proceed, on which our lives are erected. . make a complete outline of the chapter. references for class reading colvin and bagley: _human behavior_, chapters iii, viii, ix, and x. kirkpatrick: _fundamentals of child study_, chapters iv-xiii. mÜnsterberg: _psychology, general and applied_, pp.  - . pillsbury: _essentials of psychology_, chapter x. pyle: _the outlines of educational psychology_, chapters iv-ix. titchener: _a beginner's psychology_, chapter viii. chapter v feeling and attention =the feelings.= related to the instincts on one side and to habits on the other are the feelings. in chapter iii we discussed sensation, and in the preceding chapter, the instincts, but when we have described an act in terms of instinct and sensation, we have not told all the facts. for example, when a child sees a pretty red ball of yarn, he reaches out to get it, then puts it into his mouth, or unwinds it, and plays with it in various ways. it is all a matter of sensation and instinctive responses. the perception of the ball--seeing the ball--brings about the instinctive reaching out, grasping the ball, and bringing it to the mouth. but to complete our account, we must say that the child is _pleased_. we note a change in his facial expression. his eyes gleam with pleasure. his face is all smiles, showing pleasant contentment. therefore we must say that the child not only sees, not only acts, but the seeing and acting are _pleasant_. the child continues to look, he continues to act, because the looking and acting bring joy. this is typical of situations that bring pleasure. we want them continued; we act in a way to make them continue. _we go out after the pleasure-giving thing._ but let us consider a different kind of situation. a child sees on the hearth a glowing coal. it instinctively reaches out and grasps it, starts to draw the coal toward it, but instinctively drops it. this is not, however, the whole story. instead of the situation being pleasant, it is decidedly unpleasant. the child fairly howls with pain. his face, instead of being wreathed in smiles, is covered with tears. he did not hold on to the coal. he did not try to continue the situation. on the contrary, he dropped the coal, and withdrew the hand. the body contracted and shrank away from the situation. these two cases illustrate the two simple feelings, pleasantness and unpleasantness. most situations in life are either pleasant or unpleasant. situations may sometimes be neutral; that is, may arouse neither the feeling of pleasantness or unpleasantness. but usually a conscious state is either pleasant or unpleasant. a situation brings us life, joy, happiness. we want it continued and act in a way to bring about its continuance. or the situation tends to take away our life, brings pain, sorrow, grief, and we want it discontinued, and act in a way to discontinue it. these two simple forms of feeling perhaps arose in the beginning in connection with the act of taking food. it is known that if a drop of acid touches an amoeba, the animal shrinks, contracts, and tries to withdraw from the death-bringing acid. on the other hand, if a particle of a substance that is suitable for food touches the animal, it takes the particle within itself. the particle is life-giving and brings pleasure. =the emotions.= pleasure and displeasure are the simple feelings. most situations in life bring about very complex feeling states known as _emotions_. the emotions are made up of pleasure or displeasure mixed or compounded with the sensations from the bodily reactions. the circulatory system, the respiratory system, and nearly all the involuntary organs of the body form a great sounding board which instantly responds in various ways to the situations of life. when the youth sees the pretty maiden and when he touches her hand, his heart pumps away at a great rate, his cheeks become flushed, his breathing is paralyzed, his voice trembles. he experiences the emotion of love. the state is complex indeed. there is pleasantness, of course, but there is in addition the feeling of all the bodily reactions. when the mother sees her dead child lying in its casket, her head falls over on her breast, her eyes fill with tears, her shoulders droop, her chest contracts, she sobs, her breathing is spasmodic. nearly every organ of the body is affected in one way or another. the state is _unpleasant_, but there is also the feeling of the manifold bodily reactions. so it is always. the biologically important situations in life bring about, through hereditary connections in the nervous system, certain typical reactions. these reactions are largely the same for the same type of situation, and they give the particular coloring to each emotion. it is evident that the emotions are closely related to the instincts. the reflexes that take place in emotions are of the same nature as the instincts. each instinctive act has its characteristic emotion. there are fear instincts and fear emotions. fear is unpleasant. in addition to its unpleasantness there is a multitude of sensations that come from the body. the hair stands on end, the heart throbs, the circulation is hastened, breathing is interrupted, the muscles are tense. this peculiar mass of sensations, blended with the unpleasantness, gives the characteristic emotion of fear. but we need not go into an analysis of the various emotions of love, hate, envy, grief, jealousy, etc. the reader can do this for himself.[ ] [ ] see james' _psychology, briefer course_, chapter xxiv. nearly every organ of the body plays its part in the emotions: the digestive organs, the liver, the kidneys, the throat and mouth, the salivary glands, the eyes and tear glands, the skin muscles, the facial muscles, etc. and every emotion is made up of pleasantness or unpleasantness and the sensations produced by some combination of bodily reactions. it is well for us to remember the part that bodily conditions and states play in the emotional life. the emotional state of a man depends upon whether he has had his dinner or is hungry, whether the liver is working normally, and upon the condition of the various secreting and excreting organs and glands. in a word, it is evident that our emotions fall within a world of cause and effect. _our feeling states are caused._ =importance in life.= our feelings and emotions are the fountains from which nearly all our volitional actions flow. feeling is the _mainspring_ of life. nearly everything we do is prompted by love, or hate, or fear, or jealousy, or rivalry, or anger, or grief. if the feelings have such close relation to action, then the schools must take them into account, for by education we seek to control action. if the feelings control action, then we must try to control the feelings. we must get the child into a right state of mind toward the school, toward his teacher, and toward his work. the child must like the school, like the teacher, and _want_ to learn. moreover, we must create the right state of mind in connection with each study, each task. the child must come to feel the need and importance of each individual task as well as of each subject. the task is then desirable, it is to be sought for and worked at, it is important for life. this is merely enlisting the child's nature in the interest of his education. for motive, we must always look to the child's nature. the two great forces which pull and drive are _pleasure_ and _pain_. nature has no other methods. formerly the school used pain as its motive almost exclusively. the child did his tasks to escape pain. for motive we now use more often the positive influences which give pleasure, which pull instead of drive. what will one not do _for_ the _loved_ one? what will one not do _to_ the _hated_ one? the child who does not love his teacher gets little good from school while under that teacher. moreover, school work is often a failure because it is so unreal, has so little relation to an actual world, and seems foreign to any real needs of the child. no one is going to work very hard unless the work is prompted by desire. our desires come from our needs. therefore, if we are to enlist the child's feelings in the service of his education, we must make the school work vital and relate it, if possible, to the actual needs of the child. it must not be forgotten, however, that we must build up permanent attitudes of respect for authority, obedience, and reverence for the important things of life. neither must it be forgotten that we can create needs in the child. if in the education of the child we follow only such needs as he has, we will make a fine savage of him but nothing else. it is the business of the school to create in the child the right kind of needs. as was pointed out in our study of the instincts, we must make the child over again into what he ought to be. but this cannot be a sudden process. one cannot arouse enthusiasm in a six-year-old child over the beauties of higher mathematics. it takes ten or fifteen years to do that, and it must be done little by little. =control of the emotions.= without training, we remain at the mercy of our baser emotions. the child must be trained to control himself. here is where habit comes in to modify primitive action. the child can be trained to inhibit or prevent the reactions that arise in hatred, envy, jealousy, anger, etc. for a fuller discussion of this point we must wait till we come to the discussion of habit and moral training. =mood and temperament.= a mood is a somewhat extended emotional state continuing for hours or days. it is due to a continuance of the factors which cause it. the state of the liver and digestive organs may throw one for days into a cross and ugly mood. when the body becomes normal, the mood changes or disappears. similarly, one may for hours or days be overjoyed, or depressed, or morose, or melancholy. parents and teachers should look well to the matter of creating and establishing continuous and permanent states of feeling that are favorable to work and development. some people are permanently optimistic, others pessimistic. some are always joyful, others as constantly see only the dark side of life. some are always serious and solemn, others always gay, even giddy. these permanent emotional attitudes constitute temperament, and are due to fundamental differences within the body that are in some cases hereditary. crossness and moroseness, for example, may be due to a dyspeptic condition and a chronically bad liver. the happy dispositions belong to bodies whose organs are functioning properly, in which assimilation is good--all the parts of the body doing their proper work. poor eyes which are under a constant strain, through the reflex effects upon various organs of the body, are likely to develop a permanently cross and irritable disposition. through the close sympathetic relation of the various organs, anything affecting one organ and interfering with its proper action is likely to affect many other organs and profoundly influence the emotional states of the body. in growing children particularly, there are many influences which affect their emotions, things of which we seldom think, such as the condition of vision and hearing, the condition of the teeth, nose, and throat, and the condition of all the important vital organs of the body. when a child's disposition is not what we think it ought to be, we should try to find out the causes. =training the emotions.= the emotions are subject to training. the child can be taught control. moreover, he can be taught to appreciate and enjoy higher things than mere animal pleasure; namely, art, literature, nature, truth. the child thereby becomes a spiritual being instead of a mere pig. the ideal of the school should be to develop men and women whose baser passions are under control, who are calm, self-controlled, and self-directed, and who get their greatest pleasure from the finer and higher things of life, such as the various forms of music, the songs of birds, the beauties and intricate workings of nature. this is a wonderful world and a wonderful life, but the child may go through the world without seeing it, and live his life without knowing what it is to live. his eyes must be opened, he must be trained to see and to feel. it is not the place here to tell how this is to be done. this is not a book on methods of teaching. we can only indicate here that the business of the school is not merely to teach people how to make a living, but to teach them how to enjoy the living. there are many avenues from which we get the higher forms of pleasure. there are really many different worlds which we may experience: the world of animals, the world of plants, the mechanical world, the chemical world, the world of literature and of art, the world of music. it is the duty of the schools to open up these worlds to the children, and make them so many possibilities of joy and happiness. the emotions and feelings, then, are not lawless and causeless, but are a part of a world of law and order. they are themselves caused and therefore subject to control and modification. =attention.= attention, too, is related to inherited tendencies on the one side and to habits on the other. if one is walking in the woods and catches a glimpse of something moving in the trees, the eyes _instinctively_ turn so that the person can get a better view of the object. if one hears a sudden sound, the head is instinctively turned so that the person can hear better. one stops, the body is held still and rigid, breathing is slow and controlled--all to favor better hearing. the various acts of attention are reflex and instinctive. but what is attention? by attention we mean _sensory clearness_. when we say we are attentive to a thing or subject, we mean that perceptions or ideas of that thing or subject are _clear_ as compared to other perceptions and ideas that are in consciousness at the same time. the contents of one's consciousness, the perceptions and ideas that constitute one's mind at any one moment are always arranged in an _attentive_ pattern, some being clear, others unclear. the pattern constantly changes and shifts. what is now clear and in the focus of consciousness, presently is unclear and may in a moment disappear from consciousness altogether, while other perceptions or ideas take its place. the first question that arises in connection with attention is, what are the causes of attention? the first group of causes are hereditary and instinctive. the child attends to loud things, bright things, moving things, etc. but as we grow older, the basis of attention becomes more and more _habit_. an illustration will make this clear. i once spent a day at a great exposition with a machinist. he was constantly attending to things mechanical, when i would not even see them. he had spent many years working with machinery, and as a result, things mechanical at once attracted him. similarly, if a man and a woman walk along a street together and look in at the shop windows, the woman sees only hats, dresses, ribbons, and other finery, while the man sees only cigars, pipes, and automobile supplies. every day we live, we are building up habits of attending to certain types of things. what repeatedly comes into our experience, easily attracts our attention to the exclusion of other things. =the function of attention.= attention is the unifying aspect of consciousness. there are always many things in consciousness, and we cannot respond to all at once. the part of consciousness that is clear and focal brings about action. the things to which we attend are the things that count. in later chapters we shall learn that in habit-formation, attention is an important factor. we must attend to the acts we are trying to make habitual. in getting knowledge, we must attend to what we are trying to learn. in committing to memory, we must attend to the ideas that we are trying to fix and make permanent. in thinking and reasoning, those ideas become associated together that are together in attention. attention is therefore the controlling aspect of consciousness. it is the basis of what we call _will_. the ideas that are clear and focal and that persist in consciousness are the ideas that control our action. when one says he has made up his mind, he has made a choice; that merely means that a certain group of ideas persist in consciousness to the exclusion of others. these are the ideas which ultimately produce action. and it is our past experience that determines what ideas will become focal and persist. =training the attention.= there are two aspects of the training of attention. ( ) we can learn to hold ourselves to a task. when we sit down to a table to study, there may be many things that tend to call us away. there lies a magazine which we might read, there is a play at the theater, there are noises outside, there is a friend calling across the street. but we must study. we have set ourselves to a task and we must hold fast to our purpose. the young child cannot do this. he must be trained to do it. the instruments used to train him are pleasure and pain, rewards and punishments that come from parents. gradually, slowly, the child gains control over himself. no one ever amounts to anything till he can hold himself to a task, to a fixed purpose. one must learn to form plans extending over weeks, months, and years, and to hold unflinchingly to them, just as one must hold himself to his study table and allow nothing to distract or to interfere. no training a child can receive is more important than this, for it gives him control over his life, it gives him control over the ideas that are to become focal and determine action. it is for this reason that we call such training a training of attention. it might perhaps better be called a training of the will. but the will is only the attentive consciousness. the idea that is clear, that holds its own in consciousness, is the idea that produces action. when we say that we _will_ to do a certain thing, all we can mean is that the _idea of this act_ is clearest and holds its focal place in consciousness to the exclusion of other ideas. it therefore goes over into action. ( ) the training just discussed may be called a general training of attention giving us a general power and control over our lives, but there is another type of training which is specific. as with the machinist mentioned above, so with all of us; we attend to the type of thing that we have formed a habit of attending to. continued experience in a certain field makes it more and more easy to attend to things in that field. one can take a certain subject and work at it day after day, year after year. by and by, the whole world takes on the aspect of this chosen subject. the entomologist sees bugs everywhere, the botanist sees only plants, the mechanic sees only machines, the preacher sees only the moral and religious aspects of action, the doctor sees only disease, the mathematician sees always the quantitative aspect of things. ideas and perceptions related to one's chosen work go at once and readily to the focus of consciousness; other things escape notice. it is for this reason that we become "crankier" every year that we live. we are attending to only one aspect of the world. while this blinds us to other aspects of the world, it brings mastery in our individual fields. we can, then, by training and practice, get a general control over attention, and by working in a certain field or kind of work, we make it easy to attend to things in that field or work. this to an extent gives us control of our lives, of our destiny. =interest.= the essential elements of interest are attention and feeling. when a person is very attentive to a subject and gets pleasure from experience in that subject, we commonly say that he is _interested_ in that subject. since the importance of attention and feeling in learning has already been shown and will be further developed in the chapters which follow in connection with the subjects of habit, memory, and thinking, little more need be said here. the key to all forms of learning is _attention_. the key to attention is _feeling_. feeling depends upon the nature of the child, inherited and acquired. in our search for the means of arousing interest, we look first to the original nature of the child, to the instincts and the emotions. we look next to the acquired nature, the habits, the ideals, the various needs that have grown up in the individual's life. educational writers have overemphasized the original nature of the child as a basis of interest and have not paid enough attention to acquired nature. we should not ask so much what a child's needs are, but what they _ought_ to be. needs can be created. the child's nature to some extent can be changed. the problem of arousing interest is therefore one of finding in the child's nature a basis for attention and pleasure. if the basis is not to be found there, then it must be built up. how this can be done, how human nature can be changed, is to some extent the main problem of psychology. every chapter in this book, it is hoped, will be found to throw some light on the problem. summary. the two elementary feeling states are pleasantness and unpleasantness. the emotions are complex mental states composed of feeling and the sensations from bodily reactions to the situations. feeling and emotion are the motive forces of life, at the bottom of all important actions. the bodily reactions of emotions are reflex and instinctive. attention is a matter of the relative clearness of the contents of consciousness. the function of attention is to unify thought and action. it is the important factor in all learning and thinking, for it is only the attentive part of consciousness that is effective. class exercises . make out a complete list of the more important emotions. . indicate the characteristic expression of each emotion in your list. . can you have an emotion without its characteristic expression? if, for example, when a situation arises which ordinarily arouses anger in you, you inhibit all the usual motor accompaniments of anger, are you really angry? . are the expressions of the same emotion the same for all people? . try to analyze some of your emotional states: anger, or fear, or grief. can you detect the sensations that come from the bodily reactions? . try to induce an emotional state by producing its characteristic reactions. . try to change an emotional state to an opposite emotion; for example, grief to joy. . try to control and change emotional states in children. . name some sensations that for you are always pleasant, others that are always unpleasant--colors, sounds, tastes, odors, temperatures. . confirm by observation the statement of the text as to the importance of emotions in all the important actions of life. . to what extent do you have control of your emotional states? what have you observed about differences in expression of deep emotions by different people? in case of death in the family, some people wail and moan and express their grief in the most extreme manner, while others do not utter a sound and show great control. why the difference? . make an introspective study of your conscious states to note the difference in clearness of the different processes that are going on in consciousness. do you find a constant shifting? . perform experiments to show the effects of attention in forming habits and acquiring knowledge. ( ) perform tests in learning, using substitution tests as described in chapter x. use several different keys. in some experiments have no distractions, in others, have various distracting noises. what differences do you find in the results? ( ) try learning nonsense syllables, some lists with distractions, others without distractions. ( ) try getting the ideas from stories read to you, as in the logical memory experiment described in chapter x. some stories should be read without distractions, others with distractions. . why are you unable to study well when under the influence of some strong emotion? . are you trained to the extent that you can concentrate on a task and hold yourself to it for a long time? . do you see that as far as will and attention and the emotions are concerned, your life and character are in large measure in your own hands? . make a complete outline of the chapter. references for class reading colvin and bagley: _human behavior_, chapters iv, v, and vi. mÜnsterberg: _psychology, general and applied_, chapter xiv, also pp.  - and pp.  - . pillsbury: _essentials of psychology_, chapters v and xi. pyle: _the outlines of educational psychology_, chapter xiv. titchener: _a beginner's psychology_, chapters iv, viii, and xi. chapter vi habit =the nature of habit.= we now turn from man's inherited nature to his acquired nature. inherited tendencies to action we have called instincts; acquired tendencies to action we shall call habits. we can best form an idea of the nature of habit by considering some concrete cases. let us take first the case of a man forming the habit of turning out the basement light. it usually happens that when a man has an electric light in the basement of his house, it is hard for him at first to think to turn out the light at night when he retires, and as a consequence the light often burns all night. this is expensive and unnecessary, so there is a strong incentive for the man to find a plan which will insure the regular turning-off of the light at bedtime. the plan usually hit upon is the following: the electric switch that controls the basement light is beside the basement stairway. the man learns to look at the switch as he comes up the stairs, after preparing the furnace fire for the night, and learns to take hold of the switch when he sees it and turn off the light. coming up the stairs means to look at the switch. seeing the switch means to turn it. each step of the performance touches off the next. the man sees that in order to make sure that the light will always be turned off, the acts must all be made automatic, and each step must touch off the next in the series. at first, the man leaves the light burning about as often as he turns it off. after practicing for a time on the scheme, the different acts become so well connected that he seldom leaves the light burning. we say that he has formed the _habit_ of turning off the light. for a second illustration, let us take the process of learning that nine times nine equals eighty-one. at first, one does not say or write "eighty-one" when one sees "nine times nine," but one can acquire the habit of doing so. it does not here concern us how the child learns what the product of nine times nine is. he may learn it by counting, by being told, or by reading it in a book. but however he first learns it, he fixes it and makes it automatic and habitual by _continuing_ to say or to write, "nine times nine equals eighty-one." the essential point is that at first the child does not know what to say when he hears or sees the expression "nine times nine," but after long practice he comes to give automatically and promptly the correct answer. for the definite problem "nine times nine" there comes the definite response "eighty-one." for a third illustration, let us take the case of a man tipping his hat when he meets a lady. a young boy does not tip his hat when he meets a lady until he has been taught to do so. after he learns this act of courtesy he does it quite automatically without thinking of it. for the definite situation, meeting a lady of his acquaintance, there comes to be established the definite response, tipping the hat. a similar habit is that of turning to the right when we meet a person. for the definite situation, meeting a person on the road or street or sidewalk, there is established the definite response, turning to the right. the response becomes automatic, immediate, certain. there is another type of habit that may properly be called an intellectual habit, such as voting a certain party ticket, say the democratic. when one is a boy, one hears his father speak favorably of the democratic party. his father says, "hurrah for bryan," so he comes to say, "hurrah for bryan." his father says, "i am a democrat," so he says he is a democrat. he takes the side that his father takes. in a similar way we take on the same religious notions that our parents have. it does not always happen this way, but this is the rule. but no matter how we come to do it, we do adopt the creed of some party or some church. we adopt a certain way of looking at public questions, and a certain way of looking at religious questions. for certain rather definite situations, we come to take definite stands. when we go to the booth to vote, we look at the top of the ballot to find the column marked "democratic," and the definite response is to check the "democrat" column. of course, some of us form a different habit and check the "republican" column, but the psychology of the act is the same. the point is that we form the democratic habit or we form the republican habit; and the longer we practice the habit, the harder it is to change it. in the presidential campaign of , roosevelt "bolted" from the republican party. it was hard for the older republicans to follow him. while one occasionally found a follower of roosevelt who was gray, one usually found the old republicans standing by the old party, the younger ones joining the progressive party. it is said that when darwin published "the origin of species," very few old men accepted the doctrine of evolution. the adherents of the new doctrine were nearly all young men. so there is such a thing as an intellectual habit. one comes to take a definite stand when facing certain definite intellectual situations. similar to the type of habits which we have called intellectual is another type which may be called "moral." when we face the situation of reporting an occurrence, we can tell the truth or we can lie. we can build up the habit of meeting such situations by telling the truth on all occasions. we can learn to follow the maxim "tell the truth at all times, at all hazards." we can come to do this automatically, certainly, and without thought of doing anything else. most moral situations are fairly definite and clear-cut, and for them we can establish definite forms of response. we can form the habit of helping a person in distress, of helping a sick neighbor, of speaking well of a neighbor; we can form habits of industry, habits of perseverance. these and other similar habits are the basis of morality. the various kinds of habits which we have enumerated are alike in certain fundamental particulars. in all of them there is a definite situation followed by a definite response. one sees the switch and turns off the light; he sees the expression "nine times nine" and says "eighty-one"; he sees a lady he knows and tips his hat; in meeting a carriage on the road, he turns to the right; when he has to vote, he votes a certain ticket; when he has to report an occurrence, he tells it as it happened. there is, in every case, a definite situation followed by a definite response. another characteristic is common to all the cases mentioned above, _i.e._ the response is acquired, it does not come at first. in every instance we might have learned to act differently. we could form the habit of always leaving the light burning; could just as easily say "nine times nine equals forty"; we could turn to the left; we could vote the republican ticket. we can form bad moral habits as well as good ones, perhaps more easily. the point is, however, that we acquire definite ways of acting for the same situations, and these definite ways of acting are called habits. =habit and nerve-path.= it has already been stated that a habit is a tendency toward a certain type of action in a certain situation. the basis of this tendency is in the nervous system. in order to understand it we must consider what the nervous system is like. nerves terminate at one end in a sense organ and at the other end ultimately in a muscle. in figure ii, a is a sense organ, b a nerve going from the sense organ to the brain c. d, e, f, g, and h are motor nerves going from the brain to the muscles. now, let us show from the diagram what organization means and what tendency means. at first when the child sees the expression "nine times nine," he does not say "eighty-one." the stimulus brings about no definite action. it is as likely to go out through e or f as through d. but suppose we can get the child to say "nine times nine equals eighty-one." we can write the expression on the blackboard and have the child look at it and say "nine times nine equals eighty-one." suppose the act of saying "eighty-one" is brought about by the nerve-current going out through nerve-chain d. by repetition, we establish a bond. a stimulus of a particular kind comes through a, goes over b to c, and out over d, making muscles at m bring about a very definite action in saying "eighty-one." [illustration: figure ii.--the organization of tendencies] from the point of view of physiology, the process of habit-formation consists in securing a particular nerve coupling, establishing a particular nerve path, so that a definite form of stimulation will bring about a definite form of response. a nerve tendency is simply the likelihood that a stimulus will take a certain course rather than any other. this likelihood is brought about by getting the stimulus to take the desired route through the nervous system to a group of muscles and to continue following this route. the more times it passes the same way, the greater is the probability that at any given time the stimulus will take the accustomed route and bring about the usual response. at first any sort of action is possible. a nerve stimulus can take any one of the many routes to the different muscles. by chance or by conscious direction, the stimulus takes a certain path, and by repetition we fix and make permanent this particular route. this constitutes a nerve tendency or habit. =plasticity.= our discussion should have made it clear that habit is acquired nature, while instinct is inherited nature. habit is acquired tendency while instinct is inherited tendency. the possibility of acquiring habits is peculiarly a human characteristic. while inanimate things have a definite nature, a definite way of reacting to forces which act upon them, they have little, if any, possibility of varying their way of acting. water might be said to have habits. if one cools water, it turns to ice. if we heat it, it turns to steam. but it _invariably_ does this. we cannot teach it any different way of acting. under the same conditions it always does the same thing. plants are very much like inanimate things. plants have definite ways of acting. a vine turns around a support. a leaf turns its upper surface to the light. but one cannot teach plants different ways of acting. the lower forms of animals are somewhat like plants and inanimate objects. but to a very slight extent they are variable and can form habits. among the higher animals, such as dogs and other domestic animals, there is a greater possibility of forming habits. in man there are the greatest possibilities of habit-formation. in man the learned acts or habits are many as compared to the unlearned acts or instincts; while among the lower animals the opposite is the case--their instincts are many as compared to their habits. we may call this possibility of forming habits _plasticity_. inanimate objects such as iron, rocks, sulphur, oxygen, etc., have no plasticity. plants have very little possibility of forming habits. lower animals have somewhat more, and higher animals still more, while man has the greatest possibility of forming habits. this great possibility of forming habits is one of the main characteristics of man. let us illustrate the contrast between man and inanimate objects by an example. if sulphur is put into a test tube and heated, it at first melts and becomes quite thin like water. if it is heated still more, it becomes thick and will not run out of the tube. it also becomes dark. sulphur _always_ does this when so treated. it cannot be taught to act differently. now the action of sulphur when heated is like the action of a man when he turns to the right upon meeting a person in the street. but the man has to acquire this habit, while the sulphur does not have to learn its way of acting. sulphur always acted in this way, while man did not perform his act at first, but had to learn it by slow repetition. everything in the world has its own peculiar nature, but man is unique in that his nature can be very much changed. to a large extent, a man is _made_, his nature is _acquired_. after we become men and women, we have hundreds and thousands of tendencies to action, definite forms of action, that we did not have when young. man's nature might be said to consist in his tendencies to action. some of these tendencies he inherits; these are his instincts. some of these he acquires; these are his habits. =what habits do for us.= we have found out what habits are like; let us now see what they do for us. what good do they accomplish for us? how are we different after forming a habit from what we were before? we can best answer these questions by a consideration of concrete cases. typewriting will serve very well the purpose of illustration. we shall give the result of an actual experiment in which ten university students took part. during their first half hour of practice, they wrote an average of  words. at the end of forty-five hours of practice, they were writing an average of  words in a half hour. this was an increase of speed of  per cent. an expert typist can write about  words in a half hour. such a speed requires much more than forty-five hours practice, and is attained by the best operators only. [illustration: figure iii.--learning curves the upper graph shows the improvement in speed of a group of students working two half hours a day. the lower curve shows the improvement of a group working ten half-hours a day.] in the foregoing experiment, the students improved in accuracy also. at the beginning of the work, they made  errors in the half hour. at the end of the practice, with much faster speed, they were making only  errors in a half hour. the actual number of errors had increased  per cent. the increase in errors was therefore exactly half as much as the increase in speed. this, of course, was a considerable increase in accuracy, for while the speed had increased to . times what it had been at the beginning, the errors had increased only . times. the subjects in this experiment paid much more attention to speed than they did to accuracy. if they had emphasized accuracy, they would have been doing almost perfect work at the end of the practice, and their speed would have been somewhat less. practice, then, not only develops speed but also develops accuracy. there are also other results. at the beginning of work with the typewriter, there is much waste of energy and much fatigue. the waste of energy comes from using unnecessary muscles, and the fatigue is partly due to this waste of energy. but even apart from this waste of energy, an habituated act is performed with less fatigue. the various muscles concerned become better able to do their work. as a result of habituation there is, then, greater speed, greater accuracy, less waste of energy, and less fatigue. if we look not at the changes in our work but at the changes in ourselves, the changes in our minds due to the formation of habits, we find still other results. at the beginning of practice with the typewriter, the learner's whole attention is occupied with the work. when one is learning to do a new trick, the attention cannot be divided. the whole mind must be devoted to the work. but after one has practiced for several weeks, one can operate the typewriter while thinking about something else. we say that the habituated act sinks to a lower level of consciousness, meaning that as a habit becomes more and more fixed, less and less attention is devoted to the acts concerned. increased skill gives us pleasure and also gives us confidence in our ability to do the thing. corresponding to this inner confidence is outer certainty. there is greater objective certainty in our performance and a corresponding inner confidence. by objective certainty, we mean that a person watching our performance, becomes more and more sure of our ability to perform, and we ourselves feel confidence in our power of achievement. now that we have shown the results of habituation let us consider additional illustrations. in piano playing, the stimuli are the notes as written in the music. we see the notes occupying certain places on the scale of the music. a note in a certain place means that we must strike a certain key. at first the response is slow, we have to hunt out each note on the keyboard. moreover, we make many mistakes; we strike the wrong keys just as we do in typewriting. we are awkward, making many unnecessary movements, and the work is tiresome and fatiguing. after long practice, the speed with which we can manipulate the keys in playing the piano is wonderful. our playing becomes accurate, perfect. we do it with ease, with no unnecessary movements. we can play the piano, after we become skilled, without paying attention to the actual movements of our hands. we can play the piano while concentrating upon the meaning of the music, or while carrying on a conversation, or while thinking about something else. as a rule, pleasure and confidence come with skill. playing a difficult piece on the piano involves a skill which is one of the most complicated that man achieves. it is possible only through habituation of the piano-playing movements. nailing shingles on a roof illustrates well the various aspects of habituation. the expert carpenter not only nails on many more shingles in a day than does the amateur, but he does it better and with more ease, and with much less fatigue. the carpenter knows exactly how much he can do in a day, and each particular movement is certain and sure. the carpenter has confidence in, and usually prides himself on, this ability, thus getting pleasure out of his work. the operations in arithmetic illustrate most of the results of habituation. practice in addition makes for speed and accuracy. in a few weeks' time we can very much increase our speed and accuracy in adding, or in the other arithmetical operations. the foregoing examples are sufficient, although they could be multiplied indefinitely. almost any habit one might name would show clearly most of the results enumerated. the most important aspects of habituation may be summed up in the one word _efficiency_. habituation gives us speed and accuracy. speed and accuracy mean skill. skill means efficiency. =how habits are formed.= it is clear from the foregoing discussion that the essential thing in a habit is the definiteness of the connection between the stimulus and the response, between the situation and the reaction to the situation. our question now is, how is this definiteness of connection established? the answer is, _through repetition_. let us work the matter out from a concrete case, such as learning to play the piano. in piano playing the stimulus comes from the music as printed on the staff. a note having a certain position on the staff indicates that a certain key is to be struck. we are told by our music teacher what keys on the piano correspond to the various notes on the staff, or we may learn these facts from the instruction book. it makes no difference how we learn them; but after we know these facts, we must have practice to give us skill. the mere knowledge will not make us piano players. in order to be skillful, we must have much practice not only in striking the keys indicated by the various note positions, but with the various combinations of notes. for example, a note on the second space indicates that the player must strike the key known as "a." but "a" may occur with any of the other notes, it may precede them or it may follow them. we must therefore have practice in striking "a" in all these situations. to have skill at the piano, we must mechanize many performances. we must be able to read the notes with accuracy and ease. we must practice so much that the instant we see a certain combination of notes on the staff, our hands immediately execute the proper strokes. not only must we learn what keys on the piano correspond to the various notes of the music, but the notes have a temporal value which we must learn. some are to be sounded for a short time, others for a longer time. we have eighth notes, quarter notes, half notes, etc. moreover, the signature of the music as indicated by the sharps or flats changes the whole situation. if the music is written in "a sharp" then when "a" is indicated on the staff, we must not strike the white key known as "a," but the black key just above, known as "a sharp." briefly, in piano playing, the stimulus comes from the characters printed on the staff. the movements which these characters direct are very complicated and require months and years of practice. we must emphasize the fact that practice alone gives facility, years of practice. but after these years of practice, one can play a piece of music at sight; that is, the first stimulus sets off perfectly a very complicated response. this sort of performance is one of the highest feats of skill that man accomplishes. to get skill, then, one must practice. but mere repetition is not sufficient. for practice to be most effective, one must put his whole mind on what he is doing. if he divides his attention between the acts which he is practicing and something else, the effect of the practice in fixing and perfecting the habit is slight. it seems that when we are building up a new nerve-path which is to be the basis of a new habit, the nervous energies should not be divided; that the whole available nervous energy should be devoted to the acts which we are repeating. this is only another way of saying that when we are practicing to establish a habit, we should attend to what we are doing and to nothing else. but after the habit-connection is once firmly established, we can attend to other things while performing the habitual act. the habitual action will go on of itself. we may say, then, that in order to be able to do a thing with little or no attention, we must give much attention to it at first. another important factor in habit-formation is pleasure. the act which we are practicing must give us pleasure, either while we are doing it or as a result. pleasurable results hasten habit-formation. when we practice an act in which we have no interest, we make slow progress or none at all. now the elements of interest are attention and pleasure. if we voluntarily attend to a thing and its performance gives us pleasure, or pleasure results from it, we say we are interested in it. the secret of successful practice is interest. repeatedly in laboratory experiments it happens that a student loses interest in the performance and subsequently makes little, if any, progress. one of the biggest problems connected with habit-formation is that of maintaining interest. a factor which prevents the formation of habits is that of exceptions. if a stimulus, instead of going over to the appropriate response, produces some other action, there is an interference in the formation of the desired habit. the effect of an exception is greater than the mere neglect of practice. the _exception opens up another path_ and tends to make future action uncertain. particularly is this true in the case of moral habits. forming moral habits is usually uphill work anyway, in that we have instincts to overcome. allowing exceptions to enter, in the moral sphere, usually means a slipping back into an old way of acting, thereby weakening much the newly-made connection. in any kind of practice, when we become fatigued we make errors. if we continue to practice when fatigued, we form connections which we do not wish to make and which interfere with the desired habits. =economy of practice.= the principles which we have enumerated and illustrated are fairly general and of universal validity. there are certain other factors which we may discuss here under the head of economical procedure. to form a habit, we must practice. but how long should we practice at one time? this is an experimental problem and has been definitely solved. it has been proved by experiment that we can practice profitably for as long a time as we can maintain a high degree of attention, which is usually till we become fatigued. this time is not the same for all people. it varies with age, and in the case of the same person it varies at different times. if ordinary college students work at habit-formation at the highest point of concentration, they get the best return for a period of about a half hour. it depends somewhat on the amount of concentration required for the work and the stage of fixation of the habit, _i.e._ whether one has just begun to form the habit or whether it is pretty well fixed. for children, the period of successful practice is usually much less than a half hour--five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, depending upon the age of the child and the kind of work. the best interval between periods of practice is the day, twenty-four hours. if one practices in the morning for a half hour, one can practice again in the afternoon with nearly as much return as he would secure the next day, but not quite. in general, practice is better, gives more return, if spread out. to practice one day as long as one can work at a high point of efficiency, and then to postpone further practice till the next day, gives one the most return for the time put in. but if one is in a hurry to form a habit, one can afford to practice more each day even if the returns from the practice do diminish proportionately. this matter has been tried out on the typewriter. if one practices for ten half hours a day with half-hour rests between, one does not get so much return for his time as he would if he should spread it out at the rate of one or two half-hour practices a day. but by working ten half hours a day, one gets much more efficiency in the same number of days than if he should practice only one or two half hours a day. this point must not be misunderstood. we do not mean that one must not work at anything longer than a half hour a day. we mean that if one is forming a habit, his time counts for more in forming the habit if spread out at the rate of a half hour or an hour a day, than it does if put in at a faster rate. therefore if one is in no hurry and can afford to spread out his time, he gets the best return by so doing, and the habit is more firmly fixed than if formed hurriedly. but if one is in a hurry, and has the time to devote to it, he can afford to concentrate his practice up to five hours or possibly more in a day, provided that rest intervals are interspersed between periods of practice. there is one time in habit-formation when concentrated practice is most efficient. that is at the beginning. in a process as complicated as typewriting, so little impression is made at the beginning by a short period of practice that progress is but slight. on the first day, one should practice about four or five times to secure the best returns, a half hour each time. =what the teacher can do.= now, let us see how the teacher can be of assistance to the pupil in habit-formation. the teacher should have a clear idea of the nature of the habit to be formed and should demonstrate the habit to the pupil. suppose the habit is so simple a thing as long division. the teacher should explain each step in the process. she should go to the blackboard and actually solve a number of problems in long division, so that the pupils can see just how to do it. after this the pupils should go to the board and solve a problem themselves. the reason for this procedure is that it is most economical. if the children are left to get the method of doing long division from a book, they will not be able to do it readily and will make mistakes. a teacher can explain a process better than it can be explained in a book. by giving a full explanation and demonstration and then by requiring the children to work a few problems while she watches for mistakes, correcting them at once, the teacher secures economy of effort and time. the first step is to demonstrate the habit to the pupils; the second, to have them do the act, whatever it is, correcting their mistakes; the third, to require the pupils to practice till they have acquired skill. the teacher must make provision for practice. =what parents can do.= parents can be of very great assistance to children who are forming habits. ( ) they can coöperate with the school, which is directing the child in the systematic formation of a great system of habits. the teacher should explain these habits to the parents so that they may know what the teacher is trying to do. quite often the home and the school are working at cross purposes. the only way to prevent this is for them to work in the closest coöperation, with the fullest understanding of what is being undertaken for the child. parents and teachers should often meet together and talk over the work of training the children of the community. parents should have not merely a general understanding of the work of the school, but they should know the details undertaken. the school often assigns practice work to be done at home in reading, writing, arithmetic. parents should always know of these assignments and should help the children get the necessary practice. they can do this by reminding the child of the work, by preparing a suitable place where the work may be done, and by securing quiet for the practice. children like play and it is easy for them to forget their necessary work. parents can be of the greatest service to childhood and youth by holding the children to their responsibilities and duties. few parents take any thought of whether their children are doing all possible for their school progress. few of those who do, make definite plans and arrangements for the children to accomplish the necessary practice and study. this is the parent's duty and responsibility. moreover, parents are likely to feel that children have no rights, and think nothing of calling on them in the midst of their work to do some errand. now, children should work about the house and help their parents, but there should be a time for this and a separate time for study and practice on school work. when a child sits down for serious practice on some work, his time should be sacred and inviolable. instead of interfering with the child, the parents should do everything in their power to make this practice possible and efficient. in their relations with their children perhaps parents sin more in the matter of neglecting to plan for them than in any other way. they plan for everything else, but they let their children grow up, having taken no definite thought about helping them to form their life habits and to establish these habits by practice. when a child comes home from school, the mother should find out just what work is to be done before the next day and should plan the child's play and work in such a way as to include all necessary practice. if all parents would do this, the value to the work of the school and to the life of the child would be incalculable. ( ) just as one of the main purposes of the teacher is to help the child gain initiative, so it is one of the greatest of the parents' duties. parents must help the children to keep their purposes before them. children forget, even when they wish to remember. often, they do not want to remember. the parents' duty is to get the child to _want_ to remember, and to help him to remember, whether he wants to or not. one of the main differences between childhood and maturity is that the child lives in the present, his purposes are all immediate ones. habits always look forward, they are for future good and use. mature people have learned to look forward and to plan for the future. they must, therefore, perform this function for the children. they must look forward and see what the child should learn to do, and then see that he learns to do it. ( ) parents must help children to plan their lives in general and in detail; _i.e._ in the sense of determining the ideals and habits that will be necessary for those lives. the parents must do this with the help of the child. the child must not be a blind follower, but as the child's mind becomes mature enough, the parent must explain the matter of forming life habits, and must show the child that life is a structure that he himself is to build. life will be what he makes it, and the time for forming character is during early years. the parent must not only tell the child this but must help him to realize the truth of it, must help him continually, consistently. ( ) of course it is hardly necessary to say that the parent can help much, perhaps most, by example. the parent must not only tell the child what to do but must _show_ him how it should be done. ( ) parents can help in the ways mentioned above, but they can also help by coöperating among themselves in planning for the training of the children of the community. one parent cannot train his children independently of all the other people in the community. there must be a certain unity of ideals and aims. therefore, not only is there need for coöperation between parents and teachers but among parents themselves. although they coöperate in everything else, they seldom do in the training of their children. the people of a community should meet together occasionally to plan for this common work. =importance of habit in education and life.= a man is the sum of his habits and ideals. he has language habits; he speaks german, or french, or english. he has writing habits, spelling habits, reading habits, arithmetic habits. he has political habits, religious habits. he has various social habits, habitual attitudes which he takes toward his fellows. he has moral habits--he is honest and truthful, or he is dishonest and untruthful. he always looks on the bright side, or else on the dark side of events. all these habits and many more, he has. they are structures which he has built. one's life, then, is the sum of his tendencies, and these tendencies one establishes in early life. this view gives an importance to the work of the school which is derived from no other view. the school is not a place where we get this little bit of information, or the other. it is the place where we are molded, formed, and shaped into the beings we are to be. the school has not risen to see the real importance of its work. its aims have been low and its achievements much lower than its aims. teachers should rise to the importance of their calling. their work is that of gods. they are creators. they do not make the child. they do not give it memory or attention or imagination. but they are creators of tendencies, prejudices, religions, politics, and other habits unnumbered. so that in a very real sense, the school, with all the other educational influences, makes the man. we do not give a child the capacity to learn, but we can determine what he shall learn. we do not give him memory, but we can select what he shall remember. we do not make the child as he is at the beginning, but we can, in large measure, determine the world of influences which complete the task of _making_. in the early part of life every day and every hour of the day establishes and strengthens tendencies. every year these tendencies become stronger. every year after maturity, we resist change. by twenty-five or thirty, "character has set like plaster." the general attitude and view of the world which we have at maturity, we are to hold throughout life. very few men fundamentally change after this. it takes a tremendous influence and an unusual situation to break one up and make him an essentially different man after maturity. every year a "crank" becomes "crankier." it is well that this is so. everything in the world costs its price. rigidity is the price we pay for efficiency. in order to be efficient, we must make habitual the necessary movements. after they are habituated, they resist change. but habit makes for regularity and order. we could not live in society unless there were regularity, order, fixity. habit makes for conservatism. but conservatism is necessary for order. in a sense, habit works against progress. but permanent improvement without habit would be impossible, for permanent progress depends upon holding what we gain. it is well for society that we are conservative. we could not live in the chaos that would exist without habit. public opinion resists change. people refuse to accept a view that is different from the one they have held. we could get nowhere if we continually changed, and it is well for us that we continue to do the old way to which we have become accustomed, till a new and better one is shown beyond doubt. even then, it is probably better for an old person to continue to use the accustomed methods of a lifetime. although better methods are developed, they will not be so good for the old person as those modes of action that he is used to. the possibility of progress is through new methods which come in with each succeeding generation. when we become old we are not willing to change, but the more reasonable of us are willing that our children should be taught a better way. sometimes, of course, we find people who say that what was good enough for them is good enough for their children. most of us think better, and wish to give our children a "better bringing up than ours has been." these considerations make clear the importance of habit in life. they should also make clear a very important corollary. if habits are important in life, then it is the duty of parents and teachers to make a careful selection of the habits that are to be formed by the children. the habits that will be necessary for the child to form in order to meet the various situations of his future life, should be determined. there should be no vagueness about it. definite habits, social, moral, religious, intellectual, professional, etc., will be necessary for efficiency. we should know what these various habits are, and should then set about the work of establishing them with system and determination, just as we would the building of a house. much school work and much home training is vague, indefinite, uncertain, done without a clear understanding of the needs or of the results. we therefore waste time, years of the child's life, and the results are unsatisfactory. =drill in school subjects.= in many school subjects, the main object is to acquire skill in certain processes. as previously explained, we can become skillful in an act only by repetition of the act. therefore, in those subjects in which the main object is the acquiring of skill, there must be much repetition. this repetition is called drill. the matter of economical procedure in drill has already been considered, but there are certain problems connected with drill that must be further discussed. drill is usually the hardest part of school work. it becomes monotonous and tiresome. moreover, drill is always a means. it is the means by which we become efficient. take writing, for example. it is not an end in itself; it is the means by which we convey thoughts. reading is a means by which we are able to get the thought of another. in acquiring a foreign language, we have first to master the elementary tools that will enable us to make the thought of the foreign language our own. it seems that the hardest part of education always comes first, when we are least able to do it. it used to be that nearly all the work of the school was drill. there was little school work that was interesting in itself. in revolt against this kind of school, many modern educators have tried to plan a curriculum that would be interesting to the child. in schools that follow this idea, there is little or no drill, pure and simple. there is no work that is done for the sole purpose of acquiring skill. the work is so planned that, in pursuing it, the child will of necessity have to perform the necessary acts and will thereby gain efficiency. in arithmetic, there is no adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing, only as such things must be done in the performance of something else that is interesting in itself. for example, the child plays store and must add up the sales. the child plays bean bag and must add up the score. practice gained in this indirect way is known as incidental drill. direct drill consists in making a direct approach; we wish to be efficient at adding, so we practice adding as such and not merely as incidental to something else. this plan of incidental drill is in harmony with the principle of interest previously explained. there are several things, however, that must be considered. the proper procedure would seem to be to look forward and find out in what directions the child will need to acquire skill and then to help him acquire it in the most economical way and at the proper time. nature has so made us that we like to do a new trick. when we have taught a child how to add and subtract, he likes to perform these operations because the operations themselves give pleasure. therefore much repetition can be allowed and much skill acquired by a direct approach to the practice. when interest drags, incidental drill can be fallen back upon to help out the interest. children should be taught that certain things must be done, certain skill must be acquired. they should accept some things on the authority of elders. they should be taught to apply themselves and to give their whole attention to a thing that must be done. a desire for efficiency can be developed in them. the spirit of competition can sometimes be effectively used to add interest to drill. of course, interest and attention there must be, and if it cannot be secured in one way, it must be in another. experiments have abundantly shown the value of formal drill, that is to say, drill for drill's sake. if an arithmetic class is divided, one half being given a few minutes' drill on the fundamental operations each day but otherwise doing exactly the same work as the other half of the class, the half receiving the drill acquires much more skill in the fundamental operations and, besides, is better at reasoning out problems than the half that had no drill. the explanation of the latter fact is doubtless that the pupils receiving the drill acquire such efficiency in the fundamental operations that these cause no trouble, leaving all the energies of the pupils for reasoning out the problems. it has been shown experimentally that a direct method of teaching spelling is more efficient than an indirect method. it is not to be wondered at that such turns out to be the case. for in a direct approach, the act that we are trying to habituate is brought more directly before consciousness, receiving that focal attention which is necessary for the most efficient practice in habit-formation. if one wishes to be a good ball pitcher, one begins to pitch balls, and continues pitching balls day after day, morning, noon, and night. one does not go about it indirectly. if one wishes to be a good shot with a rifle, one gets a rifle and goes to shooting. similarly, if one wishes to be a good adder, the way to do is to begin adding, not to begin doing something else. of course any method that will induce a child to realize that he ought to acquire a certain habit, is right and proper. we must do all we can to give a child a desire, an interest in the thing that he is trying to do. but there is no reason why the thing should not be faced directly. =rules for habit formation.= in the light of the various principles which we have discussed, what rules can be given to one forming habits? the evident answer is, to proceed in accordance with established principles. we may, however, bring the most important of these principles together in the form of rules which can serve as a guide and help to one forming habits. ( ) _get initiative._ by this is meant that a person forming a habit should have some sustaining reason for doing it, some end that is being sought. this principle will be of very little use to young children, only to those old enough to appreciate reasons and ends. in arithmetic, for example, a child should be shown what can be accomplished if he possesses certain skill in addition, subtraction, and multiplication. it is not always possible for a young person to see why a certain habit should be formed. for the youngest children, the practice must be in the form of play. but when a child is old enough to think, to have ideals and purposes, reasons and explanations should be worked out. ( ) _get practice._ if you are to have skill, you must practice. practice regularly, practice hard while you are doing it. throw your whole life into it, as if what you are doing is the most important thing in the world. practice under good conditions. do not think that just any kind of practice will do. try to make conditions such that they will enable you to do your best work. such conditions will not happen by chance. you must make them happen. you must make conditions favorable. you must seek opportunities to practice. you must realize that your life is in the making, that _you_ are making it, that it is to a large extent composed of habits. these habits you are building. they are built only by practice. get practice. when practicing, fulfill the psychological conditions. work under the most favorable circumstances as to length of periods, intervals, etc. ( ) _allow no exceptions._ you should fully realize the great influence of exceptions. when you start in to form a habit, allow nothing to turn you from your course. whether the habit is some fundamental moral habit or the multiplication table, be consistent, do not vacillate. nothing is so strong as consistent action, nothing so weak as doubtful, wavering, uncertain action. have the persistence of a bull dog and the regularity of planetary motion. =transfer of training.= our problem now is to find out whether forming one habit helps one to form another. in some cases it does. the results of a recent experiment performed in the laboratory of educational psychology in the university of missouri, will show what is meant. it was found that if a person practiced distributing cards into pigeon holes till great proficiency was attained, and then the numbering of the boxes or pigeon holes was changed, the person could learn the new numbering and gain proficiency in distributing the cards in the new way more quickly than was the case at first. similarly, if one learns to run a typewriter with a certain form of keyboard, one can learn to operate a different keyboard much more quickly than was the case in learning the first keyboard. it is probable that the explanation of this apparent transfer is that there are common elements in the two cases. certain bonds established in the first habit are available in the second. in the case of distributing the cards, many such common elements can be made out. one gains facility in reading the numbering of the cards. the actual movement of the hand in getting to a particular box is the same whatever the number of the box. one acquires schemes of associating and locating the boxes, schemes that will work in both cases. but suppose that one spends fifteen days in distributing cards according to one scheme of numbering, and then changes the numbering and practices for fifteen days with the new numbering, at the end of the second fifteen days one has more skill than at the close of the first fifteen days. in fact, in five days one has as much skill in the new method as was acquired in fifteen days in the first method. however, and this is an important point, the speed in the new way is not so great as the speed acquired in thirty days using one method or one scheme all the time. direct practice on the specific habit involved is always most efficient. one should probably never learn one thing _just because_ it will help him in learning something else, for that something else could be more economically learned by direct practice. learning one language probably helps in learning another. a year spent in learning german will probably help in learning french. but two years spent in learning french will give more efficiency in french than will be acquired by spending one year on german and then one year on french. if the only reason for a study is that it helps in learning something else, then this study should be left out of the curriculum. if the only reason for studying latin, for example, is that it helps in studying english, or french, or helps in grammar, or gives one a larger vocabulary in english on account of a knowledge of the latin roots, then the study of the language cannot be justified; for all of these results could be much more economically and better attained by a direct approach. of course, if latin has a justification in itself, then these by-products are not to be despised. the truth seems to be that habits are very specific things. a definite stimulus goes over to a definite response. we must decide what habits we need to have established, and then by direct and economical practice establish these habits. it is true that in pursuing some studies, we acquire habits that are of much greater applicability in the affairs of life than can be obtained from other studies. when one has acquired the various adding habits, he has kinds of skill that will be of use in almost everything that is undertaken later. so also speaking habits, writing habits, spelling habits, moral habits, etc., are of universal applicability. whenever one undertakes to do a thing that involves some habit already formed, that thing is more easily done by virtue of that habit. one could not very well learn to multiply one number by another, such as , , by , , without first learning to add. this seems to be all there is to the idea of the transfer of training. one gets an act, or an idea, or an attitude, or a point of view that is available in a new thing, thereby making the new thing easier. the methods one would acquire in the study of zoölogy would be, many of them, directly applicable in the study of botany. but, just as truly, one can acquire habits in doing one thing that will be a direct hindrance in learning another thing. knocking a baseball unfits one for knocking a tennis ball. the study of literature and philosophy probably unfits one for the study of an experimental science because the methods are so dissimilar, in some measure antagonistic. =habit and moral training.= by moral training, we mean that training which prepares one to live among his fellows. it is a training that prepares us to act in our relations with our fellow men in such a way as to bring happiness to our neighbors as well as to ourselves. specifically, it is a training in honesty, truthfulness, sympathy, and industry. there are other factors of morality but these are the most important. it is evident at once that moral training is the most important of all training. this is, at any rate, the view taken by society; for if a man falls short in his relations with his fellows, he is punished. if the extent of his falling is very great, his liberty is entirely taken away from him. in some cases, he is put to death. moral training, in addition to being the most important, is also the most difficult. what the public schools can do in this field is quite limited. the training which the child gets on the streets and at home almost overshadows it. =nature of moral training.= a good person is one who does the right social thing at the right time. the more completely and consistently one does this, the better one is. what kind of training can one receive that will give assurance of appropriate moral action? two things can be done to give a child this assurance. the child can be led to form proper ideals of action and proper habits of action. by ideal of action, we mean that the child should know what the right action is, and have a desire to do it. habits of action are acquired only through action. as has been pointed out in the preceding pages, continued action of a definite kind develops a tendency to this particular action. one's character is the sum of his tendencies to action. these tendencies can be developed only through practice, through repetition. moral training, therefore, has the same basis as all other training, that is, in habits. the same procedure that we use in teaching the child the multiplication table is the one to use in developing honesty. in the case of the tables, we have the child say "fifty-six" for "eight times seven." we have him do this till he does it instantly, automatically. honesty and truthfulness and the other moral virtues can be fixed in the same way. =home and moral training.= the home is the most important factor in moral training. this is largely because of the importance of early habits and attitudes. obedience to parents and respect for authority, which in a large measure underlie all other moral training, must be secured and developed in the early years of childhood. the child does not start to school till about six years old. at this age much of the foundation of morality is laid. unless the child learns strict obedience in the first two or three years of life, it is doubtful whether he will ever learn it aright. without the habit of implicit obedience, it is difficult to establish any other good habit. parents should understand that training in morality consists, in large measure, in building up habits, and should go about it in a systematic way. as various situations arise in the early life of a child, the parents should obtain from him the appropriate responses. when the situations recur, the right responses should be again secured. parents should continue to insist upon these responses till tendencies are formed for the right response to follow when the situation arises. after continued repetition, the response comes automatically. the good man or woman is the one who does the right thing as the situation presents itself, does it as a matter of course because it is his nature. he does not even think of doing the wrong thing. one of the main factors in child training is consistency. the parent must inflexibly require the right action in the appropriate situation. good habits will not be formed if parents insist on proper action one day but on the next day allow the child to do differently. parents must plan the habits which they wish their children to form and execute these plans systematically, exercising constant care. parents, and children as well, would profit from reading the plan used by franklin. farseeing and clear-headed, franklin saw that character is a structure which one builds, so he set about this building in a systematic way. for a certain length of time he practiced on one virtue, allowing no exceptions in this one virtue. when this aspect of his character had acquired strength, he added another virtue and then tried to keep perfect as to both.[ ] [ ] see _autobiography of benjamin franklin_. =the school and moral training.= in this, as in all other forms of training, the school is supplementary to the home. the teacher should have well in mind the habits and ideals that the home has been trying to develop and should assist in strengthening the bonds. the school can do much in developing habits of kindness and sympathy among the children. it can develop civic and social ideals and habits. just how it can best do this is a question. should moral ideals be impressed systematically and should habits be formed at the time these ideals are impressed, or should the different ideals be instilled and developed as occasion demands? this is an experimental problem, and that method should be followed which produces the best results. it is possible that one teacher may use one method best while a different teacher will have better success with another method. more important than the question of a systematic or an incidental method is the question of making the matter vital when it is taken up. nothing is more certain than that mere knowledge of right action will not insure right action. in a few hours one can teach a child, as matters of mere knowledge, what he should do in all the important situations of life; but this will not insure that he will henceforth do the right things. there are only two ways by which we can obtain any assurance that right action will come. the first way is to secure right habits of response. we must build up tendencies to action. tendencies depend upon previous action. the second way is to help the child to analyze moral situations and see what results will follow upon the different kinds of action. there can be developed in a child a desire to do that which will bring joy and happiness to others, rather than pain and sorrow. but this analysis of moral situations is not enough to insure right moral action; there must be practice in doing the right thing. the situation must go over to the right response to insure its going there the next time. the first thing in moral training is to develop habits. then, as soon as the child is old enough he can strengthen his habits by a careful analysis of the problem why one should act one way rather than another. this adds motive; and motive gives strength and assurance. summary. habits are acquired tendencies to specific actions in definite situations. they are fixed through repetition. they give us speed, accuracy, and certainty, they save energy and prevent fatigue. they are performed with less attention and become pleasurable. the main purpose of education is to form the habits--moral, intellectual, vocational, cultural--necessary for life. habits and ideals are the basis of our mature life and character. moral training is essentially like other forms of training, habit being the basis. class exercises . practice on the formation of some habit until considerable skill is acquired. draw a learning curve similar to the one on page  , showing the increase in skill. a class experiment can be performed by the use of a substitution test. take letters to represent the nine digits, then transcribe numbers into the letters as described on page  . keep a record of successive five-minute periods of practice till all have practiced an hour. this gives twelve practice periods for the construction of a learning curve. the individual experiments should be more difficult and cover a longer period. suitable experiments for individual practice are: learning to operate a typewriter, pitching marbles into a hole, writing with the left hand, and mirror writing. the latter is performed by standing a mirror vertically on the table, placing the paper in front and writing in such a way that the letters have the proper form and appearance when seen in the mirror. the subject should not look at his hand but at its reflection in the mirror. a piece of cardboard can be supported just over the hand so that only the image of the hand in the mirror can be seen. . a study of the interference of habit can be made as follows: take eight small boxes and arrange them in a row. number each box plainly. do not number them consecutively, but as follows, , , , , , , , . make eighty cards, ten of each number, and number them plainly. practice distributing the cards into the boxes. note the time required for each distribution. continue to distribute them till considerable skill is acquired. then rearrange the order of the boxes and repeat the experiment. what do the results show? . does the above experiment show any transfer of training? compare the time for each distribution in the second part of the experiment, _i.e._ after the rearrangement of the boxes, with the time for the corresponding distribution in the first part of the experiment. the question to be answered is: are the results of the second part of the experiment better than they would have been if the first part had not been performed? state your results and conclusions and compare with the statements in the text. . a study of the effects of spreading out learning periods can be made as follows: divide the class into two equal divisions. let one division practice on a substitution experiment as explained in exercise  , for five ten-minute periods of practice in immediate succession. let the other division practice for five days, ten minutes a day. what do the results indicate? the divisions should be of equal ability. if the first ten-minute practice period shows the sections to be of unequal ability, this fact should be taken into account in making the comparisons. test sheets can be prepared by the teacher, or they can be obtained from the extension division of the university of missouri. . an experiment similar to no.  can be performed by practicing adding or any other school exercise. care must be taken to control the experiment and to eliminate disturbing factors. . try the card-distributing experiment with people of different ages, young children, old people, and various ages in between. what do you learn? is it as easy for an old person to form a habit as it is for a young person? why? . if an old person has no old habits to interfere, can he form a new habit as readily as can a young person? . cite evidence from your own experience to prove that it is hard for an old person to break up old habits and form new ones which interfere with the old ones. . do you find that you are becoming "set in your ways?" . what do we mean by saying that we are "plastic in early years"? . have you planned your life work? are you establishing the habits that will be necessary in it? . is it an advantage or a disadvantage to choose one's profession or occupation early? . attention often interferes with the performance of a habitual act. why is this? . if a man removes his vest in the daytime, he is almost sure to wind his watch. on the other hand if he is up all night, he lets his watch run down. why? . do you know of people who have radically changed their views late in life? . try to teach a dog or a cat a trick. what do you learn of importance about habit-formation? . what branches taught in school involve the formation of habits that are useful throughout life? . make a list of the moral habits that should be formed in early years. . write an essay on _habit and life_. . make a complete outline of the chapter. references for class reading colvin and bagley: _human behavior_, chapters xi and xvii. pillsbury: _essentials of psychology_, pp.  - ; also chapter xv. pyle: _the outlines of educational psychology_, chapters x, xi, and xii. rowe: _habit formation_, chapters v-xiii. titchener: _a beginner's psychology_, p.  , par.  . chapter vii memory =perceptions and ideas.= in a previous chapter, brief mention was made of the difference between perceptions and ideas. this distinction must now be enlarged upon and made clearer. perceptions arise out of our sensory life. we see things when these things are before our eyes. we hear things when these things produce air vibrations which affect our ears. we smell things when tiny particles from them come into contact with a small patch of sensitive membrane in our noses. we taste substances when these substances are in our mouths. now, this seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, etc., is _perceiving_. we perceive a thing when the thing is actually at the time affecting some one or more of our sense organs. a perception, then, results from the stimulation of a sense organ. perception is the process of perceiving, sensing, objects in the external world. ideas are our _seeming_ to see, hear, smell, taste things when these things are not present to the senses. this morning i saw, had a _perception_ of, a robin. to-night in my study, i have an _idea_ of a robin. this morning the robin was present. light reflected from it stimulated my eye. to-night, as i have an idea of the robin, it is not here; i only seem to see it. the scene which was mine this morning is now revived, reproduced. we may say, therefore, that ideas are the conscious representatives of objects which are not present to the senses. ideas are revived experiences. revived experience is memory. since it is memory that enables us to live our lives over again, brings the past up to the present, it is one of the most wonderful aspects of our natures. the importance of memory is at once apparent if we try to imagine what life would be without it. if our life were only perceptual, if it were only the sights and sounds and smells and tastes of the passing moment, it would have little meaning, it would be bare and empty. but instead of our perceptions being our whole life, they are only the starting points of life. perceptions serve to arouse groups of memory images or ideas, and the groups of ideas enrich the passing moment and give meaning to the passing perceptions, which otherwise would have no meaning. suppose i am walking along the street and meet a friend. i see him, speak to him, and pass on. but after i have passed on, i have ideas. i think of seeing my friend the day before. i think of what he said and of what he was doing, of what i said and of what i was doing. perhaps for many minutes there come ideas from my past experience. these ideas were aroused by the perception of my friend. the perception was momentary, but it started a long train of memory ideas. i pass on down the street and go by a music store. within the store, a victrola is playing _jesus, lover of my soul_. the song starts another train of memory ideas. i think of the past, of my boyhood days and sunday school, my early home and many scenes of my childhood. for several minutes i am so engrossed with the memory images that i scarcely notice anything along the street. again, the momentary perception, this time of sounds, served to revive a great number of ideas, or memories, of the past. these illustrations are typical of our life. every moment we have perceptions. these perceptions arouse ideas of our past life and experience. one of these ideas evokes another, and so an endless chain of images passes along. the older we become, the richer is our ideational life. while we are children, the perceptions constitute the larger part of our mental life, but as we become older, larger and larger becomes the part played by our memory images or ideas. a child is not content to sit down and reflect, giving himself up to the flow of ideas that come up from his past experience, but a mature person can spend hours in recalling past experience. this means that the older we grow, the more we live in the past, the less we are bound down by the present, and when we are old, instead of perceptions being the main part of mental life, they but give the initial push to our thoughts which go on in an endless chain as long as we live. =the physiological basis of memory.= it will be remembered that the basis of perception is the agitation of the brain caused by the stimulation of a sense organ by an external thing or force. if there is no stimulation of a sense organ, there is no sensation, no perception. now, just as the basis of sensation and perception is brain activity, so it is also the basis of ideas. in sensation, the brain activity is set up from without. in memory, when we have ideas, the brain activity is set up from within and is a fainter revival of the activity originally caused by the stimulation of the sense organ. our ideas are just as truly conditioned or caused by brain activity as are our sensations. memory presents many problems, and psychologists have been trying for many years to solve them. we shall now see what they have discovered and what is the practical significance of the facts. =relation of memory to age and sex.= it is a common notion that memory is best when we are young, but such is not the case. numerous experiments have shown that all aspects of memory improve with age. some aspects of memory improve more than others, and they improve at different times and rates; but all aspects do improve. from the beginning of school age to about fourteen years of age the improvement of most aspects of memory is rapid. if we pronounce a number of digits to a child of six, it can reproduce but few of them, a child of eight or ten can reproduce more, a child of twelve can reproduce still more, and an adult still more. if we read a sentence to children of different ages, we find that the older children can reproduce a longer sentence. if we read a short story to children of different ages, and then require them to reproduce the story in their own words, the older children reproduce more of the story than do the young children.[ ] [ ] see age and sex graphs, pp.  , , . girls excel boys in practically all the aspects of memory. in rote memory, that is, memory for lists of unrelated words, there is not much difference; but the girls are somewhat better. however, in the ability to remember the ideas of a story, girls excel boys at every age. this superiority of girls over boys is not merely a matter of memory. a girl is superior to a boy of the same age in nearly every way. this is merely a fact of development. a girl develops faster than a boy, she reaches maturity more quickly, in mind as well as in body. although a girl is lighter than a boy at birth, on the average she gains in weight faster and is heavier at twelve than a boy of the same age. she also gains faster in height, and for a few years in early adolescence is taller than a boy of the same age. of course, boys catch up and finally become much taller and heavier than girls. similarly, a girl's mind develops faster than the mind of a boy, as shown in memory and other mental functions. =the improvement of memory by practice.= all aspects of memory can be improved by practice, some aspects much, other aspects little. the memory span for digits, or letters, or words, or for objects cannot be much improved, but memory for ideas that are related, as the ideas of a story, can be considerably improved. in extensive experiments conducted in the author's laboratory, it was found that a person who at first required an hour to memorize the ideas in a certain amount of material, could, after a few months' practice, memorize the same amount in fifteen minutes. and in the latter case the ideas would be better remembered than they were at the beginning of the experiment. not only could a given number of ideas be learned in less time, but they would be better retained when learned in the shorter time. if a person comes to us for advice as to how to improve his memory, what should we tell him? in order to answer the question, we must consider the factors of a good memory. =factors of a good memory.= ( ) the first requirement is to get a good impression in the beginning. memory is revived experience. the more vivid and intense the first experience, the more sure will be the later recall. so if we wish to remember an experience, we must experience it in the first place under the most favorable conditions. the thing must be seen clearly, it must be understood, it must be in the focus of consciousness. the best teaching is that which leads the child to get the clearest apprehension of what is taught. if we are teaching about some concrete thing, a plant, a machine, we should be sure that the child sees the essential points, should be sure that the main principles enter his consciousness. we should find out by questioning whether he really does clearly understand what we are trying to get him to understand. often we think a pupil or student has forgotten, when the fact is that he never really knew the thing which we wished to have him remember. the first requisite to memory, then, is to _know in the first place_. if we wish to remember knowledge, the knowledge must be seen in the clearest light, really _be_ knowledge, at the outset. few people ever really learn how to learn. they never see anything clearly, they never stick to a point till it is apprehended in all its relations and bearings; consequently they forget, largely because they never really knew in the fullest sense. most teaching is too abstract. the teacher uses words that have no meaning to the pupil. too much teaching deals with things indirectly. we study _about_ things instead of studying things. in geography, for example, we study about the earth, getting our information from a book. we read about land formations, river courses, erosion, etc., when instead we should study these objects and processes themselves. the first thing in memory, then, is clear apprehension, clear understanding, vivid and intense impression. ( ) the second thing necessary to memory is to repeat the experience. first we must get a clear impression, then we must repeat the experience if we would retain it. it is a mistake to believe that if we have once understood a thing, we will always thereafter remember it. we must think our experiences over again if we wish to fix them for permanent retention. we must organize our experience. to organize experience means to think it over in its helpful relations. in memory, one idea arouses another. when we have one idea, what other idea will this arouse? it depends on what connections this idea has had in our minds in the past. it depends on the associations that it has, and associations depend on our thinking the ideas over together. teachers and parents should help children to think over their experiences in helpful, practical relations. then in the future, when an idea comes to mind, it brings along with it other ideas that have these helpful, practical relations. we must not, then, merely repeat our experiences, but must repeat them in helpful connections or associations. in organizing our experience, we must systematize and classify our knowledge. one of the chief differences in men is in the way they organize their knowledge. most of us have experiences abundant enough, but we differ in the way we work over and organize these experiences. organization not only enables us to remember our experience, but brings our experience back in the right connections. the advice that should be given to a student is the following: make sure that you understand. if the matter is a lesson in a book, go through it trying to get the main facts; then go through it again, trying to see the relation of all the facts. then try to see the facts in relation to your wider experience. if it is a history lesson, think of the facts of the lesson in their relation to previous chapters. think of the details in their bearing on wider and larger movements. a teacher should always hold in mind the facts in regard to memory, and should make her teaching conform to them. she should carefully plan the presentation of a new topic so as to insure a clear initial impression. a new topic should be presented orally by the teacher, with abundant illustration and explanation. it cannot be made too concrete, it cannot be made too plain and simple. then after the teacher has introduced and made plain the new topic, the pupil reads and studies further. at the next recitation of the class, the first thing in order should be a discussion, on the part of the pupils. this will help the pupils to get the facts cleared up and will help the teacher to find out whether the pupils have the facts right. the first part of the recitation should also be a time for questions. everything should now be made clear, if there are any errors or misunderstandings on the pupil's part. of course any procedure in a recitation should depend upon the nature of the material and to some extent on the stage of advancement of the pupil; but in general such a procedure as that just outlined will be most satisfactory and economical: first clear initial presentation by the teacher; then reading and study on the part of the pupil, and third, discussions on the following day. teachers should also endeavor to show students how to study to the best advantage. pupils do not know how to study. they do not know what to look for, and do not know how to find it after they know what they are looking for. they should be shown. of course, some of them learn without help how to study. but some never learn, and it would be a great saving of time to help all of them master the arts of study and memorizing. a very important factor in connection with memory is the matter of meaning. if a person will try to memorize a list of nonsense words, he will find that it is much more difficult than to memorize words that have meaning. this is a significant fact. it means that as material approaches nonsense, it is difficult to memorize. therefore we should always try to grasp the meaning of a thing, its significance. in science, let us always ask, what is the meaning of this fact? what bearing does it have on other facts? how does it affect the meaning of other facts? =kinds of memories.= we should not speak of memory as if it were some sort of power like muscular strength. we should always speak of _memories_. memories may be classified from several different points of view: a classification may be based on the kind of material, as memory for concrete things, the actual objects of experience, on the one hand, and memory for abstract material, such as names of things, their attributes and relations, on the other. again, we can base a classification on the type of ideation to which the material appeals, as auditory memory, visual memory, motor memory. we can also base a classification on the principle of _meaning_. this principle of classification would give us at least three classes: memory for ideas as expressed in sentences, logical memory; memory for series of meaningful words not logically related in sentences, rote memory; memory for series of meaningless words, a form of rote memory. this classification is not meant to be complete, but only suggestive. with every change in the kind of material, the method of presenting the material to the subject, or the manner in which the subject deals with the material, there may be a change in the effectiveness of memory. while these different kinds or aspects of memory may have some relation to one another, they are to some extent independent. one may have a good rote memory and a poor logical memory, or a poor rote memory and a good logical memory. that is to say, one may be very poor at remembering the exact words of a book, but be good at remembering the meaning, the ideas, of the book. one may be good at organizing meaningful material but poor at remembering mere words. on the other hand, these conditions may be reversed; one may remember the words but never get the meaning. it is of course possible that much of this difference is due to habit and experience, but some of the difference is beyond doubt due to original differences in the nervous system and brain. these differences should be determined in the case of all children. it is quite a common thing to find a feeble-minded person with a good rote memory, but such a person never has a good logical memory. one can have a good rote memory without understanding, one cannot have a good logical memory without understanding. let us now ask the question, why can one remember better words that are connected by logical relations than words that have no such connection? if we read to a person a list of twenty nonsense words, the person can remember only two or three; but if a list of twenty words connected in a sentence were read to a person, in most cases, all of them would be reproduced. the reason is that the words in the latter case are not new. we already know the words. they are already a part of our experience. we have had days, perhaps years, of experience with them. all that is now new about them is perhaps a slightly new relation. moreover, the twenty words may contain but one, or at most only a few, ideas, and in this case it is the ideas that we remember. the ideas hold the words together. if the twenty words contain a great number of ideas, then we cannot remember all of them from one reading. if i say, "i have a little boy who loves his father and mother very much, and this boy wishes to go to the river to catch some fish," one can easily remember all these words after one reading. but if i say, "the stomach in all the salmonidæ is syphonal and at the pylorus are fifteen to two hundred comparatively large pyloric coeca"; although this sentence is shorter, one finds it more difficult to remember, and the main reason is that the words are not so familiar. =memory and thinking.= what is the relation of memory to thinking and the other mental functions? one often hears a teacher say that she does not wish her pupils to depend on memory, but wishes them to reason things out. such a statement shows a misunderstanding of the facts; for reasoning itself is only the recall of ideas in accordance with the laws of association. without memory, there would be no reasoning, for the very material of thought is found to be the revived experiences which we call ideas, memories. one of the first requisites of good thinking is a reliable memory. one must have facts to reason, and these facts must come to one in memory to be available for thought. if one wishes to become a great thinker in a certain field, he must gain experience in that field and organize that experience in such a way as to remember it and to recall it when it is wanted. what one does deplore is memory for the mere words with no understanding of the meaning. in geometry, for example, a student sometimes commits to memory the words of a demonstration, with no understanding of the meaning. of course, that is worse than useless. one should remember the meaning of the demonstration. if one has memorized the words only, he cannot solve an original problem in geometry. but if he has understood the meaning of the demonstration, then he recalls it, and is enabled to solve the problem. if one does not remember the various facts about the relationships in a triangle, he cannot solve a problem of the triangle until he has worked out and discovered the necessary facts. then memory would make them available for the solution of the problem. =memory and school standing.= that memory plays a large part in our life is evident; and, of course, it is an important factor in all school work. it matters not what we learn, if we do not remember it. the author has made extensive experiments to determine the relation that memory has to a child's progress in school. the method used was to give logical memory tests to all the children in a school and then rank the children in accordance with their abilities to reproduce the story used in the test. then they were ranked according to their standing in their studies. a very high correlation was found. on the whole, the pupils standing highest in the memory tests were found to stand highest in their studies. it is true, of course, that they did not stand highest merely because they had good memories, but because they were not only better in memory, but were better in most other respects too. pupils that are good in logical memory are usually good in other mental functions. a test of logical memory is one of the best to give us an idea of the school standing of pupils. not only is the retention of ideas of very great importance itself, but the acquiring of ideas, and the organizing of them in such a way as to remember them involves nearly all the mental functions. the one who remembers well ideas logically related, is the one who pays the closest attention, the one who sees the significance, the one who organizes, the one who repeats, the one who turns things over in his mind. a logical memory test is therefore, to some extent, a test of attention, association, power of organization as well as of memory; in a word, it is a test of mental power. other things being equal, a person whose power of retention is good has a great advantage over his fellows who have poor ability to remember. suppose we consider the learning of language. the pupil who can look up the meaning of a word just once and remember it has an advantage over the person who has to look up the meaning of the word several times before it is retained. so in any branch of study, the person who can acquire the facts in less time than another person, has the extra time for learning something else or for going over the same material and organizing it better. the scientist who remembers all the significant facts that he reads, and sees their bearing on his problems, has a great advantage over the person who does not remember so well. of course, there are certain dangers in having a good memory, just as there is danger in being brilliant generally. the quick learner is in danger of forming slovenly habits. a person who learns quickly is likely to form the habit of waiting till the last minute to study his lesson and then getting a superficial idea of it. the slow learner must form good habits of study to get on at all. teachers and parents should prevent the bright children from forming bad habits of study. the person who learns quickly and retains well should be taught to be thorough and to use the advantage that comes from repetition. the quick learner should not be satisfied with one attack on his lesson, but should study the lesson more than once, for even the brilliant learner cannot afford to neglect the advantages that come from repetition. a person with poor memory and only mediocre ability generally can make up very much by hard work and by work that takes advantage of all the laws of economical learning. but he can never compete successfully with the person who works as hard as he does and who has good powers of learning and retention. the author has found that in a large class of a hundred or more, there is usually a person who has good memory along with good mental ability generally, and is also a hard worker. such a person always does the best work in the class. a person with poor memory and poor mental powers generally cannot hope to compete with a person of good memory, good mental powers generally, if that person is also a good worker. =learning and remembering.= a popular fallacy is expressed in the saying "easy come, easy go." the person who is the best learner is also the best in retaining what is learned, provided all other conditions are the same. this matter was determined in the following way: a logical memory test was given to all the children in a city school system. a story was read to the pupils and then reproduced by them in writing. the papers were corrected and graded and nothing more was said about the test for one month. then at the same time in every room, the teachers said, "you remember the story i read to you some time ago and which i asked you to reproduce. well, i wish to see how much of the story you still remember." the pupils were then required to write down all the story that they could recall. it was found that, in general, the children who write the most when the story is first read to them, write the most after the lapse of a month, and the poorest ones at first are the poorest ones at the end of the month. of course, the correspondence is not perfect, but in some cases, in some grades, it is almost so. the significance of this experiment is very great. it means that the pupil who gets the most facts from a lesson will have the most facts at any later time. this is true, of course, only if other things are equal. if one pupil studies about the matter more, reflects upon it, repeats it in his mind, of course this person will remember more, other things being equal. but if neither reviews the matter, or if both do it to an equal extent, then the one who learns the most in the first place, remembers the most at a later time. i have also tested the matter out in other ways. i have experimented with a group of men and women, by reading a passage of about a page in length, repeating the reading till the subject could reproduce all the facts. it was found that the person who acquired all the facts from the fewest readings remembered more of the facts later. it must be said that there is less difference between the subjects later than at first. in the laboratory of columbia university a similar experiment was performed, but in a somewhat different way. students were required to commit to memory german vocabularies and were later tested for their retention of the words learned. it was found that those who learned the most words in a given time, also retained the largest percentage of what had been learned. it should not be surprising that this is the case. the quick learner is the one who makes the best use of all the factors of retention, the factors mentioned in the preceding paragraph--good attention, association, organization, etc. another experiment performed in the author's laboratory bears out the above conclusions. a group of students were required to commit to memory at one sitting a long list of nonsense syllables. the number of repetitions necessary to enable each student to reproduce them was noted. one day later, the students attempted to reproduce the syllables. of course they could not, and they were then required to say them over again till they could just repeat them from memory. the number of repetitions was noted. the number of repetitions was much less than on the first day. on the third day, the process was repeated. the number of repetitions was fewer still. this relearning was kept up each day till each person could repeat the syllables from memory without any study. it was found that the person who learned the syllables in the fewest repetitions the first time, relearned them in the fewest repetitions on succeeding days. all the experiments bearing on the subject point to the same conclusion; namely, that the quick learner, if other things are equal, retains at least as well as the slow learner, and usually retains better. =transfer of memory training.= we have said above that there are many kinds or aspects of memory. it has also been said that we can improve memory by practice. now, the question arises, if we improve one aspect of memory, does this improve all aspects? this is an important question; moreover, it is one to be settled by experiment and not by argument. the most extensive and thorough experiment was performed by an english psychologist, sleight. the experiment was essentially as follows: he took a large number of pupils and tested the efficiency of the various aspects of their memory. he then took half of them and trained one aspect of their memory until there was considerable improvement. the other section had no memory training meanwhile. after the training, both groups again had all aspects of their memory tested. both groups showed improvement in all aspects because the first tests gave them some practice, but the group that had been receiving the training was no better in those aspects not trained than was the group receiving no training at all. aspects of memory much like the one trained showed some improvement, but other aspects did not. the conclusion is that memory training is specific, that it affects only the kind of memory trained, and related memories. this is in harmony with what we learned about habit. when we receive training, it affects only the parts of us trained and other closely related parts. =learning by wholes.= we do not often have to commit to memory verbatim, but when we do, it is important that we should know the most economical way. experiments have clearly demonstrated that the most economical way is to read the entire selection through from beginning to end and continue to read it through in this way till the matter is learned by heart. in long selections, the saving by this method is considerable. a pupil is not likely to believe this because if he spends a few minutes learning in this manner, he finds that he cannot repeat a single line, while if he had concentrated on one line, he could have repeated at least that much. this is true; but although he cannot repeat a single line by the whole procedure, he has learned nevertheless. it would be a good thing to demonstrate this fact to a class; then the pupils would be satisfied to use the most economical procedure. the plan holds good whether the matter be prose or poetry. but experiments have been carried on only with verbatim learning. the best procedure for learning the facts so that one can give them in one's own words has not yet been experimentally determined. =cramming.= an important practical question is whether it pays to go over a great amount of material in a very short time, as students often do before examinations. from all that has been said above, one could infer the solution to this problem. learning and memorizing are to some extent a growth, and consequently involve time. there is an important law of learning and memory known as jost's law, which may be stated as follows: if we repeat or renew associations, the repetitions have most value for the old associations. therefore when we learn, we should learn and then later relearn. this will make for permanent retention. of course, if we wish to get together a great mass of facts for a temporary purpose and do not care to retain them permanently, cramming is the proper method. if we are required to pass an examination in which a knowledge of many details is expected and these details have no important permanent value, cramming is justified. when a lawyer is preparing a case to present to a court, the actual, detail evidence is of no permanent value, and cramming is justified. but if we wish to acquire and organize facts for their permanent value, cramming is not the proper procedure. the proper procedure is for a student to go over his work faithfully as the term of school proceeds, then occasionally review. at the end of the term, a rapid review of the whole term's work is valuable. after one has studied over matter and once carefully worked it out, a quick view again of the whole subject is most valuable, and assists greatly in making the acquisition permanent. but if the matter has not been worked out before, the hasty view of the material of the course, while it may enable one to pass the examination, has no permanent value. =function of the teacher in memory work.= the function of a teacher is plainly to get the pupils to learn in accordance with the laws of memory above set forth; but there are certain things that a teacher can do that may not have become evident to the reader. it has been learned in experiments in logical memory that when a story is read to a subject and the subject attempts to reproduce it, certain mistakes are made. when the story is read again, it is common for the same mistakes to be made in the recall. certain ideas were apprehended in a certain way; and, when the piece is read again, the subject pays no more attention to the ideas already acquired and reported, and they are therefore reported wrongly as they were in the first place. often the subject does not notice the errors till his attention is called to them. this suggests an important function of the teacher in connection with the memory work of the pupils. this function is to correct mistakes in the early stages of learning. a teacher should always be on the watch to find the errors of the pupils and to correct them before they are fixed by repetition. a teacher should, also, consider it her duty to test the memory capacities of the pupils and to give each the advice that the case demands. =some educational inferences.=--there are certain consequences to education that follow from the facts of memory above set forth that are of considerable significance. many things have been taught to children on the assumption that they could learn them better in childhood than later, because it was thought that memory and the learning capacity were better in childhood. but both of these assumptions are false. as children grow older their learning capacity increases and their memories become better. it has particularly been held that rote memory is better in childhood and that therefore children should begin their foreign language study early. it is true that as far as _speaking_ a foreign language is concerned, the earlier a child begins it the better. but this is not true of learning to read the language. the sounds of the foreign language that we have not learned in childhood in speaking the mother tongue are usually difficult for us to make. the organs of speech become set in the way of their early exercise. in reading the foreign language, correct pronunciation is not important. we are concerned with _getting_ the thought, and this is possible without pronouncing at all. reference to graphs on pages  and will show that rote memory steadily improves throughout childhood and youth. the author has performed numerous experiments to test this very point. he has had adults work side by side with children at building up new associations of the rote memory type and found that always the adult could learn faster than the child and retain better what was learned. the experience of language teachers in college and university does not give much comfort to those who claim that language study should be begun early. these teachers claim that the students who have had previous language study do no better than those who have had none. it seems, however, that there certainly ought to be _some_ advantage in beginning language study early and spreading the study out over the high school period. but what is gained does not offset the tremendous loss that follows from requiring _all_ high school students to study a foreign language merely to give an opportunity for early study to those who are to go on in the university with language courses. a mature university student that has a real interest in language and literature can begin his language study in the university and make rapid progress. some of the best classical scholars whom the author knows began their language study in the university. while it would have been of some advantage to them to have begun their language study earlier, there are so few who should go into this kind of work that society cannot afford to make provision for their beginning the study in the high school. the selection and arrangement of the studies in the curriculum must be based on other grounds than the laws of memory. what children make most progress in and need most to know are the concrete things of their physical and social environment. children must first learn the world--the woods and streams and birds and flowers and plants and animals, the earth, its rocks and soils and the wonderful forces at work in it. they must learn man,--what he is and what he does and how he does it; how he lives and does his work and how he governs himself. they should also learn to read and to write their mother tongue, and should learn something of that great store of literature written in the mother tongue. the few that are to be scholars in language and literature must wait till beginning professional study before taking up their foreign language; just as a person who is to be a lawyer or physician must also wait till time to enter a university before beginning special professional preparation. the child's memory for abstract conceptions is particularly weak in early years; hence studies should be so arranged as to acquaint the child with the concrete aspects of the world first, and later to acquaint him with the abstract relations of things. mathematics should come late in the child's life, for the same reason. mathematics deals with quantitative relations which the child can neither learn nor remember profitably and economically till he is more mature. the child should first learn the world in its descriptive aspects. =memory and habit.= the discussion up to this point should have made it clear to the reader that memory is much the same thing as habit. memory considered as retention depends upon the permanence of the impression on the brain; but in its associative aspects depends on connections between brain centers, as is the case with habit. the association of ideas, which is the basis of their recall, is purely a matter of habit formation. when i think of george washington, i also think of the revolution, of the government, of the presidency, of john adams, thomas jefferson, etc., because of the connections which these ideas have had in my mind many times before. there is a basis in the brain structure for these connections. there is nothing in any _idea_ that connects it with another idea. ideas become connected because of the _way in which we experience them_, and the reason one idea calls up another idea is because the brain process that is the cause of one idea brings about another brain process that is the cause of a second idea. the whole thing is merely a matter of the way the brain activities become organized. therefore the various laws of habit-formation have application to memory in so far as memory is a matter of the association of ideas, based on brain processes. one often has the experience of trying to recall a name or a fact and finds that he cannot. presently the name or fact may come, or it may not come till the next day or the next week. what is the cause of this peculiar phenomenon? the explanation is to be found in the nervous system. when one tries to recall the name and it will not come to mind, there is some temporary block or hindrance in the nerve-path that leads from one center to the other and one cannot think of the name till the obstruction is removed. we go on thinking about other things, and in the meantime the activities going on in the brain remove the obstruction; so when the matter comes up again, the nerve current shoots through, and behold, the name comes to mind. [illustration: figure iv--associative connections the diagram represents schematically the neural basis of the association of ideas.] now the only preventive of such an occurrence is to be found in the law of habit, for the block ordinarily occurs in case of paths or bonds not well established. we must _think together_ the things we wish to have associated. repetition is the key to the situation, repetition which is the significant thing in habit-formation, repetition which is the only way of coupling two things which we wish to have associated together. of course, there is no absolute coupling of two ideas. one sometimes forgets his own name. when we are tired or ill, things which were the most closely associated may not hang together. but those ideas hold together in the firmest way that have been experienced together most often in a state of attention. the diagram on page  illustrates schematically the neural connections and cross-connections which are the bases of the association of ideas, the circles _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, _e_, and _f_ represent brain processes which give rise to ideas, and the lines represent connecting paths. note that there are both direct and indirect connections. summary. sensation and perception give us our first experience with things; memory is revived experience. it enables us to live our experience over again and is therefore one of the most important human traits. the physiological basis of memory is in the brain and nervous system. memory improves with practice and up to a certain point with the age of the person. it is better in girls than in boys. good memory depends on vivid experience in the first place and on organization and repetition afterward. the person who learns quickly usually retains well also. memory training is specific. the extension of the learning process over a long time is favorable to memory. memory ideas are the basis of thinking and reasoning. class exercises . the teacher can test the auditory memory of the members of the class for rote material by using letters. it is better to omit the vowels, using only the consonants. prepare five groups of letters with eight letters in a group. read each group of letters to the class, slowly and distinctly. after reading a group, allow time for the students to write down what they recall, then read the next group and so proceed till the five groups have been read. grade the work by finding the number of letters reproduced, taking no account of the position of the letters. . in a similar way, test visual memory, using different combinations of letters. write the letters plainly on five large squares of cardboard. hold each list before the class for as long a time as it took to read a group in experiment no.  . . test memory for words in a similar way. use simple words of one syllable, making five lists with eight words in a list. . test memory for objects by fastening common objects on a large cardboard and holding the card before the class. put eight objects on each card and prepare five cards. expose them for the same length of time as in experiment no.  . . test memory for _names_ of objects by preparing five lists of names, eight names in a list, and reading the names as in experiment no.  . . you now have data for the following study: find the average grade of each student in the different experiments. find the combined grade of each student in all the above experiments. do the members of the class hold the same rank in all the tests? how do the boys compare with the girls? how does memory for objects compare with memory for names of objects? how does auditory memory compare with visual? what other points do you learn from the experiments? . the teacher can make a study of the logical memory of the members of the class by using material as described on page  . make five separate tests, using stories that are well within the comprehension of the class and that will arouse their interest. sufficient material will be found in the author's _examination of school children_ and whipple's _manual_. however, the teacher can prepare similar material. . do the students maintain the same rank in the separate tests of experiment no.  ? rank all the students for their combined standing in all the first five tests. rank them for their combined standing in the logical memory tests. compare the two rankings. what conclusions are warranted? . you have tested, in experiment no.  , logical memory when the material was read to the students. it will now be interesting to compare the results of no.  with the results obtained by allowing the students to read the material of the test. for this purpose, select portions from the later chapters of this book. allow just time enough for the selection to be read once slowly by the students, then have it reproduced as in the other logical memory experiment. give several tests, if there is sufficient time. find the average grade of each student, and compare the results with those obtained in no.  . this will enable you to compare the relative standing of the members of the class, but will not enable you to compare the two ways of acquiring facts. for this purpose, the stories would have to be of equal difficulty. let the members of the class plan an experiment that would be adequate for this purpose. . a brief study of the improvement of memory can be made by practicing a few minutes each day for a week or two, as time permits, using material that can be easily prepared, such as lists of common words. let the members of the class plan the experiment. use the best plan. . the class can make a study of the relation of memory to school standing in one of the grades below the high school. give at least two tests for logical memory. give also the rote memory tests described on page  . get the class standing of the pupils from the teacher. make the comparison as suggested in chapter i, page  . or, the correlation can be worked out accurately by following the directions given in the _examination of school children_, page  , or in whipple's _manual_, page  . . let the members of the class make a plan for the improvement of their memory for the material studied in school. plan devices for learning the material better and for fixing it in memory. at the end of the course in psychology, have an _experience_ meeting and study the results reported. . prepare five lists of nonsense syllables, with eight in a list. give them as in experiment no.  , and compare the results with those of that experiment. what do the results indicate as to the value to memory of _meaningful_ material? what educational inferences can you make? in preparing the syllables, put a vowel between two consonants, and use no syllable that is a real word. . a study of the effects of distractions on learning and memory can be made as follows: let the teacher select two paragraphs in later chapters of this book, of equal length and difficulty. let the students read one under quiet conditions and the other while an electric bell is ringing in the room. compare the reproductions in the two cases. . from the chapter and from the results of all the memory tests, let the students enumerate the facts that have educational significance. . make a complete outline of the chapter. references for class reading colvin and bagley: _human behavior_, chapter xv. mÜnsterberg: _psychology, general and applied_, pp.  - . pillsbury: _essentials of psychology_, chapters vi and viii. pyle: _the outlines of educational psychology_, chapter xiii. titchener: _a beginner's psychology_, chapter vii. chapter viii thinking in chapter iii we learned about sensation. we found that when a sense organ is stimulated by its appropriate type of stimulus, this stimulation travels through the sensory nerves and sets up an excitation in the brain. this excitation in the brain gives us sensation. we see if the eye is stimulated. we hear if the ear is stimulated, etc. in chapter vii we learned that after the brain has had an excitation giving rise to sensation, it is capable of reviving this excitation later. this renewal or revival of a brain excitation gives us an experience resembling the original sensation, only usually fainter and less stable. this revived experience is called _image_ or _idea_. the general process of retention and revival of experience is, as we have seen, known as memory. an idea, then, is a bit of revived experience. a perception is a bit of immediate or primary experience. i am said to perceive a chair if the chair is present before me, if the light reflected from the chair is actually exciting my retinas. i have an _idea_ of the chair when i _seem_ to see it, when the chair is not before me or when my eyes are shut. these distinctions were pointed out in the preceding chapter. let us now proceed to carry our study of ideas further. =association of ideas.= the subject of the association of ideas can best be introduced by an experiment. take a paper and pencil, and think of the word "horse." write this word down, and then write down other words that come to mind. write them in the order in which they come to mind. do this for three or four minutes, and try the experiment several times, beginning with a different word each time. make a study of the lists of words. compare the different lists and the lists written by different students. in the case of the writer, the following words came to mind in the first few seconds: horse, bridle, saddle, tail, harness, buggy, whip, man, sky, stars, sun, ocean. why did these words come, and why did they come in that order? why did the idea "horse" suggest the idea "bridle"? and why did "bridle" suggest "saddle"? is there something in the nature of ideas that couples them with certain other ideas and makes them _always_ suggest the other ideas? no, there is not. ideas become coupled together in our experience, and the coupling is in accordance with our experience. things that are together in our experience become coupled together as ideas. the idea "horse" may become coupled with any other idea. the general law of the association of ideas is this: ideas are joined together in memory or revived experience as they were joined in the original or perceptive experience. but the matter is complicated by the fact that things are experienced in different connections in perceptive experience. i do not always experience "horse" together with "bridle." i sometimes see horses in a pasture eating clover. so, as far as this last experience is concerned, when i think "horse" i should also think "clover." i sometimes see a horse running when a train whistles, so "whistle" and "horse" should be coupled in my mind. a horse once kicked me on the shoulder, so "horse" and "shoulder" should be connected in my mind. and so they are. the very fact that these various experiences come back to me proves that they are connected in my mind in accordance with the original experiences. the revival of various horse experiences has come to me faster than i could write them down, and they are all bound together in my memory. if i should write them all out, it would take many hours, perhaps days. not only are these "horse ideas" bound together with one another, but they are bound more or less directly, more or less closely, to everything else in my life. i can, therefore, pass in thought from the idea "horse" to any other idea, directly or indirectly. now, in any given case, what idea will actually come first after i have the idea "horse"? this depends upon the tendencies established in the nervous system. the brain process underlying the idea "horse" has connections with many other processes and tends to excite these processes. the factors that strengthen these tendencies or connections are the frequency, recency, primacy, and vividness of experience. let us consider, in some detail, each of these factors. =primacy of experience.= a strong factor in determining association is the _first experience_. the first, the original, coupling of ideas tends to persist. the first connection is nearly always a strong one, and is also strengthened by frequent repetition in memory. our first experience with people and things persists with great strength, across the years, in spite of other associations and connections established later. just now there comes to mind my first experience with a certain famous scientist. it was many years ago. i was a student in an eastern university. this man gave a public lecture at the opening of the session. i remember many details of the occurrence with great vividness. although i studied under this man for three years, no other experience with him is more prominent than the first. first experiences give rise to such strong connections between ideas that these connections often persist and hold their own as against other connections depending upon other factors. the practical consequences of this factor in teaching are, of course, evident. both teachers and parents should take great care in the matter of the first experiences of children. if the idea-connections of first experiences are likely to persist, then these connections should be desirable ones. they should not be useless connections, nor should they, ordinarily, be connections that will have to be radically undone later. usually it is not economical to build up connections between ideas that will not serve permanently, except in cases in which the immaturity of the mind makes such a procedure necessary. =recency of experience.= the most recent connection of ideas is relatively strong, and is often the determining one. but the most recent connection must be very recent or it has no especial value. if i have seen a certain friend to-day, and his name is brought to mind now, to-day's experience with him will likely be brought to mind _first_. but if my last seeing him was some days or months ago, the idea-connection of the last meeting has no great value. of course, circumstances always alter the matter. perhaps we should say in the last instance that, other things being equal, the last experience has no special value. if the last experience was an unusual one, such as a death or a marriage, then it has a value due to its vividness and intensity and its emotional aspects. these factors not only add strength to the connections made at the time but are the cause of frequent revivals of this last experience in memory in the succeeding days. all these factors taken together often give a last experience great associative strength, even though the last experience is not recent. =frequency of experience.= the most frequent connection of ideas is probably the most important factor of all in determining future associations. the first connection is but one, and the last connection is but one, while repeated connections may be many in number. connections which recur frequently usually overcome all other connections. hence frequency is the dominant factor in association. most of the strength of first connections is due to repetitions in memory later. the first experience passes through the mind again and again as memory, and thereby becomes strengthened. the fact that repetition of connections establishes these connections is, of course, the justification of drill and review in school studies. the practical needs of life demand that certain ideas be associated so that one calls up the other. teachers and parents, knowing these desirable connections, endeavor to fix them in the minds of children by repetition. the important facts of history, literature, civics, and science we endeavor, by means of repetition, to fasten in the child's mind. =vividness and intensity of experience.= a vivid experience is one that excites and arouses us, strongly stimulating our feelings. such experiences establish strong bonds of connection. when i think of a railroad wreck, i think of one in which i participated. the experience was vivid, intense, and aroused my emotions. i hardly knew whether i was dead or alive. then, secondly, i usually think of a wreck which i witnessed in childhood. a train plunged through a bridge and eighteen cars were piled up in the ravine. the experience was vivid and produced a deep and lasting impression on me. the practical significance of this factor is, of course, great. when ideas are presented to pupils these ideas should be made clear. every conceivable device should be used to clarify and explain,--concrete demonstration, the use of objects and diagrams, pictures and drawings, and abundant oral illustration. we must be sure that the one taught understands, that the ideas become focal in consciousness and take hold of the individual. this is the main factor in what is known as "interest." an interesting thing is one that takes hold of us and possesses us so that we cannot get away from it. such experiences are vivid and have rich emotional connections or accompaniments. ideas that are experienced together at such times are strongly connected. =mental set or attitude.= another influence always operative in determining the association of ideas is mental set. by mental set we mean the mood or attitude one is in,--whether one is sad or glad, well or ill, fresh or fatigued, etc. what one has just been thinking about, what one has just been doing, are always factors that determine the direction of association. one often notices the effects of mental set in reading newspapers. if one's mind has been deeply occupied with some subject and one then starts to read a newspaper, one may actually miscall many of the words in the article he is reading; the words are made to fit in with what is in his mind. for example, if one is all wrought up over a wedding, many words beginning with "w" and having about the same length as the word "wedding," will be read as "wedding." mental set may be permanent or temporary. by permanent we mean the strong tendencies that are built up by continued thought in a certain direction. one becomes a methodist, a democrat, a conservative, a radical, a pessimist, an optimist, etc., by continuity of similar experiences and similar reactions to these experiences. germans, french, irish, italians, chinese, have characteristic sets or ways of reacting to typical situations that may be called racial. these prejudicial ways of reacting may be called racial sets or attitudes. religious, political, and social prejudices may all be called sets or attitudes. temporary sets or attitudes are leanings and prejudices that are due to temporary states of mind. the fact that one has headache, or indigestion, or is in a hurry, or is angry, or is hungry, or is emotionally excited over something will, for the time, be a factor in determining the direction of association. one of the tasks of education is to build up sets or attitudes, permanent prejudices, to be constant factors in guiding association and, consequently, action. we wish to build up permanent attitudes toward truth, honesty, industry, sympathy, zeal, persistence, etc. it is evident that attitude is merely an aspect of habit. it is an habitual way of reacting to a definite and typical situation. this habitual way is strengthened by repetition, so that set or attitude finally, after years of repetition, becomes a part of our nature. our prejudices become as strong, seemingly, as our instinctive tendencies. after a man has thought in a particular groove for years, it is about as sure that he will come to certain definite conclusions on matters in the line of his thought as that he would give typical instinctive or even reflex reactions. we know the direction association will take for a presbyterian in religious matters, for a democrat in political matters, with about as much certainty as we know what their actions will be in situations that evoke instinctive reactions. =thinking and reasoning.= thinking is the passing of ideas in the mind. this flow of ideas is in accordance with the laws of association above discussed. the order in which the ideas come is the order fixed by experience, the order as determined by the various factors above enumerated. in early life, one's mind is chiefly perceptual, it is what we see and hear and taste and smell. as one grows older his mind grows more and more ideational. with increasing age, a larger and larger percentage of our mental life is made up of ideas, of memories. the child lives in the present, in a world of perceptions. a man is not so much tied down to the present; he lives in memory and anticipation. he thinks more than does the child. a man is content to sit down in his chair and think for hours at a time, a child is not. this thinking is the passing of ideas, now one, then another and another. these ideas are the survivals or revivals of our past experience. the order of their coming depends on our past experience. as i sit here and write, there surge up out of my past, ideas of creeks and rivers and hills, horses and cows and dogs, boys and girls, men and women, work and play, school days, friends,--an endless chain of ideas. this "flow" of ideas is often started by a perception. for illustration, i see a letter on the table, a letter from my brother. i then have a visual image of my brother. i think of him as i saw him last. i think of what he said. i think of his children, of his home, of his boyhood, and our early life together. then i think of our mother and the old home, and so on and on. presently i glance at a history among my books, and immediately think of greece and athens and the acropolis, plato, aristotle, and socrates, schoolmates and teachers, and friends connected in one way or another with my college study of greek. in this description of the process of thinking, i have repeatedly used the words "think of." i might have said instead, "there came to mind ideas of athens, ideas of friends," etc. thinking, then, is a general term for our idea-life. reasoning is a form of thinking. reasoning, too, is a flow of ideas. but while reasoning is thinking, it is a special form of thinking; it is thinking to a purpose. in thinking as above described and illustrated, no immediate ends of the person are served; while in reasoning some end is always sought. in reasoning, the flow of ideas must reach some particular idea that will serve the need of the moment, the need of the problem at hand. reasoning, then, is controlled thinking, thinking centering about a problem, about a situation that one must meet. the statement that reasoning is _controlled_ thinking needs some explanation, for the reader at once is likely to want to know what does the controlling. there is not some special faculty or power that does the controlling. the control is exercised by the set into which one is thrown by the situation which confronts one. the set puts certain nerve-tracts into readiness to conduct, or in other words, makes certain groups of ideas come into mind, and makes one satisfied only if the right ideas come. as long as ideas come that do not satisfy, the flow keeps on, taking one direction and then another, in accordance with the way our ideas have become organized. an idea finally comes that satisfies. we are then said to have reached a conclusion, to have made up our mind, to have solved our problem. but the fact that we are satisfied is no sure sign that the problem is correctly solved. it means only that our past experiences, available at the time through association, say that the conclusion is right. or, in more scientific terms, that the conclusion is in harmony with our past experience, as it has been organized and made available through association. there is not within us a little being, a reasoner, that sits and watches ideas file by and passes judgment upon them. the real judge is our nervous system with its organized bonds or connections. an illustration may make the matter clearer: a boy walking along in the woods comes to a stream too wide for him to jump across. he wishes to be on the other side, so here is a situation that must be met, a problem that must be solved. a flow of ideas is started centering about the problem. the flow is entirely determined and directed by past experience and the present situation. the boy pauses, looks about, and sees on the bank a pole and several large stones. he has walked on poles and on fences, he therefore sees himself putting the pole across the stream and walking on it. this may be in actual visual imagery, or it may be in words. he may merely say, "i will put the pole across and walk on it." but, before having time to do it, he may recall walking on poles that turned. he is not then satisfied with the pole idea. the perception of stones may next become clear in his mind, and if no inhibiting or hindering idea comes up, the stone idea carries him into action. he piles the stones into the stream and walks across. as was mentioned above, the flow of ideas may take different forms. the imagery may take any form but is usually visual, auditory, motor, or verbal. further discussion of the point that reasoning is determined by past experience may be necessary. suppose the teacher ask the class a number of different questions, moral, religious, political. many different answers to the questions will be received, in some cases as many answers to the questions as there are pupils. ask whether it is ever right to steal, whether it is ever right to lie, whether it is ever right to fight, whether it is ever right to disobey a parent or teacher, whether oak is stronger than maple, whether iron expands more when heated than does copper, whether one should always feed beggars, etc. the answers received, in each case, depend on the previous experience of the pupils. the more nearly alike the experiences of the pupils, the more nearly alike will be the answers. the more divergent the experiences, the more different will be the answers. the basis of reasoning is ultimately the same sort of thing as the basis of habit. we have repeated experiences of the same kind. the ideas of these experiences become welded together in a definite way. association between certain groups of ideas becomes well fixed. later situations involving these groups of ideas set up definite trains of association. we come always to definite conclusions from the same situations provided that we are in the same mental set and the factors involved are the same. throughout early life we have definite moral and religious ideas presented to us. we come to think in definite ways about them or with them. it therefore comes about that every day we live, we are determining the way we shall in the future reason about things. we are each day getting the material for the solution of the problems that will be presented to us by future situations. and the reason that one of us will solve those problems in a different way from another is because of having somewhat different experiences, and of organizing them in a different way. =meaning and the organization of ideas.= in the preceding paragraphs we have several times spoken of the organization of ideas. let us now see just what is meant by this expression. intimately connected with the organization of ideas is _meaning_. what is the meaning of an idea? the meaning of an idea is another idea or group of ideas that are very closely associated with it. when there comes to mind an idea that has arisen out of repeated experience, there come almost immediately with it other ideas, perhaps vivid images which have been connected with the same experience. suppose the idea is of a horse. if one were asked, "what is a horse?" ideas of a horse in familiar situations would present themselves. one may see in imagination a horse being driven, ridden, etc., and he would then answer, "why, a horse is to ride," or "a horse is to drive," or "a horse is a domestic animal," etc. again, "what is a cloud? what is the sun? what is a river? what is justice? what is love?" one says, "a cloud is that from which rain falls," or "a cloud is partially condensed vapor. the sun is a round thing in the sky that shines by day. a river is water flowing along in a low place through the land. justice is giving to people what they deserve. love is that feeling one has for a person which makes him be kind to that person." the answer that one gives depends on age and experience. but it is evident that when a person is asked what a thing is or what is the meaning of a thing, he has at once ideas that have been most closely associated with the idea in question. now, since the most important aspect of a thing is what we can do with it, what use it can be to us, usually meaning centers about _use_. a chair is to sit in, bread is to eat, water is to drink, clothes are to wear, a hat is a thing to be worn on one's head, a shovel is to dig with, a car is to ride in, etc. use is not quite so evident in such cases as the following: "who was cæsar? who was homer? who is edison? what was the inquisition? what were the crusades?" however, one has, in these cases, very closely associated ideas, and these ideas do center about what we have done with these men and events in our thinking. "cæsar was a warrior. homer was a writer of epics. edison is an inventor," etc. these men and events have been presented to us in various situations as standing for various things in the history of the world. and when we think of them, we at once think of what they did, the place they fill in the world. this constitutes their meaning. it is evident that an idea may have many meanings. and the meaning that may come to us at any particular moment depends upon the situation. a chair, for example, in one situation, may come to mind as a thing to sit in; in another situation, as a thing to stand in the corner and look pretty; in another, a thing to stand on so that one may reach the top shelf in the pantry; in another, a thing to strike a burglar with; in another, a thing to knock to pieces to be used to make a fire. the meaning of a thing comes from our experience with it, and the thing usually comes to have more and more meanings as our experience with it increases. when we meet something new, it may have practically no meaning. suppose we find a new plant in the woods. it has little meaning. we may be able to say only that it is a plant, or it is a small plant. we touch it and it pricks us, and it at once has more meaning. it is a plant that pricks. we bite into it and find it bitter. it is then a plant that is bitter, etc. in such a way, objects come to have meaning. they acquire meaning according to the connections in which we experience them and they may take on different meanings for different persons because of the different experiences of these persons. the chief interest we have in objects is in what use we can make of them, how we can make them serve our purposes, how we can make them contribute to our pleasure. the organization of experience is the connecting, through the process of association, of the ideas that arise out of our experience. our ideas are organized not only in accordance with the way we experience them in the first place, but in accordance with the way we think them later in memory. of course, ideas are recalled in accordance with the way we experience them, but since they are experienced in such a multitude of connections, they are recalled later in these various connections and it is possible in recall to repeat one connection to the exclusion of others. organization can therefore be a selective process. although "horse" is experienced in a great variety of situations or connections, for our purposes we can select some one or more of these connections and by repetition in recalling it, strengthen these connections to the exclusion of others. herein lies one of the greatest possibilities in thinking and reasoning, which enables us, to an extent, to be independent of original experience. we must have had experience, of course, but the strength of bonds between ideas need not depend upon original experience, but rather upon the way in which these ideas are recalled later, and especially upon the number of times they are recalled. it is in the matter of the organization of experience that teachers and parents can be of great help to young people. children do not know what connections of ideas will be most useful in the future. people who have had more experience know better and can, by direction and suggestion, lead the young to form, and strengthen by repetition, those connections of ideas that will be most useful later. in the various school studies, a mass of ideas is presented. these ideas, isolated or with random connections, will be of little service to the pupils. they must be organized with reference to future use. this organization must come about through thinking over these ideas in helpful connections. the teacher knows best what these helpful connections are and must help the pupil to make them. suppose the topic studied in history is the battle of bunker hill. the teacher should assist the child to think the battle over in many different connections. there are various geographical, historical, and literary aspects of the battle that are of importance. these aspects should be brought to mind and related by being thought of together. thinking things together binds them together as ideas; and later when one idea comes, the others that have been joined with it in the past in thought, come also. therefore, in studying the battle of bunker hill, the pupil not only reads about it, but gets a map and studies the geography of it, works out the causes that led up to the battle, studies the consequences that followed, reads speeches and poems that have been made and written since concerning the battle, the monument, etc. similarly, all the topics studied in school should be thought over and organized with reference to meaning and with reference to future use. as a result of such procedure, all the topics become organized and crystallized, with all related ideas closely bound together in association. one of the greatest differences in people is in the organization of their ideas. of course, people differ in original experience, but they differ more in the way they organize this experience and prepare it for future needs. just as in habit-formation we should by exercise and practice acquire those kinds of skill that will serve us best in the future, so in getting knowledge we should by repetition strengthen the connections between those ideas that we shall need to have connected in the future. all education looks forward and is preparatory. as a result of training in the organization of ideas, a pupil can learn how to organize his experience, in a measure, independent of the teacher. he learns to know, himself, what ideas are significant, and what connections of ideas will be most helpful. such an outcome should be one of the ends of school training. =training in reasoning.= we have already mentioned ways in which a child can be helped in gaining power and facility in reasoning. in this paragraph we shall discuss the matter more fully. there are three aspects of training in reasoning, one with reference to original experience, one with reference to the organization of this experience as just discussed, and one with reference to certain habits of procedure in the recall and use of experience. ( ) _original experience._ before reasoning in any field, one must have experience in that field. there is no substitute for experience. after having the experience, it can be organized in various ways, but experience there must be. experience may be primary, with things themselves, or it may be secondary, received second hand through books or through spoken language. we cannot think without ideas, and ideas come only through perceptions of one kind or another. originally, all experience arises out of sensations. language makes it possible for us to profit through the perceptual experience of others. but even when we receive our experience second hand, our own primary experience must enable us to understand the meaning of what we read and hear about, else it is valueless to us. therefore, if we wish to be able to reason in the field of physics, of botany, of chemistry, of medicine, of law, or of agriculture, we must get experience in those fields. the raw material of thought comes only through experience. in such a subject as physical geography, for example, the words of the book have little meaning unless the child has had original experience in the matter discussed. he must have seen hills and valleys and rivers and lakes and rocks and weathering, and all the various processes discussed in physical geography; otherwise, the reading of the text is almost valueless. the same thing is true of all subjects. to reason in any subject we must have had original experience in it. ( ) _the organization of experience._ after experience comes its organization. this point has already been fully explained. it was pointed out that organization consists in thinking our experience over again in helpful relations. here parents and teachers can be of very great service to children. ( ) _habits of thought._ there are certain habits of procedure in reasoning, apart from the association of the ideas. one can form the habit of putting certain questions to oneself when a problem is presented, so that certain types of relations are called up. if one is a scientist, one looks for causes. if one is a lawyer, one looks up the court decisions. if one is a physician, one looks for symptoms, etc. one of the most important habits in connection with reasoning is the habit of caution. reasoning is waiting, waiting for ideas to come that will be adequate for the situation. one must form the habit of waiting a reasonable length of time for associations to run their course. if one act too soon, before his organized experience has had time to pass in review, he may act improperly. therefore one must be trained to a proper degree of caution. of course, caution may be overdone. one must act sometime, one cannot wait always. another habit is that of testing out a conclusion before it is finally put into practice. it is often possible to put a conclusion to some sort of test before it is put to the real test, just as one makes a model and tries out an invention on a small scale. one should not have full confidence in a conclusion that is the result of reasoning, till the conclusion has been put to the final test of experiment, of trial. this last statement leads us to the real function of reasoning. reason points the way to action in a new situation. after the situation is repeated for a sufficient number of times, action passes into the realm of habit. =language and thinking.= the fact that man has spoken and written language is of the greatest significance. it has already been pointed out that language is a means through which we can get experience secondhand. this proves to be a great advantage to man. but language gives us still another advantage. without language, thinking is limited to the passing of sensory images that arise in accordance with the laws of association. but man can name things and the attributes of things, and these names become associated, so that thinking comes to be, in part at least, a matter of words. thinking is talking to oneself. one cannot talk without language. the importance that attaches to language can hardly be overestimated. when the child acquires the use of language, he has acquired the use of a tool, the importance of which to thinking is greater than that of any other tool. now, one can think without language, in the sense that memory images come and go,--we have defined thinking as the flow of imagery, the passing or succession of ideas. but after we have named things, thinking, particularly reasoning, becomes largely verbal, or as we said above, _talking to oneself_. not only do we give names to concrete things but we give names to specific attributes and to relations. as we organize and analyze our experiences, there appear uniformities, principles, laws. to these we give names, such as white, black, red, weight, length, thickness, justice, truth, sin, crime, heat, cold, mortal, immortal, evolution, disintegration, love, hate, envy, jealousy, possible, impossible, probable, etc. we spoke above of meanings. to meanings we give names, so that a single word comes to stand for meanings broad and significant, the result of much experience. such words as "evolution" and "gravitation," single words though they are, represent a wide range of experiences and bring these experiences together and crystallize them into a single expression, which we use as a unit in our thought. language, therefore, makes thought easier and its accomplishment greater. after we have studied cæsar for some years, the name comes to represent the epitome, the bird's-eye view of a great man. a similar thing is true of our study of other men and movements and things. single words come to represent a multitude of experiences. then these words become associated and organized in accordance with the principles of association discussed above, so that it comes about that the older we are, the more we come to think in words, and the more these words represent. the older we are, the more abstract our thinking becomes, the more do our words come to stand for meanings and attributes and laws that have come out of the organization of our experience. it is evident that the accuracy of our thinking depends upon these words standing for the _truth_, depends upon whether we have organized our experience in accordance with facts. if our word "cæsar" does not stand for the real cæsar, then all our thinking in which cæsar enters will be incorrect. if our word "justice" does not stand for the real justice, then all our thinking in which justice enters will be incorrect. this discussion points to the tremendous importance of the organization of experience. truth is the agreement of our thought with the thing, with reality. we must therefore help the young to see the world clearly and to organize what they see in accordance with the facts and with a view to future use. then the units of this organized experience are to be tagged, labeled, by means of words, and these words or labels become the vehicles of thought, and the outcome of the thinking depends on the validity of the organization of our experience. summary. thinking is the passing of ideas in the mind; its basis is in the association of memory ideas. the basis of association is in original experience, ideas becoming bound together in memory as originally experienced. the factors of association are primacy, recency, frequency, intensity, and mental set or attitude. reasoning is thinking to a purpose. we can be trained in reasoning by being taught to get vivid experience in the first place and in organizing this experience in helpful ways, having in mind future use. class exercises . a series of experiments should be performed to make clear to the students that the basis of the association of ideas is in _experience_ and not in the nature of the ideas themselves. (a) let the students, starting with the same word, write down all the ideas that come to mind in one minute. the teacher should give the initial idea, as sky, hate, music, clock, table, or wind. the first ten ideas coming to each student might be written on the blackboard for study and comparison. are any series alike? is the tenth idea in one series the same as that in any other? (b) for a study of the various factors of association, perform the following experiment: let the teacher prepare a list of fifty words--nouns and adjectives, such as wood, murder, goodness, bad, death, water, love, angel. read the words to the class and let each student write down the first idea that comes to mind in each case. after the list is finished, let each student try to find out what the determining factor was in each case, whether primacy, frequency, recency, vividness, or mental set. when the study is completed, the student's paper should contain three columns, the first column showing the stimulus words, the second showing the response words, the third showing the determining factors. the first column should be dictated and copied after the response words have been written. (c) study the data in (a) and (b), noting the variety of ideas that come to different students for the same stimulus word. it will be seen that they come from a great variety of experiences and from all parts of one's life from childhood to the present, showing that all our experiences are bound together and that we can go from one point to any other, directly or indirectly. . perform an experiment to determine how each member of the class thinks, _i.e._ in what kind of imagery. let each plan a picnic in detail. how do they do it? do they see it or hear it or seem to act it? or does it happen in words merely? . think of the events of yesterday. how do they come to you? do your images seem to be visual, auditory, motor, or verbal? do you seem to have all kinds of imagery? is one kind predominant? . test the class for speed of free association as described on page  . repeat the experiment at least five times and rank the members of the class from the results. . similarly, test speed for controlled association as described on page  and rank the members of the class. . compare the rankings in nos.  and . . the teacher can extend the controlled association tests by preparing lists that show different kinds of logical relations with one another, from genus to species, from species to genus, from verb to object, from subject to verb, etc. do the students maintain the same rank in the various types of experiments? do the ranks in these tests correspond to the students' ranks in thinking in the school subjects? . at least two series of experiments in reasoning should be performed, one to show the nature of reasoning and the other to show the ability of the members of the class. (a) put several problems to the class, similar to the following: what happens to a wet board laid out in the sunshine? explain. suppose corn is placed in three vessels, , , and . number  is sealed up air tight and kept warm? number  is kept open and warm? number  is kept open and warm and moist. what happens in each case? explain. condensed milk does not sour as long as the can remains unopened. after the can is opened, the milk sours if allowed to become warm; it does not sour if kept frozen. why? two bars of metal are riveted together. one bar is lead, the other iron. what happens when the bars are heated to  c?  c?  c?  c? answer the following questions: is it ever right to steal? to kill a person? to lie? which are unwise and mistaken, republicans or democrats? in the above, do all come to the same conclusion? why? were any unable to come to a conclusion at all on some questions? why? do the experiments make it clear that reasoning is dependent upon experience? (b) let the teacher prepare five problems in reasoning well within the experience of the class, and find the speed and accuracy of the students in solving them. compare the results with those in the controlled association tests. test the class with various kinds of mechanical puzzles. . the students should study several people to ascertain how well those people have their experience organized. is their experience available? can they come to the point immediately, or, are they hazy, uncertain, and impractical? . it is claimed that we have two types of people, theoretical and practical. this is to some extent true. what is the explanation? . from the point of view of no.  , compare teachers and engineers. . if anything will work in theory, will it work in practice? . from what you have learned in the chapter and from the experiments, write a paper on training in reasoning. . what are the main defects of the schools with reference to training children to think? . make a complete outline of the chapter. references for class reading colvin and bagley: _human behavior_, chapters xvi and xviii. dewey: _how we think_, parts i and iii. mÜnsterberg: _psychology, general and applied_, chapters viii and xii; also pp.  - . pillsbury: _essentials of psychology_, chapters vi and ix. pyle: _the outlines of educational psychology_, chapter xv. titchener: _a beginner's psychology_, chapters v, vi, and x. chapter ix individual differences =physical differences.= one never sees two people whose bodies are exactly alike. they differ in height or weight or color of the skin. they differ in the color of the hair or eyes, in the shape of the head, or in such details as size and shape of the ear, size and shape of the nose, chin, mouth, teeth, feet, hands, fingers, toes, nails, etc. the anatomist tells us that we differ internally just as we do externally. while the internal structure of one person has the same general plan as that of another, there being the same number of bones, muscles, organs, etc., there are always differences in detail. we are built on the same plan, _i.e._ we are made after a common type. we vary, above and below this type or central tendency. weight may be taken for illustration. if we should weigh the first thousand men we meet, we should find light men, heavy men, and men of medium weight. there would be few light men, few heavy men, but many men of medium weight. this fact is well shown in diagram by what is known as a curve of distribution or frequency surface, which is constructed as follows: draw a base line a b, and on this line mark off equal distances to represent the various weights. at the left end put the number representing the lightest men and at the right the number representing the heaviest men; the other weights come in between in order. then select a scale; we will say a millimeter in height above the base line represents one person of the weight represented on the base, and in drawing the upper part of the figure, a c b, we have but to measure up one millimeter for each person weighed, of the weight indicated below on the base. [illustration: figure v--frequency surface--weight the solid line represents men, the broken line, women.] a study of this frequency surface shows a tendency for people to be grouped about the central tendency or average. there are many people of average weight or nearly so, but few people who deviate widely from the average weight. if we measure people with reference to any other physical characteristic, or any mental characteristic, we get a similar result, we find them grouped about an average or central tendency. =mental differences.= just as we differ physically, so also we differ mentally, and in the various aspects of our behavior. the accompanying diagram (free association) shows the distribution of a large number of men and women with respect to the speed of their flow of ideas. when men and women are measured with respect to any mental function, a similar distribution is found. [illustration: figure vi--frequency surface--free association solid line, men; broken line, women. the numbers below the base represent the number of words written in the free association test, and the numbers at the left represent the number of people making the respective scores.] an interesting question is whether our mental differences have any relation or connection with one another. if one mental characteristic is of high order, are all the others of high order also? does a good memory indicate a high order of attention, of association, of imagination, of learning capacity? experiments show that mental characteristics have at least some degree of independence. but the rule is that they generally go together, a high order of ability in one mental function indicating a high order of ability in at least some others, and a low order of ability in one function indicating a low order in other functions. however, it seems that abilities that are very much specialized, such as musical ability, artistic ability, etc., may exist in high order while other mental functions may be only mediocre. it is a common thing for a musical person to be of rather poor ability otherwise. to the extent that special abilities require specialized differences in the structure of brain, nervous system, or sense organ, they can exist in some degree of independence of other functions. musical ability to some extent does require some such differences and may therefore be found either with a high or a low degree of ability in other characteristics. it is doubtless true that at maturity the unequal power of mental functions in the same person may be partly due to the fact that one function has been exercised and others neglected. a person having very strong musical tendencies is likely to have such a great interest in music that he will think other activities are not worth while, and will consequently neglect these other activities. it will therefore turn out that at maturity the great differences in mental functions in such a person are in part due to exercise of one function and neglect of others. but there can be no doubt that in many cases there are large original, inherited differences, the individual being poor in one aspect of mind and good in others. feeble-minded people are usually poor in all important aspects of mind. however, one sometimes finds a feeble-minded person having musical or artistic ability, and often such a person has a good rote memory, sometimes a good verbal memory. however, the so-called higher mental functions--logical memory, controlled association, and constructive imagination--are all poor in a feeble-minded person. each mental function may be looked upon as in some measure independent; each is found existing in people in varying degrees from zero ability up to what might be called genius ability. the frequency curves in fig. vi show this. take rote memory for example. idiots are found with practically zero ability in rote memory. at the other extreme, we find mathematical prodigies who, after watching a long freight train pass and noting the numbers of the cars, can repeat correctly the number of each car. rote memory abilities can be found representing every step between these two extremes. this principle of distribution holds true in the case of all mental functions. we find persons practically without them, and others possessing them in the highest order, but most people are grouped about the average ability. =detecting mental differences.= it has already been said that mind has many different aspects and that people differ with respect to these aspects. now let us ask how we can measure the degree of development of these aspects or functions of mind. we measure them just as we measured muscular speed as described in the first chapter. each mental function means ability to do something--to learn, to remember, to form images, to reason, etc. to measure these different capacities or functions we have but to require that the person under consideration _do_ something, as learn, remember, etc., and measure how well and how fast he does it, just as we would measure how far he can jump, how fast he can run, etc. in such measurements, the question of practice is always involved. if we measure running ability, we find that some are in practice while others are not. those in practice can run at very nearly their ultimate capacity. those who are not in practice can be trained to run much faster than they do. to get a true measure of running capacity, we should practice the persons to be measured till each runs up to the limit of his capacity, and then measure each one's speed. the same thing is true, to some extent, when we come to measure mental functions proper. however, the life that children live gives exercise to all fundamental functions of the mind, and unless some of the children tested have had experience which would tend to develop some mental functions in a special way, tests of the various aspects of learning capacity, memory, association, imagination, etc., are a fairly good measure of original, inherited tendencies. of course, it must be admitted that there are measurable differences in the influence of environment on children, and when these differences are extreme, no doubt the influence is shown in the development of the child's mind. a child reared in a home where all the influences favor its mental development, ought to show a measurable difference in such development when compared with a child reared in a home where all the influences are unfavorable. it is difficult to know to what extent this is true, for the hereditary and environmental influences are usually in harmony, the child of good hereditary stock having good environmental influences, and vice versa. when this is not the case, _i.e._ when a child of good stock is reared under poor environmental influences, or when a child of poor stock is reared under good influences, the results seem to show that the differences in environment have little effect on mental development, as far as the fundamental functions are concerned, except in the most extreme cases. each mental function is capable of some development. it can be brought up to the limit of its possibilities. but recent experiments indicate that such development is not very great in the case of the elementary, fundamental functions. training, however, has a much greater effect on complex mental activities that involve several functions. rote memory is rather simple; it cannot be much affected by training. the memory for ideas is more complex; it can be considerably affected by training. the original and fundamental functions of the mind depend upon the nature of the nervous system which is bequeathed to us by heredity. this cannot be much changed. however, training has considerable effect on the coördinations and combinations of mental functions. therefore, the more complex the mental activities which we are testing, the more likely they are to have been affected by differences in experience and training. if we should designate the logical memory capacity of one person by , and that of another by , by practice we might bring the first up to and the second to ½, but we could not equalize them. we could never make the memory of the one equal to that of the other. in an extreme case, we might find one child whose experience had been such that his logical memory was working up to the limit of its capacity, while the other had had little practice in logical memory and was therefore far below his real capacity. in such a case, a test would not show the native difference, it would show only the present difference in functioning capacity. fairly adequate tests for the most important mental functions have been worked out. a series of group tests with directions and norms follow. the members of the class can use these tests in studying the individual differences in other people. the teacher will find other tests in the author's _examination of school children_, and in whipple's _manual of mental and physical tests_. =mental tests= general directions the results of the mental tests in the school will be worse than useless unless the tests are given with the greatest care and scientific precision. every test should be most carefully explained to the children so that they will know _exactly_ what they are to do. the matter must be so presented to them that they will put forth _all possible_ effort. they must take the tests seriously. great care must be taken to see that there is no cheating. the work of each child should be his own work. in those tests in which time is an important element, the time must be _carefully kept_, with a stop watch if one is available. the papers should be distributed for the tests and turned face downward on the pupil's desk. the pupil, when all are ready to begin, should take the paper in his hand and at the signal "begin" turn it over and begin work, and when the signal "stop" is given, should quit work instantly and turn the paper over. before the work begins, the necessary information should be placed on each paper. this information should be the pupil's name, age, grade, sex, and school. this should be on every paper. when the test is over the papers should be immediately collected. logical memory =object.= the purpose of this test is to determine the pupil's facility in remembering and reproducing ideas. a pupil's standing in the test may serve as an indication of his ability to remember the subject matter of the school studies. [illustration: figure vii--logical memory "willie jones"] =method.= the procedure in this test is for the teacher to read slowly and distinctly the story to be reproduced. immediately after the reading the pupils are to write down all of the story that they can recall. they must not begin to write till _after_ the reading. ten minutes should be allowed for the reproduction. this is ample time, and each pupil should be told to use the whole time in working on his reproduction. at the end of ten minutes, collect the papers. care should be taken to see that each pupil does his own work, that there is no copying. before reading the story, the teacher should give the following instructions: i shall read to you a story entitled "willie jones and his dog" (or "a farmer's son," or "a costly temper," as the case may be). after i have read the story you are to write down all you can remember of it. you are not to use the exact words that i read unless you wish. you are to use your own words. try to recall as much as possible and write all you recall. try to get all the details, not merely the main facts. =material.= for grades three, four, and five, use "willie jones and his dog"; for grades six, seven, and eight, use "a farmer's son"; for the high school, use "a costly temper." the norms for the latter are based on eighth grade and high school pupils. * * * * * willie jones and his dog willie | jones | was a little | boy | only | five years old. | he had a dog | whose name was buster. | buster was a large | dog | with long, | black, | curly | hair. | his fore | feet | and the tip | of his tail | were white. | one day | willie's mother | sent him | to the store | which was only | a short | distance away. | buster went with him, | following behind. | as buster was turning | at the corner, | a car | struck him | and broke | one | hind | leg | and hurt | one | eye. | willie was | very | sorry | and cried | a long | time. | willie's father | came | and carried | the poor | dog | home. | the broken leg | got well | in five | weeks | but the eye | that was hurt | became blind.| a farmer's son will | was a farmer's | son | who attended school | in town. | his clothes | were poor and his boots | often smelled | of the farmyard | although he took great | care of them. | since will had not gone to school | as much | as his classmates, | he was often | at a disadvantage, | although his mind | was as good | as theirs,--| in fact, he was brighter | than most | of them. | james, | the wit | of the class, | never lost an opportunity | to ridicule | will's mistakes, | his bright | red | hair, | and his patched | clothes. | will | took the ridicule | in good part | and never | lost his temper. | one saturday | as will | was driving | his cows | to pasture, | he met james | teasing | a young | child, | a cripple. | will's | indignation | was aroused | by the sight. | he asked | the bully | to stop, | but when he would not, | will pounced | upon him | and gave him | a good | beating, | and he would not | let james go | until he promised | not to tease | the crippled | child | again. | a costly temper a man | named john | murdock | had a servant | who worried him | much by his stupidity. | one day | when this servant was more | stupid | than usual, | the angry | master | of the house | threw a book | at his head. | the servant | ducked | and the book flew | out of the window. | "now go | and pick that book up!" | ordered the master. | the servant | started | to obey, | but a passerby | had saved him | the trouble, | and had walked off | with the book. | the scientist | thereupon | began to wonder | what book | he had thrown away, | and to his horror, | discovered | that it was a quaint | and rare | little | volume | of poems, | which he had purchased | in london | for fifty | dollars. | but his troubles | were not over. | the weeks went by | and the man had almost | forgotten his loss, | when, strolling | into a secondhand | bookshop, | he saw, | to his great delight, | a copy of the book | he had lost. | he asked the price. | "well," | said the dealer, | reflectively, | "i guess we can let you have it | for forty | dollars. | it is a very | rare book, | and i am sure | that i could get seventy-five | dollars for it | by holding on a while." | the man of science | pulled out his purse | and produced the money, | delighted at the opportunity of replacing | his lost | treasure. | when he reached home, | a card | dropped out | of the leaves. | the card was his own, | and further | examination | showed that he had bought back | his own property. | "forty dollars' | worth of temper," | exclaimed the man. | "i think i shall mend my ways." | his disposition | afterward | became so | good | that | the servant became worried, | thinking the man | must be ill. | * * * * * [illustration: figure viii--logical memory--"a farmer's son"] =the results.= the material for the test is divided into units as indicated by the vertical lines. the pupil's written reproduction should be compared unit by unit with the story as printed, and given one credit for each unit adequately reproduced. the norms for the three tests are shown in the accompanying figures vii, viii, and ix. in these and all the graphs which follow, the actual ages are shown in the first horizontal column. the norms for girls appear in the second horizontal column, the norms for boys in the column at the bottom. by the _norm_ for an age is meant the average performance of all the pupils of that age examined. age ten applies to those pupils who have passed their tenth birthday and have not reached their eleventh birthday, and the other ages are to be similarly interpreted. the vertical lines in the graphs indicate birthdays and the scores written on these lines indicate ability at these exact ages. the column marked ten, for example, includes all the children that are over ten and not yet eleven. the graphs show the development from age to age. in general, it will be noticed, there is an improvement of memory with age, but in the high school, in the "costly temper" test, there is a decline. this may not indicate a real decline in ability to remember ideas, but a change in attitude. the high school pupil probably acquires a habit of remembering only significant facts. his memory is selective, while in the earlier ages, the memory may be more parrot-like, one idea being reproduced with about as much fidelity as another. this statement is made not as a _fact_, but as a _probable_ explanation. rote memory [illustration: figure ix--logical memory--"a costly temper"] =object.= the object of the rote memory tests is to determine the pupil's memory span for unrelated impressions--words that have no logical relations with one another. much school work makes demands upon this ability. therefore, the tests are of importance. =method.= there are two lists of words, _concrete_ and _abstract_, with six groups in each list. the list of concrete words should be given first, then the abstract. the procedure is to pronounce the first group, _cat_, _tree_, _coat_, and then pause for the pupils to write these three words. then pronounce the next group, _mule_, _bird_, _cart_, _glass_, and pause for the reproduction, and so on through the list. [illustration: figure x--concrete rote memory] give the following instructions: we wish to see how well you can remember words. i shall pronounce first a group of three words. _after_ i have pronounced them, you are to write them down. i shall then pronounce a group of four words, then one of five words, and so continue with a longer group each time. you must pay very close attention for i shall pronounce a group but once. you are not required to write the words in their order, but just as you recall them. =material.= the words for the test are given in the following lists: _concrete_ _abstract_ . cat, tree, coat . good, black, fast . mule, bird, cart, glass . clean, tall, round, hot . star, horse, dress, fence, man . long, wet, fierce, white, cold . fish, sun, head, door, shoe, . deep, soft, quick, dark, great, block dead . train, mill, box, desk, oil, . sad, strong, hard, bright, pup, bill fine, glad, plain . floor, car, pipe, bridge, hand, . sharp, late, sour, wide, rough, dirt, cow, crank thick, red, tight [illustration: figure xi--abstract rote memory] =results.= the papers are graded by determining the number of concrete words and the number of abstract words that are reproduced. no account is taken of whether the words are in the right position or not. a perfect score in each test would therefore be thirty-three. the norms are shown in figures x and xi. the substitution test =object.= this test determines one's ability to build up new associations. it is a test of quickness of learning. =method.= the substitution test-sheets are distributed to the pupils and turned face down on the desks. the teacher gives the following instructions: we wish to see how fast you can learn. at the top of the sheet which has been distributed to you there is a key. in nine circles are written the nine digits and for each digit there is written a letter which is to be used instead of the digit. below the key are two columns of numbers; each number contains five digits. in the five squares which follow the number you are to write the letters which correspond to the digits. work as fast as you can and fill as many of the squares as you can without making mistakes. when i say "stop," quit work instantly and turn the paper over. before beginning the test the teacher should explain on the blackboard the exact nature of the test. this can be done by using other letters instead of those used in the key. make sure that the pupils understand what they are to do. allow _eight_ minutes in grades three, four, and five, and _five_ minutes above the fifth grade. =material.= for material, use the substitution test-sheets. this and the other test material can be obtained from the university of missouri, extension division. =results.= in grading the work, count each square correctly filled in as one point, and reduce the score to speed per minute by dividing by eight in grades three, four, and five, and by five in the grades above. the norms are shown in figure xii. [illustration: figure xii--substitution test] free association =object.= this test determines the speed of the free flow of ideas. the result of the test is a criterion of the quickness of the flow of ideas when no restriction or limitation is put on this flow. =method.= the procedure in this test is to give the pupils a word, and tell them to write this word down and all the other words that come into their minds. make it clear to them that they are to write whatever word comes to mind, whether it has any relation to the word that is given them or not. start them with the word "cloud." give the following instructions: i wish to see how many words you can think of and write down in three minutes. i shall name a word, you may write it down and then all the other words that come into your minds. do not write sentences, merely the words that come into your minds. work as fast as you can. [illustration: figure xiii--free association test] =results.= score the work by counting the number of words that have been written. the norms are shown in figure xiii. opposites =object.= this is a test of controlled association. it tests one aspect of the association of ideas. all thinking is a matter of association of ideas. reasoning is controlled association. the test may therefore be taken as a measure of speed in reasoning. [illustration: figure xiv--opposites test--lists i and ii] =method.= distribute the lists of opposites to the pupils and turn them face down on the desks. use list one in grades three, four, and five, and list two in grades above. allow two minutes in grades three, four, and five and one minute in grades above. give the following instructions: on the sheets that have been distributed to you are fifty words. after each word you are to write a word that has the opposite meaning. for example, if one word were "far," you could write "near." work as fast as you can, and when i say "stop" quit work instantly and turn your paper over. =results.= the score is the number of opposites correctly written. the norms are shown in figure xiv. opposites--list no.  . good . up . before . big . thick . winter . rich . quick . ripe . out . pretty . night . sick . heavy . open . hot . late . first . long . wrong . over . wet . smooth . love . yes . strong . come . high . dark . east . hard . dead . top . sweet . wide . wise . clean . empty . front . sharp . above . girl . fast . north . sad . black . laugh . fat . old . man opposites--list no.  . strong . strange . fine . deep . wrong . plain . lazy . quickly . sharp . seldom . black . late . thin . good . sour . soft . fast . wide . many . clean . drunk . valuable . tall . tight . gloomy . hot . empty . rude . long . sick . dark . wet . friend . rough . fierce . above . pretty . great . loud . high . dead . war . foolish . cloudy . in . present . hard . yes . glad . bright the word-building test =object.= this is a test of a certain type of inventiveness, namely linguistic invention. specifically, it tests the pupil's ability to construct words using certain prescribed letters. [illustration: figure xv--word-building test] =method.= the pupils are given the letters, _a_, _e_, _o_, _m_, _n_, _r_, and told to make as many words as possible using only these letters. give the following instructions: i wish to see how many words you can make in five minutes, using only the letters which i give you. the words must be real english words. you must use only the letters which i give you and must not use the same letter more than once in the same word. you do not, of course, have to use all the letters in the same word. a word may contain one or more letters up to six. =material.= the pupils need only sheets of blank paper. =results.= the score is the number of words that do not violate the rules of the test as given in the instructions. the norms are shown in figure xv. the completion test =object.= this is, to some extent, a test of reasoning capacity. of course, it is only one particular aspect of reasoning. the pupil is given a story that has certain words omitted. he must read the story, see what it is trying to say, and determine what words, put into the blanks, will make the correct sense. the meaning of the word written in a particular blank must not only make the sentence read sensibly but must fit into the story _as a whole_. filling in the blanks in this way demands considerable thought. =method.= distribute the test-sheets and turn them face down on the desks. allow ten minutes in all the tests. give the following instructions: on the sheets which have been distributed is printed a story which has certain words omitted. you are to put in the blanks the words that are omitted. the words which you write in must give the proper meaning so that the story reads correctly. each word filled in must not only give the proper meaning to the sentence but to the story as a whole. =material.= use the completion test-sheets, "joe and the fourth of july," for grades three, four, and five; "the trout" for grades, six, seven, and eight; and "dr. goldsmith's medicine" for the high school. =results.= in scoring the papers, allow one credit for each blank correctly filled. the norms are shown in figures xvi, xvii, and xviii. it will be noticed that the boys excel in the "trout" story. this is doubtless because the story is better suited to them on the ground of their experience and interest. [illustration: figure xvi--completion test--"joe and the fourth of july"] * * * * * joe and the fourth of july joe {ran}[ ] errands for {his} mother and {took} care of the {baby} until by the fourth of july his penny {grew} to be a dime. the day before the fourth, he {went} down town all by {himself} to get his fire {works}. there were so {many} kinds he hardly knew which to {buy}. the clerk knew that it takes a {long} time to decide, for he had been a {boy} himself not very {long} ago. so he helped joe to {select} the very best kinds. "when are you going to {fire} them off?" asked the clerk. "i will fire {them} very {early} to-morrow," said the boy. so that night joe set the {alarm} clock, and the next {morning} got up {early} to fire his firecrackers. [ ] the italicized words and letters are left blank in the test sheets. the trout the trout is a fine fish. once a big trout {lived} in a pool {close} by a spring. he used to {stay} under the bank with {only} his head showing. his wide-open {eyes} shone like jewels. i tried to {catch} him. i would {creep} up to the {edge} of the pool {where} i could see his {bright} eyes looking up. i {caught} a grasshopper and {threw} it over {to} him. then there was a {splash} in the water and the grasshopper {was gone}. i {did} this {two} or three times. each time i {saw} the rush and splash and saw the bait had been {taken}. so i put the sa{me} bait on my {hook} and {threw} it over into the {water}. but {all} was silent. the fish was an {old} one and had {grown} very wise. i did this {day} after day with the same luck. the trout {knew} there was a {hook} hidden in the bait. [illustration: figure xvii--completion test--"the trout"] doctor goldsmith's medicine this {is} a story of good medicine. most medicine is {bad} to {take}, but this was so good {that} the sick man {wished} for more. {one} day a poor woman {went} to doctor goldsmith and {asked} him to {go} to see her {sick} husband. "he {is} very sick," she said, "and i {can} not {get} him to eat anything." {so} doctor goldsmith {went} to {see} him. the doctor {saw} at once that the {reason} why the man {could} not eat was {because} he was {so} poor that he had {not} been {able} to buy good food. then he {said} to the woman, "{come} to my house this evening and i will {give you} some {medicine} for your {husband}." the woman {went} in the evening and the {doctor} gave {her} a small paper box tied {up} tight. "{it} is very heavy," {she} said. "may i {see} what it looks {like}?" "{no}," said the doctor, "{wait} until you get {home}." when she {got} home, and she and {her} husband {opened} the box so that he {could} take the first {dose} of medicine,--what do you think they {saw}? the box was {filled} with silver {money}. {this} was the {good} doctor's medicine. * * * * * =importance of mental differences.= ( ) _in school work._ one of the important results that come from a knowledge of the mental differences in children is that we are able to classify them better. when a child enters school he should be allowed to proceed through the course as fast as his development warrants. some children can do an eight-year course in six years; others require ten years; still others can never do it. the great majority, of course, can do it in eight years. [illustration: figure xviii--completion test--"dr. goldsmith's medicine"] norms for adults, as obtained from university students, are: test men women substitution test . . rote memory, concrete . . rote memory, abstract . . free association . . completion, _dr. goldsmith's medicine_ . . word building . . logical memory, _costly temper_ . . [illustration: figure xix--frequency surfaces--comparing fourth grade with high school the numbers along the base represent mental age; those at the left, the number of pupils of the respective ages.] it may be thought that a child's success in school branches is a sufficient measure of his ability and that no special mental measurements are needed. this is a mistake. many factors contribute to success in school work. ability is only one of these factors, and should be specially and independently determined by suitable tests. children may fail in school branches because of being poorly started or started at the wrong time, because of poor teaching, sickness, moving from one school to another, etc. on the other hand, children of poor ability may succeed at school because of much help at home. therefore special mental tests will help in determining to what extent original mental ability is a factor in the success or failure of the different pupils. as far as possible, the children of the same grade should have about the same ability; but such is seldom the case. in a recent psychological study of a school system, the author found wide differences in ability in the same grade. the distribution of abilities found in the fourth grade and in the high school are shown in figure xix. it will be seen that in the fourth grade pupils are found with ability equal to that of some in the high school. of course to some extent such a condition is unavoidable, for a pupil must establish certain habits and acquire certain knowledge before passing from one grade to another. however, much of the wide variation in ability now found in the same grade of a school could be avoided if the teacher had accurate knowledge of the pupils' abilities. when a teacher learns that a child who is doing poorly in school really has ability, she is often able to get from that pupil the work of which he is capable. it has been demonstrated by experience that accurate measures of children's abilities are a great help in gradation and classification. a knowledge of mental differences is also an aid in the actual teaching of the children. the instance mentioned at the close of the last paragraph is an example. a knowledge of the differences among the mental functions of the same pupil is especially helpful. it has been pointed out that the different mental functions in the same pupil are sometimes unequally developed. sometimes considerable differences exist in the same pupil with respect to learning capacity, the different aspects of memory, association, imagination, and attention. when a teacher knows of these differences, she can better direct the work of the pupils. for example, if a pupil have a very poor memory, the teacher can help him by aiding him to secure the advantage that comes from close and concentrated attention, frequent repetitions, logical organization, etc. on the other hand, she can help the brilliant student by preventing him from being satisfied with hastily secured, superficial knowledge, and by encouraging him to make proper use of his unusual powers in going deeper and more extensively into the school subjects than is possible for the ordinary student. in many ways a teacher can be helpful to her pupils if she has an accurate knowledge of their mental abilities. ( ) _in life occupations._ extreme variations in ability should certainly be considered in choosing one's life work. only persons of the highest ability should go into science, law, medicine, or teaching. many occupations demand special kinds of ability, special types of reaction, of attention, imagination, etc. for example, the operation of a telephone exchange demands a person of quick and steady reaction. the work of a motorman on a street car demands a person having the broad type of attention, the type of attention that enables one to keep in mind many details at the same time. scientific work demands the type of concentrated attention. as far as it is possible, occupations demanding special types of ability should be filled by people possessing these abilities. it is best for all concerned if each person is doing what he can do best. it is true that many occupations do not call for special types of ability. and therefore, as far as ability is concerned, a person could do as well in one of these occupations as in another. the time will sometime come when we shall know the special abilities demanded by the different occupations and professions, and by suitable tests shall be able to determine what people possess the required qualifications. the schools should always be on the lookout for unusual ability. children that are far superior to others of the same age should be allowed to advance as fast as their superior ability makes possible, and should be held up to a high order of work. such superior people should be, as far as possible, in the same classes, so that they can the more easily be given the kind and amount of work that they need. the schools should find the children of unusual special ability, such as ability in drawing, painting, singing, playing musical instruments, mechanical invention, etc. some provision should be made for the proper development and training of these unusual abilities. society cannot afford to lose any spark of genius wherever found. moreover, the individual will be happier if developed and trained along the line of his special ability. =subnormal children.= a small percentage of children are of such low mentality that they cannot do the ordinary school work. as soon as such children can be picked out with certainty, they should be taken out of the regular classes and put into special classes. it is a mistake to try to get them to do the regular school work. they cannot do it, and they only waste the teacher's time and usually give her much trouble. besides, they waste their own time; for while they cannot do the ordinary school work, they can do other things, perhaps work of a manual nature. the education of such people should, therefore, be in the direction of simple manual occupations. for detecting such children, in addition to the tests given above, elaborate tests for individual examination have been devised. the most widely used is a series known as the binet-simon tests. a special group of tests is provided for the children of each age. if a child can pass the tests for his age, he is considered normal. if he can pass only the tests three years or more below his age, he is usually considered subnormal. but a child's fate should not depend solely upon any number or any kind of tests. we should always give the child a trial and see what he is able to achieve. this trial should cover as many months or years as are necessary to determine beyond doubt the child's mental status. summary. just as we differ in the various aspects of body, so also we differ in the various aspects of mind. these differences can be measured by tests. a knowledge of these differences should aid us in grading, classifying, and teaching children, as well as in the selection of occupation and professions for them. mental traits have some degree of independence; as a result a high degree of one trait may be found with low degree of some others. class exercises . many of the tests and experiments already described should have shown many of the individual differences of the members of the class. the teacher will find in the author's _examination of school children_ a series of group tests with norms which can be used for a further study of individual differences. . the tapping experiment described in the first chapter can now be repeated and the results taken as a measure of reaction time. . you should now have available the records of all the tests and experiments so far given that show individual differences. make out a table showing the rank of each student in the various tests. compute the average rank of each student for all the tests. this average rank may be taken as a measure of the intelligence of the students, as far as such can be determined by the tests used. correlate this ranking with standing in the high school classes. it will give a positive correlation, not perfect, however. why not? if your measures of intelligence were absolutely correct, you still would not get a perfect correlation with high school standing. why not? . if you had a correct measure of intelligence of mature people in your city, selected at random, would this measure give you an exact measure of their success in life? give the reason for your answer. . of all the tests and experiments previously described in this book, which gives the best indication of success in high school? . if the class in psychology is a large one, a graph should be prepared showing the distribution of abilities in the class. for this purpose, you will have to use the absolute measures instead of ranks. find the average for each test used. make these averages all the same by multiplying the low ones and dividing the high ones. then all the grades of each student can be added. this will give each test the same weight in the average. the use of a slide rule will make this transference to a new average very easy. a more accurate method for this computation is described in the author's _examination of school children_, p.  . the students should make a study of individual differences and the distribution of ability in some grade below the high school. the tests described in this chapter can be used for that purpose. . is it a good thing for high school students to find out how they compare with others in their various mental functions? if you have poor ability, is it a good thing for you to find it out? if the teacher and students think best, the results of all the various tests need not be made known except to the persons concerned. the data can be used in the various computations without the students' knowing whose measures they are. . to what extent is ability a factor in life? you find people of only ordinary ability succeeding and brilliant people failing. why is this? . none of the tests so far used measures ideals or perseverance and persistence. these are important factors in life, and there is no very adequate measure for any of them. the students might plan some experiments to test physical and mental persistence and endurance. the tapping experiment, for example, might be continued for an hour and the records kept for each minute. then from these records a graph could be plotted showing the course of efficiency for the hour. mental adding or multiplying might be kept up continuously for several hours and the results studied as above. . we have said that ideals and persistence are important factors in life. are they inherited or acquired? . do you find it to be the rule or the exception for a person standing high in one mental function to stand high in the others also? . make a complete outline of the chapter. references for class reading mÜnsterberg: _psychology, general and applied_. chapter xvi. pyle: _the examination of school children_. pyle: _the outlines of educational psychology_. chapter xvii. titchener: _a beginner's psychology_, pp.  - . chapter x applied psychology =the general field.= psychology has now reached that stage in its development where it can be of use to humanity. it can be of use in those fields which demand a knowledge of human nature. as indicated in the first chapter, these fields are education, medicine, law, business, and industry. we may add another which has been called "culture." we cannot say that psychology is able yet to be of very great service except to education, law, and medicine. it has been of less service to the field of business and industry, but in the future, its contribution here will be as great as in the other fields. while the service of psychology in the various fields is not yet great, what it will eventually be able to do is very clear. it is the purpose of this chapter to indicate briefly, the nature and possibilities of this psychological service. =education.= throughout the preceding chapters, we have emphasized the educational importance of the facts discussed. there is little left to say here except to summarize the main facts. since education is a matter of making a child over into what he ought to be, the science of education demands a knowledge of the original nature of children. this means that one must know the nature of instincts, their relations to one another, their order of development, and the possibilities of their being changed, modified, developed, suppressed. it means that one must know the nature of the child's mind in all its various functions, the development and significance of these functions,--memory, association, imagination, and attention. the science especially demands that we understand the principles of habit-formation, the laws of economical learning, and the laws of memory. this psychological knowledge must form the ground-work in the education of teachers for their profession. in addition to this general preparation of the teacher, psychology will render the schools a great service through the psycho-clinicist, who will be a psychological expert working under the superintendents of our school systems. his duty will be to supervise the work of mental testing, the work of diagnosis for feeble-mindedness and selection of the subnormal children, the teaching of such children. he will give advice in all cases which demand expert psychological knowledge. =medicine.= in the first place, there is a department of medicine which deals with nervous diseases, such as insanity, double personality, severe nervous shock, hallucination, etc. this entire aspect of medicine is wholly psychological. but psychology can be of service to the general practitioner both in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. a thorough psychological knowledge of human nature will assist a physician in diagnosis. often the best way to find out what ails a patient's body is through the patient's mind, and the doctor must know how to get the truth from the patient's mind even in those cases in which the patient is actually trying to conceal the truth. a profound practical knowledge of human nature is necessary,--a knowledge which can be obtained only by long and careful technical study as well as practice and experience. psychology can be of service in the treatment of disease. the physician must understand the peculiar mental characteristics of his patient in order to know how to deal with him. in some cases, hypnotism is a valuable aid in treatment, and in many cases, ordinary normal suggestion can be of considerable service. the state of mind of a sick person has much to do with his recovery. the physician must know this and must know how to induce the desired state of mind. indeed, a patient's trouble is often imaginary, exists in the mind only; in such cases, the treatment should be wholly mental, _i.e._ through suggestion. of course, the best physicians know these facts and make use of them in their practice, but preparation for this aspect of their work should be a regular part of their medical education. they should not be left to learn these facts from their practice as best they may, any more than they should be expected to learn their physiology and anatomy in this way. =law.= the service of psychology to law can be very great, but owing to the necessary conservatism of the courts, it will be a long time before they will make much use of psychological knowledge. perhaps the greatest service will be in determining the credibility of evidence. psychology can now give the general principles in this matter. witnesses go on the stand and swear to all sorts of things as to what they heard and saw and did, often months and even years previously. the expert clinical psychologist can tell the court the probability of such evidence being true. experiments have shown that there is a large percentage of error in such evidence. the additional value that comes from the oath has been measured. the oath increases the liability of truth only a small percentage. experiments have also shown that one's feeling of certainty is no guarantee of truth. sometimes the point we feel surest about is the one farthest from the truth. in fact, feeling sure of a thing is no guarantee of truth. in a particular case in court, the psychologist can determine the reliability of the evidence of a particular witness and enable the judge and the jury to put the proper value on such witness's testimony. for example, a witness may swear to a certain point involving the estimation of time and distance. the psychologist can measure the witness's accuracy in such estimates, often showing that what the witness claims to be able to do is an impossibility. a case may hinge on whether an interval of time was ten minutes or twelve minutes, or whether a distance was three hundred or four hundred feet. a witness may swear positively to one or both of these points. the psychologist can show the court the limitations of the witness in making such estimates. psychology can be of service in the examination of the criminal himself. through association tests and in other ways, the guilt or innocence of the prisoner can often be determined, and his intellectual status can also be determined. the prisoner may be insane, or feeble-minded, or have some other peculiar mental disorder. such matters fall within the realm of psychology. after a prisoner has been found guilty, the court should have the advice of the clinical psychologist in deciding what should be done with him. it should be added that the court and not the attorneys should make use of the psychologist. whenever a psychologist can be of service in a case in court, the judge should summon such assistance, just as he should if expert chemical, physical, physiological, or anatomical knowledge should be desired. a knowledge of human nature can be of much service to society in the prevention of crime. this will come about from a better knowledge of the psychological principles of habit-formation and moral training, through a better knowledge of how to control human nature. a large percentage of all crime, perhaps as much as forty per cent, is committed by feeble-minded people. now, if we can detect these people early, and give them the simple manual education which they are capable of receiving, we can keep them out of a life of crime. studies of criminals in reform schools show that the history of many cases is as follows: the person, being of low mentality, could not get on well at school and therefore came to dislike school, and consequently became a truant. truancy led to crime. crime sent the person to the court, and the court sent the person to the state reformatory. the great duty of the state is the prevention of crime. usually little can be done in the way of saving a mature criminal. we must save the children before they become criminals, save them by proper treatment. society owes it to every child to do the right thing for him, the right thing, whether the child is an idiot or a genius. merely from the standpoint of economy, it would be an immense saving to the state if it would prevent crime by the proper treatment of every child. =business.= the contribution of psychology in this field, so far, is in the psychology of advertising and salesmanship, both having to do chiefly with the selling of goods. students of the psychology of advertising have, by experiment, determined many principles that govern people when reading newspapers and magazines, principles having to do with size and kind of type, arrangement and form, the wording of an advertisement, etc. the object of an advertisement is to get the reader interested in the article advertised. the first thing is to get him to _read_ the advertisement. here, various principles of attention are involved. the next thing is to have the _matter_ of the advertisement of such a nature that it creates interest and remains in memory, so that when the reader buys an article of that type he buys the particular kind mentioned in the advertisement. in salesmanship, many subtle psychological principles are involved. the problem of the salesman is to get the attention of the customer, and then to make him _want_ to buy his goods. to do this with the greatest success demands a profound knowledge of human nature. other things being equal, that man can most influence people who has the widest knowledge of the nature of people, and of the factors that affect this nature. the successful salesman must understand human feelings and emotions, especially sympathy; also the laws of attention and memory, and the power of suggestion. a mastery of the important principles requires years of study, and a successful application of them requires just as many years of practice. the last paragraph leads us to a consideration of the general problem of influencing men. in all occupations and professions, one needs to know how to influence other men. we have already discussed the matter of influencing people to buy goods. people who employ labor need to know how to get laborers to do more and better work, how to make them loyal and happy. the minister needs to know how to induce the members of his congregation to do right. the statesman needs to know how to win his hearers and convince them of the justice and wisdom of his cause. whatever our calling, there is scarcely a day when we could not do better if we knew more fully how to influence people. =industry.= the service of psychology here is four-fold: ( ) finding what men are fitted for. ( ) finding what kinds of abilities are demanded by the various trades and occupations. ( ) helping the worker to understand the psychological aspects of his work. ( ) getting the best work out of the laborer. _finding what men are fitted for._ in the preceding chapter, we discussed the individual variations of men. some people are better fitted physically and mentally for certain types of work than they are for other types of work. the determination of what an individual is fitted for and what he is not fitted for is the business of psychology. in some cases, the verdict of psychology can be very specific; in others, it can be only general. much misery and unhappiness come to people from trying to do what they are not fitted by nature to do. there are many professions and occupations which people should not enter unless they possess high general ability. now, psychology is able to measure general ability. there are many other occupations and professions which people should not enter unless they possess some special ability. music, art, and mechanics may be mentioned as examples of occupations and professions demanding specific kinds of ability. in industrial work, many aspects demand very special abilities, as quick reaction, quick perception, fine discrimination, calmness and self-control, ingenuity, quick adaptation to new situations. psychology can aid in picking out the people who possess the required abilities. _the different abilities demanded._ it is the business of psychology to make a careful analysis of the specific abilities required in all the various works of life. there are hundreds of occupations and often much differentiation of work within an occupation. it is for the psychologist of the future to make this analysis and to classify the occupations with reference to the kinds of abilities demanded. of course, many of them will be found to require the same kind of ability, but just as surely, many will be found to require very special abilities. it is a great social waste to have people trying to fill such positions unless they possess the specific abilities required. it should be the work of the high school and college to explain the possibilities, and the demands in the way of ability, of the various occupations of the locality. by possibilities and demands are meant the kinds of abilities required and the rewards that can be expected, the kind of life which the different fields offer. it is the further duty of the high school and college to find out, as far as possible, the specific abilities of the students. with this knowledge before them, the students should choose their careers, and then make specific preparation for them. the schools ought to work in close coöperation with the industries, the student working for a part of the day in school and a part in the industries. this would help much in leading the student to understand the industries and in ascertaining his own abilities and interests. _the psychological aspects of one's work._ all occupations have a psychological aspect. they involve some trick of attention, of association, of memory. certain things must be looked for, certain habits must be formed, certain movements must be automatized. workmen should be helped to master these psychological problems, to find the most convenient ways of doing their work. workmen often do their work in the most uneconomical ways, having learned their methods through imitation, and never inquiring whether there is a more economical way. _securing efficiency._ securing efficiency is a matter of influencing men, a matter which we have already discussed. securing efficiency is quite a different matter from that treated in the preceding paragraph. a workman may have a complete knowledge of his work and be skilled in its performance, and still be a poor workman, because he does not have the right attitude toward his employer or toward his work. the employer must therefore meet the problem of making his men like their work and be loyal to their employer. the laborer must be happy and contented if he is to do good work. moreover, there is _no use in working_, or in living either, if one cannot be happy and contented. we have briefly indicated the possibilities of psychology in the various occupations and professions. there is a further application that has no reference to the practical needs of life, but to enjoyment. a psychological knowledge of human nature adds a new interest to all our social experience. the ability to understand the actions and feelings of men puts new meaning into the world. the ability to understand oneself, to analyze one's actions, motives, feelings, and thoughts, makes life more worth living. a knowledge of the sensations and sense organs adds much pleasure to life in addition to its having great practical value. briefly, a psychological knowledge of human nature adds much to the richness of life. it gives one the analytical attitude. experiences that to others are wholes, to the psychologist fall apart into their elements. such knowledge leads us to analyze and see clearly what otherwise we do not understand and see only darkly or not at all. literature and art, and all other creations and products of man take on a wholly new interest to the psychologist. summary. psychology is of service to education in ascertaining the nature of the child and the laws of learning; to law, in determining the reliability of evidence and in the prevention of crime; to medicine, in the work of diagnosis and treatment; to business, in advertising and salesmanship; to the industries, in finding the man for the place and the place for the man; to everybody, in giving a keener insight into, and understanding of, human nature. class exercises . visit a court room when a trial is in progress. note wherein psychology could be of service to the jury, to the judge, and to the attorneys. . to test the reliability of evidence, proceed as follows: take a large picture, preferably one in color and having many details; hold it before the class in a good light where all can see it. let them look at it for ten or fifteen seconds, the time depending on the complexity of the picture. the students should then write down what they saw in the picture, underscoring all the points to which they would be willing to make oath. then the students should answer a list of questions prepared by the teacher, on various points in the picture. some of these questions should be suggestive, such as, "what color is the dog?" supposing no dog to be in the picture. the papers giving the first written description should be graded on the number of items reported and on their accuracy. the answers to the questions should be graded on their accuracy. how do girls compare with boys in the various aspects of the report? what is the accuracy of the underlined points? . let the teacher, with the help of two or three students, perform before the class some act or series of acts, with some conversation, and then have the students who have witnessed the performance write an account of it, as in no.  . . divide the class into two groups. select one person from each to look at a picture as in no.  . these two people are then to write a complete account of the picture. this account is then read to another person in the same group, who then writes from memory his account and reads to another. this is to be continued till all have heard an account and written their own. you will then have two series of accounts of the same picture proceeding from two sources. it will be well for the two who look at the picture to be of very different types, let us say, one imaginative, the other matter-of-fact. do all the papers of one series have some characteristics that enable you to determine from which group they come? what conclusions and inferences do you draw from the experiment? . does the feeling of certainty make a thing true? see how many cases you can find in a week, of persons feeling sure a statement is true, when it is really false. . in the following way, try to find out something which a person is trying to conceal. prepare a list of words, inserting now and then words which have some reference to the vital point. read the words one by one to the person and have him speak the first word suggested by those read. note the time taken for the responses. a longer reaction time usually follows the incriminating words, and the subject is thrown into a visible confusion. . talk to successful physicians and find out what use they make of suggestion and other psychological principles. . spend several hours visiting different grades below the high school. in how many ways could the teachers improve their work by following psychological principles? . could the qualities of a good teacher--native and acquired--be measured by tests and experiments? . visit factories where men do skillful work and try to learn by observation what types of mind and body are required by the different kinds of work. . does the occupation which you have chosen for life demand any specific abilities? if so, do you possess them in a high degree? . could parents better train their children if they made use of psychological principles? . in how many ways will the facts learned in this course be of economic use to you in your life? in what ways will they make life more pleasurable? . make a complete outline of this chapter. references for class reading mÜnsterberg: _psychology, general and applied_, chapter xxvii-xxxiii. mÜnsterberg: _the psychology of industrial efficiency_. alphabetical list of references for class reading colvin, s. s., and bagley, w. c.: _human behavior_. the macmillan company, . davenport, c. b.: _heredity in relation to eugenics_. henry holt & company, . dewey, j.: _how we think_. d. c. heath & company, . kellicott, w. e.: _the social direction of human evolution_. d. appleton & company, . kirkpatrick, e. a.: _the fundamentals of child study_. the macmillan company, . mÜnsterberg, h.: _psychology, general and applied_. d. appleton & company, . mÜnsterberg, h.: _the psychology of industrial efficiency_. houghton mifflin company, . pillsbury, w. b.: _essentials of psychology_. the macmillan company, . pyle, w. h.: _outlines of educational psychology_. warwick and york, . pyle, w. h.: _the examination of school children_. the macmillan company, . rowe, s. h.: _habit-formation and the science of teaching_. longmans, green, & company, . titchener, e. b.: _a beginner's psychology_. the macmillan company, . glossary most of the terms given below are explained in the text, but it is hoped that this alphabetical list with brief definitions will prove helpful. it is a difficult task to make the definitions scientific and at the same time brief, simple, and clear. _abnormal._ having mental or physical characteristics widely different from those commonly found in ordinary people. _acquired nature._ those aspects of habit, skill, knowledge, ideas, and ideals that come from experience and are due to experience. _action._ muscular contractions usually producing motion of the body or of some part of the body. _adaptation._ adjustment to one's surroundings. _adaptive._ readily changing one's responses and acquiring such new responses as enable one to meet successfully new situations; also having tendencies or characteristics which enable one to be readily adjustable. _after-images._ images that follow immediately after stimulation of a sense organ, and resulting from this stimulation. _association._ binding together ideas through experiencing them together. _attention._ relative clearness of perceptions and ideas. _attitude._ the tendency toward a particular type of response in action or a particular idea or association in thought. _bond._ the connection established in the nervous system which makes a certain response follow a certain stimulus or a certain idea follow another idea or perception. _capacity._ the possibility of learning, achieving, etc. _color blindness._ inability to experience certain colors, usually red and green. _complementary color._ complementary colors are those which, mixed in the right proportion, produce gray. _congenital._ inborn. _connection._ the nerve-path through which a stimulus produces a response or through which one idea produces or evokes another. _conscious._ having consciousness, or accompanying consciousness or producing consciousness. _consciousness._ the mental states--perceptions, ideas, feelings--which one has at any moment. _low level of consciousness._ conscious processes not so clear as others existing at the same time. _high level of consciousness._ conscious processes that are clear as compared to others existing at the same time. _contrast._ the enhancing or strengthening of a sensation by another of opposite quality. _correlation._ the relation that exists between two functions, characteristics, or attributes that enables us, finding one, to predict the presence of the other. _development._ the appearance, or growth, or strengthening of a characteristic. _emotion._ the pleasure-pain aspect of experience plus sensations from characteristic bodily reactions. _environment._ the objects and forces about us which affect us through our senses. _environmental instincts._ instincts which have originated, at least in part, from the periodic changes in man's environment. _eugenics._ the science of race improvement through selective breeding or proper marriages or in some cases through the prevention of marriage. _experience._ what we learn of the world through sensation and perception. _fatigue._ inability to work produced by work and which only rest will cure. _feeble-minded._ having important mental traits only poorly developed or not at all. _feeling._ the pleasure-pain aspect of experience or of ideational states. _function._ the use of a thing or process, also any mental process or combination of processes considered as a unit. _genetic._ having reference to origin and development. _habits._ definite responses to definite stimuli depending upon bonds established by use after birth. _heredity._ transmission of characteristics from parent to offspring. _human nature._ the characteristics and tendencies which we have as human beings, with particular reference to mind and action. _ideals._ definite tendencies to act in definite ways. ideas of definite types of action with tendency toward the actions; ideas of definite conditions, forms, and states together with a desire to experience or possess them. _ideas._ revived perceptions. _images._ revived sensations, simpler than ideas. _imitation._ acting as we see others act. _impulse._ tendency to action. _individualistic instincts._ those instincts which more immediately serve individual survival. _individual differences._ the mental and physical differences between people. _inherited nature._ those aspects of one's nature due directly to heredity. _instincts._ definite responses produced by definite stimuli through hereditary connections in the nervous system. _intellectual habits._ definite fixed connections between ideas; definite ways of meeting typical thought situations. _intensity._ the amount or strength of a sensation or image, how far it is from nothing. _interest._ the aspect given to experience or thinking by attention and pleasure. _learning._ establishing new bonds or connections in the nervous system; acquiring habits; gaining knowledge. _memory._ the retention of experience; retained and reproduced experience. _mental set._ mental attitude or disposition. _mind._ the sum total of one's conscious states from birth to death. _nerve-path._ the route traversed by a nerve-stimulus or excitation. _original nature._ all those aspects of mind and body directly inherited. _perceive._ to be aware of a thing through sensation. _perception._ awareness of a thing through sensation or a fusion of sensations. _plasticity._ modifiability, making easy the formation of new bonds or nerve-connections. _presupposition._ a theory or hypothesis on which an argument or a system of arguments or principles is based. _primary._ first, original, elementary, perceptive experience as distinguished from ideational experience. _reaction._ the action immediately following a stimulus and produced by it. _reasoning._ thinking to a purpose; trying to meet a new situation. _reflex._ a very simple act brought about by a stimulus through an hereditary nerve-path. _response._ the act following a stimulus and produced by it. _retention._ memory; modification of the nervous system making possible the revival of experience. _science._ knowledge classified and systematized. _sensation._ primary experience; consciousness directly due to the stimulation of a sense organ. _sense._ to sense is to have sensation, to perceive. a sense is a sense organ or the ability to have sensation through a sense organ. _sense organ._ a modified nerve-end with accompanying apparatus or mechanism making possible a certain form of stimulation. _sensitive._ capable of giving rise to sensation, or transmitting a nerve-current. _sensitivity._ property of, or capacity for being sensitive. _sensory._ relating to a sense organ or to sensation. _situation._ the total environmental influences of any one moment. _socialistic instincts._ the instincts related more directly to the survival of a social group. _stimulation._ the setting up of a nerve process in a sense organ or in a nerve tract. _stimulus._ that which produces stimulation. _subnormal._ having characteristics considerably below the normal. _tendency._ probability of a nerve-current taking a certain direction due to nerve-organization. _thinking._ the passing of images and ideas. _thought._ thinking; an idea or group of ideas. _training._ establishing nerve connection or bonds. _vividness._ clearness of sensations, perceptions, images, and ideas. index abilities, specialized, ability, unusual, adaptation of vision, after-images, visual, ancestors,  f. anger, appearance of instincts, applied psychology, - ,  ff. association of ideas, astigmatism, attention,  ff.; and will, . attitude, behavior, bodily conditions, brain, brightness, sensation of, business, causality, , centrally initiated action, child, nature of, cold, sense of, collecting instinct, college, function of, color blindness, color mixture, color, sensation of, completion test, concentrated practice, consciousness, conservatism, costly temper test, cramming, criminal, the,  f. curriculum, darwin, defects of sense organs, development, individual,  ff.; racial, - ; significance of and causality, - direct method, dizziness, organs that give us sense of, dramatization, drill in school subjects, - dynamic, world as, economical practice,  ff. education, ; aim of, ; preparatory, ; science of,  ff. educational inferences, educational psychology,  ff. efficiency, , emotions,  ff. environment, environmental instincts, envy, evolution,  ff. exceptions, , excursions, experience, ; organization of, experiment,  ff. eye, the, eye defects,  ff. eyestrain, farsightedness, fatigue, fear, feeble-mindedness, feeling,  ff. fighting instincts, formal drill, iii, free association frequency surface, free association test, frequency of experience, gang instinct, genetic view of childhood, genius, habit,  ff.; and nerve path, ; how formed,  ff.; importance in life, ; intellectual, ; moral, ; of thought, ; results of, ; specific, hearing, ; defects of, heredity,  ff. heredity _vs._ environment, heritage, social, high school and fourth grade abilities compared, high school, function of, home and moral training, idea, ideas, imitation,  ff. imitation in ideals, incidental drill, individual development,  ff. individual differences,  ff. individualistic instincts, industry, influencing men, inheritance, inherited tendencies,  ff. initiative, instincts,  ff.; classification of, ; significance of, interest, intervals between practice, jealousy, joints, sense organs in, jost's law, language and thinking,  ff. language study, latin, law, service of psychology to, learning and remembering, learning by wholes, life occupations, logical memory,  ff. meaning,  ff. medicine, memories, kinds of, memory,  ff.; and age and sex, ; and habit, ; and school standing, ; and thinking, ; factors of,  ff.; good, dangers resulting from, ; kinds of, mendelian principle, mental development, mental differences, ; detection of, ; importance of,  ff. mental functions developed, mental set, mental tests,  ff. mind and body,  ff. mood, moral training,  ff. motive, muscular speed, museum, school,  ff. musical ability, nearsightedness, needs of child, nerve tendency, norms in mental tests,  ff. occupations, opposites test,  ff. organization of experience,  ff. pain sense, parents, and habit-formation of children,  ff., perception, physiological basis of memory, piano playing, , pitch, plasticity, play, pleasure and habit, pleasure, higher forms of, practice, , primary experience, psychology and culture, psychology defined, ; method of, ; problems of, race, development of,  ff.; improvement of, ranking students, reasoning, ; training in, recalling forgotten names, recency of experience, regeneration, repetition, respect for authority, resemblance, retina, the,  f. revived experience, rigidity, rote memory, rules for habit-formation, salesmanship, school, and habit, ; and moral training,  f. schoolhouse, community center,  f. science, scientific law, scientist,  ff. securing efficiency, selecting habits, sense organs, affects of stimulating, , ; knowledge through, sleight's experiment, smell, social life of children, social tendencies, stimulation, stimulus and response, study, learning how to, subnormal children, substitution test, taste, teacher, function of in memory work, ; function of in habit-formation, teaching too abstract, temperament, tendons, sense organs in, thinking,  ff., touch, transfer of training,  ff., truancies, typewriting, ,  ff. vision, ; importance of, visual contrast, vividness and intensity of experience, wandering, warmth, sense of, weight, diagram showing frequency surface of, word-building test, work and psychology, ontario normal school manuals science of education authorized by the minister of education toronto the ryerson press copyright, canada, , by the minister of education for ontario second printing, . third printing, . contents part i the principles of education chapter i page nature and purpose of education conditions of growth and development worth in human life factors in social efficiency chapter ii forms of reaction instinctive reaction habitual reaction conscious reaction factors in process experience relative value of experiences influence of conscious reaction chapter iii process of education conscious adjustment education as adjustment education as control of adjustment requirements of the instructor chapter iv the school curriculum purposes of curriculum dangers in use of curriculum chapter v educational institutions the school other educative agents the church the home the vocation other institutions chapter vi the purpose of the school civic views individualistic views the eclectic view chapter vii divisions of educational study control of experience the instructor's problems general method special methods school management history of education part ii methodology chapter viii general method subdivisions of method method and mind chapter ix the lesson problem nature of problem need of problem pupil's motive awakening interest knowledge of problem how to set problem examples of motivation chapter x learning as a selecting activity the selecting process law of preparation value of preparation precautions necessity of preparation examples of preparation chapter xi learning as a relating activity nature of synthesis interaction of processes knowledge unified chapter xii application of knowledge types of action nature of expression types of expression value of expression dangers of omitting expression and impression chapter xiii forms of lesson presentation the lecture method the text-book method uses of text-book abuse of text-book the developing method the objective method the illustrative method precautions modes of presentation compared chapter xiv classification of knowledge acquisition of particular knowledge through senses through imagination by deduction acquisition of general knowledge by conception by induction applied knowledge general processes of acquiring knowledge similar chapter xv modes of learning development of particular knowledge learning through senses learning through imagination learning by deduction examples for study development of general knowledge the conceptual lesson the inductive lesson the formal steps conception as learning process induction as learning process further examples the inductive-deductive lesson chapter xvi the lesson unit whole to parts parts to whole precautions chapter xvii lesson types the study lesson the recitation lesson conducting recitation lesson the drill lesson the review lesson the topical review the comparative review chapter xviii questioning qualifications of good questioner purposes of questioning socratic questioning the question the answer limitations part iii educational psychology chapter xix consciousness value of educational psychology limitations methods of psychology phases of consciousness chapter xx mind and body the nervous system the cortex reflex acts characteristics of nervous matter chapter xxi instinct human instincts curiosity imitation play play in education chapter xxii habit formation of habits value of habits improvement of habits chapter xxiii attention attention selective involuntary attention non-voluntary attention voluntary attention attention in education chapter xxiv the feeling of interest classes of feelings interest in education development of interests chapter xxv sense perception genesis of perception factors in sensation classification of sensations education of the senses chapter xxvi memory and apperception distinguished factors of memory conditions of memory types of recall localization of time classification of memories memory in education apperception conditions of apperception factors in apperception chapter xxvii imagination types of imagination passive active uses of imagination chapter xxviii thinking conception factors in concept aims of conceptual lessons the definition judgment errors in judgment reasoning deduction induction development of reasoning power chapter xxix feeling conditions of feeling tone sensuous feelings emotion conditions of emotion other types of feeling mood disposition temperament sentiments chapter xxx the will types of movement development of control volition factors in volitional act abnormal types of will chapter xxxi child study methods of child study periods of development infancy childhood adolescence individual differences appendix suggested readings the science of education part i. principles of education chapter i nature and purpose of education =value of scientific knowledge.=--in the practice of any intelligent occupation or art, in so far as the practice attains to perfection, there are manifested in the processes certain scientific principles and methods to which the work of the one practising the art conforms. in the successful practice, for example, of the art of composition, there are manifested the principles of rhetoric; in that of housebuilding, the principles of architecture; and in that of government, the principles of civil polity. in practising any such art, moreover, the worker finds that a knowledge of these scientific principles and methods will guide him in the correct practice of the art,--a knowledge of the science of rhetoric assisting in the art of composition; of the science of architecture, in the art of housebuilding; and of the science of civil polity, in the art of government. =the science of education.=--if the practice of teaching is an intelligent art, there must, in like manner, be found in its processes certain principles and methods which may be set forth in systematic form as a science of education, and applied by the educator in the art of teaching. assuming the existence of a science of education, it is further evident that the student-teacher should make himself acquainted with its leading principles, and likewise learn to apply these principles in his practice of the art of teaching. to this end, however, it becomes necessary at the outset to determine the limits of the subject-matter of the science. we shall, therefore, first consider the general nature and purpose of education so far as to decide the facts to be included in this science. conditions of growth and development =a. physical growth.=--although differing in their particular conception of the nature of education, all educators agree in setting the child as the central figure in the educative process. as an individual, the child, like other living organisms, develops through a process of inner changes which are largely conditioned by outside influences. in the case of animals and plants, physical growth, or development, is found to consist of changes caused in the main through the individual responding to external stimulation. taking one of the simplest forms of animal life, for example, the amoeba, we find that when stimulated by any foreign matter not constituting its food, say a particle of sand, such an organism at once withdraws itself from the stimulating elements. on the other hand, if it comes in contact with suitable food, the amoeba not only flows toward it, but by assimilating it, at once begins to increase in size, or grow, until it finally divides, or reproduces, itself as shown in the following figures. hence the amoeba as an organism is not only able to react appropriately toward different stimuli, but is also able to change itself, or develop, by its appropriate reactions upon such stimulations. in plant life, also, the same principle holds. as long as a grain of corn, wheat, etc., is kept in a dry place, the life principle stored up within the seed is unable to manifest itself in growth. when, on the other hand, it is appropriately stimulated by water, heat, and light, the seed awakens to life, or germinates. in other words, the seed reacts upon the external stimulations of water, heat, and light, and manifests the activity known as growth, or development. thus all physical growth, whether of the plant or the animal, is conditioned on the energizing of the inherent life principle, in response to appropriate stimulation of the environment. [illustration: a. simple amoeba. b. an amoeba developing as a result of assimilating food. c. an amoeba about to divide, or propagate.] =b. development in human life.=--in addition to its physical nature, human life has within it a spiritual law, or principle, which enables the individual to respond to suitable stimulations and by that means develop into an intelligent and moral being. when, for instance, waves of light from an external object stimulate the nervous system through the eye, man is able, through his intelligent nature, to react mentally upon these stimulations and, by interpreting them, build up within his experience conscious images of light, colour, and form. in like manner, when the nerves in the hand are stimulated by an external object, the mind is able to react upon the impressions and, by interpreting them, obtain images of touch, temperature, and weight. in the sphere of action, also, the child who is stimulated by the sight of his elder pounding with a hammer, sweeping with a broom, etc., reacts imitatively upon such stimulations, and thus acquires skill in action. so also when stimulated by means of his human surroundings, as, for example, through the kindly acts of his mother, father, etc., he reacts morally toward these stimulations and thus develops such social qualities as sympathy, love, and kindness. nor are the conditions of development different in more complex intellectual problems. if a child is given nine blocks on which are printed the nine digits, and is asked to arrange them in the form of a square so that each of the horizontal and the vertical columns will add up to fifteen, there is equally an inner growth through stimulation and response. in such a case, since the answer is unknown to the child, the problem serves as a stimulation to his mind. furthermore, it is only by reacting upon this problem with his present knowledge of the value of the various digits when combined in threes, as , , ; , , ; , , ; , , ; etc., that the necessary growth of knowledge relative to the solution of the problem will take place within the mind. worth in human life but the possession of an intellectual and moral nature which responds to appropriate stimulations implies, also, that as man develops intellectually, he will find meaning in human life as realized in himself and others. thus he becomes able to recognize worth in human life and to determine the conditions which favour its highest growth, or development. =the worthy life not a natural growth.=--granting that it is thus possible to recognize that "life is not a blank," but that it should develop into something of worth, it by no means follows that the young child will adequately recognize and desire a worthy life, or be able to understand and control the conditions which make for its development. although, indeed, there is implanted in his nature a spiritual tendency, yet his early interests are almost wholly physical and his attitude impulsive and selfish. left to himself, therefore, he is likely to develop largely as a creature of appetite, controlled by blind passions and the chance impressions of the moment. until such time, therefore, as he obtains an adequate development of his intellectual and moral life, his behaviour conforms largely to the wants of his physical nature, and his actions are irrational and wasteful. under such conditions the young child, if left to himself to develop in accordance with his native tendencies through the chance impressions which may stimulate him from without, must fall short of attaining to a life of worth. for this reason education is designed to control the growth, or development, of the child, by directing his stimulations and responses in such a way that his life may develop into one of worth. =character of the worthy life.=--if, however, it is possible to add to the worth of the life of the child by controlling and modifying his natural reactions, the first problem confronting the scientific educator is to decide what constitutes a life of worth. this question belongs primarily to ethics, or the science of right living, to which the educator must turn for his solution. here it will be learned that the higher life is one made up of moral relations. in other words, the perfect man is a social man and the perfect life is a life made up of social rights and duties, wherein one is able to realize his own good in conformity with the good of others, and seek his own happiness by including within it the happiness of others. but to live a life of social worth, man must gain such control over his lower physical wants and desires that he can conform them to the needs and rights of others. he must, in other words, in adapting himself to his social environment, develop a sense of duty toward his fellows which will cause him to act in co-operation with others. he must refuse, for instance, to satisfy his own want by causing want to others, or to promote his own desires by giving pain to others. secondly, he must obtain such control over his physical surroundings, including his own body, that he is able to make these serve in promoting the common good. in the worthy life, therefore, man has so adjusted himself to his fellow men that he is able to co-operate with them, and has so adjusted himself to his physical surroundings that he is able to make this co-operation effective, and thus live a socially efficient life. factors in social efficiency =a. knowledge, a factor in social efficiency.=--the following simple examples will more fully demonstrate the factors which enter into the socially efficient life. the young child, for instance, who lives on the shore of one of our great lakes, may learn through his knowledge of colour to distinguish between the water and the sky on the horizon line. this knowledge, he finds, however, does not enter in any degree into his social life within the home. when on the same basis, however, he learns to distinguish between the ripe and the unripe berries in the garden, he finds this knowledge of service in the community, or home, life, since it enables him to distinguish the fruit his mother may desire for use in the home. one mark of social efficiency, therefore, is to possess knowledge that will enable us to serve effectively in society. =b. skill, a factor in social efficiency.=--in the sphere of action, also, the child might acquire skill in making stones skip over the surface of the lake. here, again, however, the acquired skill would serve no purpose in the community life, except perhaps occasionally to enable him to amuse himself or his fellows. when, on the other hand, he acquires skill in various home occupations, as opening and closing the gates, attending to the furnace, harnessing and driving the horse, or playing a musical instrument, he finds that this skill enables him in some measure to serve in the community life of which he is a member. a second factor in social efficiency, therefore, is the possession of such skill as will enable us to co-operate effectively within our social environment. =c. right feeling, a factor in social efficiency.=--but granting the possession of adequate knowledge and skill, a man may yet fall far short of the socially efficient life. the machinist, for instance, may know fully all that pertains to the making of an excellent engine for the intended steamboat. he may further possess the skill necessary to its actual construction. but through indifference or a desire for selfish gain, this man may build for the vessel an engine which later, through its poor construction, causes the loss of the ship and its crew. a third necessary requisite in social efficiency, therefore, is the possession of a sense of duty which compels us to use our knowledge and skill with full regard to the feelings and rights of others. thus a certain amount of socially useful knowledge, a certain measure of socially effective skill, and a certain sense of moral obligation, or right feeling, all enter as factors into the socially efficient life. formal education assuming that the educator is thus able to distinguish what constitutes a life of worth, and to recognize and in some measure control the stimulations and reactions of the child, it is evident that he should be able to devise ways and means by which the child may grow into a more worthy, that is, into a more socially efficient, life. such an attempt to control the reactions of the child as he adjusts himself to the physical and social world about him, in order to render him a more socially efficient member of the society to which he belongs, is described as formal education. chapter ii forms of reaction instinctive reaction since the educator aims to direct the development of the child by controlling his reactions upon his physical and social surroundings, we have next to consider the forms under which these reactions occur. even at birth the human organism is endowed with certain tendencies, which enable it to react effectively upon the presentation of appropriate stimuli. our instinctive movements, such as sucking, hiding, grasping, etc., being inherited tendencies to react under given conditions in a more or less effective manner for our own good, constitute one type of reactive movement. at birth, therefore, the child is endowed with powers, or tendencies, which enable him to adapt himself more or less effectively to his surroundings. because, however, the child's early needs are largely physical, many of his instincts, such as those of feeding, fighting, etc., lead only to self-preservative acts, and are, therefore, individual rather than social in character. even these individual tendencies, however, enable the child to adjust himself to his surroundings, and thus assist that physical growth without which, as will be learned later, there could be no adequate intellectual and moral development. but besides these, the child inherits many social and adaptive tendencies--love of approbation, sympathy, imitation, curiosity, etc., which enable him of himself to participate in some measure in the social life about him. =instinct and education.=--our instincts being inherited tendencies, it follows that they must cause us to react in a somewhat fixed manner upon particular external stimulation. for this reason, it might be assumed that these tendencies would build up our character independently of outside interference or direction. if such were the case, instinctive reactions would not only lie beyond the province of formal education, but might even seriously interfere with its operation, since our instinctive acts differ widely in value from the standpoint of the efficient life. it is found, however, that human instincts may not only be modified but even suppressed through education. for example, as we shall learn in the following paragraphs, instinctive action in man may be gradually supplanted by more effective habitual modes of reaction. although, therefore, the child's instinctive tendencies undoubtedly play a large part in the early informal development of his character outside the school, it is equally true that they can be brought under the direction of the educator in the work of formal education. for that reason a more thorough study of instinctive forms of reaction, and of their relation to formal education, will be made in chapter xxi. habitual reaction a second form of reaction is known as habit. on account of the plastic character of the matter constituting the nervous tissue in the human organism, any act, whether instinctive, voluntary, or accidental, if once performed, has a tendency to repeat itself under like circumstances, or to become habitual. the child, for example, when placed amid social surroundings, by merely yielding to his general tendencies of imitation, sympathy, etc., will form many valuable modes of habitual reaction connected with eating, dressing, talking, controlling the body, the use of household implements, etc. for this reason the early instinctive and impulsive acts of the child gradually develop into definite modes of action, more suited to meet the particular conditions of his surroundings. =habit and education.=--furthermore, the formation of these habitual modes of reaction being largely conditioned by outside influences, it is possible to control the process of their formation. for this reason, the educator is able to modify the child's natural reactions, and develop in their stead more valuable habits. no small part of the work of formal education, therefore, must consist in adding to the social efficiency of the child by endowing him with habits making for neatness, regularity, accuracy, obedience, etc. a detailed study of habit in its relation to education will be made in chapter xxii. conscious reaction =an example.=--the third and highest form of human reaction is known as ideal, or conscious, reaction. in this form of reaction the mind, through its present ideas, reacts upon some situation or difficulty in such a way as to adjust itself satisfactorily to the problem with which it is faced. as an example of such a conscious reaction, or adjustment, may be taken the case of a young lad who was noticed standing over a stationary iron grating through which he had dropped a small coin. a few moments later the lad was seen of his own accord to take up a rod lying near, smear the end with tar and grease from the wheel of a near by wagon, insert the rod through the grating, and thus recover his lost coin. an analysis of the mental movements involved previously to the actual recovery of the coin will illustrate in general the nature of a conscious reaction, or adjustment. =factors involved in process.=--in such an experience the consciousness of the lad is at the outset occupied with a definite problem, or felt need, demanding adjustment--the recovering of the lost coin, which need acts as a stimulus to the consciousness and gives direction and value to the resulting mental activity. acting under the demands of this problem, or need, the mind displays an intelligent initiative in the selecting of ideas--stick, adhesion, tar, etc., felt to be of value for securing the required new adjustment. the mind finally combines these selected ideas into an organized system, or a new experience, which is accepted mentally as an adequate solution of the problem. the following factors are found, therefore, to enter into such an ideal, or conscious, reaction: . _the problem._--the conscious reaction is the result of a definite problem, or difficulty, presented in consciousness and grasped by the mind as such--how to recover the coin. . _a selecting process._--to meet the solution of this problem use is made of ideas which already form a part of the lad's present experience, or knowledge, and which are felt by him to have a bearing on the presented problem. . _a relating process._--these elements of former experience are organized by the child into a mental plan which he believes adequate to solve the problem before him. . _application._--this resulting mental plan serves to guide a further physical reaction, which constitutes the actual removal of the difficulty--the recovery of the coin. =significance of conscious reactions.=--in a conscious reaction upon any situation, or problem, therefore, the mind first uses its present ideas, or experience, in weighing the difficulties of the situation, and it is only after it satisfies itself in theory that a solution has been reached that the physical response, or application of the plan, is made. hence the individual not only directs his actions by his higher intelligent nature, but is also able to react effectively upon varied and unusual situations. this, evidently, is not so largely the case with instinctive or habitual reactions. for efficient action, therefore, there must often be an adequate mental adjustment prior to the expression of the physical action. for this reason the value of consciousness consists in the guidance it affords us in meeting the demands laid upon us by our surroundings, or environment. this will become more evident, however, by a brief examination into the nature of experience itself. experience =its value.=--in the above example of conscious adjustment it was found that a new experience arises naturally from an effort to meet some need, or problem, with which the mind is at the time confronted. our ideas, therefore, naturally organize themselves into new experiences, or knowledge, to enable us to gain some desired end. it was in order to effect the recovery of the lost coin, for example, that conscious effort was put forth by the lad to create a mental plan which should solve the problem. primarily, therefore, man is a doer and his ideas, or knowledge, is meant to be practical, or to be applied in directing action. it is this fact, indeed, which gives meaning and purpose to the conscious states of man. hour by hour new problems arise demanding adjustment; the mind grasps the import of the situation, selects ways and means, organizes these into an intelligent plan, and directs their execution, thus enabling us: not without aim to go round in an eddy of purposeless dust. =its theoretic or intellectual value.=--but owing to the value which thus attaches to any experience, a new experience may be viewed as desirable apart from its immediate application to conduct. although, for instance, there is no immediate physical need that one should learn how to resuscitate a drowning person, he is nevertheless prepared to make of it a problem, because he feels that such knowledge regarding his environment may enter into the solution of future difficulties. thus the value of new experience, or knowledge, is often remote and intellectual, rather than immediate and physical, and looks to the acquisition of further experience quite as much as to the directing of present physical movement. beyond the value they may possess in relation to the removal of present physical difficulty, therefore, experiences may be said to possess a secondary value in that they may at any time enter into the construction of new experiences. =its growth: a. learning by direct experience.=--the ability to recall and use former experience in the upbuilding of an intelligent new experience is further valuable, in that it enables a person to secure much experience in an indirect rather than in a direct way, and thus avoid the direct experience when such would be undesirable. under direct experience we include the lessons which may come to us at first hand from our surroundings, as when the child by placing his hand upon a thistle learns that it has sharp prickles, or by tasting quinine learns that it is bitter. in this manner direct experience is a teacher, continually adjusting man to his environment; and it is evident that without an ability to retain our experiences and turn them to use in organizing a new experience without expressing it in action, all conscious adjustments would have to be secured through such a direct method. =b. learning indirectly.=--since man is able to retain his experiences and organize them into new experiences, he may, if desirable, enter into a new experience in an indirect, or theoretic, way, and thus avoid the harsher lessons of direct experience. the child, for example, who knows the discomfort of a pin-prick may apply this, without actual expression, in interpreting the danger lurking in the thorn. in like manner the child who has fallen from his chair realizes thereby, without giving it expression, the danger of falling from a window or balcony. it is in this indirect, or theoretic, way that children in their early years acquire, by injunction and reproof, much valuable knowledge which enables them to avoid the dangers and to shun the evils presented to them by their surroundings. by the same means, also, man is able to extend his knowledge to include the experiences of other men and even of other ages. =relative value of experiences.=--while the value of experience consists in its power to adjust man to present or future problems, and thus render his action more efficient, it is to be noted that different experiences may vary in their value. many of these, from the point of their value in meeting future problems or making adjustments, must appear trivial and even useless. others, though adapted to meet our needs, may do this in a crude and ineffective manner. as an illustration of such difference in value, compare the effectiveness and accuracy of the notation possessed by primitive men as illustrated in the following strokes: , , , , , , etc., with that of our present system of notation as suggested in: , , , , , , , etc. in like manner to experience that ice is cold is trivial in comparison with experiencing its preservative effects as seen in cold storage or its medicinal effects in certain diseases; to know that soda is white would be trivial in comparison with a knowledge of its properties in baking. =man should participate in valuable experiences.=--of the three forms of human reaction, instinctive, habitual, and conscious, or ideal, it is evident that, owing to its rational character, ideal reaction is not only the most effective, but also the only one that will enable man to adjust himself to unusual situations. for this reason, and because of the difference in value of experiences themselves, it is further evident that man should participate in those experiences which are most effective in facilitating desired adjustments or in directing right conduct. it is found, moreover, that this participation can be effected by bringing the child's experiencing during his early years directly under control. it is held by some, indeed, that the whole aim of education is to reconstruct and enrich the experiences of the child and thereby add to his social efficiency. although this conception of education leaves out of view the effects of instinctive and habitual reaction, it nevertheless covers, as we shall see later, no small part of the purpose of formal education. influence of conscious reaction =a. on instinctive action.=--before concluding our survey of the various forms of reaction, it may be noted that both instinctive and habitual action are subject to the influence of conscious reaction. as a child's early instinctive acts develop into fixed habits, his growing knowledge aids in making these habits intelligent and effective. consciousness evidently aids, for example, in developing the instinctive movements of the legs into the rhythmic habitual movements of walking, and those of the hands into the later habits of holding the spoon, knife, cup, etc. greater still would be the influence of consciousness in developing the crude instinct of self-preservation into the habitual reactions of the spearman or boxer. in general, therefore, instinctive tendencies in man are subject to intelligent training, and may thereby be moulded into effective habits of reaction. =b. on habitual action.=--further new habits may be established and old ones improved under the direction of conscious reaction. when a child first learns to represent the number four by the symbol, the problem is necessarily met at first through a conscious adjustment. in other words, the child must mentally associate into a single new experience the number idea and certain ideas of form and of muscular movement. although, however, the child is conscious of all of these factors when he first attempts to give expression to this experience, it is clear that very soon the expressive act of writing the number is carried on without any conscious direction of the process. in other words, the child soon acquires the habit of performing the act spontaneously, or without direction from the mind. inversely, any habitual mode of action, in whatever way established, may, if we possess the necessary experience, be represented in idea and be accepted or corrected accordingly. a person, for instance, who has acquired the necessary knowledge of the laws of hygiene, may represent ideally both his own and the proper manner of standing, sitting, reclining, etc., and seek to modify his present habits accordingly. the whole question of the relation of conscious to habitual reaction will, however, be considered in chapter xxii. chapter iii the process of education conscious adjustment from the example of conscious adjustment previously considered, it would appear that the full process of such an adjustment presents the following characteristics: . _the problem._--the individual conceives the existence within his environment of a difficulty which demands adjustment, or which serves as a problem calling for solution. . _a selecting process._--with this problem as a motive, there takes place within the experience of the individual a selecting of ideas felt to be of value for solving the problem which calls for adjustment. . _a relating process._--these relevant ideas are associated in consciousness and form a new experience believed to overcome the difficulty involved in the problem. this new experience is accepted, therefore, mentally, as a satisfactory plan for meeting the situation, or, in other words, it adjusts the individual to the problem in hand. . _expression._--this new experience is expressed in such form as is requisite to answer fully the need felt in the original problem. education as adjustment =example from writing.=--an examination of any ordinary educative process taken from school-room experience will show that it involves in some degree the factors mentioned above. as a very simple example, may be taken the case of a young child learning to form capital letters with short sticks. assuming that he has already copied letters involving straight lines, such as a, h, etc., the child, on meeting such a letter as c or d, finds himself face to face with a new problem. at first he may perhaps attempt to form the curves by bending the short thin sticks. hereupon, either through his own failure or through some suggestion of his teacher, he comes to see a short, straight line as part of a large curve. thereupon he forms the idea of a curve composed of a number of short, straight lines, and on this principle is able to express himself in such forms as are shown here. [illustration] [illustration] in this simple process of adjustment there are clearly involved the four stages referred to above, as follows: . _the problem._--the forming of a curved letter by means of straight sticks. . _a selecting process._--selecting of the ideas straight and curved and the fixing of attention upon them. . _a relating process._--an organization of the selected ideas into a new experience in which the curve is viewed as made up of a number of short, straight lines. . _expression._--working out the physical expression of the new experience in the actual forming of capitals involving curved lines. =example from arithmetic.=--an analysis of the process by which a child learns that there are four twos in eight, shows also the following factors: . _the problem._--to find out how many twos are contained in the vaguely known eight. . _a selecting process._--to meet this problem the pupil is led from his present knowledge of the number two, to proceed to divide eight objects into groups of two; and, from his previous knowledge of the number four, to measure the number of these groups of two. . _a relating process._--next the three ideas two, four, and eight are translated into a new experience, constituting a mental solution of the present problem. . _expression._--this new experience expresses itself in various ways in the child's dealings with the number problems connected with his environment. =example from geometry.=--taking as another example the process by which a student may learn that the exterior angle of a triangle is equal to the two interior and opposite angles, there appear also the same stages, thus: . _the problem._--the conception of a difficulty or problem in the geometrical environment which calls for solution, or adjustment--the relation of the angle _a_ to the angles _b_ and _c_ in figure . [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] [illustration: fig. ] . _a selecting process._--with this problem as a motive there follows, as suggested by figure , the selecting of a series of ideas from the previous experiences of the pupil which seem relative to, or are considered valuable for solving the problem in hand. . _a relating process._--these relative ideas pass into the formation of a new experience, as illustrated in figure , constituting the solution of the problem. . _expression._--a further applying of this experience may be made in adjusting the pupil to other problems connected with his geometric environment; as, for example, to discover the sum of the interior angles of a triangle. education as control of adjustment the examples of adjustment taken from school-room practice, are found, however, to differ in one important respect from the previous example taken from practical life. this difference consists in the fact that in the recovery of the coin the modification of experience took place wholly without control or direction other than that furnished by the problem itself. here the problem--the recovery of the coin--presents itself to the child and is seized upon as a motive by his attention solely on account of its own value; secondly, this problem of itself directs a flow of relative images which finally bring about the necessary adjustment. in the examples taken from the school, on the other hand, the processes of adjustment are, to a greater or less extent, directed and regulated through the presence of some type of educative agent. for instance, when a student goes through the process of learning the relation of the exterior angle to the two interior and opposite angles, the control of the process appears in the fact that the problem is directly presented to the student as an essential step in a sequence of geometric problems, or adjustments. the same direction or control of the process is seen again in the fact that the student is not left wholly to himself, as in the first example, to devise a solution, but is aided and directed thereto, first, in that the ideas bearing upon the problem have previously been made known to the student through instruction, and secondly, in that the selecting and adjusting of these former ideas to the solution of the new problem is also directed through the agency of either a text-book or a teacher. a conscious adjustment, therefore, which is brought about without direction from another, implies only a process of learning on the part of the child, while a controlled adjustment implies both a process of learning on the part of the child and a process of teaching on the part of an instructor. for scientific treatment, therefore, it is possible to limit formal education, so far as it deals with conscious adjustment, to those modifications of experience which are directed or controlled through an educative agent, or, in other words, are brought about by means of instruction. requirements of the instructor formal education being an attempt to direct the development of the child by controlling his stimulations and responses through the agency of an instructor, we may now understand in general the necessary qualifications and offices of the teacher in directing the educative process. . the teacher must understand what constitutes the worthy life; that is, he must have a definite aim in directing the development of the child. . he must know what stimulations, or problems, are to be presented to the child in order to have him grow, or develop, into this life of worth. . he must know how the physical, intellectual, and moral nature of the child reacts upon these appropriate stimulations. . he must have skill in presenting the stimuli, or problems, to the child and in bringing its mind to react appropriately thereon. . he must, in the case of conscious reactions, see that the child not only acquires the new experience, but that he is also able to apply it effectively. in other words, he must see that the child acquires not only knowledge, but also skill in the use of knowledge. chapter iv the school curriculum =valuable experience: race knowledge.=--since education aims largely to increase the effectiveness of the moral conduct of the child by adding to the value of his experience, the science of education must decide the basis on which the educator is to select experiences that possess such a value in directing conduct. now a study of the progress of a nation's civilization will show that this advancement is brought about through the gradual interpretation of the resources at the nation's command, and the turning of these resources to the attainment of human ends. thus there is gradually built up a community, or race, experience, in which the materials of the physical, economic, political, moral, and religious life are organized and brought under control. by this means is constituted a body of race experience, the value of which has been tested in its direct application to the needs of the social life of the community. it is from the more typical forms of this social, or race, experience that education draws the experience, or problems, for the educative process. in other words, through education the experiences of the child are so reconstructed that he is put in possession of the more typical and more valuable forms of race experience, and thus rendered more efficient in his conduct, or action. purposes of curriculum =represents race experiences.=--so far as education aims to have the child enter into typical valuable race experiences, this can be accomplished only by placing these experiences before him as problems in such form that he may realize them through a regular process of learning. the purpose of the school curriculum is, therefore, to provide such problems as may, under the direction of the instructor, control the conscious reactions of the child, and enable him to participate in these more valuable race experiences. in this sense arithmetic becomes a means for providing the child with a series of problems which may give him the experiences which the race has found valuable in securing commercial accuracy and precision. in like manner, constructive work provides a series of problems in which the child experiences how the race has turned the materials of nature to human service. history provides problems whose solution gives the experience which enables the pupil to meet the political and social conditions of his own time. physics shows how the forces of nature have become instruments for the service of man. geography shows how the world is used as a background for social life; and grammar, what principles control the use of the race language as a medium for the communication of thought. =classifies race experience.=--without such control of the presentation of these racial experiences as is made possible through the school and the school curriculum, the child would be likely to meet them only as they came to him in the actual processes of social life. these processes are, however, so complex in modern society, that, in any attempt to secure experience directly, the child is likely to be overwhelmed by their complex and unorganized character. the message boy in the dye-works, for example, may have presented to him innumerable problems in number, language, physics, chemistry, etc., but owing to the confused, disorganized, and mingled character of the presentation, these are not likely to be seized upon by him as direct problems calling for adjustment. in the school curriculum, on the other hand, the different phases of this seemingly unorganized mass of experiences are abstracted and presented to the child in an organized manner, the different phases being classified as facts of number, reading, spelling, writing, geography, physics, chemistry, etc. thus the school curriculum classifies for the child the various phases of this race experience and provides him with a comprehensive representation of his environment. =systematizes race experience.=--the school curriculum further presents each type of experience, or each subject, in such a systematic order that the various experiences may develop out of one another in a natural way. if the child were compelled to meet his number facts altogether in actual life, the impressions would be received without system or order, now a discount experience, next a problem in fractions, at another time one in interest or mensuration. in the school curriculum, on the other hand, the child is in each subject first presented with the simple, near, and familiar, these in turn forming basic experiences for learning the complex, the remote, and the unknown. thus he is able in geography, for example, on the basis of his simple and known local experiences, to proceed to a realization of the whole world as the background for human life. =clarifies race experience.=--finally, when a child is given problems by means of the school curriculum, the experiences come to him in a pure form. that is, the trivial, accidental, and distracting elements which are necessarily bound up with these experiences when they are met in the ordinary walks of life are eliminated, and the single type is presented. for instance, the child may every day meet accidentally examples of reflection and refraction of light. but these not being separated from the mass of accompanying impressions, his mind may never seize as distinct problems the important relations in these experiences, and may thus fail to acquire the essential principles involved. in the school curriculum, on the other hand, under the head of physics, he has the essential aspects presented to him in such an unmixed, or pure, form that he finds relatively little difficulty in grasping their significance. thus the school curriculum renders possible an effective control of the experiencing of the child by presenting in a comprehensive form a classified, systematized, and pure representation of the more valuable features of the race experience. in other words, it provides suitable problems which may lead the child to participate more fully in the life about him. through the subjects of the school curriculum, therefore, the child may acquire much useful knowledge which would not otherwise be met, and much which, if met in ordinary life, could not be apprehended to an equal degree. dangers in use of curriculum while recognizing the educational value of the school curriculum, it should be noticed that certain dangers attach to its use as a means of providing problems for developing the experiences of the child. it is frequently argued against the school that the experiences gained therein too often prove of little value to the child in the affairs of practical life. the world of knowledge within the school, it is claimed, is so different from the world of action outside the school, that the pupil can find no connection between them. if, however, as claimed above, the value of experience consists in its use as a means of efficient control of conduct, it is evident that the experiences acquired through the school should find direct application in the affairs of life, or in other words, the school should influence the conduct, or behaviour, of the child both within and without the school. =a. child may not see connection with life.=--now the school curriculum, as has been seen, in representing the actual social life, so classifies and simplifies this life that only one type of experience--number, language, chemistry, geography, etc., is presented to the child at one time. it is evident, however, that when the child faces the problems of actual life, they will not appear in the simple form in which he meets them as represented in the school curriculum. thus, when he leaves the school and enters society, he frequently sees no connection between the complex social life outside the school and the simplified and systematized representation of that life, as previously met in the school studies. for example, when the boy, after leaving school, is set to fill an order in a wholesale drug store, he will in the one experience be compelled to use various phases of his chemical, arithmetical, writing, and bookkeeping knowledge, and that perhaps in the midst of a mass of other accidental impressions. in like manner, the girl in her home cooking might meet in a single experience a situation requiring mathematical, chemical, and physical knowledge for its successful adjustment, as in the substitution of soda and cream of tartar for baking-powder. this complex character of the problems of actual life may prove so bewildering that the person is unable to see any connection between the outside problem and his school experiences. thus school knowledge frequently fails to function to an adequate degree in the practical affairs of life. =how to avoid this danger.=--to meet this difficulty, school work must be related as closely as possible to the practical experiences of the child. this would cause the teacher, for example, to draw his problems in arithmetic, his subjects in composition, or his materials for nature study from the actual life about the child, while his lessons in hygiene would bear directly on the care of the school-room and the home, and the health of the pupils. moreover, that the work of the school may represent more fully the conditions of actual life, pupils should acquire facility in correlating different types of experience upon the same problem. in this way the child may use in conjunction his knowledge of arithmetic, language, geography, drawing, nature study, etc., in school gardening; and his arithmetic, language, drawing, art, etc., in conjunction with constructive occupations. =value of typical forms of expression.=--a chief cause in the past for the lack of connection between school knowledge and practical life was the comparative absence from the curriculum of any types of human activity. in other words, though the ideas controlling human activity were experienced by the child within the school, the materials and tools involved in the physical expression of such ideas were almost entirely absent. the result was that the physical habits connected with the practical use of knowledge were wanting. thus, in addition to the lack of any proper co-ordinating of different types of knowledge in suitable forms of activity, the knowledge itself became theoretic and abstract. this danger will, however, be discussed more fully at a later stage. =b. curriculum may become fossilized.=--a second danger in the use of the school curriculum consists in the fact that, as a representation of social life, it may not keep pace with the social changes taking place outside the school. this may result in the school giving its pupils forms of knowledge which at the time have little functional value, or little relation to present life about the child. an example of this was seen some years ago in the habit of having pupils spend considerable time and energy in working intricate problems in connection with british currency. this currency having no practical place in life outside the school, the child could see no connection between that part of his school work and any actual need. another marked example of this tendency will be met in the history of education in connection with the educational practice of the last two centuries in continuing the emphasis placed on the study of the ancient languages, although the functional relation of these languages to everyday life was on the decline, and scientific knowledge was beginning to play a much more important part therein. while the school curriculum may justly represent the life of past periods of civilization so far as these reflect on, and aid in the interpreting of, the present, it is evident that in so far as the child experiences the past without any reference to present needs, the connection which should exist between the school and life outside the school must tend to be destroyed. =c. may be non-progressive.=--as a corollary to the above, is the fact that the school, when not watchful of the changes going on without the school, may fail to represent in its curriculum new and important phases of the community life. at the present time, for example, it is a debatable question whether the school curriculum is, in the matter of our industrial life, keeping pace with the changes taking place in the community. it is in this connection that one of the chief dangers of the school text-book is to be found. the text is too often looked upon as a final authority upon the particular subject-matter, rather than being treated as a mode of representing what is held valuable and true in relation to present-day interests and activities. the position of authority which the text-book thus secures, may serve as a check against even necessary changes in the attitude of the school toward any particular subject. =d. may present experience in too technical form.=--lastly, the school curriculum, even when representing present life, may introduce it in a too highly technical form. so far at least as elementary education is concerned, each type of knowledge, or each subject, should find a place on the curriculum from a consideration of its influence upon the conduct and, therefore, upon the present life of the child. there is always a danger, however, that the teacher, who may be a specialist in the subject, will wish to stress its more intellectual and abstract phases, and thus force upon the child forms of knowledge which he is not able to refer to his life needs in any practical way. this tendency is illustrated in the desire of some teachers to substitute with young children a technical study of botany and zoology, in place of more concrete work in nature study. now when the child approaches these phases of his surroundings in the form of nature study, he is able to see their influence upon his own community life. when, on the other hand, these are introduced to him in too technical a form, he is not able, in his present stage of learning, to discover this connection, and the so-called knowledge remains in his experience, if it remains at all, as uninteresting, non-significant, and non-digested information. in the elementary school at least, therefore, knowledge should not be presented to the child in such a technical and abstract way that it will seem to have no contact with daily life. chapter v educational institutions the school as man, in the progress of civilization, became more fully conscious of the worth of human life and of the possibilities of its development through educational effort, the providing of special instruction for the young naturally began to be recognized as a duty. as this duty became more and more apparent, it gave rise, on the principle of the division of labour, to corporate, or institutional, effort in this direction. by this means there has been finally developed the modern school as a fully organized corporate institution devoted to educational work, and supported as an integral part of our civil or public obligations. =origin of the school.=--to trace the origin of the school, it will be necessary to look briefly at certain marked stages of the development of civilization. the earliest and simplest forms of primitive life suggest a time when the family constituted the only type of social organization. in such a mode of life, the principle of the division of labour would be absent, the father or patriarch being the family carpenter, butcher, doctor, judge, priest, and teacher. in the two latter capacities, he would give whatever theoretic or practical instruction was received by the child. as soon, however, as a tribal form of life is met, we find the tribe or race collecting a body of experience which can be retained only by entrusting it to a selected body. this experience, or knowledge, is at first mainly of a religious character, and is possessed and handed on by a body of men forming a priesthood. such priestly bodies, or colleges, may be considered the earliest special organizations devoted to the office of teaching. as civilization gradually advanced, a mass of valuable practical knowledge relative to man's environment was secured and added to the more theoretic forms. as this practical knowledge became more complex, there was felt a greater need that the child should be made acquainted with it in some systematic manner during his early years. thus developed the conception of the school as an instrument by which such educative work might be carried on more effectively. on account of the constant increase of practical knowledge and its added importance in directing the political and economic life of the people, the civil authorities began in time to assume control of secular education. thus the government of the school as an institution gradually passed to the state, the teacher taking the place of the priest as the controlling agent in the education of the young. other educative agents =the church.=--but notwithstanding the organization of the present school as a civic institution, it is to be noticed that the church still continues to act as an educative agent. in many communities, in fact, the church is still found to retain a large control of education even of a secular type. even in communities where the church no longer exercises control over the school, she still does much, though in a more indirect way, to mould the thought and character of the community life; and is still the chief educational agent concerned in the direct attempt to enrich the religious experiences of the race. =the home.=--while much of the knowledge obtained by the child within his own home necessarily comes through self, or informal, education, yet in most homes the parent still performs in many ways the function of a teacher, both by giving special instruction to the child and by directing the formation of his habits. in certain forms of experience indeed, it is claimed by the school that the instruction should be given by the parent rather than by the teacher. in questions of morals and manners, the natural tie which unites child and parent will undoubtedly enable much of the necessary instruction to be given more effectively in the home. it is often claimed, in fact, that parents now leave too much to the school and the teacher in relation to the education of the child. =the vocation.=--another agent which may directly control the experiences of the young is found in the various vocations to which they devote themselves. this phase of education was very important in the days of apprenticeship. one essential condition in the form of agreement was that the master should instruct the apprentice in the art, or craft, to which he was apprenticed. owing to the introduction of machinery and the consequent more complex division of labour, this type of formal education has been largely eliminated. it may be noted in passing that it is through these changed conditions that night classes for mechanics, which are now being provided by our technical schools, have become an important factor in our educational system. =other educational institutions.=--finally, many clubs, institutes, and societies attempt, in a more accidental way, to convey definite instruction, and therefore serve in a sense as educational institutions. prominent among such institutions is the modern public library, which affords opportunity for independent study in practically every department of knowledge. our farmers' institutes also attempt to convey definite instruction in connection with such subjects as dairying, horticulture, agriculture, etc. many women's clubs seek to provide instruction for young women, both of a practical and also of a moral and religious character. various societies of a scientific character have also done much to spread a knowledge of nature and her laws and are likewise to be classed as educational institutions. such movements as these, while taking place without the limits of the school, may not unreasonably claim a certain recognition as educational factors in the community and should receive the sympathetic co-operation of the teacher. chapter vi the purpose of the school civic views since the school of to-day is organized and supported by the state as a special corporate body designed to carry on the work of education, it becomes of public interest to know the particular purpose served through the maintenance of such a state institution. we have already seen that the school seeks to interpret the civilized life of the community, to abstract out of it certain elements, and to arrange them in systematic or scientific order as a curriculum of study, and finally to give the child control of this experience, or knowledge. we have attempted to show further that by this means education so increases the effectiveness of the conscious reactions of the child and so modifies his instincts and his habits as to add to his social efficiency. as, however, many divergent and incomplete views are held by educators and others as to the real purpose of public instruction, it will be well at this stage to consider briefly some of the most important types of these theories. =aristocratic view.=--it may be noted that the experience, or knowledge, represented in the curriculum cannot exist outside of the knowing mind. in other words, arithmetic, grammar, history, geography, etc., are not something existing apart from mind, but only as states of consciousness. text-books, for instance, do not contain knowledge but merely symbols of knowledge, which would have no significance and give no light without a mind to interpret them. some, therefore, hold that the school, in seeking to translate this social experience into the consciousness of the young, should have as its aim merely to conserve for the future the intellectual and moral achievements of the present and the past. this they say demands of the school only that it produce an intellectual priesthood, or a body of scholars, who may conserve wisdom for the light and guidance of the whole community. thus arises the aristocratic view of the purpose of education, which sees no justification in the state attempting to provide educational opportunities for all of its members, but holds rather that education is necessary only for the leaders of society. =democratic view.=--against the above view, it is claimed by others that, while public education should undoubtedly be conducted for the benefit of the state as a whole; yet, since a chain cannot be stronger than its weakest link, the efficiency of the state must be measured by that of its individual units. the state, therefore, must aim, by means of education, to add to its own efficiency by adding to that of each and all of its members. this demands, however, that every individual should be able to meet in an intelligent way such situations as he is likely to encounter in his community life. although carried on, therefore, for the good of the state, yet education should be democratic, or universal, and should fit every individual to become a useful member of society. =these views purely civic.=--it is to be noted that though the latter view provides for the education of all as a duty of the state, yet both of the above views are purely civic in their significance, and hold that education exists for the welfare of the state as a whole and not for the individual. if, therefore, the state could be benefited by having the education of any class of citizens either limited or extended in an arbitrary way, nothing in the above conception of the purpose of state education would forbid such a course. individualistic views opposed to the civic view of education, many hold, on the other hand, that education exists for the child and not for the state, and therefore, aims primarily to promote the welfare of the individual. by these educators it is argued that, since each child is created with a separate and distinct personality, it follows that he possesses a divine right to have that personality developed independently of the claims of the community to which he belongs. according to this view, therefore, the aim of education should be in each case solely to effect some good for the individual child. these educators, however, are again found to differ concerning what constitutes this individual good. =the culture aim.=--according to the practice of many educators, education is justified on the ground that it furnishes the individual a degree of personal culture. according to this view, the worth of education is found in the fact that it puts the learner in possession of a certain amount of conventional knowledge which is held to give a polish to the individual; this polish providing a distinguishing mark by which the learned class is separated from the ignorant. it is undoubtedly true that the so-called culture of the educated man should add to the grace and refinement of social life. in this sense, culture is not foreign to the conception of individual and social efficiency. a narrow cultural view, however, overlooks the fact that man's experience is significant only when it enables him to meet the needs and problems of the present, and that, as a member of a social community, he must apply himself to the actual problems to be met within his environment. to acquire knowledge, therefore, either as a mere possession or as a mark of personal superiority, is to give to experience an unnatural value. =the utilitarian aim.=--others express quite an opposite view to the above, declaring that the aim of education is to enable the individual to get on in the world. by this is meant that education should enable us to be more successful in our business, and thus live more comfortable lives. now, so far as this practical success of the individual can be achieved in harmony with the interests of society as a whole, we may grant that education should make for individual betterment. indeed it may justly be claimed that an advancement in the comfort of the individual under such conditions really implies an increase in the comfort of society as a whole; for the man who is not able to provide for his own welfare must prove, if not a menace, at least a burden to society. if, however, it is implied that the educated man is to be placed in a position to advance his own interests irrespective of, or in direct opposition to, the rights and comforts of others, then the utilitarian view of the end of education must appear one-sided. to emphasize the good of the individual irrespective of the rights of others, and to educate all of its members with such an end in view, society would tend to destroy the unity of its own corporate life. =the psychological aim.=--according to others, although education aims to benefit the child, this benefit does not come from the acquisition of any particular type of knowledge, but is due rather to a development which takes place within the individual himself as a result of experiencing. in other words, the child as an intelligent being is born with certain attributes which, though at first only potential, may be developed into actual capacities or powers. thus it is held that the real aim of education is to develop to the full such capacities as are found already within the child. moreover, it is because the child has such possibilities of development within him, and because he starts at the very outset of his existence with a divine yearning to develop these inner powers, that he reaches out to experience his surroundings. for this reason, they argue that every individual should have his own particular capacities and powers fully and harmoniously developed. thus the true aim of education is said to be to unfold the potential life of each individual and allow it to realize itself; the purpose of the school being primarily not to make of the child a useful member of society, but rather to study the nature of the child and develop whatever potentialities are found within him as an individual. because this theory places such large emphasis on the natural tendencies and capacities of the child, it is spoken of as the psychological aim of education. =limitations of the aim.=--this view evidently differs from others in that it finds the justification for education, not primarily in the needs or rights of a larger society of which the child is a member, but rather in those of the single individual. here, however, a difficulty presents itself. if the developing of the child's capacities and tendencies constitute the real purpose of public education, may not education at times conflict with the good of the state itself? now it is evident that if a child has a tendency to lie, or steal, or inflict pain on others, the development of such tendencies must result in harm to the community at large. on the other hand, it is clear that in the case of other proclivities which the child may possess, such as industry, truthfulness, self-sacrifice, etc., the development of these cannot be separated from the idea of the good of others. to apply a purely individual aim to education, therefore, seems impossible; since we can have no standard to distinguish between good and bad tendencies, unless these are measured from a social standpoint or from a consideration of the good of others, and not from the mere tendencies and capacities of the individual. moreover, to attempt the harmonious development of all the child's tendencies and powers is not justifiable, even in the case of those tendencies which might not conflict with the good of others. as already noted, division of labour has now gone so far that the individual may profitably be relieved from many forms of social activity. this implies as a corollary, however, that the individual will place greater stress upon other forms of activity. the social, or eclectic, view moreover, because, as already noted, the child is by his very nature a social being, it follows that the good of the individual can never in reality be opposed to the good of society, and that whenever the child has in his nature any tendencies which conflict with the good of others, these do not represent his true, or social, nature. for education to suppress these, therefore, is not only fitting the child for society but also advancing the development of the child so far as his higher, or true, nature is concerned. thus the true view of the purpose of the school and of education will be a social, or eclectic, one, representing the element of truth contained in both the civic and the individualistic views. in the first place, such a view may be described as a civic one, since it is only by considering the good of others, that is of the state, that we can find a standard for judging the value of the child's tendencies. moreover, it is only by using the forms of experience, or knowledge, that the community has evolved, that conditions can be provided under which the child's tendencies may realize themselves. secondly, the true view is equally an individualistic view, for while it claims that the child is by his nature a social being, it also demands a full development of the social or moral tendencies of the individual, as being best for himself as well as for society. =this view dynamic.=--in such an eclectic view of the aim of education, it is to be noted further that society may turn education to its own advancement. by providing that an individual may develop to his uttermost such good tendencies as he may possess, education not only allows the individual to make the most of his own higher nature, but also enables him to contribute something to the advancement, or elevation, of society itself. such a conception of the aim of education, therefore, does not view the present social life as some static thing to which the child must be adapted in any formal sense, but as dynamic, or as having the power to develop itself in and through a fuller development of the higher and better tendencies within its individual members. =a caution.=--while emphasizing the social, or moral, character of the aim of education, it is to be borne in mind by the educator that this implies more than a passive possession by the individual of a certain moral sentiment. man is truly moral only when his moral character is functioning in goodness, or in _right action_. this is equivalent to declaring that the moral man must be individually efficient in action, and must likewise control his action from a regard for the rights of others. there is always a danger, however, of assuming that the development of moral character consists in giving the child some passive mark, or quality, without any necessity of having it continually functioning in conduct. but this reduces morality to a mere sentiment. in such a case, the moral aim would differ little from the cultural aim mentioned above. chapter vii divisions of educational study control of experience =significance of control.=--from our previous inquiry into the nature of education, we may notice that at least two important problems present themselves for investigation in connection with the educative process. our study of the subject-matter of education, or the school curriculum, has shown that its function as an educational instrumentality is to furnish for the child experiences of greater value, this enhanced value consisting in the greater social significance of the race experiences, or knowledge, embodied within the curriculum, when compared with the more individual experiences of the average child. it has been noted further, however, that the office of education is not merely to have the child translate this race experience into his own mind, but rather to have him add to his social efficiency by gaining an adequate power of control over these experiences. it is not, for instance, merely to know the number combinations, but to be able to meet his practical needs, that the child must master the multiplication tables. control of experience, however, as we have seen from our analysis of the learning process, implies an ability to hold an aim, or problem, in view, and a further ability to select and arrange the means of gaining the desired end. in relation to the multiplication table, therefore, control of experience implies that a person is able to apprehend the present number situation as one that needs solution, and also that he can bring, or apply, his knowledge of the table to its solution. =nature of growth of control.=--the young child is evidently not able at first to exercise this power of control over his experiences. when a very young child is aroused, say by the sound proceeding from a bell, the impression may give rise to certain random movements, but none of these indicate on his part any definite experience or purpose. when, however, under the same stimulation, in place of these random movements, the child reacts mentally in a definite way, it signifies on his part the recognition of an external object. this recognition shows that the child now has, in place of the first vague image, a more or less definite idea of the external thing. before it was vague noise; now it is a bell. but a yet more valuable control is gained by the child when he gives this idea a wider meaning by organizing it as an element into more complex experiences, as when he relates it with the idea of a fire, of dinner, or of a call to school. before it was merely a bell; now it is an alarm of fire. so far, however, as the child is lacking in the control of his experiences, he remains largely a mere creature of impulse and instinct, and is occupied with present impressions only. this implies also an inability to set up problems and solve them through a regular process of adjustment, and a consequent lack of power to arrange experiences as guides to action. in the educative process, however, as previously exemplified, we find that the child is not a slave to the passing transient impressions of the present, but is able to secure a control over his experience which enables him to set up intelligent aims, devise plans for their attainment, and apply these plans in gaining the end desired. growth of control takes place, therefore, to the extent to which the child thus becomes able to keep an end in view and to select and organize means for its realization. =elements of control.=--in the growth of control manifested in the learning process, the child, as we have noticed, becomes able to judge the value, or worth, of experience. in other words, he becomes able to distinguish between the important and the trivial, and to see the relative values of various experiences when applied to practical ends. further, he gains right feeling or an emotional warmth toward that which his intelligence affirms to be worthy, or grows to appreciate the right. thirdly, he secures a power in execution that enables him to attain to that which his judgment and feeling have set up as a desirable end. in fine, the educative process implies for the child a growth of control by which he becomes able ( ) to select worthy ends; ( ) to devise plans for their attainment; and ( ) to put these plans into successful execution. the instructor's problems the end in any learning process being to set the pupils a problem which may stimulate them to gain such an efficient control of useful experience, or knowledge, we may note two important problems confronting the teacher as an instructor: . _problem of matter._--the teacher must be so conversant with the subject-matter of the curriculum and with its value in relation to actual life, that he may select therefrom the problems and materials which will enable the child to come into possession of the desirable experiences. this constitutes the question of the subject-matter of education. . _problem of method._--the teacher must further be conversant with the process by which the child gets command of experience or with the way in which the mind of the child, in reacting upon any subject-matter, selects and organizes his knowledge into new experience and puts the same into execution. in other words, the teacher must fully understand how to direct the child successfully through the four stages of the learning process. (_a_) _general method._--in a scientific study of education it is usually assumed that the student-teacher has mastered academically the various subjects of the curriculum. in the professional school, therefore, the subject-matter of education is studied largely from the standpoint of method. in his study of method the student of education seeks first to master the details of the process of education outlined in the opening chapters under the headings of problem, selecting process, relating process, and application. by this means the teacher comes to understand in greater detail how the mind of the child reacts upon the presented problems of the curriculum in gaining control over his experiences, or, in other words, how the process of learning actually takes place within the consciousness of the child. this sub-division is treated under the head of _general method_. (_b_) _special methods._--in addition to general method, the student-teacher must study each subject of the curriculum from the standpoint of its use in setting problems, or lessons, which shall enable the child to gain control of a richer experience. this sub-division is known as _special methods_, since it considers the particular problems involved in adapting the matter of each subject to the general purpose of the educative process. . _problem of management._--from what has been seen in reference to the school as an institution organized for directing the education of the child, it is apparent that in addition to the immediate and direct control of the process of learning as involved in the method of instruction, there is the more indirect control of the process through the systematic organization and management of the school as a corporate institution. these more indirect problems connected with the control of education within the school will include, not only such topics as the organization and management of the pupils, but also the legal ways and means for providing these various educational instrumentalities. these indirect elements of control constitute a third phase of the problem of education, and their study is known as _school organization and management_. . _an historic problem._--it has been noted that the corporate institution known as the school arose as the result of the principle of the division of labour, and thus took to itself duties previously performed under other less effective conditions. thus the school presents on its organic side a history with which the teacher should be more or less familiar. on its historical side, therefore, education presents a fourth phase for study. this division of the subject is known as the _history of education_. summary the facts of education, as scientifically considered by the student-teacher, thus arrange themselves under four main heads: . general method . special methods . school organization and management . history of education the third and fourth divisions of education are always studied as separate subjects under the above heads. in dealing with special methods, also, it is customary in the study of education to treat each subject of the curriculum under its own head in both a professional and an academic way. there is left, therefore, for scientific consideration, the subject of general method, to a study of which we shall now proceed. part ii.--methodology chapter viii general method =meaning of method.=--in the last chapter it was seen that, in relation to the child, education involves a gaining of control over experiences. it has been seen further, that the child gains control of new experience whenever he goes through a process of learning involving the four steps of problem, selecting activity, relating activity, and expression. finally it has been decided that the teacher in his capacity as an instructor, by presenting children with suitable problems, may in a sense direct their selecting and relating activities and thus exercise a certain control over their learning processes. to the teacher, therefore, method will mean an ability to control the learning process in such a way that the children shall, in their turn, gain an adequate control over the new experience forming the subject-matter of any learning process. thus a detailed study by student-teachers of the various steps of the learning process, with a view to gaining knowledge and skill relative to directing pupils in their learning, constitutes for such teachers a study of general method. =subdivisions of method.=--for the student-teacher, the study of general method will involve a detailed investigation of how the child is to gain control of social experiences as outlined above, and how the teacher may bring about the same through instruction. tn such an investigation, he must examine in detail the various steps of the educative process to discover: . how the knowledge, or social experience, contained in the school curriculum should be presented to the child. this will involve an adequate study of the first step of the learning process--the problem. . how the mind, or consciousness, of the child reacts during the learning process upon the presented materials in gaining control of this knowledge. this will embrace a study of the second and third steps of the process--the selecting and relating activities. . how the child is to acquire facility in using a new experience, or in applying it to direct his conduct. this involves a particular study of the fourth step of the process--the law of expression. . how the teacher may use any outside agencies, as maps, globes, specimens, experiments, etc., to assist in directing the learning process. this involves a study of various classes of educational instrumentalities. . how the principles of general method are to be adapted to the different modes by which the learner may gain new experience, or knowledge. this will involve a study of the different kinds of lessons, or a knowledge of lesson types. method implies knowledge of mind before we proceed to such a detailed study of the educative process as a process of teaching, it should be noted that the existence of a general method is possible only provided that the growth of conscious control takes place in the mind of the child in a systematic and orderly manner. all children, for instance, must be supposed to respond in the same general way in the learning process when they are confronted with the same problem. without this they could not secure from the same lesson the same experiences and the same relative measure of control over these experiences. but if our conscious acts are so uniform that the teacher may expect from all of his pupils like responses and like states of experience under similar stimulations, then a knowledge on the part of the teacher of the orderly modes in which the mind works will be essential to an adequate control of the process of learning. now a full and systematic account of mind and its activities is set forth in the science of psychology. as the science of consciousness, or experience, psychology explains the processes by which all experience is built up, or organized, in consciousness. thus psychology constitutes a basic science for educational method. it is essential, therefore, that the teacher should have some knowledge of the leading principles of this science. for this reason, frequent reference will be made, in the study of general method, to underlying principles of psychology. the more detailed examination of these principles and of their application to educational method will, however, be postponed to a later part of the text. each of the four important steps of the learning process will now be treated in order, beginning in the next chapter with the problem. chapter ix the lesson problem =problem, a motive.=--the foregoing description and examples of the educative process have shown that new knowledge necessarily results whenever the mind faces a difficulty, or need, and adjusts itself thereto. in other words, knowledge is found to possess a practical value and to arise as man faces the difficulties, or problems, with which he is confronted. the basis of conscious activity in any direction is, therefore, a feeling of _need_. if one analyses any of his conscious acts, he will find that the motive is the satisfaction of some desire which he more or less consciously feels. the workman exerts himself at his labour because he feels the need of satisfying his artistic sense or of supplying the necessities of those who are dependent upon him; the teacher prepares the lessons he has to present and puts forth effort to teach them successfully, because he feels the need of educating the pupils committed to his care; the physician observes symptoms closely and consults authorities carefully, because he feels the need of curing his patients; the lawyer masters every detail of the case he is pleading, because he feels the need of protecting the interests of his client. what is true of adults is equally true of children in school. the pupil puts forth effort in school work because he feels that this work is meeting some of his needs. =nature of problem.=--it is not to be assumed, however, that the only problem which will prompt the individual to put forth conscious effort must be a purely physical need, such as hunger, thirst, or a distinct desire for the attainment of a definite object, as to avoid danger or to secure financial gain or personal pleasure. nor is it to be understood that the learner always clearly formulates the problem in his own mind. indeed, as will be seen more fully later, one very important motive for mastering a presented problem is the instinct of curiosity. as an example of such may be noted a case which came under the observation of the writer, where the curiosity of a small child was aroused through the sight of a mud-turtle crawling along a walk. after a few moments of intense investigation, he cried to those standing by, "come and see the bug in the basket." here, evidently, the child's curiosity gave the strange appearance sufficient value to cause him to make it an object of study. impelled by this feeling, he must have selected ideas from his former experience (bug--crawling thing; basket--incasing thing), which seemed of value in interpreting the unknown presentation. finally by focusing these upon this strange object, he formed an idea, or mental picture, which gave him a reasonable control over the new vague presentation. such a motive as curiosity may not imply to the same degree as some others a personal need, nor does it mean that the child consciously says to himself that this new material or activity is satisfying a specific need, but in some vague way he knows that it appeals to him because of its attractiveness in itself or because of its relation to some other attractive object. in brief, it interests him, and thus creates a tendency on the part of an individual to give it his attention. in such situations, therefore, the learner evidently feels to a greater or less degree a necessity, or a practical need, for solving the problem before him. need of problem =knowledge gained accidentally.=--it is evident, however, that at times knowledge might be gained in the absence of any set problem upon which the learner reacts. for example, a certain person while walking along a road intent upon his own personal matters observed a boy standing near a high fence. on passing further along the street, he glanced through an opening and observed a vineyard within the inclosure. on returning along the street a few minutes later, he saw the same boy standing at a near by corner eating grapes. hereupon these three ideas at once co-ordinated themselves into a new form of knowledge, signifying stealing-of-fruit. in such a case, the experience has evidently been gained without the presence of a problem to guide the selecting and relating of the ideas entering into the new knowledge. in like manner, a child whose only motive is to fill paper with various coloured crayon may accidentally discover, while engaged on this problem, that red and yellow will combine to make orange, or that yellow and blue will combine to make green. here also the child gains valuable experience quite spontaneously, that is, without its constituting a motive, or problem, calling for adjustment. =learning without motive.=--in the light of the above, a question suggests itself in relation to the lesson problem, or motive. granting that a regular school recitation must contain some valuable problem for which the learning process is to furnish a solution, and granting that the teacher must be fully conscious both of the problem and of its mode of solution, the question might yet be asked whether a problem is to be realized by the child as a felt need at the beginning of the lesson. for example, if the teacher wishes his pupils to learn how to compose the secondary colour purple, might he have them blend in a purely arbitrary way, red and blue, and finally ask them to note the result? or again, if he wishes the pupils to learn the construction of a paper-box or fire-place, would he not be justified in directing them to make certain folds, to do certain cutting, and to join together the various sections in a certain way, and then asking them to note the result? if such a course is permissible, it would seem that, so far at least as the learner is concerned, he may gain control of valuable experience, or knowledge, without the presence of a problem, or motive, to give the learning process value and direction. =problem aids control.=--it is true that in cases like the above, the child may gain the required knowledge. the cause for this is, no doubt, that the physical activity demanded of the pupil constitutes indirectly a motive for attending sufficiently to gain the knowledge. but in many cases no such conditions might exist. it is important, therefore, to have the pupil as far as possible realize at the outset a definite motive for each lesson. the advantage consists in the fact that the motive gives a value to the ideas which enter into the new knowledge, even before they are fully incorporated into a new experience. for example, if in a lesson in geometrical drawing, the teacher, instead of having the child set out with the problem of drawing a pair of parallel lines, merely orders him to follow certain directions, and then requests him to measure the shortest distance between the lines at different points, the child is not likely to grasp the connections of the various steps involved in the construction of the whole problem. this means, however, that the learner has not secured an equal control over the new experience. =pupils feel its lack.=--a further objection to conducting a lesson in such a way that the child may find no motive for the process until the close of the lesson, is the fact that he is himself aware of its lack. in school the child soon discovers that in a lesson he selects and gives attention to various ideas solely in order to gain control over some problem which he may more or less definitely conceive in advance. for this reason, if the teacher attempts, as in the above examples, to fix the child's attention on certain facts without any conception of purpose, the pupil nevertheless usually asks himself the question: "what does the teacher intend me to do with these facts?" indeed, without at least that motive to hold such disconnected ideas in his mind, it is doubtful whether the pupil would attend to them sufficiently to organize them into a new item of knowledge. when, therefore, the teacher proposes at the outset an attractive problem to solve, he has gone a long way toward stimulating the intellectual activity of the pupil. the setting of problems, the supplying of motives, the giving of aims, the awakening of needs--this constitutes a large part of the business of the teacher. pupil's motive =pupil's problem versus teacher's.=--but it is important that the problem before the pupil at the beginning of the lesson should really be the pupil's and not the teacher's merely. the teacher should be careful not to impose the problem on the pupils in an arbitrary way, but should try to connect the lesson with an interest that is already active. the teacher's motive in teaching the lesson and the pupil's motive in attending to it are usually quite different. the teacher's problem should, of course, be identical with the real problem of the lesson. thus in a literature lesson on "hide and seek" (_ontario third reader_), the teacher's motive would be to lead the pupil to appreciate the music of the lines, the beauty of the images, and the pathos of the ideas; and in general, to increase the pupil's capacities of constructive imagination and artistic appreciation. the pupil's motive might be to find out how the poet had described a familiar game. in a nature study lesson on "the rabbit," the teacher's motive would be to lead the pupil to make certain observations and draw certain inferences and thus add something to his facility in observation and inference. the pupil's motive in the same lesson would be to discover something new about a very interesting animal. in general, the teacher's motive will be ( ) to give the pupil a certain kind of useful knowledge; ( ) to develop and strengthen certain organs; or ( ) to add something to his mechanical skill by the forming of habitual reactions. in general, the pupil's motive will be to learn some fact, to satisfy some instinct, or perform some activity that is interesting either in itself or because of its relation to some desired end. that is, the pupil's motive is the satisfaction of an interest or the promotion of a purpose. =pupil's motive may be indirect.=--it is evident from the foregoing that the pupil's motive for applying himself to any lesson may differ from the real lesson problem, or motive. for instance, in mastering the reading of a certain selection, the pupil's chief motive in applying himself to this particular task may be to please and win the approbation of the teacher. the true lesson problem, however, is to enable the learner to give expression to the thoughts and feelings of the author. when the aim, or motive, is thus somewhat disconnected from the lesson problem itself, it becomes an _indirect_ motive. while such indirect motives are undoubtedly valuable and must often be used with young children, it is evident that when the pupil's motive is more or less directly associated with the real problem of the lesson, it will form a better centre for the selecting and organizing of the ideas entering into the new experience. =relation to pupil's feeling.=--a chief essential in connection with the pupil's motive, or attitude, toward the lesson problem, is that the child should _feel_ a value in the problem. that is, his apprehension of the problem should carry with it a desire to secure a complete mastery of the problem from a sense of its intrinsic value. the difference in feeling which a pupil may have toward the worth of a problem would be noticed by comparing the attitude of a class in the study of a military biography or a pioneer adventure taken from canadian or united states sources respectively. in the case of the former, the feeling of patriotism associated with the lesson problem will give it a value for the pupils entirely absent from the other topic. the extent to which the pupil feels such a value in the lesson topic will in most cases also measure the degree of control he obtains over the new experience. awakening interest in problems as will be seen in chapter xxix, where our feeling states will be considered more fully, feeling is essentially a personal attitude of mind, and there can be little guarantee that a group of pupils will feel an equal value in the same problem. at times, in fact, even where the pupil understands fairly well the significance of a presented lesson problem, he may feel little personal interest in it. one of the most important questions of method is, therefore, how to awaken in a class the necessary interest in the lesson problem with which they are being presented. . =through physical activity.=--it is a characteristic of the young child to enjoy physical activity for the sake of the activity itself. this is true even of his earliest acts, such as stretching, smiling, etc. although these are merely impulsive movements without conscious purpose, the child soon forms ideas of different acts, and readily associates these with other ideas. thus he takes a delight in the mere functioning of muscles, hands, voice, etc., in expressive movements. as he develops, however, on account of the close association, during his early years, between thought and movement, the child is much interested in any knowledge which may be presented to him in direct association with motor activity. this fact is especially noticeable in that the efforts of a child to learn a strange object consist largely in endeavouring to discover what he can do with it. he throws, rolls, strikes, strives _to_ open it, and in various other ways makes it a means of physical expression. whenever, especially, he can discover the use of an object, as to cut with knife or scissors, to pound with a hammer, to dip with a ladle, or to sweep with a broom, this social significance of the object gives him full satisfaction, and little attention is paid to other qualities. for these reasons the teacher will find it advantageous, whenever possible, to associate a lesson problem directly with some form of physical action. in primary number work, for example, instead of presenting the child with mere numbers and symbols, the teacher may provide him with objects, in handling which he may associate the number facts with certain acts of grouping objects. it is in this way that a child should approach such problems as: how many fours are there in twelve? how many feet in a yard? how many quarts in a peck? etc. the teaching of fractions by means of scissors and cardboard; the teaching of board measure by having boards actually measured; the teaching of primary geography by means of the sand-table; the teaching of nature study by excursions to fields and woods; these are all easy because we are working in harmony with the child's natural tendency to be physically active. the more closely the lesson problem adjusts itself to these tendencies, the greater will be the pupil's activity and hence the more rapid his progress. . through constructive instinct.--the child's delight in motor expression is closely associated with his instinctive tendency to construct. when, therefore, new knowledge can be presented to the child in and through constructive exercises, he is more likely to feel its value. thus it is possible, by means of such occupations as paper folding or stick-laying, to provide interesting problems for teaching number and geometric forms. in folding the check-board, for example, the child will master necessary problems relating to the numbers, , , , and . in learning colour, it is more interesting for the child to study different colours through painting leaves, flowers, and fruits, than to learn them through mere sense impressions, or even through comparing coloured objects, as in the montessori chromatic exercises. a study of the various kindergarten games and occupations would give an abundance of examples illustrative of the possibility of presenting knowledge in direct association with various types of constructive work. =a. activity must be directly connected with problem.=--it may be noted, however, that certain dangers associate themselves with these methods. one danger consists in the fact that, if care is not taken, the physical activity may not really involve the knowledge to be conveyed, but may be only very indirectly associated with it. such a danger might occur in the use of the montessori colour tablets for teaching tints and shades. in handling those, kindergarten children show a strong inclination to build flat forms with the tablets. now unless these building exercises involve the distinguishing of the various tints and shades, the constructive activity will be likely to divert the attention of the pupil away from the colour problem which the tablets are supposed to set for the pupils. =b. not too much emphasis on manual skill.=--again, in expressive exercises intended merely to impart new knowledge, it may happen that the teacher will lay too much stress on perfect form of expression. in these exercises, however, the purpose should be rather to enable the child to realize the ideas in his expressive actions. when, for example, a child, in learning such geographical forms as island, gulf, mountain, etc., uses sand, clay, or plasticine as a medium of expression, too much striving after accuracy of form in minor details may tend to draw the pupil's attention from the broader elements of knowledge to be mastered. in other words, it is the gaining of certain ideas, or knowledge, and not technical perfection, that is being aimed at in such expressive movements. = . instinct of curiosity as motive.=--the value of the instinct of curiosity in setting a problem for the young child has been already referred to. from what was there seen, it is evident that to the extent to which the teacher awakens wonder and curiosity in his presentation of a lesson problem, the child will be ready to enter upon the further steps of the learning process. for example, by inserting two forks and a large needle into a cork, as illustrated in the accompanying figure, and then apparently balancing the whole on a small hard surface, we may awaken a deep interest in the problem of gravity. in the same manner, by calling the pupils' attention to the drops on the outside of a glass pitcher filled with water, we may have their curiosity aroused for the study of condensation. so also the presentation of a picture may arouse curiosity in places or people. [illustration] = . ownership as motive.=--the natural pleasure which children take in collection and ownership may often be associated with presented problems in a way to cause them to take a deeper interest in the knowledge to be acquired. for example, in presenting a lesson on the countries of europe, the collection of coins or stamps representative of the different countries will add greatly to the interest, compared with a mere outline study of the political divisions from a map. a more detailed examination of the instincts and tendencies of the child and their relation to the educative process will, however, be found in chapter xxi. = . acquired interest as motive.=--finally, in the case of individual pupils, a knowledge of their particular, or special, interests is often a means of awakening in them a feeling of value for various types of school work. as an example, there might be cited the experience of a teacher who had in his school a pupil whom it seemed impossible to interest in reading. thereupon the teacher made it his object to learn what were this pupil's chief interests outside the school. using these as a basis for the selecting of simple reading matter for the boy, he was soon able to create in him an interest in reading for its own sake. the result was that in a short time this pupil was rendered reasonably efficient in what had previously seemed to him an uninteresting and impossible task. = . use of knowledge as motive.=--in the preceding cases, interest in the problem is made to rest primarily upon some native instinct, or tendency. it is to be noted, however, that as the child advances in the acquisition of knowledge, or experience, there develops in him also a desire for mental activity. in other words, the normal child takes a delight in the use of any knowledge over which he possesses adequate control. it is to be noted further, that the child masters the new problem by bringing to bear upon it suitable ideas selected out of his previously acquired experiences. it is evident, therefore, that, when a lesson problem is presented to the child in such a way that he sees a connection between it and his present knowledge and feels, further, that the problem may be mastered by a use of knowledge over which he has complete mastery, he will take a deeper interest in the learning process. when, on the other hand, he has imperfect control over the old knowledge from which the interpreting ideas are selected, his interest in the problem itself will be greatly reduced. owing to this fact, the teacher may adapt his lesson problems, or motives, to the stage of development of the pupils. in the case of young children, since they have little knowledge, but possess a number of instinctive tendencies, the lesson problem should be such as may be associated with their instinctive tendencies. since, however, the expressing of these tendencies necessarily brings to the child ideas, or increases his knowledge, the pupil will in time desire to use his growing knowledge for its own sake. here the child becomes able to grasp a problem consciously, or in idea, and, so far as it appeals to his past experience, will desire to work for its solution. thus any problem which is recognized as having a vital connection with his own experience constitutes for the child a strong motive. for older pupils, therefore, the lesson problem which constitutes the strongest motive is the one that is consciously recognized and felt to have some direct connection with their present knowledge. knowledge of problem =relation to pupil's knowledge.=--since the conscious apprehension of the problem by the pupil in its relation to his present knowledge constitutes the best motive for the learning process, a question arises how this problem is to be grasped by the pupil. first, it is evident that the problem is not a state of knowledge, or a complete experience. if such were the case, there would be nothing for him to learn. it is this partial ignorance that causes a problem to exist for the learner as a felt need, or motive. on the other hand it is not a state of complete ignorance, otherwise the learner could not call up any related ideas for its solution. when, for example, the child, after learning the various physical features, the climate, and people of ontario, is presented with the problem of learning the chief industries, he is able by his former knowledge to realize the existence of these industries sufficiently to feel the need of a fuller realization. in the same way the student who has traced the events of canadian history up to the year , is able to know the constitutional act as a problem for study, that is, he is able to experience the existence of such a problem and to that extent is able to know it. his mental state is equally a state of ignorance, in that he has not realized in his own consciousness all the facts relative to the act. in the orderly study of any school subject, therefore, the mastery of the previous lesson or lessons will in turn suggest problems for further lessons. it is this further development of new problems out of present knowledge that demands an orderly sequence of topics in the different school subjects, a fact that should be fully realized by the teacher. =recognition of problem: a. prevents digressions.=--an adequate recognition of the lesson problem by the pupil in the light of his own experience is useful in preventing the introduction of irrelevant material into the lesson. young children are particularly prone (and, under certain circumstances, older students also) to drag into the lessons interesting side issues that have been suggested by some phase of the work. as a rule, it is advisable to follow closely the straight and narrow road that leads to the goal of the lesson and not to permit digressions into attractive by-paths. if a pupil attempts to introduce irrelevant matter, he should be asked what the problem of the lesson is and whether what he is speaking of will be of any value in attaining that end. the necessity of this will, however, be seen more fully in our consideration of the next division of the learning process. =b. organizes the lesson facts.=--the adequate recognition of the lesson problem is valuable in helping the pupil to organize his knowledge. if you take a friend for a walk along the streets of a strange city engaging him in interesting conversation by the way, and if, when you have reached a distant point, you tell him that he must find his way back alone, he will probably be unable to do so without assistance. but if you tell him at the outset what you are going to do, he will note carefully the streets traversed, the corners turned, the directions taken, and will likely find his way back easily. this is because he had a clearly defined problem before him. the conditions are much the same in a lesson. when the pupil starts out with no definite problem and is led along blindly to some unknown goal, he will be unable to retrace his route; that is, he will be unable to reproduce the matter over which he has been taken. but with a clearly defined problem he will be able to note the order of the steps of the lesson, their relation to one another and to the problem, and when the lesson is over he will be able to go over the same course again. the facts of the lesson will have become organized in his mind. how to set lesson problem =precautions.=--if the teacher expects his pupils to become interested in a problem by immediately recognizing a connection between it and their previous knowledge, he must avoid placing the problem before them in a form in which they cannot readily apprehend this connection. the teacher who announced at the beginning of the grammar lesson, "to-day we are going to learn about mood in verbs" started the problem in a form that was meaningless to the class. the simplest method in such a lesson would be to draw attention to examples in sentences of verbs showing this change and then say to the class, "let us discover why these verbs are changed." similarly, to propose as the problem of the history lesson "the development of parliamentary government during the stuart period" would be to use terms too difficult for the class to interpret. it would be better to say: "we are going to find out how the stuart kings were forced by parliament to give up control of certain things." instead of saying, "we shall study in this lesson the municipal government of ontario," it would be much better to proceed in some such way as the following: "a few days ago your father paid his taxes for the year. now we are going to learn by whom, and for what purposes, these taxes are spent." similarly, "let us find out all we can about the cat," would be inferior to, "of what use to the cat are his sharp claws, padded feet, and rough tongue?" on the other hand, it is evident that, in attempting to present the problem in a form in which the pupils may recognize its connection with their previous experiences, care must be taken not to tell outright the whole point of the lesson. in a lesson on the adverb, for instance, it would not do to say: "you have learned how adjectives modify, or change the meaning of, nouns. to-day we shall study words that modify verbs." a more satisfactory way of proceeding in such a lesson would be to have on the black-board two sets of sentences exactly alike except that the second would contain adverbs and the first would not. then ask: "what words are in the second group of sentences that are not in the first? let us examine the use of these words." in the same way, to state the problem of an arithmetic lesson as the discovery of "how to add fractions by changing them to equivalent fractions having the same denominator" is open to the objection of telling too much. in this case a better method would be to present a definite problem requiring the use of addition of fractions. the pupil will see that he has not the necessary arithmetical knowledge to solve the problem and will then be in the proper mental attitude for the lesson. examples of motivation a few additional examples, drawn from different school subjects, are here added to illustrate further what is meant by setting a problem as a need, or motive. =a. history.=--the members of a form iv class were about to take up the study of the influence of john wilkes upon parliamentary affairs during the reign of george iii. as most of the pupils had visited the canadian parliament buildings and had watched from the galleries the proceedings of the house of commons, the teacher took this as the point of departure for the lesson. first, he obtained from the class the facts that the members of the commons are elected by the different constituencies of the dominion and that nobody has any power to interfere with the people's right to elect whomsoever they wish to represent them. the same conditions exist to-day in england, but this has not always been the case there. there was a time when the people's choice of a representative was sometimes set aside. the teacher then inquired regarding the men who sit in the gallery just above the speaker's chair. these are the parliamentary reporters for the important daily newspapers throughout the dominion. they send telegraphic despatches regarding the debates in the house to their respective newspapers. these despatches are published the following day, and the people of the country are thus enabled to know what is going on in parliament. nobody has any right to prevent these newspapers from publishing what they wish regarding the proceedings, provided, of course, the reports are not untruthful. these conditions prevail also in england now, but have not always done so. the work of the lesson was to see how these two conditions, freedom of elections and liberty of the press, have been brought about. the pupils were thus placed in a receptive attitude to hear the story of john wilkes. =b. arithmetic.=--a form iv class had been studying decimals and knew how to read and write, add and subtract them. the teacher suggested a situation requiring the use of multiplication, and the pupils found themselves without the necessary means to meet the situation. for instance, "mary's mother sent her to buy . lb. tea which cost $. per lb. what would she have to pay for it?" or, "mr. brown has a field containing . acres. last year it yielded . bushels of wheat to the acre. wheat was worth . cents per bushel. what was the crop from the field worth?" the pupils saw that, in order to solve these questions, they must know how to multiply decimals. multiplication of decimals became the problem of the lesson, the goal to be attained. =c. grammar.=--the teacher wished to show the meaning of _case_ as an inflection of nouns and pronouns. he had written on the black-board such sentences as: i dropped my book when john pushed me. when the man passed, he had his dog with him. he asked the pupils what words in these sentences refer to the same person, and obtained the answer that _i_, _my_, and _me_ all refer to one person, and _he_, _his_, and _him_ to another. then, he proposed the problem, "let us find out why we have three different forms of a word all meaning the same person." the problem was adapted to animate the curiosity of the pupils and call into activity their capacity for perceiving relationships. =d. literature.=--the teacher was about to present the poem, "hide and seek," to a form iii class. he said, "you have all played 'hide and seek.' how do you play it? you will find on page of your _ontario third reader_ a beautiful poem describing a game of 'hide and seek' that is rather a sad one. let us see how the poet has described this game." the pupils were at once interested in what the poet had to say about what was to them a very familiar diversion, and, while the lesson was in progress, their capacity for sympathy and for artistic appreciation was appealed to. =e. geography.=--a form iii class was to study some of the more important commercial centres of canada. speaking of montreal, the teacher proposed the problem, "do you think we can find out why a city of half a million people has grown up at this particular point?" the pupils' instinct of curiosity was here appealed to and their capacity for perceiving relationships was challenged. =f. composition.=--the teacher wished to take up the writing of letters of application with a class of form iv pupils. he wrote on the black-board an advertisement copied from a recent newspaper, for example, "wanted--a boy about fifteen to assist in office; must be a good writer and accurate in figures; apply by letter to martin & kelly, central chambers, city." then he said, "some day in the near future many of you will be called upon to answer such an advertisement as this. now what should a letter of application in reply to this contain?" the class at once proceeded, with the teacher's assistance, to work out a satisfactory letter. here, a purpose for the future was the principal need promoted. =g. nature study.=--the pupils of a form ii class had been making observations regarding a pet rabbit that one of their number had brought to school. after reporting these observations, the pupils were asked, "what good do you think these long ears, large eyes, strong hind legs, split upper lip, etc., are to the rabbit?" here the problem set was related to the children's instinctive interest in a living animal, appealed to the instinct of curiosity, and challenged their capacity to draw inferences. chapter x learning as a selecting activity or process of analysis =knowledge obtained through use of ideas.=--as already noted, the presented problem of a lesson is neither a state of complete knowledge nor a state of complete ignorance. on the other hand, its function is to provide a starting-point and guide for the calling up of a number of suitable ideas which the pupil may later relate into a single experience, constituting the new knowledge. take, for example, a person without a knowledge of fractions, who approaches for the first time the problem of sharing as found in such a question as: divide $ between john and william, giving john $ as often as william gets $ . in gaining control of this situation, the pupil must select the ideas $ and $ , the knowledge that $ and $ = $ , and the further knowledge that $ contains $ three times. these various ideas will constitute data for organizing the new experience of $ for john and $ for william. in the same manner, when the student in grammar is first presented with the problem of interpreting the grammatical value of the word _driving_ in the sentence, "the boy _driving_ the horse is very noisy," he is compelled to apply to its interpretation the ideas noun, adjectival relation, and adjective, and also the ideas object, objective relation, and verb. in this way the child secures the mental elements which he may organize into the new experience, or knowledge (participle), and thus gain control of the presented word. =interpreting ideas already known.=--it is to be noticed at the outset that all ideas selected to aid in the solution of the lesson problem have their origin in certain past experiences which have a bearing on the subject in hand. when presented with a strange object (guava), a person fixes his attention upon it, and thereupon is able, through his former sensation experiences, to interpret it as an unknown thing. he then begins to select, out of his experiences of former objects, ideas that bear upon the thing before him. by focusing thereon certain ideas with which he is perfectly familiar, as rind, flesh, seed, etc., he interprets the strange thing as a kind of fruit. in the same way, when the student is first presented in school with an example of the infinitive, he brings to bear upon the vague presentation various ideas already contained within his experience through his previous study of the noun and the verb. to the extent also to which he possesses and is able to recall these necessary old ideas, will he be able to adjust himself to the new and unfamiliar presented example (infinitive). it is evident, therefore, that a new presentation can have a meaning for us only as it is related to something in our past experience. =further examples.=--the mind invariably tries to interpret new presentations in terms of old ideas. a newspaper account of a railway wreck will be intelligible to us only through the revival and reconstruction of those past experiences that are similar to the elements described in the account. the grief, disappointment, or excitement of another will be appreciated only as we have experienced similar feelings in the past. new ideas are interpreted by means of related old ideas; new feelings and acts are dependent upon and made possible by related old feelings and acts. moreover, the meaning assigned to common objects varies with different persons and even with the same person under different circumstances. a forest would be regarded by the savage as a place to hide from the attacks of his enemies; by the hunter as a place to secure game; by the woodcutter as affording firewood; by the lumberman as yielding logs for lumber; by the naturalist as offering opportunity for observing insects and animals; by the artist as a place presenting beautiful combinations of colours. this ability of the mind to retain and use its former knowledge in meeting and interpreting new experiences is known in psychology as _apperception_. a more detailed study of apperception as a mental process will be made in chapter xxvi. the selecting process =learner's mind active.=--a further principle of method to be deduced from the foregoing is, that the process of bringing ideas out of former experiences to bear upon a presented problem must take place within the mind of the learner himself. the new knowledge being an experience organized from elements selected out of former experiences, it follows that the learner will possess the new knowledge only in so far as he has himself gone through the process of selecting the necessary interpreting ideas out of his own former knowledge and finally organizing them into new knowledge. this need for the pupil to direct mental effort, or attention, upon the problem in order to bring upon it, out of his former knowledge, the ideas relative to the solution of the question before him, is one of the most important laws of method. from the standpoint of the teacher, this law demands that he so direct the process of learning that the pupil will clearly call up in consciousness the selected interpreting ideas as portions of his old knowledge, and further feel a connection between these and the new problem before him. =learner's experience analysed.=--the second stage of the learning process is found to involve also a breaking up of former experience. this appears in the fact that the various ideas which are necessary to interpret the new problem are to be selected out of larger complexes of past experience. for example, in a lesson whose problem is to account for the lack of rainfall in the sahara desert, the pupil may have a complex of experiences regarding the position of the desert. out of this mass of experience he must, however, select the one feature--its position in relation to the equator. in the same way, he may have a whole body of experience regarding the winds of africa. this body must, however, be analysed, and the attention fixed upon the north-east trade-wind. again, he may know many things about these winds, but here he selects out the single item of their coming from a land source. again, from the complex of old knowledge which he possesses regarding the land area from which the wind blows, he must analyse out its temperature, and compare it with that of the areas toward which the wind is blowing. thus it will be seen that, step by step, the special items of old knowledge to be used in the apperceptive process are selected out of larger masses of experience. for this reason this phase of the learning process is frequently designated as a process of analysis. =problem as object of analysis.=--although the second step of the learning process has been described as a selecting of elements from past experience, it might be supposed that the various elements which the mind has been said to select from its former experiences to interpret the new problem, come in a sense from the presentation itself. thus it is often said, in describing the present step in the learning process, that the presentation embodies a certain aggregate of experience, which the learner can master by analysing it into its component parts and recombining the analysed parts into a better known whole. =analysis depends upon selection.=--it is not in the above sense, however, that the term analysis is to be applied in the learning process. it is not true, for instance, when a person is presented with a strange object, say an _ornithorhynchus_, and realizes it in only a vague way, that any mere analysis of the object will discover for him the various characteristics which are to synthesize into a knowledge of the animal. this would imply that in analysis the mind merely breaks up a vaguely known whole in order to make of it a definitely known whole. but the learner could not discover the characteristics of such an object unless the mind attended to it with certain elements of its former experiences. unless, for instance, the person already knew certain characteristics of both birds and animals, he could not interpret the ornithorhynchus as a bird-beaked animal. in the case of the child and the mud-turtle, also, there could have been no analysis of the problem in the way referred to, had the child not had the ideas, bug and basket, as elements of former experience. these characteristics, therefore, which enter into a definite knowledge of the object, do not come out of the object by a mere mechanical process of analysis, but are rather read into the object by the apperceptive process. that is, the learner does not get his new experience directly out of the presented materials, but builds up his new experience out of elements of his former knowledge. in other words, the learner sees in the new object, or problem, only such characteristics as his former knowledge and interest enable him to see. thus while the learner may be said from one standpoint to analyse the new problem, this is possible only because he is able to break up, or analyse, his former experience and read certain of its elements into the new presentation. to say that the mind analyses the unknown object, or topic, in any other sense, would be to confound mental interpretation with physical analysis. =a further example.=--the following example will further show that the learner can analyse a presented problem only to the extent that he is able to put characteristics into it by this process of analysing or selecting from his past experience. consider how a young child gains his knowledge of a triangle. at first his control of certain sensations enables him to read into it two ideas, three-sidedness and three-angledness, and only these factors, therefore, organize themselves into his experience triangle. nor would any amount of mere attention enable him at this stage to discover another important quality in the thing triangle. later, however, through the growth of his geometric experience, he may be able to read another quality into a triangle, namely two-right-angledness. this new quality will then, and only then, be organized with his former knowledge into a more complete knowledge of a triangle. here again it is seen that analysis as a learning process is really reading into a new presentation something which the mind already possesses as an element of former experience, and not gaining something at first hand out of the presented problem. =problem directs selection.=--it will be well to note here also that the selecting of the interpreting ideas is usually controlled by the problem with which the mind is engaged. this is indicated from the various ways in which the same object may be interpreted as the mind is confronted with different problems. the round stone, for instance, when one wishes to crack the filbert, is viewed as a hammer; when he wishes to place his paper on the ground, it becomes a weight; when he is threatened by the strange dog, it becomes a weapon of defence. in like manner the sign _x_ suggests an unknown quantity in relation to the algebraic problem; in relation to phonics it is a double sound; in relation to numeration, the number ten. it is evident that in all these cases, what determines the meaning given to the presented object is the _need_, or _problem_, that is at the moment predominant. in the same way, any lesson problem, in so far as it is felt to be of value, forms a starting-point for calling up other ideas, and therefore starts in the learner's mind a flow of ideas which is likely to furnish the solution. moreover, the mind has the power to measure the suitability of various ideas and select or reject them as they are felt to stand related to the problem in hand. for example, when a pupil is engaged in a study of the grammatical value of the word _driving_ in the sentence, "the boy driving the horse is very noisy," it is quite possible that he may think of the horse at his own home, or the shouting of his father's hired man, or even perhaps the form of the word _driving_, if he has just been viewing it in a writing lesson. the mind is able, however, to reject these irrelevant ideas, and select only those that seem to adjust themselves to the problem in hand. the cause of this lies in the fact that the problem is at the outset at least partly understood by the learner, which fact enables him to determine whether the ideas coming forward in consciousness are related in any way to this partially known topic. thus in the example cited, the learner knows the problem sufficiently to realize that it is a question of grammatical function, and is able, therefore, to feel the value, or suitability, of any knowledge which may be applied to it, even before he is fully aware of its ultimate relation thereto. law of preparation =control of old knowledge necessary.=--but notwithstanding the direction given the apperceptive process through the aim, or problem, it is evident that if the pupil is to select from his former experiences the particular elements which bear upon the problem in hand, he must have a ready and intelligent control over such former knowledge. it is too evident, however, that pupils frequently do not possess sufficient control over the old knowledge which will bear upon a presented problem. in endeavouring, for example, to grasp the relation of the exterior angle to the two interior and opposite angles, the pupil may fail because he has not a clear knowledge of the equality of angles in connection with parallel lines. for this reason teachers will often find it necessary (before bringing old knowledge to bear upon a new problem) to review the old knowledge, or experience, to be used during the apperceptive process. thus a lesson on the participle may begin with a review of the pupils' knowledge of verbs and adjectives, a lesson on the making of the colours orange and green for painting a pumpkin with its green stem may begin with a recognition of the standard colours, red, yellow, and blue, and the writing of a capital letter with a review of certain movements. =preparation recalls interpreting ideas.=--it must be noted that this review of former knowledge always implies, either that the pupil is likely to have forgotten at least partially this former knowledge, or that without such review he is not likely to recall and apply it readily when the new problem is placed before him. for this reason the teacher is usually warned that his lesson should always begin with a review of such of the pupil's old knowledge as is to be used in mastering the new experiences. value of preparation =a. aids the understanding.=--the main advantage of this preparatory work is that it brings into clear consciousness that group of ideas and feelings best suited to give meaning to the new presentation. without it, the pupil may not understand, or only partially understand, or entirely misunderstand the lesson. ( ) he may not understand the new matter at all because he does not bring any related facts from his past experience to bear upon it. multiplication of decimals would in all probability be a merely mechanical process if the significance of decimals and the operation of multiplying fractions were not brought to bear upon it, the pupil not understanding it at all as a rational process. ( ) he may only partially understand the new matter because he does not see clearly the relation between his old ideas and the new facts, or because he does not bring to the new facts a sufficient equipment of old ideas to make them meaningful. the adverbial objective would be imperfectly understood if it were not shown that its functions are exactly parallel with those of the adverb. the pupil would have only a partial understanding of it. ( ) he may entirely misunderstand the new facts because he uses wrong old experiences to give them meaning. such was evidently the difficulty in the case of the young pupil who, after a lesson on the equator, described it as a menagerie lion running around the earth. many of the absurd answers that a pupil gives are due to his failure to use the correct old ideas to interpret the new facts. he has misunderstood because his mind was not prepared by making the proper apperceiving ideas explicit. =b. saves time.=--there is the further advantage of economy of time, when an adequate preparation of the mind has been made. when the appropriate ideas are definitely in the forefront of consciousness, they seize upon kindred impressions as soon as these are presented and give them meaning. on the other hand, when sufficient preparation has not been made, time must be taken during the presentation of the new problem to go back in search of those experiences necessary to make it meaningful. frequent interruptions and consequent waste of time will be inevitable. time will be saved by having the apperceiving ideas ready and active. =c. provides for review.=--one of the most important values of the preparatory step is the opportunity given for the review of old ideas. these have to be revived, worked over, and reconstructed, and in consequence they become the permanent possessions of the mind. the pupil's knowledge of the functions of the adverb is reviewed when he learns the adverb phrase and adverb clause, and is still further illuminated when he comes to study the adverbial objective. further, the apperceiving ideas become more interesting to the pupil, when he finds that he can use them in the conquest of new fields. he has a consciousness of power, which in itself is a source of satisfaction and pleasure. precautions regarding preparation =must not be too long.=--two precautions seem advisable in the preparatory step. the first is that too long a time should not be spent over it. there is sometimes a tendency to go back too far and drag forward ideas that are only remotely connected with the new ideas to be presented. under such conditions much irrelevant material is likely to be introduced, and often a train of associations out of harmony with the meaning and spirit of the lesson is started. this is especially dangerous in lessons in literature and history. only those experiences should be revived which are necessary to a clear apprehension of the ideas or a full appreciation of the emotions to be presented in the new lesson. =must recall vital ideas.=--the most active, vivid, and powerful ideas in the pupil's mind are those which are closely connected with his life. this suggests the second precaution, namely, the use wherever possible of the ideas associated with his surroundings, his games, his occupations. when this is done, not only will the new knowledge have a much greater interest attached to it but it will also be much more vividly apprehended. this will be referred to further in connection with the use of illustrations in teaching. necessity of preparation teachers, however, are not always agreed as to the amount of time or emphasis to be given to this preparatory step. if the teacher can assure himself that a lesson is following in easy sequence upon something with which the children are undoubtedly familiar, he may, many argue, safely omit such preparatory work. indeed it is evident that after leaving school the child will have no personal monitor to call up beforehand the ideas that he must apply in solving the problems continually presenting themselves in practical life. on the other hand, however, it is to be remembered that the young child is, at the best, feeling his way in the process of adjusting himself to new experiences. for this reason, the first work for the teacher in any lesson is to ascertain whether the pupils are in a proper attitude for the new knowledge, and, so far as is necessary, prepare their minds through the recall of such knowledge as is related to the new experiences to be presented. although, therefore, the step of preparation is not an essential part of the learning process, since it constitutes for the pupil merely a review of knowledge acquired through previous learning processes, it may be accepted as a step in the teacher's method of controlling the learning process. examples of preparation the following additional examples as to the mode and form of the step of preparation may be considered by the student-teacher: in a lesson in phonic reading in a primary class, the preparation should consist of a review of those sounds and those words which the pupil already knows that are to be used in the new lesson. in a nature study lesson on "the rabbit," in a form ii class, the preparation should include a recall of any observations the pupils may have made regarding the wild rabbit. they may have observed its timidity, its manner of running, what it feeds upon, where it makes its home, its colour during the winter and during the summer, the kind of tracks it makes in the snow, etc. all these facts will be useful in interpreting the new observations and in assisting the pupils to make new inferences. in a lesson in a form iii class on "ottawa as a commercial centre," the preparation consists of a recall of the pupil's knowledge regarding the position of the city; the adjacent rivers, the ottawa, gatineau, rideau, lièvre, madawaska; the waterfalls of the rideau and chaudière; the forests to the north and west, with their immense supplies of pine, spruce, and hemlock; and the fact that it is the dominion capital. all these facts are necessary in inferring the causes of the importance of ottawa. in a literature lesson in a form iii class on _the charge of the light brigade_, the preparation would involve a recall of some deed of personal heroism with which the pupils are familiar, such as that of john maynard, grace darling, or any similar one nearer home. recall how such a deed is admired and praised, and the memory of the doer is cherished and revered. then the teacher should tell the story of balaklava with all the dramatic intensity he is master of, in order that the pupils may be in a proper mood to approach the study of the poem. in a grammar lesson on "the adverbial objective" the preparation should consist of a review of the functions of the adverb as modifying a verb, an adjective, and sometimes another adverb. upon this knowledge alone can a rational idea of the adverbial objective be built. in an arithmetic lesson on "multiplication of decimals," in a form iv class, the preparation should involve a review of the meaning of decimals, of the interconversion of decimals and fractions (for example, . = hundredths; ten-thousandths = . , etc.); and of the multiplication of fractions. unless the pupil can do these operations, it is obviously impossible to make his knowledge of multiplication of decimals anything more than a merely mechanical process. preparation merely aids selection before closing our consideration of preparation as a stage of method, it will be well again to call attention to the fact that this is not one of the four recognized stages of the learning process, but rather a subsidiary feature of the second, or apperceptive stage. in other words, actual advance is made by the pupil toward the control of a new experience, not through a review of former experience, but by an active relating of elements selected from past experience to the interpretation of the new problem. chapter xi learning as a relating activity or process of synthesis =learning a unifying process.=--it has been seen that the learner, in gaining control of new knowledge, must organize into the new experience elements selected from former experiences. for instance, when a person gains a knowledge of a new fruit (guava), he not only brings forward in consciousness from his former knowledge the ideas--rind, flesh, seed, etc.,--to interpret the strange object, but also associates these into a single experience, a new fruit. so long also as the person referred to in an earlier chapter retained in his consciousness as distinct factors three experiences--seeing a boy at the fence, seeing the vineyard, and finally, seeing the boy eating grapes--these would not, as three such distinct experiences, constitute a knowledge of grape-stealing. on the other hand, as soon as these are combined, or associated by a relating act of thought, the different factors are organized into a new idea symbolized by the expression, _grape-stealing_. =examples from school-room procedure.=--a similar relating process is involved when the learner faces a definite school problem. when, for instance, the pupil gains a knowledge of the sign ÷, he must not only bring forward in consciousness from his former knowledge distinct ideas of a line, of two dots, and of a certain mathematical process, but must also associate these into a new idea, division-sign. so also a person may know that air takes up more moisture as it becomes warmer, that the north-east trade-winds blow over the sahara from land areas, and that the sahara is situated just north of the equator. but the mind must unify these into a single experience in order to gain a knowledge of the condition of the rainfall in that quarter. nature of synthesis =deals with former experiences.=--this mental organizing, or unifying, of the elements of past experiences to secure control of the new experience, is usually spoken of as a process of synthesis. the term synthesis, however, must be used with the same care as was noted in regard to the term analysis. synthesis does not mean that totally _new_ elements are being unified, but merely that whatever selected elements of old knowledge the mind is able to read into a presented problem, are built, or organized, into a new system; and constitute, for the time being, one's knowledge and control of that problem. this is well exemplified by noting the growth of a person's knowledge of any object or topic. thus, so long as the child is able to apperceive only the three sides and three angles of a triangle, his idea of triangle includes a synthesis of these. when later, through the building up of his geometric knowledge, he is able to apperceive that the interior angles equal two right angles, his knowledge of a triangle expands through the synthesis of this with the former knowledge. =all knowledge a synthesis.=--the fact that all knowledge is an organization from earlier experiences becomes evident by looking at the process from the other direction. the adult who has complete knowledge of an orange has it as a single experience. this experience is found, however, to represent a co-ordination of other experiences, as touch, taste, colour, etc. moreover, each of these separate characteristics is an association of simpler experiences. experiencing the touch of the orange, for instance, is itself a complex made up of certain muscular, touch, and temperature sensations. from this it is evident that the knowledge of an orange, although a unity of experience in adult life, is really a complex, or synthesis, made up of a large number of different elements. what is true of our idea of an orange is true of every other idea. whether it be the understanding of a plant, an animal, a city, a picture, a poem, an historical event, an arithmetical problem, or a scientific experiment, the process is always the same. the apperceptive process of interpreting the new by selecting and relating elements of former experience, or the process of analysis-synthesis, is universal in learning. expressed in another form, what is at first indistinct and indefinite becomes clear and defined through attention selecting, for the interpretation of the new presentation, suitable old ideas and setting up relationships among them. analysis, or selection, is incomplete without an accompanying unification, or synthesis; synthesis, or organization, is impossible without analysis, or selection. it is on account of the mind's ability to unify a number of mental factors into a single experience, that the process of unification, or synthesis, is said to imply economy within our experiences. this fact will become even more evident, however, when later we study such mental processes as sense perception and conception. interaction of processes it is to be noted, however, that the selecting and the relating of the different interpreting ideas during the learning process are not necessarily separate and distinct parts of the lesson. in other words, the mind does not first select out of its former knowledge a whole mass of disconnected elements, and then later build them up into a new organic experience. there is, rather, in almost every case, a continual interplay between the selecting and relating activity, or between analysis and synthesis, throughout the whole learning process. as soon, for instance, as a certain feature, or characteristic, is noted, this naturally relates itself to the central problem. when later, another characteristic is noted, this may relate itself at once both with the topic and with the formerly observed characteristic into a more complete knowledge of the object. thus during a lesson we find a gradual growth of knowledge similar to that illustrated in the case of the scholar's knowledge of the triangle, involving a continual interplay of analysis and synthesis, or of selecting and relating different groups of ideas relative to the topic. this would he illustrated by noting a pupil's study of the cat. the child may first note that the cat catches and eats rats and mice, and picks meat from bones. these facts will at once relate themselves into a certain measure of knowledge regarding the food of the animal. later he may note that the cat has sharp claws, padded feet, long pointed canines, and a rough tongue; these facts being also related as knowledge concerning the mouth and feet of the animal. in addition to this, however, the latter facts will further relate themselves to the former as cases of adaptation, when the child notes that the teeth and tongue are suited to tearing food and cleaning it from the bones, and that its claws and padded feet are suited to surprising and seizing its living prey. =example from study of conjunctive pronoun.=--this continuous selecting and relating throughout a process of learning is also well illustrated in the pupil's process of learning the _conjunctive pronoun_. by bringing his old knowledge to bear on such a sentence as "the men _who_ brought it returned at once"; the pupil may be asked first to apperceive the subordinate clause, _who brought it_. this will not likely be connected by the pupil at first with the problem of the value of _who_. from this, however, he passes to a consideration of the value of the clause and its relation. hereupon, these various ideas at once co-ordinate themselves into the larger idea that _who_ is conjunctive. next, he may be called upon to analyse the subordinate clause. this, at first, also may seem to the child a disconnected experience. from this, however, he passes to the idea of _who_ as subject, and thence to the fact that it signifies man. thereupon these ideas unify themselves with the word _who_ under the idea _pronoun_. thereupon a still higher synthesis combines these two co-ordinated systems into the more complex system, or idea--_conjunctive pronoun_. [illustration] this progressive interaction of analysis and synthesis is illustrated by the accompanying figure, in which the word _who_ represents the presented unknown problem; _a_, _b_, and _c_, the selecting and relating process which results in the knowledge, _conjunction_; _a'_, _b'_, and _c'_, the building up of the _pronoun_ notion; and the circle, the final organization of these two smaller systems into a single notion, _conjunctive pronoun_. the learning of any fact in history, the mastery of a poem, the study of a plant or animal, will furnish excellent examples of these subordinate stages of analysis and synthesis within a lesson. it is to be noted further that this feature of the learning process causes many lessons to fall into certain well marked sub-divisions. each of these minor co-ordinations clustering around a sub-topic of the larger problem, the whole lesson separates itself into a number of more or less distinct parts. moreover, the child's knowledge of the whole lesson will largely depend upon the extent to which he realizes these parts both as separate co-ordinations and also as related parts of the whole lesson problem. all knowledge unified nor does this relating activity of mind confine itself within the single lesson. as each lesson is organized, it will, if fully apprehended, be more or less directly related with former lessons in the same subject. in this way the student should discover a unity within the lessons of a single subject, such as arithmetic or grammar. in like manner, various groups of lessons organize themselves into larger divisions within the subject, in accordance with important relations which the pupil may read into their data. thus, in grammar, one sequence of lessons is organized into a complete knowledge of sentences; another group, into a complete knowledge of inflection; a smaller group within the latter, into a complete knowledge of tense or mood. it is thus that the mind is able to construct its mass of knowledge into organized groups known as sciences, and the various smaller divisions into topics. chapter xii application of knowledge or law of expression =practical significance of knowledge.=--in our consideration of the fourth phase of the learning process, or the law of expression, it is necessary at the outset to recall what has already been noted regarding the correlation of knowledge and action. in this connection it was learned that knowledge arises naturally as man faces a difficulty, or problem, and that it finds significance and value in so far as it enables him to meet the practical and theoretical difficulties with which he may be confronted. in other words, man is primarily a doer, and knowledge is intended to guide the conduct of the individual along certain recognized lines. this being the case, while instruction aims to control the process by which the child is to acquire valuable social experience, or knowledge, it is equally important that it should promote skill by correlating that knowledge with expression, or should strive to influence action while forming character. to apperceive, for instance, the rules of government and agreement in grammar will have a very limited value if the student is not able to give expression to these in his own conversation. it becomes imperative, therefore, that as far as possible, expression should enter as a factor in the learning process. =examples of expression.=--man's expressive acts are found, however, to differ greatly in their form. when one is hurt, he distorts his face and cries aloud; when he hears a good speech he claps his hands and shouts approval; when he reads an amusing story he laughs; when he learns of the death of a friend he sheds tears; when he is affronted his face grows red, his muscles tense, and he strikes a blow or breaks into a torrent of words; when he has seen a striking incident he tells some one about it or writes an account to a distant friend. when his feelings are stirred by a patriotic address, he springs to his feet and sings, "god save the king." the desire that his team should carry the foot-ball to the southern goal causes the spectator to lean and push in that direction. when he conceives how he may launch a successful venture, the business man at once proceeds to carry it into effect. these are all examples of _expression_. every impression, idea, or thought, tends sooner or later to work itself out in some form of motor expression. types of action =a. uncontrolled actions.=--passing to an examination of such physical, or motor, activities, we find that man's expressive acts fall into three somewhat distinct classes. a young child is found to engage in many movements which seem destitute of any conscious direction. some of these movements, such as breathing, sneezing, winking, etc., are found to be useful to the child, and imply what might be termed inherited control of conduct, though they do not give expression to any consciously organized knowledge, or experience. at other times, his bodily movements seem to be mere random, or impulsive, actions. these latter actions at times arise in a spontaneous way as a result of native bodily vigour, as, for instance, stretching, kicking, etc., as seen in a baby. at other times these uncontrolled acts have their origin in the various impressions which the child is receiving from his surroundings, or environment, as when the babe impulsively grasps the object coming in contact with his hand. although, moreover, these instinctive movements may come in time under conscious control, such actions do not in themselves imply conscious control or give expression to organized knowledge. =b. actions subject to intelligent control.=--to a second class of actions belong the orderly movements which are both produced and directed by consciousness. when, in distinction to the movements referred to above, a child pries open the lid to see what is in the box, or waves his hand to gain the attention of a companion, a conscious aim, or intention, produces the act, and conscious effort sustains it until the aim is reached. the distinction between mere impulsive and instinctive actions on the one hand, and guided effort on the other, will be considered more fully in chapter xxx. =c. habitual actions.=--thirdly, as has been noted in chapter ii, both consciously directed and uncontrolled action may, by repetition, become so fixed that it practically ceases to be directed by consciousness, or becomes habitual. our expressive actions may be classified, therefore, into three important groups as follows: . instinctive, reflex, and impulsive action . consciously controlled, or directed action . habitual action. nature of expression =implies intelligent control.=--it is evident that as a stage in the learning process, expression must deal primarily with the second class of actions, since its real purpose is to correlate the new conscious knowledge with action. expression in education, therefore, must represent largely consciously produced and consciously directed action. =conscious expression may modify a. instinctive acts.=--while this is true, however, expression, as a stage in the educative process, will also have a relation to the other types of action. as previously noted, the expression stage of the learning process may be used as a means to bring instinctive and impulsive acts under conscious control. this is indeed an important part of a child's education. for instance, it is only by forming ideas of muscular movements and striving to express them that the child can bring his muscular movements under control. it is evident, therefore, that the expressive stage of the lesson can be made to play an important part in bringing many instinctive and impulsive acts under conscious direction. by expressing himself in the games of the kindergarten, the child's social instinct will come under conscious control. by directing his muscular movements in art and constructive work, he gains the control which will in part enable him to check the impulse to strike the angry blow. these points will, however, be considered more fully in a study of the inherited tendencies in chapter xxi. =b. habits.=--further, many of our consciously directed acts are of so great value that they should be made more permanent through habituation. expression must, therefore, in many lessons be emphasized, not merely to test and render clear present conscious knowledge, but also to lead to habitual control of action, or to create skill. this would be especially true in having a child practise the formation of figures and letters. although at the outset we must have him form the letter to see that he really knows the outline, the ultimate aim is to enable him to form these practically without conscious direction. in language work, also, the child must acquire many idiomatic expressions as habitual modes of speech. types of expression since the tendency to express our impressions in a motor way is a law of our being, it follows that the school, which is constantly seeking to give the pupil intelligent impressions, or valuable knowledge, should also provide opportunity for adequate expression of the same. the forms most frequently adopted in schools are speech and writing. pupils are required to answer questions orally or in writing in almost every school subject, and in doing so they are given an opportunity for expression of a very valuable kind. in fact, it would often be much more economical to try to give pupils fewer impressions and to give them more opportunities for expression in language. but written or spoken language is not the only means of expression that the school can utilize. pupils can frequently be required to express themselves by means of manual activity. in art, they represent objects and scenes by means of brush and colour, or pencil, or crayon; in manual training, they construct objects in cardboard and wood; in domestic science, they cook and sew. the primary object of these so-called "new" subjects of the school programme is not to make the pupils artists, carpenters, or house-keepers, but partly to acquaint them with typical forms of human activity and partly to give them means of expression having an educative value. in arithmetic, the pupils express numerical facts by manipulating blocks and splints, and measure quantities, distances, surfaces, and solids. in geography, they draw maps of countries, model them in sand or clay, and make collections to illustrate manufactures at various stages of the process. in literature, they dramatize stories and illustrate scenes and situations by a sketch with pencil or brush. in nature study, they illustrate by drawings and make mounted collections of plants and insects. value of expression =a. influences conduct.=--in nature study, history, and literature, the most valuable kind of expression is that which comes through some modification of future conduct. that pupil has studied the birds and animals to little purpose who needlessly destroys their lives or causes them pain. he has studied the reign of king john to little purpose if he is not more considerate of the rights of others on the playground. he has gained little from the life of robert bruce, columbus, or la salle, if he does not manfully attack difficulties again and again until he has overcome them. he has not read _the heroine of verchères_, or _the little hero of haarlem_ aright, if he does not act promptly in a situation demanding courage. he has learned little from the story of damon and pythias if he is not true to his friends under trying circumstances, and he has not imbibed the spirit of _the christmas carol_ if he is not sympathetic and kindly toward those less fortunate than himself. from the standpoint of the moral life, therefore, right knowledge is valuable only as it expresses itself in right action. =b. aids impression.=--apart from the fact that it satisfies a demand of our being, expression is most important in that it tests the clearness of the applied knowledge. we often think that our impression is clear, only to discover its vagueness when we attempt to express it in some form. people often say that they understand a fact thoroughly, but they cannot exactly express it. such a statement is usually incorrect. if the impression were clear, the expression under ordinary circumstances would also be clear. in this connection a danger should be pointed out. pupils sometimes express themselves in language with apparent clearness, when in reality they are merely repeating words that they have memorized and that are quite meaningless to them. the alert teacher can, however, by judicious questioning, avoid being deceived in this regard. =c. adds to clearness of knowledge.=--not only does expression test the clearness of the apperceived new knowledge, but at the same time it gives the knowledge greater clearness. we learn to know by doing. a pupil realizes a story more fully when he has reproduced it for somebody else. he images a scene described in a poem more clearly when he has drawn it. he has a clearer idea of the volume of a cord when he has actually measured out a cord of wood. he has a more accurate conception of the difficulties attending the discoveries of la salle when he has drawn a map and traced the routes of his various expeditions. there is much truth in the statement that one never fully knows some things until he has taught them to somebody else. the teacher in grammar and geography will often have occasion to realize this. greater clearness of impression means, of course, greater permanence. we remember best those facts of which our impression was most vivid. dangers of omitting expression =a. knowledge not practical.=--it is apparent, then, that if the pupil is not given opportunity for expression, his ideas are vague and evanescent. further than this, his capacities for _knowing_ will be developed but his capacities for _doing_ ignored. his _intellectual_ powers will be exercised and his _volitional_ powers neglected. the pupil is thus likely to develop into a mere _theorist_; and as the tendencies of childhood are accentuated in later life, he becomes an _impractical_ man. there are many men in the world who apparently know a great deal, but who, through inability to make practical application of their knowledge, are unsuccessful in life. it is, however, seriously to be doubted whether knowledge is ever _real_ until it has been worked out in practice and conduct. to avoid the danger of becoming impractical, a pupil should have every opportunity for expression. =b. feelings weakened.=--a second serious danger of neglecting expression lies in the field of the emotions. to have generous emotions continually aroused and never to act upon them, to have one's sympathies frequently stirred and never to perform a kindly act, to experience feelings of love and never to express them in acts of service, is to cultivate a weakness of character. a classic instance of this is that of the lady who wept bitterly over the imaginary sorrows of the heroine in the play while her coachman was freezing to death outside the theatre. if worthy emotions are ever to be of the slightest moral value to us, they must be expressed in action. the pupil frequently has his emotions stirred in the lessons in literature, history, and nature study, and there are situations constantly arising in the school room, on the playground, on the street, and in the home, that afford opportunity for expression. to give a single instance, there is a story in the _ontario third reader_ by elizabeth phelps ward, called "mary elizabeth." no pupil could read that story without being stirred with a deep pity and yet profound admiration for the pathetic figure of poor little mary elizabeth. the natural expression for such emotions would be a more kindly and sympathetic attitude towards some unfortunate child in the school. relation of expression to impression =knowledge tends toward expression.=--on account of the evident connection between knowledge and action, the law of expression has formulated itself into a well-known pedagogical law of method--no impression without expression. like many other educational maxims, however, this law may be interpreted in too wide a sense. the law of expression in education claims only that valuable experiences, or valuable forms of new knowledge, should not be built up in the child's mind without adequate accompanying expression. in the first case, as already seen, many impressions come to us which are never seized upon sufficiently by our consciousness to become intelligent rules for conduct, or action. it is true, of course that, so far as such impressions stimulate us, they tend toward expression, and to that extent the maxim is true. for instance, when a child is impressed, say, by a sudden strange sound, he has a tendency to express himself by straining his attention, and when the man imagines an enemy is before him, he finds his arms and fists assuming the fighting attitude. =expression at times inhibited.=--it is to be noted that the child should early learn to form intelligent plans of action and postpone or even condemn them as forms of expression. in other words, a child should early learn to select and co-ordinate ideas into an orderly system independently of their actual expression in physical action. without this power to suppress, or inhibit, expression, the child would be unable adequately to weigh and compare alternative courses of action and suppress such as seem undesirable. such indeed is the weakness of the man who possesses an impulsive nature. although, therefore, it is true that all knowledge is intended to serve in meeting actual needs, or to function in the control of expression, it is equally true that not every organized experience should find expression in action. part at least of man's efficiency must consist in his ability to organize a new experience in an indirect way and condemn it as a rule of action. while, therefore, we emphasize the importance, under ordinary conditions, of having the child's knowledge function as directly as possible in some form of actual expression, it is equally important to recognize that in actual life many organized plans should not find expression in outer physical action. this being the case, the divorce between organized experience, or knowledge, and practical expression, which at times takes place in school work, is not necessarily unsound, since it tends to make the child proficient in separating the mental organizing of experience from its immediate expression, and must, therefore, tend to make him more capable of weighing plans before putting them into execution. this will in turn habituate the child to taking the necessary time for reflection between "the acting of a thing and the first purpose." this question will be considered more fully in chapter xxx, which treats of the development of voluntary control. it should be noted in conclusion that the law of expression as a fourth stage of the learning process differs in purpose from the use of physical action as a means of creating interest in the problem, as referred to on page . when, for instance, we set a pupil who has no knowledge of long measure to use the inch in interpreting the yard stick, expressive action is merely a means of putting the problem before the child in an interesting form on account of his liking for physical action. when, on the other hand, the child later uses the foot or yard as a unit to measure the perimeter of the school-room, he is applying his knowledge of long measure, which has been acquired previously to this expressive act. chapter xiii forms of lesson presentation the chief office of the teacher, in controlling the pupils' process of learning, being to direct their self-activity in making a selection of ideas from their former knowledge which shall stand in vital connection with the problem, and lead finally to its solution, the question arises in what form the teacher is to conduct the process in order to obtain this desired result. three different modes of directing the selecting activity of the student are recognized and more or less practised by teachers. these are usually designated the lecture method, the text-book method, and the developing method. the lecture method =example of lecture method.=--in the lecture method so-called, the teacher tells the students in direct words the facts involved in the new problem, and expects these words to enable the pupils to call up from their old knowledge the ideas which will give the teacher's words meaning, and thus lead to a solution of the problem. for example, in teaching the meaning of alluvial fans in geography, a teacher might seek to awaken the interpreting ideas by merely stating in words the characteristic of a fan. this would involve telling the pupils that an alluvial fan is a formation on the floor of a main river valley, resulting from the depositing of detritus carried down the steep side of the valley by a tributary stream and deposited in the form of a fan, when the force of the water is weakened as it enters the more level floor of the valley. to interpret this verbal description, however, the pupil must first interpret the words of the teacher as sounds, and then convert these into ideas by bringing his former knowledge to bear upon the word symbols. if we could take it for granted that the pupil will readily grasp the ideas here signified by such words as, formation, main river valley, depositing, detritus, steep side, etc., and at once feel the relation of these several ideas to the more or less unknown object--alluvial fan--this method would undoubtedly give the pupil the knowledge required. =the method difficult.=--to expect of young children a ready ability in thus interpreting words would, however, be an evident mistake. to translate such sound symbols into ideas, and immediately adjust them to the problem, demands a power of language interpretation and of reflection not usually found in school children. the purely lecture method, therefore, has very small place with young children, whatever may be its value with advanced students. pupils in the primary grades have not sufficient power of attention to listen to a long lecture on any subject, and no teacher should think of conducting a lesson by that method alone. the purpose of the lecture is merely to give information, and that is seldom the sole purpose of a lesson in elementary classes. there the more important purposes are to train pupils to acquire knowledge by thinking for themselves, and to express themselves, both of which are well-nigh impossible if the purely lecture method is followed. =does not insure selection.=--the weakness of such a method is well illustrated in the case of the young teacher who, in giving her class a conception of the equator, followed the above method, and carefully explained to the pupils that the equator is an imaginary line running around the earth equally distant from the two poles. when the teacher came later to review the work with the class, one bright lad described the equator as a menagerie lion running around the earth. here evidently the child, true to the law of apperception, had interpreted, or rather misinterpreted, the words of the teacher, by means of the only ideas in his possession which seemed to fit the uttered sounds. it is evident, therefore, that too often in this method the pupils will either thus misinterpret the meaning of the teacher's words, or else fail to interpret them at all, because they are not able to call up any definite images from what the teacher may be telling them. =when to be used.=--it may be noted, however, that there is some place for the method in teaching. for example, when young children are presented with a suitable story, they will usually have no difficulty in fitting ideas to words, and thus building up the story. it requires, in fact, the continuity found in the telling method to keep the children's attention on the story, the tone of voice and gesture of the reciter going a long way in helping the child to call up the ideas which enable him to construct the story plot. moreover, some telling must be done by the teacher in every lesson. everything cannot be discovered by the pupils themselves. even if it were possible, it would often be undesirable. some facts are relatively unimportant, and it is much better to tell these outright than to spend a long time in trying to lead pupils to discover them. the lecture method, or telling method, should be used, then, to supply pupils with information they could not find out for themselves, or which they could find out only by spending an amount of time disproportionate to the importance of the facts. the teacher must use good judgment in discriminating between those facts which the pupils may reasonably be expected to find out for themselves and those facts which had better be told. many teachers tell too much and do not throw the pupils sufficiently on their own resources. on the other hand, many teachers tell too little and waste valuable time in trying to "draw" from the pupils what they do not know, with the result that the pupils fall back upon the pernicious practice of guessing. the teacher needs to be on his guard against "the toil of dropping buckets into empty wells, and growing old in drawing nothing up." it may be added further that, in practical life, man is constantly required to interpret through spoken language. for this reason, therefore, all children should become proficient in securing knowledge through spoken language, that is, by means of the lecture, or telling, method. the text-book method =nature of text-book method.=--in the text-book method, in place of listening to the words of the teacher, the pupil is expected to read in a text-book, in connection with each lesson problem, a series of facts which will aid him in calling up, or selecting, the ideas essential to the mastery of the new knowledge. this method is similar, therefore, in a general way, to the lecture method; since it implies ability in the pupil to interpret language, and thus recall the ideas bearing upon the topic being presented. although the text-book method lacks the interpretation which may come through gesture and tone of voice, it nevertheless gives the pupil abundance of time for reflecting upon the meaning of the language without the danger of losing the succeeding context, as would be almost sure to happen in the lecture method. moreover, the language and mode of presentation of the writer of the text-book is likely to be more effective in awakening the necessary old knowledge, than would be the less perfect descriptions of the ordinary teacher. on the whole, therefore, the text-book seems more likely to meet the conditions of the laws of apperception and self-activity, than would the lecture method. =method difficult for young children.=--the words of the text-book, however, like the words of the teacher, are often open to misinterpretation, especially in the case of young pupils. this may be illustrated by the case of the student, who upon reading in her history of the mettle of the defenders of lacolle mill, interpreted it as the possession on their part of superior arms. an amusing illustration of the same tendency to misinterpret printed language, in spite of the time and opportunity for studying the text, is seen in the case of the student who, after reading the song entitled "the old oaken bucket," was called upon to illustrate in a drawing his interpretation of the scene. his picture displayed three buckets arranged in a row. on being called upon for an explanation, he stated that the first represented "the old oaken bucket"; the second, "the iron-bound bucket"; and the third, "the moss-covered bucket." another student, when called upon to express in art his conception of the well-known lines: all at once i saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils; beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze; represented on his paper a bed of daffodils blooming in front of a platform, upon which a number of female figures were actively engaged in the terpsichorean art. =pupil's mind often passive.=--as in the lecture method, also, the pupil may often go over the language of the text in a passive way without attempting actively to call up old knowledge and relate it to the problem before him. it is evident, therefore, that without further aid from a teacher, the text-book could not be depended upon to guide the pupil in selecting the necessary interpreting ideas. as with the lecture method, however, it is to be recognized that, both in the school and in after life, the student must secure much information by reading, and that he should at some time gain the power of gathering information from books. the use of the text-book in school should assist in the acquisition of this power. the teacher must, therefore, distinguish between the proper _use_ of the text-book and the _abuse_ of it. there are several ways in which the text-book may be effectively used. uses of text-book . after a lesson has been taught, the pupils may be required by way of review to read the matter covered by the lesson as stated by the text-book. this plan is particularly useful in history and geography lessons. the text-book strengthens and clarifies the impression made by the lesson. . before assigning the portion to be read in the text-book, the teacher may prepare the way by presenting or reviewing any matter upon which the interpretation of the text depends. this preparatory work should be just sufficient to put the pupils in a position to read intelligently the portion assigned, and to give them a zest for the reading. sometimes in this assignment, it is well to indicate definitely what facts are sufficiently important to be learned, and where these are discussed in the text-book. . the mastery of the text by the pupils may sometimes be aided by a series of questions for which answers are to be found by a careful reading. such questions give the pupils a definite purpose. they constitute a set of problems which are to be solved. they are likely to be interesting, because problems within the range of the pupils' capacity are a challenge to their intelligence. further, these questions will emphasize the things that are essential, and the pupils will be enabled to grasp the main points of the lesson assigned. occasionally, to avoid monotony, the pupils should be required, as a variation of this plan, to make such a series of questions themselves. in these cases, the pupil with the best list might be permitted, as a reward for his effort, to "put" his questions to the class. . in the more advanced classes, the pupils should frequently be required to make a topical outline of a section or chapter of the text-book. this demands considerable analytic power, and the pupil who can do it successfully has mastered the art of reading. the ability is acquired slowly, and the teacher must use discretion in what he exacts from the pupil in this regard. if the plan were followed persistently, there would be less time wasted in cursory reading, the results of which are fleeting. what is read in this careful way will become the real possession of the mind and, even if less material is read, more will be permanently retained. the facts thus learned from the text-book should be discussed by the teacher and pupils in a subsequent recitation period. this may be done by the question and answer method, the teacher asking questions to which the pupils give brief answers; or by the topical recitation method, the pupils reporting in connected form the facts under topics suggested by the teacher. the teacher has thus an opportunity of emphasizing the important facts, of correcting misconceptions, and of amplifying and illustrating the facts given in the text-book. further, the pupils are given an opportunity of expressing themselves, and have thus an exercise in language which is a valuable means of clarifying their impressions. abuse of text-book as instances of the abuse of the text-book, the following might be cited: . the memorization by the pupils of the words of the text-book without any understanding of the meaning. . the assignment of a certain number of pages or sections to be learned by the pupils without any preliminary preparation for the study. . the employment of the text-book by the teacher during the recitation as a means of guiding him in the questions he is to ask--a confession that he does not know what he requires the pupils to know. =limitation of text-book.=--the chief limitation of the text-book method of teaching is that the pupil makes few discoveries on his own account, and is, therefore, not trained to think for himself. the problems being largely solved for him by the writer, the knowledge is not valued as highly as it would be if it came as an original discovery. we always place a higher estimation on that knowledge which we discover for ourselves than on that which somebody else gives us. the developing method =characteristics of the method.=--the third, or developing, method of directing the selecting activity of the learner, is so called because in this method the teacher as an instructor aims to keep the child's mind actively engaged throughout each step of the learning process. he sees, in other words, that step by step the pupil brings forward whatever old knowledge is necessary to the problem, and that he relates it in a definite way to this problem. instead of telling the pupils directly, for instance, the teacher may question them upon certain known facts in such a way that they are able themselves to discover the new truth. in teaching alluvial fans, for example, the teacher would begin questioning the pupil regarding his knowledge of river valleys, tributary streams, the relation of the force of the tributary water to the steepness of the side of the river valley, the presence of detritus, etc., and thus lead the pupil to form his own conclusion as to the collecting of detritus at the entrance to the level valley and the probable shape of the deposit. so also in teaching the conjunctive pronoun from such an example as: he gave it to a boy _who_ stood near him; the teacher brings forward, one by one, the elements of old knowledge necessary to a full understanding of the new word, and tests at each step whether the pupil is himself apprehending the new presentation in terms of his former grammatical knowledge. beginning with the clause "who stood near him," the teacher may, by question and answer, assure himself that the pupil, through his former knowledge of subordinate clauses, apprehends that the clause is joined adjectively to _boy_, by the word _who_. next, he assures himself that the pupil, through his former knowledge of the conjunction, apprehends clearly the consequent _conjunctive_ force of the word _who_. finally, by means of the pupil's former knowledge of the subjective and pronoun functions, the teacher assures himself that the pupil appreciates clearly the _pronoun_ function of the word _who_. thus, step by step, throughout the learning process, the teacher makes certain that he has awakened in the mind of the learner the exact old knowledge which will unify into a clearly understood and adequately controlled new experience, as signified by the term _conjunctive pronoun_. =question and answer.=--on account of the large use of questioning as a means of directing and testing the pupils' selecting of old knowledge, or interpreting ideas, the developing method is often identified with the question and answer method. but the real mark of the developing method of teaching is the effort of an instructor to assure himself that, step by step, throughout the learning process, the pupil himself is actively apprehending the significance of the new problem by a use of his own previous experience. it is true, however, that the method of interrogation is the most universal, and perhaps the most effective, mode by which a teacher is able to assure himself that the learner's mind is really active throughout each step of the learning process. moreover, as will be seen later, the other subsidiary methods of the developing method usually involve an accompanying use of question and answer for their successful operation. it is for this reason that the question is sometimes termed the teacher's best instrument of instruction. for the same reason, also, the young teacher should early aim to secure facility in the art of questioning. an outline of the leading principles of questioning will, therefore, be given in chapter xviii. =other forms of development.=--notwithstanding the large part played by question and answer in the developing method, it must be observed that there are other important means which the teacher at times may use in the learning process in order to awaken clear interpreting ideas in the mind of the learner. in so far, moreover, as any such methods on the part of the teacher quicken the apperceptive process in the child, or cause him to apply his former knowledge in a more active and definite way to the problem in hand, they must be classified as phases of the developing method. two of these subsidiary methods will now be considered. the objective method =characteristics of the objective method.=--one important sub-section of the developing method is known as the objective method. in this method the teacher seeks, as far as possible, ( ) to present the lesson problem through the use of concrete materials, and ( ) to have the child interpret the problem by examining this concrete material. a child's interest and knowledge being largely centred in objects and their qualities and uses, many truths can best be presented to children through the medium of objective teaching. for example, in arithmetic, weights and measures should be taught by actually handling weights and measures and building up the various tables by experiment. tables of lengths, areas, and volumes may be taught by measurements of lines, surfaces, and solids. geographical facts are taught by actual contact with the neighbouring hills, streams, and ponds; and by visits to markets and manufacturing plants. in nature study, plants and animals are studied in their natural habitat or by bringing them into the class-room. =advantages of the objective method.=--the advantages of this method in such cases are readily manifest. although, for instance, the pupil who knows in a general way an inch space and the numbers , , - / , , and , might be supposed to be able to organize out of his former experiences a perfect knowledge of surface measure, yet it will be found that compared with that of the pupil who has worked out the measure concretely in the school garden, the control of the former student over this knowledge will be very weak indeed. in like manner, when a student gains from a verbal description a knowledge of a plant or an animal, not only does he find it much more difficult to apply his old knowledge in interpreting the word description than he would in interpreting a concrete example, but his knowledge of the plant or animal is likely to be imperfect. objective teaching is important, therefore, for two reasons: . it makes an appeal to the mind through the senses, the avenue through which the most vivid images come. frequently several senses are brought to bear and the impressions thereby multiplied. . on account of his interest in objects, the young child's store of old experiences is mainly of objects and of their sensuous qualities and uses. to teach the abstract and unfamiliar through these, therefore, is an application of the law of apperception, since the object makes it easier for the child's former knowledge to be related to the presented problem. =limitations of objective method.=--it must be recognized, however, that objective teaching is only a means to a higher end. the concrete is valuable very often only as a means of grasping the abstract. the progress of humanity has ever been from the sensuous and concrete to the ideal and abstract. not the objects themselves, but what the objects symbolize is the important thing. it would be a pedagogical mistake, then, to make instruction begin, continue, and end in the concrete. it is evident, moreover, that no progress could be made through object-teaching, unless the question and answer method is used in conjunction. the illustrative method =characteristics of the illustrative method.=--in many cases it is impossible or impracticable to bring the concrete object into the school-room, or to take the pupils to see it outside. in such cases, somewhat the same result may be obtained by means of some form of graphic illustration of the object, as a picture, sketch, diagram, map, model, lantern slide, etc. the graphic representation of an object may present to the eye most of the characteristics that the actual object would. for this reason pictures are being more and more used in teaching, though it is a question whether teachers make as good use of the pictures of the text-book, in geography for instance, as might be made. =illustrative method involves imagination.=--in the illustrative method, however, the pupil, instead of being able to apply directly former knowledge obtained through the senses, in interpreting the actual object, must make use of his imagination to bridge over the gulf between the actual object and the representation. when, for example, the child is called upon to form his conception of the earth with its two hemispheres through its representation on a globe, the knowledge will become adequate only as the child's imagination is able to picture in his mind the actual object out of his own experience of land, water, form, and space, in harmony with the mere suggestions offered by the model. it is evident, for the above reason, that the illustrative method often demands more from the pupil than does the more concrete objective method. for instance, the child who is able to see an actual mountain, lake, canal, etc., is far more likely to obtain an accurate idea of these, than the student who learns them by means of illustrations. the cause for this lies mainly in the failure of the child to form a perfect image of the real object through the exercise of his imagination. in fact it sometimes happens that he makes very little use of his imagination, his mental picture of the real object differing little from the model placed before him. the writer was informed of a case in which a teacher endeavoured to give some young pupils a knowledge of the earth by means of a large school globe. when later the children were questioned thereon, it was discovered that their earth corresponded in almost every particular with the large globe in the school. the successful use of the illustrative method, therefore, demands from the teacher a careful test by the question and answer method, to see that the learner has properly bridged over, through his imagination, the gulf separating the actual object from its illustration. for this reason an acquaintance with the mental process of imagination is of great value to the teacher. the leading facts connected with this process will be set forth in chapter xxvii. precautions in use of materials in the use of objective and illustrative materials the following precautions are advisable: . their use in the lesson should not be continued too long. it should be remembered that their office is illustrative, and the aim of the teacher should be to have the pupils think in the abstract as soon as possible. to make pupils constantly dependent on the concrete is to make their thinking weak. . the pupils must be mentally active while the concrete object or illustrative material is being used, and not merely gaze in a passive way upon the objects. it requires mental activity to grasp the abstract facts that the objects or illustrations typify. a tellurion will not teach the changes of the seasons; bundles of splints, notation; nor black-board examples, the law of agreement; unless these are brought under the child's mental apprehension. the sole purpose of such materials is, therefore, to start a flow of imagery or ideas which bear upon the presented problem. . the objects should not be so intrinsically interesting that they distract the attention from what they are intended to illustrate. it would be injudicious to use candies or other inherently attractive objects to illustrate number facts in primary arithmetic. the objects, not the number facts, would be of supreme interest. the teacher who used a heap of sand and some gunpowder to teach what a volcano is, found his pupils anxious for "fireworks" in subsequent geography classes. the science teacher may make his experiments so interesting that his students neglect to grasp what the experiments illustrate. the preacher who uses a large number of anecdotes to illustrate the points of his sermon, would be probably disappointed to know that the only part of his discourse remembered by the majority of his hearers was these very anecdotes. in his enthusiasm for objective teaching, the teacher may easily make the objects so attractive that the pupils fail altogether to grasp what they signify. . in the case of pictures, maps, and sketches, it is well to present those that are not too detailed. a map drawn on the black-board by the teacher is usually better for purposes of illustration than a printed wall map. the latter shows so many details that it is often difficult for the pupil to single out those required in the lesson. the black-board map, on the other hand, will emphasize just those details that are necessary. for the same reason the sketch is often better than the printed picture or photograph. any one who can sketch rapidly and accurately has at his disposal a valuable means of communicating knowledge, and every teacher should strive to cultivate this power. modes of presentation compared the relative clearness of different modes of presenting knowledge may be seen from the following: if a teacher stated to his pupils that he saw a guava yesterday, possibly no information would be conveyed to them other than that some unknown object has been referred to. merely to name any object of thought, therefore, does not guarantee any real understanding in the mind of the pupil. if the teacher describes the object as a fruit, fragrant, yellow, fleshy, and pear-shaped, the mental picture of the pupil is likely to be much more definite. if, on the other hand, a picture of the fruit is shown, it is likely that the pupil will more fully realize at least some of the features of the fruit. if the pupil is given the object and allowed to bring all his senses to bear upon it, his knowledge will become both more full and more definite. if he were allowed to express himself through drawing and modelling, his knowledge would become still more thorough, while if he grew, marketed, and manufactured the fruit into jelly, his knowledge of the fruit might be considered complete. chapter xiv classification of knowledge before passing to a consideration of the various types or classes into which school lessons may be divided, it is necessary to note a certain distinction in the way the mind thinks of objects, or two classes into which our experiences are said to divide themselves. when the mind experiences, or is conscious of, this particular chair on the platform, that tree outside the window, the size of this piece of stone, or the colour and shape of this bonnet, it is said to be occupied with a particular experience, or to be gaining particular knowledge. acquisition of particular knowledge =a. through the senses.=--these particular experiences may arise through the actual presentation of a thing to the senses. i _see_ this chair; _taste_ this sugar; _smell_ this rose; _hear_ this bell; etc. as will be seen later, the senses provide the primary conditions for revealing to the mind the presence of particular things, that is, for building up particular ideas, or, as they are frequently called, particular notions. neither does a particular experience, or notion, necessarily represent a particular concrete object. it may be an idea of some particular state of anger or joy being experienced by an individual of the beauty embodied in this particular painting, etc. =b. through the imagination.=--secondly, by an act of constructive imagination, one may image a picture of a particular object as present here and now. although never having had the actual particular experience, a person can, with the eye of the imagination, picture as now present before him any particular object or event, real or imaginary, such as king arthur's round table; the death scene of sir isaac brock or captain scott; the sinking of the _titanic_; the heroine of verchères; or the many-headed hydra. =c. by inference, or deduction.=--again, knowledge about a particular individual, or particular knowledge, may be gained in what seems a yet more indirect way. for instance, instead of standing beside socrates and seeing him drink the hemlock and die, and thus, by actual sense observation, learn that socrates is mortal; we may, by a previous series of experiences, have gained the knowledge that all men are mortal. for that reason, even while he yet lives, we may know the particular fact that socrates, being a man, is also mortal. in this process the person is supposed to start with the known general truth, "all men are mortal"; next, to call to mind the fact that socrates is a man; and finally, by a comparison of these statements or thoughts, reason out, or deduce, the inference that therefore socrates is mortal. this process is, therefore, usually illustrated in what is called the syllogistic form, thus: all men are mortal. socrates is a man. socrates is mortal. when particular knowledge about an individual thing or event is thus inferred by comparing two known statements, it is said to be secured by a process of _deduction_, or by inference. general knowledge in all of the above examples, whether experienced through the senses, built up by an act of imagination, or gained by inference, the knowledge is of a single thing, fact, organism, or unity, possessing a real or imaginary existence. in addition to possessing its own individual unity, however, a thing will stand in a more or less close relation with many other things. various individuals, therefore, enter into larger relations constituting groups, or classes, of objects. in addition, therefore, to recognizing the object as a particular experience, the mind is able, by examining certain individuals, to select and relate the common characteristics of such classes, or groups, and build up a general, or class, idea, which is representative of any member of the class. thus arise such general ideas as book, man, island, county, etc. these are known as universal, or class, notions. moreover, such rules, or definitions, as, "a noun is the name of anything"; "a fraction is a number which expresses one or more equal parts of a whole," are general truths, because they express in the form of a statement the general qualities which have been read into the ideas, noun and fraction. when the mind, from a study of particulars, thus either forms a class notion as noun, triangle, hepatica, etc., or draws a general conclusion as, "air has weight," "any two sides of a triangle are together greater than the third side," it is said to gain general knowledge. acquisition of general knowledge =a. conception.=--in describing the method of attaining general knowledge, it is customary to divide such knowledge into two slightly different types, or classes, and also to distinguish between the processes by which each type is attained. when the mind, through having experienced particular dogs, cows, chairs, books, etc., is able to form such a general, or class, idea as, dog, cow, chair, or book, it is said to gain a class notion, or concept; and the method by which these ideas are gained is called _conception_. =b. induction.=--when the mind, on the basis of particular experiences, arrives at some general law, or truth, as, "any two sides of a triangle are together greater than the third side"; "air has weight"; "man is mortal"; "honesty is the best policy"; etc., it is said to form a universal judgment, and the process by which the judgment is formed is called a process of _induction_. =examples of general and particular knowledge.=--when a pupil learns the st. lawrence river system as such, he gains a particular experience, or notion; when he learns of river basins, he obtains a general notion. in like manner, for the child to realize that here are eight blocks containing two groups of four blocks, is a particular experience; but that + = , is a general, or universal, truth. to notice this water rising in a tube as heat is being applied, is a particular experience; to know that liquids are expanded by heat is a general truth. _the air above this radiator is rising_ is a particular truth, but _heated air rises_ is a general truth. _the english people plunged into excesses in charles ii's reign after the removal of the stern puritan rule_ is particular, but a _period of license follows a period of repression_ is general. =distinction is in ideas, not things.=--it is to be noted further that the same object may be treated at one time as a particular individual, at another time as a member of a class, and at still another time as a part of a larger individual. thus the large peninsula on the east of north america may be thought of now, as the individual, nova scotia; at another time, as a member of the class, province; and at still another time, as a part of the larger particular individual, canada. =only two types of knowledge.=--it is evident from the foregoing that no matter what subject is being taught, so far as any person may aim _to develop a new experience_ in the mind of the pupil, that experience will be one or other of the two classes mentioned above. if the aim of our lesson is to have the pupils know the facts of the war of - , to study the rainfall of british columbia, to master the spelling of a particular word, or to image the pictures contained in the story _mary elizabeth_, then it aims primarily to have pupils come into possession of a particular fact, or a number of particular facts. on the other hand, if the lesson aims to teach the pupils the nature of an infinitive, the rule for extracting square root, the law of gravity, the classes of nouns, etc., then the aim of the lesson is to convey some general idea or truth. applied knowledge general before proceeding to a special consideration of such type lessons, it will be well to note that the mind always applies general knowledge in the learning process. that is, the application of old knowledge to the new presentation is possible only because this knowledge has taken on a general character, or has become a general way of thinking. the tendency for every new experience, whether particular or general, to pass into a general attitude, or to become a standard for interpreting other presentations, is always present, at least after the very early impressions of infancy. when, for instance, a child observes a strange object, dog, and perceives its four feet, this idea does not remain wholly confined to the particular object, but tends to take on a general character. this consists in the fact that the characteristic perceived is vaguely thought of as a quality distinct from the dog. this quality, _four-footedness_, therefore, is at least in some measure recognized as a quality that may occur in other objects. in other words, it takes on a general character, and will likely be applied in interpreting the next four-footed object which comes under the child's attention. so also when an adult first meets a strange fruit, guava, he observes perhaps that it is _pear-shaped, yellow-skinned, soft-pulped_, of _sweet taste_, and _aromatic flavour_. all such quality ideas as pear-shaped, yellow, soft, etc., as here applied, are general ideas of quality taken on from earlier experiences. even in interpreting the qualities of particular objects, therefore, as this rose, this machine, or this animal, we apply to its interpretation general ideas, or general forms of thought, taken on from earlier experiences. the same fact is even more evident when the mind attempts to build up the idea of a particular object by an act of imagination. one may conceive as present, a sphere, red in colour, with smooth surface, and two feet in diameter. now this particular object is defined through the qualities spherical, red, smooth, etc. but these notions of quality are all general, although here applied to building up the image of a particular thing. processes of acquiring knowledge similar if what has already been noted concerning the law of universal method is correct, and if all learning is a process of building up a new experience in accordance with the law of apperception, then all of the above modes of gaining either particular or general knowledge must ultimately conform to the laws of general method. keeping in view the fact that applied knowledge is always general in character, it will not be difficult to demonstrate that these various processes do not differ in their essential characteristics; but that any process of acquiring either particular or general knowledge conforms to the method of selection and relation, or of analysis-synthesis, as already described in our study of the learning process. to demonstrate this, however, it will be necessary to examine and illustrate the different modes of learning in the light of the principles of general method already laid down in the text. chapter xv modes of learning development of particular knowledge a. learning through the senses in many lessons in nature study, elementary science, etc., pupils are led to acquire new knowledge by having placed before them some particular object which they may examine through the senses. the knowledge thus gained through the direct observation of some individual thing, since it is primarily knowledge about a particular individual, is to be classified as particular knowledge. as an example of the process by which a pupil may gain particular knowledge through the senses, a nature lesson may be taken in which he would, by actual observation, become acquainted with one of the constellations, say the great dipper. here the learner first receives through his senses certain impressions of colour and form. next he proceeds to read into these impressions definite meanings, as stars, four, corners, bowl, three, curve, handle, etc. in such a process of acquiring knowledge about a particular thing, it is to be noted that the acquisition depends upon two important conditions: . the senses receive impressions from a particular thing. . the mind reacts upon these impressions with certain phases of its old knowledge, here represented by such words as four, corner, bowl, etc. =analysis of process.=--when the mind thus gains knowledge of a particular object through sense perception, the process is found to conform exactly to the general method already laid down; for there is involved: . _the motive._--to read meaning into the strange thing which is placed before the pupil as a problem to stimulate his senses. _ . selection, or analysis._--bringing selected elements of former knowledge to interpret the unknown impressions, the elements of his former knowledge being represented in the above example by such words as, four, bowl, curve, handle, etc. . _unification, or synthesis._--a continuous relating of these interpreting factors into the unity of a newly interpreted object, the dipper. sense perception in education =a. gives knowledge of things.=--in many lessons in biology, botany, etc., although the chief aim of the lesson is to acquire a correct class notion, yet the learning process is in large part the gaining of particular knowledge through the senses. in a nature lesson, for instance, the pupil may be presented with an insect which he has never previously met. when the pupil interprets the object as six-legged, with hard shell-like wing covers, under wings membranous, etc., he is able to gain knowledge about this particular thing: . because the thing manifests itself to him through the senses of sight and touch. . because he is able to bring to bear upon these sense impressions his old knowledge, represented by such words as six, wing, shell, hard, membranous, etc. so far, therefore, as the process ends with knowledge of the particular object presented, the learning process conforms exactly to that laid down above, for there is involved: . _the motive._--to read meaning into the new thing which is placed before the pupil as a problem to stimulate his senses. . _selection, or analysis._--bringing selected elements of former knowledge to interpret the unknown problem, the elements of his former knowledge being represented above by such words as six, leg, wing, hard, shell, membranous, etc. . _unification, or synthesis._--a continuous relating of these interpreting factors into the unity of a better known object, the insect. =b. is a basis for generalization.=--it is to be noted, however, that in any such lesson, although the pupil gains through his senses a knowledge of a particular individual only, yet he may at once accept this individual as a sign, or type, of a class of objects, and can readily apply the new knowledge in interpreting other similar things. although, for example, the pupil has experienced but one such object, he does not necessarily think of it as a mere individual--this thing--but as a representative of a possible class of objects, a beetle. in other words the new particular notion tends to pass directly into a general, or class, notion. b. learning through imagination as an example of a lesson in which the pupil secures knowledge through the use of his imagination, may be taken first the case of one called upon to image some single object of which he may have had no actual experience, as a desert, london tower, the sphinx, etc. taking the last named as an example, the learner must select certain characteristics as, woman, head, lion, body, etc., all of which are qualities which have been learned in other past experiences. moreover, the mind must organize these several qualities into the representation of a single object, the sphinx. here, evidently, the pupil follows fully the normal process of learning. . the term--the sphinx--suggests a problem, or felt need, namely, to read meaning into the vaguely realized term. . under the direction of the instructor or the text-book, the pupil selects, or analyses out of past experience, such ideas as, woman, head, body, lion, which are felt to have a value in interpreting the present problem. . a synthetic, or relating, activity of mind unifies the selected ideas into an ideally constructed object which is accepted by the learner as a particular object, although never directly known through the senses. nor is the method different in more complex imagination processes. in literary interpretation, for instance, when the reader meets such expressions as: the curfew tolls the knell of parting day, the lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, the ploughman homeward plods his weary way and leaves the world to darkness and to me; the words of the author suggest a problem to the mind of the reader. this problem then calls up in the mind of the student a set of images out of earlier experience, as bell, evening, herd, ploughman, lea, etc., which the mind unifies into the representation of the particular scene depicted in the lines. it is in this way that much of our knowledge of various objects and scenes in nature, of historical events and characters, and of spiritual beings is obtained. =imagination gives basis for generalization.=--it should be noted by the student-teacher that in many lessons we aim to give the child a notion of a class of objects, though he may in actual experience never have met any representatives of the class. in geography, for instance, the child learns of deserts, volcanoes, etc., without having experienced these objects through the senses. it has been seen, however, that our general knowledge always develops from particular experience. for this reason the pupil who has never seen a volcano, in order to gain a general notion of a volcano, must first, by an act of constructive imagination, image a definite picture of a particular volcano. the importance of using in such a lesson a picture or a representation on a sand-board, lies in the fact that this furnishes the necessary stimulus to the child's imagination, which will cause him to image a particular individual as a basis for the required general, or class, notion. too often, however, the child is expected in such lessons to form the class notion directly, that is, without the intervention of a particular experience. this question will be considered more fully in chapter xxvii, which treats of the process of imagination. c. learning by inference, or deduction instead of placing himself in british columbia, and noting by actual experience that there is a large rainfall there, a person may discover the same by what is called a process of inference. for example, one may have learned from an examination of other particular instances that air takes up moisture in passing over water; that warm air absorbs large quantities of moisture; that air becomes cool as it rises; and that warm, moist air deposits its moisture as rain when it is cooled. knowing this and knowing a number of particular facts about british columbia, namely that warm winds pass over it from the pacific and must rise owing to the presence of mountains, we may infer of british columbia that it has an abundant rainfall. when we thus discover a truth in relation to any particular thing by inference, we are said to go through a process of deduction. a more particular study of this process will be made in chapter xxviii, but certain facts may here be noted in reference to the process as a mode of acquiring knowledge. an examination will show that the deductive process follows the ordinary process of learning, or of selecting certain elements of old knowledge, and organizing them into a new particular experience in order to meet a certain problem. =deduction as formal reasoning.=--it is usually stated by psychologists and logicians that in this process the person starts with the general truth and ends with the particular inference, or conclusion, for example: winds coming from the ocean are saturated with moisture. the prevailing winds in british columbia come from the pacific. therefore these winds are saturated with moisture. all winds become colder as they rise. the winds of british columbia rise as they go inland. therefore, the winds (atmosphere) in british columbia become colder as they go inland. the atmosphere gives out moisture as it becomes colder. the atmosphere in british columbia becomes colder as it goes inland. therefore, the atmosphere gives out moisture in british columbia. =steps in process.=--the various elements involved in a deductive process are often analysed into four parts in the following order: . _principles._ the general laws which are to be applied in the solution of the problem. these, in the above deductions, constitute the first sentence in each, as, the air becomes colder as it rises. air gives out its moisture as it becomes colder, etc. . _data._ this includes the particular facts already known relative to the problem. in this lesson, the data are set forth in the second sentences, as follows: the prevailing winds in british columbia come from the pacific; the wind rises as it goes inland, etc. . _inferences._ these are the conclusions arrived at as a result of noting relations between data and principles. in the above lesson, the inferences are: the atmosphere, or trade-winds, coming from the pacific rise, become colder, and give out much moisture. . _verification._ in some cases at least the learner may use other means to verify his conclusions. in the above lesson, for example, he may look it up in the geography or ask some one who has had actual experience. =deduction involves a problem.=--it is to be noted, however, that in a deductive learning process, the young child does not really begin with the general principle. on the contrary, as noted in the study of the learning process, the child always begins with a particular unsolved problem. in the case just cited, for instance, the child starts with the problem, "what is the condition of the rainfall in british columbia?" it is owing to the presence of this problem, moreover, that the mind calls up the principles and data. these, of course, are already possessed as old knowledge, and are called up because the mind feels a connection between them and the problem with which it is confronted. the principles and data are thus both involved in the selecting process, or step of analysis. what the learner really does, therefore, in a deductive lesson is to interpret a new problem by selecting as interpreting ideas the principles and data. the third division, inference, is in reality the third step of our learning process, since the inference is a new experience organized out of the selected principles and data. moreover, the verification is often found to take the form of ordinary expression. as a process of learning, therefore, deduction does not exactly follow the formal outline of the psychologists and logicians of ( ) principles, ( ) data, ( ) inference, and (_ _) verification; but rather that of the learning process, namely, ( ) problem, ( ) selecting activity, including principles and data, ( ) relating activity=inference, ( ) expression=verification. =example of deduction as learning process.=--a simple and interesting lesson, showing how the pupil actually goes through the deductive process, is found in paper cutting of forms balanced about a centre, say the letter x. . _problem._ the pupil starts with the problem of discovering a way of cutting this letter by balancing about a centre. . _selection._ principles and data. the pupil calls up as data what he knows of this letter, and as principles, the laws of balance he has learned from such letters as, a, b, etc. . _organization or inference._ the pupil infers from the principle involved in cutting the letter a, that the letter x (fig. a) may be balanced about a vertical diameter, as in fig. b. repeating the process, he infers further from the principle involved in cutting the letter b, that this result may again be balanced about a horizontal diameter, as in fig. c. [illustration] . _expression or verification._ by cutting figure d and unfolding figures e and f, he is able to verify his conclusion by noting the shape of the form as it unfolds, thus: [illustration] further examples for study the following are given as further examples of deductive processes. the materials are here arranged in the formal or logical way. the student-teacher should rearrange them as they would occur in the child's learning process. i. division of decimals . _principles_: (_a_) multiplying the dividend and divisor by the same number does not alter the quotient. (_b_) to multiply a decimal by , , , etc., move the decimal point , , , etc., places respectively to the right. . _data_: present knowledge of facts contained in such an example as . divided by . . . _inferences_: (_a_) the divisor (. ) may be converted into a whole number by multiplying it by . (_b_) if the divisor is multiplied by , the dividend must also be multiplied by if the quotient is to be unchanged. (_c_) the problem thus becomes . divided by , for which the answer is . . . _verification_: check the work to see that no mistakes have been made in the calculation. multiply the quotient by the divisor to see if the result is equal to the dividend. ii. trade-winds . _principles_: (_a_) heated air expands, becomes lighter, and is pushed upward by cooler and heavier currents of air. (_b_) air currents travelling towards a region of more rapid motion have a tendency to "lag behind," and so appear to travel in a direction opposite to that of the earth's rotation. . _data_: (_a_) the most heated portion of the earth is the tropical region. (_b_) the rapidity of the earth's motion is greatest at the equator and least at the poles. (_c_) the earth rotates on its axis from west to east. . _inferences_: (_a_) the heated air in equatorial regions will be constantly rising. (_b_) it will be pushed upward by colder and heavier currents of air from the north and south. (_c_) if the earth did not rotate, there would be constant winds towards the south, north of the equator; and towards the north, south of the equator. (_d_) these currents of air are travelling from a region of less motion to a region of greater motion, and have a tendency to lag behind the earth's motion as they approach the equator. (_e_) hence they will seem to blow in a direction contrary to the earth's rotation, namely, towards the west. (_f_) these two movements, towards the equator and towards the west, combine to give the currents of air a direction towards the south-west north of the equator, and towards the north-west south of the equator. . _verification_: read the geography text to see if our inferences are correct. the development of general knowledge =the conceptual lesson.=--as an example of a lesson involving a process of conception, or classification, may be taken one in which the pupil might gain the class notion _noun_. the pupil would first be presented with particular examples through sentences containing such words as john, mary, toronto, desk, boy, etc. thereupon the pupil is led to examine these in order, noting certain characteristics in each. examining the word _john_, for instance, he notes that it is a word; that it is used to name and also, perhaps, that it names a person, and is written with a capital letter. of the word _toronto_, he may note much the same except that it names a place; of the word _desk_, he may note especially that it is used to name a thing and is written without a capital letter. by comparing any and all the qualities thus noted, he is supposed, finally, by noting what characteristics are common to all, to form a notion of a class of words used to name. =the inductive lesson.=--to exemplify an inductive lesson, there may be noted the process of learning the rule that to multiply the numerator and denominator of any fraction by the same number does not alter the value of the fraction. _conversion of fractions to equivalent fractions with different denominators_ the teacher draws on the black-board a series of squares, each representing a square foot. these are divided by vertical lines into a number of equal parts. one or more of these parts are shaded, and pupils are asked to state what fraction of the whole square has been shaded. the same squares are then further divided into smaller equal parts by horizontal lines, and the pupils are led to discover how many of the smaller equal parts are contained in the shaded parts. [illustration: / = / / = / / = / / = / ] examine these equations one by one, treating each after some such manner as follows: how might we obtain the numerator from the numerator ? (multiply by .) the denominator from the denominator ? (multiply by .) Ã� Ã� Ã� Ã� --- = -; --- = --; --- = --; --- = --. Ã� Ã� Ã� Ã� if we multiply both the numerator and the denominator of the fraction / by , what will be the effect upon the value of the fraction? (it will be unchanged.) what have we done with the numerator and denominator in every case? how has the fraction been affected? what rule may we infer from these examples? (multiplying the numerator and denominator by the same number does not alter the value of the fraction.) the formal steps in describing the process of acquiring either a general notion or a general truth, the psychologist and logician usually divide it into four parts as follows: . the person is said to analyse a number of particular cases. in the above examples this would mean, in the conceptual lesson, noting the various characteristics of the several words, john, toronto, desk, etc.; and in the second lesson, noting the facts involved in the several cases of shading. . the mind is said to compare the characteristics of the several particular cases, noting any likenesses and unlikenesses. . the mind is said to pick out, or abstract, any quality or quantities common to all the particular cases. . finally the mind is supposed to synthesise these common characteristics into a general notion, or concept, in the conceptual process, and into a general truth if the process is inductive. thus the conceptual and inductive processes are both said to involve the same four steps of: . _analysis._--interpreting a number of individual cases. . _comparison._--noting likenesses and differences between the several individual examples. . _abstraction._--selecting the common characteristics. . _generalization._--synthesis of common characteristics into a general truth or a general notion, as the case may be. =criticism.=--here again it will be found, however, that the steps of the logician do not fully represent what takes place in the pupil's mind as he goes through the learning process in a conceptual or inductive lesson. it is to be noted first that the above outline does not signify the presence of any problem to cause the child to proceed with the analysis of the several particular cases. assuming the existence of the problem, unless this problem involves all the particular examples, the question arises whether the learner will suspend coming to any conclusion until he has analysed and compared all the particular cases before him. it is here that the actual learning process is found to vary somewhat from the outline of the psychologist and logician. as will be seen below, the child really finds his problem in the first particular case presented to him. moreover, as he analyses out the characteristics of this case, he does not really suspend fully the generalizing process until he has examined a number of other cases, but, as the teacher is fully aware, is much more likely to jump at once to a more or less correct conclusion from the one example. it is true, of course, that it is only by going on to compare this with other cases that he assures himself that this first conclusion is correct. this slight variation of the actual learning process from the formal outline will become evident if one considers how a child builds up any general notion in ordinary life. conception as a learning process =a. in ordinary life.=--suppose a young child has received a vague impression of a cow from meeting a first and only example; we find that by accepting this as a problem and by applying to it such experience as he then possesses, he is able to read some meaning into it, for instance, that it is a brown, four-footed, hairy object. this idea, once formed, does not remain a mere particular idea, but becomes a general means for interpreting other experiences. at first, indeed, the idea may serve to read meaning, not only into another cow, but also into a horse or a buffalo. in course of time, however, as this first imperfect concept of the animal is used in interpreting cows and perhaps other animals, the first crude concept may in time, by comparison, develop into a relatively true, or logical, concept, applicable to only the actual members of the class. now here, the child did not wait to generalize until such time as the several really essential characteristics were decided upon, but in each succeeding case applied his present knowledge to the particular thing presented. it was, in other words, by a series of regular selecting and relating processes, that his general notion was finally clarified. =b. in the school.=--practically the same conditions are noted in the child's study of particular examples in an inductive or conceptual lesson in the school, although the process is much more rapid on account of its being controlled by the teacher. in the lesson outlined above, the pupil finds a problem in the very first word _john_, and adjusts himself thereto in a more or less perfect way by an apperceptive process involving both a selecting and a relating of ideas. with this first more or less perfect notion as a working hypothesis, the pupil goes on to examine the next word. if he gains the true notion from the first example, he merely verifies this through the other particular examples. if his first notion is not correct, however, he is able to correct it by a further process of analysis and synthesis in connection with other examples. throughout the formal stages, therefore, the pupil is merely applying his growing general knowledge in a selective, or analytic, way to the interpreting of several particular examples, until such time as a perfect general, or class, notion is obtained and verified. it is, indeed, on account of this immediate tendency of the mind to generalize, that care must be taken to present the children with typical examples. to make them examine a sufficient number of examples is to ensure the correcting of crude notions that may be formed by any of the pupils through their generalizing perhaps from a single particular. induction as a learning process in like manner, in an inductive lesson, although the results of the process of the development of a general principle may for convenience be arranged logically under the above four heads, it is evident that the child could not wholly suspend his conclusions until a number of particular cases had been examined and compared. in the lesson on the rule for conversion of fractions to equivalent fractions with different denominators, the pupils could not possibly apperceive, or analyse, the examples as suggested under the head of selection, or analysis, without at the same time implicitly abstracting and generalizing. also in the lesson below on the predicate adjective, the pupils could not note, in all the examples, all the features given under analysis and fail at the same time to abstract and generalize. the fact is that in such lessons, if the selection, or analysis, is completed in only one example, abstraction and generalization implicitly unfold themselves at the same time and constitute a relating, or synthetic, act of the mind. the fourfold arrangement of the matter, however, may let the teacher see more fully the children's mental attitude, and thus enable him to direct them intelligently through the apperceptive process. it will undoubtedly also impress on the teacher's mind the need of having the pupils compare particular cases until a correct notion is fully organized in experience. two processes similar notwithstanding the distinction drawn by psychologists between conception as a process of gaining a general notion, and induction as a process of arriving at a general truth, it is evident from the above that the two processes have much in common. in the development of many lesson topics, in fact, the lesson may be viewed as involving both a conceptual and an inductive process. in the subject of grammar, for instance, a first lesson on the pronoun may be viewed as a conceptual lesson, since the child gains an idea of a class of words, as indicated by the new general term pronoun, this term representing the result of a conceptual process. it may equally be viewed as an inductive lesson, since the child gains from the lesson a general truth, or judgment, as expressed in his new definition--"a pronoun is a word that represents an object without naming it," the definition representing the result of an inductive process. this fact will be considered more fully, however, in chapter xxviii. further examples of inductive lessons as further illustrations of an inductive process, the following outlines of lessons might be noted. the processes are outlined according to the formal steps. the student-teacher should consider how the children are to approach each problem and to what extent they are likely to generalize as the various examples are being interpreted during the analytic stage. . the subjective predicate adjective _analysis, or selection:_ divide the following sentences into subject and predicate: the man was old. the weather turned cold. the day grew stormy. the boy became ill. the concert proved successful. what kind of man is referred to in the first sentence? what part of speech is "old"? what part of the sentence does it modify? in what part of the sentence does it stand? could it be omitted? what then is its duty with reference to the verb? what are its two duties? (it completes the verb "was" and modifies the subject "man.") lead the pupils to deal similarly with "cold," "stormy," "ill," "successful." _comparison, abstraction, and generalization, or organization:_ what two duties has each of these italicized words? each is called a "subjective predicate adjective." what is a subjective predicate adjective? (a subjective predicate adjective is an adjective that completes the verb and modifies the subject.) . condensation of vapour _analysis, or selection:_ the pupils should be asked to report observations they have made concerning some familiar occurrences like the following: ( ) breathe upon a cold glass and upon a warm glass. what do you notice in each case? where must the drops of water have come from? can you see this water ordinarily? in what form must the water have been before it formed in drops on the cold glass? ( ) what have you often noticed on the window of the kitchen on cool days? from where did these drops of water come? could you see the vapour in the air? how did the temperature of the window panes compare with the temperature of the room? ( ) when the water in a tea-kettle is boiling rapidly, what do you see between the mouth of the spout and the cloud of steam? what must have come through that clear space? is the steam then at first visible or invisible? the pupils should be further asked to report observations and make correct inferences concerning such things as: ( ) the deposit of moisture on the outside surface of a pitcher of ice-water on a warm summer day. ( ) the clouded condition of one's eye-glasses on coming from the cold outside air into a warm room. _comparison, abstraction, and generalization, or organization:_ in all these cases you have reported what there has been in the air. was this vapour visible or invisible? under what condition did it become visible? the pupils should be led to sum up their observations in some such way as the following: air often contains much water vapour. when this comes in contact with cooler bodies, it condenses into minute particles of water. in other words, the two conditions of condensation are ( ) a considerable quantity of water vapour in the air, and ( ) contact with cooler bodies. it must be borne in mind that in a conceptual or an inductive lesson care is to be taken by the teacher to see that the particulars are sufficient in number and representative in character. as already pointed out, crude notions often arise through generalizing from too few particulars or from particulars that are not typical of the whole class. induction can be most frequently employed in elementary school work in the subjects of grammar, arithmetic, and nature study. inductive-deductive lessons before we leave this division of general method, it should be noted that many lessons combine in a somewhat formal way two or more of the foregoing lesson types. in many inductive lessons the step of application really involves a process of deduction. for example, after teaching the definition of a noun by a process of induction as outlined above, we may, in the same lesson, seek to have the pupil use his new knowledge in pointing out particular nouns in a set of given sentences. here, however, the pupil is evidently called upon to discover the value of particular words by the use of the newly learned general principle. when, therefore, he discovers the grammatical value of the particular word "provender" in the sentence "provender is dear," the pupil's process of learning can be represented in the deductive form as follows: all naming words are nouns. _provender_ is a naming word. _provender_ is a noun. although in these exercises the real aim is not to have the pupil learn the value of the individual word, but to test his mastery of the general principle, such application undoubtedly corresponds with the deductive learning process previously outlined. any inductive lesson, therefore, which includes the above type of application may rightly be described as an inductive-deductive lesson. a great many lessons in grammar and arithmetic are of this type. chapter xvi the lesson unit =what constitutes a lesson problem.=--the foregoing analysis and description of the learning process has shown that the ordinary school lesson is designed to lead the pupil to build up, or organize, a new experience, or, as it is sometimes expressed, to gain control of a unit of valuable knowledge, presented as a single problem. from what has been learned concerning the relating activity of mind, however, it is evident that the teacher may face a difficulty when he is called upon to decide what extent of knowledge, or experience, is to be accepted as a knowledge unit. it was noted, for example, that many topics regularly treated in a single lesson fall into quite distinct sub-divisions, each of which represents to a certain extent a separate group of related ideas and, therefore, a single problem. on the other hand, many different lesson experiences, or topics, although taught as separate units, are seen to stand so closely related, that in the end they naturally organize themselves into a larger single unit of knowledge, representing a division, of the subject of study. from this it is evident that situations may arise, as in teaching the classes of sentences in grammar, in which the teacher must ask himself whether it will be possible to take up the whole topic with its important sub-divisions in a single lesson, or whether each sub-division should be treated in a single lesson. =how to approach associated problems.=--even when it is realized that the related matter is too large for a single lesson, it must be decided whether it will be better to bring on each sub-division as a separate topic, and later let these sub-divisions synthesise into a new unity; or whether the larger topic should be taken up first in a general way, and the sub-divisions made topics of succeeding lessons. in the study of mood in grammar, for example, shall we introduce each mood separately, and finally have the child synthesise the separate facts; or shall we begin with a lesson on mood in general, and follow this with a study of the separate moods? in like manner, in the study of winds in geography, shall we study in order land and sea breezes, trade-winds, and monsoons, and have the child synthesise these facts at the end of the series; or shall we begin with a study of winds in general, and follow this with a more detailed study of the three classes of winds? whole to parts =advantages.=--the second of these methods, which is often called the method of proceeding from whole to parts, should, whenever possible, be followed. for instance, in a study of such a lesson as _dickens in the camp_, the detailed study of the various stanzas should be preceded by an introductory lesson, bringing out the leading thought of the poem, and noting the sub-topics. when, in an introductory lesson, the pupil is able to gain control of a large topic, and see the relation to it of a given number of sub-topics, he is selecting and relating the parts of the whole topic by the normal analytic-synthetic method. moreover, in the following lessons, he is much more likely to appreciate the relation of the various sub-topics to the central topic, and the inter-relations between these various sub-topics. for this reason, in such subjects as history, literature, geography, etc., pupils are often introduced to these large divisions, or complex lesson units, and given a vague knowledge of the whole topic, the detailed study of the parts being made in subsequent lessons. =examples.=--the following outlines will further illustrate how a series of lessons (numbered i, ii, iii, etc.) may thus proceed from a first study of the larger whole to a more detailed study of a number of subordinate parts. the st. lawrence river system _i. topic.--the st. lawrence river:_ position, size, extent of system, other characteristics. importance--historical, commercial, industrial. _ii. sub-topic .--importance historically:_ open mouth to europe; open door to continent; cartier, champlain. system of lakes and rivers large and small gave lines of communication, inviting discovery and subsequent development and settlement. _iii. sub-topic .--importance commercially:_ large tracts of valuable land, timber, etc., made available. highway--need of such between east and west. difficulties to be overcome, canal, ships. competition of railways, how? classes of goods back and forth. avenue to and from the wheat land. _iv. sub-topic .--importance industrially:_ great commercial centres--where located and why? water powers, elevators, manufacturing of raw materials made available in the large areas; immigration; fishing. study of bacteria _i. topic.--bacteria:_ what they are; relations, comparisons; other plants in same class, or those of higher orders; size, shape; where found; conditions of growth; propagation; modes of distribution; etc. _ii. sub-topic .--our interest in bacteria, arising out of the injury or good they do:_ (_a_) injury: decay of fruits, trees, tissues, etc., diseases--diphtheria, typhoid, tuberculosis; how developed, conditions, favourable toxins. (_b_) benefits: in soil, cheese, butter, etc.; chemical action, building new compounds and breaking up other compounds. _iii. sub-topic .--our interest in controlling them; the methods based on mode and conditions of growth, etc.:_ (_a_) prevention: eliminating favourable conditions; low temperature, high temperatures, cleanliness; sewerage disposal; clean cow-stables, cellars, kitchens, etc.; antiseptics--carbolic, formalin, sugar for fruit, sealing up; quarantine, vaccination, antitoxin. (_b_) cultures,--alfalfa, cheese, butter, under control. geography of europe _i. topic.--europe:_ what interest to us; why we study it; position, latitude, near water, boundaries, size; surface features--highlands, lowlands, drainage rivers, coast-line, etc. climate--temperature (means, jan., july), wind, moisture. _ii. sub-topic .--products (based on above conditions):_ vegetation, animal, mineral; vary over area according to physical climatic, and geological conditions; kinds of products of each class, in each area, etc. _iii. sub-topic .--occupations (based on lesson ii):_ study of operations and conditions favourable and unfavourable under which each product is produced, gathered, and manufactured. industries, arising from work on the raw materials. _iv. sub-topic .--trade and commerce (based on lessons ii and iii):_ transportation, producers selling and manufacturers buying raw material, distributed to homes in country and city, to factories within the region itself, to regions beyond, across oceans, etc. manufactured products sent out, exports and imports. _v. sub-topic .--civil advantages (based on lessons i, iii, and iv):_ conditions of living--homes, dress, work and pleasure; trades, education, government, social, religious, etc. parts to whole the method of whole to parts cannot be followed in all cases even where a number of lesson units may possess important points of inter-relation. although, for instance, simple and compound addition and addition of fractions are only different phases of one process, no one would advocate the combining of these into such a unified lesson series. in canadian history, also, although the conditions of the quebec act, the coming of the united empire loyalists, and the passing of the constitutional act, have definite points of inter-relation, it would nevertheless be unwise to attempt to evolve these out of a single complex lesson unit. in such cases, therefore, the synthesis of the various parts must be made as the lessons proceed. moreover, it is well to ensure the complete organization of the elements by means of an outline review at the end of the lesson series. the student-teacher will meet an example of this process under the topical lesson in chapter xvii. precautions it is evident from the above considerations, that certain precautions should be observed in deciding upon the particular subject-matter to be included in each lesson topic. . a just balance should be maintained between the difficulty of each lesson unit and the ability of the class. matter that is too easy requires no effort in its mastery and hence is uninteresting. matter that is too difficult discourages effort, and is, therefore, equally uninteresting. it should be sufficiently easy for every pupil to master, and sufficiently difficult to require real effort. . the amount of matter included should be carefully adjusted to the length of time taken for the lesson and to the attainments of the class. if too much is attempted, there will be insufficient time for adequate drill and review, and hence there will be lack of thoroughness. if too little is attempted, time will be wasted in needless repetition. . each unit of instruction in any subject should, in general, grow out of the preceding unit taken in that subject, and be closely connected with it. it is in this way that a pupil's interest is aroused for the new problem and his knowledge becomes organized. neglect in this regard results in the possession of disconnected and unsystematized facts. each lesson should contain one or more central facts around which the other facts are grouped. this permits easy organization of the material of the lesson, and ensures its retention by the pupils. further, the pupils are by this means trained to discriminate between the essential and the non-essential. chapter xvii lesson types =the developing lesson.=--in the various lesson plans already considered, the aim has always appeared as an attempt to direct the learning process so that the pupil may both build up a new experience and also gain such control over it as will enable him to turn it to practical use. because in all such lessons the teacher is supposed to direct the pupils through the four steps of the learning process in such a way that they discover for themselves some important new experience, or develop it out of their own present knowledge, the lessons are spoken of as developing lessons. moreover, the two parts of the lesson in which the new experience is especially gained by the pupils, namely the selecting and relating processes, are often spoken of as a single step and called the step of _development,_ the lesson then being treated under four heads: problem, preparation, development, and application. =auxiliary lessons.=--it is evident, however, that there may be lessons in which this direct attempt to have the pupils build up some wholly new experience through a regularly controlled learning process, will not appear as the chief purpose of the lesson. in the previous consideration of the deductive lesson, it was pointed out that this type may be used to give a further mastery of general rules previously learned, rather than a knowledge of particular examples. such would be the case in an ordinary parsing and analysis lesson in grammar. here the primary purpose is, evidently, not to give the pupils a grammatical knowledge of the particular words and sentences which are being parsed and analysed, but rather to give them better control of certain general rules of language which they have partially mastered in previous lessons. so also a lesson in writing may seek, not to teach the form of some new letter, but to give skill in writing a letter form which the pupils have already learned. in an exercise in addition of fractions, also, the aim is not so much to have the pupil know these particular questions, as to have him gain a more complete control of the previously learned rule. in other lessons the pupils may be left to secure new knowledge largely for themselves, and the recitation be devoted to testing whether they have been able to accomplish this successfully. in still other lessons the teacher may merely outline a certain topic or certain topics, preparatory to such independent study by the pupils. the following outlines will explain and exemplify these auxiliary lesson types. the study lesson =purpose of study lesson.=--the purpose of the study lesson is the mastery by the pupils of a stated portion of the text-book. ultimately, however it is the cultivation of the power of gleaning information from the printed page, of selecting essential features, and of arranging these in their proper relationships. the main difficulty in connection with the study lesson is the adaptation of the matter to the interests of the pupils. this difficulty is sometimes due to their inability to interpret the language of the book, and to the difficulty of their distinguishing the salient features from the non-essential. the trouble in this regard is accentuated when they approach the lesson with an inadequate preparation of mind. the study lesson falls naturally into two parts, the assignment and the seat work. =the assignment.=--the object of the assignment is to put the pupils in an attitude of inquiry toward the new matter. it corresponds to the conception of the problem and the step of preparation in the development lesson. the most successful assignment is one in which the interest of the pupils is aroused to such a pitch that they are anxious to read more about the subject. in general it will consist of a recall of those ideas, or a statement of those facts upon which the interpretation of the new matter depends. most of the unsuccessful study lessons are due to insufficient care in the assignment. often pupils are told to read so many pages of the book, without any preliminary preparation and without any idea of what facts they are to learn. under such conditions, the result is usually a very slight interest in the lesson, and consequently an unsatisfactory grasp of it. =examples of assignment.=--a few examples will serve to illustrate what is meant by an adequate assignment. when a new reading lesson is to be prepared, the assignment should include the pronunciation and meaning of the different words, and a general understanding of the passage to be read. for a new spelling lesson, the assignment should include the pronunciation and meaning of the words, and any special difficulties that may appear in them. in assigning a history lesson on, say, the capture of quebec, the teacher should discuss with the class the position of quebec, the difficulties that would present themselves to a besieging army, the character and personal appearance of wolfe (making him stand out as vividly as possible), and the position seized by the british army, illustrating as far as possible by maps and diagrams. then the class will be in a mental attitude to read with interest the dramatic story of the taking of the fortress. if the pupils were about to study the geography of british columbia, the teacher might, in the assignment, ask them to note from the map of canada the position of the province and the direction of the mountain ranges; to infer the character and direction of the rivers and their value for navigation; to infer the nature of the climate, knowing the direction of the prevailing winds; to infer the character of the chief industries, knowing the physical features and climate. with these facts in mind the class will be able to read intelligently what the text-book says about british columbia. =the seat work.=--however good the assignment may be, there is always a danger that there will be much waste of time in connection with the seat work. the tendency to mind-wandering is always so great that the time devoted to the preparation of lessons at seats may to a large extent be lost, unless special precautions are taken in that regard. unfortunately every lesson cannot be made so enthralling that the pupil's mind is kept upon it in spite of distractions. to prevent this possible waste of time, suggestions have already been made in another connection (page above). these will bear repetition here. questions upon the matter to be studied might be placed on the black-board and pupils asked to prepare answers for these. the difficulty with this plan is, that, unless the questions are carefully thought out by the teacher, the pupils may get from their reading only a few disconnected facts instead of organized knowledge. the pupils might be asked to prepare lists of questions for themselves, and the one who had the best list might be permitted to put his questions to the rest of the class. the difficulty here is that most pupils have a tendency to question about what is unimportant and to neglect the important. in the higher classes, the pupils might be required to make a topical outline of the lesson studied. this requires considerable analytic ability, and the results at first are likely to be disappointing. however, it is an ability worth striving for. the individual who can readily outline what he has read has mastered the art of reading. =use of study lessons.=--there is a danger that the study lesson may be used too much or too little. in an ungraded school containing many classes, the teacher may be tempted to rely solely upon the study lesson as a means of intellectual advancement. used exclusively it becomes monotonous, and the pupils grow weary of the constant effort required. on the other hand, in the graded school, where a teacher has charge of only one class, there will be a tendency to depend entirely on the oral presentation of lessons, to the exclusion of the text-book altogether. the result is that pupils do not cultivate the power to obtain knowledge from books. the study lesson should alternate with the oral lesson, so that monotony may be avoided, and the pupils will reap the undoubted benefits of both methods. the recitation lesson =purpose of the recitation lesson.=--the recitation lesson is the complement of the study lesson. its purpose is to test the pupil's grasp of the facts he has read during the study period. incidentally the teacher clears up difficulties and corrects misconceptions on the part of the pupil. the facts of the text-book may be amplified from the teacher's stock of information. abstract facts may be illustrated in a concrete way. the important facts may be emphasized and the unimportant ones lightly passed over. the ultimate aim of the recitation lesson is to add something to the pupil's power of interpreting and organizing facts. =precautions.=--some precautions are to be noted in connection with the recitation lesson. ( ) care must be exercised that the pupils are not reciting mere words that have no solid basis of ideas. young children are particularly expert at verbalizing. ( ) care must also be taken that the pupils have not merely scrappy information, but have the ideas thoroughly organized. ( ) the teacher must know the facts to be recited well enough to be independent of the text-book during the recitation. to conduct the lesson with an open book before him is a confession of weakness on the part of the teacher. conducting the recitation lesson there are two methods of conducting the recitation lesson, namely, the question and answer method and the topical method. =a. the question and answer method.=--this is the easier method for the pupil, as he is called upon to answer only in a brief form detailed questions asked by the teacher. the onus of the analysis of the lesson rests largely upon the teacher. he must ask the questions in a proper sequence so that, if the answers of the pupils were written out, they would form a connected account of the matter. he must be able to detect from the pupils' answers whether they have real knowledge or are merely masquerading with words. to be able to question well is one of the most valuable accomplishments that a teacher can possess. the whole problem of the art of questioning will be considered in the next chapter. =b. the topical method.=--the topical recitation consists in the pupil's reporting the facts of the study lesson with a minimum of questioning on the part of the teacher. two advantages are apparent: ( ) it gives the pupil an excellent training in organizing his materials, and ( ) it develops his language power. it is to be feared that the topical recitation is not so frequently used as its value warrants. the reason is probably that it is a difficult method to follow. poor results are usually secured at first, teachers grow discouraged, they stop trying it, and thereafter put their whole faith in the question and answer recitation. this is unfortunate, for however good the latter may be, it is greatly inferior to the topical recitation in helping the pupil to institute relations among his facts, and in improving his power to use his mother-tongue effectively. successful topical recitations can be secured only at the price of long, patient, and persistent effort. the teacher can gradually work towards them from detailed questions to questions requiring the combination of a few sentences in answer, and thence to the complete outline. in almost every lesson the pupils may be called upon to summarize some topic after it has been gone over by means of detailed questions. in such answers the pupils may reasonably be expected to state the facts in their proper connection and in good language form. in reviews, also, in such subjects as history and geography, the pupils should be frequently called upon to recite topically. the drill lesson =purpose of drill lesson.=--the drill lesson involves the repetition of matter in the same form as it was originally learned, in order to fix it in the mind so firmly that its recall will eventually become automatic. in other words, the function of this type of lesson is habit-formation. it is necessary in those subjects that are more or less mechanical in nature, and that can be reduced to the plane of habit. the field of the drill lesson will, therefore, be largely restricted to spelling, writing, language, and the mechanical phases of art and arithmetic. =the method.=--as the purpose of the drill lesson is the formation of habit, the method will involve the application of the principles that lie at the basis of habit-formation. these are, ( ) attention to the thing to be done so as to obtain a vivid picture or a clear understanding of it, and ( ) repetition with attention. for instance, if the writing lesson is the formation of the capital e, the class will examine carefully a model form, note the parts of which it is composed, the relative size and position of the parts, how they are connected, etc. then will follow the repetition of the form by the pupils, each time with careful attention to the method of making it, comparison with the model, and the noting of defects in their work. this will continue until the letter can be made correctly without attention, that is, until the method of making it has been reduced to a habit. if the lesson is on the spelling of difficult words, the first step will be to observe the pronunciation of each, the division into syllables, the difficult part of the word, and the order of the letters. then the word will be repeated attentively until it can be spelled without effort. in a language lesson on the correct use, say, of "lie" and "lay," the pupils will first be called upon to observe the forms of each, "lie, lay, lain, lying," and "lay, laid, laying"--as used in sentences on the black-board, and the meaning of each group--"lie" meaning "to recline" and "lay" meaning "to place." the pupils will then repeat attentively the correct forms of the words in sentences, until they finally reach the stage when they unconsciously use the words correctly, or as habits of speech. the same principles apply in learning the addition and multiplication tables, and the tables of weights and measures in arithmetic; in the memorization of gems of poetry and prose; in the learning of dates, lists of events, and important provisions of acts in history; and in the memorization of lists of places and products in geography, where this is desirable. in all the cases mentioned, it must not be supposed that a single drill lesson will be sufficient for the fixing of the desired knowledge or skill. before instant and unconscious reaction can be depended upon, repetition will be needed at intervals for some time. =danger in mere repetition.=--in connection with the repetition necessary in the second stage of the drill lesson, an important precaution should be noted. it is impossible for anybody to repeat anything _attentively_ many times in succession unless there is some new element noted in each repetition. when there is no longer a new element, the repetition becomes mechanical, and hence comparatively useless so far as acquisition of knowledge or even habit is concerned. to ask a pupil who has difficulty with a combination in addition, or a product in multiplication, or the spelling of a word, to repeat it many times in succession, may be not only waste of time, but even worse, because a tendency toward mind-wandering may be encouraged. the practice of requiring pupils to write out new words, or words that have been mis-spelled in the dictation lesson, five, ten, or twenty times successively, cannot be too strongly condemned. the attention cannot possibly be concentrated upon the work beyond two or three repetitions, and the fact that pupils frequently make mistakes two or three words down the column and repeat this mistake to the end, is sufficient proof of the mechanical nature of the process. the little boy who had difficulty with the use of "went" and "gone," and was commanded by his teacher to write "i have gone" a hundred times on his slate, illustrates this principle exactly. he had been left to finish his task alone and, after writing "i have gone" faithfully forty or fifty times, grew tired of the monotony of the process. turning the slate over, he wrote on the other side, "i have went home" and left it on the desk for the teacher's approval. =how to overcome dangers.=--to avoid this difficulty, some device must be adopted to secure attention to each repetition until the knowledge is firmly fixed. for instance, instead of asking the pupil many times one after the other, what seven times six are, it would be better to introduce other combinations and come back frequently to seven times six. in that way the pupil would have to attend to it every time it came up. similarly, in learning to spell a troublesome word like "separate," the best plan would be to mix it up with other words and come back to it often. repetition is always necessary in the drill lesson, but it should always be _repetition with attention_. the review lesson =purpose of review lesson.=--as the name implies, a review is a new view of old knowledge. while the drill lesson repeats the matter in the same form as it was originally learned, the review lesson repeats the matter from another standpoint or in new relations. the function of the review lesson is the organization of the material of a series of lessons into an inter-connected whole, and incidentally the fixing of these facts in the mind by the additional repetitions. =kinds of review.=--almost every lesson gives opportunities for incidental reviews. the step of preparation recalls old ideas in new connections, and may be properly considered a review. a lesson on the "gerund" in grammar would require a recall of the various relations in which a noun may stand, and the various ways in which a verb may be completed. it is quite probable that the pupils have never before brought these facts together in an organized way. similarly, the step of expression affords opportunity for review. the solution of problems in simple interest confronts the pupils with new situations in which this principle can be applied. the reproduction of the matter of the history lesson requires the selection of the important facts from the mass of details given and the placing of these in their proper relationship to one another. but besides the incidental reviews which form a part of nearly all lessons, there must be lessons which are purely reviews. without these, the pupil, because of insufficient repetition, would rapidly forget the facts he had once learned or would never really know the facts at all, because he had not seen them in all their connections. there are two methods of conducting these reviews: ( ) by means of the topical outline, ( ) by means of the method of comparison. the topical review =purpose of topical outlines.=--by this method the pupil gets a bird's-eye view of a whole field. in learning the matter originally, his attention was largely concentrated upon the individual facts, and it is quite probable that he has since lost sight of some of the threads of unity running through them. the topical outline will bring these into prominence. it will enable the pupil to keep in his mind the most important headings of a subject, the sub-headings, and the individual facts coming under these. whatever may be said against the practice of memorizing topical outlines, it must be acknowledged that unless it is done the pupil's knowledge of the subject is likely to be very hazy, indefinite, and disconnected. =illustrations from history.=--as an illustration of the review lesson by means of the topical outline, take the history of the hudson's bay company. if the pupil has followed the order of the text-book, he has probably learned this subject in pieces--a bit here, another some pages later, and still another a few chapters farther on. in the multiplicity of other events, he has probably missed the connections among the facts, and a topical review will be necessary to establish these. he may be required to go through his history text-book, reading all the parts relating to the hudson's bay company. he will thus get a grasp of the relationships among the facts, and this will be made firmer if an outline such as the following is worked out with the assistance of the teacher. the hudson's bay company i. early history: . groseilliers and radisson interest prince rupert in possibilities of trade in north-western canada. two vessels fitted out for hudson's bay. report favourable. . charter granted hudson's bay company by charles ii, . . forts nelson, albany, rupert, and hayes attacked and captured by detroyes and d'iberville, . restored by treaty of utrecht, . ii. nature of fur-trade: . furs gathered by indians in winter. . conveyed to forts in summer, after incredible difficulties. . ceremonies on arrival of indians at forts. . articles exchanged for furs at first showy and worthless, but later more useful and valuable, for example, guns, hatchets, powder, shot, blankets, etc. iii. rivals of hudson's bay company: . coureurs-de-bois. . scottish traders--ranged from michilimackinac to saskatchewan. h.b. co. built cumberland house on saskatchewan to compete for interior trade. . north-west company, - --at first friendly to h.b. co., but later bitter enemies. iv. the selkirk settlement: . _establishment._--lord selkirk, a scottish philanthropist, and a shareholder in the hudson's bay co., purchased from the company , square miles of land around red river for scotch colonies, . about three hundred settlers came within three years. miles macdonell at head of the colony. . _trouble with north-west company._-- (_a_) suspicion of n.w. co. that colony was established by h.b. co. to compete for fur trade. (_b_) proclamation of macdonell that food should not be taken out of settlement. attack on colony by metis indians encouraged by n.w. co. withdrawal of colonists to lake winnipeg. (_c_) return with reinforcements under semple. skirmish at seven oaks, . semple with twenty others killed. (_d_) selkirk's descent upon fort william. arrest of several nor'westers. colony at red river restored. (_e_) nor'westers acquitted of murder of semple. selkirk convicted and heavily fined for acts of violence. selkirk withdrew from canada in disappointment and disgust. . _later progress._-- (_a_) hardships of pioneer life like those of ontario. (_b_) a series of disasters--grasshoppers, floods. (_c_) prosperity finally came. (_d_) government at first administered by governor of h.b. co., later assisted by council of fourteen members. v. amalgamation of rival companies: . _union._-- after withdrawal of selkirk, the h.b. co. and the n.w. co. united in , under name of former. . _subsequent progress._-- (_a_) governor sir george simpson extended posts westward to pacific. (_b_) through his energy britain was able to retain possession of western canada in spite of aggression of united states and russia. vi. relinquishment of administrative powers: . canadian government claimed that the rule of the company hindered development of western canada because it was interested only in trade. . _agreement with canadian government._-- (_a_) company sold prince rupert's land and gave up its trade monopoly. (_b_) in return.-- (i) received £ , . (ii) retained one twentieth of land south of the saskatchewan. (iii) retained its posts and trading privileges. . company still exists as a trading organization with many posts in the west and large stores in many cities. vii. services of h.b. co. to canada and the empire: . opened up a valuable trade in western canada. . explored and opened up the west for settlement. . retained for britain the territory west of rockies when it was in danger of falling into other hands. the subjects of the public and separate school course where topical reviews are most necessary are history and geography. the comparative review a thing always stands out most vividly in the mind when the relations of similarity and difference are perceived between it and other things. when we compare and contrast two things, certain features of each that would otherwise escape our attention are brought to light. we get a clearer idea of both the rabbit and the squirrel when we compare their various characteristics. great britain and germany are each better understood geographically, when we set up comparisons between them; pitt and walpole stand out more clearly as statesmen when we compare and contrast them. one of the most effective forms of review is that in which the relations of likeness and difference are set up between subjects that have already been studied. for instance, the geographical features of manitoba and british columbia may be effectively reviewed by instituting comparisons between them in regard to ( ) position and size, ( ) physical features, ( ) climate, ( ) industries, ( ) products, ( ) commercial centres. the careers of walpole and pitt might be reviewed by comparing and contrasting them with regard to ( ) circumstances under which each became prime minister, ( ) domestic policy, ( ) foreign policy, ( ) circumstances surrounding the resignation of each, ( ) personal character. whatever form the review lesson may take, the teacher should always keep in mind its two main purposes, namely, ( ) the organization of knowledge which comes through the apprehension of new relationships, and ( ) the deeper impression of facts on the mind which comes through attentive repetition. chapter xviii questioning =importance.=--as a teaching device, questioning must always occupy a place of the highest importance. while it may not be always true that good questioning is synonymous with good teaching, there can be no doubt that the good teacher must have, as one of his qualifications, the ability to question well. a good question is a problem to solve. a stimulating problem arouses and directs mental activity. well-directed mental activity is the prime requisite of all learning and one of the ends which all effective teaching endeavours to realize. questioning is one of the best means of securing that desirable activity of mind without which intellectual progress is impossible. the teacher who would master the technique of his art must study to attain skill in questioning. qualifications of the good questioner =a. knowledge of subject and of mind.=--the most obvious essentials are familiarity with the subject-matter and a knowledge of the mental processes of the child. without the first, the questions will be pointless, haphazard, and unsystematic; without the second, they will be ill-adjusted to the interests and attainments of the pupils. a thorough knowledge of the facts of the lesson and a keen insight into the workings of the child mind are indispensable. =b. analytic ability.=--as an accompaniment of the first of these qualifications, the good questioner must have analytic ability. the material of the lesson must be analysed into its elements and the relations of these must be clearly perceived if it is to be effectively presented to the pupils. the teacher must further have the power to discriminate between the important and the unimportant. the ability to seize upon the essential features and to give due prominence to these is one of the most valuable accomplishments a teacher can have. =c. knowledge of pupils' experiences.=--as an accompaniment of the second qualification, the good questioner must have a knowledge of the previous experience and of the capacities of the pupils. good teaching consists largely in the skilful adjustment of the new to the old. the teacher must ascertain what the pupils already know, what their interests are, and what matter they may reasonably be expected to apprehend, if he is to have them assimilate properly the facts of the lesson. he must further show sympathy and tact in order to inspire the pupils to their best effort. he must be able to detect unerringly the symptoms of inattention, listlessness, and misbehaviour, and by a well-directed question to bring back the wandering attention to the subject in hand. =faults in questioning.=--there are two serious weaknesses that many young teachers exhibit, namely, questioning when they ought to tell and telling when they ought to question. to tell pupils what they might easily discover for themselves is to deprive them of the joy of conquest and to miss an opportunity of exercising and strengthening their mental powers. on the other hand, to question upon matter which the pupils cannot reasonably be expected to know or discover is to discourage effort and encourage guessing. to know just when to question and when to tell requires considerable discrimination and insight on the part of the teacher. purposes of questioning questioning has three main purposes, namely: . to determine the limits of the pupil's present knowledge in order that the teacher may have a definite basis upon which to build the new material; . to direct the pupil's thought along a prescribed channel to a definite end, to lead him to make discoveries and form conclusions on his own account; . to ascertain how far he has grasped the meaning of the new material that has been presented. =a. preparatory.=--the first of these purposes may be designated as preparatory. here the teacher clears the ground for the presentation of the new matter by recalling the old related facts necessary to the interpretation of the new. in thus sounding the depths of the pupil's previous knowledge, the teacher should usually ask questions that demand fairly long answers instead of those which may be answered briefly. the onus of the recall should be placed largely upon the pupil. the teacher will do comparatively little talking; the pupil will do much. =b. developing.=--the second purpose may be described as developing. the pupil is led step by step to a conclusion. each question grows naturally out of the preceding question, the responsibility for this logical connection falling upon the teacher. the pupil has before him a certain set of conditions, and he is asked to infer the logical result of such conditions. he forms inferences, makes new discoveries, sets up new relationships, and formulates definitions and laws. it should be noted that this form of questioning gives no entirely new information to the pupil. it merely classifies and organizes what is already in his mind in a more or less indistinct and nebulous form. new information cannot be questioned out of a pupil; it must be given to him directly. =c. recapitulation.=--the third purpose of questioning may be described as recapitulatory. the pupil is asked to reproduce what he has learned during the progress of the lesson. at convenient intervals during the presentation and at the close, he should be asked to summarize in a connected manner the main points already covered. thus the teacher tests the pupil's comprehension of the facts of the lesson. the pupil, on his side, as a result of such reproduction, has the facts more clearly fixed in his mind. as in the first stage of the lesson, the answers should be of considerable length, logically connected, and expressed in good language. the responsibility for this is again thrown largely upon the pupil. he does most of the talking; the teacher does little. =how employed in lesson.=--it will thus be recognized that questioning is employed for different purposes at the three different stages of the lesson. at the opening of the lesson it prepares the mind of the pupil for what is to follow. during the presentation it leads the pupil to form his own inferences. at the close of the lesson it tests his grasp of the facts and gives these greater clearness and fixity in his mind. the first and third might both be designated as _testing_ purposes, and the second _training_. socratic questioning =its characteristics.=--developing, or training, questions, are sometimes referred to as socratic questions. the terms are, however, not altogether synonymous. the method of socrates had two divisions, known as _irony_ and _maieutics_. the former consisted in leading the pupil to express an opinion on some subject of current interest, an opinion that was apparently accepted by socrates. then, by a series of questions adroitly put, he drove his pupil into a contradiction or an absurd position, thus revealing the inadequacy of the answer. this phase of the socratic method is rarely applicable with young children. occasionally, in grammar or arithmetic, for instance, an incorrect answer may properly be followed up so as to lead the pupil into a contradiction, but it is usually not desirable to embarrass him unnecessarily. it is never agreeable to be covered with the confusion which such a situation usually brings about. the other phase of the socratic method, the _maieutics_, consisted in leading the pupil, by a further series of questions, to formulate the correct opinion of which the first hastily-given answer was only a fragment. this coincides with the developing method and may sometimes be profitably employed with young children. example of socratic questioning.--as an example of socratic questioning may be noted the following taken from plato's _minos_. socrates has questioned his companion concerning the nature of law and has received the answer, "law is the decree of the city." to show his companion the inadequacy of this definition, socrates engages with him in the following dialogue: _socrates_: justice and law, are highly honourable; injustice and lawlessness, highly dishonourable; the former preserves cities, the latter ruins them? _pupil_: yes, it does. _socrates_: well, then! we must consider law as something honourable; and seek after it, under the assumption that it is a good thing. you defined law to be the decree of the city: are not some decrees good, others evil? _pupil_: unquestionably. _socrates_: but we have already said that law is not evil? _pupil_: i admit it. _socrates_: it is incorrect therefore to answer, as you did broadly, that law is the decree of the city. an evil decree cannot be law. _pupil_: i see that it is incorrect. having shown his pupil the fallacy of his first definition, socrates proceeds to teach him that only what is right is lawful. this part of the dialogue proceeds as follows: _socrates_: those who know, must of necessity hold the same opinion with each other, on matters which they know: always and everywhere? _pupil_: yes--always and everywhere. _socrates_: physicians write respecting matters of health what they account to be true, and these writings of theirs are the medical laws? _pupil_: certainly they are. _socrates_: the like is true respecting the laws of farming, the laws of gardening, the laws of cookery. all these are the writings of persons, knowing in each of the respective pursuits? _pupil_: yes. _socrates_: in like manner, what are the laws respecting the government of a city? are they not the writings of those who know how to govern--kings, statesmen, and men of superior excellence? _pupil_: truly so. _socrates_: knowing men like these will not write differently from each other about the same things, nor change what they have once written. if, then, we see some doing this, are we to declare them knowing or ignorant? _pupil_: ignorant, undoubtedly. _socrates_: whatever is right, therefore, we may pronounce to be lawful in medicine, gardening, or cookery; whatever is not right, not to be lawful but lawless. and the like in treatises respecting just and unjust, prescribing how the city is to be administered. that which is right, is the regal law; that which is not right, is not so, but only seems to be law in the eyes of the ignorant, being in truth lawless. _pupil_: yes. it will be seen from the above examples, that much of the socratic questioning is really explanatory; the questions, though interrogative in form, being often rhetorical, and therefore assertive in value. the question =characteristics of a good question.=--good questions should seize upon the important features and emphasize these. unimportant details, though useful in giving vividness to a narrative and enabling the pupil to build up a clear picture of the scene or incident, may well be ignored in questioning. the teacher must see that the pupil grasps the essentials and must direct his questions towards the attainment of that end. the questions should be arranged in logical sequence, so that the answers, if written out in the order given, would form a connected account of the topic under discussion. further, the questions should require the expression of a judgment on the part of the pupil. in the main they should not be answerable by a single word or a brief phrase. one of the greatest weaknesses in the answers of pupils is the tendency _to_ extreme brevity. as a result, it is difficult to get pupils to give a connected and continuous narration, description, or exposition in any subject. the remedy for this defect is to ask questions which demand answers of considerable length, and to avoid those which require only a scrappy answer. =form of the question.=--it should ever be borne in mind that the teacher's language influences the language habits of his pupils. carelessly worded, poorly constructed questions are likely to result in answers having similar characteristics. on the other hand, correctness in the form of the questions asked, accuracy in the use of words, simple, straightforward statements of the thing wanted, will be reflected, dimly perhaps, in the form of the pupils' answers. care must, therefore, be exercised as to the form in which questions are asked. they should be stripped of all superfluous introductory words, such as, "who can tell?" "how many of you know?" etc. such prefaces are not only useless and a waste of time, but they also put before pupils a bad model if we are to expect concise and direct statements from them. the questions should be so clear and definite in meaning as to admit of only one interpretation. questions such as, "what happened after this?" "what did cromwell become?" "what about the rivers of germany?" "what might we say of this word?" are objectionable on the score of indefiniteness. many correct answers might be given for each and the pupils can only guess at what is required. if the question cannot be so stated as to make what is desired unmistakable, the information had better be given outright. questions should be brief and usually deal with only one point, except, perhaps in asking for summaries of what has been covered in the lesson. in the latter case it is frequently desirable to put a question involving several points in order to ensure definiteness, conciseness, and connectedness in the answer; for example, "for what is alexander mackenzie noted? state his great aim and describe his two most important undertakings connected therewith." but in dealing with matter taken up for the first time or involving original thought, this type of question, demanding as it does attention to several points, would put too great a demand upon the powers of young children. under such conditions it is best to ask questions requiring only one point in answer. the answer =form of answers.=--the possibility of improving the pupil's language power through his answers has already been referred to. to secure the best results in this regard, the teacher should insist on answers that are grammatically correct and, usually, in complete sentences. it would be pedantic, however, to insist always upon the latter condition. for such questions as, "what british officer was killed at queenston heights?" or "what province lies west of manitoba?" the natural answers are "general brock," or "saskatchewan." to require pupils to say, "the british officer killed at queenston heights was general brock," or "the province west of manitoba is saskatchewan," would be to make the recitation unnatural and formal. when answers are a mere echo of the question, with some slight inversion or addition, they become exceedingly mechanical, and useless from the point of view of language training. while it is desirable to avoid, as far as possible, questions that admit of answers of a single word or short phrase, such questions are sometimes necessary and are not objectionable. questions should not be thrown into the form of an elliptical statement in which the pupil merely fills a blank, for example, "the capital of ontario is...?" "the first english parliament was called by...?" nor should they be given in inverted form, as, "montreal is situated where?" "the great charter was signed by what king?" alternative questions such as, "is this a noun or an adjective?" "was charles i willing or unwilling to sign the petition of right?" as well as those questions that are answerable by "yes" or "no," require little thought to answer and should be avoided if possible. when they are used, the pupil should at once be required to give reasons for his answer. neither the form of the question nor the teacher's tone of voice or manner should afford any inkling as to the answer expected. =calling for answers.=--in order that the attention of the whole class may be maintained, the question should be proposed before the pupil who is to answer is indicated. no fixed order in calling upon the pupils should be adopted. if the pupils are never certain beforehand who is to be named to answer the question, they are more likely to be kept constantly on the alert. the questions should be carefully distributed among the class, the duller pupils being given rather more and easier questions than the brighter ones. one of the temptations that the teacher has to overcome is that of giving the clever and willing pupils the majority of the questions. the question should seldom be repeated unless the first wording is so unfortunate that the meaning is not clear and it is found necessary to recast it. to repeat questions habitually is to put a premium on inattention on the part of the pupils. a bad habit often noted among teachers is that of wording the question in several ways before any one is asked to answer it. =methods of dealing with answers.=--as has been already indicated in another connection, the answers of the pupils should be generally in complete sentences and frequently should be in the form of a continuous paragraph or series of paragraphs, especially in summaries and reviews. the continuous answer should be cultivated much more than it is, as a means of training pupils to organize their information and to express themselves in clear and connected discourse. on the other hand, however, children should be discouraged from giving more information than is demanded by the question. while it is desirable that the correctness of an answer should be indicated in some way, the teacher should guard against forming the habit of indicating every correct answer by a stereotyped word or phrase, such as, "yes" or "that's right." answers should seldom be repeated by the teacher, unless it is desirable to re-word them for purposes of emphasis. repetition of answers encourages careless articulation on the part of the pupil answering and inattention on the part of the others. one of the worst habits a teacher can contract is the "gramophonic" repetition of pupils' answers. the answers given by the pupils should almost invariably be individual, not collective. simultaneous answering makes a noisy class-room, cultivates a monotonous and measured method of speaking, and encourages the habit of relying on others. there are always a few leaders in the class that are willing to take the initiative in answering, and the others merely chime in with them. the method is not suitable for the expression of individual opinion, for all pupils must answer alike. there is, further, the possibility that absurd blunders may pass uncorrected, because in the general repetition the teacher cannot detect them. limitations though questioning is the most valuable of teaching devices, it is quite susceptible of being overworked. there is quite as much danger of using it too extensively as there is of using it too little. frequently, teachers try to question from pupils what they could not be expected to know. further, it is possible by too much questioning to cover up the point of the lesson rather than reveal it, and to mystify the pupils rather than clarify their ideas. these are the two main abuses of the device. after all, it should be remembered that, important as good questioning undoubtedly is, it is not the only thing in lesson technique. in teaching, as elsewhere, variety is the spice of life. sympathy, sincerity, enthusiasm in the teacher will do more to secure mental activity in the pupils than mere excellence in questioning. the energetic, enthusiastic, sympathetic teacher may secure better results than the teacher whose ability in questioning is well-nigh perfect, but who lacks these other qualities. if, however, to these qualities he adds a high degree of efficiency in questioning, his success in teaching is so much the more assured. part iii. educational psychology chapter xix consciousness =data of psychology.=--throughout the earlier parts of the text, occasional reference has been made to various classes of mental states, and to psychology, as the science which treats of these mental states, under the assumption that such references would be understood in a general way by the student-teacher. at the outset of a study of psychology as the science of mind, however, it becomes necessary to inquire somewhat more fully into the nature of the data with which the science is to deal. mind is usually defined either by contrasting it with the concrete world of matter, or by describing its activities. it is said, for instance, that mind is that which feels and knows, which hopes, fears, determines, etc. by some, indeed, mind is described as merely the sum of these states of knowing and feeling and willing. the practical man says, however, _i_ know and feel so-and-so, and _my_ wish is so-and-so. here an evident distinction is drawn between the knower, or conscious self, and his conscious activities. while, however, we may agree with the practical man that there is a mind, or self, that knows and wills and feels; yet it is evident that the self, or knower, can know himself only through his conscious states. it must be understood, therefore, that mind in its ultimate sense cannot be studied directly, but only the conscious states, or conditions of mind. thus psychology becomes a study of mental states, or states of consciousness; and it is, in fact, frequently described as the science of consciousness. =nature of consciousness.=--our previous study of the nature of experience has shown that various kinds of conscious states may arise in the mind, now the smell of burning cloth, now the sound of a ringing bell, now the feeling of bodily pain, now a remembered joy, now a future expectation or a resolution. such a conscious state was seen, moreover, to represent on the part of the mind, not a mere passive impression coming from some external source, but an active attitude resulting in definite experience. it signifies, in other words, a power to react in a fixed way toward impressions, and direct our conduct in accordance with the resulting states of consciousness. consciousness in the individual implies, therefore, that he is aware of phenomena as they are experienced, and is able to modify his behaviour accordingly. =types of consciousness.=--although allowable, from the standpoint of the learning process, to describe a conscious state as an attitude of awareness in which the individual grasps the significance of an experience in relation to his own needs; it must be recognized that not all consciousness manifests this meaningful quality, or this relation to a felt aim, or end. while lying, for instance, in a vague, half-awake state, although one is conscious, the mental condition is quite devoid of the meaningful quality referred to, and entirely lacks the feeling of reaction, or of mental effort. in this case there is no distinct reference to the needs of the self, and a lack of that focusing of attention necessary to give the consciousness a meaning and purpose in the life of the individual. all such passive, or effortless, states of consciousness, which make up those portions of mental existence in which no definite presentation seems to hold the attention, although falling within the sphere of the scientific psychologist, may nevertheless be left out of consideration in a study of educational psychology. learning involves apperception, and apperception is always giving a meaning to new presentations by actively bringing old knowledge to bear upon them. for the educator, therefore, psychology may be limited to a study of the definite states of consciousness which arise through an apperceiving act of attention, that is, to our states of experience and the processes connected therewith. for this reason, psychology is by some appropriately enough defined as the science of experience. =consciousness a stream.=--although we describe the data of psychology as facts, or states, of consciousness, a moment's reflection will show that our conscious life is not made up of a number of mental states, or experiences, completely separated one from the other. our consciousness is rather a unified whole, in which seemingly disconnected states blend into one continuous flow of conscious life. for this reason, consciousness is frequently compared to a stream, or river, moving onward in an unbroken course. this stream of consciousness appears as disjointed mental states, simply because the attention discriminates within this stream, and thus in a sense detaches different portions one from the other, or, as sometimes figuratively put, it creates successive waves on the stream of consciousness. a mental state, or experience, so-called, is such a discriminated portion of this stream of consciousness, and is, therefore, itself a process, the different processes blending in a continuous succession or relation to make up the unbroken flow of conscious life. for this reason psychology is frequently described as a study of conscious processes. value of educational psychology within the school the child secures a control of experience only by passing through a process of mental reconstruction, or of changes in consciousness. moreover, to bring about these mental changes, it is found necessary for the teacher's effort to conform as far as possible to the interests and tendencies of the child. so far, therefore, as the teacher's office is to direct and control the children's effort during the learning process, he must approach them primarily as mental, or conscious, beings. for this reason the educator should at least not violate the general principles governing all mental activity. by giving him an insight into the general principles underlying conscious processes, psychology should aid the teacher to control the learning process in the child. limitations of educational psychology =psychology cannot give: a. knowledge of subject-matter.=--it must not be assumed, however, that knowledge of psychology will necessarily imply a corresponding ability to teach. psychology, for instance, cannot decide what should be taught to the child. this, as we have seen, is a problem of social experience, and must be decided by considering the types of experience which will add to the social efficiency of the individual, or which will enable him best to do his duty to himself and to others. all, therefore, that psychology can do here is to explain the process by which experience is acquired, leaving to social ethics the problem of deciding what knowledge is of most worth. =b. love for children.=--again, psychology will not necessarily furnish that largeness of heart and sympathy for childhood, without which no teacher can be successful. indeed, it is felt by many that making children objects of psychological analysis will rather tend to destroy that more spiritual conception of their personality which should constitute the teacher's attitude toward his pupils. while this is no doubt true of the teacher who looks upon children merely as subjects for psychological analysis and experimentation, it is equally true that a knowledge of psychology will enable even the sympathetic teacher to realize more fully and deal more successfully with the difficulties of the pupil. =c. acquaintance with the individual child.=--again, the teacher's problem in dealing with the mental attitude of the particular child cannot always be interpreted through general principles. the general principle would be supposed to have an application to every child in a large class. it is often found, however, that the character and disposition of the particular child demands, not general, but special treatment. here, what is termed the knack of the sympathetic teacher is often more effective than the general principle of the psychologist. admitting so much, however, it yet may be argued that a knowledge of psychology will not hinder, but rather assist the sympathetic teacher in dealing even with special cases. methods of psychology =a. introspection.=--a unique characteristic of mind is its ability to turn attention inward and make an object of study of its own states, or processes. for instance, the mind is able to make its present sensation, its remembered state of anger, its idea of a triangle, etc., stand out in consciousness as a subject of study for conscious attention. on account of this ability to give attention to his own states of consciousness, man is said both to know and to know that he knows. this reflective method of studying our own mental states is known as the method of _introspection_. =b. objective method.=--facts of mind may, however, be examined objectively. as previously noted, man, by his words, acts, and works, gives expression to his conscious states. these different forms of expression are accepted, therefore, as external indications of corresponding states of mind, and afford the psychologist certain data for developing his science. one of the most important of these objective methods is known as child study. here, by the method of observing the acts and language of very young children, data are obtained concerning the native instincts of the child, concerning the genesis and development of the different mental processes, and the relation of these to physical development. a brief statement of the leading principles of child study will be found in chapter xxxi. =c. experimental method.=--a third method of studying mind is known as the _experimental_ method. here, as in the case of the ordinary physical experimenter, the psychologist seeks to control certain mental processes by isolating them and regulating their action. this may be effectively done in the study of certain processes. for instance, by passing the two points of a pair of compasses over different parts of the body, the tactile sensibility of the skin may be compared at these different parts. by this means it may be shown that the tip of the finger can detect the two points when only one twelfth of an inch apart, while on the middle of the back they may require to be two and a half inches apart to give a double impression. the experimental method is often used in connection with the objective method in child study. phases of consciousness =a. knowledge.=--although, as previously stated, the stream of consciousness must at all times be looked upon as a unity, it will be found upon analysis to present three more or less distinct phases. a state of consciousness implies, in the first place, being aware of something as an object of attention. in other words, something is seized upon by consciousness as a presentation, and to the extent to which one is aware of this object of consciousness, he is said to recognize, or to know it. a state of consciousness is always, therefore, a state of knowledge, or of intelligence. thus, whether we perceive this chair, imagine a mermaid, recall the looks of an absent friend, experience the toothache, judge the weight of this book, or become angry, our conscious state is a state of _knowledge_. =b. feeling.=--a conscious state is also a state of feeling. every conscious state has its feeling side, since it is a personal state, or since the mind itself is affected toward its own state. two men, for instance, may know equally well the taste of a particular food, but the taste may affect each one quite differently. to one the experience is pleasant, to the other it may be even painful. two boys may know equally that a point has been scored by the visiting team, but the personal attitude of each toward the experience may be quite different. the one finds in it a quality of joy; the other a quality of sorrow. in the same way the mind always feels more or less pleased or displeased in its present state of consciousness. to speak of any particular experience as painful, joyous, sorrowful, etc., is, therefore, to refer to it as a state of _feeling_. =c. will.=--consciousness is a state of effort, or will. it was especially pointed out above, that the purposeful consciousness always implies a straining or focusing of consciousness in order to attain a fuller control of the experience. this element of exertion manifest in consciousness may appear as a directing of attention, as the making of a choice, as determining upon a certain action, etc. this aspect of any conscious state is spoken of as a state of _will_, or volition. in the unity of the conscious life, therefore, there are three attitudes from which consciousness may be viewed: . it is a state of knowledge, or of intelligence. . it is a state of feeling. . it is a state of will. on account of this threefold aspect of mental states, consciousness has been represented in the following form: [illustration] the significance of comparing the threefold aspect of consciousness to the three sides of a triangle consists in the fact that if any side of a triangle is removed no triangle remains. in like manner, none of the three attributes of consciousness could be wanting without the conscious state ceasing to exist as such. no one, for instance, could feel the pressure of a tight shoe without at the same time knowing it, and fixing his attention upon it. neither could a person at any particular time know that the shoe was pinching him unless he was also attending to and feeling the experience. chapter xx mind and body =relation of mind to bodily organism.=--notwithstanding the antithesis which has been affirmed to exist between mind and matter, yet a very close relation exists between mind and the material organism known as the body. there are many ways in which this intimate connection manifests itself. mental excitement is always accompanied with agitation of the body and a disturbance of such bodily processes as breathing, the beating of the heart, digestion, etc. such mental processes as seeing, hearing, tasting, etc., are found also to depend upon the use of a bodily organ, as the eye, the ear, the tongue, without which it is quite impossible for the mind to come into relation with outside things. moreover, disease or injury, especially to the organs of sense or to the brain, weakens or destroys mental power. the size of the brain, also, is found to bear a certain relation to mental capacity; the weight of the average brain being about ounces, while the brain of an idiot often weighs only from to ounces. the nervous system [illustration: brain and spinal cord] =divisions of nervous system.=--this intimate connection between mind and body is provided for through the existence of that part of the bodily organism known as the nervous system, and it is this part, together with its associated organs of sense, that chiefly interests the student of psychology. a study of the character and functions of the various parts of the nervous system, and of the nervous substance of which these parts are composed, belongs to physiology rather than to psychology. as the student-teacher is given a general knowledge of the structure of the nervous system in his study of physiology, a brief description will suffice for the present purpose. the nervous system consists of two parts, ( ) the central part, or cerebro-spinal centre, and ( ) an outer part--the spinal nerves. the central part, or cerebro-spinal centre, includes the spinal cord, passing upward through the vertebrae of the spinal column and the brain. the brain consists of three parts: the cerebrum, or great brain, consisting of two hemispheres, which, though connected, are divided in great part by a longitudinal fissure; the cerebellum, or little brain; and the medulla oblongata, or bulb. the spinal nerves consist of thirty-one pairs, which branch out from the spinal cord. each pair of nerves contains a right and left member, distributed to the right and the left side of the body respectively. these nerves are of two kinds, sensory, or afferent, (in-carrying) nerves, which carry inward impressions from the outside world, and motor, or efferent, (out-carrying) nerves, which convey impulses outward to the muscles and cause them to contract. there are also twelve pairs of nerves connected with the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and face, which, instead of projecting from the spinal cord, proceed at once from the brain through openings in the cranium. these are, therefore, known as cerebral nerves. in their general character, however, they do not differ from the projection fibres. [illustration: pair of spinal nerves] =nervous substance.=--nervous substance is divided into two kinds--grey, or cellular, substance and white, or fibrous, substance. the greater part of the grey matter is situated as a layer on the outside of the cerebrum, or great brain, where it forms a rind from one twelfth to one eighth of an inch in thickness, known as the cortex. it is also found on the surface of the cerebellum. diffuse masses of grey matter are likewise met in the other parts of the brain, and extending downward through the centre of the spinal cord. the function of the grey matter is to form centres to which the nerve fibres tend and carry in stimulations, or from which they commence and carry out impulses. =the neuron.=--the centres of grey matter are composed of aggregations, or masses, of very small nerve cells called neurons. a neuron may range from / to / of an inch in diameter, and there are several thousand millions of these cells in the nervous system. a developed neuron consists of a cell body with numerous prolongations in the form of white, thread-like fibres. the neuron with its outgoing fibres is the unit of the nervous system. neurons are supposed to be of three classes, sensory to receive stimulations, motor to send out impulses to the muscles, and association to connect sensory and motor centres. [illustration: a neuron in stages of development] these neurons, as already noted, are collected into centres, and the outgoing fibres give connection to the cells, the number of connections for each neuron depending upon its outgoing fibres. some of these connections are already established within the system at birth, while others, as we shall see more fully later, are formed whenever the organism is brought into action in our thinking and doing. to speak of such connections being formed between nerve centres by means of their outgoing fibres does not necessarily mean a direct connection, but may imply only that the fibres of one cell approach nearly enough to those of another to admit of a nervous impulse passing from the one cell to the other. this is often spoken of as the establishment of a path between the centres. =the nerve fibres.=--the nerve fibres which transmit impressions to and from the centres of grey matter average about / of an inch in thickness, but are often of great length, some extending perhaps half the length of the body. large numbers of these fibres unite into a sheath or single nerve. it is estimated that the number of fibres in a single nerve number in most cases several thousand, those in the nerve of sight being estimated at about one hundred thousand. the fibres in the white substance of the brain are estimated at several hundred million. =classes of fibres.=--these fibres are supposed to be of four classes, as follows: . _sensory cerebral and spinal fibres_ these have already been referred to as spreading outward from the brain and spinal cord to different parts of the body. their office is, therefore, to carry inward to the centres of grey matter impressions received from the outside world, thus setting up a connection between the various senses and the cortex of the brain. . _motor cerebral and spinal fibres_ these fibres connect the centres of grey matter directly with the muscles, and thus provide a means of communication between these muscles and the cortex of the brain. . _association fibres_ these connect one part of the cortex with another within the same hemisphere. . _commissural fibres_ these connect corresponding centres of the two hemispheres of the cerebrum. [illustration] =function of parts.=--because the various cells are thus brought into relation, the whole nervous system combines into a single organism, which is able to receive impressions and provides conditions for the mind to interpret these impressions and, if necessary, react thereon. when, for instance, a stimulus is received by an end organ (the eye), it will be transmitted by a sensory nerve directly inward to a sensory centre, or cell, in the cortex of the brain. in such a case it may be interpreted by the mind and a line of action decided upon. then by means of associating cells and fibres a motor centre may be stimulated and an impulse transmitted along an outgoing motor nerve to a muscle, whereupon the necessary motor reaction will take place. a pupil may, for instance, receive the impression of a word through the ear or through the eye and thereupon make a motor response by writing the word. the arrows in the accompanying figure indicate the course of the stimulus and the response in such cases. the cortex =cortex the seat of consciousness.=--experiments in connection with the different nerve cords and centres have demonstrated that intelligent consciousness depends upon the nerve centres situated in the cortex of the cerebrum. for instance, a sensory impulse may be carried inward to the cells of the spinal cord and upward to the cerebellum without any resulting consciousness. when, however, the stimulus reaches a higher centre in the cortex of the brain, the mind becomes conscious, or interprets the impression, and any resulting action will be controlled by consciousness, through impulses given to the motor nerves. it is for this reason that the cortex is called the seat of consciousness, and that mind is said to reside in the brain. =localization of function.=--in addition, however, to placing the seat of consciousness in the cortex of the brain, psychologists also claim that different parts of the cortex are involved in different types of conscious activity. sensations of sight, for instance, involve certain centres in the cortex, sensations of sound other centres, the movements of the organs of speech still other centres. some go so far as to claim that each one of the higher intellectual processes, as memory, imagination, judgment, reasoning, love, anger, etc., involves neural activity in its own special section of the cortex. there seems no good evidence, however, to support this view. the fact seems rather that in all these higher processes, quite numerous centres of the cortex may be involved. the following figure indicates the main conclusions of the psychologists in reference to the localization of certain important functions in distinct areas of the cortex. [illustration: reflex acts] =nature of reflex action.=--while a lower nerve centre is not a seat for purposeful consciousness, these centres may, in addition to serving as transmission points for cortical messages, perform a special function by immediately receiving sensory impressions and transmitting motor impulses. a person, for instance, whose mind is occupied with a problem, may move a limb to relieve a cramp, wink the eye, etc., without any conscious control of the action. in such a case the sensory impression was reported to a lower sensory centre, directly carried to a lower motor centre, and the motor impulse given to perform the movement. in the same way, after one has acquired the habit of walking, although it usually requires conscious effort to initiate the movements, yet the person may continue walking in an almost unconscious manner, his mind being fully occupied with other matters. here, also, the complex actions involved in walking are controlled and regulated by lower centres situated in the cerebellum. in like manner a person will unconsciously close the eyelid under the stimulus of strong light. here the impression caused by the light stimulus, upon reaching the medulla along an afferent nerve, is deflected to a motor nerve and, without any conscious control of the movements, the muscles of the eyelid receive the necessary impulse to close. actions which are thus directed from a lower centre without conscious control, are usually spoken of as reflex acts. acts directed by consciousness are, on the other hand, known as voluntary acts. the difference in the working of the nervous mechanism in consciously controlled and in reflex action may be illustrated by means of the accompanying figures. [illustration: fig ] [illustration: fig ] the heavy lines in figure on the opposite page show that the sensory-motor arc is made through the cortex, and that the mind is, therefore, conscious both of the sense stimulus and also of the resulting action. figure shows the same arc through a lower centre, in which case the mind is not directly attending to the impression or the resulting action. =function of consciousness.=--the facts set forth above serve further to illustrate the purposeful character of consciousness as man interprets and adjusts himself to his surroundings. so long, for instance, as the individual walks onward without disturbance, his mind is free to dwell upon other matters, cortical activity not being necessary to control the process of walking. if, however, he steps upon anything which perhaps threatens him with a fall, the rhythmic interplay between sensory and motor activity going on in the lower centres is at once disturbed, and a message is flashed along the sensory nerve to the higher, or cortical, centres. this at once arouses consciousness, and the disturbing factor becomes an object of attention. consciousness thus appears as a means of adaptation to the new and varying conditions with which the organism is confronted. characteristics of nervous matter =a. plasticity.=--one striking characteristic of nervous matter is its plasticity. the nature of the connections within the nervous system have already been referred to. mention has also been made of the fact that numerous connections are established within the nervous system as a result of movements taking place within the organism during life. in other words, the movements within the nervous system which accompany stimulations and responses bring about changes in the structure of the organism. the cause for these changes seems to be that the neurons which chance to work together during any experience form connections with one another by means of their outgrowing fibres. by this means, traces of past experiences are in a sense stored up within the organism, and it is for this reason that our experiences are said to be recorded within the nervous system. =b. retentiveness.=--a second characteristic of nervous matter is its retentive power. in other words, the modifications which accompany any experience, besides taking on the permanent character referred to above, pre-dispose the system to transmit impulses again through the same centres. moreover, with each repetition of the nervous activity, there develops a still greater tendency for the movements to re-establish themselves. this power possessed by nervous tissue to establish certain modes of action carries with it also an increase in the ease and accuracy with which the movements are performed. for example, the impressions and impulses involved in the first attempts of the child to control the clasping of an object, are performed with effort and in an ineffective manner. the cause for this seems to be largely the absence of proper connections between the centres involved, as referred to above. this absence causes a certain resistance within the system to the nervous movements. when, however, the various centres involved in the movements establish the proper connections with one another, the act will be performed in a much more effective and easy manner. from this it is evident that the nervous system, as the result of former experiences, always retains a certain potential, or power, to repeat the act with greater ease, and thus improve conduct, or behaviour. this property of nervous matter will hereafter be referred to as its power of retention. =c. energy.=--another quality of nervous matter is its energy. by this is meant that the cells are endowed with a certain potential, or power, which enables them to transmit impressions and impulses and overcome any resistance offered. different explanations are given as to the nature of this energy, or force, with which nervous matter is endowed, but any study of these theories is unnecessary here. =d. resistance.=--a fourth characteristic to be noted regarding nervous matter is that a nervous impulse, or current, as it is transmitted through the system, encounters _resistance_, or consumes an amount of nervous energy. moreover, when the nervous current, whether sensory or motor, involves the establishment of new connections between cells, as when one first learns combinations of numbers or the movements involved in forming a new letter, a relatively greater amount of resistance is met or, in other words, a greater amount of nervous energy is expended. on the other hand, when an impulse has been transmitted a number of times through a given arc, the resistance is greatly lessened, or less energy is expended; as indicated by the ease with which an habitual act is performed. =education and nervous energy.=--it is evident from the foregoing, that the forming of new ideas or of new modes of action tends to use up a large share of nervous energy. for this reason, the learning of new and difficult things should not be undertaken when the body is in a tired or exhausted condition; for the resistance which must be overcome, and the changes which must take place in the nervous tissue during the learning process, are not likely to be effectively accomplished under such conditions. moreover, the energy thus lost must be restored through the blood, and therefore demands proper food, rest, and sleep on the part of the individual. it should be noted further that nervous tissue is more plastic during the early years of life. this renders it imperative, therefore, that knowledge and skill should be gained, as far as possible, during the plastic years. the person who wishes to become a great violinist must acquire skill to finger and handle the bow early in life. the person who desires to become a great linguist, if he allows his early years to pass without acquiring the necessary skill, cannot expect in middle life to train his vocal organs to articulate a number of different languages. =cortical habit.=--in the light of what has been seen regarding the character and function of the nervous system, it will now be possible to understand more fully two important forms of adjustment already referred to. when nervous movements are transmitted to the cortex of the brain, they not only awaken consciousness, or make the individual aware of something, but the present impression also leaves certain permanent effects in the nervous tissue of the cortex itself. since, however, cortical activity implies consciousness, the retention of such a tendency within the cortical centres will imply, not an habitual act in the ordinary sense, but a tendency on the part of a conscious experience to repeat itself. this at once implies an ability to retain and recall past experiences, or endows the individual with power of memory. cortical habit, therefore, or the establishment of permanent connections within the cortical centres, with their accompanying dynamic tendency to repeat themselves, will furnish the physiological conditions for a revival of former experience in memory, or will enable the individual to turn the past to the service of the present. =physical habits.=--the basis for the formation of physical habits appears also in this retentive power of nervous tissue. when the young boy, for instance, first mounts his new bicycle, he is unable, except with the most attentive effort and in a most laboured and awkward manner, either to keep his feet on the pedals, or make the handle-bars respond to the balancing of the wheel. in a short time, however, all these movements take place in an effective and graceful manner without any apparent attention being given to them. this efficiency is conditioned by the fact that all these movements have become habitual, or take place largely as reflex acts. in school also, when the child learns to perform such an act as making the figure , the same changes take place. here an impression must first proceed from the given copy to a sensory centre in the cortex. as yet, however, there is no vital connection established between the sensory centres and the motor centres which must direct the muscles in making the movement. as the movement is attempted, however, faint connections are set up between different centres. with each repetition the connection is made stronger, and the formation of the figure rendered less difficult. so long, however, as the connection is established within the cortex, the movement will not take place except under conscious direction. ultimately, however, similar connections between sensory and motor neurons may be established in lower centres, whereupon the action will be performed as a reflex act, or without the intervention of a directing act of consciousness. this evidently takes place when a student, in working a problem, can form the figures, while his consciousness is fully occupied with the thought phases of the problem. thus the neural condition of physical habit is the establishment of easy passages between sensory and motor nerves in centres lower than the cortex. chapter xxi instinct =definition of instinct.=--in a foregoing section, it was seen that our bodily movements divide into different classes according to their source, or origin. among them were noted certain inherited spontaneous, but useful, complex movements which follow, in a more or less uniform way, definite types of stimuli presented to the organism. such an inherited tendency on the part of an organism to react in an effective manner, but without any definite purpose in view, whenever a particular stimulus presents itself, is known as instinct, and the resulting action is described as an instinctive act. as an example of purely instinctive action may be taken the maternal instinct of insects whose larvæ require live prey when they are born. to provide this the mother administers sufficient poison to a spider or a caterpillar to stupefy it, and then bears it to her nest. placing the victim close to her eggs, she incloses the two together, thus providing food for her future offspring. this complex series of acts, so essential to the continuance of the species, and seemingly so full of purpose, is nevertheless conducted throughout without reference to past experience, and without any future end in view. instinct may, therefore, be defined as the ability of an organism to react upon a particular situation so as to gain a desirable end, yet without any purpose in view or any previous training. =characteristics of instinct.=--an instinctive act, it may be noted, is distinguished by certain well marked characteristics: . the action is not brought about by experience or guided by intelligence, but is a direct reaction on the part of the organism to definite stimulation. . although not the result of reason, instinctive action is purposeful to the extent that it shows a predisposition on the part of the organism to react in an effective manner to a particular situation. . an instinctive movement is a response in which the whole organism is concerned. it is the discomfort of the whole organism, for instance, that causes the bird to migrate or the child to seek food. in this respect it differs from a mere reflex action such as the winking of the eye, breathing, coughing, etc., which involves only some particular part of the organism. . although not a consciously purposed action, instinct nevertheless involves consciousness. in sucking, for instance, sensation accompanies both the discomfort of the organism giving rise to the movements and also the instinctive act itself. in this respect it differs from such automatic actions as breathing, the circulation of the blood, and the beating of the heart. =origin of instinct.=--the various instinctive movements with which an organism is endowed, not being a result of experience or education, a question at once arises as to their source, or origin. instinct has its origin in the fact that certain movements which have proved beneficial in the ancestral experience of the race have become established as permanent modes of reaction, and are transmitted to each succeeding generation. the explanation of this transmission of tendencies is, that beneficial movements are retained as permanent modifications of the nervous system of the animal, and are transmitted to the offspring as a _reactive tendency_ toward definite stimuli. the partridge family, for instance, has preserved its offspring from the attacks of foxes, dogs, and other enemies only by the male taking flight and dragging itself along the ground, thus attracting the enemy away from the direction of the nest. the complex movements involved in such an act, becoming established as permanent motor connections within the system, are transmitted to the offspring as predispositions. instinct would thus seem a physiological habit, or hereditary tendency, within the nervous system to react in a fixed manner under certain conditions. in many respects, however, instincts seem to depend more largely upon bodily development than upon nervous structure. while the babe will at first instinctively suck; yet as soon as teeth appear, the sucking at once gives way to the biting instinct. the sucking instinct then disappears so completely that only a process of education will re-establish it later. birds also show no instinctive tendency to fly until their wings are developed, while the young of even the fiercest animals will flee from danger, until such time as their bodily organism is properly developed for attack. from this it would seem that instinctive action depends even more upon general bodily structure and development than upon fixed co-ordinations within the nervous system. human instincts on account of the apparently intelligent character of human actions, it is often stated that man is a creature largely devoid of instincts. the fact is, however, that he is endowed with a large number of impulsive or instinctive tendencies to act in definite ways, when in particular situations. man has a tendency, under the proper conditions, to be fearful, bashful, angry, curious, sympathetic, grasping, etc. it is only, moreover, because experience finally gives man ideas of these instinctive movements, that they may in time be controlled by reason, and developed into orderly habits. =classification of human instincts.=--various attempts have been made to classify human instincts. for educational purposes, perhaps the most satisfactory method is that which classifies them according to their relation to the direct welfare of the individual organism. being inherited tendencies on the part of the organism to react in definite ways to definite stimuli, all instinctive acts should naturally tend to promote the good of the particular individual. different instincts will be found to differ, however, in the degree in which they involve the immediate good of the individual organism. on this basis the various human instincts may be divided into the following classes: . _individualistic instincts._--some instincts gain their significance because they tend solely to meet the needs of the individual. examples of these would be the instincts involved in securing food, as biting, chewing, carrying objects to the mouth; such instinctive expressions as crying, smiling, and uttering articulate sounds; rhythmical bodily movements; bodily expression of fear, etc. . _racial instincts._--these include such instinctive acts as make for the preservation of the species, as the sexual and parental instincts, jealousy, etc. the constructive instinct in man, also, may be considered parallel to the nesting instinct in birds and animals. . _social instincts._--among these are placed such instinctive tendencies as bashfulness, sympathy, the gregarious instinct, or love of companionship, anger, self-assertion, combativeness, etc. . _instincts of adjustment._--included among man's native tendencies are a number of complex responses which manifest themselves in his efforts to adjust himself to his surroundings. these may be called instinctive so far as concerns their mere impulsive tendency, which is no doubt inherited. in the operation of these so-called instincts, however, there is not seen that definite mode of response to a particular stimulus which is found in a pure instinct. since, however, these are important human tendencies, and since they deal specifically with the child's attitude in adapting himself to his environment, they rank from an educational standpoint among the most important of human instincts. these include such tendencies as curiosity, imitation, play, constructiveness and acquisitiveness. =human instincts modified by experience.=--although instinctive acts are performed without forethought or conscious purpose, yet in man they may be modified by experience. this is true to a degree even in the case of the instincts of the lower animals. young spiders, for instance, construct their webs in a manner inferior to that of their elders. in the case of birds, also, the first nest is usually inferior in structure to those of later date. in certain cases, indeed, if accounts are to be accepted, animals are able to vary considerably their instinctive movements according to the particular conditions. it is reported that a swallow had selected a place for her nest between two walls, the surfaces of which were so smooth that she could find no foundation for her nest. thereupon she fixed a bit of clay to each wall, laid a piece of light wood upon the clay supports, and with the stick as a foundation proceeded to construct her nest. on the whole, however, there seems little variation in animal instincts. the fish will come a second time to take food off the hook, the moth will fly again into the flame, and the spider will again and again build his web over the opening, only to have it again and again torn away. but whatever may be the amount of variation within the instincts of the lower animals, in the case of man instinctive action is so modified by experience that his instincts soon develop into personal habits. the reason for this is quite evident. as previously pointed out, an instinctive act, though not originally purposeful, is in man accompanied with a consciousness of both the bodily discomfort and the resulting movements. although, therefore, the child instinctively sucks, grasps at objects, or is convulsed with fear, these acts cannot take place without his gradually understanding their significance as states of experience. in this way he soon learns that the indiscriminate performance of an instinctive act may give quite different results, some being much more valuable to the individual than others. the young child, for instance, may instinctively bite whatever enters his mouth, but the older child has learned that this is not always desirable, and therefore exercises a voluntary control over the movement. =instincts differ in value.=--the fact that man's instinctive tendencies thus come within the range of experience, not only renders them amenable to reason, but also leaves the question of their ultimate outcome extremely indefinite. for this reason many instincts may appear in man in forms that seem undesirable. the instinct to seek food is a natural one, yet will be condemned when it causes the child to take fruit from the neighbour's garden. in like manner, the instinct to know his surroundings is natural to man, but will be condemned when it causes him to place his ear to the keyhole. the tendency to imitate is not in itself evil, yet the child must learn to weigh the value of what he imitates. one important reason, therefore, why the teacher should understand the native tendencies of the child is that he may direct their development into moral habits and suppress any tendencies which are socially undesirable. =education of instincts.=--in dealing with the moral aspects of the child's instinctive tendencies, the educator must bear in mind that one tendency may come in conflict with another. the individualistic instinct of feeding or ownership may conflict with the social instinct of companionship; the instinct of egoism, with that of imitation; and the instinct of fear, with that of curiosity. to establish satisfactory moral habits on the basis of instinct, therefore, it is often possible to proceed by a method of substitution. the child who shows a tendency to destroy school furniture can best be cured by having constructive exercises. the boy who shows a natural tendency to destroy animal life may have the same arrested by being given the care of animals and thus having his sympathy developed. in other cases, the removal of stimuli, or conditions, for awaking the instinctive tendency will be found effective in checking the development of an undesirable instinct into a habit. the boy who shows a spirit of combativeness may be cured by having a generous and congenial boy as his chum. the pupil whose social tendencies are so strong that he cannot refrain from talking may be cured by isolation. =instincts may disappear.=--in dealing with the instinctive tendencies of the child, it is important for the educator to remember that many of these are transitory in character and, if not utilized at the proper time, will perish for want of exercise. even in the case of animals, natural instincts will not develop unless the opportunity for exercise is provided at the time. birds shut up in a cage lose the instinct to fly; while ducks, after being kept a certain time from water, will not readily acquire the habit of swimming. in the same way, the child who is not given opportunity to associate with others will likely grow up a recluse. all work for a few years, and it will be impossible for jack to learn later how to play. the girl who during her childhood has no opportunity to display any pride through neatness in dress will grow up untidy and careless as to her personal appearance. in like manner, it is only the child whose constructive tendency is early given an opportunity to express itself who is likely to develop into an expert workman; while one who has no opportunity to give expression to his æsthetic instinct in early life will not later develop into an artist. curiosity =curiosity as motive.=--an important bearing of instinct upon the work of education is found in the fact that an instinctive tendency may add much to the force of the motive, or end, in any educative process. this is especially true in the case of such adaptive instincts as curiosity, imitation, and play. curiosity is the inquisitive attitude, or appetite, of the mind which causes it to seek out what is strange in its surroundings and make it an object of attention. as an instinctive tendency, its significance consists in the fact that it leads the individual to interpret his surroundings. a creature devoid of curiosity, therefore, would not discover either the benefits to be derived from his surroundings or the dangers to be avoided. in addition to its direct practical value in leading the individual to study his environment in order to meet actual needs, curiosity often seeks a more theoretic end, appearing merely as a feeling of wonder or a thirst for knowledge. =use and abuse of curiosity.=--while curiosity is needful for the welfare of the individual, an inordinate development of this instinct is both intellectually and morally undesirable. since curiosity directs attention to the novel in our surroundings, over-curiosity is likely to keep the mind wandering from one novelty to another, and thus interfere with the fixing of attention for a sufficient time to give definiteness to particular impressions. the virtue of curiosity is, therefore, to direct attention to the novel until it is made familiar. there is a type of curiosity, however, which craves for mere astonishment and not for understanding. it is such curiosity that causes children to pry into other people's belongings, and men into other people's affairs. =sensuous and apperceptive curiosity.=--curiosity may be considered of two kinds also from the standpoint of its origin. in early life, curiosity must rest largely upon sense perception, being essentially an appetite of the senses to meet and interpret the objective surroundings. a bright light, a loud noise, a moving object, at once awakens curiosity. at this stage, curiosity serves as a counteracting influence to the instinct of fear, the one leading the child to use his senses upon his surroundings, and the other causing him to use them in a careful and judicious manner. as the child grows in experience, however, his curiosity limits itself more and more in accordance with the law of apperception. here the object attracts attention not merely because of its sensuous properties, but because it suggests novel relations within the elements of past experience. the young child's curiosity, for instance, is aroused toward a strange plant simply because of its form and colour, that of the student of botany, because the plant presents features that do not relate themselves at once to his botanical experience. the first curiosity may be called objective, or sensuous, the second subjective, or apperceptive. =relation of two types.=--the distinction between sensuous and apperceptive curiosity is, of course, one of degree rather than one of kind. a novel object could not be an object of attention unless it bore some relation to the present mental content. the young child, however, seeks mainly to give meaning to novel sense impressions, and is not attracted to the more hidden relations in which objects may stand one to another. he is attracted, for instance, to the colour, scent, and general form of the flower, rather than to its structure. on the other hand, it is found that at a later stage curiosity is usually aroused toward a novel problem, to the extent to which the problem finds a setting in previous experience. this is seen in the fact that the young child takes no interest in having lessons grow out of each other in a connected manner, but must have his curiosity aroused to the present situation through its own intrinsic appeal. for this reason, young children are mainly interested in a lesson which deals with particular elements in a concrete manner, such as coloured blocks, bright pictures, and stories of action; while the older pupil seeks out the new problem because it stands in definite relation to what is already known. =importance of apperceptive curiosity.=--since curiosity depends upon novelty, it is evident that sensuous should ultimately give place to apperceptive curiosity. although objects first impress the senses with a degree of freshness and vigour, this freshness must disappear as the novelty of the impression wears off. when sensuous curiosity thus disappears, it is only by seeing in the world of sensuous objects other relations with their larger meaning, that healthy curiosity is likely to be maintained. thus it is that the curiosity of the student is attracted to the more hidden qualities of objects, to the tracing of cause and effect, and to the discovery of scientific truth in general. =novelty versus variety.=--while the familiar must lose something of its freshness through its very familiarity, it is to be noted that to remit any experience for a time will add something to the freshness of its revival. persons and places, for instance, when revisited after a period of absence, gain something of the charm of novelty. variety is, therefore, a means by which the effect of curiosity may be sustained, even after the original novelty has disappeared. this fact should be especially remembered in dealing with the studies of young children. without being constantly fed upon the novel, the child may yet avoid monotony by having a measure of variety within a reasonable number of interests. it is in this way, in fact, that permanent centres of interest can best be established. to keep a child's attention continually upon one line of experiences would destroy both curiosity and interest. to keep him ever attending to the novel would prevent the building up of any centres of interest. by variety within a reasonable number of subjects, both depth of interest and reasonable variety in interests will be obtained. this is, therefore, another reason why the school curriculum should show a reasonable number of subjects and reasonable variety in the presentation of these subjects. imitation =nature of imitation.=--in our study of the nervous system, attention was called to the close connection existing between sensory impulse and action. it may be noted further that, whenever the young child gains an idea of an action, he tends at once to express that idea in action. on account of this immediate connection between thought and expression, due to an inability to inhibit the motor discharge, a child, as soon as he is able to form ideas of the acts of others, must necessarily show a tendency to repeat, or reproduce, such acts. granting that this immediate connection between sensory impulse and motor response is an inherited capacity, the tendency of the young child to imitate the acts of others may be classified as an instinct. =imitation a complex.=--on closer examination, however, it will be found that imitation is really a complex of several tendencies. the nervous organism of the healthy young child is usually supercharged with nervous energy. this energy, like a swollen stream, seems ever striving to sweep away any resistance to the motor discharge of sensory impulses, and must necessarily reinforce the natural tendency to give immediate expression to ideas of action. moreover, the social instincts of the child, his sympathy, etc., give him a special interest in human beings and in their acts. these tendencies, therefore, focus his attention upon human action, and cause his ideas of such acts to become more vivid and interesting. for this reason, observation of human acts is more likely to lead to motor expression. that the social instincts of the child reinforce the tendency to imitate is indicated by the fact that his early imitations are of human acts especially, as yawning, smiling, crying, etc. the same is further evidenced in that, at a later stage, when ordinary objects enter into his imitative acts, the imitation is largely symbolic, and objects are endowed with living attributes. here blocks become men; sticks, horses, etc. =kinds of. a. spontaneous imitation.=--in its simplest form, imitation seems to follow directly upon the perception of a given act. as the child attends, now to the nod of the head, now to the shaking of the rattle, now to an uttered sound, he spontaneously reproduces these perceived acts. because in such cases the imitative act follows directly upon the perception of the copy, without the intervention of any determination to imitate, it is termed spontaneous, or unconscious, imitation. it is by spontaneous imitation that the child gains so much knowledge of the world about him, and so much power over the movements of his own body. the occupations and language of the home, the operations of the workman, the movements and gestures of the older children in their games, all these are spontaneously reproduced through imitation. this enables the child to participate largely in the social life about him. it is for this reason that he should observe only good models of language and conduct during his early years. =b. symbolic imitation.=--if we note the imitative acts of a child of from four to six years of age, we may find that a new factor is often entering into the process. at this stage the child, instead of merely copying the acts of others, further clothes objects and persons with fancied attributes through a process of imagination. by this means, the little child becomes a mother and the doll a baby; one boy becomes a teacher or captain, the others become pupils or soldiers. this form has already been referred to as symbolic imitation. frequent use is made of this type of imitation in education, especially in the kindergarten. through the gifts, plays, etc., of the kindergarten, the child in imagination exemplifies numberless relations and processes of the home and community life. the educative value of this type consists in the fact that the child, by acting out in a symbolic, or make-believe, way valuable social processes, though doing them only in an imaginative way, comes to know them better by the doing. =c. voluntary imitation.=--as the child's increasing power of attention gives him larger control of his experiences, he becomes able, not only to distinguish between the idea of an action and its reproduction by imitation, but also to associate some further end, or purpose, with the imitative process. the little child imitates the language of his fellows spontaneously; the mimic, for the purpose of bringing out certain peculiarities in their speech. when first imitating his elder painting with a brush, the child imitates merely in a spontaneous or unconscious way the act of brushing. when later, however, he tries to secure the delicate touch of his art teacher, he will imitate the teacher's movements for the definite purpose of adding to his own skill. because in this type the imitator first conceives in idea the particular act to be imitated, and then consciously strives to reproduce the act in like manner, it is classified as conscious, or voluntary, imitation. =use of voluntary imitation.=--teachers differ widely concerning the educational value of voluntary imitation. it is evident, however, that in certain cases, as learning correct forms of speech, in physical and manual exercises, in conduct and manners, etc., good models for imitation count for more than rules and precepts. on the other hand, to endeavour to teach a child by imitation to read intelligently could only result in failure. in such a case, the pupil, by attempting to analyse out and set up as models the different features of the teachers reading, would have his attention directed from the thought of the sentence. but without grasping the meaning, the pupil cannot make his reading intelligent. in like manner, to have a child learn a rule in arithmetic by merely imitating the process from type examples worked by the teacher, would be worse than useless, since it would prevent independent thinking on the child's part. the purpose here is not to gain skill in a mechanical process, but to gain knowledge of an intelligent principle. play =nature of play impulse.=--another tendency of early childhood utilized by the modern educator is the so-called instinct of play. according to some, the impulse to play represents merely the tendency of the surplus energy stored up within the nervous organism to express itself in physical action. according to this view, play would represent, not any inherited tendency, but a condition of the nervous organism. it is to be noted, however, that this activity spends itself largely in what seems instinctive tendencies. the boy, in playing hide-and-seek, in chasing, and the like, seems to express the hunting and fleeing instincts of his ancestors. playing with the doll is evidently suggested and influenced by the parental instinct, while in all games, the activity is evidently determined largely by social instincts. like imitation, therefore, play seems a complex, involving a number of instinctive tendencies. =play versus work.=--an essential characteristic of the play impulse is its freedom. by this is meant that the acts are performed, not to gain some further end, but merely for the sake of the activity itself. the impulse to play, therefore, must find its initiative within the child, and must give expression merely to some inner tendency. so long, for example, as the boy shovels the sand or piles the stones merely to exercise his physical powers, or to satisfy an inner tendency to imitate the actions of others, the operation is one of play. when, on the other hand, these acts are performed in order to clean up the yard, or because they have been ordered to be done by a parent, the process is one of work, for the impulse to act now lies in something outside the act itself. to compel a child to play, therefore, would be to compel him to work. =value of play: a. physical.=--play is one of the most effective means for promoting the physical development of the child. this result follows naturally from the free character of the play activity. since the impulse to act is found in the activity itself, the child always has a strong motive for carrying on the activity. on the other hand, when somewhat similar activities are carried on as a task set by others, the end is too remote from the child's present interests and tendencies to supply him with an immediate motive for the activity. play, therefore, causes the young child to express himself physically to a degree that tasks set by others can never do, and thus aids him largely in securing control of bodily movements. =b. intellectual and moral.=--in play, however, the child not only secures physical development and a control of bodily movements, but also exercises and develops other tendencies and powers. many plays and games, for instance, involve the use of the senses. whether the young child is shaking his rattle, rolling the ball, pounding with the spoon, piling up blocks and knocking them over, or playing his regular guessing games in the kindergarten, he is constantly stimulating his senses, and giving his sensory nerves their needed development. as imitation and imagination, by their co-operation, later enable the child to symbolize his play, such games as keeping store, playing carpenter, farmer, baker, etc., both enlarge the child's knowledge of his surroundings, and also awaken his interest and sympathy toward these occupations. other games, such as beans-in-the-bag, involve counting, and thus furnish the child incidental lessons in number under most interesting conditions. in games involving co-operation and competition, as the bowing game, the windmill, fill the gap, chase ball in ring, etc., the social tendencies of the child are developed, and such individual instincts as rivalry, emulation, and combativeness are brought under proper control. play in education =assigning play.=--in adapting play to the formal education of the child, a difficulty seems at once to present itself. if the teacher endeavours to provide the child with games that possess an educative value, physical, intellectual, or moral, how can she give such games to the children, and at the same time avoid setting the game as a task? that such a result might follow is evident from our ordinary observation of young children. to the boy interested in a game of ball, the request to come and join his sister in playing housekeeping would, more than likely, be positive drudgery. may it not follow therefore, that a trade or guessing game given by the kindergarten director will fail to call forth the free activity of the child? one of the arguments of the advocates of the montessori method in favour of that system is, that the specially prepared apparatus of that system is itself suggestive of play exercises; and that, by having access to the apparatus, the child may choose the particular exercise which appeals to his free activity at the moment. this supposed superiority of the montessori apparatus over the kindergarten games is, however, more apparent than real. what the skilful kindergarten teacher does is, through her knowledge of the interests and tendencies of the children, to suggest games that will be likely to appeal to their free activity, and at the same time have educative value along physical, intellectual, and moral lines. in this way, she does no more than children do among themselves, when one suggests a suitable game to his companions. in such a case, no one would argue, surely, that the leader is the only child to show free activity in the play. =stages in play.=--in the selecting of games, plays, etc., it is to be noted that these may be divided into at least three classes, according as they appeal to children at different ages. the very young child prefers merely to play with somewhat simple objects that can make an appeal to his senses, as the rattle, the doll, the pail and shovel, hammer, crayon, etc. this preference depends, on the one hand, upon his early individualistic nature, which would object to share the play with another; and, on the other hand, upon the natural hunger of his senses for varied stimulations. at about five years of age, owing to the growth of the child's imagination, symbolism begins to enter largely into his games. at this age the children love to play church, school, soldier, scavenger man, hen and chickens, keeping store, etc. at from ten to twelve years of age, co-operative and competitive games are preferred; and with boys, those games especially which demand an amount of strength and skill. this preference is to be accounted for through the marked development of the social instincts at this age and, in the case of boys, through increase in strength and will power. =limitations of play.=--notwithstanding the value of play as an agent in education, it is evident that its application in the school-room is limited. social efficiency demands that the child shall learn to appreciate the joy of work even more than the joy of play. moreover, as noted in the early part of our work, the acquisition of race experience demands that its problems be presented to the child in definite and logical order. this can be accomplished only by having them presented to the pupil by an educative agent and therefore set as a problem or a task to be mastered. this, of course, does not deny that the teacher should strive to have the pupil express himself as freely as possible as he works at his school problem. it does necessitate, however, that the child should find in his lesson some conscious end, or aim, to be reached beyond the mere activity of the learning process. this in itself stamps the ordinary learning process of the school as more than mere play. chapter xxii habit =nature of habit.=--when an action, whether performed under the full direction, or control, of attention and with a sense of effort, or merely as an instinctive or impulsive act, comes by repetition to be performed with such ease that consciousness may be largely diverted from the act itself and given to other matters, the action is said to have become habitual. for example, if a person attempts a new manner of putting on a tie, it is first necessary for him to stand before a glass and follow attentively every movement. in a short time, however, he finds himself able to perform the act easily and skilfully both without the use of a glass and almost without conscious direction. moreover if the person should chance in his first efforts to hold his arms and head in a certain way in order to watch the process more easily in the glass, it is found that when later he does the act even without the use of a glass, he must still hold his arms and head in this manner. =basis of habits.=--the ability of the organism to habituate an action, or make it a reflex is found to depend upon certain properties of nervous matter which have already been considered. these facts are: . nervous matter is composed of countless numbers of individual cells brought into relation with one another through their outgoing fibres. . this tissue is so plastic that whenever it reacts upon an impression a permanent modification is made in its structure. . not only are such modifications retained permanently, but they give a tendency to repeat the act in the same way; while every such repetition makes the structural modification stronger, and this renders further repetition of the act both easier and more effective. . the connections between the various nervous centres thus become so permanent that the action may run its course with a minimum of resistance within the nervous system. . in time the movements are so fixed within the system that connections are formed between sensory and motor centres at points lower than the cortex--that is, the stimulus and response become reflex. =an example.=--when a child strives to acquire the movements necessary in making a new capital letter, his eye receives an impression of the letter which passes along the sensory system to the cortex and, usually with much effort, finds an outlet in a motor attempt to form the letter. thus a permanent trace, or course, is established in the nervous system, which will be somewhat more easily taken on a future occasion. after a number of repetitions, the child, by giving his attention fully to the act, is able to form the letter with relative ease. as these movements are repeated, however, the nervous system, as already noted, may shorten the circuit between the point of sensory impression and motor discharge by establishing associations in centres lower than those situated in the cortex. whenever any act is repeated a great number of times, therefore, these lower associations are established with a resulting diminution of the impression upward through the cortex of the brain. this results also in a lessening of the amount of attention given the movement, until finally the act can be performed in a perfectly regular way with practically no conscious, or attentive, effort. =habit and consciousness.=--while saying that such habitual action may be performed with facility in the absence of conscious direction, it must not be understood that conscious attention is necessarily entirely absent during the performance of an habitual act. in many of these acts, as for instance, lacing and tieing a shoe, signing one's name, etc., conscious effort usually gives the first impulse to perform the act. there may be cases, however, in which one finds himself engaged in some customary act without any seeming initial conscious suggestion. this would be noted, for instance, where a person starts for the customary clothes closet, perhaps to obtain something from a pocket, and suddenly finds himself hanging on a hook the coat he has unconsciously removed from his shoulders. here the initial movement for removing the coat may have been suggested by the sight of the customary closet, or by the movement involved in opening the closet door, these impressions being closely co-ordinated through past experiences with those of removing the coat. when, also, a woman is sewing or kneading bread, although she seems to be able to give her attention fully to the conversation in which she may be engaged, yet no doubt a slight trace of conscious control is still exercised over the other movements. this is seen in the fact that, whenever the conversation becomes so absorbing that it takes a very strong hold on the attention, the habitual movements may cease without the person being at first aware that she has ceased working. =habit and nervous action.=--the general flow of the nervous energy during such processes as the above, in which there is an interchange between conscious and habitual control, may be illustrated by the following figures. in these figures the heavy lines indicate the process actually going on, while the broken lines indicate that although such nerve courses are established, they are not being brought into active operation in the particular case. [illustration: fig. , fig. , fig. a. sensory stimulus b. lower sensory centre c. higher sensory centre a' higher motor centre b' lower motor centre c' motor response] the arrows in figure indicate the course of sensory stimulation and motor response during the first efforts to acquire skill in any movement. no connections are yet set up between lower centres and the acts are under conscious control. the arrows in figure indicate the course of sensory stimulus and motor response in an ordinary habitual act, as when an expert fingers the piano keys or controls a bicycle while his mind is occupied with other matters. the arrows in figure indicate how, even in performing what is ordinarily an habitual act, the mind may at any time assume control of the movement. this is illustrated in the case of a person who, when unconsciously directing his bicycle along the road, comes to a narrow plank over a culvert. hereupon full attention may be given to the movements, that is, the acts may come under conscious control. formation of habits it is evident from the nature of the structure and properties of the nervous system, that man cannot possibly avoid the formation of habits. any act once performed will not only leave an indelible trace within the nervous system, but will also set up in the system a tendency to repeat the act. it is this fact that always makes the first false step exceedingly dangerous. moreover, every repetition further breaks down the present resistance and, therefore, in a sense further enslaves the individual to that mode of action. the word poorly articulated for the first time, the letter incorrectly formed, the impatient shrug of the shoulder--these set up their various tracks, create a tendency, and soon, through the establishment of lower connections, become unconscious habits. thus it is that every one soon becomes a bundle of habits. =precautions to be taken.=--a most important problem in relation to the life of the young child is that he should at the outset form right habits. this includes not only doing the right thing, but also doing it in the right way. for this he must have the right impression, make the right response, and continue this response until the proper paths are established in the nervous system, or, in other words, until practically all resistance within the system is overcome. it is here that teachers are often very lax in dealing with the pupil in his various forms of expressive work. they may indeed give the child the proper impression, for example, the correct form of the letter, the correct pronunciation of the new word, the correct position for the pen and the body, but too often they do not exercise the vigilance necessary to have the first responses develop into well-fixed habits. but it must be remembered that the child's first response is necessarily crude; for as already seen, there is always at first a certain resistance to the co-ordinated movements, on account of the tracks within the nervous system not yet being surely established. the result is that during the time this resistance is being overcome, there is constant danger of variations creeping into the child's responses. unless, therefore, he is constantly watched during this practice period, his response may fall much below the model, or standard, set by the teacher. take, for instance, the child's mode of forming a letter. at the outset he is given the correct forms for _g_ and _m_, but on account of the resistance met in performing these movements he may, if left without proper supervision, soon fall into such movements as [symbol] and [symbol]. the chief value of the montessori sandpaper letters consists in the fact that they enable the child to continue a correct movement without variation until all resistance within the nervous organism has been overcome. two facts should, therefore, be kept prominently in view by the teacher concerning the child's efforts to secure skill. first, the learner's early attempts must be necessarily crude, both through the resistance at first offered by the nervous system on account of the proper paths not being laid in the system, and also through the image of the movement not being clearly conceived. secondly, there is constant danger of variations from the proper standard establishing themselves during this period of resistance. value of habits =habits promote efficiency.=--but notwithstanding the dangers which seem to attend the formation of habits, it is only through this inevitable reduction of his more customary acts to unconscious habit that man attains to proficiency. only by relieving conscious attention from the ordinary mechanical processes in any occupation, is the artist able to attend to the special features of the work. unless, for instance, the scholar possesses as an unconscious habit the ability to hold the pen and form and join the various letters, he could never devote his attention to evolving the thoughts composing his essay. in like manner, without an habitual control of the chisel, the carver could not possibly give an absorbing attention to the delicate outlines of the particular model. it is only because the rider has habituated himself to the control of the handles, etc., that he can give his attention to the street traffic before him and guide the bicycle or automobile through the ever varying passages. the first condition of efficiency, therefore, in any pursuit, is to reduce any general movements involved in the process to unconscious habits, and thus leave the conscious judgment free to deal with the changeable features of the work. =habit conserves energy.=--another advantage of habit is that it adds to the individual's capacity for work. when any movements are novel and require our full attention, a greater nervous resistance is met on account of the laying down of new paths in the nerve centres. moreover longer nervous currents are produced through the cortex of the brain, because conscious attention is being called into play. these conditions necessarily consume a greater amount of nerve energy. the result is that man is able to continue for a longer time with less nervous exhaustion any series of activities after they have developed into habits. this can be seen by noting the ease with which one can perform any physical exercise after habituating himself to the movements, compared with the evident strain experienced when the exercise is first undertaken. =makes the disagreeable easy.=--another, though more incidental, advantage of the formation of habits, is that occupations in themselves uninteresting or even distasteful may, through habit, be performed at least without mental revulsion. this results largely from the fact that the growth of habit decreases the resistance, and thus lessens or destroys the disagreeable feeling. moreover, when such acts are reduced to mechanical habits, the mind is largely free to consider other things. in this way the individual, even in the midst of his drudgery, may enjoy the pleasures of memory or imagination. although, therefore, in going through some customary act, one may still dislike the occupation, the fact that he can do much of it habitually, leaves him free to enjoy a certain amount of mental pleasure in other ways. =aids morality.=--the formation of habits also has an important bearing on the moral life. by habituating ourselves to right forms of action, we no doubt make in a sense moral machines of ourselves, since the right action is the one that will meet the least nervous resistance, while the doing of the wrong action would necessitate the establishing of new co-ordinations in the nervous system. it is no doubt partly owing to this, that one whose habits are formed can so easily resist temptations; for to ask him to act other than in the old way is to ask him to make, not the easy, but the hard reaction. while this is true, however, it must not be supposed that in such cases the choice of the right thing involves only a question of customary nervous reaction. when we choose to do our duty, we make a conscious choice, and although earlier right action has set up certain nerve co-ordinations which render it now easy to choose the right, yet it must be remembered that _conscious judgment_ is also involved. in such cases man does the right mainly because his judgment tells him that it is right. if, therefore, he is in a situation where he must act in a totally different way from what is customary, as when a quiet, peace-loving man sees a ruffian assaulting a helpless person, a moral man does not hesitate to change his habitual modes of physical action. improvement of habitual reactions =to eliminate a habit.=--from what has been learned concerning the permanency of our habits, it is evident that only special effort will enable us to make any change in an habitual mode of reaction. in at least two cases, however, changes may be necessary. the fact that many of our early habits are formed either unconsciously, or in ignorance of their evil character, finds us, perhaps, as we come to years of discretion, in possession of certain habits from which we would gladly be freed. such habits may range from relatively unimportant personal peculiarities to impolite and even immoral modes of conduct. in attempting to free ourselves from such acts, we must bear in mind what has been noted concerning the basis of retention. to repeat an act at frequent intervals is an important condition of retaining it as a habit. on the other hand, the absence of such repetition is almost sure, in due time, to obliterate the nervous tendency to repeat the act. to free one's self from an undesirable habit, therefore, the great essential is to avoid resolutely, for a reasonable time, any recurrence of the banned habit. while this can be accomplished only by conscious effort and watchfulness, yet each day passed without the repetition of the act weakens by so much the old nerve co-ordinations. to attempt to break an old habit, gradually, however, as some would prefer, can result only in still keeping the habitual tendency relatively strong. =to modify a habit.=--at other times, however, we may desire not to eliminate an habitual co-ordination _in toto_, but rather to modify only certain phases of the reaction. in writing, for instance, a pupil may be holding his pen correctly and also using the proper muscular movements, but may have developed a habit of forming certain letters incorrectly, as [symbol] and [symbol]. in any attempt to correct such forms, a special difficulty is met in the fact that the incorrect movements are now closely co-ordinated with a number of correct movements, which must necessarily be retained while the other portions of the process are being modified. to effect such a modification, it is necessary for attention to focus itself upon the incorrect elements, and form a clear idea of the changes desired. with this idea as a conscious aim, the pupil must have abundant practice in writing the new forms, and avoid any recurrence of the old incorrect movements. this fact emphasizes the importance of attending to the beginning of any habit. in teaching writing, for instance, the teacher might first give attention only to the form of the letter and then later seek to have the child acquire the muscular movement. in the meantime, however, the child, while learning to form the letters, may have been allowed to acquire the finger movement, and to break this habit both teacher and pupil find much difficulty. by limiting the child to the use of a black-board or a large pencil and tablet, and having him make only relatively large letters while he is learning to form them, the teacher could have the pupil avoid this early formation of the habit of writing with the finger movement. =limitations of habit.=--from what has here been learned concerning the formation of physical habits, it becomes evident that there are limitations to these as forms of reaction. since any habit is largely an unconscious reaction to a particular situation, its value will be conditional upon the nature of the circumstances which call forth the reaction. these circumstances must occur quite often under almost identical conditions, otherwise the habit can have no value in directing our social conduct. on the contrary, it may seriously interfere with successful effort. for the player to habituate his hands to fingering the violin is very important, because this is a case where such constant conditions are to be met. for a salesman to habituate himself to one mode of presenting goods to his customers would be fatal, since both the character and the needs of the customers are so varied that no permanent form of approach could be effective in all cases. to habituate ourselves to some narrow automatic line of action and follow it even under varying circumstances, therefore, might prevent the mind from properly weighing these varying conditions, and thus deaden initiative. it is for this reason that experience is so valuable in directing life action. by the use of past experience, the mind is able to analyse each situation calling for reaction and, by noting any unusual circumstances it presents, may adapt even our habitual reactions to the particular conditions. the relation of habit to interest and attention is treated in chapter xxiv. chapter xxiii attention =nature of attention.=--in our study of the principles of general method, it was noted that the mind is able to set up and hold before itself as a problem any partially realized experience. from what has been said concerning nervous stimulation and the passing inward of sensuous impression, it might be thought that the mind is for the most part a somewhat passive recipient of conscious states as they chance to arise through the stimulations of the particular moment. further consideration will show, however, that, at least after very early childhood, the mind usually exercises a strong selective control over what shall occupy consciousness at any particular time. in the case of a student striving to unravel the mazes of his mathematical problem, countless impressions of sight, sound, touch, etc., may be stimulating him from all sides, yet he refuses in a sense to attend to any of them. the singing of the maid, the chilliness of the room as the fire dies out, even the pain in the limb, all fail to make themselves known in consciousness, until such time as the successful solution causes the person to direct his attention from the work in hand. in like manner, the traveller at the busy station, when intent upon catching his train, is perhaps totally unconscious of the impressions being received from the passing throngs, the calling newsboys, the shunting engines, and the malodorous cattle cars. this ability of the mind to focus itself upon certain experiences to the exclusion of other possible experiences is known as _attention_. =degree of attention.=--mention has already been made of states of consciousness in which the mind seems in a passive state of reverie. although the mind, even in such sub-conscious states, would seem to exercise some slight attention, it is yet evident that it does not exercise a definite selective control during such passive states of consciousness. attention proper, on the other hand, may be described as a state in which the mind focuses itself upon some particular impression, and thus makes it stand out more clearly in consciousness as a definite experience. from this standpoint it may be assumed that, in a state of waking reverie, the attention is so scattered that no impression is made to stand out clearly in consciousness. on the other hand, as soon as the mind focuses itself on a certain impression, for example, the report of a gun, the relation of two angles, or the image of a centaur, this stands out so clearly that it occupies the whole foreground of consciousness, while all other impressions hide themselves in the background. this single focal state of consciousness is, therefore, pre-eminently a state of attention while the former state of reverie, on account of its diffuse character, may be said to be relatively devoid of attention. =physical illustrations of attention.=--to furnish a physical illustration of the working of attention, some writers describe the stream of our conscious life as presenting a series of waves, the successive waves representing the impressions or ideas upon which attention is focused at successive moments. when attention is in a diffuse state, consciousness is likened to a comparatively level stream. the focusing of attention upon particular impressions and thus making them stand out as distinct states of consciousness is said to break the surface of the stream into waves. this may be illustrated as follows: [illustration: fig. --consciousness in a state of passive reverie. fig. --active consciousness. attention focussed on the definite experiences _a, b, c, d, e, f, g_.] by others, consciousness is described as a field of vision, in which the centre of vision represents the focal point of attention. for instance, if the student intent upon his problem in analysis does not notice the flickering light, the playing of the piano, or the smell of the burning meat breaking in upon him, it is because this problem occupies the centre of the attentive field. the other impressions, on the contrary, lie so far on the outside of the field that they fail to stand out in consciousness. this may be represented by the following diagram: [illustration: p represents the problem on which attention is fixed. a, b, c, d, e, represent impressions which, though stimulating the organism, do not attract definite attention.] it must be understood, however, that these are merely mechanical devices to illustrate the fact that when the mind selects, or attends to, any impression, this impression is made to stand out clearly as an object in consciousness; or, in other words, the particular impression becomes a clear-cut and definite experience. [illustration: probable adjusting of nerve ends during active attention] =neural basis of attention.=--the neural conditions under which the mind exercises such active attention seem to be that during the attentive state the nervous energy concentrates itself upon the paths and centres involved in the particular experience, the resistance being decreased in the paths connecting the cells traversed by the impulse. moreover, any nervous energy tending to escape in other channels is checked and the movements hindered, thus shutting off attention from other possible experiences. for instance, a person with little interest in horticulture might pass a flowering shrub, the colour, form, and scent making only a faint impression upon him. if, however, his companion should say, "what a lovely colour," his attention will direct itself to this quality, with the result that the colour stands out much more clearly in consciousness, and the other features practically escape his notice. here the suggestion of the companion focuses attention upon the colour, this being accompanied with a lessening of the resistance between the centres involved in interpreting the colour sensations. at the same time resistance in the arcs involving form and smell is increased, and the energy diverted from these arcs into that of colour. attention selective =attention and interest.=--at this point a question naturally arises why the mind, since it is continually subject to the influence of impressions from without and of reviving ideas from within, should select and focus attention upon certain of these to the exclusion of others. the answer usually given is that the mind feels in each case, at least vaguely, a personal interest in some change or adjustment to be wrought either in or through the impression which it makes an object of attention. when, for instance, the reader diverts his attention from the interesting story to the loud talking outside the window, he evidently desires to adjust his understanding more fully to the new and strange impression. so, also, when the spectator rivets his attention upon the flying ball, it is because he associates with this the interesting possibility of a change in the score. in like manner, the student in geometry fixes his attention upon the line joining the points of bisection of the sides, because he desires to change his present mental state of uncertainty as to its parallelism with the base into one of certainty. he further fixes his attention upon the qualities of certain bases and triangles, because through attending to these, he hopes to gain the desired experience concerning the parallelism of the two lines. =attention and the question.=--the general conditions for determining the course of attention will be further understood by a reference to two facts already established in connection with general method. it has been seen that the question and answer method is usually a successful mode of conducting the learning process. the reason for this is that the question is a most effective means of directing a selective act of attention. for instance, in an elementary science lesson on the candle flame, although the child, if left to himself, might observe the flame, he would not, in all probability, notice particularly the luminous part. or again, if a dry glass is simply held over the flame and then removed by the demonstrator, although the pupil may have watched the experiment in a general way, it is doubtful whether he would notice particularly the moisture deposited upon the glass. a question from the demonstrator, however, awakens interest, causes the mind to focus in a special direction, and banishes from consciousness features which might otherwise occupy attention. this is because the question suggests a problem, and thus awakens an expectant or unsatisfied state of mind, which is likely to be satisfied only by attending to what the question suggests as an object of attention. =attention and motive.=--it has already been noted that any process of learning is likely to be more effective when the child realizes a distinct problem, or aim, in the lesson, or feels a need for going through the learning process. the cause of this is that the aim, by awaking curiosity, etc., is an effective means of securing attention. when, for example, the pupil, in learning that Ã� = , begins with the problem of finding out how many threes are contained in his twelve blocks, his curiosity can be satisfied only by grasping certain significant relations. in approaching the lesson, therefore, with such an actual problem before him, the child feels a desire to change, or alter, his present mental relation to the problem. in other words, he wishes to gain something involved in the problem which he does not now know or is not yet able to do. his desire to bring about this change or to reach this end not only holds his attention upon the problem, but also adjusts it to whatever ideas are likely to assist in solving the problem. when, therefore, pupils approach a lesson with an interesting problem in mind, the teacher finds it much easier to centre their attention upon those factors which make for the acquisition of the new experience. involuntary attention =nature of involuntary attention.=--attention is met in its simplest form when the mind spontaneously focuses itself upon any strong stimulus received through the senses, as a flashing light, a loud crash, a bitter taste, or a violent pressure. as already noted, the significance of this type of attention lies in the fact that the mind seeks to adjust itself intelligently to a new condition in its surroundings which has been suggested to it through the violent stimulus. the ability to attend to such stimuli is evidently an inherited capacity, and is possessed by animals as well as by children. it is also the only form of attention exercised by very young children, and for some time the child seems to have little choice but to attend to the ever varying stimuli, the attention being drawn now to a bright light, now to a loud voice, according to the violence of the impressions. on account of the apparent lack of control over the direction of attention, this type is spoken of as spontaneous, or involuntary, attention. =place and value.=--it is only, however, during his very early years that man lacks a reasonable control even over relatively strong stimulations. as noted above, the mind acquires an ability to concentrate itself upon a single problem in the midst of relatively violent stimulations. moreover, in the midst of various strong stimulations, it is able to select the one which it desires, to the exclusion of all others. at a relatively early age, for instance, the youth is able, in his games, to focus his attention upon the ball, and pays little attention to the shouts and movements of the spectators. on the other hand, however, it is also true that man never loses this characteristic of attending in an involuntary, or reflex, way to any strong stimulus. indeed, without the possession of this hereditary tendency, it is hard to see how he could escape any dangers with which his body might be threatened while his attention is strongly engaged an another problem. =educational precautions.=--that young children naturally tend to give their attention to strong stimuli, is a matter of considerable moment to the primary teacher. it is for this cause, among others, that reasonable quiet and order should prevail in the class-room during the recitation. when the pupil is endeavouring to fix his attention upon a selected problem, say the relation of the square foot to the square yard, any undue stimulation of his senses from the school-room environment could not fail to distract his attention from the problem before him. for the same reason, the external conditions should be such as are not likely to furnish unusual stimulations, as will be the case if the class-room is on a busy street and must be ventilated by means of open windows. finally, in the use of illustrative materials, the teacher should see that the concrete matter will not stimulate the child unduly in ways foreign to the lesson topic. for example, in teaching a nature lesson on the crow, the teacher would find great difficulty in keeping the children's attention on the various topics of the lesson, if he had before the class a live crow that kept cawing throughout the whole lesson period. nor would it seem a very effective method of attracting attention to the problem of a lesson, if the teacher were continually shouting and waving his arms at the pupils. non-voluntary attention =nature of non-voluntary attention.=--on account of the part played by interest in the focusing of attention, it is possible to distinguish a second type of spontaneous attention in which the mind seems directly attracted to an object of thought because of a natural satisfaction gained from contemplating the subject. the lover, apparently without any determination, and without any external stimulus to suggest the topic, finds his attention ever centring itself upon the image of his fair lady. the young lad, also, without any apparent cause, turns his thoughts constantly to his favourite game. here the impulse to attend is evidently from within, rather than from without, and arises from the interest that the mind has in the particular experience. this type of attention is especially manifest when trains of ideas pass through the mind without any apparent end in view, one idea suggesting another in accordance with the prevailing mood. the mind, in a half passive state, thinks of last evening, then of the house of a friend, then of the persons met there, then of the game played, etc. in the same way the attention of the student turns without effort to his favourite school subject, and its various aspects may pass in view before him without any effort or determination on his part. because in this type of attention the different thoughts stand out in consciousness without any apparent choice, or selection, on the part of the mind, it is described as non-voluntary attention. voluntary attention =nature of voluntary attention.=--the most important form of attention, however, is that in which the mind focuses itself upon an idea, not as a result of outside stimulation, but with some further purpose in view. for instance, when a person enters a room in which a strange object seems to be giving out musical notes automatically, he may at first give spontaneous attention to the sounds coming from the instrument. when, however, he approaches the object later with a desire to discover the nature of its mechanism, his attention is focused upon the object with a more remote aim, or end, in view, to discover where the music comes from. so also, when the lad mentioned in chapter ii fixed his attention on the lost coin, he set this object before his attention with a further end in view--how to regain it. because the person here _determines_ to attend to, or think about, a certain problem, in order that he may reach a certain consciously set end, this form of attention is described as voluntary, or active, attention. =near and remote ends.=--it is to be noted, however, that the interesting end toward which the mind strives in voluntary attention may be relatively near or remote. a child examining an automatic toy does it for the sake of discovering what is in the toy itself; an adult in order to see whether it is likely to interest his child. a student gives attention to the problem of the length of the hypotenuse because he is interested in the mathematical problem itself, the contractor because he desires to know how much material will be necessary for the roof of the building. one child may apply himself to mastering a reading lesson because the subject itself is interesting to him, another because he desires to take home a perfect report at the end of the week, and a third because a sense of obligation tells him that teacher and parents will expect him to study it. =how we attend to a problem.=--since voluntary attention implies mental movement directed to the attainment of some end, the mind does not simply keep itself focused on the particular problem. for instance, in attempting to solve the problem that the exterior angle of a triangle equals the sum of the two interior and opposite angles, no progress toward the attainment of the end in view could be made by merely holding before the mind the idea of their equality. it is, in fact, impossible for the attention to be held for any length of time on a single topic. this will be readily seen if one tries to hold his attention continuously upon, say, the tip of a pencil. when this is attempted, other ideas constantly crowd out the selected idea. the only sense, therefore, in which one holds his attention upon the problem in an act of voluntary attention is, that his attention passes forward and back between the problem and ideas felt to be associated with it. voluntary attention is, therefore, a mental process in which the mind shifts from one idea to another in attaining to a desired end, or problem. in this shifting, or movement, of voluntary attention, however, two significant features manifest themselves. first, in working forward and back from the problem as a controlling centre, attention brings into consciousness ideas more or less relevant to the problem. secondly, it selects and adjusts to the problem those that actually make for its solution, and banishes from consciousness whatever is felt to be foreign to obtaining the desired end. =example of controlled attention.=--to exemplify a process of voluntary attention we may notice the action of the mind in solving such a problem as: two trains started at the same moment from toronto and hamilton respectively, one going at the rate of thirty miles an hour and the other at the rate of forty miles an hour. supposing the distance between toronto and hamilton to be forty miles, in how many minutes will the trains meet? here the pupil must first fix his attention upon the problem--the number of minutes before the trains will meet. this at once forms both a centre and a standard for measuring other related ideas. in this way his attention passes to the respective rates of the two trains, thirty and forty miles per hour. then perhaps he fixes attention on the thought that one goes a mile in two minutes and the other a mile in - / minutes. but as he recognizes that this is leading him away from the problem, resistance is offered to the flow of attention in this direction, and he passes to the thought that in a _minute_ the former goes / mile and the later / of a mile. from this he passes to the thought that in one minute they together go - / miles. hereupon perhaps the idea comes to his mind to see how many miles they would go in an hour. this, however, is soon felt to be foreign to the problem, and resistance being set up in this direction, the attention turns to consider in what time the two together cover miles. now by dividing miles by - / , he obtains the number - / and is satisfied that his answer is - / minutes. the process by which the attention here selected and adjusted the proper ideas to the problem might be illustrated by the following figure: [illustration] here "p" represents the problem; a, b, c, d, and e, ideas accepted as relevant to the problem; and b', d' ideas suggested by b and d, but rejected as not adjustable to the problem. =factors in process.=--the above facts demonstrate, however, that the mind can take this attitude toward any problem only if it has a certain store of old knowledge relative to it. two important conditions of voluntary attention are therefore, first, that the mind should have the necessary ideas, or knowledge, with which to attend and, secondly, that it would select and adjust these to the purpose in view. here the intimate connection of voluntary attention to the normal learning process is apparent. the step of preparation, for instance, is merely putting the mind in the proper attitude to attend voluntarily to an end in view, namely the lesson problem; while the so-called analytic-synthetic process of learning involves the selecting and adjusting movements of voluntary attention. =spontaneous and voluntary attention distinguished.=--in describing voluntary attention as an active form of attention, psychologists assume that since the mind here wills, or resolves, to attend, in order to gain a certain end in view; therefore voluntary attention must imply a much greater degree of effort, or strain, than other types. that such is always the case, however, is at times not very apparent. if one may judge by the straining of eye or ear, the poise of the body, the holding of the breath, etc., when a person gives involuntary attention to any sudden impression, as a strange noise at night, it is evident that the difference of effort, or strain, in attending to this and some selected problem may not, during the time it continues, be very marked. it is of course true that in voluntary attention the mind must choose its own object of attention as an end, or aim, while in the involuntary type the problem seems thrust upon us. this certainly does imply a deliberate choice in the former, and to that extent may be said to involve an effort not found in the latter. in like manner, when seeking to attain the end which has been set up, the mind must select the related ideas which will solve its problem. this in turn may demand the grasping of a number of complex relations. to say, however, that all striving to attain an end is lacking in a case of involuntary attention would evidently be fallacious. when the mind is startled by a strange noise, the mind evidently does go out, though in a less formal way, to interpret a problem involuntarily thrust upon it. when, for instance, we receive the violent impression, the mind may be said to ask itself, "what strange impression is this?" and to that extent, even here, faces a selected problem. the distinguishing feature of voluntary attention, therefore, is the presence of a consciously conceived end, or aim, upon which the mind deliberately sets its attention as something to be thought _about_. attention in education =voluntary attention and learning.=--from what has been seen, it is evident that, when a pupil in his school approaches any particular problem, the learning process will represent a process of voluntary attention. this form of attention is, therefore, one of special significance to the teacher, since a knowledge of the process will cast additional light upon the learning process. the first condition of voluntary attention is the power to select some idea as an end, or problem, for attention. it was seen, however, that the focusing of attention upon any problem depends upon some form of desirable change to be effected in and through the set problem. for instance, unless the recovery of the coin is conceived as producing a desirable change, it would not become a deliberately set problem for attention. it is essential, therefore, that the end which the child is to choose as an object of attention should be one conceived as demanding a desired change, or adjustment. for instance, to ask a child to focus his attention upon two pieces of wood merely as pieces of wood is not likely to call forth an active effort of attention. to direct his attention to them to find out how many times the one is contained in the other, on the other hand, focuses his attention more strongly upon them; since the end to be reached will awaken his curiosity and set an interesting problem. =non-voluntary attention in education.=--on account of the ease with which attention seems to centre itself upon its object in non-voluntary attention, it is sometimes erroneously claimed that this is the type of attention to be aimed at in the educative process, especially with young children. such a view is, however, a fallacious one, and results from a false notion of the real character of both non-voluntary and voluntary attention. in a clear example of non-voluntary attention, the mind dwells upon the ideas merely on account of their inherent attractiveness, and passes from one idea to its associated idea without any purposeful end in view. this at once shows its ineffectiveness as a process of learning. when the young lover's thoughts revert in a non-voluntary way to the fair one, he perhaps passes into a state of mere reminiscence, or at best of idle fancy. even the student whose thoughts run on in a purposeless manner over his favourite subject, will merely revive old associations, or at best make a chance discovery of some new knowledge. in the same way, the child who delights in musical sounds may be satisfied to drum the piano by the hour, but this is likely to give little real advance, unless definite problems are set up and their attainment striven for in a purposeful way. =voluntary attention and interest.=--a corollary of the fallacy mentioned above is the assumption that voluntary attention necessarily implies some conflict with the mind's present desire or interest. it is sometimes said, for instance, that in voluntary attention, we compel our mind to attend, while our interest would naturally direct our attention elsewhere. but without a desire to effect some change in or through the problem being attended to, the mind would not voluntarily make it an object of attention. the misconception as to the relation of voluntary attention to interest is seen in an illustration often given as an example of non-voluntary attention. it is said, rightly enough, that if a child is reading an interesting story, and is just at the point where the plot is about to unravel itself, there will be difficulty in diverting his attention to other matters. this, it is claimed, furnishes a good example of the power of non-voluntary attention. but quite the opposite may be the case. when called upon, say by his parent, to lay aside the book and attend to some other problem, the child, it is true, shows a desire to continue reading. but this may be because he has a definite aim of his own in view--to find out the fate of his hero. this is a strongly felt need on his part, and his mind refuses to be satisfied until, by further attention to the problem before him, he has attained to this end. the only element of truth in the illustration is that the child's attention is strongly reinforced through the intense feeling tone associated with the selected, or determined, aim--the fate of his hero. the fact is, therefore, that a process of voluntary attention may have associated with its problem as strong an interest as is found in the non-voluntary type. =voluntary attention depends on problem.=--it is evident from the foregoing that the characteristic of voluntary attention is not the absence or the presence of any special degree of interest, but rather the conception of some end, or purpose, to be reached in and through the attentive process. in other words, voluntary attention is a state of mind in which the mental movements are not drifting without a chart, but are seeking to reach a set haven. a person who is greatly interested in automobiles, for instance, on seeing a new machine, may allow his attention to run now to this part of the machine, now to that, as each attracts him in turn. here no fixed purpose is being served by the attentive process, and attention may pass from part to part in a non-voluntary way, the person's general interest in automobiles being sufficient to keep the attention upon the subject. suddenly, however, he may notice something apparently new in the mechanism of the machine, and a desire arises to understand its significance. this at once becomes an end to which the mind desires to attain, and voluntary attention proceeds to direct the mental movements toward its attainment. to suppose, however, that the interest, manifest in the former mental movements, is now absent, would evidently be fallacious. the difference lies in this, that at first the attention seemed fixed on the object through a general interest only, and drifted from point to point in a purposeless way, while in the second case an interesting end, or purpose, controlled the mental movements, and therefore made each movement significant in relation to the whole conscious process. =attention and knowledge.=--mention has already been made of the relation of attention to interest. it should be noted, further, that the difference in our attention under different circumstances is largely dependent upon our knowledge. the stonecutter, as he passes the fine mansion, gives attention to the fretted cornice; the glazier, to the beautiful windows; the gardener, to the well-kept lawn and beds. even the present content of the mind has its influence upon attention. the student on his way to school, if busy with his spelling lesson, is attracted to the words and letters on posters and signs. if he is reviewing his botany, he notes especially the weeds along the walk; if carrying to his art teacher, with a feeling of pride, the finished landscape drawing, his attention goes out to the shade and colour of field and sky. that such a connection must exist between knowledge and attention is apparent from what has been already noted concerning the working of the law of apperception. =physical conditions of attention.=--from what was learned above regarding the relation of nervous energy to active attention, it is evident that the ability to attend to a problem at any given time will depend in part upon the physical condition of the organism. if, therefore, the nervous energy is lowered through fatigue or sickness, the attention will be weakened. for this reason the teaching of subjects, such as arithmetic, grammar, etc., which present difficult problems, and therefore make large demands upon the attention of the scholars, should not be undertaken when the pupils' energy is likely to be at a minimum. similarly, unsatisfactory conditions in the school-room, such as poor ventilation, uncomfortable seats, excessive heat or cold, all tend to lower the nervous energy and thus prevent a proper concentration of attention upon the regular school work. =precautions relating to voluntary attention.=--although voluntary attention is evidently the form of attention possessing real educational value, certain precautions would seem necessary concerning its use. with very young children the aim for attending should evidently not be too remote. in other words, the problem should involve matter in which the children have a direct interest. for this reason it is sometimes said that young children should set their own problems. this is of course a paradox so far as the regular school work is concerned, though it does apply to the pre-school period, and also justifies the claim that with young children the lesson problem should be closely connected with some vital interest. it would be useless, for instance, to try to interest young children in the british north america act by telling them that the knowledge will be useful when they come to write on their entrance examinations. the story of sir isaac brock, on the other hand, wins attention for itself through the child's patriotism and love of story. again, the problem demanding attention should not, in the case of young children, be too long or complex. for example, a young child might easily attend to the separate problems of finding out, ( ) how many marbles he must have to give four to james and three to william; ( ) how many times seven can be taken from twenty-eight; ( ) how many marbles james would have if he received four marbles four times; and ( ) how many james would have if he received three marbles three times. but if given the problem "to divide twenty-eight marbles between james and william, giving james four every time he gives william three," the problem may be too complex for his present power of attention. a young child has not the control over his knowledge necessary to continue any long process of selecting attention. a relatively short period of attention to any problem, therefore, exhausts the nervous energy in the centres connected with a particular set of experiences. it is for this reason that the lessons in primary classes should be short and varied. one of the objections, therefore, to a narrow curriculum is that attention would not obtain needed variety, and that a narrowness in interest and application may result. on the other hand, it is well to note that the child must in time learn to concentrate his attention for longer periods and upon topics possessing only remote, or indirect, interest. chapter xxiv the feeling of interest =nature of feeling.=--feeling has already been described (chapter xix) as the pleasurable or painful side of any state of consciousness. we may recall how it was there found that any conscious state, or experience, for instance, being conscious of the prick of a pin, of success at an examination, or of the loss of a friend, is not merely a state of knowledge, or awareness, but is also a state of feeling. it is a state of feeling because it _affects_ us, that is, because being a state of _our_ consciousness, it appeals to us pleasurably or painfully in a way that it can to no one else. =neural conditions of feeling.=--it has been seen that every conscious state, or experience, has its affective, or feeling, tone, and also that every experience involves the transmission of nervous energy through a number of connected brain cells. on this basis it is thought that the feeling side of any conscious state is conditioned by the degree of the resistance encountered as the nervous energy is transmitted. if the centres involved in the experience are not yet properly organized, or if the stimulation is strong, the resistance is greater and the feeling more intense. a new movement of the limbs in physical training, for example, may at first prove intensely painful, because the centres involved in the exercise are not yet organized. so also, because a very bright light stimulates the nerves violently, it causes a painful feeling. that morphine deadens pain is to be explained on the assumption that it decreases nervous energy, and thus lessens the resistance being encountered between the nervous centres affected at the time. =feeling and habit.=--that the intensity of a feeling is conditioned by the amount of the resistance seems evident, if we note the relation of feeling to habit. the first time the nurse-in-training attends a wounded patient, the experience is marked by intense feeling. after a number of such experiences, however, this feeling becomes much less. in like manner, the child who at first finds the physical exercise painful, as he becomes accustomed to the movements, finds the pain becoming less and less intense. in such cases it is evident that practice, by organizing the centres involved in the experience, decreases the resistance between them, and thus gradually decreases the intensity of the feeling. when finally the act becomes habitual, the nervous impulse traverses only lower centres, and therefore all feeling and indeed all consciousness will disappear, as happens in the habitual movements of the limbs in walking and of the arms during walking. classes of feelings =sensuous feeling.=--as already noted, while feelings vary in intensity according to the strength of the resistance, they also differ in kind according to the arcs traversed by the impulse. experiencing a burn on the hand would involve nervous impulses, or currents, other than those involved in hearing of the death of a friend. the one experience also differs in feeling from the other. our feeling states are thus able to be divided into certain important classes with more or less distinct characteristics for each. in one class are placed those feelings which accompany sensory impulses. the sensations arising from the stimulations of the sense organs, as a sweet or bitter taste, a strong smell, the touch of a hot, sharp, rough, or smooth object, etc., all present an affective, or feeling, side. so also feeling enters into the general or organic sensations arising from the conditions of the bodily organs; as breathing, the circulation of the blood, digestion, the tension of the muscles, hunger, thirst, etc. the feeling which thus enters as a factor into any sensation is known as sensuous feeling. =ideal feeling.=--other feelings enter into our ideas and thoughts. the perception or imagination of an accident is accompanied with a painful feeling, the memory or anticipation of success with a feeling of joy, the thought of some particular person with a thrill of love. such feelings are known as ideal feelings. when a child tears his flesh on a nail, he experiences sensuous feeling, when he shrinks away, as he perceives the teeth of a snarling dog, he experiences an ideal feeling, known as the emotion of fear. =interest.=--a third type of feeling especially accompanies an active process of attention. in our study of attention, it was seen that any process of attention is accompanied by a concentration of nervous energy upon the paths or centres involved in the experience, thus organizing the paths more completely and thereby decreasing the resistance. the impulse to attend to any experience is, therefore, accompanied with a desirable feeling, because a new adjustment between nerve centres is taking place and resistance being overcome. this affective, or feeling, tone which accompanies a process of attention is known as the feeling of interest. =interest and attention.=--in discussions upon educational method, it is usually affirmed that the attention will focus upon a problem to the extent to which the mind is interested. while this statement may be accepted in ordinary language, it is not psychologically true that i first become interested in a strange presentation, and then attend to it afterwards. in such a case it is no more true to say that i attend because i am interested, than to say that i am interested because i attend. in other words, interest and attention are not successive but simultaneous, or, as sometimes stated, they are back and front of the same mental state. this becomes evident by noting the nervous conditions which must accompany interest and attention. when one is attending to any strange phenomenon, say a botanist to the structure of a rare plant, it is evident that there are not only new groupings of ideas in the mind, but also new adjustments being set up between the brain centres. this implies in turn a lessening of resistance between the cells, and therefore the presence of the feeling tone known as interest. =interest, attention, and habit.=--since the impulse to attend to a presentation is conditioned by a process of adjustment, or organization, between brain centres, it is evident that, while the novel presentations call forth interest and attention, repetition, by habituating the nervous arcs, will tend to deaden interest and attention. for this reason the story, first heard with interest and attention, becomes stale by too much repetition. the new toy fails to interest the child after the novelty has worn off. it must be noted, however, that while repetition usually lessens interest, yet when any set of experiences are repeated many times, instead of lessening interest the repetition may develop a new interest known as the interest of custom. thus it is that by repeating the experience the man is finally compelled to visit his club every evening, and the boy to play his favourite game every day. this secondary interest of custom arises because repetition has finally established such strong associations within the nervous system that they now have become a part of our nature and are thus able to make a new demand upon interest and attention. interest in education =uses of term: a. subjective; b. objective.=--that the educator describes interest as something that causes the mind to give attention to what is before it, when in fact interest and attention are psychologically merely two sides of a single process, is accounted for by the fact that the term "interest" may be used with two quite different meanings. psychologically, interest is evidently a feeling state, that is, it represents a phase of consciousness. my _interest_ in football, for instance, represents the _feeling_ of worth which accompanies attention to such experiences. in this sense interest and attention are but two sides of the single experience, interest representing the feeling, and attention the effort side of the experience. as thus applied, the term interest is said to be used subjectively. more, often, however, the term is applied rather to the thing toward which the mind directs its attention, the object being said to possess interest for the person. in this sense the rattle is said to have interest for the babe; baseball, for the young boy; and the latest fashions, for the young lady. since the interest is here assumed to reside in the object, it seems reasonable to say that our attention is attracted through interest, that is, through an interesting presentation. as thus applied, the term interest is said to be used objectively. =types of objective interest.=--the interest which various objects and occupations thus possess for the mind may be of two somewhat different types. in some cases the object possesses a direct, or intrinsic, interest for the mind. the young child, for instance, is spontaneously attracted to bright colours, the boy to stories of adventure, and the sentimental youth or maiden to the romance. in the case of any such direct interests, however, the feeling with which the mind contemplates the object may transfer itself at least partly to other objects associated more or less closely with the direct object of interest. it is thus that the child becomes interested in the cup from which his food is taken, and the lover in the lap dog which his fair one fondles. as opposed to the _direct interest_ which an object may have for the mind, this transferred type is known as _indirect interest_. =importance of transference of interest.=--the ability of the mind thus to transfer its interests to associated objects is often of great pedagogical value. abstract forms of knowledge become more interesting to young children through being associated with something possessing natural interest. a pupil who seems to take little interest in arithmetic may take great delight in manual training. by associating various mathematical problems with his constructive exercises, the teacher can frequently cause the pupil to transfer in some degree his primary interest in manual training to the associated work in arithmetic. in the same way the child in the primary grade may take more delight in the alphabet when he is able to make the letters in sand or by stick-laying. it may be said, in fact, that much of man's effort is a result of indirect interest. what is called doing a thing from a sense of duty is often a case of applying ourselves to a certain thing because we are interested in avoiding the disapproval of others. the child also often applies himself to his tasks, not so much because he takes a direct interest in them, but because he wishes to gain the approval and avoid the censure of teacher and parents. =native and acquired interest.=--interest may also be distinguished on the basis of its origin. as noted above, certain impressions seem to demand a spontaneous interest from the individual. for this cause the child finds his attention going out immediately to bright colours, to objects which give pleasure, such as candy, etc., or to that which causes personal pain. on the other hand, objects and occupations which at first seem devoid of interest may, after a certain amount of experience has been gained, become important centres of interest. a young child may at first show no interest in insects unless it be a feeling of revulsion. through the visit of an entomologist to his home, however, he may gain some knowledge of insects. this knowledge, by arousing an apperceptive tendency in the direction of insect study, gradually develops in him a new interest which lasts throughout his whole life. it is in this way that the various school subjects widen the narrow interests of the child. by giving him an insight into various phases of his social environment, the school curriculum awakens in him different centres of interest, and thus causes him to become in the truest sense a part of the social life about him. this fact is one of the strongest arguments, also, against a narrow public school course of study in a society which is itself a complex of diversified interests. =interest versus interests.=--on account of the evident connection of interest and attention, the teacher may easily err in dealing with the young pupil. it is allowable, as pointed out above, that the teacher should take advantage of any native interest to secure the attention and effort of the child in his school work. this does not mean, however, that children are to be given only problems in which they are naturally interested. it must be remembered, as seen in a former paragraph, that, according to the interest of custom, any line of school work, when intelligently followed, may soon build up a centre of interest for itself. for this reason a proper study of arithmetic should develop an interest in arithmetic; a study of history, an interest in history; and a study of geography, an interest in geography. the saying that school work should follow a child's interest might, therefore, be better expressed by saying that the child's interests should follow the school work. it is only, in fact, as any one becomes directly interested in his pursuits, that the highest achievement can be reached. it is not the workman who is always looking forward to pay-day, who develops into an artist, or the teacher who is waiting for the summer holiday, who is a real inspiration to her pupils. in like manner, it is only as the child forms centres of interest in connection with his school work, that his life and character are likely to be affected permanently thereby. =development of interests.=--the problem for the educator is, therefore, not so much to follow the interest of the child, as it is to develop in him permanent centres of interest. for this reason the following facts concerning the origin and development of interests should be understood by the practical educator. first among these is the fact that certain instinctive tendencies of early childhood may be made a starting-point for the development of permanent valuable interest. the young child has a tendency to collect or an instinct of ownership, which may be taken advantage of in directing him to make collections of insects, plants, coins, stamps, and thus prove of permanent educative value. his constructive tendencies, or desire to do with what comes into his hand, as well as his imitative instincts, may be turned to account in building up an interest in various occupations. his social instinct, also, provides a means for developing permanent emotional interests as sympathy, etc. in like manner, the character of the child's surroundings tends to create in him various centres of interest. the young child, for instance, who is surrounded with beautiful objects, is almost sure to develop an interest in works of art, while the child who is early provided with fable and story will develop an interest in history. =when to develop interests.=--it is to be noted further concerning many of these forms of interest, that youth is the special period for their development. the child who does not, during his early years, have an opportunity to develop his social tendencies, is not likely later in life to acquire an interest in his fellow-men. in the same manner, if youth is spent in surroundings void of æsthetic elements, manhood will be lacking in artistic interests. it is in youth also that our intellectual interests, such as love of reading, of the study of nature, of mathematics, must be laid. =interests must be limited.=--while emphasizing the importance of establishing a wide range of interests when educating a child, the teacher must remember that there is danger in a child acquiring too wide a range. this can result only in a dissipation of effort over many fields. while this prevents narrowness of vision and gives versatility of disposition, it may prevent the attainment of efficiency in any department, and make of the youth the proverbial "jack-of-all-trades." a study of the feeling of interest has been made at this stage on account of its close connection with the problem of attention, and in fact with the whole learning process. an examination of the other classes of feeling will be made at a later stage in the course. chapter xxv sense perception =sensation and perception distinguished.=--sensation and perception are two terms applied usually without much distinction of meaning to our recognition of the world of objects. when, for instance, a man draws near to a stove, he may say that it gives him a _sensation_ of heat, or perhaps that he _perceives_ it to be hot. in psychology, however, the term sensation has been used in two somewhat different meanings. by some the term is used to signify a state of consciousness conditioned merely upon the stimulation of a sense organ, as the eye, ear, etc., by its appropriate stimulus. to others, however, sensation signifies rather a mental image experienced by the mind as it reacts upon and interprets any sensory impression. perception, on the other hand, signifies the recognition of an external object as presented to the mind here and now. =sensation implies externality.=--when, however, a sensory image, such as smooth, yellow, cold, etc., arises in consciousness as a result of the mind reacting when an external stimulus is applied to some sense organ, it is evident that, at least after very early infancy, one never has the image without at once referring it to some external cause. if, for instance, a person is but half awake and receives a sound sensation, he does not ask himself, "what mental state is _this_?" but rather, "what is _that_?" this shows an evident tendency to refer our sensations at once to an external cause, or indicates that our sensations always carry with them an implicit reference to an external object. leaving, therefore, to the scientific psychologist to consider whether it is possible to have a pure sensation, we shall treat sensation as the recognition of a quality which is at least vaguely referred to an external object. in other words, sensation is a medium by which we are brought into relation with real things existing independently of our sensations. =perception involves sensation element.=--moreover, an object is perceived as present here and now only because it is revealed to us through one or more of the senses. when, for instance, i reach out my hand in the dark room and receive a sensation of touch, i perceive the table as present before me. when i receive a sensation of sound as i pass by the church, i perceive that the organ is being played. when i receive a colour sensation from the store window, i say that i perceive oranges. perception, therefore, involves the referring of the sensuous state, or image, to an external thing, while in adult life sensation is never accepted by our attention as satisfactory unless it is referred to something we regard as immediately presenting itself to us by means of the sensation. it is on account of this evident interrelation of the two that we speak of a process of sense perception. =perception an acquired power.=--on the other hand, however, investigation will show that this power to recognize explicitly the existence of an external object through the presentation of a sensation, was not at first possessed by the mind. the ability thus to perceive objects represents, therefore, an acquirement on the part of the individual. if a person, although receiving merely sensations of colour and light, is able to say, "yonder is an orange," he is evidently interpreting, or giving meaning to, the present sensations largely through past experience; for the images of colour and light are accepted by the mind as an indication of the presence of an external thing from which could be derived other images of taste, smell, etc., all of which go to make up the idea "orange." an ordinary act of perception, therefore, must involve not merely sensation, but also an interpretation of sensation through past experience. it is, in fact, because the recognition of an external object involves this conscious interpretation of the sensuous impressions, that people often suffer delusion. when the traveller passing by a lone graveyard interprets the tall and slender shrub laden with white blossoms as a swaying ghost, the misconception does not arise from any fault of mere vision, but from the type of former knowledge which the other surroundings of the moment call up, these evidently giving the mind a certain bias in its interpretation of the sensuous, or colour, impressions. =perception in adult life.=--in our study of general method, sense perception was referred to as the most common mode of acquiring particular knowledge. a description of the development of this power to perceive objects through the senses should, therefore, prove of pedagogical value. but to understand how an individual acquires the ability to perceive objects, it is well to notice first what takes place in an ordinary adult act of perception, as for instance, when a man receives and interprets a colour stimulus and says that he perceives an orange. if we analyse the person's idea of an orange we find that it is made up of a number of different quality images--colour, taste, smell, touch, etc., organized into a single experience, or idea, and accepted as a mental representation of an object existing in space. when, therefore, the person referred to above says that he perceives an orange, what really happens is that he accepts the immediate colour and light sensation as a sign of the whole group of qualities which make up his notion of the external object, orange, the other qualities essential to the notion coming back from past experience to unite with the presented qualities. owing to this fact, any ordinary act of perception is said to contain both presentative and representative elements. in the above example, for instance, the colour would be spoken of as a presentative element, because it is immediately presented to the mind in sensuous terms, or through the senses. anything beyond this which goes to make up the individual's notion orange, and is revived from past experience, is spoken of as representative. for the same reason, the sensuous elements involved in an ordinary act of perception are often spoken of as immediate, and the others as mediate elements of knowledge. =genesis of perception.=--to trace the development of this ability to mingle both presentative and representative elements of knowledge into a mental representation, or idea, of an external object, it is necessary to recall what has been noted regarding the relation of the nervous system to our conscious acts. when the young child first comes in contact with the world of strange objects with which he is surrounded, the impressions he receives therefrom will not at first have either the definite quality or the relation to an external thing which they later secure. as a being, however, whose first tendencies are those of movement, he grasps, bites, strokes, smells, etc., and thus goes out to meet whatever his surroundings thrust upon him. gradually he finds himself expand to take in the existence of a something external to himself, and is finally able, as the necessary paths are laid down in his nervous system, to differentiate various quality images one from the other; as, touch, weight, temperature, light, sound, etc. this will at once involve, however, a corresponding relating, or synthetic, attitude of mind, in which different quality images, when experienced together as qualities of some vaguely felt thing, will be organized into a more or less definite knowledge, or idea, of that object, as illustrated in the figure below. as the child in time gains the ability to _attend_ to the sensuous presentations which come to him, and to discriminate one sensation from another, he discovers in the vaguely known thing the images of touch, colour, taste, smell, etc., and finally associates them into the idea of a better known object, orange. [illustration: a. unknown thing. b. sensory stimuli. c. sensory images. d. idea of object.] =control of sensory image as sign.=--since the various sense impressions are carried to the higher centres of the brain, they will not only be interpreted as sensory images and organized into a knowledge of external objects, but, owing to the retentive power of the nervous tissue, will also be subject to recall. as the child thus gains more and more the ability to organize and relate various sensory images into mental representations, or ideas, of external objects, he soon acquires such control over these organized groups, that when any particular sensation image out of a group is presented to the mind, it will be sufficient to call up the other qualities, or will be accepted as a sign of the presence of the object. when this stage of perceptual power is reached, an odour coming from the oven enables a person to perceive that a certain kind of meat is within, or a noise proceeding from the tower is sufficient to make known the presence of a bell. to possess the ability thus to refer one's sensations to an external object is to be able to perceive objects. =fulness of perception based on sensation.=--from the foregoing account of the development of our perception of the external world, it becomes evident that our immediate knowledge, or idea, of an individual object will consist only of the images our senses have been able to discover either in that or other similar objects. to the person born without the sense of sight, for instance, the flower-bed can never be known as an object of tints and colours. to the person born deaf, the violin cannot really be known as a _musical_ instrument. moreover, only the person whose senses distinguish adequately variations in colour, sound, form, etc., is able to perceive fully the objects which present themselves to his senses. even when the physical senses seem equally perfect, one man, through greater power of discrimination, perceives in the world of objects much that totally escapes the observation of another. the result is that few of us enter as fully as we might into the rich world of sights, sounds, etc., with which we are surrounded, because we fail to gain the abundant images that we might through certain of our senses. factors involved in sensation passing to a consideration of the senses as organs through which the mind is made aware of the concrete world, it is to be noted that a number of factors precede the image, or mental interpretation, of the impression. when, for instance, the mind becomes cognizant of a musical note, an analysis of the whole process reveals the following factors: . the concrete object, as the vibrating string of a violin. . sound waves proceeding from the vibrating object to the sense organ. . the organ of sense--the ear. [illustration] . the nerves--cells and fibres involved in receiving and conveying the sense stimulus. . the interpreting cells. . the reacting mind, which interprets the impression as an image of sound. the different factors are somewhat arbitrarily illustrated in the accompanying diagram, the arrows indicating the physical stimulation and the conscious response: of the six factors involved in the sensation, and are purely physical and belong to the science of acoustics; , , and are physiological; is conscious, or psychological. it is because they always involve the immediate presence of some physical object, that the sensation elements involved in ordinary perception are spoken of as immediate, or presentative, elements of knowledge. classification of sensations our various sensations are usually divided into three classes as follows: . sensations of the special senses, including: sight, sound, touch (including temperature), taste, and smell. . motor, or muscular, sensations. . organic sensations. =sensations of the special senses.=--as a study of the five special senses has been made by the student-teacher under the heading of physiology, no attempt will be made to explain the structure of these organs. it must be noted, however, that not all senses are equally capable of distinguishing differences in quality. for example, it seems quite beyond our power to recall the tastes and odours of the various dishes of which we may have partaken at a banquet, while on the other hand we may recall distinctly the visual appearance of the room and the table. it is worthy of note, also, that in the case of smell, animals are usually much more discriminative than man. certain of our senses are, therefore, much more intellectual than others. by this is meant that for purposes of distinguishing the objects themselves, and for providing the mind with available images as materials for further thought, our senses are by no means equally effective. under this heading the special senses are classified as follows: higher intellectual senses: sight, hearing, touch. lower intellectual senses: taste and smell. =muscular sensations.=--under motor, or muscular, sensations are included the feelings which accompany consciousness of muscular exertion, or movement. in distinction from the other sense organs, the muscles are stimulated by having nervous energy pass outward over the motor nerves to the muscles. as the muscles are thus stimulated to movement, sensory nerves in turn convey inward from the muscles sensory impressions resulting from these movements. the important sensations connected with muscular action are those of strain, force, and resistance, as in lifting or pushing. by means of these motor sensations, joined with the sense of touch, the individual is able to distinguish especially weight, position, and change of position. in connection with the muscular sense, may be recalled that portion of the montessori apparatus known as the weight tablets. these wooden tablets, it will be noted, are designed to educate the muscular sense to distinguish slight differences in weight. the muscular sense is chiefly important, however, in that delicate distinctions of pressure, movement, and resistance must be made in many forms of manual expression. the interrelation between sensory impression and motor impulse within the nervous system, as illustrated in the figures on page , is already understood by the reader. for an adequate conscious control of movements, especially when one is engaged in delicate handwork, as painting, modelling, wood-work, etc., there must be an ability to perceive slight differences in strain, pressure, and movement. moreover, the most effective means for developing the muscular sense is through the expressive exercises referred to above. =organic sensations.=--the organic sensations are those states of consciousness that arise in connection with the processes going on within the organism, as circulation of the blood, digestion; breathing, or respiration; hunger; thirst; etc. the significance of these sensations lies in the fact that they reveal to consciousness any disturbances in connection with the vital processes, and thus enable the individual to provide for the preservation of the organism. education of the senses =importance.=--when it is considered that our general knowledge must be based on a knowledge of individuals, it becomes apparent that children should, through sense observation, learn as fully as possible the various qualities of the concrete world. only on this basis can they build their more general and abstract forms of knowledge. for this reason the child in his study of objects should, so far as safety permits, bring all of his senses to bear upon them and distinguish as clearly as possible all their properties. by this means only can he really know the attributes of the objects constituting his environment. moreover, without such a full knowledge of the various properties and qualities of concrete objects, he is not in a position to turn them fully to his own service. it is by distinguishing the feeling of the flour, that the cook discovers whether it is suited for bread-making or pastry. it is by noting the texture of the wood, that the artisan can decide its suitability for the work in hand. in fine, it was only by noting the properties of various natural objects that man discovered their social uses. =how to be effected.=--one of the chief defects of primary education in the past has been a tendency to overlook the importance of giving the child an opportunity to exercise his senses in discovering the properties of the objects constituting his environment. the introduction of the kindergarten, objective methods of teaching, nature study, school gardening, and constructive occupations have done much, however, to remedy this defect. one of the chief claims in favour of the so-called montessori method is that it provides especially for an education of the senses. in doing this, however, it makes use of arbitrarily prepared materials instead of the ordinary objects constituting the child's natural environment. the one advantage in this is that it enables the teacher to grade the stimulations and thus exercise the child in making series of discriminations, for instance, a series of colours, sounds, weights, sizes, etc. notwithstanding this advantage, however, it seems more pedagogical that the child should receive this needful exercise of the senses by being brought into contact with the actual objects constituting his environment, as is done in nature study, constructive exercises, art, etc. =dangers of neglecting the senses.=--the former neglect of an adequate exercise of the senses during the early education of the child was evidently unpedagogical for various reasons. as already noted, other forms of acquiring knowledge, such as constructive imagination, induction, and deduction, must rest primarily upon the acquisitions of sense perception. moreover, it is during the early years of life that the plasticity and retentive power of the nervous system will enable the various sense impressions to be recorded for the future use of the mind. further, the senses themselves during these early years show what may be termed a hunger for contact with the world of concrete objects, and a corresponding distaste for more abstract types of experience. =learning through all the senses.=--in recognizing that the process of sense perception constitutes a learning process, or is one of the modes by which man enters into new experience, the teacher should further understand that the same object may be interpreted through different senses. for example, when a child studies a new bird, he may note its form and colour through the eye, he may recognize the feeling and the outline through muscular and touch sensations, he may discover its song through the ear, and may give muscular expression to its form in painting or modelling. in the same way, in learning a figure or letter, he may see its form through the eye, hear its sound through the ear, make the sound and trace the form by calling various muscles into play, and thus secure a number of muscular sensations relative to the figure or letter. since all these various experiences will be co-ordinated and retained within the nervous system, the child will not only know the object better, but will also be able to recall more easily any items of knowledge concerning it, on account of the larger number of connections established within the nervous system. one chief fact to be kept in mind by the teacher, therefore, in using the method of sense perception, is to have the pupil study the object through as many different senses as possible, and especially through those senses in which his power of discrimination and recall seems greatest. =use of different images in teaching.=--the importance to the teacher of an intimate knowledge of different types of imagery and of a further acquaintance with the more prevailing images of particular pupils, is evident in various ways. in the first place, different school subjects may appeal more especially to different types of imagery. thus a study of plants especially involves visual, or sight, images; a study of birds, visual and auditory images; oral reading and music, auditory images; physical training, motor images; constructive work, visual, tactile, and motor images; a knowledge of weights and measures, tactile and motor images. on account of a native difference in forming images, also, one pupil may best learn through the eye, another through the ear, a third through the muscles, etc. in learning the spelling of words, for example, one pupil may require especially to visualize the word, another to hear the letters repeated in their order, and a third to articulate the letters by the movement of the organs of speech, or to trace them in writing. in choosing illustrations, also, the teacher will find that one pupil best appreciates a visual illustration, a second an auditory illustration, etc. some young pupils, for instance, might best appreciate a pathetic situation through an appeal to such sensory images as hunger and thirst. =an illustration.=--the wide difference in people's ability to interpret sensuous impressions is well exemplified in the case of sound stimuli. every one whose ear is physically perfect seems able to interpret a sound so far as its mere quality and quantity are concerned. in the case of musical notes, however, the very greatest difference is found in the ability of different individuals to distinguish pitch. so also the distinguishing of distance and direction in relation to sound is an acquired ability, in which different people will greatly differ. finally, to interpret the external relations involved in the sound, that is, whether the cry is that of an insect or a bird, or, if it is the former, from what kind of bird the sound is proceeding, this evidently is a phase of sense interpretation in which individuals differ very greatly. yet an adequate development of the sense of hearing might be supposed to give the individual an ability to interpret his surroundings in all these ways. =power of sense perception limited: a. by interest.=--it should be noted, however, that so far as our actual life needs are concerned, there is no large demand for an all-round ability to interpret sensuous impressions. for practical purposes, men are interested in different objects in quite different ways. one is interested in the colour of a certain wood, another in its smoothness, a third in its ability to withstand strain, while a fourth may even be interested in more hidden relations, not visible to the ordinary sense. this will justify one in ignoring entirely qualities in the object which are of the utmost importance to others. from such a practical standpoint, it is evidently a decided gain that a person is not compelled to see everything in an object which its sensuous attributes might permit one to discover in it. in the case of the man with the so-called untrained sense, therefore, it is questionable whether the failure to see, hear, etc., is in many cases so much a lack of ability to use the particular sense, as it is a lack of practical interest in this phase of the objective world. in such processes as induction and deduction, also, it is often the external relations of objects rather than their sensory qualities that chiefly interest us. indeed, it is sometimes claimed that an excessive amount of mere training in sense discrimination might interfere with a proper development of the higher mental processes. =b. by knowledge.=--from what has been discovered regarding the learning process, it is evident that the development of any sense, as sight, sound, touch, etc., is not brought about merely by exercising the particular organ. it has been learned, for instance, that the person who is able to observe readily the plant and animal life as he walks through the forest, possesses this skill, not because his physical eye, but because his mind, has been prepared to see these objects. in other words, it is because his knowledge is active along such lines that his eye beholds these particular things. the chief reason, therefore, why the exercise of any sense organ develops a power to perceive through that sense, is that the exercise tends to develop in the individual the knowledge and interest which will cause the mind to react easily and effectively on that particular class of impressions. a sense may be considered trained, therefore, to the extent to which the mind acquires knowledge of, and interest in, the objective elements. chapter xxvi memory and apperception =nature of memory.=--mention has been made of the retentive power of the nervous system, and of a consequent tendency for mental images to revive, or _re-present_, themselves in consciousness. it must now be noted that such a re-presentation of former experiences is frequently accompanied with a distinct recognition that the present image or images have a definite reference to past time. in other words, the present mental fact is able to be placed in the midst of other events believed to make up some portion of our past experience. such an ideal revival of a past experience, together with a recognition of the fact that it formerly occurred within our experience, is known as an act of memory. =neural conditions of memory.=--when any experience is thus reproduced, and recognized as a reproduction of a previous experience, there is physiologically a transmission of nervous energy through the same brain centres as were involved in the original experience. the mental reproduction of any image is conditioned, therefore, by the physical reproduction of a nervous impulse through a formerly established path. that this is possible is owing to the susceptibility of nervous tissue to take on habit, or to retain as permanent modifications, all impressions received. from this it is evident that when we say we retain certain facts in our mind, the statement is not in a sense true; for there is no knowledge stored up in consciousness as so many ideas. the statement is true, therefore, only in the sense that the mind is able to bring into consciousness a former experience by reinstating the necessary nervous impulses through the proper nervous arcs. what is actually retained, however, is the tendency to reinstate nervous movements through the same paths as were involved in the original experience. although, therefore, retention is usually treated as a factor in memory, its basis is, in reality, physiological. =memory distinguished from apperception.=--the distinguishing characteristics of memory as a re-presentation in the mind of a former experience is evidently the mental attitude known as recognition. memory, in other words, always implies a belief that the present mental state really represents a fact, or event, which formed a part of our past experience. in the apperceptive process as seen in an ordinary process of learning, on the other hand, although it seems to involve a re-presentation of former mental images in consciousness, this distinct reference of the revived imagery to past time is evidently wanting. when, for instance, the mind interprets a strange object as a pear-shaped, thin-rinded, many-seeded fruit, all these interpreting ideas are, in a sense, revivals of past experience; yet none carry with them any distinct reference to past time. in like manner, when i look at an object of a certain form and colour and say that it is a sweet apple, it is evidently owing to past experience that i can declare that particular object to be sweet. it is quite clear, however, that in such a case there is no distinct reference of the revived image of sweetness to any definite occurrence in one's former experience. such an apperceptive revival, or re-presentation of past experience, because it includes merely a representation of mental images, but fails to relate them to the past, cannot be classed as an act of memory. =but involves apperceptive process.=--while, however, the mere revival of old knowledge in the apperceptive process does not constitute an act of memory, memory is itself only a special phase of the apperceptive process. when i think of a particular anecdote to-day, and say i remember having the same experience on sunday evening last, the present mental images cannot be the very same images as were then experienced. the former images belonged to the past, while those at present in consciousness are a new creation, although dependent, as we have seen, upon certain physiological conditions established in the past. in an act of memory, therefore, the new presentation, like all new presentations, must be interpreted in terms of past experience, or by an apperceiving act of attention. whenever in this apperceptive act there is, in addition to the interpretation, a further feeling, or sense, of familiarity, the presentation is accepted by the mind as a reproduction from past experience, or is recognized as belonging to the past. when, on the way down the street, for instance, impressions are received from a passing form, and a resulting act of apperceiving attention, besides reading meaning into them, awakens a sense of familiarity, the face is recognized as one seen on a former occasion. memory, therefore, is a special mode of the apperceptive process of learning, and includes, in addition to the interpreting of the new through the old, a belief that there is an identity between the old and the new. factors of memory in a complete example of memory the following factors may be noted: . the original presentation--as the first perception of an object or scene, the reading of a new story, the hearing of a particular voice, etc. . retention--this involves the permanent changes wrought in the nervous tissue as a result of the presentation or learning process and, as mentioned above, is really physiological. . recall--this implies the re-establishment of the nervous movements involved in the original experiences and an accompanying revival of the mental imagery. . recognition--under this heading is included the sense of familiarity experienced in consciousness, and the consequent belief that the present experience actually occurred at some certain time as an element in our past experience. conditions of memory =a. physical conditions.=--one of the first conditions for an effective recollection of any particular experience will be, evidently, the strength of the co-ordinations set up in the nervous system during the learning process. the permanent changes brought about in the nervous tissue as a result of conscious experience is often spoken of as the physical basis of memory. the first consideration, therefore, relative to the memorizing of knowledge is to decide the conditions favourable to establishing such nervous paths during the learning process. first among these may be mentioned the condition of the nervous tissue itself. as already seen, the more plastic and active the condition of this tissue, the more susceptible it is to receive and retain impressions. for this reason anything studied when the body is tired and the mind exhausted is not likely to be remembered. it is for the same reason, also, that knowledge acquired in youth is much more likely to be remembered than things learned late in life. the intensity and the clearness of the presentation also cause it to make a stronger impression upon the system and thus render its retention more permanent. this demands in turn that attention should be strongly focused upon the presentations during any learning process. by adding to the clearness and intensity of any impressions, attention adds to the likelihood of their retention. the evident cause of the scholar's ability to learn even relatively late in life is the fact that he brings a much greater concentration of attention to the process than is usually found in others. repetition also, since it tends to break down any resistance to the paths which are being established in the nervous system during the learning process, is a distinct aid to retention. for this reason any knowledge acquired should be revived at intervals. this is especially true of the school knowledge being acquired by young children, and their acquisitions must be occasionally reviewed and used in various ways, if the knowledge is to become a permanent possession. a special application of the law of repetition may be noted in the fact that we remember better any topic learned, say, in four half-hours put upon it at different intervals, than we should by spending the whole two hours upon it at one time. another condition favourable to recall is the recency of the original experience. anything is more easily recalled, the more recently it has been learned. the physiological cause for this seems to be that the nervous co-ordinations being recent, they are much more likely to re-establish themselves, not having yet been effaced or weakened through the lapse of time. =b. mental conditions.=--it must be noted, however, that although there is evidently the above neural concomitant of recall, yet it is not the nervous system, but the mind, that actually recalls and remembers. the real condition of recall, therefore, is mental, and depends largely upon the number of associations formed between the ideas themselves in the original presentation. according to the law of association, different ideas arise in the mind in virtue of certain connections existing between the ideas themselves. it would be quite foreign to our present purpose to examine the theories held among philosophic psychologists regarding the principle of the association of ideas. it is evident, however, that ideas often come to our minds in consequence of the presence in consciousness of a prior idea. when we see the name "queenston heights," it suggests to us sir isaac brock; when we see a certain house, it calls to mind the pleasant evening spent there; and when we hear the strains of solemn music, it brings to mind the memories of the dead. equally evident is the fact that anything experienced in isolation is much harder to remember than one experienced in such a way that it may enter into a larger train of ideas. if, for instance, any one is told to call up in half an hour telephone , it is more than likely that the number will be forgotten, if the person goes on with other work and depends only on the mere impression to recall the number at the proper time. this would be the case also in spite of the most vivid presentation of the number by the one giving the order or the repetition of it by the person himself. if, however, the person says, even in a casual way, "call up ," and the person addressed associates the number with the confederation of the dominion, there is practically no possibility of the number going out of his mind. an important mental condition for recall, therefore, is that ideas should be learned in as large associations, or groups, as possible. it is for the above reason that the logical and orderly presentation of the topics in any subject and their thorough understanding by the pupil give more complete control over the subject-matter. when each lesson is taught as a disconnected item of knowledge, there seems nothing to which the ideas are anchored, and recall is relatively difficult. when, on the other hand, points of connection are established between succeeding lessons, and the pupil understands these, one topic suggests another, and the mind finds it relatively easy to recall any particular part of the related ideas. types of recall =a. involuntary.=--in connection with the working of the principle of association, it is interesting to note that practically two types of recall manifest themselves. as a result of their suggestive tendency, the ideas before consciousness at any particular time have a tendency to revive old experiences which the mind may recognize as such. here there is no effort on the part of the voluntary attention to recall the experience from the past, the operation of the law of association being, as it were, sufficient to thrust the revived image into the centre of the field of consciousness, as when the sight of a train recalls a recent trip. =b. voluntary.=--at times the mind may set out with the deliberate aim, or purpose, of reviving some forgotten experience. this is because attention is at the time engaged upon a definite problem, as when the student writing on his examination paper strives to recall the conditions of the constitutional act. this type is known as voluntary memory. such a voluntary attempt at recall is, however, of the same character as the involuntary type in that both involve association. what the mind really strives for is to start a train of ideas which shall suggest the illusive ideas involved in the desired answer. such a process of recall might be illustrated as follows: [illustration] here a, b, c, d, e represent the forgotten series of ideas to be recalled. a, b, c, d, e represent other better known ideas, some of which are associated with the desired ones. by having the mind course over the better known facts--a, b, c, d, e, attention may finally focus upon the relation a, a, b, and thus start up the necessary revival of a, b, c, d, e. =attention may hinder memory.=--while active attention is thus able under proper conditions to reinforce memory, yet occasionally attention seems detrimental to memory. that such is the case will become evident from the preceding figure. if the experience a, b, c, d, e, is directly associated only with a, b, but the mind believes the association to centre in c, d, e, attention is certain to keep focused upon the sub-group--c, d, e. at an examination in history, for example, we may desire to recall the circumstances associated with the topic, "the grand remonstrance," and feel vaguely that this is connected with a revolutionary movement. this may cause us, however, to fix attention, not upon the civil war, but upon the revolution of . in this case, instead of forcing a nervous impulse into the proper centres, attention is in reality diverting it into other channels. when, a few minutes later, we have perhaps ceased our effort to remember, the impulse seems of itself to stimulate the proper centres, and the necessary facts come to us apparently without any attentive effort. localization in time it has been pointed out that in an act of memory there must be a recognition of the present experience as one which has occurred in a series of past events. the definite reference of a memory image to a past series is sometimes spoken of as localization. the degree to which a memory image is localized in the past differs greatly, however, in different cases. your recollection of some interesting personal event in your past school history may be very definitely located as to time, image after image reinstating themselves in memory in the order of their actual occurrence. such a similar series of events must have taken place when, by means of handling a number of objects, you learned different number and quantity relations or, by drawing certain figures, discovered certain geometrical relations. at the present time, however, although you remember clearly the general relations, you are utterly unable to recall the more incidental facts connected with their original presentation, or even localize the remembered knowledge at all definitely in past time. nothing, in fact, remains as a permanent possession except the general, or scientific, truth involved in the experience. classification of memories =a. mechanical.=--the above facts would indicate that in many cases the mind would find it more effective to omit from conscious recall what may appear irrelevant in the original presentation, and fix attention upon only the essential features. from this standpoint, two somewhat different types of memory are to be found among individuals. with many people, it seems as if a past experience must be revived in every detail. if such a one sets out to report a simple experience, such as seeing a policeman arrest a man on the street, he must bring in every collateral circumstance, no matter how foreign to the incident. he must mention, for example, that he himself had on a new straw hat, that his companion was smoking a cigar, was accompanied by his dog, and was talking about his crops, at the time they observed the arrest. this type is known as a mechanical memory. very good examples of such will be seen in the persons of "farmer philip" in tennyson's _brook_ and the "landlady" in shakespeare's _king henry iv_. =b. logical.=--in another type of memory, the mind does not thus associate into the memory experience every little detail of the original experience. the outstanding facts, especially those which are bound by some logical sequence, are the only ones which enter into permanent association. such a type of mind, therefore, in recalling the past, selects out of the mass of experiences the incidents which will constitute a logical revival, and leaves out the trivial and incidental. this type is usually spoken of as a logical memory. this type of memory would, in the above incident, recall only the essential facts connected with the arrest, as the cause, the incidents, and the result. memory in education =value of memory.=--it is evident that without the ability to reinstate past experiences in our conscious life, such experiences could not serve as intelligent guides for our present conduct. each day, in fact, we should begin life anew so far as concerns intelligent adaptation, our acquired aptitude being at best only physical. it will be understood, therefore, why the ability to recall past experiences is accepted as an essential factor in the educative process. it will be noted, indeed, in our study of the history of education, that, at certain periods, the whole problem of education seemed to be to memorize knowledge so thoroughly that it might readily be reinstated in consciousness. modern education, however, has thrown emphasis upon two additional facts regarding knowledge. these are, first, that the ability to use past knowledge, and not the mere ability to recall it, is the mark of a truly educated man. the second fact is that, when any experience is clearly understood at the time of its presentation, the problem of remembering it will largely take care of itself. for these reasons, modern education emphasizes clearness of presentation and ability to apply, rather than the mere memorizing of knowledge. it is a question, however, whether the modern educator may not often be too negligent concerning the direct problem of the ability to recall knowledge. for this reason, the student-teacher may profitably make himself acquainted with the main conditions of retention and recall. =the training of memory.=--an important problem for the educator is to ascertain whether it is possible to develop in the pupil a general power of memory. in other words, will the memorizing of any set of facts strengthen the mind to remember more easily any other facts whatsoever? from what has been noted regarding memory, it is evident that, leaving out of consideration the physical condition of the organism, the most important conditions for memory at the time are attention to, and a thorough understanding of, the facts to be remembered. from this it must appear that a person's ability to remember any facts depends primarily, not upon the mere amount of memorizing he has done in the past, but upon the extent to which his interests and old knowledge cause him to attend to, understand, and associate the facts to be remembered. there seems no justification, therefore, for the method of the teacher who expected to strengthen the memories of her pupils for their school work by having them walk quickly past the store windows and then attempt to recall at school what they had seen. in such cases the boys are found to remember certain objects, because their interests and knowledge enable them to notice these more distinctly at the time of the presentation. the girls, on the other hand, remember other objects, because their interests and knowledge cause them to apprehend these rather than the others. apperception =apperception a law of learning.=--in the study of the lesson process, chapter iii, attention was called to the fact that the interpretation which the mind places upon any presentation depends in large measure upon the mind's present content and interest. it is an essential characteristic of mind that it always attempts to give meaning to any new impression, no matter how strange that impression may be. this end is reached, however, only as the mind is able to apply to the presentation certain elements of former experience. even in earliest infancy, impressions do not come to the organism as total strangers; for the organism is already endowed with instinctive tendencies to react in a definite manner to certain stimuli. as these reactions continue to repeat themselves, however, permanent modifications, as previously noted, are established in the nervous system, including both sensory and motor adjustments. since, moreover, these sensory and motor adjustments give rise to ideas, they result in corresponding associations of mental imagery. as these neural and mental elements are thus organized into more and more complex masses, the recurrence of any element within an associated mass is able to reinstate the other elements. the result is that when a certain sensation is received, as, for instance, a sound stimulus, it reinstates sensory impressions and motor reactions together with their associated mental images, thus enabling the mind to assert that a dog is barking in the distance. in such a case, the present impression is evidently joined with, and interpreted through, what has already formed a part of our experience. what is true of this particular case is true of all cases. new presentations are always met and interpreted by some complex experiences with which they have something in common, otherwise the stimuli could not be attended to at all. this ability of the mind to interpret new presentations in terms of old knowledge on account of some connection they bear to that content, is known as _apperception_. in other words, apperception is the law of the mind to attend to such elements in a new presentation as possess some degree of _familiarity_ with the already assimilated experience, although there may be no distinct recognition of this familiarity. conditions of apperception =a. present knowledge.=--since the mind can apperceive only that for which it is prepared through former experience, the interpretation of the same presentations will be likely to differ greatly in different individuals. the book lying before him is to the young child a place in which to find pictures, to the ignorant man a source of mysterious information, and to the scholar a symbolic representation of certain mathematical knowledge. in the same manner, the object outside the window is a noxious weed to the farmer, a flower to the naturalist, and a medicinal plant to the physician or the druggist. from this it is clear that the interpretation of the impressions must differ according to the character of our present knowledge. in other words, the more important the aspects read into any presentation, the more valuable will be the present experience. although when the child apperceives a stick as a horse, and the mechanic apperceives it as a lever, each interpretation is valuable within its own sphere, yet there is evidently a marked difference in the ultimate significance of the two interpretations. education is especially valuable, in fact, in that it so adds to the experience of the child that he may more fully apperceive his surroundings. =b. present interests and needs.=--but apperception is not solely dependent upon present knowledge. the interests and needs of the individual reflect themselves largely in his apperceptive tendencies. while the boy sees a tent in the folded paper, the girl is more likely to find in it a screen. to the little boy the lath is a horse, to the older boy it becomes a sword. feelings and interest, therefore, as well as knowledge, dominate the apperceptive process. nor should this fact be overlooked by the teacher. the study of a poem would be very incomplete and unsatisfactory if it stopped with the apprehension of the ideas. there must be emotional appreciation as well; otherwise the study will result in entire indifference to it. in introducing, for instance, the sonnet, "mysterious night" (page , _ontario reader, book iv_), the teacher might ask: "why can we not see the stars during the day?" the answer to this question would put the pupils in the proper intellectual attitude to interpret the ideas of the poem, but that is not enough. a recall of such an experience as his contemplation of the starry sky on a clear night will put the pupil in a suitable emotional attitude. he is a rare pupil who has not at some time gazed in wonder at the immense number and magnificence of the stars, or who has not thought with awe and reverence of the infinite power of the creator of "such countless orbs." a recall of these feelings of wonder, awe, and reverence will place the pupil in a suitable mood for the emotional appreciation of the poem. it is in the teaching of literature that the importance of a proper feeling attitude on the part of the pupil is particularly great. without it the pupil is coldly indifferent toward literature and will never cultivate an enthusiasm for it. factors in apperception =retention and recall.=--the facts already noted make it plain that apperception involves two important factors. first, apperception implies retention and recall. unless our various experiences left behind them the permanent effects already noted in describing the retentive power of the nervous organism and the consequent possibility of recall, there could be no adjustment to new impressions on the basis of earlier experiences. =attention.=--secondly, apperception involves attention. since to apperceive is to bring the results of earlier experience to bear actively upon the new impression, it must involve a reactive, or attentive, state of consciousness; for, as noted in our study of the learning process, it is only by selecting elements out of former experience that the new impression is given definite meaning in consciousness. for the child to apperceive the strange object as a "bug-in-a-basket," demands from him therefore a process of attention in which the ideas "bug" and "basket" are selected from former experience and read into the new impression, thereby giving it a meaning in consciousness. a reference to any of the lesson topics previously considered will provide further examples of these apperceptive factors. chapter xxvii imagination =nature of.=--in our study of the various modes of acquiring individual notions, attention was called to the fact that knowledge of a particular object may be gained through a process of imagination. like memory, imagination is a process of re-presentation, though differing from it in certain important regards. . although imagination depends on past experiences for its images, these images are used to build up ideal representations of objects without any reference to past time. . in imagination the associated elements of past experience may be completely dissociated. thus a bird may be imagined without wings, or a stone column without weight. . the dissociated elements may be re-combined in various ways to represent objects never actually experienced, as a man with wings, or a horse with a man's head. imagination is thus an apperceptive process by which we construct a mental representation of an object without any necessary reference to its actual existence in time. =product of imagination, particular.=--it is to be noted that in a process of imagination the mind always constructs in idea a representation of a _particular_ object or individual. for instance, the ideal picture of the house i imagine situated on the hill before me is that of a particular house, possessing definite qualities as to height, size, colour, etc. in like manner, the future visit to toronto, as it is being run over ideally, is constructed of particular persons, places, and events. so also when reading such a stanza as: the milk-white blossoms of the thorn are waving o'er the pool, moved by the wind that breathes along, so sweetly and so cool; if the mind is able to combine into a definite outline of a particular situation the various elements depicted, then the mental process of the reader is one of imagination. it is not true, of course, that the particular elements which enter into such an ideal representation are always equally vivid. yet one test of a person's power of imagination is the definiteness with which the mind makes an ideal representation stand out in consciousness as a distinct individual. types of imagination =a. passive.=--in dissociating the elements of past experience and combining them into new particular forms, the mind may proceed in two quite different ways. in some cases the mind seemingly allows itself to drift without purpose and almost without sense, building up fantastic representations of imaginary objects or events. this happens especially in our periods of day-dreaming. here various images, evidently drawn from past experience, come before consciousness in a spontaneous way and enter into most unusual forms of combination, with little regard even to probability. in these moods the timid lad becomes a strong hero, and his rustic audrey, a fair lady, for whose sake he is ever performing untold feats of valour. here the ideas, instead of being selected and combined for a definite purpose through an act of voluntary attention, are suggested one after the other by the mere law of association. because in such fantastic products of the imagination the various images appear in consciousness and combine themselves without any apparent control or purpose, the process is known as passive imagination, or phantasy. such a type, it is evident, will have little significance as an actual process of learning. =b. active, or constructive.=--opposed to the above type is that form of imagination in which the mind proceeds to build up a particular ideal representation with some definite purpose, or end, in view. a student, for example, who has never seen an aeroplane and has no direct knowledge of the course to be traversed, may be called upon in his composition work to describe an imaginary voyage through the air from toronto to winnipeg. in such an act of imagination, the selecting of elements to enter into the ideal picture must be chosen with an eye to their suitability to the end in view. when also a child is called upon in school to form an ideal representation of some object of which he has had no direct experience, as for instance, a mental picture of a volcano, he must in the same way, under the guidance of the teacher, select and combine elements of his actual experience which are adapted to the building up of a correct mental representation of an actual volcano. this type of imagination is known as active, or constructive, imagination. =factors in constructive imagination.=--in such a purposeful, or active, process of imagination the following factors may be noticed: . the purpose, end, or problem calling for the exercise of the imagination. . a selective act of attention, in which the fitness or unfitness of elements of past experience, or their adaptability to the ideal creation, is realized. . a relating, or synthetic, activity combining the selected elements into a new ideal representation. uses of imagination =imagination in education.=--one important application of imagination in school work is found in connection with the various forms of constructive occupation. in such exercises, it is possible to have the child first build up ideally the picture of a particular object and then have him produce it through actual expression. for example, a class which has been taught certain principles of cutting may be called upon to conceive an original design for some object, say a valentine. here the child, before proceeding to produce the actual object, must select from his knowledge of valentines certain elements and interpret them in relation to his principles of cutting. this ideal representation of the intended object is, therefore, a process of active, or constructive, imagination. in composition, also, the various events and situations depicted may be ideal creations to which the child gives expression in language. in geography and nature study likewise, constant use must be made of the imagination in gaining a knowledge of objects which have never come within the actual experience of the child. in science there is a further appeal to the child's imagination. when, for instance, he studies such topics as the law of gravity, chemical affinity, etc., the imagination must fill in much that falls outside the sphere of actual observation. in history and literature, also, the student can enter into the life and action of the various scenes and events only by building up ideal representations of what is depicted through the words of the author. =imagination in practical life.=--in addition to the large use of constructive imagination in school work, this process will be found equally important in the after affairs of life. it is by use of the imagination that the workman is able to see the changes we desire made in the decoration of the room or in the shape of the flower-beds. it is by the use of imagination, also, that the general is able to outline the plan of campaign that shall lead his army to victory. without imagination, therefore, the mind could not set up those practical aims toward the attainment of which most of life's effort is directed. in the dominion of conduct, also, imagination has its important part to play. it is by viewing in his imagination the effect of the one course of action as compared with the other, that man finally decides what constitutes the proper line of conduct. even when indifferent as to his moral conduct, man pictures to himself what his friends may say and think of certain lines of action. for the enjoyment of life, also, the exercise of imagination has a place. it is by filling up the present with ideals and hopeful anticipations for the future, that much of the monotony of our work-a-day hours is relieved. =development of imagination.=--a prime condition of a creative imagination is evidently the possession of an abundance of mental materials which may be dissociated and re-combined into new mental products. these materials, of course, consist of the images and ideas retained by the mind from former experiences. one important result, therefore, of providing the young child with a rich store of images of sight, sound, touch, movement, etc., is that it provides his developing imagination with necessary materials. but the mere possession of abundant materials in the form of past images will not in itself develop the imagination. here, as elsewhere, it is only by exercising imagination that ability to imagine can be developed. opportunity for such an exercise of the imagination, moreover, may be given the child in various ways. as already noted, a chief function of play is that it stimulates the child to use his imagination in reconstructing the objects about him and clothing them with many fancied attributes. in supplementary reading and story work, also, the imagination is actively exercised in constructing the ideal situations, as they are being presented in words by the book or the teacher. nature study, likewise, by bringing before the child the secret processes of nature, as noting, for instance, the life history of the butterfly, the germination of seeds, etc., will call upon him to use his imagination in various ways. on the other hand, to deprive a young child of all such opportunities will usually result in preventing a proper development of the imagination. chapter xxviii thinking =nature of thinking.=--in the study of general method, as well as in that of the foregoing mental processes, it has been taken for granted that our minds are capable of identifying different objects on the basis of some common feature or features. this tendency of the mind to identify objects and group individual things into classes, depends upon its capacity to detect similarity and difference, or to make comparisons. when the mind, in identifying objects, events, qualities, etc., discovers certain relations between its various states, the process is especially known as that of thinking. in its technical sense, therefore, thought implies a more or less explicit apprehension of relation. =thinking involved in all conscious states.=--it is evident, however, that every mental process must involve thinking, or a grasping of relations. when, by my merely touching an object, my mind perceives it is an apple, this act of perception, as already seen, takes place because elements of former experience come back as associated factors. this implies, evidently, that the mind is here relating elements of its past experience with the present touch sensation. perception of external objects, therefore, implies a grasping of relations. in the same way, if, in having an experience to-day, one recognizes it as identical with a former experience, he is equally grasping a relation. every act of memory, therefore, implies thinking. thus in all forms of knowledge the mind is apprehending relations; for no experience could have meaning for the mind except as it is discriminated from other experiences. in treating thinking as a distinct mental process, however, it is assumed that the objects of sense perception, memory, etc., are known as such, and that the mind here deals more directly with the relations in which ideas stand one to another. as a mental process, thinking appears in three somewhat distinct forms, known as conception, judgment, and reasoning. conception =the abstract notion.=--it was seen that at least in adult life, the perception of any object, as this particular orange, horse, cow, etc., really includes a number of distinct images of quality synthesised into the unity of a particular idea or experience. because of this union of a number of different sensible qualities in the notion of a single individual, the mind may limit its attention upon a particular quality, or characteristic, possessed by an object, and make this a distinct problem of attention. thus the mind is able to form such notions as length, roundness, sweetness, heaviness, four-footedness, etc. when such an attribute is thought of as something distinct from the object, the mental image is especially known as an abstract idea, or notion, and the process as one of abstraction. =the class notion.=--one or more of such abstracted qualities may, moreover, be recognized as common to an indefinite number of objects. for instance, in addition to its ability to abstract from the perception of a dog, the abstract notions four-footedness, hairy, barking, etc., the mind further gives them a general character by thinking of them as qualities common to an indefinite number of other possible individuals, namely, the class four-footed, hairy, barking objects. because the idea representing the quality or qualities is here accepted by the mind as a means of identifying a number of objects, the idea is spoken of as a class notion, and the process as one of classification, or generalization. thus it appears that, through its ability to detect sameness and difference, or discover relations, the mind is able to form two somewhat different notions. by mentally abstracting any quality and regarding it as something distinct from the object, it obtains an abstract notion, as sweetness, bravery, hardness, etc.; by synthesising and symbolizing the images of certain qualities recognized in objects, it obtains a general, or class, notion by which it may represent an indefinite number of individual things as, triangle, horse, desert, etc. thus abstract notions are supposed to represent qualities; class notions, things. because of its reference to a number of objects, the class notion is spoken of especially as a general notion, and the process of forming the notion as one of generalization. these two types of notions are technically known as concepts, and the process of their formation as one of conception. =formal analysis of process.=--at this point may be recalled what was stated in chapter xv concerning the development of a class notion. mention was there made of the theory that in the formation of such concepts, or class notions, as cow, dog, desk, chair, adjective, etc., the mind must proceed through certain set stages as follows: . comparison: the examination of a certain number of particular individuals in order to discover points of similarity and difference. . abstraction: the distinguishing of certain characteristics common to the objects. . generalization: the mental unification, or synthesis, of these common characteristics noted in different individuals into a class notion represented by a name, or general term. =but conception is involved in perception.=--from what has been seen, however, it is evident that the development of our concepts does not proceed in any such formal way. if the mind perceives an individual object with any degree of clearness, it must recognize the object as possessing certain qualities. if, therefore, the child can perceive such an object as a dog, it implies that he recognizes it, say, as a hairy, four-footed creature. to recognize these qualities, however, signifies that the mind is able to think of them as something apart from the object, and the child thus has in a sense a general notion even while perceiving the particular dog. whenever he passes to the perception of another dog, he undoubtedly interprets this with the general ideas already obtained from this earlier percept of a dog. to say, therefore, that to gain a concept he compares the qualities found in several individual things is not strictly true, for if his first percept becomes a type by which he interprets other dogs, his first experience is already a concept. what happens is that as this concept is used to interpret other individuals, the person becomes more conscious of the fact that his early experience is applicable to an indefinite number of objects. so also, when an adult first perceives an individual thing, say the fruit of the guava, he must apprehend certain qualities in relation to the individual thing. thereupon his idea of this particular object becomes in itself a copy for identifying other objects, or a symbol by which similar future impressions may be given meaning. in this sense the individual idea, or percept, will serve to identify other particular experiences. such being the case, this early concept of the guava has evidently required no abstraction of qualities beyond apprehending them while perceiving the one example of the fruit. this, however, is but to say that the perception of the guava really implied conception. =comparison of individuals necessary for correct concepts.=--it is, of course, true that the correctness of the idea as a class symbol can be verified only as we apply it in interpreting a number of such individual things. as the person meets a further number of individuals, he may even discover the presence of qualities not previously recognized. a child, for instance, may have a notion of the class triangle long before he discovers that all triangles have the property of containing two right angles. when this happens, he will later modify his first concept by synthesising into it the newly discovered quality. moreover, if certain features supposed to be common are later found to be accidental, if, for instance, a child's concept of the class fish includes the quality _always living in water_, his meeting with a flying fish will not result in an utterly new concept, but rather in a modification of the present one. thus the young child, who on seeing the chinese diplomat, wished to know where he had his laundry, was not without a class concept, although that concept was imperfect in at least one respect. =concept and term.=--a point often discussed in connection with conception is whether a general notion can be formed without language. by some it is argued that no concept could exist in the mind without the name, or general term. it was seen, however, that our first perception of any object becomes a sort of standard by which other similar experiences are intercepted, and is, therefore, general in character. from this it is evident that a rudimentary type of conception exists prior to language. in the case of the young child, as he gains a mental image of his father, the experience evidently serves as a centre for interpreting other similar individuals. we may notice that as soon as he gains control of language, other men are called by the term papa. this does not imply an actual confusion in identity, but his use of the term shows that the child interprets the new object through a crude concept denoted by the word papa. it is more than probable, moreover, that this crude concept developed as he became able to recognize his father, and had been used in interpreting other men before he obtained the term, papa. on the other hand, it is certain that the term, or class name, is necessary to give the notion a definite place in consciousness. factors involved in concept it will appear from the foregoing that a concept presents the following factors for consideration: . the essential quality or qualities found in the individual things, and supposed to be abstracted sooner or later from the individuals. . the concept itself, the mental image or idea representative of the abstracted quality; or the unification of a number of abstracted qualities, when the general notion implies a synthesis of different qualities. . the general term, or name. . the objects themselves, which the mind can organize into a class, because they are identified as possessing common characteristics. when, however, a single abstracted quality is taken as a symbol of a class of objects, for example, when the quality bitterness becomes the symbol for the class of bitter things, there can be no real distinction between the abstracted quality and the class concept. in other words, to fix attention upon the quality bitterness as a quality distinct from the object in which it is found, is at the same time to give it a general character, recognizing it as something which may be found in a number of objects--the class bitter things. here the abstract term is in a sense a general notion representative of a whole class of objects which agree in the possession of the quality. =intension of concepts.=--certain of our general notions are, however, much more complex than others. when a single attribute such as four-footedness is generalized to represent the class four-footed objects, the notion itself is relatively simple. in other words, a single property is representative of the objects, and in apprehending the members of the class all other properties they chance to possess may be left out of account. in many cases, however, the class notion will evidently be much more complex. the notion dog, for instance, in addition to implying the characteristic four-footedness, may include such qualities as hairy, barking, watchful, fearless, etc. this greater or less degree of complexity of a general notion is spoken of as its intensity. the notion dog, for instance, is more intensive than the notion four-footed animals; the notion lawyer, than the notion man. =extension of concepts.=--it is to be noted further that as a notion increases in intension it becomes limited to a smaller class of objects. from this standpoint, notions are said to differ in extension. the class lawyer, for instance, is not so extensive as the class man; nor the class dog, as the class four-footed objects. it will appear from the above that an abstract notion viewed as a sign of a class of objects is distinguished by its extension, while a class notion, so far as it implies a synthesis of several abstracted qualities, is marked rather by its intension. aims of conceptual lessons so far as school lessons aim to establish and develop correct class notions in the minds of the pupils, three somewhat distinct types of work may be noted: . to define classes in some lessons no attempt is made to develop an utterly new class notion, or concept; the pupils in fact may already know the class of objects in a general way and be acquainted with many of their characteristics. the object of the lesson is, therefore, to render the concept more scientific by having it include the qualities which essentially mark it as a class and especially separate it from other co-ordinate classes. in studying the grasshopper; for instance, in entomology, the purpose is not to give the child a notion of the insect in the ordinary sense of the term. this the pupil may already have. the purpose is rather to enable him to decide just what general characteristics distinguish this from other insects. the lesson may, therefore, leave out of consideration features which are common to all grasshoppers, simply because they do not enter into a scientific differentiation of the class. . to enlarge a concept in many lessons the aim seems to be chiefly to enlarge certain concepts by adding to their intensiveness. the pupil, for instance, has a scientific concept of a triangle, that is, one which enables him to distinguish a triangle from any other geometrical figure. he may, however, be led to see further that the three angles of every triangle equal two right angles. this is really having him discover a further attribute in relation to triangles, although this knowledge is not essential to the concept as a symbol of the members of the class. in the same way, in grammar the pupil is taught certain attributes common to verbs, as mood and tense, although these are not essential attributes from the standpoint of distinguishing the verb as a special class of words. . to build up new concepts =a. presentation of unknown individuals.=--in many lessons the chief object seems to be, however, to build up a new concept in the mind of the child. this would be the case when the pupil is presented with a totally unknown object, say a platypus, and called upon to examine its characteristics. in such lessons two important facts should be noticed. first, the child finds seemingly little difficulty in accepting a single individual as a type of a class, and is able to carry away from the lesson a fairly scientific class notion through a study of the one individual. in this regard the pupil but illustrates what has been said of the ability of the child to use his early percepts as standards to interpret other individuals. the pupil is able the more easily to form this accurate notion, because he no doubt has already a store of abstract notions with which to interpret the presentation, and also because his interest and attention is directed into the proper channels by the teacher. =b. division of known classes.=--a second common mode of developing new concepts in school work is in breaking up larger classes into co-ordinate sub-classes. this, of course, involves the developing of new concepts to cover these sub-classes. in such cases, however, the new notions are merely modified forms of the higher class notion. when, for example, the pupil gains general notions representative of the classes, proper noun and common noun, the new terms merely add something to the intension of the more extensive term noun. this will be evident by considering the difference between the notions noun and proper noun. both agree in possessing the attribute _used to name_. the latter is more intensive, however, because it signifies _used to name a particular object_. although in such cases the lesson seems in a sense to develop new general notions, they represent merely an adding to the intension of a notion already possessed by the child. =use of the term.=--a further problem regarding the process of conception concerns the question of the significance of a name. when a person uses such a term as dog, whale, hepatica, guava, etc., to name a certain object, what is the exact sense, or meaning, in which the name is to be applied? a class name, when applied scientifically to an object, is evidently supposed to denote the presence in it of certain essential characteristics which belong to the class. it is clear, however, that the ordinary man rarely uses these names with any scientific precision. a man can point to an object and say that it is a horse, and yet be ignorant of many of the essential features of a horse. in such cases, therefore, the use of the name merely shows that the person considers the object to belong to a certain class, but is no guarantee that he is thinking of the essential qualities of the class. it might be said, therefore, that a class term is used for two somewhat different purposes, either to denote the object merely, or to signify scientifically the attributes possessed by the object. it is in the second respect that danger of error in reasoning arises. so far as a name represents the attributes of a class, it will signify for us just those attributes which we associate with that class. so long, therefore, as the word fish means to us an animal living in the water, we will include in the class the whale, which really does not belong to the class, and perhaps exclude from the class the flying fish, although it is scientifically a member of the class. the definition it has been noted that, when man discovers common characteristics in a number of objects, he tends on this basis to unite such objects into a class. it is to be noted in addition, however, that in the same manner he is also able, by examining the characteristics of a large class of objects, to divide these into smaller sub-classes. although, for example, we may place all three-sided figures into one class and call them triangles, we are further able to divide these into three sub-classes owing to certain differences that may be noted among them. thus an important fact regarding classification is that while a class may possess some common quality or qualities, yet its members may be further divided into sub-classes and each of these smaller classes distinguished from the others by points of difference. owing to this fact, there are two important elements entering into a scientific knowledge of any class, first, to know of what larger class it forms a part, and secondly, to know what characteristics distinguish it from the other classes which go with it to make up this larger class. to know the class equilateral triangle, for instance, we must know, first, that it belongs to the larger class triangle, and secondly, that it differs from other classes of triangles by having its three sides equal. for this reason a person is able to know a class scientifically without knowing all of its common characteristics. for instance, the large class of objects known as words is subdivided into smaller classes known as parts of speech. taking one of these classes, the verb, we find that all verbs agree in possessing at least three common characteristics, they have power to assert, to denote manner, and to express time. to distinguish the verb, however, it is necessary to note only that it is a word used to assert, since this is the only characteristic which distinguishes it from the other classes of words. when, therefore, we describe any class of objects by first naming the larger class to which it belongs, and then stating the characteristics which distinguish it from the other co-ordinate classes, we are said to give a definition of the class, or to define it. the statement, "a trimeter is a verse of three measures," is a definition because it gives, first, the larger class (verse) to which the trimeters belong, and secondly, the difference (of three measures) which distinguishes the trimeter from all other verses. the statement, "a binomial is an algebraic expression consisting of two terms," is a definition, because it gives, first, the larger class (algebraic expression) to which binomials belong, and secondly, the difference (consisting of two terms) which distinguishes binomials from other algebraic expressions. judgment =nature of judgment.=--a second form, or mode, of thinking is known as judgment. our different concepts were seen to vary in their intension, or meaning, according to the number of attributes suggested by each. my notion _triangle_ may denote the attributes three-sided and three-angled; my notion _isosceles triangle_ will in that case include at least these two qualities plus equality of two of the sides. this indicates that various relations exist between our ideas and may be apprehended by the mind. when a relation between two concepts is distinctly apprehended in thought, or, in other words, when there is a mental assertion of a union between two ideas, or objects of thought, the process is known as _judgment_. judgment may be defined, therefore, as the apprehension, or mental affirmation, of a relation between two ideas. if the idea, or concept, _heaviness_ enters as a mental element into my idea _stone_, then the mind is able to affirm a relation between these concepts in the form, "stone is heavy." in like manner when the mind asserts, "glass is transparent" or "horses are animals," there is a distinct apprehension of a relation between the concepts involved. =judgment distinguished from statement.=--it should be noted that judgment is the mental apprehension of a relation between ideas. when this relation is expressed in actual words, it is spoken of as a proposition, or a predication. a proposition is, therefore, the statement of a judgment. the proposition is composed of two terms and the copula, one term constituting the subject of the proposition and the other the predicate. although a judgment may often be expressed in some other form, it can usually be converted into the above form. the proposition, "horses eat oats," may be expressed in the form, "horses are oat-eaters"; the proposition, "the sun melts the snow," into the form, "the sun is a-thing-which-melts-snow." =relation of judgment to conception.=--it would appear from the above examples that a judgment expresses in an explicit form the relations involved within the concept, and is, therefore, merely a direct way of indicating the state of development of any idea. if my concept of a dog, for example, is a synthesis of the qualities four-footed, hairy, fierce, and barking, then an analysis of the concept will furnish the following judgments: { a four-footed thing. { a hairy thing. a dog is { a fierce thing. { a barking thing. because in these cases a concept seems necessary for an act of judgment, it is said that judgment is a more advanced form of thinking than conception. on the other hand, however, judgment is implied in the formation of a concept. when the child apprehends the dog as a four-footed object, his mind has grasped four-footedness as a quality pertaining to the strange object, and has, in a sense, brought the two ideas into relation. but while judgment is implied in the formation of the concept, the concept does not bring explicitly to the mind the judgments it implies. the concept snow, for instance, implies the property of whiteness, but whiteness must be apprehended as a distinct idea and related mentally with the idea snow before we can be said to have formed, or thought, the judgment, "snow is white." judgment is a form of thinking separate from conception, therefore, because it does thus bring into definite relief relations only implied in our general notions, or concepts. one value of judgment is, in fact, that it enables us to analyse our concepts, and thus note more explicitly the relations included in them. =universal and particular judgments.=--judgments are found to differ also as to the universality of their affirmation. in such a judgment as "man is mortal," since mortality is viewed as a quality always joined to manhood, the affirmation is accepted as a universal judgment. in such a judgment as "men strive to subdue the air," the two objects of thought are not considered as always and necessarily joined together. the judgment is therefore particular in character. all of our laws of nature, as "air has weight," "pressure on liquids is transmitted in every direction," or "heat is conducted by metals," are accepted as universal judgments. =errors in judgment due to: a. faulty concepts.=--it may be seen from the foregoing that our judgments, when explicitly grasped by the mind and predicated in language, reflect the accuracy or inaccuracy of our concepts. whatever relations are, as it were, wrapped up in a concept may merge at any time in the form of explicit judgments. if the fact that the only chinamen seen by a child are engaged in laundry work causes this attribute to enter into his concept chinaman, this will lead him to affirm that the restaurant keeper, wan lee, is a laundry-man. the republican who finds two or three cases of corruption among democrats, may conceive corruption as a quality common to democrats and affirm that honest john smith is corrupt. faulty concepts, therefore, are very likely to lead to faulty judgments. a first duty in education is evidently to see that children are forming correct class concepts. for this it must be seen that they always distinguish the essential features of the class of objects they are studying. they must learn, also, not to conclude on account of superficial likeness that really unlike objects belong to the same class. the child, for instance, in parsing the sentence, "the swing broke down," must be taught to look for essential characteristics, and not call the word _swing_ a gerund because it ends in "ing"; which, though a common characteristic of gerunds, does not differentiate it from other classes of words. so, also, when the young nature student notes that the head of the spider is somewhat separated from the abdomen, he must not falsely conclude that the spider belongs to the class insects. in like manner, the pupil must not imagine, on account of superficial differences, that objects really the same belong to different classes, as for example, that a certain object is not a fish, but a bird, because it is flying through the air; or that a whale is a fish and not an animal, because it lives in water. the pupil must also learn to distinguish carefully between the particular and universal judgment. to affirm that "men strive to subdue the air," does not imply that "john smith strives to subdue the air." the importance of this distinction will be considered more fully in our next section. =b. feeling.=--faulty concepts are not, however, the only causes for wrong judgments. it has been noted already that feeling enters largely as a factor in our conscious life. man, therefore, in forming his judgments, is always in danger of being swayed by his feelings. our likes and dislikes, in other words, interfere with our thinking, and prevent us from analysing our knowledge as we should. instead, therefore, of striving to develop true concepts concerning men and events and basing our judgments upon these, we are inclined in many cases to allow our judgments to be swayed by mere feeling. =c. laziness.=--indifference is likewise a common source of faulty judgments. to attend to the concept and discover its intension as a means for correct judgment evidently demands mental effort. many people, however, prefer either to jump at conclusions or let others do their judging for them. =sound judgments based on scientific concepts.=--to be able to form correct judgments regarding the members of any class, however, the child should know, not only its common characteristics, but also the essential features which distinguish its members from those of co-ordinate classes. to know adequately the equilateral triangle, for instance, the pupil must know both the features which distinguish it from other triangles and also those in which it agrees with all triangles. to know fully the mentha family of plants, he must know both the characteristic qualities of the family and also those of the larger genus labiatae. from this it will be seen that a large share of school work must be devoted to building up scientific class notions in the minds of the pupils. without this, many of their judgments must necessarily be faulty. to form such scientific concepts, however, it is necessary to relate one concept with another in more indirect ways than is done through the formation of judgments. this brings us to a consideration of _reasoning_, the third and last form of thinking. reasoning =nature of reasoning.=--reasoning is defined as a mental process in which the mind arrives at a new judgment by comparing other judgments. the mind, for instance, is in possession of the two judgments, "stones are heavy" and "flint is a stone." by bringing these two judgments under the eye of attention and comparing them, the mind is able to arrive at the new judgment, "flint is heavy." here the new judgment, expressing a relation between the notions, _flint_ and _heavy_, is supposed to be arrived at, neither by direct experience, nor by an immediate analysis of the concept _flint_, but more indirectly by comparing the other judgments. the judgment, or conclusion, is said, therefore, to be arrived at mediately, or by a process of reasoning. reasoning is of two forms, deductive, or syllogistic, reasoning, and inductive reasoning. deduction =nature of deduction.=--in deduction the mind is said to start with a general truth, or judgment, and by a process of reasoning to arrive at a more particular truth, or judgment, thus: stone is heavy; flint is a stone; .'. flint is heavy. expressed in this form, the reasoning process, as already mentioned, is known as a syllogism. the whole syllogism is made up of three parts, major premise, minor premise, and conclusion. the three concepts involved in the syllogism are known as the major, the minor, and the middle term. in the above syllogism, _heavy_, the predicate of the major premise, is the major term; _flint_, the subject of the minor premise, is the minor term; and _stone_, to which the other two are related in the premises, is known as the middle term. because of this previous comparison of the major and the minor terms with the middle term, deduction is sometimes said to be a process by which the mind discovers a relation between two concepts by comparing them each with a third concept. =purpose of deduction.=--it is to be noted, however, as pointed out in chapter xv, that deductive reasoning takes place normally only when the mind is faced with a difficulty which demands solution. take the case of the boy and his lost coin referred to in chapter ii. as he faces the problem, different methods of solution may present themselves. it may enter his mind, for instance, to tear up the grate, but this is rejected on account of possible damage to the brickwork. finally he thinks of the tar and resorts to this method of recovery. in both of the above cases the boy based his conclusions upon known principles. as he considered the question of tearing up the grate, the thought came to his mind, "lifting-a-grate is a-thing-which-may-cause-damage." as he considered the use of the tar, he had in mind the judgment, "adhesion is a property of tar," and at once inferred that tar would solve his problem. in such practical cases, however, the mind seems to go directly from the problem in hand to a conclusion by means of a general principle. when a woman wishes to remove a stain, she at once says, "gasoline will remove it." here the mind, in arriving at its conclusion, seems to apply the principle, "gasoline removes spots," directly to the particular problem. thus the reasoning might seem to run as follows: problem: what will remove this stain? principle: gasoline will remove stains. conclusion: gasoline will remove this stain. here the middle term of the syllogism seems to disappear. it is to be noted, however, that our thought changes from the universal idea "stains," mentioned in the statement of the principle, to the particular idea "this stain" mentioned in the problem and in the conclusion. but this implies a middle term, which could be expressed thus: gasoline will remove stains; this is a stain; .'. gasoline will remove _this_. the syllogism is valuable, therefore, because it displays fully and clearly each element in the reasoning process, and thus assures the validity of the conclusion. =deduction in school recitation.=--it will be recalled from what was noted in our study of general method, that deduction usually plays an important part during an ordinary developing lesson. in the step of preparation, when the pupil is given a particular example in order to recall old knowledge, the example suggests a problem which is intended to call up certain principles which are designed to be used during the presentation. in a lesson on the "conjunctive pronoun," for instance, if we have the pupil recall his knowledge of the conjunction by examining the particular word "if" in such a sentence as, "i shall go if they come," he interprets the word as a conjunction simply because he possesses a general rule applicable to it, or is able to go through a process of deduction. in the presentation also, when the pupil is called on to examine the word _who_ in such a sentence as, "the man who met us is very old," and decides that it is both a conjunction and a pronoun, he is again making deductions, since it is by his general knowledge of conjunctions and pronouns that he is able to interpret the two functions of the particular word _who_. finally, as already noted, the application of an ordinary recitation frequently involves deductive processes. induction =nature of induction.=--induction is described as a process of reasoning in which the mind arrives at a conclusion by an examination of particular cases, or judgments. a further distinguishing feature of the inductive process is that, while the known judgments are particular in character, the conclusion is accepted as a general law, or truth. as in deduction, the reasoning process arises on account of some difficulty, or problem, presented to the mind, as for example: what is the effect of heat upon air? will glass conduct electricity? why do certain bodies refract light? to satisfy itself upon the problem, the mind appeals to actual experience either by ordinary observation or through experimentation. these observations or experiments, which necessarily deal with particular instances, are supposed to provide a number of particular judgments, by examining which a satisfactory conclusion is ultimately reached. =example of induction.=--as an example of induction, may be taken the solution of such a problem as, "does air exert pressure?" to meet this hypothesis we must evidently do more than merely abstract the manifest properties of an object, as is done in ordinary conception, or appeal directly to some known general principle, as is done in deduction. the work of induction demands rather to examine the two at present known but disconnected things, _air_ and _pressure_, and by scientific observation seek to discover a relation between them. for this purpose the investigator may place a card over a glass filled with water, and on inverting it find that the card is held to the glass. taking a glass tube and putting one end in water, he may place his finger over the other end and, on raising the tube, find that water remains in the tube. soaking a heavy piece of leather in water and pressing it upon the smooth surface of a stone or other object, he finds the stone can be lifted by means of the leather. reflecting upon each of these circumstances the mind comes to the following conclusions: air pressure holds this card to the glass, air pressure keeps the water in the tube, air pressure holds together the leather and the stone, .'. air exerts pressure. =how distinguished from, a. deduction, and b. conception.=--such a process as the above constitutes a process of reasoning, first, because the conclusion gives a new affirmation, or judgment, "air exerts pressure," and secondly, because the judgment is supposed to be arrived at by comparing other judgments. as a process of reasoning, however, it differs from deduction in that the final judgment is a general judgment, or truth, which seems to be based upon a number of particular judgments obtained from actual experience, while in deduction the conclusion was particular and the major premise general. it is for this reason that induction is defined as a process of going from the particular to the general. moreover, since induction leads to the formation of a universal judgment, or general truth, it differs from the generalizing process known as conception, which leads to the formation of a concept, or general idea. it is evident, however, that the process will enrich the concept involved in the new judgment. when the mind is able to affirm that air exerts pressure, the property, exerting-pressure, is at once synthesised into the notion air. this point will again be referred to in comparing induction and conception as generalizing processes. in speaking of induction as a process of going from the particular to the general, this does not signify that the process deals with individual notions. the particulars in an inductive process are particular cases giving rise to particular judgments, and judgments involve concepts, or general ideas. when, in the inductive process, it is asserted that air holds the card to the glass, the mind is seeking to establish a relation between the notions air and pressure, and is, therefore, thinking in concepts. for this reason, it is usually said that induction takes for granted ordinary relations as involved in our everyday concepts, and concerns itself only with the more hidden relations of things. the significance of induction as a process of going from the particular to the general, therefore, consists in the fact that the conclusion is held to be a wider judgment than is contained in any of the premises. =particular truth implies the general.=--describing the premises of an inductive process as particular truths, and the conclusion as a universal truth, however, involves the same fiction as was noted in separating the percept and the concept into two distinct types of notions. in the first place, my particular judgment, that air presses the card against the glass, is itself a deduction resting upon other general principles. secondly, if the judgment that air presses the card against the glass contains no element of universal truth, then a thousand such judgments could give no universal truth. moreover, if the mind approaches a process of induction with a problem, or hypothesis, before it, the general truth is already apprehended hypothetically in thought even before the particular instances are examined. when we set out, for instance, to investigate whether the line joining the bisecting points of the sides of a triangle is parallel with the base, we have accepted hypothetically the general principle that such lines are parallel with the base. the fact is, therefore, that when the mind examines the particular case and finds it to agree with the hypothesis, so far as it accepts this case as a truth, it also accepts it as a universal truth. although, therefore, induction may involve going from one particular experiment or observation to another, it is in a sense a process of going from the general to the general. that accepting the truth of a particular judgment may imply a universal judgment is very evident in the case of geometrical demonstrations. when it is shown, for instance, that in the case of the particular isosceles triangle abc, the angles at the base are equal, the mind does not require to examine other particular triangles for verification, but at once asserts that in every isosceles triangle the angles at the base are equal. =induction and conception interrelated.=--although as a process, induction is to be distinguished from conception, it either leads to an enriching of some concept, or may in fact be the only means by which certain scientific concepts are formed. while the images obtained by ordinary sense perception will enable a child to gain a notion of water, to add to the notion the property, boiling-at-a-certain-temperature, or able-to-be-converted-into-two-parts-hydrogen-and-one-part-oxygen, will demand a process of induction. the development of such scientific notions as oxide, equation, predicate adjective, etc., is also dependent upon a regular inductive process. for this reason many lessons may be viewed both as conceptual and as inductive lessons. to teach the adverb implies a conceptual process, because the child must synthesise certain attributes into his notion adverb. it is also an inductive lesson, because these attributes being formulated as definite judgments are, therefore, obtained inductively. the double character of such a lesson is fully indicated by the two results obtained. the lesson ends with the acquisition of a new term, adverb, which represents the result of the conceptual process. it also ends with the definition: "an adverb is a word which modifies a verb, adjective, or other adverb," which indicates the general truth or truths resulting from the inductive process. =deduction and induction interrelated.=--in our actual teaching processes there is a very close inter-relation between the two processes of reasoning. we have already noted on page that, in such inductive lessons as teaching the definition of a noun or the rule for the addition of fractions, both the preparatory step and the application involve deduction. it is to be noted further, however, that even in the development of an inductive lesson there is a continual interplay between induction and deduction. this will be readily seen in the case of a pupil seeking to discover the rule for determining the number of repeaters in the addition of recurring decimals. when he notes that adding three numbers with one, one, and two repeaters respectively, gives him two repeaters in his answer, he is more than likely to infer that the rule is to have in the answer the highest number found among the addenda. so far as he makes this inference, he undoubtedly will apply it in interpreting the next problem, and if the next numbers have one, one, and three repeaters respectively, he will likely be quite convinced that his former inference is correct. when, however, he meets a question with one, two, and three repeaters respectively, he finds his former inference is incorrect, and may, thereupon, draw a new inference, which he will now proceed to apply to further examples. the general fact to be noted here, however, is that, so far as the mind during the examination of the particular examples reaches any conclusion in an inductive lesson, it evidently applies this conclusion to some degree in the study of the further examples, or thinks deductively, even during the inductive process. =development of reasoning power.=--since reasoning is essentially a purposive form of thinking, it is evident that any reasoning process will depend largely upon the presence of some problem which shall stimulate the mind to seek out relations necessary to its solution. power to reason, therefore, is conditioned by the ability to attend voluntarily to the problem and discover the necessary relations. it is further evident that the accuracy of any reasoning process must be dependent upon the accuracy of the judgments upon which the conclusions are based. but these judgments in turn depend for their accuracy upon the accuracy of the concepts involved. correct reasoning, therefore, must depend largely upon the accuracy of our concepts, or, in other words, upon the old knowledge at our command. on the other hand, however, it has been seen that both deductive and inductive reasoning follow to some degree a systematic form. for this reason it may be assumed that the practice of these forms should have some effect in giving control of the processes. the child, for instance, who habituates himself to such thought processes as ab equals bc, and ac equals bc, therefore ab equals ac, no doubt becomes able thereby to grasp such relations more easily. granting so much, however, it is still evident that close attention to, and accurate knowledge of, the various terms involved in the reasoning process is the sure foundation of correct reasoning. chapter xxix feeling =sensuous and ideal feeling.=--we have noted (chapter xxiv), that in addition to the general feeling tone accompanying an act of attention, and already described as a feeling of interest, there are two important classes of feeling known respectively as sensuous and ideal feeling. when a person says: "i feel tired" or "i feel hungry," he is referring to the feeling side of certain organic sensations. when he says: "the air feels cold" or "the paper feels smooth," he is referring to the feeling side of temperature and touch sensations. these are, therefore, examples of sensuous feeling. on the other hand, to say "i feel angry" or "i feel afraid," is to refer to a feeling state which accompanies perhaps the perception of some object, the recollection or anticipation of some act, or the inference that something is sure to happen, etc. these latter states are therefore known as ideal feelings. =quality of feeling states.=--the qualities of our various feeling states are distinguished under two heads, pleasure and pain. it might seem at first sight that our feeling states will fall into a much larger number of classes distinguished by differences in quality, or tone. the taste of an orange, the smell of lavender, the touch of a hot stove, the appreciation of a fine piece of music, and the appreciation of a lofty poem, seem at first sight to yield different feelings. the supposed difference in the quality of the feelings is due, however, to a difference in the knowledge elements accompanying the feelings, or to the fact that they are discriminated as different experiences. the idea of the music or the poem is of a higher grade than the sensory image of taste, and accordingly the feelings _appear_ to be different. the feelings may, of course, differ in intensity, but in _quality_ they are either pleasant or unpleasant. conditions of feeling tone =a. neural.=--the quality, or tone, of a feeling will vary according to the intensity of the impression. great heat stimulates the nerves violently and the resultant feeling state is painful; warmth gives a moderate stimulation and the resultant tone is pleasant. excessive cold also, because it stimulates violently, produces a painful feeling. since the intensity of a stimulus varies according to the resistance encountered in the nervous arc, the quality of a feeling state must, therefore, vary according to the resistance. it is for this reason that an experience, at first very painful, may lose much of its tone by repetition. by repetition the nerve centres are adapted to the experience, resistance is lessened, and the accompanying pain diminished. in this way, some work or exercise, which is at first positively unpleasant, may at least become endurable as the organism becomes adapted to the occupation. from this point of view, it is sometimes said that any impressions to which we are perfectly adapted give pleasurable feelings, while, in other cases the resultant tone will be painful. =b. mental.=--the law of perfect adaptation also explains why ideal feelings may at one time result in a pleasant, and at another time in a painful, feeling tone. according to the principle of apperception, the new experience must organize itself with whatever thoughts and feelings are now occupying consciousness. it necessarily happens that a given experience does not always equally harmonize with our present thoughts and feelings. the recognition of a friend under ordinary circumstances is agreeable, but amid certain associations or in a certain environment, such recognition would be disagreeable. so, too, while an original experience may have been agreeable, the memory of it may now be disagreeable; and vice versa. for instance, the memory of a former success or prosperity may, in the midst of present failure and poverty, be disagreeable; while the recollection of former failure and defeat may now, in the midst of success and prosperity, be agreeable. what is it that makes a sensation, a perception, a memory, or an apprehended relation pleasant under some circumstances and unpleasant under others? the rule appears to be that when the experience harmonizes with our present train of thought, when it promotes our present interests and intentions, it is pleasant; but when, on the other hand, it does not harmonize with our train of thought or thwarts or impedes our interests and purposes, it is unpleasant. =function of pleasure and pain.=--from what has been noted concerning co-ordination between the adaptation of the organism to impression and the quality of the accompanying feeling, it is evident that pleasure and pain each have their part to play in promoting the ultimate good of the individual. pain is beneficial, because it lets us know that there is some misadjustment to our environment, and thereby warns us to remove or cease doing what is proving injurious. in this connection, it may be noted that no disease is so dangerous as one that fails to make its presence known through pain. pleasure also is valuable in so far as it results from perfect adaptation to a perfect environment, since it induces the individual to continue beneficial acts. it must be remembered, however, that so far as heredity or education has adapted our organism to improper stimuli, pleasure is no proof that the good of the organism is being advanced. in such cases, redemption can come to the fallen world only through suffering. =feeling and knowing.=--since the intensity of a feeling state is conditioned by the amount of resistance, an intense state of feeling is likely to be accompanied by a lowering of intellectual activity. for this reason excessive hunger, heat or cold, intense joy, anger or sorrow, are usually antagonistic to intellectual work. the explanation for this seems to be that so much of our nervous energy is consumed in overcoming the resistance in the centres affected, that little is left for ordinary intellectual processes. this does not, of course, imply that no one can do intellectual work under such conditions; nor that the intellectual man is always devoid of strong feelings, although such is often the case. occasionally, however, a man is so strongly endowed with nervous energy, that even after overcoming the resistance being encountered, he still has a residue of energy to devote to ordinary intellectual processes. =feeling and will.=--although, as pointed out in the last paragraph, there is a certain antagonism between knowing and feeling, it has also been seen that every experience has its knowing as well as its feeling side. because of this co-ordination, the qualities of our feeling states become known to us, or are able to be distinguished by the mind. as a result of this recognition of a difference in our feeling states, we learn to seek states of pleasure and to avoid states of pain or, in other words, our mere states of feeling become desires. this means that we become able to contrast a present feeling with other remembered states, and seek either to continue the present desired state or to substitute another for the present undesirable feeling. in the form of desire, therefore, our feelings become strong motives, which may influence the will to certain lines of action. sensuous feelings while the sensations of the special senses, namely, sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell, have each their affective, or feeling, side, a minute study of these feelings is not necessary for our present purpose. it may be noted, however, that in the more intellectual senses, namely, sight, hearing, and touch, feeling tone is less marked, although strong feeling may accompany certain tactile sensations. in the lower senses of taste and smell, the feeling tone is more pronounced. under muscular sensation we meet such marked feeling tones as fatigue, exertion, and strain, while associated with the organic sensations are such feelings as hunger and thirst, and the various pains which usually accompany derangement and disease of the bodily organs. some of these feelings are important, because they are likely to influence the will by developing into desires in the form of appetites. many sensuous feelings are important also because they especially warn the mind regarding the condition of the organism. emotion =nature of emotion.=--an emotion differs from sensuous feeling, not in its content, but in its higher intensity, its greater complexity, and its more elaborate motor response. it may be defined as a succession of interconnected feelings with a more complex physical expression than a simple feeling. on reading an account of a battle, one may feel sad and express this sadness only in a gloomy appearance of the face. but if one finds that in this battle a friend has been killed, the feeling is much intensified and may become an emotion of grief, expressing itself in some complex way, perhaps in tears, in sobbing, in wringing the hands. similarly, a feeling of slight irritation expressed in a frowning face, if intensified, becomes the emotion of anger, expressed in tense muscles, rapidly beating heart, laboured breathing, perhaps a torrent of words or a hasty blow. =emotion and instinct.=--feeling and instinct are closely related. every instinct has its affective phase, that is, its satisfaction always involves an element of pleasure or pain. the satisfaction of the instincts of curiosity or physical activity illustrates this fact. on the other hand, every emotion has its characteristic instinctive response. fear expresses itself in all persons alike in certain characteristic ways inherited from a remote ancestry; anger expresses itself in other instinctive reactions; grief in still others. conditions of emotion an analysis of a typical emotion will serve to show the conditions under which it makes its appearance. let us take first the emotion of fear. suppose a person is walking alone on a dark night along a deserted street. his nervous currents are discharging themselves uninterruptedly over their wonted channels, his current of thought is unimpeded. suddenly there appears a strange and frightful object in his pathway. his train of thought is violently checked. his nervous currents, which a moment ago were passing out smoothly and without undue resistance into muscles of legs, arms, body, and face, are now suddenly obstructed, or in other words encounter violent resistance. he stands still. his heart momentarily stops beating. a temporary paralysis seizes him. as the nervous currents thus encounter resistance, the feeling tone known as fear is experienced. at the same time the currents burst their barriers and overflow into new channels that are easy of access, the motor centres being especially of this character. some of the currents, therefore, run to the involuntary muscles, and in consequence the heart beats faster, the breathing becomes heavier, the face grows pale, a cold sweat breaks forth, the hair "stands on end." other currents, through hereditary influences, pass to the voluntary muscles, and the person shrieks, and turns and flees. or take the emotion of anger. some fine morning in school everything is in good order, everybody is industriously at work, the lessons are proceeding satisfactorily. the current of the teacher's experience is flowing smoothly and unobstructedly. presently a troublesome boy, who has been repeatedly reproved for misconduct, again shows symptoms of idleness and misbehaviour. the smooth current of experience being checked, here also both a new feeling tone is experienced and the wonted nerve currents flow out into other brain centres. the teacher stops his work and gazes fixedly at the offending pupil. his heart beats rapidly, the blood surges to his face, his breathing becomes heavy, his muscles grow tense. in these reactions we have the nervous currents passing out over involuntary channels. then, perhaps, the teacher unfortunately breaks forth into a torrent of words or lays violent hands upon the offender. here the nervous currents are passing outward over the voluntary system. these illustrations indicate that three important conditions are present at the appearance of the emotion, namely, ( ) the presence of an unusual object in consciousness, ( ) the consequent disturbance of the smooth flow of experience or, in physiological terms, the temporary obstruction of the ordinary pathways of nervous discharge through the great resistance encountered, and ( ) the new feeling state with its concomitant overflow of the impulses into new motor channels, some of which lead to the involuntary muscles and others to the voluntary. the emotion proper consists in the feeling state which arises as a result of the resistance encountered by the nervous impulses as the smooth flow of experience is checked. the idea that i shall die some day arouses no emotion in me, because it in no way affects my ordinary thought processes, and therefore it in no way disturbs my nervous equilibrium. the perception of a wild animal about to kill me, because it suddenly thwarts and impedes the smooth flow of my experience through a suggestion of danger, produces an intense feeling and a diffused and intense derangement of the nervous equilibrium. =development of emotions.=--the question of paramount importance in connection with emotion is how to arouse and develop desirable emotions. the close connection of the three phases of the mind's manifestation--knowing, feeling, and willing, gives the key to the question. feeling cannot be developed alone apart from knowing and willing. in fact, if we attend carefully to the knowing and willing activities, the feelings, in one sense, take care of themselves. two principles, therefore, lie at the basis of proper emotional development: . the mind must be allowed to dwell upon only those ideas to which worthy emotions are attached. we must refuse to think those thoughts that are tinged with unworthy feelings. the apostle paul has expressed this very eloquently when he says in his epistle to the philippians: "finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." . the teacher's main duty in the above regard is to provide the pupil with a rich fund of ideas to which desirable feelings cling. an impressive manner, an enthusiastic attitude toward subjects of study, an evident interest in them, and apparent appreciation of them, will also aid much in inspiring pupils with proper feelings, for feelings are often contagious in the absence of very definite ideas. how often have we been deeply moved by hearing a poem impressively read even though we have very imperfectly grasped its meaning. the feelings of the reader have been communicated to us through the principle of contagion. similarly, in history, art, and nature study, emotions may be stirred, not only through the medium of the ideas presented, but also by the impressiveness, the enthusiasm, and the interest exhibited by the teacher in presenting them. . we must give expression to these emotions we wish to develop. expression means the probability of the recurrence of the emotion, and gradually an emotional habit is formed. an unselfish disposition is cultivated by performing little acts of kindness and self-denial whenever the opportunity offers. the expression of a desirable emotion, moreover, should not stop merely with an experience of the organic sensations or the reflex reactions accompanying the emotion. to listen to a sermon and react only by an emotional thrill, a quickened heart beat, or a few tears, is a very ineffective kind of expression. the only kind of emotional expression that is of much consequence either to ourselves or others is conduct. only in so far as our emotional experiences issue in action that is beneficial to those about us, are they of any practical value. =elimination of emotions.=--since certain of our emotions, such as anger and fear, are, in general, undesirable states of feeling, a question arises how such emotions may be prevented. it is sometimes said that, if we can inhibit the expression, the emotion will disappear, that is, if i can prevent the trembling, i will cease to be afraid. from what has just been learned, however, the emotion and its expression being really concomitant results of the antecedent obstruction of ordinary nervous discharges, emotion cannot be checked by checking the expression, but both will be checked if the nervous impulses can be made to continue in their wonted courses in spite of the disturbing presentations. the real secret of emotional control lies, therefore, in the power of voluntary attention. the effect of attention is to cause the nervous energy to be directed without undue resistance into its wonted channels, this, in turn, preventing its overflow into new channels. by thus directing the energy into wonted and open channels, attention prevents both the movements and the feeling that are concomitants of a disturbance of nervous equilibrium. by meeting the attack of the dog in a purposeful and attentive manner, we cause the otherwise damming-up nervous energy to continue flowing into ordinary channels, and in this way prevent both the feeling of fear and also the flow of the energy into the motor centres associated with the particular emotion. but while it is not scientifically correct in a particular case to say that we may inhibit the feeling by inhibiting the movements, it is of course true that, by avoiding a present emotional outburst, we are less likely in the future to respond to situations which tend to arouse the emotional state. on the other hand, to give way frequently to any emotional state will make it more difficult to avoid yielding to the emotion under similar conditions. other types of feeling =mood.=--our feelings and emotions become organized and developed in various ways. the sum total of all the feeling tones of our sensory and ideational processes at any particular time gives us our _mood_ at that time. if, for instance, our organic sensations are prevailingly pleasant, if the ideas we dwell upon are tinged with agreeable feeling, our mood is cheerful. we can to a large extent control our current of thought, and can as we will, except in case of serious bodily disturbances, attend, or not attend, to our organic sensations. consequently we are ourselves largely responsible for the moods we indulge. =disposition.=--a particular kind of mood frequently indulged in produces a type of emotional habit, our _disposition_. for instance, the teacher who permits the occurrences of the class-room to trouble him unnecessarily, and who broods over these afterwards, soon develops a worrying disposition. as we have it in our power to determine what habits, emotional and otherwise, we form, we alone are responsible for the dispositions we cultivate. =temperament.=--some of us are provided with nervous systems that are predisposed to particular moods. this predisposition, together with frequent indulgence in particular types of mood, gives us our _temperament_. the responsibility for this we share with our ancestors, but, even though predisposed through heredity to unfortunate moods, we can ourselves decide whether we shall give way to them. temperaments have been classified as _sanguine_, _melancholic_, _choleric_, and _phlegmatic_. the sanguine type is inclined to look on the bright side of things, to be optimistic; the melancholic tends to moodiness and gloom; the choleric is easily irritated, quick to anger; the phlegmatic is not easily aroused to emotion, is cold and sluggish. an individual seldom belongs exclusively to one type. =sentiments.=--certain emotional tendencies become organized about an object and constitute a _sentiment_. the sentiment of love for our mother had its basis in our childhood in the perception of her as the source of numberless experiences involving pleasant feeling tones. as we grew older, we understood better her solicitude for our welfare and her sacrifices for our sake--further experiences involving a large feeling element. thus there grew up about our mother an organized system of emotional tendencies, our sentiment of filial love. such sentiments as patriotism, religious faith, selfishness, sympathy, arise and develop in the same way. compared with moods, sentiments are more permanent in character and involve more complex knowledge elements. moreover, they do not depend upon physiological conditions as do moods. one's organic sensations may affect one's mood to a considerable extent, but will scarcely influence one's patriotism or filial love. chapter xxx the will voluntary control of action =types of movement.=--closely associated with the problem of voluntary attention is that of voluntary movement, or control of action. it is an evident fact that the infant can at first exercise no conscious control over his bodily movements. he has, it is true, certain reflex and instinctive tendencies which enable him to react in a definite way to certain special stimuli. in such cases, however, there is no conscious control of the movements, the bodily organs merely responding in a definite way whenever the proper stimulus is present. the eye, for instance, must wink when any foreign matter affects it; wry movements of the face must accompany the bitter taste; and the body must start at a sudden noise. at other times, bodily movements may be produced in a more spontaneous way. here the physical energy stored within the system gives rise to bodily activity and causes those random impulsive movements so evident during infancy and early childhood. when these movements, which are the only ones possible to very early childhood, are compared with the movements of a workman placing the brick in the wall or of an artist executing a delicate piece of carving, there is found in the latter movements the conscious idea of a definite end, or object, to be reached. to gain control of one's movements is, therefore, to acquire an ability to direct bodily actions toward the attainment of a given end. thus a question arises as to the process by which a child attains to this bodily control. =ideas of movements acquired.=--although, as pointed out above, a child's early instinctive and impulsive movements are not under conscious control, they nevertheless become conscious acts, in the sense that the movements are soon realized in idea. the movements, in other words, give rise to conscious states, and these in turn are retained as portions of past experience. for instance, although the child at first grasps the object only impulsively, he nevertheless soon obtains an idea, or experience, of what it means to grasp with the hand. so, also, although he may first stretch the limb impulsively or make a wry face reflexively, he secures, in a short time, ideas representative of these movements. as the child thus obtains ideas representative of different bodily movements, he is able ultimately, by fixing his attention upon any movement, to produce it in a voluntary way. =development of control: a. ideo-motor action.=--at first, on account of the close association between the thought centres and the motor centres causing the act, the child seems to have little ability to check the act, whenever its representative idea enters consciousness. it is for this reason that young children often perform such seemingly unreasonable acts as, for instance, slapping another person, kicking and throwing objects, etc. in such cases, however, it must not be assumed that these are always deliberate acts. more often the act is performed simply because the image of the act arises in the child's mind, and his control of the motor discharge is so weak that the act follows immediately upon the idea. this same tendency frequently manifests itself even in the adult. as one thinks intently of some favourite game, he may suddenly find himself taking a bodily position used in playing that game. it is by the same law also that the impulsive man tends to act out in gesture any act that he may be describing in words. such a type of action is described as ideo-motor action. =b. deliberate action.=--because the child in time gains ideas of various movements and an ability to fix his attention upon them, he thus becomes able to set one motor image against another as possible lines of action. one image may suggest to slap; the other to caress; the one to pull the weeds in the flower bed; the other, to lie down in the hammock. but attention is ultimately able, as noted in the last chapter, so to control the impulse and resistance in the proper nervous centres that the acts themselves may be indefinitely suspended. thus the mind becomes able to conceive lines of action and, by controlling bodily movement, gain time to consider the effectiveness of these toward the attainment of any end. when a bodily movement thus takes place in relation to some conscious end in view, it is termed a deliberate act. one important result of physical exercises with the young child is that they develop in him this deliberate control of bodily movements. the same may be said also of any orderly modes of action employed in the general management of the school. regular forms of assembly and dismissal, of moving about the class-room, etc., all tend to give the child this same control over his acts. =action versus result.=--as already noted, however, most of our movements soon develop into fixed habits. for this reason our bodily acts are usually performed more or less unconsciously, that is, without any deliberation as to the mere act itself. for this reason, we find that when bodily movements are held in check, or inhibited, in order to allow time for deliberation, attention usually fixes itself, not upon the acts themselves, but rather upon the results of these acts. for instance, a person having an axe and a saw may wish to divide a small board into two parts. although the axe may be in his hand, he is thinking, not how he is to use the axe, but how it will result if he uses this to accomplish the end. in the same way he considers, not how to use the saw, but the result of using the saw. by inhibiting the motor impulses which would lead to the use of either of these, the individual is able to note, say, that to use the axe is a quick, but inaccurate, way of gaining the end; to use the saw, a slow, but accurate, way. the present need being interpreted as one where only an approximate division is necessary, attention is thereupon given wholly to the images tending to promote this action; resistance is thus overcome in these centres, and the necessary motor discharges for using the axe are given free play. here, however, the mind evidently does not deliberate on how the hands are to use the axe or the saw, but rather upon the results following the use of these. volition =nature of will.=--when voluntary attention is fixed, as above, upon the results of conflicting lines of action, the mind is said to experience a conflict of desires, or motives. so long as this conflict lasts, physical expression is inhibited, the mind deliberating upon and comparing the conflicting motives. for instance, a pupil on his way to school may be thrown into a conflict of motives. on the one side is a desire to remain under the trees near the bank of the stream; on the other a desire to obey his parents, and go to school. so long as these desires each press themselves upon the attention, there results an inhibiting of the nervous motor discharge with an accompanying mental state of conflict, or indecision. this prevents, for the time being, any action, and the youth deliberates between the two possible lines of conduct. as he weighs the various elements of pleasure on the one hand and of duty on the other, the one desire will finally appear the stronger. this constitutes the person's choice, or decision, and a line of action follows in accordance with the end, or motive, chosen. this mental choice, or decision, is usually termed an act of will. =attention in will.=--such a choice between motives, however, evidently involves an act of voluntary attention. what really goes on in consciousness in such a conflict of motives is that voluntary attention makes a single problem of the twofold situation--school versus play. to this problem the attention marshals relative ideas and selects and adjusts them to the complex problem. finally these are built into an organized experience which solves the problem as one, say, of going to school. the so-called choice is, therefore, merely the mental solution of the situation; the necessary bodily action follows in an habitual manner, once the attention lessens the resistance in the appropriate centres. =factors in volitional act.=--such an act of volition, or will, is usually analysed in the following steps: . conflicting desires . deliberation--weighing of motives . choice--solving the problem . expression. as a mental process, however, an act of will does not include the fourth step--expression. the mind has evidently willed, the moment a conclusion, or choice, is reached in reference to the end in view. if, therefore, i stand undecided whether to paint the house white or green, an act of will has taken place when the conclusion, or mental decision, has been reached to paint the house green. on the other hand, however, only the man who forms a decision and then resolutely works out his decision through actual expression, will be credited with a strong will by the ordinary observer. =physical conditions of will.=--deliberation being but a special case of giving voluntary attention to a selected problem, it involves the same expenditure of nervous energy in overcoming resistance within the brain centres as was seen to accompany any act of voluntary attention. such being the case, our power of will at any given time is likely to vary in accordance with our bodily condition. the will is relatively weak during sickness, for instance, because the normal amount of nervous energy which must accompany the mental processes of deliberation and choice is not able to be supplied. for the same reason, lack of food and sleep, working in bad air, etc., are found to weaken the will for facing a difficulty, though we may nevertheless feel that it is something that ought to be done. an added reason, therefore, why the victim of alcohol and narcotics finds it difficult to break his habit is that the use of these may permanently lessen the energy of the nervous organism. in facing the difficult task of breaking an old habit, therefore, this person has rendered the task doubly difficult, because the indulgence has weakened his will for undertaking the struggle of breaking an old habit. on the other hand, good food, sleep, exercise in the fresh air, by quickening the blood and generating nervous energy, in a sense strengthens the will in undertaking the duties and responsibilities before it. abnormal types of will =the impulsive will.=--one important problem in the education of the will is found in the relation of deliberation to choice. as is the case in a process of learning, the mind in deliberating must draw upon past experiences, must select and weigh conflicting ideas in a more or less intelligent manner, and upon this basis finally make its choice. a first characteristic of a person of will, therefore, is to be able to deliberate intelligently upon any different lines of action which may present themselves. but in the case of many individuals, there seems a lack of this power of deliberation. on every hand they display almost a childlike impulsiveness, rushing blindly into action, and always following up the word with the blow. this type, which is spoken of as an impulsive will, is likely to prevail more or less among young children. it is essential, therefore, that the teacher should take this into account in dealing with the moral and the practical actions of these children. it should be seen that such children in their various exercises are made to inhibit their actions sufficiently to allow them to deliberate and choose between alternative modes of action. for this purpose typical forms of constructive work will be found of educational value. in such exercises situations may be continually created in which the pupil must deliberate upon alternative lines of action and make his choice accordingly. =the retarded will.=--in some cases a type of will is met in which the attention seems unable to lead deliberation into a state of choice. like hamlet, the person keeps ever weighing whether _to be or not to be_ is the better course. such people are necessarily lacking in achievement, although always intending to do great things in the future. this type of will is not so prevalent among young children; but if met, the teacher should, as far as possible, encourage the pupil to pass more rapidly from thought to action. =the sluggish will.=--a third and quite common defect of will is seen where the mind is either too ignorant or too lazy to do the work of deliberating. while such characters are not impulsive, they tend to follow lines of action merely by habit, or in accordance with the direction of others, and do little thinking for themselves. the only remedy for such people is, of course, to quicken their intellectual life. unless this can be done, the goodness of their character must depend largely upon the nobility of those who direct the formation of their habits and do their thinking for them. =development of will.=--by recalling what has been established concerning the learning process, we may learn that most school exercises, when properly conducted, involve the essential facts of an act of will. in an ordinary school exercise, the child first has before him a certain aim, or problem, and then must select from former experience the related ideas which will enable him to solve this problem. so far, however, as the child is led to select and reject for himself these interpreting ideas, he must evidently go through a process similar to that of an ordinary act of will. when, for example, the child faces the problem of finding out how many yards of carpet of a certain width will cover the floor of a room, he must first decide how to find the number of strips required. having come to a decision on this point, he must next give expression to his decision by actually working out this part of the problem. in like manner, he must now decide how to proceed with the next step in his problem and, having come to a conclusion on this point, must also give it expression by performing the necessary mathematical processes. it is for this reason, that the ordinary lessons and exercises of the school, when presented to the children as actual problems, constitute an excellent means for developing will power. =the essentials of moral character.=--it must be noted finally, that will power is a third essential factor in the attainment of real moral character, or social efficiency. we have learned that man, through the possession of an intelligent nature, is able to grasp the significance of his experience and thus form comprehensive plans and purposes for the regulation of his conduct. we have noted further that, through the development of right feeling, he may come to desire and plan for the attainment of only such ends as make for righteousness. yet, however noble his desires, and however intelligent and comprehensive his plans and purposes, it is only as he develops a volitional personality, or determination of character which impels toward the attainment of these noble ends through intelligent plans, that man can be said to live the truly efficient life. self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, these three alone lead life to sovereign power. in this connection, also, we cannot do better than quote huxley's description of an educated man, as given in his essay on _a liberal education_, a description which may be considered to crystallize the true conception of an efficient citizen: that man, i think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of nature, and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself. chapter xxxi child study =scope and purpose of child study.=--by child study is meant the observation of the general characteristics and the leading individual differences exhibited by children during the periods of infancy, childhood, and adolescence. its purpose is to gather facts regarding childhood and formulate them into principles that are applicable in education. from the teacher's standpoint, the purpose is to be able to adapt intelligently his methods in each subject to the child's mind at the different stages of its development. in the education of the child we have our eyes fixed, at least partly, upon his future. the aim of education is usually stated in terms of what the child is to _become_. he is to become a socially efficient individual, to be fitted to live completely, to develop a good moral character, to have his powers of mind and body harmoniously developed. all these aims look toward the future. but what the child _becomes_ depends upon what he _is_. education, in its broadest sense, means taking the individual's present equipment of mind and body and so using it as to enable him to become something else in the future. the teacher must be concerned, therefore, not only with what he wishes the child to _become_ in the future, but also with what he _is_, here and now. =importance to the teacher.=--the adaptation of matter and method to the child's tendencies, capacities, and interests, which all good teaching demands, is possible only through an understanding of his nature. the teacher must have regard, not only to the materials and the method used in training, but also to the being who is to be trained. a knowledge of child nature will prevent expensive mistakes and needless waste. a few typical examples will serve to illustrate the immense importance a knowledge of child nature is to his teacher. . as has been already explained, when the teacher knows something about the instincts of children, he will utilize these tendencies in his teaching and work with them, not against them. he will, wherever possible, make use of the play instinct in his lessons, as for example, when he makes the multiplication drill a matter of climbing a stairway without stumbling or crossing a stream on stones without falling in. he will use the instinct of physical activity in having children learn number combinations by manipulating blocks, or square measure by actually measuring surfaces, or fractions by using scissors and strips of cardboard, or geographical features by modelling in sand and clay. he will use the imitative instinct in cultivating desirable personal habits, such as neatness, cleanliness, and order, and in modifying conduct through the inspiring presentation of history and literature. he will provide exercise for the instinct of curiosity by suggesting interesting problems in geography and nature study. . when the teacher understands the principle of eliminating undesirable tendencies by substitution, he will not regard as cardinal sins the pushing, pinching, and kicking in which boys give vent to their excess energy, but will set about directing this purposeless activity into more profitable channels. he will thus substitute another means of expression for the present undesirable means. he will, for instance, give opportunity for physical exercises, paper-folding and cutting, cardboard work, wood-work, drawing, colour work, modelling, etc., so far as possible in all school subjects. he will try to transform the boy who teases and bullies the smaller boys into a guardian and protector. he will try to utilize the boy's tendency to collect useless odds and ends by turning it into the systematic and purposeful collection of plants, insects, specimens of soils, specimens illustrating phases of manufactures, postage stamps, coins, etc. . when the teacher knows that the interests of pupils have much to do with determining their effort, he will endeavour to seize upon these interests when most active. he will thus be saved such blunders as teaching in december a literature lesson on _an apple orchard in the spring_, or assigning a composition on "tobogganing" in june, because he realizes that the interest in these topics is not then active. each season, each month of the year, each festival and holiday has its own particular interests, which may be effectively utilized by the presentation of appropriate materials in literature, in composition, in nature study, and in history. a current event may be taken advantage of to teach an important lesson in history or civics. for instance, an election may be made the occasion of a lesson on voting by ballot, a miniature election being conducted for that purpose. . when the teacher appreciates the extent of the capacities of children, he will not make too heavy demands upon their powers of logical reasoning by introducing too soon the study of formal grammar or the solution of difficult arithmetical problems. when he knows that the period from eight to twelve is the habit-forming period, he will stress, during these years such things as mechanical accuracy in the fundamental rules in arithmetic, the memorization of gems of poetry, and the cultivation of right physical and moral habits. when he knows the influence of motor expression in giving definiteness, vividness, and permanency to ideas, he will have much work in drawing, modelling, constructive work, dramatization, and oral and written expression. methods of child study =a. observation.=--from the teacher's standpoint the method of observation of individual children is the most practicable. he has the material for his observations constantly before him. he soon discovers that one pupil is clever, another dull; that one excels in arithmetic, another in history; that one is inclined to jump to conclusions, another is slow and deliberate. he is thus able to adapt his methods to meet individual requirements. but however advantageous this may be from the practical point of view, it must be noted that the facts thus secured are individual and not universal. such child study does not in itself carry one very far. to be of real value to the teacher, these particular facts must be recognized as illustrative of a general law. when the teacher discovers, for instance, that nobody in his class responds very heartily to an abstract discussion of the rabbit, but that everybody is intensely interested when the actual rabbit is observed, he may regard the facts as illustrating the general principle that children need to be appealed to through the senses. likewise when he obtains poor results in composition on the topic, "how i spent my summer holidays," but excellent results on "how to plant bulbs," especially after the pupils have planted a bed of tulips on the front lawn, he may infer the law, that the best work is obtained when the matter is closely associated with the active interests of pupils. by watching the children when they are on the school grounds, the teacher may observe how far the occupations of the home, or a current event, such as a circus, an election, or a war, influences the play of the children. thus the method of observation requires that not only individual facts should be obtained, but also that general principles should be inferred on the basis of these. care must be taken, however, that the facts observed justify the inference. =b. experiment.=--an experiment in any branch of science means the observation of results under controlled conditions. experimental child study must, to a large extent, therefore, be relegated to the psychological laboratory. such experiments as the localization of cutaneous impressions, the influence of certain operations on fatigue, or the discovery of the length of time necessary for a conscious reaction, can be successfully carried out only with more or less elaborate equipment and under favourable conditions. however, the school offers opportunity for some simple yet practical experiments in child study. the teacher may discover experimentally what is the most favourable period at which to place a certain subject on the school programme, whether, for instance, it is best to take mechanical arithmetic when the minds of the pupils are fresh or when they are weary, or whether the writing lesson had better be taught immediately after the strenuous play at recess or at a time when the muscles are rested. he may find out the response of the pupils to problems in arithmetic closely connected with their lives (for example, in a rural community problems relating to farm activities), as compared with their response to problems involving more or less remote ideas. he may discover to what extent concentration in securing neat exercises in one subject, composition for instance, affects the exercises in other subjects in which neatness has not been explicitly demanded. this latter experiment might throw some light upon the much debated question of formal discipline. in all these cases the teacher must be on his guard not to accept as universal principles what he has found to be true of a small group of pupils, until at least he has found his conclusions verified by other experimenters. =c. direct questions.=--this method involves the submission of questions to pupils of a particular age or grade, collecting and classifying their answers, and basing conclusions upon these. much work in this direction has been done in recent years by certain educators, and much illuminating and more or less useful material has been collected. a good deal of light has been thrown upon the apperceptive material that children have possession of by noting their answers to such questions as: "have you ever seen the stars? a robin? a pig? where does milk come from? where do potatoes come from?" etc., etc. the practical value of this method lies in the insight it gives into the interests of children, the kind of imagery they use, and the relationships they have set up among their ideas. every teacher has been surprised at times at the absurd answers given by children. these absurdities are usually due to the teacher's taking for granted that the pupils have possession of certain old knowledge that is actually absent. the moral of such occurrences is that he should examine very carefully what "mind stuff" the pupils have for interpreting the new material. =d. biographical studies of individual children.=--many books have been written describing the development of individual children. these descriptions doubtless contain much that is typical of all children, but one must be careful not to argue too much from an individual case. such records are valuable as confirmatory evidence of what has already been observed in connection with other children, or as suggestive of what may be looked for in them. periods of development the period covered by child study may be roughly divided into three parts, namely, ( ) infancy, extending from birth to three years of age, ( ) childhood, from three to twelve, and ( ) adolescence, from twelve to eighteen. while children during each of these periods exhibit striking dissimilarities one from another, there are nevertheless many characteristics that are fairly universal during each period. . infancy =a. physical characteristics.=--one of the striking features of infancy is the rapidity with which command of the bodily organs is secured. starting with a few inherited reflexes, the child at three years of age has attained fairly complete control of his sense organs and bodily movements, though he lacks that co-ordination of muscles by which certain delicate effects of hand and voice are produced. the relative growth is greater at this than at any subsequent period. another prominent characteristic is the tendency to incessant movement. the constant handling, exploring, and analysing of objects enhances the child's natural thirst for knowledge, and he probably obtains a larger stock of ideas during the first three years of his life than during any equal period subsequently. =b. mental characteristics.=--a conspicuous feature of infancy is the imitative tendency, which early manifests itself. through this means the child acquires many of his movements, his language power, and the simple games he plays. sense impressions begin to lose their fleeting character and to become more permanent. as evidence of this, few children remember events farther back than their third year, while many can distinctly recall events of the third and fourth years even after the lapse of a long period of time. the child at this period begins to compare, classify, and generalize in an elementary way, though his ideas are still largely of the concrete variety. his attention is almost entirely non-voluntary; he is interested in objects and activities for themselves alone, and not for the sake of an end. he is, as yet, unable to conceive remote ends, the prime condition of voluntary attention. his ideas of right and wrong conduct are associated with the approval and disapproval of those about him. . childhood =a. physical characteristics.=--in the earlier period of childhood, from three to seven years, bodily growth is very rapid. much of the vital force is thus consumed, and less energy is available for physical activity. the child has also less power of resistance and is thus susceptible to the diseases of childhood. his movements are for the same reason lacking in co-ordination. in the later period, from seven to twelve years, the bodily growth is less rapid, more energy is available for physical activity, and the co-ordination of muscles is greater. the brain has now reached its maximum size and weight, any further changes being due to the formation of associative pathways along nerve centres. this is, therefore, pre-eminently the habit-forming period. from the physical standpoint this means that those activities that are essentially habitual must have their genesis during the period between seven and twelve if they are to function perfectly in later life. the mastery of a musical instrument must be begun then if technique is ever to be perfect. if a foreign language is to be acquired, it should be begun in this period, or there will always be inaccuracies in pronunciation and articulation. =b. mental characteristics.=--the instinct of curiosity is very active in the earlier period of childhood, and this, combined with greater language power, leads to incessant questionings on the part of the child. he wants to know what, where, why, and how, in regard to everything that comes under his notice, and fortunate indeed is that child whose parent or teacher is sufficiently long-suffering to give satisfactory answers to his many and varied questions. to ignore the inquiries of the child, or to return impatient or grudging answers may inhibit the instinct and lead later to a lack of interest in the world about him. the imitative instinct is also still active and reveals itself particularly in the child's play, which in the main reflects the activities of those about him. he plays horse, policeman, school, indian, in imitation of the occupations of others. parents and teachers should depend largely upon this imitative tendency to secure desirable physical habits, such as erect and graceful carriage, cleanliness of person, orderly arrangement of personal belongings, neatness in dress, etc. the imagination is exceedingly active during childhood, fantastic and unregulated in the earlier period, under better control and direction in the later. it reveals itself in the love of hearing, reading, or inventing stories. the imitative play mentioned above is one phase of imaginative activity. the child's ideas of conduct, in this earlier stage of childhood, are derived from the pleasure or pain of their consequences. he has as yet little power of subordinating his lower impulses to an ideal end, and hence is not properly a moral being. good conduct must, therefore, be secured principally through the exercise of arbitrary authority from without. in the later period of childhood, acquired interests begin to be formed and, coincident with this, active attention appears. the child begins to be interested in the product, not merely in the process. the mind at this period is most retentive of sense impressions. this is consequently the time to bring the child into immediate contact with his environment through his senses, in such departments as nature study and field work in geography. thus is laid the basis of future potentialities of imagery, and through it appreciation of literature. on account of the acuteness of sense activity at this period, this is also the time for memorization of fine passages of prose and poetry. the child's thinking is still of the pictorial rather than of the abstract order, though the powers of generalization and language are considerably extended. the social interests are not yet strong, and hence co-operation for a common purpose is largely absent. his games show a tendency toward individualism. when co-operative games are indulged in, he is usually willing to sacrifice the interests of his team to his own personal glorification. . adolescence =a. physical characteristics.=--in early adolescence the characteristic physical accompaniments of early childhood are repeated, namely, rapid growth and lack of muscular co-ordination. from twelve to fifteen, girls grow more rapidly than boys and are actually taller and heavier than boys at corresponding ages. from fifteen onward, however, the boys rapidly outstrip the girls in growth. lack of muscular co-ordination is responsible for the awkward movements, ungainly appearance, ungraceful carriage, with their attendant self-consciousness, so characteristic of both boys and girls in early adolescence. =b. mental characteristics.=--ideas are gradually freed from their sensory accompaniments. the child thinks in symbols rather than in sensory images. consequently there is a greater power of abstraction and reflective thought. this is therefore the period for emphasizing those subjects requiring logical reasoning, for example, mathematics, science, and the reflective aspects of grammar, history, and geography. from association with others or from literature and history, ideals begin to be formed which influence conduct. this is brought about largely through the principle of suggestion. in the early years of adolescence children are very susceptible to suggestions, but the suggestive ideas must be introduced by a person who is trusted, admired, or loved, or under circumstances inspiring these feelings; hence the importance to the adolescent of having teachers of strong and inspiring personality. however, if the suggestive idea is to influence action, it must be introduced in such a way as not to set up a reaction against it. reaction will be set up if the idea is antagonistic to the present ideas, feelings, or aims, or if it is so persistently thrust upon the child that he begins to suspect that he is being unduly influenced. to avoid reaction the parent or teacher should introduce suggestive ideas indirectly. for instance, while the mind is concentrated upon one set of ideas, a suggestive idea that would otherwise be distasteful may be tolerated. it may lie latent for a time, and when it recurs it may be regarded as original, under which condition it is likely to issue in action. the adolescent stage is the period of greatest emotional development, and care should therefore be exercised to have the child's mind dwell upon only those ideas with which worthy emotions are associated. the emotional bent, whether good or bad, is determined to a large extent during this period of adolescence. so far as morality is the subordination of primitive instincts to higher ideas, the child now becomes a moral being. his conduct is now determined by reason and by ideals, and the primitive pleasure-pain motives disappear. it follows that coercion and arbitrary authority have little place in discipline at this period. social interests are prominent, evidenced by the tendency to co-operate with others for a common end. the games of the period are mainly of the co-operative variety and are marked by a willingness to sacrifice personal interests for the sake of the team, or side. individual differences while, as noted above, all children have certain common characteristics at each of the three periods of development, it is even more apparent that every child is in many respects different from every other child. he has certain peculiarities that demand particular treatment. it is evident that it would be impossible to enumerate all the individual differences in children. the most that can be done is to classify the most striking differences and endeavour to place individual children in one or other of these classes. =a. differences in thought.=--one of the obvious classifications of pupils is that of "quick" and "slow." the former learns easily, but often forgets quickly; the latter learns slowly, but usually retains well. the former is keen and alert; the latter, dull and passive. the former frequently lacks perseverance; the latter is often tenacious and persistent. the former unjustly wins applause for his cleverness; the latter, equally unjustly, wins contempt for his dulness. the teacher must not be unfair to the dull plodder, who in later years may frequently outstrip his brilliant competitor in the race of life. some pupils think better in the abstract, others, in the concrete. the former will analyse and parse well in grammar, distinguish fine shades of meaning in language, manage numbers skilfully, or work out chemical equations accurately. the latter will be more successful in doing things, for instance, measuring boards, planning and planting a garden plot, making toys, designing dolls' clothes, and cooking. the schools of the past have all emphasized the ability to think in the abstract, and to a large extent ignored the ability to think in the concrete. this is unfair to the one class of thinkers. from the ranks of those who think in the abstract have come the great statesmen, poets, and philosophers; from the ranks of those who think in the concrete have come the carpenters, builders, and inventors. it will be admitted that the world owes as great a debt from the practical standpoint to the latter class as to the former. let the school not despise or ignore the pupil who, though unable to think well in abstract studies, is able to do things. =b. differences in action.=--there is a marked difference among children in the ability to connect an abstract direction with the required act. this is particularly seen in writing, art, and constructive work, subjects in which the aim is the formation of habit, and in which success depends upon following explicitly the direction given. the teacher will find it economical to give very definite instruction as to what is to be done in work in these subjects. it is equally important that instructions regarding conduct should be definite and unmistakable. as explained in the last chapter, there are two extreme and contrasting types of will exhibited by children, namely, the impulsive type and the obstructed type. in the former, action occurs without deliberation immediately upon the appearance of the idea in consciousness. this type is illustrated in the case of the pupil who, as soon as he hears a question, thoughtlessly blurts out an answer without any reflection whatever. in the adult, we find a similar illustration when, immediately upon hearing a pitiable story from a beggar, he hands out a dollar without stopping to investigate whether or not the action is well-advised. it is useless to plead in extenuation of such actions that the answer may be correct or the act noble and generous. the probability is equally great that the opposite may be the case. the remedy for impulsive action is patiently and persistently to encourage the pupil to reflect a moment before acting. in the case of the obstructed type of will, the individual ponders long over a course of action before he is able to bring himself to a decision. such is the child whom it is hard to persuade to answer even easy questions, because he is unable to decide in just what form to put his answer. on an examination paper he proceeds slowly, not because he does not know the matter, but because he finds it hard to decide just what facts to select and how to express them. the bashful child belongs to this type. he would like to answer questions asked him, to talk freely with others, to act without any feeling of restraint, but is unable to bring himself to do so. the obstinate child is also of this type. he knows what he ought to do, but the opposing motives are strong enough to inhibit action in the right direction. as already shown, the remedy for the obstructed will is to encourage rapid deliberation and choice and then immediate action, thrusting aside all opposing motives. show such pupils that in cases where the motives for and against a certain course of action are of equal strength, it often does not matter which course is selected. one may safely choose either and thus end the indecision. the "quick" child usually belongs to the impulsive type; the "slow" child, to the obstructed type. the former is apt to decide and act hastily and frequently unwisely; the latter is more guarded and, on the whole, more sound in his decision and action. =c. differences in temperament.=--all four types of temperament given in the formal classification are represented among children in school. the _choleric_ type is energetic, impulsive, quick-tempered, yet forgiving, interested in outward events. the _phlegmatic_ type is impassive, unemotional, slow to anger, but not of great kindness, persistent in pursuing his purposes. the _sanguine_ type is optimistic, impressionable, enthusiastic, but unsteady. the _melancholic_ type is pessimistic, introspective, moody, suspicious of the motives of others. most pupils belong to more than one class. perhaps the two most prominent types represented in school are ( ) that variety of the sanguine temperament which leads the individual to think himself, his possessions, and his work superior to all others, and ( ) that variety of the melancholic temperament which leads the individual to fancy himself constantly the victim of injustice on the part of the teacher or the other pupils. a pupil of the first type always believes that his work is perfectly done; he boasts that he is sure he made a hundred per cent. on his examinations; what he has is always, in his own estimation, better than that of others. when the teacher suggests that his work might be better done, the pupil appears surprised and aggrieved. such a child should be shown that he is right in not being discouraged over his own efforts, but wrong in thinking that his work does not admit of improvement. a pupil of the second type is continually imagining that the teacher treats him unjustly, that the other pupils slight or injure him, that, in short, he is an object of persecution. such a pupil should be shown that nobody has a grudge against him, that the so-called slights are entirely imaginary, and that he should take a sane view of these things, depending more upon judgment than on feeling to estimate the action of others toward him. =d. sex differences.=--boys differ from girls in the predominance of certain instincts, interests, and mental powers. in boys the fighting instinct, and capacities of leadership, initiative, and mastery are prominent. in girls the instinct of nursing and fondling, and the capacities to comfort and relieve are prominent. these are revealed in the games of the playground. the interests of the two sexes are different, since their games and later pursuits are different. in a system of co-education it is impossible to take full cognizance of this fact in the work of the school. yet it is possible to make some differentiation between the work assigned to boys and that assigned to girls. for instance, arithmetical problems given to boys might deal with activities interesting to boys, and those to girls might deal with activities interesting to girls. in composition the differentiation will be easier. such a topic as "a game of baseball" would be more suitable for boys, and on the other hand "how to bake bread" would make a stronger appeal to girls. similarly in literature, such a poem as _how they brought the good news from ghent to aix_ would be particularly interesting to boys, while _the romance of a swan's nest_ would be of greater interest to girls. as to mental capacities, boys are usually superior in those fields where logical reasoning is demanded, while girls usually surpass boys in those fields involving perceptive powers and verbal memory. for instance, boys succeed better in mathematics, science, and the reflective phases of history; girls succeed better in spelling, in harmonizing colours in art work, in distinguishing fine shades of meaning in language, and in memorizing poetry. the average intellectual ability of each sex is nearly the same, but boys deviate from the average more than girls. thus while the most brilliant pupils are likely to be boys, the dullest are also likely to be boys. it is a scientific fact that there are more individuals of conspicuously clever mind, but also more of weak intellect, among men than there are among women. =a caution.=--while it has been stated that the teacher should take notice of individual differences in his pupils, it may be advisable also to warn the student-teacher against any extravagant tendency in the direction of such a study. a teacher is occasionally met who seems to act on the assumption that his chief function is not to educate but to study children. too much of his time may therefore be spent in the conducting of experiments and the making of observations to that end. while the data thus secured may be of some value, it must not be forgotten that control of the subject-matter of education and of the method of presenting that subject-matter to the normal child, together with an earnest, enthusiastic, and sympathetic manner, are the prime qualifications of the teacher as an instructor. appendix suggested readings from books of reference chapter i bagley the educative process, chapter i. colvin the learning process, chapter ii. strayer a brief course in the teaching process, chapter i. thorndike principles of teaching, chapter i. chapter ii bagley educational values, chapters i, ii, iii. strayer a brief course in the teaching process, chapter iii. thorndike elements of psychology, chapter i. welton the psychology of education, chapter vi. chapter iii bagley the educative process, chapters iv, xiv. colvin the learning process, chapter i. mcmurry the method of the recitation, chapter i. raymont the principles of education, chapter xi. chapter iv bagley the educative process, chapters ii, xv. dewey the school and society, part i. raymont the principles of education, chapters vi, vii. strayer a brief course in the teaching process, chapter xviii. chapter v bagley the educative process, chapter i. raymont the principles of education, chapter iii. chapter vi bagley the educative process, chapter iii. dewey the school and society, part ii. raymont the principles of education, chapters i, iv. welton the psychology of education, chapter xiii. chapter vii landon the principles and practice of teaching, chapter i. chapter viii landon the principles and practice of teaching, chapter i. mcmurry the method of the recitation, chapter i. raymont the principles of education, chapter viii. chapter ix kirkpatrick fundamentals of child study, chapter iv. landon the principles and practice of teaching, chapter vii. dewey the school and society, part ii. strayer a brief course in the teaching process, chapter ii. thorndike principles of teaching, chapter iii. chapter x betts the mind and its education, chapter vii. mcmurry the method of the recitation, chapter vi. thorndike principles of teaching, chapters iv, ix. chapter xi angell psychology, chapter vi. bagley the educative process, chapters iv, v, ix. pillsbury essentials of psychology, chapter v. raymont the principles of education, chapter viii. chapter xii betts psychology, chapter xvi. thorndike principles of teaching, chapter xiii. mcmurry the method of the recitation, chapter ix. chapter xiii landon the principles and practice of teaching, chapter vi. mcmurry the method of the recitation, chapter vii. raymont the principles of education, chapter xii. chapter xiv mcmurry the method of the recitation, chapter iii. chapter xv bagley the educative process, chapters xix, xx. colvin the learning process, chapter xxii. mcmurry the method of the recitation, chapters viii, x. strayer a brief course in the teaching process, chapters v, vi. chapter xvi landon the principles and practice of teaching, chapter iii. chapter xvii bagley the educative process, chapters xxi, xxii. landon the principles and practice of teaching, chapter iv. strayer a brief course in the teaching process, chapters iv, viii, x. chapter xviii landon the principles and practice of teaching, chapter vi. raymont the principles of education, chapter xii. strayer a brief course in the educative process, chapter xi. chapter xix betts the mind and its education, chapter i. pillsbury essentials of education, chapter i. raymont the principles of education, chapter ii. welton the psychology of education, chapter i. chapter xx angell psychology, chapter ii. betts the mind and its education, chapter iii. pillsbury essentials of psychology, chapter ii. halleck education of the central nervous system. chapter xxi colvin the learning process, chapters iii, iv. kirkpatrick fundamentals of child study, chapter iv. pillsbury essentials of psychology, chapter x. thorndike principles of teaching, chapter iii. welton the psychology of education, chapter iv. chapter xxii angell psychology, chapter iii. bagley the educative process, chapter vii. betts the mind and its education, chapter v. colvin the learning process, chapters iii, iv. thorndike principles of teaching, chapter viii. thorndike elements of psychology, chapter xiii. chapter xxiii angell psychology, chapter iv. betts the mind and its education, chapter ii. pillsbury essentials of psychology, chapter v. welton the psychology of education, chapter viii. chapter xxiv angell psychology, chapter xxi. betts the mind and its education, chapter xiii. james talks to teachers, chapter x. welton the psychology of education, chapter vii. chapter xxv angell psychology, chapters v, vi. betts the mind and its education, chapter vi. pillsbury essentials of psychology, chapters iv, vii. chapter xxvi angell psychology, chapter ix. bagley the educative process, chapters iv, xi. betts the mind and its education, chapter viii. thorndike elements of psychology, chapter iii. pillsbury essentials of psychology, chapter viii. chapter xxvii angell psychology, chapter viii. betts the mind and its education, chapter ix. pillsbury essentials of psychology, chapter viii. chapter xxviii angell psychology, chapters x, xii. bagley the educative process, chapters ix, x. betts the mind and its education, chapter x. colvin the learning process, chapter xxii. pillsbury essentials of psychology, chapter ix. thorndike elements of psychology, chapter vi. chapter xxix angell psychology, chapters xiii, xiv. betts the mind and its education, chapters xii, xiv. pillsbury essentials of psychology, chapters xi, xii. chapter xxx angell psychology, chapters xx, xxii. betts the mind and its education, chapter xv. pillsbury essentials of psychology, chapter xiii. thorndike elements of psychology, chapter vi. chapter xxxi bagley the educative process, chapter xii. raymont the principles of education, chapter v. kirkpatrick fundamentals of child study. how to teach by george drayton strayer and naomi norsworthy february, . preface the art of teaching is based primarily upon the science of psychology. in this book the authors have sought to make clear the principles of psychology which are involved in teaching, and to show definitely their application in the work of the classroom. the book has been written in language as free from technical terms as is possible. in a discussion of the methods of teaching it is necessary to consider the ends or aims involved, as well as the process. the authors have, on this account, included a chapter on the work of the teacher, in which is discussed the aims of education. the success or failure of the work of a teacher is determined by the changes which are brought to pass in the children who are being taught. this book, therefore, includes a chapter on the measurement of the achievements of children. throughout the book the discussion of the art of teaching is always modified by an acceptance upon the part of the writers of the social purpose of education. the treatment of each topic will be found to be based upon investigations and researches in the fields of psychology and education which involve the measurement of the achievements of children and of adults under varying conditions. wherever possible, the relation between the principle of teaching laid down and the scientific inquiry upon which it is based is indicated. any careful study of the mental life and development of children reveals at the same time the unity and the diversity of the process involved. for the sake of definiteness and clearness, the authors have differentiated between types of mental activity and the corresponding types of classroom exercises. they have, at the same time, sought to make clear the interdependence of the various aspects of teaching method and the unity involved in mental development. george drayton strayer. naomi norsworthy. november , . * * * * * table of contents i. the work of the teacher ii. original nature, the capital with which teachers work iii. attention and interest in teaching iv. the formation of habits v. how to memorize vi. the teacher's use of the imagination vii. how thinking may be stimulated viii. appreciation, an important element in education ix. the meaning of play in education x. the significance of individual differences for the teacher xi. the development of moral social conduct xii. transfer of training xiii. types of classroom exercises xiv. how to study xv. measuring the achievements of children * * * * * i. the work of the teacher education is a group enterprise. we establish schools in which we seek to develop whatever capacities or abilities the individual may possess in order that he may become intelligently active for the common good. schools do not exist primarily for the individual, but, rather, for the group of which he is a member. individual growth and development are significant in terms of their meaning for the welfare of the whole group. we believe that the greatest opportunity for the individual, as well as his greatest satisfaction, are secured only when he works with others for the common welfare. in the discussions which follow we are concerned not simply with the individual's development, but also with the necessity for inhibitions. there are traits or activities which develop normally, but which are from the social point of view undesirable. it is quite as much the work of the teacher to know how to provide for the inhibition of the type of activity which is socially undesirable, or how to substitute for such reactions other forms of expression which are worthy, as it is to stimulate those types of activity which promise a contribution to the common good. it is assumed that the aim of education can be expressed most satisfactorily in terms of social efficiency. an acceptance of the aim of education stated in terms of social efficiency leads us to discard other statements of aim which have been more or less current. chief among these aims, or statements of aim, are the following: ( ) culture; ( ) the harmonious development of the capacities or abilities of the individual; ( ) preparing an individual to make a living; ( ) knowledge. we will examine these aims briefly before discussing at length the implications of the social aim. those who declare that it is the aim of education to develop men and women of culture vary in the content which they give to the term culture. it is conceivable that the person of culture is one who, by virtue of his education, has come to understand and appreciate the many aspects of the social environment in which he lives; that he is a man of intelligence, essentially reasonable; and that he is willing and able to devote himself to the common good. it is to be feared, however, that the term culture, as commonly used, is interpreted much more narrowly. for many people culture is synonymous with knowledge or information, and is not interpreted to involve preparation for active participation in the work of the world. still others think of the person of culture as one who has a type or kind of training which separates him from the ordinary man. a more or less popular notion of the man of culture pictures him as one living apart from those who think through present-day problems and who devote themselves to their solution. it seems best, on account of this variation in interpretation, as well as on account of the unfortunate meaning sometimes attached to the term, to discard this statement of the aim of education. the difficulty with a statement of aim in terms of the harmonious development of the abilities or capacities possessed by the individual is found in the lack of any criterion by which we may determine the desirability of any particular kind of development or action. we may well ask for what purpose are the capacities or abilities of the individual to be developed. it is possible to develop an ability or capacity for lying, for stealing, or for fighting without a just cause. what society has a right to expect and to demand of our schools is that they develop or nourish certain tendencies to behave, and that they strive earnestly to eliminate or to have inhibited other tendencies just as marked. another difficulty with the statement of aim in terms of the harmonious development of the capacities is found in the difficulty of interpreting what is meant by harmonious development. do we mean equal development of each and every capacity, or do we seek to develop each capacity to the maximum of the individual's possibility of training? are we to try to secure equal development in all directions? of one thing we can be certain. we cannot secure equality in achievement among individuals who vary in capacity. one boy may make a good mechanic, another a successful business man, and still another a musician. it is only as we read into the statement of harmonious development meanings which do not appear upon the surface, that we can accept this statement as a satisfactory wording of the aim of education. the narrow utilitarian statement of aim that asserts that the purpose of education is to enable people to make a living neglects to take account of the necessity for social coöperation. the difficulty with this statement of aim is that it is too narrow. we do hope by means of education to help people to make a living, but we ought also to be concerned with the kind of a life they lead. they ought not to make a living by injuring or exploiting others. they ought to be able to enjoy the nobler pleasures as well as to make enough money to buy food, clothing, shelter, and the like. the bread-and-butter aim breaks down as does the all-around development aim because it fails to consider the individual in relation to the social group of which he is a member. to declare that knowledge is the aim of education is to ignore the issue of the relative worth of that which we call knowledge. no one may know all. what, then, from among all of the facts or principles which are available are we to select and what are we to reject? the knowledge aim gives us no satisfactory answer. we are again thrown back upon the question of purpose. knowledge we must have, but for the individual who is to live in our modern, industrial, democratic society some knowledges are more important than others. society cannot afford to permit the school to do anything less than provide that equipment in knowledge, in skill, in ideal, or in appreciation which promises to develop an individual who will contribute to social progress, one who will find his own greatest satisfaction in working for the common good. in seeking to relate the aim of education to the school activities of boys and girls, it is necessary to inquire concerning the ideals or purposes which actuate them in their regular school work. _ideals of service_ may be gradually developed, and may eventually come to control in some measure the activities of boys and girls, but these ideals do not normally develop in a school situation in which competition is the dominating factor. we may discuss at great length the desirability of working for others, and we may teach many precepts which look in the direction of service, and still fail to achieve the purpose for which our schools exist. an overemphasis upon marks and distinctions, and a lack of attention to the opportunities which the school offers for helpfulness and coöperation, have often resulted in the development of an individualistic attitude almost entirely opposed to the purpose or aim of education as we commonly accept it. there is need for much reorganization in our schools in the light of our professed aim. there are only two places in our whole school system where children are commonly so seated that it is easy for them to work in coöperation with each other. in the kindergarten, in the circle, or at the tables, children normally discuss the problems in which they are interested, and help each other in their work. in the seminar room for graduate students in a university, it is not uncommon to find men working together for the solution of problems in which they have a common interest. in most classrooms in elementary and in high schools, and even in colleges, boys and girls are seated in rows, the one back of the other, with little or no opportunity for communication or coöperation. indeed, helping one's neighbor has often been declared against the rule by teachers. it is true that pupils must in many cases work as individuals for the sake of the attainment of skill, the acquirement of knowledge, or of methods of work, but a school which professes to develop ideals of service must provide on every possible occasion situations in which children work in coöperation with each other, and in which they measure their success in terms of the contribution which they make toward the achievement of a common end. the socially efficient individual must not only be actuated by ideals of service, but must in the responses which he makes to social demands be governed by his own careful thinking, or by his ability to distinguish from among those who would influence him one whose solution of the problem presented is based upon careful investigation or inquiry. especially is it true in a democratic society that the measure of the success of our education is found in the degree to which we develop the scientific attitude. even those who are actuated by noble motives may, if they trust to their emotions, to their prejudices, or to those superstitions which are commonly accepted, engage in activities which are positively harmful to the social group of which they are members. our schools should strive to encourage the spirit of inquiry and investigation. a large part of the work in most elementary schools and high schools consists in having boys and girls repeat what they have heard or read. it is true that such accumulation of facts may, in some cases, either at the time at which they are learned, or later, be used as the basis for thinking; but a teacher may feel satisfied that she has contributed largely toward the development of the scientific spirit upon the part of children only when this inquiring attitude is commonly found in her classroom. the association of ideas which will result from an honest attempt upon the part of boys and girls to find the solution of a real problem will furnish the very best possible basis for the recall of the facts or information which may be involved. the attempt to remember pages of history or of geography, or the facts of chemistry or of physics, however well they may be organized in the text-book, is usually successful only until the examination period is passed. children who have engaged in this type of activity quite commonly show an appalling lack of knowledge of the subjects which they have studied a very short time after they have satisfied the examination requirement. the same amount of energy devoted to the solution of problems in which children may be normally interested may be expected not only to develop some appreciation of scientific method in the fields in which they have worked, but also to result in a control of knowledge or a memory of facts that will last over a longer period of time. recitations should be places where children meet for the discussion of problems which are vital to them. the question by the pupil should be as common as the question by the teacher. laboratory periods should not consist of following directions, but rather in undertaking, in so far as it is possible, real experiments. we may not hope that an investigating or inquiring turn of mind encouraged in school will always be found operating in the solution of problems which occur outside of school, but the school which insists merely upon memory and upon following instructions may scarcely claim to have made any considerable contribution to the equipment of citizens of a democracy who should solve their common problems in terms of the evidence presented. the unthinking acceptance of the words of the book or the statement of the teacher prepares the way for the blind following of the boss, for faith in the demagogue, or even for acceptance of the statements of the quack. the ideal school situation is one in which the spirit of inquiry and investigation is constantly encouraged and in which children are developing ideals of service by virtue of their _activity_. a high school class in english literature in which children are at work in small groups, asking each other questions and helping each other in the solution of their problems, seems to the writer to afford unusual opportunity for the realization of the social aim of education. a first grade class in beginning reading, in which the stronger children seek to help those who are less able, involves something more significant in education than merely the command of the tool we call reading. a teacher of a class in physics who suggested to his pupils that they find out which was the more economical way to heat their homes,--with hot air, with steam, or with hot water,--evidently hoped to have them use whatever power of investigation they possessed, as well as to have them come to understand and to remember the principles of physics which were involved. in many schools the coöperation of children in the preparation of school plays, or school festivals, in the writing and printing of school papers, in the participation in the school assembly, in the making of shelves, tables, or other school equipment, in the working for community betterment with respect to clean streets and the like, may be considered even more significant from the standpoint of the realization of the social aim of education than are the recitations in which they are commonly engaged. we have emphasized thus far the meaning of the social aim of education in terms of methods of work upon the part of pupils. it is important to call attention to the fact that the materials or content of education are also determined by the same consideration of purposes. if we really accept the idea of participation upon the part of children in modern social life as the purpose of education, we must include in our courses of study only such subject matter as may be judged to contribute toward the realization of this aim. we must, of course, provide children with the tools of investigation or of inquiry; but their importance should not be overemphasized, and in their acquirement significant experiences with respect to life activities should dominate, rather than the mere acquisition of the tool. beginning reading, for example, is important not merely from the standpoint of learning to read. the teaching of beginning reading should involve the enlarging and enriching of experience. thought getting is of primary importance for little children who are to learn to read, and the recognition of symbols is important only in so far as they contribute to this end. the best reading books no longer print meaningless sentences for children to decipher. mother goose rhymes, popular stories and fables, language reading lessons, in which children relate their own experience for the teacher to print or write on the board, satisfy the demand for content and aid, by virtue of the interest which is advanced, in the mastering of the symbols. it is, of course, necessary for one who would understand modern social conditions or problems, to know of the past out of which our modern life has developed. it is also necessary for one who would understand the problems of one community, or of one nation, to know, in so far as it is possible, of the experiences of other peoples. history and geography furnish a background, without which our current problems could not be reasonably attacked. literature and science, the study of the fine arts, and of our social institutions, all become significant in proportion as they make possible contributions, by the individual who has been educated, to the common good. any proper interpretation of the social purpose of education leads inevitably to the conclusion that much that we have taught is of very little significance. processes in arithmetic which are not used in modern life have little or no worth for the great majority of boys and girls. partnership settlements involving time, exact interest, the extraction of cube and of square roots, partial payments, and many of the problems in mensuration, might well be omitted from all courses of study in arithmetic. many of the unimportant dates in history and much of the locational geography should disappear in order that a better appreciation of the larger social movements can be secured, or in order that the laws which control in nature may be taught. in english, any attempt to realize the aim which we have in mind would lay greater stress upon the accomplishment of children in speaking and writing our language, and relatively less upon the rules of grammar. it may well be asked how our conception of aim can be related to the present tendency to offer a variety of courses of instruction, or to provide different types of schools. the answer is found in an understanding and appreciation of the fact that children vary tremendously in ability, and that the largest contribution by each individual to the welfare of the whole group can be made only when each is trained in the field for which his capacity fits him. the movement for the development of vocational education means, above all else, an attempt to train all members of the group to the highest possible degree of efficiency, instead of offering a common education which, though liberal in its character, is actually neglected or refused by a large part of our population. our interest in the physical welfare of children is accounted for by the fact that no individual may make the most significant contribution to the common good who does not enjoy a maximum of physical efficiency. the current emphasis upon moral training can be understood when we accept that conception of morality which measures the individual in terms of his contribution to the welfare of others. however important it may be that individuals be restrained or that they inhibit those impulses which might lead to anti-social activity, of even greater importance must be the part actually played by each member of the social group in the development of the common welfare. if we think of the problems of teaching in terms of habits to be fixed, we must ask ourselves are these habits desirable or necessary for an individual who is to work as a member of the social group. if we consider the problem of teaching from the standpoint of development in intelligence, we must constantly seek to present problems which are worth while, not simply from the standpoint of the curiosity which they arouse, but also on account of their relation to the life activities with which our modern world is concerned. we must seek to develop the power of appreciating that which is noble and beautiful primarily because the highest efficiency can be secured only by those who use their time in occupations which are truly recreative and not enervating. as we seek to understand the problem of teaching as determined by the normal mental development of boys and girls, we must have in mind constantly the use to which their capacities and abilities are to be put. any adequate recognition of the social purpose of education suggests the necessity for eliminating, as far as possible, that type of action which is socially undesirable, while we strive for the development of those capacities which mean at least the possibility of contribution to the common good. we study the principles of teaching in order that we may better adapt ourselves to the children's possibilities of learning, but we must keep in mind constantly that kind of learning and those methods of work which look to the development of socially efficient boys and girls. we must seek to provide situations which are in themselves significant in our modern social life as the subject matter with which children may struggle in accomplishing their individual development. we need constantly to have in mind the ideal of school work which will value most highly opportunities for coöperation and for contribution to the common good upon the part of children, which are in the last analysis entirely like the situations in which older people contribute to social progress. more and more we must seek to develop the type of pupil who knows the meaning of duty and who gladly recognizes his obligations to a social group which is growing larger with each new experience and each new opportunity. questions . why would you not be satisfied with a statement of the aim of education which was expressed in terms of the harmonious development of an individual's abilities and capacities? . suggest any part of the courses of study now in force in your school system the omission of which would be in accordance with the social aim of education. . name any subjects or parts of subjects which might be added for the sake of realizing the aim of education. . how may a teacher who insists upon having children ask permission before they move in the room interfere with the realization of the social aim of education? . can you name any physical habits which may be considered socially undesirable? desirable? . what is the significance of pupil participation in school government? . how does the teacher who stands behind his desk at the front of the room interfere with the development of the right social attitude upon the part of pupils? . why is the desire to excel one's own previous record preferable to striving for the highest mark? . in one elementary school, products of the school garden were sold and from the funds thus secured apparatus for the playground was bought. in another school, children sold the vegetables and kept the money. which, in your judgment, was the most worth while from the standpoint of the social development of boys and girls? . a teacher of latin had children collect words of latin origin, references to latin characters, and even advertisements in which latin words or literary references were to be found. the children in the class were enthusiastic in making these collections, and considerable interest was added to the work in latin. are you able to discover in the exercise any other value? . describe some teaching in which you have recently engaged, or which you have observed, in which the methods of work employed by teacher and pupils seemed to you to contribute to a realization of the social purpose of education. . how can a reading lesson in the sixth grade, or a history lesson in the high school, be conducted to make children feel that they are doing something for the whole group? . in what activities may children engage outside of school which may count toward the betterment of the community in which they live? * * * * * ii. original nature, the capital with which teachers work after deciding upon the aims of education, the goals towards which all teaching must strive, the fundamental question to be answered is, "what have we to work with?" "what is the makeup with which children start in life?" given a certain nature, certain definite results are possible; but if the nature is different, the results must of necessity differ. the possibility of education or of teaching along any line depends upon the presence of an original nature which possesses corresponding abilities. the development of intellect, of character, of interest, or of any other trait depends absolutely upon the presence in human beings of capacity for growth or development. what the child inherits, his original nature, is the capital with which education must work; beyond the limits which are determined by inheritance education cannot go. all original nature is in terms of a nervous system. what a child inherits is not ideas, or feelings, or habits, as such, but a nervous system whose correlate is human intelligence and emotion. just what relationship exists between the action of the nervous system and consciousness or intellect or emotion is still an open question and need not be discussed here. one thing seems fairly certain, that the original of any individual is bound up in some way with the kind of nervous system he has inherited. what we have in common, as a human race, of imagination, or reason, or tact, or skill is correlated in some fashion to the inheritance of a human nervous system. what we have as individual abilities, which distinguish us from our fellows, depends primarily upon our family inheritance. certain traits such as interest in people, and accuracy in perception of details, seem to be dependent upon the sex inheritance. all traits, whether racial, or family, or sex, are inherited in terms of a plastic nervous system. the racial inheritance, the capital which all normal children bring into the world, is usually discussed under several heads: reflexes, physiological actions, impulsive actions, instincts, capacities, etc., the particular heads chosen varying with the author. they all depend for their existence upon the fact that certain bonds of connection are performed in the nervous system. just what this connection is which is found between the nerve cells is still open to question. it may be chemical or it may be electrical. we know it is not a growing together of the neurones,[ ] but further than that nothing is definitely known. that there are very definite pathways of discharge developed by the laws of inner growth and independent of individual learning, there can be no doubt. this of course means that in the early days of a child's life, and later in so far as he is governed by these inborn tendencies, his conduct is machine-like and blind--with no purpose and no consciousness controlling or initiating the responses. only after experience and learning have had an opportunity to influence these responses can the child be held responsible for his conduct, for only then does his conduct become conscious instead of merely physiological. there are many facts concerning the psychology of these inborn tendencies that are interesting and important from a purely theoretical point of view, but only those which are of primary importance in teaching will be considered here. a fact that is often overlooked by teachers is that these inborn tendencies to connections of various kinds exist in the intellectual and emotional fields just as truly as in the field of action or motor response. the capacity to think in terms of words and of generals; to understand relationships; to remember; to imagine; to be satisfied with thinking,--all these, as well as such special abilities as skill in music, in managing people or affairs, in tact, or in sympathy, are due to just the same factors as produce fear or curiosity. these former types of tendencies differ from the latter in complexity of situation and response, in definiteness of response, in variability amongst individuals of the same family, and in modifiability; but in the essential element they do not differ from the more evident inborn tendencies. just what these original tendencies are and just what the situations are to which they come as responses are both unknown except in a very few instances. the psychology of original nature has enumerated the so-called instincts and discussed a few of their characteristics, but has left almost untouched the inborn capacities that are more peculiarly human. even the treatment of instincts has been misleading. for instance, instincts have been discussed under such heads as the "self-preservative instincts," "the social instincts," just as if the child had an inborn, mystical something that told him how to preserve his life, or become a social king. original nature does not work in that way; it is only as the experience of the individual modifies the blind instinctive responses through learning that these results can just as easily come about unless the care of parents provides the right sort of surroundings. there is nothing in the child's natural makeup that warns him against eating pins and buttons and poisonous berries, or encourages him to eat milk and eggs and cereal instead of cake and sweets. he will do one sort of thing just as easily as the other. all nature provides him with is a blind tendency to put all objects that attract his attention into his mouth. this response may preserve his life or destroy it, depending on the conditions in which he lives. the same thing is true of the "social instinct"--the child may become the most selfish egotist imaginable or the most self-sacrificing of men, according as his surroundings and training influence the original tendencies towards behavior to other people in one way or the other. of course it is very evident that no one has ever consistently lived up to the idea indicated by such a treatment of original nature, but certain tendencies in education are traceable to such psychology. what the child has by nature is neither good nor bad, right nor wrong--it may become either according to the habits which grow out of these tendencies. a child's inborn nature cannot determine the goal of his education. his nature has remained practically the same from the days of primitive man, while the goals of education have changed. what nature does provide is an immense number of definite responses to definite situations. these provide the capital which education and training may use as it will. it is just because education does need to use these tendencies as capital that the lack of knowledge of just what the responses are is such a serious one. and yet the difficulties of determining just what original nature gives are so tremendous that the task seems a hopeless one to many investigators. the fact that in the human being these tendencies are so easily modified means that from the first they are being influenced and changed by the experiences of the child. because of the quality of our inheritance the response to a situation is not a one-to-one affair, like a key in a lock, but all sorts of minor causes in the individual are operative in determining his response; and, on the other side, situations are so complex in themselves that they contain that which may call out several different instincts. for example, a child's response to an animal will be influenced by his own physical condition, emotional attitude, and recent mental status and by the conditions of size and nearness of the animal, whether it is shaggy or not, moving or still, whether he is alone or with others, on the floor or in his chair, and the like. it will depend on just how these factors combine as to whether the response is one of fear, of curiosity, of manipulation, or of friendliness. when to these facts are added the fact that the age and previous habits of the child also influence his response, the immense complexity of the problem of discovering just what the situations are to which there are original tendencies to respond and just how these tendencies show themselves is evident. and yet this is what psychologists must finally do if the use by teachers of these tendencies is to be both economical and wise. just as an illustration of the possibilities of analysis, thorndike in his "original nature of man" lists eleven different situations which call out an instinctive expression of fear and thirty-one different responses which may occur in that expression. under fighting he says, "there seem, indeed, to be at least six separable sets of connections in the so-called 'fighting instinct,'" in each of which the situation and the response differ from any other one. very few of the instincts are present at birth; most of them develop later in the child's life. pillsbury says, "one may recognize the food-taking instincts, the vocal protests at discomfort, but relatively few others." this delay in the appearance of instincts and capacities is dependent upon the development of the nervous system. no one of them can appear until the connections between nerve centers are ready, making the path of discharge perfect. just when these various nervous connections mature, and therefore just when the respective tendencies should appear, is largely unknown. in only a few of the most prominent and comparatively simple responses is it even approximately known. holding the head up is accomplished about the fourth month, walking and talking somewhere near the twelfth, but the more complex the tendency and the more they involve intellectual factors, the greater is the uncertainty as to the time of development. we are told that fear is most prominent at about "three or four" years of age, spontaneous imitation "becomes very prominent the latter part of the first year," the gang instinct is characteristic of the preadolescent period, desire for adventure shows itself in early adolescence, altruism "appears in the early teens," and the sex instinct "after about a dozen years of life." the child of from four to six is largely sensory, from seven to nine he is motor, from then to twelve the retentive powers are prominent. in the adolescent period he is capable of thinking logically and reasoning, while maturity finds him a man of responsibilities and affairs. although there is some truth in the belief that certain tendencies are more prominent at certain periods in the development of the child than at others, still it must be borne in mind that just when these optimum periods occur is not known. three of the most important reasons for this lack of knowledge are: first, the fact that all inborn tendencies mature gradually and do not burst into being; second, we do not know how transitory they are; and, third, the fact of the great influence of environment in stimulating or repressing such capacities. although the tendency to make collections is most prominent at nine, the beginnings of it may be found before the child is five. moll finds that the sex instinct begins its development at about six years of age, despite the fact that it is always quoted as the adolescent instinct. children in the kindergarten can think out their little problems purposively, even though reasoning is supposed to mark the high school pupil. the elements of most tendencies show themselves early in crude, almost unrecognizable, beginnings, and from these they grow gradually to maturity. in the second place how quickly do these tendencies fade? how transitory are they? it has always been stated in general psychology that instincts are transitory, that therefore it was the business of teachers to strike while the iron was hot, to seize the wave of interest or response at its crest before the ebb had begun. there was supposed to be a "happy moment for fixing in children skill in drawing, for making collections in natural history," for developing the appreciative emotions, for training the social instinct, or the memory or the imagination. children are supposed to be interested and attracted by novelty, rhythm, and movement,--to be creatures of play and imagination and to become different merely as a matter of the transitoriness of these tendencies due to growth. when the activities of the adult and the child are analyzed to see what tendencies have really passed, are transitory, it is difficult to find any that have disappeared. true, they have changed their form, have been influenced by the third factor mentioned above, but change the surroundings a little and the tendency appears. free the adult from the restraints of his ordinary life and turn him out for a holiday and the childish tendencies of interest in novelty and the mysterious, in physical prowess and adventure and play, all make their appearance. in how many adults does the collecting instinct still persist, and the instinct of personal rivalry? in how many has the crude desire for material ownership or the impulse to punish an affront by physical attack died out? experimental evidence is even proving that the general plasticity of the nervous system, which has always been considered to be transitory, is of very, very much longer duration than has been supposed. in illustration of the third fact, namely, the effect of environment to stimulate or repress, witness the "little mothers" of five and the wage earners of twelve who have assumed all the responsibilities with all that they entail of maturity. on the other side of the picture is the indulged petted child of fortune who never grows up because he has had everything done for him all his life, and therefore the tendencies which normally might be expected to pass and give place to others remain and those others never appear. that inborn tendencies do wax, reach a maximum, and wane is probably true, but the onset is much more gradual and the waning much less frequent than has been taken for granted. our ignorance concerning all these matters outweighs our knowledge; only careful experimentation which allows for all the other factors involved can give a reliable answer. one reason why the facts of delayedness and transitoriness in instincts have been so generally accepted without being thoroughly tested has been the belief in the recapitulation or repeating by the individual of racial development. so long as this was accepted as explaining the development of inborn tendencies and their order of appearance, transitoriness and delayedness must necessarily be postulated. this theory is being seriously questioned by psychologists of note, and even its strongest advocate, president hall, finds many questions concerning it which cannot be answered. the chief reasons for its acceptance were first, on logical grounds as an outgrowth of the doctrine of evolution, and second, because of an analogy with the growth of the physical body which was pushed to an extreme. on the physiological side, although there is some likeness between the human embryo and that of the lower animals, still the stages passed through by the two are not the same, being alike only in rough outline, and only in the case of a few of the bodily organs is the series of changes similar. in the case of the physical structure which should be recapitulated most closely, if behavior is to follow the same law,--namely, in that of the brain and nervous system,--there is least evidence of recapitulation. the brain of man does not follow in its development at all the same course taken in the development of brains in the lower animals. and, moreover, it is perfectly possible to explain any similarity or parallelism which does exist between the development of man's embryo and that of lower animals by postulating a general order of development followed by nature as the easiest or most economical, traces of which must then be found in all animal life. when it comes to the actual test of the theory, that of finding actual cases of recapitulation in behavior, it fails. no one has been able to point out just when a child passes through any stage of racial development, and any attempt to do so has resulted in confusion. there is no clear-cut marking off into stages, but, instead, overlapping and coexistence of tendencies characterize the development of the child. the infant of a few days old may show the swimming movements, but at the same time he can support his own weight by clinging to a horizontal stick. which stage is he recapitulating, that of the fishes or the monkeys? the nine-year-old boy loves to swim, climb trees, and hunt like a savage all at the same period, and, what is more, some of these same tendencies characterize the college man. the late maturing of the sex instinct, so old and strong in the race, and the early appearing of the tendencies towards vocalization and grasping, both of late date in the race, are facts that are hard to explain on the basis of the theory of recapitulation. as has been already suggested, one of the most important characteristics of all these tendencies is their modifiability. the very ease with which they can be modified suggests that this is what has most often to be done with them. on examination of the lists of original tendencies there are none which can be kept and fixed in the form in which they first appear. even the best of them are crude and impossible from the standpoint of civilized society. take as an illustration mother-love; what are the original tendencies and behavior? "all women possess originally, from early childhood to death, some interest in human babies, and a responsiveness to the instinctive looks, calls, gestures, and cries of infancy and childhood, being satisfied by childish gurglings, smiles, and affectionate gestures, and moved to instinctive comforting acts of childish signs of pain, grief, and misery." but the mother has to learn not to cuddle the baby and talk to it all the time it is awake and not to run to it and take it up at every cry, to steel her heart against the wheedling of the coaxing gurgles and even to allow the baby to hurt himself, all for his own good. this comes about only as original nature is modified in line with knowledge and ideals. the same need is evidenced by such a valuable tendency as curiosity. so far as original nature goes, the tendency to attend to novel objects, to human behavior, to explore with the eyes and manipulate with the hands, to enjoy having sensations of all kinds merely for their own sakes, make up what is known as the instinct of curiosity. but what a tremendous amount of modification is necessary before these crude responses result in the valuable scientific curiosity. not blind following where instinct leads, but modification, must be the watchword. on the other hand, there are equally few tendencies that could be spared, could be absolutely voted out without loss to the individual or the race. bullying as an original tendency seems to add nothing to the possibilities of development, but every other inborn tendency has its value. jealousy, anger, fighting, rivalry, possessiveness, fear, each has its quota to contribute to valuable manhood and womanhood. again, not suppression but a wise control must be the attitude of the educator. inhibition of certain phases or elements of some of the tendencies is necessary for the most valuable development of the individual, but the entire loss of any save one or two would be disastrous to some form of adult usefulness or enjoyment. the method by which valuable elements or phases of an original tendency are fixed and strengthened is the general method of habit formation and will be taken up under that head in chapter iv. when the modification involves definite inhibition, there are three possible methods,--punishment, disuse, and substitution. as an example of the use of the three methods take the case of a child who develops a fear of the dark. in using the first method the child would be punished every time he exhibited fear of the dark. by using the second method he would never be allowed to go into a dark room, a light being left burning in his bedroom, etc., until the tendency to fear the dark had passed. in the third method the emotion of fear would be replaced by that of joy or satisfaction by making the bedtime the occasion for telling a favorite story or for being allowed to have the best-loved toy, or for being played with or cuddled. the situation of darkness might be met in still another way. if the child were old enough, the emotion of courage might replace that of fear by having him make believe he was a soldier or a policeman. the method of punishment is the usual one, the one most teachers and parents use first. it relies for its effectiveness on the general law of the nervous system that pain tends to weaken the connections with whose activity it is associated. the method is weak in that pain is not a strong enough weapon to break the fundamental connections; it is not known how much of it is necessary to break even weaker ones; it is negative in its results--breaking one connection but replacing it by nothing else. the second method of inhibition is that of disuse. it is possible to inhibit by this means, because lack of use of connections in the nervous system results in atrophy. as a method it is valuable because it does not arouse resistance or anger. it is weak in that as neither the delayedness nor the transitoriness of instincts is known, when to begin to keep the situation from the child, and how long to keep it away in order to provide for the dying out of the connections, are not known. the method is negative and very unsure of results. the method of substitution depends for its use upon the presence in the individual of opposing tendencies and of different levels of development in the same tendency. because of this fact a certain response to a situation may be inhibited by forming the habit of meeting the situation in another way or of replacing a lower phase of a tendency by a higher one. this method is difficult to handle because of the need of knowledge of the original tendencies of children in general which it implies as well as the knowledge of the capacities and development of the individual child with whom the work is being done. the amount of time and individual attention necessary adds another difficulty. however, it is by far the best method of the three, for it is sure, is economical, using the energy that is provided by nature, is educative, and is positive. to replace what is poor or harmful by something better is one of the greatest problems of human life--and this is the outcome of the method of substitution. all three methods have their place in a system of education, and certain of them are more in place at certain times than at others, but at all times if the method of substitution can be used it should be. the instinct of physical activity is one of the most noticeable ones in babyhood. the young baby seems to be in constant movement. even when asleep, the twitchings and squirmings may continue. this continued muscular activity is necessary because the motor nerves offer the only possible path of discharge at first. as higher centers in the brain are developed, the ingoing currents, aroused by all sense stimuli, find other connections, and ideas, images, trains of thoughts, are aroused, and so the energy is consumed; but at first all that these currents can do is to arouse physical activity. the strength of this instinct is but little diminished by the time the child comes to school. his natural inclination is to do things requiring movement of all the growing muscles. inhibition, "sitting still," "being quiet," takes real effort on his part, and is extremely fatiguing. this instinct is extremely valuable in several ways: it gives the exercise necessary to a growing body, provides the experience of muscle movements necessary for control, and stimulates mental growth through the increase and variety of experiences it gives. the tendency to enjoy mental activity, to be satisfied with it for its own sake, is peculiarly a human trait. this capacity shows itself in two important ways--in the interest in sensory stimuli, usually discussed under the head of curiosity, and in the delight in "being a cause" or mental control. the interest in tastes, sounds, sights, touches, etc., merely for their own sake, is very evident in a baby. he spends most of his waking time in just that enjoyment. though more complex, it is still strong when the child enters school, and for years any object of sense which attracts his attention is material which arouses this instinct. the second form in which the instinct for mental ability shows itself is later in development and involves the secondary brain connections. it is the satisfaction aroused by results of which the individual is the cause. for example, the enjoyment of a child in seeing a ball swing or hearing a whistle blown would be a manifestation of curiosity, while the added interest which is always present when the child not only sees the ball swing but swings it, not only hears the whistle but blows it himself, is a result of the second tendency, that of joy in being a cause. as the child grows older the same tendency shows itself on a higher level when the materials dealt with, instead of being sensations or percepts, are images or ideas. the interest in following out a train of ideas to a logical conclusion, of building "castles in the air," of making plans and getting results, all find their taproot in this instinctive tendency towards mental activity. in close connection with the general tendency towards physical activity is the instinct of manipulation. from this crude root grows constructiveness and destructiveness. as it shows itself at first it has the elements of neither. the child inherits the tendency to respond by "many different arm, hand, and finger movements to many different objects"--poking, pulling, handling, tearing, piling, digging, and dropping objects. just what habits of using tools, and the like, will grow out of this tendency will depend on the education and training it gets. the habits of constructiveness may be developed in different sorts of media. the order of their availability is roughly as follows: first, in the use of materials such as wood, clay, raffia, etc.; second, in the use of pencil and brush with color, etc.; third, in the use of words. we should therefore expect and provide for considerable development along manual lines before demanding much in the way of literary expression. indeed, it may be argued that richness of experience in doing is prerequisite to verbal expression. acquisitiveness and collecting are two closely allied tendencies of great strength. every child has a tendency to approach, grasp, and carry off any object not too large which attracts his attention, and to be satisfied by its mere possession. blind hoarding and collecting of objects sometimes valueless in themselves results. this instinct is very much influenced in its manifestation by others which are present at the same time, such as the food-getting instinct, rivalry, love of approval, etc. the time at which the tendency to collect seems strongest is at about nine years, judged by the number of collections per child. rivalry as an instinct shows itself in increased vigor, in instinctive activity when others are engaged in the same activity, and in satisfaction when superiority is attained. there is probably no inborn tendency whereby these responses of increased vigor and satisfaction are aroused in connection with any kind of activity. we do not try to surpass others in the way we talk or in our moral habits or in our intellectual attainments, as a result of nature, but rather as a result of painstaking education. as an instinct, rivalry is aroused only in connection with other instinctive responses. in getting food, in securing attention or approval, in hunting and collecting, the activity would be increased by seeing another doing the same thing, and satisfaction would be aroused at success or annoyance at failure. the use of rivalry in other activities and at other levels comes as a result of experience. the fighting responses are called out by a variety of situations. these situations are definite and the responses to them differ from each other. in each case the child tries by physical force of some kind, by scratching, kicking, biting, slapping, throwing, and the like, to change the situation into a more agreeable one. this is true whether he be trying to escape from the restraining arms of his mother or to compel another child to recognize his mastery. original nature endows us with the pugnacious instinct on the physical level and in connection with situations which for various reasons annoy us. if this is to be raised in its manner of response from the physical to the intellectual level, if the occasions calling it out are to be changed from those that merely annoy one to those which involve the rights of others and matters of principle, it must be as a result of education. nature provides only this crude root. imitation has long been discussed as one of the most important and influential of human instincts. it has been regarded as a big general tendency to attempt to do whatever one saw any one else doing. as such a tendency it does not exist. it is only in certain narrow lines that the tendency to imitate shows itself, such as smiling when smiled at, yelling when others yell, looking and listening, running, crouching, attacking, etc., when others do. to this extent and in similar situations the tendency to imitate seems to be truly an instinct. imitating in other lines, such as writing as another writes, talking, dressing, acting like a friend, trying to use the methods used by others, etc., are a result of experience and education. the "spontaneous," "dramatic," and "voluntary" imitation discussed by some authors are the stages of development of _habits_ of imitation. the desire to be with others of the same species, the satisfaction at company and the discomfort aroused by solitude, is one of the strongest roots of all social tendencies and customs. it manifests itself in young babies, and continues a strong force throughout life. as an instinct it has nothing to do with either being interested in taking one's share in the duties or pleasures of the group or with being interested in people for their own sakes. it is merely that company makes one comfortable and solitude annoys one. anything further must come as a result of experience. motherliness and kindliness have as their characteristic behavior tendencies to respond by instinctive comforting acts to signs of pain, grief, or misery shown by living things, especially, by children, and by the feeling of satisfaction and the sight of happiness in others. of course very often these instinctive responses are interfered with by the presence of some other instinct, such as fighting, hunting, ownership, or scorn, but that such tendencies to respond in such situations are a part of the original equipment of man seems beyond dispute. they are possessed by both sexes and manifest themselves in very early childhood. there are original tendencies to respond both in getting and in giving approval and scorn. by original nature, smiles, pats, admiration, and companionship from one to whom submission is given arouses intense satisfaction; and the withdrawal of such responses, and the expression of scorn or disapproval, excites great discomfort. even the expression of approval or scorn from any one--a stranger or a servant--brings with it the responses of satisfaction or discomfort. just as strongly marked are original tendencies which cause responses of approval and cause as a result of "relief from hunger, rescue from fear, gorgeous display, instinctive acts of strength, daring and victory," and responses of scorn "to the observation of empty-handedness, deformity, physical meanness, pusillanimity, and defect." the desire for approval is never outgrown--it is one of the governing forces in society. if it is to be shown or desired on any but this crude level of instinctive response, it can only come by education. children come to school with both an original nature determined by their human inheritance and by their more immediate family relationship, and with an education more significant, perhaps, than any which the school can provide. from earliest infancy up to the time of entering a kindergarten or a first grade, the original equipment in terms of instincts, capacities, and abilities has been utilized by the child and directed by his parents and associates in learning to walk and to talk, to conform to certain social standards or requirements, to accept certain rules or precepts, or to act in accordance with certain beliefs or superstitions. the problem which the teacher faces is that of directing and guiding an individual, who is at the same time both educated and in possession of tendencies and capacities which make possible further development. not infrequently the education which children have when they come to school may in some measure handicap the teacher. it is unfortunate, but true, that in some homes instinctive tendencies which should have been overcome have been magnified. the control of children is sometimes secured through the utilization of the instinct of fear. the fighting instinct may often have been overdeveloped in a home in which disagreement and nagging, even to the extent of physical violence, have taken the place of reason. pride and jealousy may have taken deep root on account of the encouragement and approval which have been given by thoughtless adults. the teacher does not attack the problem of education with a clean slate, but rather it is his to discover what results have already been achieved in the education of the child, whether they be good or bad, for it is in the light of original nature or original tendencies to behave, and in the light of the education already secured, that the teacher must work. when one realizes the great variety or differences in ability or capacity, as determined by heredity, and when there is added to this difference in original nature the fact of variety in training which children have experienced prior to their school life, he cannot fail to emphasize the necessity for individualizing children. while it is true that we may assume that all children will take delight in achievement, it may be necessary with one child to stir as much as possible the spirit of rivalry, to give as far as one can the delight which comes from success, while for another child in the same class one may need to minimize success on account of a spirit of arrogance which has been developed before school life began. it is possible to conceive of a situation in which some children need to be encouraged to fight, even to the extent of engaging in physical combat, in order to develop a kind of courage which will accept physical discomfort rather than give up a principle or ideal. in the same group there may be children for whom the teacher must work primarily in terms of developing, in so far as he can, the willingness to reason or discuss the issue which may have aroused the fighting instinct. for all children in elementary and in high schools the possibility of utilizing their original nature for the sake of that development which will result in action which is socially desirable is still present. the problem which the teacher faces will be more or less difficult in proportion as the child's endowment by original nature is large or small, and as previous education has been successful or unsuccessful. the skillful teacher is the one who will constantly seek to utilize to the full those instincts or capacities which seem most potent. this utilization, as has already been pointed out, does not mean a blind following of the instinctive tendencies, but often the substitution of a higher form of action for a lower, which may seem to be related to the instinct in question. it is probably wise to encourage collections of stamps, of pictures, of different kinds of wood, and the like, upon the part of children in the elementary school, provided always that the teacher has in mind the possibility of leading these children, through their interest in objects, to desire to collect ideas. indeed, a teacher might measure her success in utilizing the collecting instinct in proportion as children become relatively less interested in things collected, and more interested in the ideas suggested by them, or in the mastery of fields of knowledge or investigation in which objects have very little significance. the desire for physical activity upon the part of children is originally satisfied by very crude performances. development is measured not simply in an increase in manual dexterity, but also in terms of the higher satisfaction which may come from producing articles which have artistic merit, or engaging in games of skill which make for the highest physical efficiency. during the whole period of childhood and adolescence we may never assume that the results of previous education, whether they be favorable or unsatisfactory, are permanent. whether we succeed or not in achieving the ends which we desire, the fact of modifiability, of docility, and of plasticity remains. the teacher who seeks to understand the individuals with whom he works, both in terms of their original nature and in terms of their previous education, and who at the same time seeks to substitute for a lower phase of an instinctive tendency a higher one, or who tries to have his pupils respond to a situation by inhibiting a particular tendency by forming the habit of meeting the situation in another way, need not despair of results which are socially desirable. questions . may a teacher ever expect the children in his class to be equal in achievement? why? . why is it not possible to educate children satisfactorily by following where instincts lead? . which of the instincts seem most strong in the children in your class? . can you give any example of an instinctive tendency which you think should have been outgrown but which seems to persist among your pupils? . give examples of the inhibition of undesirable actions based upon instinctive tendencies by means of ( ) punishment, ( ) disuse, ( ) substitution. . how can you use the tendency to enjoy mental activity? . why does building a boat make a stronger appeal to a boy than engaging in manual training exercises which might involve the same amount of activity? . cite examples of collections made by boys and girls in which the ideas associated with the objects collected may be more important than the objects themselves. . in what degree are we justified in speaking of the social instinct? the instinct to imitate? . how can you use the fighting instinct in your work with children? . what can teachers do to influence the education which children have received or are getting outside of school? . what differences in action among the children in your class do you attribute to differences in original nature? what to differences in education? * * * * * iii. attention and interest in teaching attention is a function of consciousness. wherever consciousness is, attention must perforce be present. one cannot exist without the other. according to most psychologists, the term attention is used to describe the form consciousness takes, to refer to the fact that consciousness is selective. it simply means that consciousness is always focal and marginal--that some ideas, facts, or feelings stand out in greater prominence than do others, and that the presence of this "perspective" in consciousness is a matter of mechanical adjustment. james describes consciousness by likening it to a series of waves, each having a crest and sides which correspond to the focus and margin of attention. the form of the wave changes from a high sharp crest with almost straight sides in pointed, concentrated attention, to a series of mere undulations, when crests are difficult to distinguish, in so-called states of dispersed attention. the latter states are rare in normal individuals, although they may be rather frequent in certain types of low-grade mental defectives. this of course means that states of "inattention" do not exist in normal people. so long as consciousness is present one must be attending to something. the "day dream" is often accompanied by concentrated attention. only when we are truly thinking of nothing, and that can only be as unconsciousness approaches, is attention absent. what is true of attention is also true of interest, for interest is coming more and more to be considered the "feeling side" of attention, or the affective accompaniment of attention. the kind of interest may vary, but some kind is always present. the place the interest occupies may also vary: sometimes the affective state itself is so strong that it forces itself into the focal point and becomes the object of attention. the chief fact of importance, however, is that attention and interest are inseparable and both are coexistent with consciousness. this selective action of consciousness is mechanical, due to the inborn tendencies toward attention possessed by human beings. the situations which by their very nature occupy the focal point in consciousness are color and brightness, novelty, sudden changes and sharp contrasts, rhythm and cadence, movement, and all other situations to which there are other instinctive responses, such as hunting, collecting, curiosity, manipulation, etc. in other words, children are born with tendencies to attend to an enormous number of situations because of the number of instinctive responses they possess. so great is this number that psychologists used to talk about the omnivorousness of children's attention, believing that they attended to everything. such a general attention seems not to be true. however, it is because so many situations have the power to force consciousness to a crest that human beings have developed the intellectual power that puts them so far above other animals. that these situations do attract attention is shown by the fact that individuals respond by movements which enable them to be more deeply impressed or impressed for a longer time by the situations in question. for example, a baby will focus his eyes upon a bright object and then move eyes and head to follow it if it moves from his field of vision. just what the situations are, then, which will arouse responses of attention in any given individual will depend in the first place upon his age, sex, and maturity, and in the second place upon his experience. the process of learning very quickly modifies the inborn tendencies to attention by adding new situations which demand it. it is the things we learn to attend to that make us human rather than merely animal. the fact of attention or selection must of necessity involve also inhibition or neglect. the very fact of the selection of certain objects and qualities means the neglect of others. this fact of neglect is at first just as mechanical as that of attention, but experiences teach us to neglect some situations which by original nature attracted attention. from the standpoint of education what we neglect is quite as important as what is selected for attention. the breadth of a person's attention, _i.e.,_ the number of lines along which attention is possible, must vary with age and experience. the younger or the more immature an individual is, the greater the number of different lines to which attention is given. it is the little child whose attention seems omnivorous, and it is the old person for whom situations worthy of attention have narrowed down to a few lines. this must of necessity be so, due to the interrelation of attention and neglect. the very fact of continuing to give attention along one line means less and less ability and desire to attend along other lines. the question as to how many things, whether objects or ideas, can be attended to at the same time, has aroused considerable discussion. most people think that they are attending to several things, if not to many, at the same second of consciousness. experiments show that if four or five unrelated objects, words, or letters be shown to adults for less than one quarter of a second, they can be apprehended, but the probability is that they are photographed, so to speak, on the eye and counted afterwards. it is the general belief of psychologists at present that the mind attends to only one thing at a time, that only one idea or object can occupy the focal point in consciousness. the apparent contradiction between ordinary experience and psychological experience along this line is due to three facts which are often overlooked. in the first place, the complexity of the idea or thing that can be attended to as a unit varies tremendously. differences in people account for part of this variation, but training and experience account for still more. our ideas become more and more complex as experience and familiarity build them up. qualities which to a little child demand separate acts of attention are with the adult merged into his perception of the object. just as simple words, although composed of separate letters, are perceived as units, so with training, more complex units may be found which can be attended to as wholes. so (to the ignorant or the uninstructed) what is apparently attending to more than one thing at a time may be explained by the complexity of the unit which is receiving the attention. in the second place _doing_ more than one thing at a time does not imply attending to more than one thing at a time. an activity which is habitual or mechanical does not need attention, but can be carried on by the control exercised by the fringe of consciousness. attention may be needed to start the activity or if a difficulty of any kind should arise, but that is all. for the rest of the time it can be devoted to anything else. the great speed with which attention can flash from one thing to another and back again must be taken into consideration in all this discussion. so far as attention goes, one can _do_ as many things at a time as he can make mechanical plus one unfamiliar one. thus a woman can rock the baby's cradle, croon a lullaby, knit, and at the same time be thinking of illustrations for her paper at the woman's club, because only one of these activities needs attention. when no one of the activities is automatic and the individual must depend on the rapid change of attention from one to the other to keep them going, the results obtained are likely to be poor and the fatigue is great. the attempt to take notes while listening to a lecture is of this order, and hence the unsatisfactoriness of the results. the third fact which helps to explain the apparent contradiction under discussion is closely related to this one. it is possible when engaged with one object to have several questions or topics close by in the fringe of consciousness so that one or the other may flash to the focal point as the development of the train of thought demands. the individual is apparently considering many questions at the same time, when in reality it is the readiness of these associations plus the oscillations of attention that account for the activity. the ability to do this sort of thing depends partly on the individual,--some people will always be "people of one idea,"--but training and experience increase the power. the child who in the primary can be given only one thing to look for when he goes on his excursion may grow into the youth who can carry half a dozen different questions in his mind to which he is looking for answers. by concentration of attention is meant the depth of the attention, and this is measured by the ease with which a person's attention can be called off the topic with which he is concerned. the concentration may be so great that the individual is oblivious to all that goes on about him. he may forget engagements and meals because of his absorption. sometimes even physical pain is not strong enough to distract attention. on the other hand, the concentration may be so slight that every passing sense impression, every irrelevant association called up by the topic, takes the attention away from the subject. the depth of concentration depends upon four factors. certain mental and physical conditions have a great deal to do with the concentration of attention, and these will be discussed later. individual differences also account for the presence or absence of power of concentration--some people concentrate naturally, others never get very deeply into any topic. maturity is another factor that is influential. a little child cannot have great concentration, simply because he has not had experience enough to give him many associations with which to work. his attention is easily distracted. although apparently absorbed in play, he hears what goes on about him and notices many things which adults suppose he does not see. this same lack of power shows itself in any one's attention when a new subject is taken up if he has few associations with it. of course this means that other things being equal the older one is, up to maturity at least, the greater one's power of concentration. little children have very little power, adolescents a great deal, but it is the adult who excels in concentration. although this is true, the fourth factor, that of training in concentration, does much toward increasing the power before full maturity is reached. one can learn to concentrate just as he can learn to do anything else. habits of concentration, of ignoring distinctions and interruptions, of putting all one's power into the work in hand, are just as possible as habits of neatness. the laws of habit formation apply in the field of attention just as truly as in every other field of mental life. laboratory experiments prove the large influence which training has on concentration and the great improvement that can be made. it is true that few people do show much concentration of attention when they wish. this is true of adults as well as of children. they have formed habits of working at half speed, with little concentration and no real absorption in the topic. this method of work is both wasteful of time and energy and injurious to the mental stability and development of the individual. half-speed work due to lack of concentration often means that a student will stay with a topic and fuss over it for hours instead of working hard and then dropping it. teachers often do this sort of thing with their school work. not only are the results less satisfactory, because the individual never gets deeply enough into the topic to really get what is there, but the effect on him is bad. it is like "constant dripping wears away the stone." children must be taught to "work when they work and play when they play," if they are to have habits of concentration as adults. the length of time which it is possible to attend to the same object or idea may be reckoned in seconds. it is impossible to hold the attention on an object for any appreciable length of time. in order to hold the attention the object must change. the simple experiment of trying to pay attention to a blot of ink or the idea of bravery proves that change is necessary if the attention is not to wander. what happens is that either the attention goes to something else, or that you begin thinking about the thing in question. of course, the minute you begin thinking, new associations, images, memories, come flocking in, and the attention occupies itself with each in turn. all may concern the idea with which you started out, but the very fact that these have been added to the mental content of the instant makes the percept of ink blot or the concept of bravery different from the bare thing with which the attention began. if this change and fluctuation of the mental state does not take place, the attention flits to something else. the length of time that the attention may be engaged with a topic will depend, then, upon the number of associations connected with it. the more one knows about a topic, the longer he can attend to it. if it is a new topic, the more suggestive it is in calling up past experience or in offering incentive for experiment or application, the longer can attention stay with it. such a topic is usually called "interesting," but upon analysis it seems that this means that for one of the above reasons it develops or changes and therefore holds the attention. this duration of attention will vary in length from a few seconds to hours. the child who is given a problem which means almost nothing, which presents a blank wall when he tries to attend to it, which offers no suggestions for solution, is an illustration of the first. attention to such a problem is impossible; his attention must wander. the genius who, working with his favorite subject, finds a multitude of trains of thought called up by each idea, and who therefore spends hours on one topic with no vacillation of attention, is an illustration of the second. attention has been classified according to the kind of feeling which accompanies the activity. sometimes attention comes spontaneously, freely, and the emotional tone is that accompanying successful activity. on the other hand, sometimes it has to be forced and is accompanied by feelings of strain and annoyance. the first type is called free[ ] attention; the second is forced attention. free attention is given when the object of attention satisfies a need; when the situation attended to provides the necessary material for some self-activity. the activity of the individual at that second needs something that the situation in question gives, and hence free, spontaneous attention results. forced attention is given when there is a lack of just such feeling of need in connection with the object of attention. it does not satisfy the individual--it is distinct from his desires at the time. he attends only because of fear of the results if he does not, and hence the condition is one of strain. all play takes free attention. work which holds the worker because it is satisfying also takes free attention. work which has in it the element of drudgery needs forced attention. the girl making clothes for her doll, the boy building his shack in the woods, the inventor working over his machine, the student absorbed in his history lesson,--all these are freely attending to the thing in hand. the girl running her seam and hating it, the, boy building the chicken coop while wishing to be at the ball game, the inventor working over his machine when his thoughts and desires are with his sick wife, the student trying to study his history when the debate in the civics club is filling his mind,--these are cases when forced attention would probably be necessary. it is very evident that there is no one situation which will necessarily take either free or forced attention because the determining factor is not in the situation _per se_, but in the relation it bears to the mind engaged with it. sometimes the same object will call forth forced attention from one person and free from another. further, the same object may at one time demand free attention and at another time forced attention from the same person, depending on the operation of other factors. it is also true that attention which was at first forced may change into free as the activity is persevered in. although these two types of attention are discussed as if they were entirely separated from each other, as if one occurred in this situation and the other in that, still as a matter of fact the actual conditions involve an interplay between the two. it is seldom true that free attention is given for any great length of time without flashes of forced attention being scattered through it. often the forced attention may be needed for certain parts of the work, although as a whole it may take free attention. the same thing is true of occasions when forced attention is used. there are periods in the activity when free attention will carry the worker on. every activity, then, is likely to be complex so far as the kind of attention used, but it is also characterized by the predominance of one or the other type. the question as to the conditions which call out each type of attention is an important one. as has already been said, free attention is given when the situation attended to satisfies a need. physiologically stated, free attention is given when a neurone series which is ready to act is called into activity. the situations which do this, other things being equal, will be those which appeal to some instinctive tendency or capacity, or to the self-activity or the personal experience of the individual and which therefore are in accord with his stage of development and his experience. forced attention is necessary when the neurone tracts used by the attention are for some reason unready to act. situations to which attention is given through fear of punishment, or when the activity involves a choice of ideal ends as opposed to personal desires, or when some instinctive tendency must be inhibited or its free activity is blocked or interfered with, or when the laws of growth and experience are violated, take forced attention. of course fatigue, disease, and monotony are frequent breeders of forced attention. from the above discussion it must be evident that one of the chief characteristics of free attention is its unity. the mental activity of the person is all directed along one line, that which leads to the satisfying of the need. it is unified by the appeal the situation makes. as a result of such a state the attention is likely to be concentrated, and can be sustained over a long period. of course this means that the work accomplished under such conditions will be greater in amount, more thorough, and more accurate than could be true were there less unity in the process. the opposite in all respects is true of forced attention. it is present when there is divided interest. the topic does not appeal to the need of the individual. he attends to it because he must. part of his full power of attention is given to keeping himself to the work, leaving only a part to be given to the work itself. if there is any other object in the field of attention which is particularly attractive, as there usually is, that claims its share, and the attention is still further divided. divided attention cannot be concentrated; it cannot last long. the very strain and effort involved makes it extremely fatiguing. the results of work done under such conditions must be poor. there can be but little thoroughness, for the worker will do just as much as he must to pass muster, and no more. inaccuracy and superficiality will characterize such work. just as training in giving concentrated attention results in power along that line, so frequent necessity for forced attention develops habits of divided attention which in time will hinder the development of any concentration. from a psychological viewpoint there can be no question but what free attention is the end to be sought by workers of all kinds. it is an absolutely false notion that things are easy when free attention is present. it is only when free attention is present that results worth mentioning are accomplished. it is only under such conditions that the worker is willing to try and try again, and put up with disappointment and failure, to use his ingenuity and skill to the utmost, to go out of his way for material or suggestions; in other words, to put himself into his work in such a way that it is truly educational. on the other hand, forced attention has its own value and could not be dispensed with in the development of a human being. its value is that of means to end--not that of an end in itself. it is only as it leads into free attention that forced attention is truly valuable. in that place the part it plays is tremendous because things are as they are. there will always be materials which will not appeal to a need in some individual because of lack of capacity or experience; there will always be parts of various activities and processes which seem unnecessary and a waste of time to some worker; there will always be choices to be made between instinctive desires and ideal needs, and in each case forced attention is the only means, perhaps, by which the necessary conditions can be acquired that make possible free attention. it is evident, therefore, that forced attention should be called into play only when needed. when needed, it should be demanded rigorously, but the sooner the individual in question can pass from it to the other type, the better. this is true in all fields whether intellectual or moral. a second classification of attention has been suggested according to the answer to the question as to why attention is given. sometimes attention is given simply because the material itself demands it; sometimes for some ulterior reason. the former type is called immediate or intrinsic attention; the latter is called derived, mediate, or extrinsic attention. the former is given to the situation for its own sake; the latter because of something attached to it. forced attention is always derived; free attention may be either immediate or derived. it is immediate and derived free attention that needs further discussion. it should be borne in mind that there is no sharp line of division between immediate and derived attention. sometimes it is perfectly evident that the attention is given for the sake of the material--at other times there can be no doubt but that it is the something beyond the material that holds the attention. but in big, complex situations it is not so evident. for instance, the musician composing just for the love of it is an example of immediate attention, while the small boy working his arithmetic examples with great care in order to beat his seatmate is surely giving derived attention. but under some conditions the motives are mixed and the attention may fluctuate from the value of the material itself to the values to be derived from it. however this may be, at the two extremes there is a clear-cut difference between these two types of attention. the value of rewards and incentives depends on the psychology of derived free attention, while that of punishment and deterrents is wrapped up with derived forced attention. immediate free attention is the more valuable of the two types because it is the most highly unified and most strongly dynamic of all the attention types. the big accomplishments of human lives have been brought to pass through this kind of attention. it is the kind the little child gives to his play--the activity itself is worth while. so with the artist, the inventor, the poet, the teacher, the physician, the architect, the banker--to be engaged in that particular activity satisfies. but this is not true of all artists, bankers, etc., nor with the others all the time. even for the child at play, sometimes conditions arise when the particular part of the activity does not seem worth while in itself; then if it is to be continued, another kind of attention must be brought in--derived attention. this illustration shows the place of derived attention as a means to an end--the same part played by forced attention in its relation to free. derived attention must needs be characteristic of much of the activity of human beings. people have few well-developed capacities, and there are many kinds of things they are required to do. if these are to be done with free attention, heartily, it will only be because of some value that is worth while that is attached to the necessary activity. as activities grow complex and as the results of activities grow remote, the need for something to carry over the attention to the parts of the activity that are seen to be worth while in the first place, or to the results in the second, grows imperative. this need is filled by derived attention, and here it shows its value as means to an end, but it is only when the need for this carrier disappears, and the activity as a whole for itself seems worth while, that the best results are obtained. there is a very great difference between the kinds of motives or values chosen for derived attention, and their value varies in accordance with the following principles. incentives should be closely connected naturally with the subject to which they are attached. they should be suited to the development of the child and be natural rather than artificial. their appeal should be permanent, _i.e._, should persist in the same situation outside of school. they should really stimulate those to whom they are offered. they should not be too attractive in themselves. applying these principles it would seem that derived interests that have their source in instincts, in special capacities, or in correlation of subjects are of the best type, while such extremely artificial incentives as prizes, half holidays, etc., are among the poorest. the value of derived attention is that it gets the work done or the habit formed. of course the hope is always there that it will pass over into the immediate type, but if it does not, at least results are obtained. it has already been shown that results may also be obtained by the use of forced attention, which is also derived. both derived free attention and forced attention are means to an end. the question as to the comparative value of the two must be answered in favor of the derived free attention. the chief reasons for this conclusion are as follows. first, derived free attention is likely to be more unified than forced attention. second, it arouses greater self-activity on the part of the worker. third, the emotional tone is that of being satisfied instead of strain. fourth, it is more likely to lead to the immediate attention which is its end. despite these advantages of derived free attention over forced attention, it still has some of the same disadvantages that forced attention has. the chief of these is that it also may result in division of energy. if the means for gaining the attention is nothing but sugar coating, if it results in the mere entertainment of the worker, there is every likelihood that the attention will be divided between the two. the other disadvantage is that because of the attractiveness of the means used to gain attention it may be given just so long as the incentive remains, and no longer. these difficulties may be largely overcome, however, by the application of the principles governing good incentives. this must mean that the choice of types of attention and therefore the provision of situations calling them out should be in this order: immediate free attention, derived free attention, forced attention. all three are necessary in the education of any child, but each should be used in its proper place. the conditions which insure the best attention of whatever type have to do with both physical and mental adjustments. on the physical side there is need for the adaptation of the sense organ and the body to the situation. for this adaptation to be effective the environmental conditions must be controlled by the laws of hygiene. a certain amount of bodily freedom yields better results than rigidity because the latter draws energy from the task in hand for purposes of inhibition. on the mental side there is need for preparation in terms of readiness of the nerve tracts to be used. james calls this "ideational" preparation. this simply means that one can attend better if he knows something of what he is to attend to. experimental evidence proves without doubt that if the subject knows that he is to see a color, instead of a word, his perception of it is much more rapid and accurate than if he does not have this preparation. this same result is obtained in much more complex sensory situations, and it also holds when the situation is intellectual. contrary to expectation, great quietness is not the best condition for the maximum of attention; a certain amount of distraction is beneficial. the problem of interest and of attention, from the point of view of teaching, is not simply to secure attention, but rather to have the attention fixed upon those activities which are most desirable from the standpoint of realizing the aim or purpose of education. as has already been suggested, children are constantly attending to something. they instinctively respond to the very great variety of stimuli with which they come in contact. our schools seek to provide experiences which are valuable. in school work when we are successful children attend to those stimuli which promise most for the formation of habits, or the growth in understanding and appreciation which will fit them for participation in our social life. we seek constantly in our work as teachers to secure either free or forced attention to the particular part of our courses of study or to the particular experiences which are allotted to the grade or class which we teach. one of the very greatest difficulties in securing attention upon the part of a class is found in the variety of experiences which they have already enjoyed, and the differences in the strength of the appeal which the particular situation may make upon the several members of the group. in class teaching we have constantly to vary our appeal and to differentiate our work to suit the individual differences represented in the class, if we would succeed in holding the attention of even the majority of the children. boys and girls do their best work only when they concentrate their attention upon the work to be done. one of the greatest fallacies that has ever crept into our educational thought is that which suggests that there is great value in having people work in fields in which they are not interested, and in which they do not freely give their attention. any one who is familiar with children, or with grown-ups, must know that it is only when interest is at a maximum that the effort put forth approaches the limit of capacity set by the individual's ability. boys concentrate their attention upon baseball or upon fishing to a degree which demands of them a maximum of effort. a boy may spend hours at a time seeking to perfect himself in pitching, batting, or fielding. he may be uncomfortable a large part of the time, he may suffer considerable pain, and yet continue in his practice by virtue of his great enthusiasm for perfecting himself in the game. interest of a not dissimilar sort leads a man who desires position, or power, or wealth, to concentrate his attention upon the particular field of his endeavor to the exclusion of almost everything else. indeed, men almost literally kill themselves in the effort which they make to achieve these social distinctions or rewards. we may not hope always to secure so high a degree of concentration of attention or of effort, but it is only as we approach a situation in which children are interested, and in which they freely give their attention to the subject in hand, that we can claim to be most successful in our teaching. the teacher who is able in beginning reading to discover to children the tool which will enable them to get the familiar story or rhyme from the book may hope to get a quality of attention which could never be brought about by forcing them to attend to formal phonetic drill. the teacher of biology who has been able to awaken enthusiasm for the investigation of plant and animal life, and who has allowed children to conduct their own investigations and to carry out their own experiments, may hope for a type of attention which is never present in the carrying out of the directions of the laboratory manual or in naming or classifying plants or animals merely as a matter of memory. children who are at work producing a school play will accomplish more in the study of the history in which they seek to discover a dramatic situation, by virtue of the concentration of attention given, than they would in reciting many lessons in which they seek to remember the paragraphs or pages which they have read. the boy who gives his attention to the production of a story for his school paper will work harder than one who is asked to write a composition covering two pages. children who are allowed to prepare for the entertainment of the members of their class a story with which they alone are familiar will give a quality of attention to the work in hand which is never secured when all of the members of the class are asked to reproduce a story which the teacher has read. it is necessary at times to have children give forced attention. there are some things to be accomplished that must be done, regardless of our success in securing free attention. it is entirely conceivable that some boy or girl may not want to learn his multiplication tables, or his words in spelling, or his conjugation or declension in french, and that all that the teacher has done may fail to arouse any great amount of interest or enthusiasm for the work in question. in these cases, and in many others which might be cited, the necessity for the particular habit may be so great as to demand that every pupil do the work or form the habit in question. in these cases we may not infrequently hope that after having given forced attention to the work of the school, children may in time come to understand the importance of the experiences which they are having, or even become interested in the work for its own sake. it is not infrequently true that after a period of forced attention there follows a time during which, on account of the value which children are able to understand as attached to or belonging to the particular exercise, they give free derived attention. many boys and girls have worked through their courses in science or in modern languages because they believed that these subjects would prove valuable not only in preparing them for college, but in giving them a wider outlook on life. their attention was of the free derived type. later on some of these same pupils have become tremendously enthusiastic in their work in the fields in question, and have found such great satisfaction in the work itself, that their attention might properly be characterized as free immediate attention. the importance of making children conscious of their power of concentrating their attention needs to be kept constantly in mind. exercises in which children are asked to do as much as they can in a period of five or ten minutes may be used to teach children what concentration of attention is and of the economy involved in work done under these conditions. the trouble with a great many adults, as well as with children, is that they have never learned what it is to work up to the maximum of their capacity. all too frequently in our attempts to teach children in classes we neglect to provide even a sufficient amount of work to demand of the more able members of the group any considerable amount of continued, concentrated attention. we seek in our work as teachers not only to secure a maximum of attention to the fields of work in which children are engaged, but also to arouse interests and enthusiasms which will last after school days are over. we think of interest often, and properly too, as the means employed to secure a maximum of attention, and, in consequence, a maximum of accomplishment. it is worth while to think often in our work in terms of interest as the end to be secured. children should become sufficiently interested in some of the subjects that we teach to care to be students in these fields, or to find enjoyment in further work or activity along these lines, either as a matter of recreation or, not infrequently, as a means of discovering their true vocation in life. that teacher who has aroused sufficient interest in music to enable the student of musical ability to venture all of the hard work which may be necessary in order to become a skillful musician, has made possibly his greatest contribution by arousing interest or creating enthusiasm. the teacher whose enthusiasm in science has led a boy to desire to continue in this field, even to the extent of influencing him to undertake work in an engineering school, may be satisfied, not so much in the accomplishment of his pupil in the field of science, as in the enthusiasm which has carried him forward to more significant work. even for children who go no farther than the elementary school, interest in history, or geography, in nature study, or in literature, may mean throughout the life of the individuals taught a better use of leisure time and an enjoyment of the nobler pleasures. successful teaching in any part of our school system demands an adjustment in the amount of work to be done, to the abilities, and even to the interest of individual children. much may be accomplished by the organization of special classes or groups in large school systems, but even under the most favorable conditions children cannot be expected to work up to the maximum of their capacity except as teachers recognize these differences in interest and in ability, and make assignments and conduct exercises which take account of these differences. questions . why do all children attend when the teacher raps on the desk, when she writes on the board, when some one opens the door and comes into the room? . some teachers are constantly rapping with their pencils and raising their voices in order to attract attention. what possible weakness is indicated by this procedure? . why do adults attend to fewer things than do children? . in what sense is it possible to attend to two things at the same time? . why are children less able to concentrate their attention than are most adults? . will a boy or girl in your class be more or less easily distracted as he gives free attention or forced attention to the work in hand? . what educational value is attached to an exercise which requires that a boy sit at his desk and work, even upon something in which he is not very much interested, for twenty minutes? . in what sense is it true that we form the habit of concentrating our attention? . why is it wrong to extend a lesson beyond the period during which children are able to concentrate their attention upon the work in hand, or beyond the period during which they do concentrate their attention? . how is it possible to extend the period devoted to a lesson in reading, or in geography, or in latin, beyond the time required to read a story or draw a map, or translate a paragraph? . why is it possible to have longer recitation periods in the upper grades and in the high school than in the primary school? . give examples from your class work of free attention; of forced attention; of free derived attention. . in what sense is it true that we work hardest when we give free attention? . in what sense is it true that we work hardest when we give forced attention? . can you give any example of superficiality or inaccuracy which has resulted from divided attention, upon the part of any member of one of your classes? . does free attention imply lack of effort? . name incidents which you think might properly be offered boys and girls in order to secure free derived attention. . can you cite any example in your teaching in which children have progressed from forced to free attention? . what interests have been developed in your classes which you think may make possible the giving of free attention in the field in question, even after school days are over? . how can you teach children what it is to concentrate their attention and the value of concentrated attention? * * * * * iv. the formation of habits habit in its simplest form is the tendency to do, think, or act as one has done, thought, or acted in the past. it is the tendency to repeat activities of all kinds. it is the tendency which makes one inclined to do the familiar action rather than a new one. in a broader sense, habit formation means learning. it is a statement of the fact that conduct _is_ modifiable and that such modifications may become permanent. the fact of learning depends physiologically on the plasticity of the nervous system. the neurones, particularly those concerned with intellectual life, are not only sensitive to nerve currents but are modified by them. the point where the greatest change seems to take place is at the synapses, but what this modification is, no one knows. there are several theories offered as explanations of what happens, but no one of them has been generally accepted, although the theory of chemical change seems to be receiving the strongest support at present. there can be no disagreement, however, as to the effects of this change, whatever it may be. currents originally passing with difficulty over a certain conduction unit later pass with greater and greater ease. the resistance which seems at first to be present gradually disappears, and to that extent is the conduct modified. this same element of plasticity accounts for the breaking of habits. in this case the action is double, for it implies the disuse of certain connections which have been made and the forming of others; for the breaking of a bad habit means the beginning of a good one. the plasticity of neurone groups seems to vary in two respects--as to modifiability and as to power to hold modifications. the neurone groups controlling the reflex and physiological operations are least easily modified, while those controlling the higher mental processes are most easily modified. the neurone groups controlling the instincts hold a middle place. so far as permanence goes, connections between sensorimotor neurone groups seem to hold modifications longer than do connections between either associative-motor or associative-association. it is probably because of this fact that habit in the minds of so many people refers to some physical activity. of course this is a misconception. wherever the nervous system is employed, habits are formed. there are intellectual, moral, emotional, temperamental habits, just as truly as physical habits. in the intellectual field every operation that involves association or memory also involves habits. good temper, or the reverse, truthfulness, patriotism, thoughtfulness for others, open-mindedness, are as much matters of learning and of habit as talking or skating or sewing. habit is found in all three lines of mental development: intellect, character, and skill. not only does the law of habit operate in all fields of mental activity, but the characteristics which mark its operation are the same. two of these are important. in the first place, habit formation results in a lessening of attention to the process. any process that is habitual can be taken care of by a minimum of attention. in other words, it need no longer be in the focal point, but can be relegated to the fringe. at the beginning of the modification of the neurone tract focal attention is often necessary, but as it progresses less and less attention is needed until the activity becomes automatic, apparently running by itself. not all habits reach this stage of perfection, but this is the general tendency. this lessening of the need for attention means that less energy is used by the activity, and the individual doing the work is less likely to be fatigued. in the second place, habit tends to make the process more and more sure in its results. as the resistance is removed from the synapses, and the one particular series of units come to act more and more as a unit, the current shoots along the path with no sidetracking, and the act is performed or the thought reached unwaveringly with very little chance of error. if the habit being formed is that of writing, the appropriate movements are made with no hesitation, and the chances that certain ones will be made the first time increase in probability. this means a saving of time and an increase in confidence as to the results. a consideration of these characteristics of habits makes clear its dangers as well as its values. the fact that habit is based on actual changes which take place in the nervous system, that its foundation is physical, emphasizes its binding power. most people in talking and thinking of habit regard it as something primarily mental in nature and therefore believe all that is necessary to break any habit is the sufficient exercise of will power. but will power, however strong, cannot break actual physical connections, and it is such connections that bind us to a certain line of activity instead of any other, when once the habit is formed. it is just as logical to expect a car which is started on its own track to suddenly go off on to another track where there is no switch, as to expect a nerve current traveling along its habitual conduction unit to run off on some other line of nervous discharge. habit once formed binds that particular line of thought to action, either good or bad. of course habits may be broken, but it is a work of time and must result from definite physical changes. every habit formed lessens the likelihood of any other response coming in that particular situation. every interest formed, every act of skill perfected, every method of work adopted, every principle or ideal accepted, limits the recognition of any other possible line of action in that situation. habit binds to one particular response and at the same time blinds the individual to any other alternative. the danger of this is obvious. if the habits formed are bad or wasteful ones, the individual is handicapped in his growth until new ones can be formed. on the other hand, habit makes for limitation. despite these dangers, habit is of inestimable value in the development of both the individual and the human race. it is through it that all learning is possible. it makes possible the preservation of our social inheritance. as james says, "habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent." because of its power of limitation it is sometimes considered the foe of independence and originality, but in reality it is the only road to progress. other things being equal, the more good habits a person has, the greater the probability of his doing original work. the genius in science or in art or in statesmanship is the man who has made habitual many of the activities demanded by his particular field and who therefore has time and energy left for the kind of work that demands thinking. habit won't make a genius, but all men of exceptional ability excel others in the number and quality of their habits in the field in which they show power. as the little child differs from the adult in the number and quality of his habits, so the ordinary layman differs from the expert. it is scarcity, not abundance, of habits that forces a man into a rut and keeps him mediocre. just as the three year old, having taken four or five times as long as the adult to dress himself, is tired out at the end of the task, so the amateur in literature or music or morals as compared with the expert. the more habits any one has in any line, the better for him, both from the standpoint of efficiency and productivity, provided that the habits are good and that among them is found the habit of breaking habits. the two great laws of habit formation are the laws of exercise and effect. these laws apply in all cases of habit formation, whether they be the purposeless habits of children or the purposive habits of maturity. the law of exercise says that the oftener and the more emphatically a certain response is connected with a certain situation, the more likely is it to be made to that situation. the two factors of repetition and intensity are involved. it is a common observance that the oftener one does a thing, other things being equal, the better he does it, whether it be good or bad. drill is the usual method adopted by all classes of people for habit formation. it is because of the recognition of the value of repetition that the old maxim of "practice makes perfect" has been so blindly adhered to. practice may make perfect, but it also may make imperfect. all that practice can do is to make more sure and automatic the activity, whatever it is. it cannot alone make for improvement. a child becomes more and more proficient in bad writing or posture, in incorrect work in arithmetic and spelling, with practice just as truly as under other conditions he improves in the same activities. evidence from school experiments, which shows that as many as per cent of the children examined did poorer work along such lines in a second test than in the first which had been given several months earlier, bears witness to the inability of mere repetition to get "perfect" results. to get such results the repetition must be only of the improvements. there must be a constant variation towards the ideal, and a selection of just those variations for practice, if perfect as well as invariable results are to be obtained. the amount of repetition necessary in the formation of any given habit is not known. it will, of course, vary with the habit and with the individual, but experimental psychology will some day have something to offer along this line. we could make a great saving if we knew, even approximately, the amount of practice necessary under the best conditions to form some of the more simple and elementary habits, such as learning the facts of multiplication. one other fact in connection with repetition should be noted, namely, that the exercise given any connection by the learner, freely, of his own initiative counts more than that given under purposive learning. this method of learning is valuable in that it is incidental and often saves energy and possible imitation on the part of the child, but it has certain drawbacks. habits formed this way are ingrained to such an extent that they are very difficult to modify. they were not consciously attended to when they were formed, and hence it is difficult later to raise them to the focal point. hence it is best whenever habits are partial and will need to be modified later, or when the habits must later be rationalized, or when bad habits must be broken, to have the process focalized in attention. the methods of gaining attention have already been discussed. in the second place, if the habit being formed is connected with an instinct, the element of intensity is added. this, of course, means that a connection already made and one which is strongly ready to act is made to give its support to the new connection being formed. of course the instinct chosen for this purpose must be in accord with the particular habit and with the nature of the learner. they may vary from the purely personal and physical up to those which have to do with groups and intellectual reactions. the added impetus of the instinct hastens the speed of the direction or supervision. the psychology of the value of self-activity is operative. it should be borne in mind, however, that the two kinds of exercise must be of the same degree of accuracy if this better result in self-initiated practice is to be obtained. not only is it true that repetition makes for automaticity, but intensity is also an aid. connections which are made emphatically as well as often tend to become permanent. this is particularly true of mental habits. there are two factors of importance which make for intensity in habit formation. first, the focalization of attention on the connections being made adds intensity. bagley in his discussion of this topic makes "focalization in attention" a necessity in all habits. although habits may be formed without such concentration, still it is true that if attention is given to the process, time is saved; for the added intensity secured increases the speed of learning. in certain types of habits, however, when incidental learning plays a large part, much skill may be acquired without focalization of attention in the process. much of the learning of little children is of this type. their habits of language, ways of doing things, mannerisms, and emotional attitudes often come as a result of suggestion and imitation rather than as a result of definite formation of the new habit. the second great law of habit formation is the law of effect. this law says that any connection whose activity is accompanied by or followed by satisfaction tends thereby to be strengthened. if the accompanying emotional tone is annoyance, the connection is weakened. this law that satisfaction stamps connections in, and annoyance inhibits connections, is one of the greatest if not the greatest law of human life. whatever gives satisfaction, that mankind continues to do. he learns only that which results in some kind of satisfaction. because of the working of this law animals learn to do their tricks, the baby learns to talk, the child learns to tell the truth, the adult learns to work with the fourth dimension. repetition by itself is a wasteful method of habit formation. the law of effect must work as well as the law of exercise, if the results are to be satisfactory. as has already been pointed out, it is not the practice alone that makes perfect, but the _stressing_ of improvements, and that fixing is made possible only by satisfaction. pleasure, in the broad sense, must be the accompaniment or the result of any connection that is to become habitual. this satisfaction may be of many different sorts, physical, emotional, or intellectual. it may be occasioned by a reward or recognition from without or by appreciation arising from self-criticism. in some form or other it must be present. two further suggestions in habit formation which grow out of the above laws should be borne in mind. the first is the effect of primacy. in everyday language, "first impressions last longest." the character of the first responses made in any given situation have great influence on all succeeding responses. they make the strongest impression, they are the hardest to eradicate. from a physiological point of view the explanation is evident. a connection untraversed or used but a few times is much more plastic than later when it has been used often. hence the first time the connection is used gives a greater set or bent than any equal subsequent activity. this is true both of the nervous system as a whole and of any particular conduction unit. thus impressions made in childhood count more than those of the same strength made later. the first few attempts in pronouncing foreign words fixes the pronunciation. the first few weeks in a subject or in dealing with any person influences all subsequent responses to a marked degree. the second suggestion has to do with the effect of exceptions. james says, "never allow an exception to occur" in the course of forming a habit. not only will the occurrence of one exception make more likely its recurrence, but if the exception does not recur, at least the response is less sure and less accurate than it otherwise would be. it tends to destroy self-confidence or confidence in the one who allowed the exception. sometimes even one exception leads to disastrous consequences and undoes the work of weeks and months. this is especially true in breaking a bad habit or in forming a new one which has some instinctive response working against it. there has been a great deal of work done in experimental laboratories and elsewhere in the study of the formation of particular habits. the process of habit formation has been shown by learning curves. when these learning curves are compared, it becomes clear that they have certain characteristics in common. this is true whether the learning be directed to such habits as the acquisition of vocabularies in a foreign language or to skill in the use of a typewriter. several of the most important characteristics follow. in the first place it is true of all learning that there is rapid improvement at first. during the beginning of the formation of a habit more rapid advance is made than at any other time. there are two principal reasons for this fact. the adjustments required at the beginning are comparatively simple and easily made and the particular learning is new and therefore is undertaken with zest and interest. after a time the work becomes more difficult, the novelty wears off, therefore the progress becomes less marked and the curve shows fluctuations. another characteristic of the learning curve is the presence of the so-called "plateaus." plateaus show in the curve as flat, level stretches during which there has apparently been no progress. the meaning of these level stretches, and whether or not they can be entirely done away with in any curve, is a matter of dispute. these pauses may be necessary for some of the habits to reach a certain degree of perfection before further progress can be made. however this may be, there are several minor causes which tend to increase the number of plateaus and to lengthen the time spent in any one. in the first place an insecure or an inaccurate foundation must result in an increase of plateaus. if at the beginning, during the initial spurt, for instance, the learner is allowed to go so fast that what he learns is not thoroughly learned, or if he is pushed at a pace that for him makes thoroughness impossible, plateaus must soon occur in his learning curve. in the second place a fruitful cause of plateaus is loss of interest,--monotony. if the learner is not interested, he will not put forth the energy necessary for continued improvement, and a time of no progress is the result. the attitude of the learner toward the work is extremely important, not only in the matter of interest, but in the further attitude of self-confidence. discouragement usually results in hindering progress, whereas confidence tends to increase it. the psychological explanation of this is very evident. both lack of interest in the learning and the presence of discouragement are likely to result in divided attention and that, as has already been shown, results in unsatisfactory work. a third cause for plateaus is physiological. not only must the learner be in the right attitude towards the work, but he must feel physically "fit." there seem to be certain physiological rhythms that may disturb the learning process whose cause cannot be directly determined, but generally the feeling of unfitness can be traced to a simple cause,--such as physical illness, loss of sleep, exercise, or food, or undue emotional strain. the older psychology has left an impression that improvement in any function is limited both as to amount and as to the period during which it must be attained. the physiological limit of improvement has been thought of as one which was rather easily reached. the loss of plasticity of the nervous system has been supposed to be rather rapid, so that marked improvement in a habit after one has passed well into the twenties was considered improbable. recent experiments, however, seem to show that no such condition of affairs exists. there is very great probability that any function whatsoever is improvable with practice, and in most cases to a very marked degree. to find a function which has reached the physiological limit has been very rare, even in experimental research, and even with extended practice series it has been unusual to reach a stage of zero improvement even with adults. thorndike says, "let the reader consider that if he should now spend seven hours, well distributed, in mental multiplication with three place numbers, he would thereby much more than double his speed and also reduce his errors; or that, by forty hours of practice, he could come to typewrite (supposing him to now have had zero practice) approximately as fast as he can write by hand; or that, starting from zero knowledge, he could learn to copy english into german script at a rate of fifty letters per minute, in three hours or a little more."[ ] it is probably true that the majority of adults are much below their limit of efficiency in most of the habits required by their profession, and that in school habits the same thing is true of children. spurious levels of accomplishment have been held up as worthy goals, and efficiency accepted as ultimate which was only two thirds, and often less than that, of what was possible. of course it may not be worth the time and energy necessary to obtain improvement in certain lines,--that must be determined by the particular case,--but the point is, that improvement; is possible with both children and adults in almost every habit they possess with comparatively little practice. neither the physiological limit of a function nor the age limit of the individual is reached as easily or as soon as has been believed. there are certain aids to improvement which must be used in order that the best results may be obtained. some of them have already been discussed and others will be discussed at a later time, so they need only be listed here, the right physiological conditions, the proper distribution of the practice periods, interest in the work, interest in improvement, problem attitude, attention, and absence of both excitement and worry. habits have been treated in psychology as wholes, just as if each habit was a unit. this has been true, whether the habits being discussed were moral habits, such as sharing toys with a younger brother; intellectual habits, such as reading and understanding the meaning of the word "and"; or motor habits, such as sitting straight. the slightest consideration of these habits makes obvious that they differ tremendously in complexity. the moral habit quoted involves both intellectual and motor habits--and not one, but several. from a physiological point of view, this difference in the complexity of habits is made clear by an examination of the number of neural bonds used in getting the habit response to a given situation. in some cases they are comparatively few--in others the number necessary is astonishing. in no case of habit will the bonds used involve but a single connection. just what bonds are needed in order that a child may learn to add, or to spell, to appreciate music, or to be industrious, is a question that only experiment and investigation can answer. at present but little is known as to just what happens, just what connections are formed, when from the original tendency towards vocalization the child just learns to say the word "milk," later reads it, and still later writes it. one thing is certain, the process is not a unitary one, nor is it a simple one. just so long as habit is discussed in general terms, without any recognition of the complexity of the process or to the specific bonds involved, just so long will the process of habit formation be wasteful and inefficient. as a sample of the kind of work being done in connection with special habits, investigation seems to give evidence that in the habit of simple column addition eight or nine distinct functions are involved, each of which involves the use of several bonds. besides these positive connections, a child in learning must inhibit other connections which are incorrect, and these must often outnumber the correct ones. and yet column addition has always been treated as a simple habit--with perhaps one element of complexity, when carrying was involved. it is evident that, if the habit concerned does involve eight or nine different functions, a child might go astray in any one. his difficulty in forming the habit might be in connection with one or several of the processes involved. knowledge on the part of the teacher of these different steps in the habit, and appreciation by him of the possibilities of making errors, are the prerequisites of efficient teaching of habits. in each one of the subjects there is much need of definite experimental work, in order that the specific bonds necessary in forming the habits peculiar to the subject be determined. the psychology of arithmetic, or of physics, or of spelling should involve such information. meanwhile every teacher can do much if she will carefully stop and think just what she is requiring in the given response. an analysis of the particular situation and response will make clear at least some of the largest elements involved, some of the most important connections to be made. it is the specific nature of the connections to be made and the number of those connections that need emphasis in the teaching of habits. not only must the specific nature of the bonds involved in individual habits be stressed, but also the specific nature of the entire complex which is called the habit. there is no such thing as a general curve of learning that will apply equally well, no matter what the habit. the kind of curve, the rate of improvement, the possibilities of plateaus, the permanence of the improvement, all these facts and others vary with the particular habit. in habit formation, as is the case in other types of activity, we get the most satisfactory results only when we secure a maximum of interest in the work to be done. the teacher who thinks that she can get satisfactory results merely by compelling children to repeat over and over again the particular form to be mastered is doomed to disappointment. indeed, it is not infrequently true that the dislike which children get for the dreary exercises which have little or no meaning for them interferes to such a degree with the formation of the habit we hope to secure as to develop a maximum of inaccuracies rather than any considerable improvement. the teacher who makes a game out of her word drill in beginning reading may confidently expect to have children recognize more words the next day than one who has used the same amount of time, without introducing the motive which has made children enjoy their work. children who compare their handwriting with a scale, which enables them to tell what degree of improvement they have made over a given period, are much more apt to improve than are children who are merely asked to fill up sheets of paper with practice writing. a vocabulary in a modern language will be built up more certainly if students seek to make a record in the mastery of some hundreds or thousands of words during a given period, rather than merely to do the work which is assigned from day to day. a group of boys in a continuation school have little difficulty in mastering the habits which are required in order to handle the formal processes in arithmetic, or to apply the formula of algebra or trigonometry, if the application of these habitual responses to their everyday work has been made clear. wherever we seek to secure an habitual response we should attempt to have children understand the use to which the given response is to be put, or, if this is not possible, to introduce some extraneous motive which will give satisfaction. we cannot be too careful in the habits which we seek to have children form to see to it that the first response is correct. it is well on many occasions, if we have any doubt as to the knowledge of children, to anticipate the response which they should give, and to make them acquainted with it, rather than to allow them to engage in random guessing. the boy who in writing his composition wishes to use a word which he does not know how to spell, should feel entirely free to ask the teacher for the correct spelling, unless there is a dictionary at hand which he knows how to use. it is very much better for a boy to ask for a particular form in a foreign language, or to refer to his grammar, than it is for him to use in his oral or written composition a form concerning which he is not certain. a mistake made in a formula in algebra, or in physics, may persist, even after many repetitions might seem to have rendered the correct form entirely automatic. in matters of habit it does not pay to take it for granted that all have mastered the particular forms which have supposedly been taught, and it never pays to attempt to present too much at any one time. more satisfactory work in habit formation would commonly be done were we to _teach_ fewer words in any one spelling lesson, or attempt to fix fewer combinations in any particular drill lesson in arithmetic, or assign a part of a declension or conjugation in a foreign language, or to be absolutely certain that one or two formulas were fixed in algebra or in chemistry, rather than in attempting to master several on the same day. teachers ought constantly to ask themselves whether every member of the class is absolutely sure and absolutely accurate in his response before attempting new work. it is of the utmost importance that particular difficulties be analyzed, and that attention be fixed upon that which is new, or that which presents some unusual difficulty. as has already been implied, it is important not simply to start with as strong a motive as possible, but it is also necessary to keep attention concentrated during the exercises which are supposed to result in habit formation. however strong the motive for the particular work may have been at the beginning, it is likely after a few minutes to lack power, if the particular exercise is continued in exactly the same form. much is to be gained by varying the procedure. oral work alternated with written work, concert work alternated with individual testing, the setting of one group over against another, the attempt to see how much can be done in a given period of minutes,--indeed, any device which will keep attention fixed is to be most eagerly sought for. in all practice it is important that the pupil strive to do his very best. if the ideal of accuracy or of perfection in form is once lost sight of, the responses given may result in an actual loss rather than in gain in fixing the habit. when a teacher is no longer able to secure attention to the work in hand, it is better to stop rather than to continue in order to provide for a given number of repetitions. drill periods of from five to fifteen minutes two or three times a day may almost always be found to produce better results than the same amount of time used consecutively. systematic reviews are most essential in the process of habit formation. the complaint of a fifth-grade teacher that the work in long division was not properly taught in the fourth grade may be due in considerable measure to the fact that she has neglected at the beginning of the fifth grade's work to spend a week or two in careful or systematic review of the work covered in the previous year. the complaint of high school teachers that children are not properly taught in the elementary school would often be obviated if in each of the fields in question some systematic review were given from time to time, especially at the beginning of the work undertaken, in any particular subject which involves work previously done in the elementary school. during any year's work that teacher will be most successful who reviews each day the work of the day before, who reviews each third or fourth day the particularly difficult parts of the work done during the previous periods, who reviews each week and each month, and even each two or three months, the work which has been covered up to that time. when teachers understand that the intervals between repetitions which seem to have fixed a habit may only be gradually lengthened, then will the formation of habits upon the part of boys and girls become more certain, and the difficulties arising from lapses and inaccuracies become less frequent. as has been suggested in previous discussions, it will be necessary in habit formation to vary the requirements among the individuals who compose a group. the motive which we seek to utilize may make a greater appeal to one child than to another. physiological differences may account for the fact that a small number of repetitions will serve to fix the response for one individual as over against a very much larger number of repetitions required for another. it is of the utmost importance that all children work up to the maximum of their capacity. it is very much better, for example, to excuse a boy entirely from a given drill exercise than to have him dawdle or loaf during the period. in some fields a degree of efficiency may be reached which will permit the most efficient children to be relieved entirely from certain exercises in order that they may spend their time on other work. on the other hand, those who are less capable may need to have special drill exercises arranged which will help them to make up their deficiency. the teacher who is acquainted with the psychology of habit formation should secure from the pupils in her class a degree of efficiency which is not commonly found in our schools. questions . in what sense is it true that we have habits of thought? . what habits which may interfere with or aid in your school work are formed before children enter school? . why is it hard to break a habit of speech? . distinguish among actions to which we attribute a moral significance those which are based upon habit and those which are reasoned. . professor james said, "habits are the stuff of which behavior consists." indicate the extent to which this is true for the children in your classes. . in how far is it advantageous to become a creature of habit? . which of our actions should be the result of reason? . should school children reason their responses in case of a fire alarm, in passing pencils, in formal work in arithmetic? name responses which should be the result of reason; others which should be habitual. . why do we sometimes become less efficient when we fix our attention upon an action that is ordinarily habitual? . why do children sometimes write more poorly, or make more mistakes in addition, or in their conjugations or declensions, at the end of the period than they do at the beginning? . how would you hope to correct habits of speech learned at home? what particular difficulty is involved? . when, are repetitions most helpful in habit formation? . when may repetitions actually break down or eliminate habitual responses? . how may the keeping of a record of one's improvement add in the formation of a habit? . what motives have you found most usable in keeping attention concentrated during the exercises in habit formation which you conduct? . the approval or disapproval of a group of boys and girls often brings about a very rapid change in physical, moral, or mental habits on the part of individual children. why? . why should drill work be discontinued when children grow tired and cease to concentrate their attention? . why should reviews be undertaken at the beginning of a year's work? how can reviews be organized to best advantage during the year? . what provision do you make in your work to guard against lapses? * * * * * v. how to memorize there is no sharp distinction between habit and memory. both are governed by the general laws of association. they shade off into each other, and what one might call habit another with equal reason might call memory. their likenesses are greater than their differences. however, there is some reason for treating the topic of association under these two heads. the term memory has been used by different writers to mean at least four different types of association. it has been used to refer to the presence of mental images; to refer to the consciousness of a feeling or event as belonging to one's own past experience; to refer to the presence of connections between situation and motor response; and to refer to the ability to recall the appropriate response to a particular situation. the last meaning of the term is the one which will be used here. the mere flow of imagery is not memory, and it matters little whether the appropriate response be accompanied by the time element and the personal element or not. in fact, most of the remembering which is done in daily life lacks these two elements. memory then is the recall of the appropriate response in a given situation. it differs from habit in that the responses referred to are more often mental rather than motor; in that it is less automatic, more purposeful. the fact that the elements involved are so largely mental makes it true that the given fact is usually found to have several connections and the given situation to be connected with many facts. which particular one will be "appropriate" will depend on all sorts of subtle factors, hence the need of the control of the connection aeries by a purpose and the diminishing of the element of automaticity. as was said before, there is no hard and fast line of division between habit and memory. the recall of the "sqrt( )" or of how to spell "home" or of the french for "table" might be called either or both. all that was said in the discussion of habit applies to memory. this ability to recall appropriate facts in given situations is dependent primarily on three factors: power of retention, number of associations, organization of associations. the first factor, power of retention, is the most fundamental and to some extent limits the usefulness of the other two. it is determined by the character of the neurones and varies with different brains. neurones which are easily impressed and retain their impression simply because they are so made are the gift of nature and the corner stone of a good memory. this retention power is but little, if at all, affected by practice. it is a primary quality of the nervous system, present or absent to the degree determined by each individual's original nature. hence memory as a whole cannot be unproved, although the absence of certain conditions may mean that it is not being used up to its maximum capacity. change in these conditions, then, will enable a person to make use of all the native retentiveness his nervous system has. one of the most important of these conditions is good health. to the extent that good blood, sleep, exercise, etc., put the nervous system in better tone, to that extent the retentive power present is put in better working order. every one knows how lack of sleep and illness is often accompanied by loss in memory. repetition, attention, interest, vividness of impression, all appeal primarily to this so-called "brute memory," or retentive power. pleasurable results seem not to be quite so important, and repetition to be more so when the connections are between mental states instead of between mental states and motor responses. an emphasis on, or an improvement in, the use of any one of these factors may call into play to a greater extent than before the native retentive power of a given child. the power to recall a fact or an event depends not only upon this quality of retentiveness, but also upon the number of other facts or events connected with it. each one of these connections serves as an avenue of approach, a clew by means of which the recall may operate. any single blockade therefore may not hinder the recall, provided there are many associates. this is true, no matter how strong the retentive power may be. it is doubly important if the retentive power is weak. suppose a given fact to be held rather weakly because of comparatively poor retentive power, then the operation of one chain of associates may not be energetic enough to recall it. but if this same fact may be approached from several different angles by means of several chains of associations, the combined power of the activity in the several neurone chains will likely be enough to lift it above the threshold of recall. other things being equal, the likelihood that a needed fact will be recalled is in proportion to the number of its associations. the third factor upon which goodness in memory depends is the organization of associates. number of connections is an aid to memory--but systematization among these connections is an added help. logical arrangement of facts in memory, classification according to various principles, orderly grouping of things that belong together, make the operation of memory more efficient and economical. the difference between mere number of associations and orderly arrangement of those associations may be illustrated by the difference in efficiency between the housekeeper who starts more or less blindly to look all over the house for a lost article, and the one who at least knows that it must be in a certain room and probably in a certain bureau drawer. although memory as a whole cannot be improved because of the limiting power of native retentiveness, memory for any fact or in any definite field may be improved by emphasizing these two factors: number of associations and organization among associations. although all three factors are operative in securing the best type of memory, still the efficiency of a given memory may be due more to the unusual power of one of them than to the combined effect of the three. it is this difference in the functioning of these three factors which is primarily responsible for certain types of memory which will be discussed later. it must also be borne in mind that the power of these factors to operate in determining recall varies somewhat with age. little children and old people are more dependent upon mere retentiveness than upon either of the others, the former because of lack of experience and lack of habits of thought, the latter because of the loss of both of these factors. the adult depends more on the organization of his material, while in the years between the number of the clews is probably the controlling factor. here again there is no sharp line of division; all three are needed. so in the primary grades we begin to require children to organize, and as adults we do all we can to make the power of retention operate at its maximum. many methods of memorizing have been used by both children and adults. recently experimental psychology has been testing some of them. so far as the learner is concerned, he may use repetition, or concentration, or recall as a primary method. repetition means simply the going over and over again the material to be learned--the element depended upon being the number of times the connection is made. concentration means going over the material with attention. not the number of connections is important, but the intensity of those connections. in recall the emphasis is laid upon reinstating the desired connections from within. in using this method, for instance, the learner goes over the material as many times as he sees necessary, then closes the book and recalls from memory what he can of it. the last of the three methods is by far the best, whether the memory desired be rote or logical, for several reasons. in the first place it involves both the other methods or goes beyond them. second, it is economical, for the learner knows when he knows the lesson. third, it is sure, for it establishes connections as they will be used--in other words, the learning provides for recall, which is the thing desired, whereas the other two methods establish only connections of impression. fourth, it tends to establish habits that are of themselves worth while, such as assuming responsibility for getting results, testing one's own power and others. fifth, it encourages the use of the two factors upon which memory depends, which are most capable of development, _i.e.,_ number and organization of associations. in connection with the use of the material two methods have been employed--the part method and the whole method. the learner may break the material up into sections, and study just one, then the next, and so on, or he may take all the material and go through with it from the beginning to the end and then back again. experimental results show the whole method to be the better of the two. however, in actual practice, especially with school children, probably a combination of the two is still better, because of certain difficulties arising from the exclusive use of the whole method. the advantages of the whole method are that it forms the right connections and emphasizes the complete thought and therefore saves time and gives the right perspective. its difficulties are that the material is not all of equal difficulty and therefore it is wasteful to put the same amount of time on all parts; it is discouraging to the learner, as no part may be raised above the threshold of recall at the first study period (particularly true if it is rote memory); it is difficult to use recall, if the whole method is rigidly adhered to. a combination of the two is therefore wise. the learner should be encouraged to go over the material from beginning to end, until the difficult parts become apparent, then to concentrate on these parts for a time and again go over from the beginning--using recall whenever possible. a consideration of the time element involved in memorizing has given use to two other methods, the so-called concentrated and distributive. given a certain amount of time to spend on a certain subject, the learner may distribute it in almost an infinite number of ways, varying not only the length of the period of practice, but also the length of time elapsing between periods. the experimental work done in connection with these methods has not resulted in agreement. no doubt there is an optimum length of period for practice and an optimum interval, but too many factors enter in to make any one statement. "the experimental results justify in a rough way the avoidance of very long practice periods and of very short intervals. they seem to show, on the other hand, that much longer practice periods than are customary in the common schools are probably entirely allowable, and that much shorter intervals are allowable than those customary between the just learning and successive 'reviews' in schools."[ ] this statement leaves the terms very long and very short to be defined, but at present the experimental results are too contradictory to permit of anything more specific. however, a few suggestions do grow from these results. the practice period should be short in proportion as these factors are present: first, young or immature minds; second, mechanical mental processes as opposed to thought material; third, a learner who "warms up" quickly; the presence of fatigue; a function near its limit. thus the length of the optimum period must vary with the age of the learner, the subject matter, the stage of proficiency in the subject, and the particular learner. the same facts must be taken into consideration in deciding on the optimum interval. one fact seems pretty well established in connection with the interval, and that is that a comparatively short period of practice with a review after a night's rest counts more than a much longer period added to the time spent the evening before. there are certain suggestions which if carried out help the learner in his memorizing. in the first place, as the number of associates is one factor determining recall, the fact to be remembered should be presented in many ways, _i.e.,_ appealing to as many senses as possible. in carrying this out, it has been the practice of many teachers to require the material to be remembered to be acted out or written. this is all right in so far as the muscular reactions required are mechanical and take little attention. if, on the other hand, the child has to give much attention to how he is to dramatize it, or if writing in itself is as yet a partially learned process, the attention must be divided between the fact to be memorized and its expression, and hence the desired result is not accomplished. colvin claims that "writing is not an aid to learning until the sixth or seventh grade in the schools." this same fact that an association only partly known is a hindrance rather than a help in fixing another is often violated both in teaching spelling and language. if the spelling of "two" is unknown or only partly known, it is a hindrance instead of a help to teach it at the same time "too" is being taught. second, the learner should be allowed to find his own speed, as it varies tremendously with the individual. third, rhythm is always an aid when it can be used, such as learning the number of days in each month in rhyme. fourth, after a period of hard mental work a few minutes (pillsbury thinks three to six) should elapse before definitely taking up a new line of work. this allows for the so-called "setting" of associations, due to the action of the general law of inertia, and tends to diminish the possibility of interference from the bonds called into play by the new work. fifth, mnemonic devices of simple type are sometimes an aid. most of these devices are of questionable value, as they themselves require more memory work than the facts they are supposed to be fixing. however, if devised by the learner, or if suggested by some one else after failure on the part of the learner to fix the material, they are permissible. memory has been classified in various ways, according to the time element, as immediate and permanent. immediate memory is the one which holds for a short time, whereas permanent memory holds for a long time. people differ markedly in this respect. some can if tested after the study period reproduce the material with a high degree of accuracy, but lose most of it in a comparatively short time. others, if tested in the same way, reproduce less immediately, but hold what they have over a long period. children as a whole differ from adults in having poorer immediate memories, but in holding what is fixed through years. of course permanent memory is the more valuable of the two types for most of life, but on the other hand immediate memory has its own special value. lawyers, physicians, politicians, ministers, lecturers, all need great power of immediate memory in their particular professions. they need to be able to hold a large amount of material for a short time, but then they may forget a great deal of it. memory is also classified according to the arrangement of the material as desultory, rote, and logical memory. in desultory memory the facts just "stick" because of the great retentive power of the brain, there are few connections, the material is disconnected and disjointed. rote memory depends on a special memory for words, aided by serial connections and often rhythm. logical is primarily a memory for meanings and depends upon arrangement and system for its power. little children as a class have good desultory memories and poor logical memories. rote memory is probably at its best in the pre-adolescent and early adolescent years. logical memory is characteristic of mature, adult minds. however, some people excel in one rather than another type, and each renders its own peculiar service. a genius in any line finds a good desultory memory of immense help, despite the fact that logical memory is the one he finds most valuable. teachers, politicians, linguists, clerks, waiters, and others need a well-developed desultory memory. rote memory is, of course, necessary if an individual is to make a success as an actor, a singer, or a musician. according to the rate of acquisition memory has been classified into quick and slow. one learner gets his material so much more quickly than another. up to rather recent years the quick learner has been commiserated, for we believed, "quickly come, quickly go." experimental results have proved this not to be true, but in fact the reverse is more true, _i.e.,_ "quickly come, slowly go." the one who learns quickly, provided he really learns it, retains it just as long and on the average longer than the one who learns much more slowly. the danger, from a practical point of view, is that the quick learner, because of his ability, gets careless and learns the material only well enough to reproduce at the time, whereas the slow learner, because of his lack of ability, raises his efficiency to a higher level and therefore retains. if the quick learner had spent five minutes more on the material, he would have raised his work to the same level as that of the slow one and yet have finished in perhaps half the time. all through the discussion of kinds of memory the term "memory" should have been used in the plural, for after all we possess "memories" and not a single faculty memory which may be quick, or desultory, or permanent. the actual condition of affairs is much more complex, for although it has been the individual who has been designated as quick or logical, it would be much more accurate to designate the particular memory. the same person may have a splendid desultory memory for gossip and yet in science be of the logical type. in learning french vocabularies he may have only a good immediate memory, whereas his memory for faces may be most lasting. his ability to learn facts in history may class him as a quick learner, whereas his slowness in learning music may be proverbial. the degree to which quickness of learning or permanence of memory in one line is correlated with that same ability in others has not yet been ascertained. that there is some correlation is probable, but at present the safest way is to think in terms of special memories and special acquisitions. some experimental work has been done to discover the order in which special memories develop in children. the results, however, are not in agreement and the experiments themselves are unsatisfactory. that there is some more or less definite order of development, paralleling to a certain extent the growth of instincts, is probable, but nothing more definite is known than observation teaches. for instance, every observer of children knows that memory for objects develops before memory for words; that memory for gestures preceded memory for words; that memory for oral language preceded memory for written language; that memory for concrete objects preceded memory for abstractions. further knowledge of the development of special memories should be accompanied by knowledge as to how far this development is dependent on training and to what extent lack of memory involves lack of understanding before it can be of much practical value to the teacher. just as repetition or exercise tends to fix a fact in memory, so disuse of a connection results in the fact fading from memory. "forgetting" is a matter of everyday experience for every one. the rate of forgetting has been the subject of experimental work. ebbinghaus's investigation is the historical one. the results from this particular series of experiments are as follows: during the first hour after study over half of what was learned had been forgotten; at the end of the first day two thirds, and at the end of a month about four fifths. these results have been accepted as capable of rather general application until within the last few years. recent experiments in learning poetry, translation of french into english, practice in addition and multiplication, learning to toss balls and to typewrite, and others, make clear that there is no general curve of forgetting. the rate of forgetting is more rapid soon after the practice period than later, but the total amount forgotten and the rate of deterioration depend upon the particular function tested. no one function can serve as a sample for others. no one curve of forgetting exists for different functions at the same stage of advancement or for the same function at different stages of advancement in the same individual, much less for different functions, at different stages of advancement, in different individuals. much more experimental work is needed before definite general results can be stated. this experimental work, however, is suggestive along several lines, ( ) it seems possible that habits of skill, involving direct sensori-motor bonds, are more permanent than memories involving connections between association bonds. in other words, that physical habits are more lasting than memories of intellectual facts. ( ) overlearning seems a necessary correlate of permanence of connection. that is, what seems to be overlearning at beginning stages is really only raising the material to the necessary level above the threshold for retention. how far overlearning is necessary and when it becomes wasteful are yet to be determined. ( ) deterioration is hastened by competing connections. if during the time a particular function is lying idle other bonds of connection are being formed into some parts or elements of it, the rate of forgetting of the function in question is hastened and the possibility of recall made more problematic. the less the interference, the greater will be the permanence of the particular bonds. a belief maintained by some psychologists is in direct opposition to this general law that disuse causes deterioration. it is usually stated something like this, that periods of incubation are necessary in acquiring skill, or that letting a function lie fallow results in greater skill at the end of that period, or briefly one learns to skate in summer and swim in winter. to some extent this is true, but as stated it is misleading. the general law of the effect of disuse on a memory is true, but under some circumstances its effect is mitigated by the presence of other factors whose presence has been unnoted. sometimes this improvement without practice is explained by the fact that at the last practice period the actual improvement was masked by fatigue or boredom, so that disuse involving rest and the disappearance of fatigue and boredom produces apparent gain, when in reality it but allows the real improvement to become evident. sometimes a particular practice period was accompanied by certain undesirable elements such as worry, excitement, misunderstandings, and so on, and therefore the improvement hindered or masked, whereas at the next period under different conditions there would be less interference and therefore added gain. all experimental evidence is against the opinion that mere disuse in and of itself produces gain. in fact, all results point to the fact that disuse brings deterioration. in the case of memory, as has already been described in habit formation, reviews which are organized with the period between repetitions only gradually lengthened may do much to insure permanence. it is entirely feasible to have children at the end of any school year able to repeat the poems or prose selections which they have memorized, provided that they have been recalled with sufficient frequency during the course of the year. in a subject like geography or history, or in the study of mathematics or science, in which logical memory is demanded, systematic reviews, rather than cramming for examinations, will result in permanence of command of the facts or principles involved, especially when these reviews have involved the right type of organization and as many associations as is possible. it is important in those subjects which involve a logical organization of ideas to have ideas associated around some particular problem or situation in which the individual is vitally interested. children may readily forget a large number of facts which they have learned about cats in the first grade, while the same children might remember, very many of them, had these facts been organized round the problem of taking care of cats, and of how cats take care of themselves. a group of children in an upper grade may forget with great rapidity the facts of climate, soil, surface drainage, industries, and the like, while they may remember with little difficulty facts which belong under each of these categories on account of the interest which they have taken in the problem, "why is the western part of the united states much more sparsely populated than the mississippi valley?" boys and girls who study physics in the high school may find it difficult to remember the principles involved in their study of heat if they are given only in their logical order and are applied only in laboratory exercises which have little or no meaning for them, while the same group of high school pupils may remember without difficulty these same laws or principles if associated round the issue of the most economical way of heating their houses, or of the best way to build an icehouse. there has been in our school system during the past few years more or less of a reaction against verbatim memorization, which is certainly justified when we are considering those subjects which involve primarily an organization of ideas in terms of problems to be solved, rather than memory for the particular form of expression of the ideas in question. it is worth while, however, at every stage of education to use whatever power children may possess for verbatim memorization, especially in the field of literature, and to some extent in other fields as well. it seems to the writers to be worth while to indicate as clearly as possible in the illustration which follows the method to be employed in verbatim memorization. as will be easily recognized, the number and organization of associations are an important consideration. it is especially important to call attention to the fact that any attempt at verbatim memorization should follow a very careful thinking through of the whole selection to be memorized. an organization of the ideas in terms of that which is most important, and that which can be subordinated to these larger thoughts, a combination of method of learning by wholes and by parts, is involved. it is not easy to indicate fully the method by which one would attempt to teach to a group of sixth-grade boys or girls wordsworth's "daffodils." the main outline of the method may, however, be indicated as follows: the first thing to be done is to arouse, in so far as is possible, some interest and enthusiasm for the poem in question. one might suggest to the class something of the beauty of the high, rugged hills, and of the lakes nestling among them in the region which is called the "lake region" in england. the wordsworth cottage near one of the lakes, and at the foot of one of the high hills, together with the walk which is to this day called wordsworth's walk, can be brought to the mind, especially by a teacher who has taken the trouble to know something of wordsworth's home life. the enthusiasm of the poet for the beauties of nature and his enjoyment in walking over the hills and around the lakes, is suggested by the poem itself. one might suggest to the pupils that this is the story of a walk which he took one morning early in the spring. the attempt will be made from this point on to give the illustration as the writer might have hoped to have it recorded as presented to a particular class. the poet tells us first of his loneliness and of the surprise which was his when he caught sight for the first time of the daffodils which had blossomed since the last time that he had taken this particular walk: "i wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills, when all at once i saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils; beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze." you see, he was not expecting to meet any one or to have any unusual experience. he "wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills," and his surprise was complete when he saw suddenly,--"all at once i saw a crowd, a _host_ of _golden_ daffodils, beside the lake, beneath the trees." you might have said that they were waving in the wind, but he saw them "fluttering and dancing in the breeze." the daffodils as they waved and danced in the breeze suggested to him the experience which he had had on other walks which he had taken when the stars were shining, and he compares the golden daffodils to the shining, twinkling stars: "continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the milky way, they stretched in never-ending line along the margin of a bay; ten thousand saw i at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance." the daffodils were as "continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the milky way." there was no beginning and no end to the line,--"they stretched in never-ending line along the margin of a bay." he saw as many daffodils as one might see stars,--"ten thousand saw i at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance." the poet has enjoyed the beauty of the little rippling waves in the lake, and he tells us that "the waves beside them danced; but they outdid the sparkling waves in glee: a poet could not but be gay, in such a jocund company: i gazed--and gazed,--but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought:" the daffodils have really left the poet with a great joy,--the waves beside the daffodils are dancing, "but they outdid the _sparkling_ waves in glee," and of course "a poet could not but be gay in such a jocund company." had you ever thought of flowers as a jocund company? you remember they fluttered and danced in the breeze, they lifted their heads in sprightly dance. do you wonder that the poet says of his experience, "i gazed--and gazed,--but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought"? i wonder if any of you have ever had a similar experience. i remember the days when i used to go fishing, and there is a great joy even now in recalling the twitter of the birds and the hum of the bees as i lay on the bank and waited for the fish to bite. and what is the great joy which is his, and which may belong to us, if we really see the beautiful things in nature? he tells us when he says "for oft, when on my couch i lie in vacant or in pensive mood, they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude; and then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils." there are days when we cannot get out of doors,--"for oft, when on my couch i lie in vacant or in pensive mood,"--these are the days when we recall the experiences which we have enjoyed in the days which are gone,--"they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude." and then for the poet, as well as for us, "and then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils." now let us get the main ideas in the story which the poet tells us of his adventure. "i wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills," "i saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils," they were "beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze." they reminded me as i saw the beautiful arched line of "the stars that shine and twinkle on the milky way," because "they stretched in never-ending line along the margin of a bay"; and as i watched "ten thousand" i saw, "tossing their heads in sprightly dance." and then they reminded me of the waves which sparkled near by, "but they outdid the sparkling waves in glee," and in the happiness which was mine, "i gazed--and gazed,--but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought." and that happiness i can depend upon when upon my couch i lie in vacant or in pensive mood, for "they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude," and my heart will fill with pleasure and dance with the daffodils. these, then, are the big ideas which the poet has,--he wanders lonely as a cloud, he enjoys the great surprise of the daffodils, the great crowd, the host, of golden daffodils, fluttering and dancing in the breeze; he thinks of the stars that twinkle in the milky way, because the line of daffodils seems to have no beginning and no end,--he sees ten thousand of them at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance. and as he looks at them he thinks of the beauty of the sparkling waves, and thinks of them as they dance with glee, and he gazes and gazes without thinking of the wealth of the experience. but later when he writes the poem, he tells us of the wealth of the experience which can last through all of the days when he lies on his couch in vacant or in pensive mood, for it is then that this experience flashes upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude, and his heart fills with pleasure and dances with the daffodils. now let us say it all over again, and see how nearly we are able to recall the story of his experience in just the words that he used. i will read it for you first, and then you may all try to repeat it after me. the teacher then reads the whole poem through, possibly more than once, and then asks all of the children to recite it with him, repeating possibly the first stanza twice or three times until they get it, and then the second stanza two or three times, then the third as often as may be necessary, and finally the fourth. it may be well then to go back and again analyze the thought, and indicate, using as far as possible the author's own words, the development of ideas through the poem. then the poem should be recited as a whole by the teacher and children. the children may then be left to study it so that they may individually on the next day recite it verbatim. the writer has found it possible to have a number of children in a sixth grade able to repeat the poem verbatim after the kind of treatment indicated above, and at the end of a period of fifteen minutes. questions . distinguish in so far as you can between habit and memory. . name the factors which determine one's ability to recall. . how can you hope to improve children's memories? which of the factors involved are subject to improvement? . in what way can you improve the organization of associations upon the part of children in any one of the subjects which you teach? how increase the number of associations? . what advantage has the method of concentration over the method of repetition in memorization? . give the reasons why the method of recall is the best method of memorization. . if you were teaching a poem of four stanzas, would you use the method of memorization by wholes or by parts? indicate clearly the degree to which the one or the other method should be used or the nature of the combination of methods for the particular selection which you use for the purposes of illustration. . how long do children in your classes seem to be able to work hard at verbatim memorization? . under what conditions may the writing of the material being memorized actually interfere with the process? when may it help? . why may it not be wise to attempt to teach "their" and "there" at the same time? . what is the type of memory employed by children who have considerable ability in cramming for examinations? is this type of memory ever useful in later life? . what precaution do we need to take to insure permanence in memory upon the part of those who learn quickly? . what is meant by saying that we possess memories rather than a power or capacity called memory? . do we forget with equal rapidity in all fields in which we have learned? what factors determine the rate of forgetting? . why should a boy think through a poem to be memorized rather than beginning his work by trying to repeat the first two lines? * * * * * vi. the teacher's use of the imagination imagination is governed by the same general laws of association which control habit and memory. in these two former topics the emphasis was upon getting a desired result without any attention to the form of that result. imagination, on the other hand, has to do with the way past experience is used and the form taken by the result. it merges into memory in one direction and into thinking in another. no one definition has been found acceptable--in fact, in no field of psychology is there more difference of opinion, in no topic are terms used more loosely, than in this one of imagination. stated in very general terms, imagination is the process of reproducing, or reconstructing any form of experience. the result of such a process is a mental image. when the fact that it is reproduction or reconstruction is lost sight of, and the image reacted to as if it were present, an illusion or hallucination results. images may be classified according to the sense through which the original experience came, into visual, auditory, gustatory, tactile, kinæsthetic, and so on. in many discussions of imagery the term "picture" has been used to describe it, and hence in the thought of many it is limited rather definitely to the visual field. of course this is entirely wrong. the recall of a melody, or of the touch of velvet, or of the fragrance of a rose, is just as much mental imagery as the recall of the sight of a friend. three points of dispute in connection with image types are worth while noting. first, the question is raised by some psychologists as to whether kinæsthetic or motor images really exist. an example of such an image would be to imagine yourself as dancing, or walking downstairs, or writing your name, or saying the word "bubble." those who object to such an image type claim that when one tries to get such an image, the attempt initiates slight muscle movements and the result is a sense experience instead of an imaged one. they believe this always happens and that therefore a motor image is an impossibility. others agree that this reinstatement of actual movements often happens, but contend that in such cases the image precedes the movement and that the resulting movement does not always take place. the question is still in dispute. the second question in dispute is as to the possibility of classifying people according to the predominant type of their imagery. people used to be classed as "visualizers," "audiles." etc., the supposition being that their mental imagery was predominantly in terms of vision or hearing. this is being seriously questioned, and experimental work seems to show that such a classification, at least with the majority of people, is impossible. the results which are believed to warrant such a conclusion are as follows: first, no one has ever been tested who always used one type of image. second, the type of image used changed with the following factors: the material, the purpose of the subject, the familiarity of the subject with the experience imagined. for example, the same person would, perhaps, visualize if he were imaging landscape, but get an auditory image of a friend's voice instead of a visual image of him. he might, when under experimental conditions with the controlling purpose,--that of examining his images,--get visual images, but, when under ordinary conditions, get a larger number of auditory and kinæsthetic images. he might when thought was flowing smoothly be using auditory and motor images, but upon the appearance of some obstacle or difficulty in the process find himself flooded with visual images. third, subjects who ranked high in one type of imagery ranked high in others, and subjects who ranked low in one type ranked low also in others. the ability seems to be that of getting clear image types, or the lack of it, rather than the ability to get one type. fourth, most of the subjects reported that the first image was usually followed by others of different types. the conclusions then, that individuals, children as well as adults, are rarely of one fixed type, the mixed type being the usual one, is being generally accepted. in fact, it seems much more probable that materials and outside conditions can more easily be classified as usually arousing a certain type of image, than people can be classified into types. the third point of controversy grows out of the second. some psychologists are asking what is the value of such a classification? suppose people could be put under types in imagery, what would be the practical advantage? such an attempt at classification is futile and not worth while, for two reasons. first, the result of the mental processes--the goal arrived at is the important thing, and the particular type of image used is of little importance. does it make any difference to the business man whether his clerk thinks in terms of the visual images of words or in terms of motor images so long as he sells the goods? to the teacher of geography, does it make any difference whether john in his thinking of the value of trees is seeing them in his mind's eye, or hearing the wind rustle through the leaves, or smelling the moist earth, leaf-mold, or having none of these images, if he gets the meaning, and reaches a right conclusion? second, the sense which gives the clearest, most dependable impressions is not the one necessarily in terms of which the experience is recalled. one of the chief values urged for a classification according to image type of people, especially children, has been that the appeal could then be made through the corresponding sense organs. for instance, group a, being visualizers, will be asked to read the material silently; group b, audiles, will have the material read to them; group c, motiles, will be asked to read the material orally, or asked to dramatize it. for each group the major appeal should be made in terms of the sense corresponding to their image type. but such a correspondence as this does not exist. an individual may learn best by use of his eyes and yet very seldom use visual images in recall. this is true of most people in reading. most people grasp the meaning of a passage better when they read it than when they hear it read, and yet the predominant type of word image is auditory-motor. hence if any classification of children is attempted it should be according to the sense by means of which they learn best, and not according to some supposed image type. many methods of appeal for all children is the safest practical suggestion. images may also be classified according to the use made of past experience. past experience may be recalled in approximately the same form in which it occurred, or it may be reconstructed. in the former case the image is called reproductive image or memory image; in the latter form it is called productive or creative image, or image of the imagination. the reproductive image never duplicates experience, but in its major features it closely corresponds to it, whereas the productive image breaks up old experiences and from them makes new wholes which correspond to no definite occurrence. the elements found in both kinds of imagery must come from experience. one cannot imagine anything the elements of which he has not experienced. creative imagination transcends experience only in the sense that it remodels and remakes, but the result of that activity produces new wholes as far removed from the actual occurrences as "alice in wonderland" is from the humdrum life of a tenement dweller. just the same, the fact that the elements used in creative work must be drawn from experience is extremely suggestive from a practical point of view. it demonstrates the need of a rich sensory life for every child. it also explains the reason for the lack of appreciation on the part of immature children of certain types of literature and certain moral questions. no more need be said here of the reproductive image, as it is synonymous with the memory image and was therefore treated fully under the topic of memory. one fact should be borne in mind, however, and that is, that the creative image is to some extent dependent on the reproductive image as it involves recall. however, as productive imagery involves the recall of elements or parts rather than wholes, an individual may have talent in creative imagery without being above the average in exact reproduction. productive imagery may be classified as fanciful, realistic, and idealistic according to the character of the material used. fanciful productive imagery is characterized by its spontaneity, its disregard of the probable and possible, its vividness of detail. it is its own reward, and does not look to any result beyond itself. little children's imaginations are of this type--it is their play world of make-believe. the incongruity and absurdity of their images have been compared to the dreams of adults. lacking in experience, without knowledge of natural laws, their imagination runs riot with the materials it has at its command. some adults still retain it to a high degree--witness the myths and fairy stories, "alice in wonderland," and the like. all adults in their "castle-building" indulge in this type of imagery to some extent. realistic productive imagery, as its name implies, adheres more strictly to actual conditions, it deals with the probable. it usually is constructed for a purpose, being put to some end beyond itself. it lacks much of the emotional element possessed by the other two types. this is the kind most valuable in reasoning and thinking. it deals with new situations--constructs them, creates means of dealing with them, and forecasts the results. it is the type of productive imagery called into play by inventors, by craftsmen, by physicians, by teachers--in fact, by any one who tries to bring about a change in conditions by the functioning of a definite thought process. this is the kind of imagery which most interests grammar school pupils. they demand facts, not fancies. they are most active in making changes in a world of things. idealistic productive imagery does not fly in the face of reality as does the fanciful, nor does it adhere so strictly to facts as does the realistic. it deals with the possible--with what may be, but with what is not yet. it always looks to the future, for if realized it is no longer idealistic. it is enjoyed for its own sake but does not exist for that alone, but looks towards some result. it is concerned primarily with human lives and has a strong emotional tone. it is the heart of ideals. the adolescent revels in this type of productive imagery. his dreams concerning his own future, his service to his fellow men, his success, and the like involve much idealistic imagery. hero worship involves it. it is one of the differences between the man with "vision" and the man without. the importance of productive imagery cannot be overemphasized. this power to create the new out of the old is one of the greatest possessions of mankind. all progress in every field, whether individual or racial, depends upon it. from the fertility and richness of man's productive imagination must come all the suggestions which will make this world other than what it is. therefore one of the greatest tasks of education at present is to cherish and cultivate this power. one cannot fail to recognize, however, that with the emphasis at present so largely upon memory, the cultivation of the imagination is being pushed into the background despite all our theories to the contrary. not only is productive imagery as a whole worth while, but each type is valuable. an adult lacking power of fanciful imagination lacks power to enjoy certain elements in life and lacks a very definite means of recreation. lacking in realistic imagination he is unable to deal successfully with new situations, but must forever remain in bondage to the past. without idealistic imagination he lacks the motive which makes men strive to be better, more efficient--other than what they are. at certain times in child development one type may need special encouragement, and at another time some other. all should, however, be borne in mind and developed along right and wholesome lines; otherwise, left to itself, any one of these, and especially the last, may be a source of danger to the character. images may be classified according to the material dealt with into object images or concrete images and into word or abstract images. no one of these terms is very good as a name of the image referred to. the first group--object or concrete image--refers to an image in which the sensory qualities, such as color, size, rhythm, sweetness, harmony, etc., are present. the images of a friend, of a text-book, of the national anthem, of an orange, of the schoolroom, and so on, would all be object images. a word or abstract image is one which is a symbol. it stands for and represents certain sensory experiences, the quality of which does not appear in the image. any word, number, mathematical or chemical symbol--in fact, any abstract symbol will come under this type of image. if in the first list of illustrations, instead of having images of the real objects, an individual had images of words in each case, the images would be abstract or verbal images. abstract images shade into concrete by gradual degrees--there is no sharp line of division between the two; however, they do form two different kinds of images, two forms which may have the same meaning. the question as to the respective use and value of these two kinds of images is given different answers. there is no question but that the verbal image is more economical than the object image. it saves energy and time. it brings with it less of irrelevant detail and is more stable than the object image, and therefore results in more accurate thinking. it is abstract in nature and therefore has more general application. on the other hand, it has been claimed for the object image that it necessarily precedes the verbal image--is fundamental to it; that it is essential in creative work dealing with materials and sounds and in the appreciation of certain types of descriptive literature, and that in any part of the thinking process when, because of difficulty of some kind, a percept would help, an object image would be of the same assistance. it is concerning these supposed advantages of the object image that there has been most dispute. there is no proof that the line of growth is necessarily from percept, through object image, to verbal image. in certain fields, notably smell, the object image is almost absent and yet the verbal images in that field carry meaning. it is also true that people whose power of getting clear-cut, vivid object images is almost nil seem to be in nowise hampered by that fact in their use of the symbols. knowing the unreliability of the object image, it would seem very unsafe to use it as the link between percept and symbol. much better to connect the symbol directly with the experience and let it gain its meaning from that. as to its value in constructive work in arts, literature, drama, and invention, the testimony of some experts in each field bears witness that it is not a necessary accompaniment of success. the musician need not hear, mentally, all the harmonies, changes, intervals; he may think them in terms of notes, rests, etc., as he composes. the poet need not see the scene he is describing; verbal images may bear his meanings. of course this does not mean that object images may not be present too, but the point is that the worker is not dependent on them. the aid offered by object images in time of difficulty is still more open to doubt. as an illustration of what is meant by this: suppose a child to be given a carpeting example in arithmetic which he finds himself unable to solve. the claim is made that if he will then call up a concrete image of the room, he will see that the carpet is laid in strips and that suggestion may set him right. but it has been proved experimentally over and over again that if he doesn't know that carpets are laid that way, he will never get it from the image, and if he does know it, he doesn't need an object image. it seems to be a fact that object images do not function, in the sense that one cannot get a correct answer as to color, or form, or number from them. one can read off from a concrete image what he knows to be true of it--or else it is just guessing. "knowing" in each case involves observation and judgment, and that means verbal images. students whose power of concrete imagery is low do, on the average, in situations where a concrete image would supposedly help, just as well as students whose power in this field is high. it does seem to be true that object images give a vividness and color to mental life which may result in a keener appreciation of certain types of literature. this warmth and vividness which object images add to the mental processes of those who have them is a boon. on the whole, then, word images are the more valuable of the two types. upon them depends, primarily, the ability to handle new situations, and even in the constructive fields they are all sufficient. these two facts, added to the fact that they are more accurate, speedy, and general in application, makes them a necessary part of the mental equipment of an efficient worker, and means that much more attention must be given to the development of productive symbol images. two warnings should be borne in mind: first, although the object images are not necessary in general, as discussed above, to any given individual, because of his particular habits of thought, they may be necessary accompaniments to his mental processes. second, although object images may not help in giving understanding or appreciation under new conditions, still the method of asking students to try to image certain conditions is worth while because it makes them stop and think, which is always a help. whether they get object or word images in the process makes no difference. the discussion concerning the possibility of "imageless" thought, while an interesting one, cannot be entered into here. whether "meanings" can exist in the human mind apart from any carrier in the form of some sensory or imaginal state is unsettled, but the discussion has drawn attention to at least the very fragmentary nature of those carriers. a few fragments of words, a mental shrug of the shoulder, a feeling of the direction in which a certain course is leading, a consciousness of one's attitude towards a plan or person--and the conclusion is reached. the thinking, or it may even have been reasoning, involved few clear-cut images of any kind. the fragmentary, schematic nature of the carriers and the large part played by feelings of direction and attitude are the rather astonishing results of the introspective analysis resulting from this discussion. this sort of thinking is valuable for the same reasons that thinking in terms of words is valuable--it only goes a step further, but it needs direction and training. images of all kinds have been discussed as if they stood out clearly differentiated from all other types of mental states. this is necessary in order that their peculiar characteristics and functions may be clear. however, they are not so clearly defined in actual mental life, but shade into each other and into other mental states, giving rise to confusion and error. the two greatest sources of error are: first, the confusion of image with percept, and second, the confusion of memory image with image of the imagination. the chief difference between these mental states as they exist is a difference in kind and amount of associations. these different associates usually give to the percept a vividness and material reality which the other two lack. they give to the memory image a feeling of pastness and trueness which the image of imagination lacks. therefore lack of certain associations, due to lack of experience or knowledge, or presence of associations due to these same causes and to the undue vividness of other connections, could easily result in one of these states being mistaken for another. there is no inherent difference between them. the first type of confusion, between percept and image, has been recently made the subject of investigation. perky found that even with trained adults, if the perceptual stimulus was slight, it was mistaken for an image. all illusions would come under this head. children's imaginary companions, when really believed in, are explained by this confusion. however, the confusion is much more general than these illustrations would seem to imply. the fact that "love is blind," that "we see what we look for" are but statements of this same confusion, and these two facts enter into multitudes of situations all through life. the need to "see life clearly and see it whole" is an imperative one. the second type of confusion, between reproductive and productive memory, is even more common. the "white lies" of children, the embroidering of a story by the adult, the adding to and adding to the original experience until all sense of what really happened is lost, are but ordinary facts of everyday experiences. the unreliability of witness and testimony is due, in part, to this confusion. questions . how is the process of imagination like memory? . what is the relation of imagination to thinking? . what kind of images do you seek to have children use in their work in the subjects which you teach? . can you classify the members of your class as visualizers, audiles, and the like? . if one learns most readily by reading rather than hearing, does it follow that his images will be largely visual? why? . give examples from your own experience of memory images; of creative images. . to what degree does creative imagination depend upon past experiences? . what type of imagery is most important for the work of the inventor? the farmer? the social reformer? . of what significance in the life of an adult is fanciful imagery? . what, if any, is the danger involved in reveling in idealistic productive imagery? . what advantages do verbal images possess as over against object images? . why would you ask children to try to image in teaching literature, geography, history, or any other subject for which you are responsible? . how would you handle a boy who is hi the habit of confusing memory images with images of imagination? . in what sense is it true that all progress, is dependent upon productive imagination? * * * * * vii. how thinking may be stimulated the term "thinking" has been used almost as loosely as the term "imagination," and used to mean almost as many different things. even now there is no consensus of opinion as to just what thinking is. dewey says, "active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends, constitutes reflective thought."[ ] miller says, "thinking is not so much a distinct conscious process as it is an organisation of all the conscious processes which are relevant in a problematic situation for the performance of the function of consciously adjusting means to end."[ ] thinking always presupposes some lack in adjustment, some doubt or uncertainty, some hesitation in response. so long as the situation, because of its simplicity or familiarity, receives immediately a response which satisfies, there is no need for thinking. only when the response is inadequate or when no satisfactory response is forthcoming is thinking aroused. by far the majority of the daily adjustments made by people, both mental and physical, require no thinking because instinct, habit, and memory suffice. it is only when these do not serve to produce a satisfactory response that thinking is needed--only when there is something problematic in the situation. even in new situations thinking is not always used to bring about a satisfactory adjustment. following an instinctive prompting when confronted by a new situation; blindly following another's lead; using the trial and error method of response; reacting to the situation as to the old situation most like it; or response by analogy: all are methods of dealing with new situations which often result in correct adjustments, and yet none of which need involve thinking. this does not mean that these methods, save the first mentioned, may not be accompanied by thinking; but that each of them may be used without the conscious adjustment of means to end demanded by thinking. that these methods, and not thinking, are the ones most often used, even by adults, in dealing with problems, cannot be denied. they offer an easy means of escape from the more troublesome method of thinking. it is so much easier to accept what some one else says, so much easier to agree with a book's answer to a question than to think it out for oneself. following the first suggestion offered, just going at things in a hit-or-miss fashion, uncritical response by analogy, saves much time and energy apparently, and therefore these methods are adopted and followed by the majority of people in most of the circumstances of life. it is human nature to think only when no other method of mental activity brings the desired response. we think only when we must. not only is it true that problems are often solved correctly by other methods than that of thinking, but on the other hand much thinking may take place and yet the result be an incorrect conclusion, or perhaps no solution at all be reached. think of the years of work men have devoted to a single problem, and yet perhaps at the end of that time, because of a wrong premise or some incorrect data, have arrived at a result that later years have proved to have been utterly false. think of the investigations being carried on now in medicine, in science, in invention, which because of the lack of knowledge are still incomplete, and yet in each case thinking of the most technical and rigorous type has been used. thinking cannot be considered in terms of the result. correct results may be obtained, even in problematic situations, with no thinking, and on the other hand much thinking may be done and yet the results reached be entirely unsatisfactory. thinking is a process involving a certain definite procedure. it is the organisation of all mental states toward a certain definite end, but is not any one mental state. in certain types of situations this procedure is the one most certain of reaching correct conclusions, in some situations it is the only possible one, but the conclusion is not the thinking and its correctness does not differentiate the process from others. from the foregoing discussions it must not be deduced that because of the specific nature and the difficulty of thinking that the power is given only to adults. on the contrary, the power is rooted in the original equipment of the human race and develops gradually, just as all other original capacities do. children under three years of age manifest it. true, the situations calling it out are very simple, and to the adult seem often trivial, as they most often occur in connection with the child's play, but they none the less call for the adjustment of means to end, which is thinking. a lost toy, the absence of a playmate, the breaking of a cup, a thunderstorm, these and hundreds of other events of daily life are occasions which may arouse thinking on the part of a little child. it is not the type of situation, nor its dignity, that is the important thing in thinking, but the way in which it is dealt with. the incorrectness of a child's data, their incompleteness and lack of organization, often result in incorrect conclusions, and still his thinking may be absolutely sound. the difference between the child and the adult in this power is a difference in degree--both possess the power. as dewey says, "only by making the most of the thought-factor, already active in the experience of childhood, is there any promise or warrant for the emergence of superior reflective power at adolescence, or at any later period."[ ] thinking, then, is involved in any response which comes as a result of the conscious adaptation of means to end in a problematic situation. many of the processes of mental activity which have been given other names may involve this process. habit formation--when the learner analyzes his progress or failure, when he tries to find a short cut, or when he seeks for an incentive to insure greater improvement--may serve as a situation calling for thinking. the process of apperceiving or of assimilation may involve it. studying and trying to remember may involve it. constructive imagination often calls for it. reasoning, always requires it. in the older psychology reasoning and thinking were often used as synonyms, but more recently it has been accepted by most psychologists that reasoning is simply one type of thinking, the most advanced type, and the most demanding type, but not the only one. thinking may go on (as in the other processes just mentioned) without reasoning, but all reasoning must involve thinking. it is this lack of differentiation between reasoning and thinking, the attempt to make of all thinking, reasoning, that has limited teachers in their attempts to develop thinking upon the part of their pupils. the essentials of the thinking process are three: ( ) a state of doubt or uncertainty, resulting in suspended judgment; ( ) an organization and control of mental states in view of an end to be attained; ( ) a critical attitude involving selection and rejection of suggestions offered. the recognition of some lack of adjustment, the feeling of need for something one hasn't, is the only stimulus toward thinking. this problematic situation, resulting in suspended judgment, caused by the inadequacy of present power or knowledge, may arise in connection with any situation. it is unfortunate that the terms "problematic situation" and "feeling of inadequacy" have been discussed almost entirely in connection with situations when the result has some pragmatic value. there is no question but what the situation arousing thinking must be a live one and a real one, but it need not be one the answer to which will be useful. it is true that with the majority of people, both children and adults, a problem of this type will be more often effective in arousing the thinking process than a problem of a more abstract nature, but it is not always so, nor necessarily so. most children sometimes, and some children most of the time, enjoy thinking simply for the sake of the activity. they do not need the concrete, pragmatic situation--anything, no matter how abstract, that arouses their curiosity or appeals to their love of mastery offers enough of a problem. sometimes children are vitally interested in working geometrical problems, translating difficult passages in latin, striving to invent the perpetual motion machine, even though there is no evident and useful result. it is not the particular type of situation that is the thing to be considered, but the attitude that it arouses in the individual concerned. educators in discussion of the situations that make for thinking must allow for individual differences and must plan for the intellectually minded as well as for others. the thinker confronted by a situation for which his present knowledge is not adequate, recognizes the difficulty and suspends judgment; in other words, does not jump at a conclusion but undertakes to think it out. to do this control is continually necessary. he must keep his problem continually before him and work directly for its solution, avoiding delays, avoiding being side-tracked. this means, of course, the critical attitude towards all suggestions offered. each one as it comes must be inspected in the light of the end to be reached--if it does not seem to help towards that goal, it must be rejected. criticism, selection, and rejection of suggestions offered must continue as long as the thinking process goes on. "to maintain the state of doubt and to carry on systematic and protracted inquiry--these are the essentials of thinking." in order to maintain this critical attitude to select and reject suggestions with reference to a goal, the suggestions as they come cannot be accepted as units and followed. such a procedure is possible only when the mental process is not controlled by an end. control by a goal necessitates analysis of the suggestions and abstraction of what in them is essential for the particular problem in hand. it is because no complete association at hand offers a satisfactory response to the situation that the need for thinking arises. each association as it comes must be broken up, certain parts or elements emerge, certain relationships, implications, or functions are made conscious. each of these is examined in turn; as they seem to be valueless for the purpose of the thinker, they are rejected. if one element or relationship seems significant for the problem, it is seized upon, abstracted from its fellows, and becomes the center of the next series of suggestions. a part, element, quality, or what not, of the situation is accepted as significant of it for the time being. the part stands for the whole--this is characteristic of all thinking. as a very simple illustration, consider the following one reported by dewey: "projecting nearly horizontally from the upper deck of the ferryboat on which i daily cross the river, is a long white pole, bearing a gilded ball at its tip. it suggested a flag pole when i first saw it; its color, shape, and gilded ball agreed with this idea, and these reasons seemed to justify me in this belief. but soon difficulties presented themselves. the pole was nearly horizontal, an unusual position for a flag pole; in the next place, there was no pulley, ring, or cord by which to attach a flag; finally, there were elsewhere two vertical staffs from which flags were occasionally flown. it seemed probable that the pole was not there for flag-flying. "i then tried to imagine all possible purposes of such a pole, and to consider for which of these it was best suited: (_a_) possibly it was an ornament. but as all the ferryboats and even the tugboats carried like poles, this hypothesis was rejected. (_b_) possibly it was the terminal of a wireless telegraph. but the same considerations made this improbable. besides, the more natural place for such a terminal would be the highest part of the boat, on top of the pilot house, (_c_) its purpose might be to point out the direction in which the boat is moving. "in support of this conclusion, i discovered that the pole was lower than the pilot house, so that the steersman could easily see it. moreover, the tip was enough higher than the base, so that, from the pilot's position, it must appear to project far out in front of the boat. moreover, the pilot being near the front of the boat, he would need some such guide as to its direction. tugboats would also need poles for such a purpose. this hypothesis was so much more probable than the others that i accepted it. i formed the conclusion that the pole was set up for the purpose of showing the pilot the direction in which the boat pointed, to enable him to steer correctly."[ ] the problem was to find out the use of the flag pole. no adequate explanation came as the problem presented itself; it therefore caused a state of uncertainty, of suspended judgment, and a process of thinking in order to get an answer. each suggestion that came was analyzed, its requirements and possibilities checked up by the actual facts and the goal. the suggestions that the pole was simply to carry a flag, was an ornament, was the terminal of a wireless telegraph, were examined and rejected. the final one, that the pole was to point out the direction in which the boat was moving, upon analysis seemed most probable and was accepted. the one characteristic of the pole, that it points direction, and its position, need to be accepted as the essential facts in the situation, for the particular problem. without control of the process, without the two steps of analysis and abstraction, no conclusion could have been reached. analysis and abstraction may be facilitated in three ways. first, by attentive piecemeal examination. the total situation is examined, element by element, attentively, until the element needed is reached or approximated. this method of procedure helps to emphasize minor bonds of association which the element possesses in the learner's experience but which he needs to have brought to his attention. it can only be used when the element is known to some degree. it is the method to use when elements are known in a hazy, incomplete, or indefinite way and need clearing up. second, by varying the concomitant. an element associated with many situations, which vary in other respects, comes to be felt and recognized as independent. this is the method to use when a new element in a complex is to be taught. third, by contrast. a new element is brought into consciousness more quickly if it is set side by side with its opposite. of course, this is only true provided the opposite has already been learned. to present opposites, both of which are new or only partially learned, confuses the analysis instead of facilitating it. reasoning, as the highest type of thinking, includes all that thinking in general does, and adds some particular requirement which differentiates it from the simpler forms. further discussion of it, then, should make clearer the essential in thinking as a process, as well as make clear its most difficult form. reasoning is defined by miller as "controlled thinking,--thinking organized and systematized according to laws and principles and carried on by use of superior technique."[ ] reasoning, then, is the kind of thinking that deals directly with laws and principles. much thinking may be carried on without any overt, definite use of laws and principles, as in constructive imagination or in apperception, but, if this is so, it seems better to call the thinking by one of the other names. of course this classification is somewhat arbitrary, but there can be no question that types of thinking do differ. as has already been noted, some psychologists have used the terms thinking and reasoning as synonyms, but such usage has resulted in confusion and has not been of practical value. it is only as the mental process desired becomes clearly conceived of, its connotations and denotation clearly defined, that it becomes a real goal towards which a teacher or learner may strive. this, then, is the primary criterion of reasoning--that the thinker be dealing consciously with laws and principles. an acceptance of this first essential makes clear that the particular process of reasoning cannot be carried on in subjects which lack laws and principles. spelling, elementary reading, vocabulary study, most of the early work in music and art, the acquisition of facts wherever found--these situations may offer opportunity for thinking, but little if any for reasoning. because a teacher is using the development method does not mean necessarily that her students are reasoning. the two terms are not in any way synonymous. the second essential in reasoning is the presence of a definite technique. this technique consists of two factors: first, certain definite mental states, and second, the use of the process of thinking by either the inductive or the deductive method. first as to the mental states involved. the fact that the thinking deals with laws and principles necessitates the presence, in the thinking process, of constructive verbal or symbolic imagery, logical relationships, logical concepts, and explicit judgments. this does not at all exclude other types of these mental states and entirely different mental states. the kind of analysis involved simply necessitates the presence of these types, whatever others may be present. constructive symbolic imagery has already been discussed. logical relationships are those that are independent of accidental conditions, are not dependent on mere contiguity in time and space, but are inherent in the association involved. such relationships are those of likeness and difference, cause and effect, subject and object, equality, concession, and the like. logical concepts are those which are the result of thinking, whose definite meaning has been brought clearly into consciousness so that a definition could be framed. a child has some notion of the meaning of tree, or man, or chemist, and therefore possesses a concept of some kind, but the exact meaning, the particular qualities necessary, are usually lacking, and so it could not be called a logical concept. explicit judgments are those which contain within themselves the reasons for the inference. they, too, are the result of thinking. one may say that "cheating is wrong," or that "water will not rise above its source level," or that "cleanliness is necessary to health," or that "this is a rembrandt"--as a matter of experience, habit, but without any reflection and with no reasons for such judgment. if, on the other hand, the problems to which these judgments are answers had been a matter of thinking, the reasons or the ground for such judgment would have become conscious and the judgment then become explicit. it must be evident that in any problems dealing with laws and principles the mental states involved must be definite, clear cut, logically sound, and their implications thoroughly appreciated and understood. the second element in the technique necessary in reasoning is the use of either the inductive or the deductive method in the process. induction requires--a problem, search for facts with which to solve it, comparison and analysis of those facts, abstraction of the essential likenesses, and conclusion. deduction requires--a problem, the analysis of the situation and abstraction of its essential elements, search for generals under which to classify it, comparison of it with each general found, and conclusion. it is unfortunate that in the discussions of induction and deduction the differences have been so emphasized that they have been regarded as different processes, whereas the likenesses far outweigh the differences. an examination of the requirements of each as stated above shows that the process in the two is the same. not only do both involve reasoning and therefore require the major steps of analysis and abstraction present in all thinking, but both also involve search and comparison. both, of course, involve the same kind of mental states. at times it is very difficult to distinguish between them. although for practical purposes it is necessary, sometimes, to stress the differences, the inherent similarity should not be lost sight of. the differences between these two methods of reasoning are, first, in the locus of the problem; second, in the order of the steps of the process; third, in the relative proportion of particulars and generals used; fourth, in the devices used, ( ) in induction the problem is concerned with a general. in some situation a concept, law, or principle has proven inadequate as a response. the question is then raised as to what is wrong with it and the inductive process is instigated. the problem is solved when the principle or concept is perfected or enlarged--in other words, is made adequate. in deduction the problem is concerned with the individual situation. some problem is raised by a particular fact or experience and is answered when it is placed under the law or concept to which it belongs. deduction is, practically the classification of particulars. ( ) the order of steps is different. in induction, because present knowledge falls short, the major step of analysis necessary to abstraction of the essential is impossible, and therefore the search for new facts must come first, whereas in deduction, the analysis of the particular situation results in a search for generals and a classification of the situation in question. ( ) in induction many particular facts may be necessary before one concept or principle is made adequate, while in deduction many concepts or principles may be examined before one particular is classified. ( ) in induction the hypothesis is used as a device to make clear the possible goal; in deduction the syllogism is used as a device to make clear the conclusion which has been reached, to throw into relief the classification and the result coming from it. in this discussion, induction and deduction have been treated, for the sake of clearness, as if they acted independently of each other, as if a thinker might at one time use deduction and at another time induction. they have been outlined in such a way that one might think that the movement of the mind in one process was such that it precluded the possibility of the other process. this is not so--the two are inextricably mingled in the actual process of reasoning, and further, induction as used in practical life always involves deduction at two points, as an initial starting point and as an end point. the knowledge that a certain principle is inadequate comes to consciousness through the attempt to classify some particular experience under it. failure results and the inductive process may then be initiated, but this initial attempt is deductive and if it had been successful there would have been no need of induction. after the inductive process is complete and the general principle has been classified or perfected, the final step is testing it to see if it is adequate, first by applying it to the particular problem which caused the whole process, and then to new situations. if it tests, it is accepted,--if not, further induction is necessary. this again is deduction. not only is induction not complete without deduction, but each deduction influences the principle which is applied, making it more sure and more flexible. even in the process of induction, there are attempts to classify these facts which are being gathered under suggested old principles, or half-formed new ones, before the process is completed. this is a deductive movement, even though it prove unsatisfactory or impossible. dewey describes this interaction by saying, "there is thus a double movement in all reflection: a movement from the given partial and confused data to a suggested comprehension (or inclusive) entire situation; and back from this suggested whole--which as suggested is a meaning, an idea--to the particular facts, so as to connect these with one another and with additional facts to which the suggestion has directed attention."[ ] however true this intermingling of induction and deduction may be, the fact still remains true that in any given case the major movement is in one direction or the other, and that therefore in order to insure effective thinking measures must be taken accordingly. as a child formulates his conception of a verb, or words the characteristic essentials of the lily-family, or frames the rule for addition of fractions or the action of a base on a metal, he is concerned primarily with the form of the reasoning process known as induction. when he classes a certain word as a conjunction, a certain city as a trade center, a certain problem as one in percentage, he is using deduction. complexes and gradual shadings of one state into another, not clearly defined and sharply differentiated processes and states, are characteristic of all mental life. another unfortunate statement with regard to induction and deduction is that the former "proceeds from particulars to generals" and the latter from "generals to particulars." both of these statements omit the starting point and leave the thinker with no ground for either the particulars or the generals with which he works. the thinker is supposed, let us say, to collect specimens of flowers in order to arrive at a notion of the characteristics of a certain class--but why collect these rather than any others? true, in the artificial situation of a schoolroom or college, the learner often collects in a certain field rather than another, simply because he is told to. but in daily life he would not be told to---the incentive must come from some particular situation which presents a problem and therefore limits the field of search. the starting point must be a particular experience or situation. the same thing is true in deduction, although the syllogistic form has often been misleading. "metals are hard; iron is a metal, therefore iron is hard." but why talk about metals at all--and if so why hardness rather than color or effect on bases or some other characteristic? of course, here again it is some particular problem that defines the search for the general and directs attention to some class characteristics rather than to others. not only is the starting point of all reasoning some definite situation for which there is no adequate response, but the end point must naturally be the same. a particular problem demanding solution is the cause for reasoning, and, of course, the end of the process must be the solution of that problem. from the foregoing it must not be concluded that the processes of induction and deduction are manifested only in connection with reasoning. in fact, their use as a conscious tool of technique in reasoning comes only after considerable experience of their use when there was no conscious purpose and no control. a little child's notion of dog, or tree, or city--in fact, all his psychological concepts necessitate the inductive movement, but it has taken place in his spontaneous thinking and the meanings have evolved after considerable experience without any definite control on his part. so with deduction. as he recognizes this as a chestnut tree, that as a rocking chair, as he decides that this is wrong or that it is going to clear, he is classifying things, or conduct, or conditions, and so is following the deductive movement. but the judgments may come as a result of past experience, may be spontaneous and involve no protracted controlled activity which has been defined as thinking. man's mind works spontaneously both inductively and deductively, and hence the possibility of control of these operations later. thinking is an outgrowth of spontaneous activity; reasoning is but an application of the natural laws of mental activity to certain situations. the laws of readiness, exercise, and effect govern thinking just as they do all other mental processes. thinking is not independent of habit; it is not a mysterious force other than association which deals with novel data. thinking is merely an exhibition of the laws of habit under certain definite situations. at first sight this seems to be impossible, because, as has been emphasized throughout this chapter, thinking takes place when no satisfactory response is at hand and when nothing is offered by past experience which is adequate. as a result of the thinking, responses are reached which never before have occurred as a result of that situation. just the same they are reached only because of the operation of the laws of habit. it must be borne in mind that the laws of association do not work in such a way that only gross total situations are bound to total responses. in man particularly, situations are being continually broken up into elements, and those elements connected with responses. responses are being continually disintegrated, and elements, instead of the whole response, being bound to situations. analysis is continually taking place merely as a result of the working of these laws. if the nervous mechanism of man were not of this hair-trigger variety, if elements did not emerge from a total complex as a result of bonds formed, of readiness of certain tracts, no willing, no attention on the part of the thinker, would ever bring about analysis. this is made very vivid when one is met by a problem he cannot solve. if the situation does not break up, if the right element does not emerge, if the right cue is not given, he is helpless. all he can do is to hold fast to his problem and wait. as the associations are offered, he can select and reject, but that is all. the marvelous power of the genius, the inventor, the reasoner in all fields, is merely an exhibition of the laws of association working with extremely subtle elements. it seems to transcend all experience because these elements and the bonds which experience has formed cannot be observed. a child fails in his thinking often because he uses his past experience and responds by analogy--we note that fact and criticize him for it. but he succeeds for just the same reason and by the use of just the same laws. james long ago showed conclusively that association by similarity, which is one of the prominent types used in reasoning, was only the law of habit working with elements of novel data. the fact that thinking is determined by its aim rather than by its antecedents has also been given a mysterious place as apart from association. the thinker who chose the right associate, the one that led him towards his goal rather than some other, was called sagacious. but, after all, this being governed by an aim is nothing more than the operation of the law of readiness among intellectual bonds. one associate is chosen and another rejected because one is more satisfying than another. certain bonds are made more ready than others because of the general set or attitude of the thinker, and therefore any associate using those bonds brings satisfaction and is retained. "the power that moves the man of science to solve problems correctly is the same that moves him to eat, sleep, rest, and play. the efficient thinker is not only more fertile in ideas and more often productive of the 'right' ideas than the incompetent is; he is also more satisfied by them when he gets them, and more rebellious against the futile and misleading ones. we trust to the laws of cerebral nature to present us spontaneously with the appropriate idea, and also _to prefer that idea to others."_[ ] the reasons for failure of teachers and educators of all kinds to train people to think are numerous. ( ) scarcity of brains which work primarily in terms of connections between subtle elements, relationships, etc. ( ) lack of knowledge or incorrect knowledge, due to narrow experience or poor memory. ( ) lack of the necessary habits of attention and criticism. ( ) lack of power of the more abstract and intellectual operations to bring satisfaction, due partly to original equipment and partly to training. ( ) lack of power to do independent work, due to poor training. schools cannot in any way make good the deficiency which is due to a lack of mental capacity. they can, and should, do something to provide knowledge which is well organized around experiences which have proved vital to pupils. something can undoubtedly be done in the way of cultivating the habit of concentration of attention, and of making more or less habitual the critical attitude. within the range of the ability which the individuals to be educated possess, the school may do much to give training which will make independent work or thinking more common in the experience of school pupils, and therefore much more apt to be resorted to in the case of any problematic situation. possibly the greatest weakness in our schools, as they are at present constituted, is in the dependence of both teachers and children upon text-books, laboratory manuals, lectures, and the like. in almost every field of knowledge which is presented in our elementary and high schools, more opportunity should be given for contact with life activities. such contacts should, in so far as it is possible, involve the organization of the observations which are made with relation to problems and principles which the subject seeks to develop. in nature study or in geography in the elementary school many of the principles involved are never really mastered by children, by virtue of the fact that they merely memorize the words which are involved, rather than solve any of the problems which may occur, either by virtue of their intellectual interests, or on account of their meaning in everyday life. the following of the instructions given in the laboratory manual does not necessarily result in developing the spirit of inquiry or investigation, nor even acquaint pupils with the method of the science which is supposed to be studied. possibly the greatest contribution which a teacher can make to the development of thinking upon the part of children is in discovering to them problems which challenge their attention, the solution of which for them is worth while. as has already been indicated, an essential element in thinking is constantly to select from among the many associations which may be available that one which will contribute to the particular problem which we have in mind. the mere grouping of ideas round some topic does not satisfy this requirement, for such a reciting of paragraphs or chapters may amount simply to memorization and nothing more. if a teacher can in geography or in history send children to their books to find such facts as are available for the solution of a particular problem, she is stimulating thought upon their part, and may at the same time be giving them some command of the technique of inquiry or of investigation. the class that starts to work, either in the discussion during the recitation period, or when they work at their seats, or at home, with a clear statement of the aim or problem may be expected to do much more in the way of thinking than will occur in the experience of those who are merely told to read certain parts of a book. in a well-conducted recitation which involves thinking, the aim needs to be restated a number of times in order that the selection of those associations which are important, and the rejection of those which are not pertinent, may continue over a considerable period. in so far as it is possible, children should be made to feel responsibility for the progress which is made in the solution of their problems. they should be critical of the contributions made by each other. they should be sincere in their expression of doubt, and in questioning whenever they do not understand. above all, if they are really thinking, they need to have an opportunity for free discussion. in classrooms in which children are seated in rows looking at the backs of each other's heads and reciting to the teacher, the tendency is simply to satisfy what the pupils conceive to be the demands of the teacher, rather than to think and to attempt to resolve one's doubts. in classes in which teachers provide not only for a statement of the problem which is to be solved during the study period, but also for a variety in assignments, children may be expected to bring to class differences in points of view and in the data which they have collected. in such a situation discussion is a perfectly normal process, and thinking is stimulated. as children pass through the several grades of the school system, they ought to become increasingly conscious of the process of reasoning. they should be asked to tell how they have arrived at their conclusions. they should give the reason for their judgments. a great deal of loose thinking would be avoided if we could in some measure establish the habit upon the part of boys and girls of asking, "will it work in all cases?"; "what was assumed as a basis for arriving at the conclusion which i have accepted?"; "are the data which have been brought together adequate?"; "to what degree have the fallacies which are more or less common in reasoning entered into my thinking?" it is not that one would hope to give a course in logic to elementary or to high school children, but rather that they should learn, out of the situations which demand thought, constantly to check up their conclusions and to verify them in every possible way. we may not expect by this method to create any unusual power of thought, but we may in some degree provide for the development of a critical attitude which will enable these same boys and girls, both now and as they grow older, to discriminate between those who merely dogmatize, and those who present a sound basis for their reasoning, either in terms of a principle which can be accepted, or in terms of observations or experiments which establish the conclusions which they are asked to accept. in all of the work which involves thinking, it is of the utmost importance that we preserve upon the part of pupils, in so far as it is possible, an open-minded attitude. it is well to have children in the habit of saying with respect to their conclusions that in so far as they have the evidence, this or that conclusion seems to be justified. it may even be well to have them reach the conclusion in some parts of their work that there are not sufficient data available upon which to base a generalization, or that certain principles which are accepted as valid by some thinkers are questioned by others, and that the conclusions which are based upon principles which are not commonly accepted must always be stated by saying: it follows, if you accept a particular principle, that this particular conclusion will hold. we need more and more to encourage the habit of independent work. we must hope as children pass through our school system that they will grow more and more independent in their statement of conclusions and of beliefs. we can never expect that boys and girls, or men and women, will reach conclusions on all of the questions which are of importance to them, but it ought to be possible, especially for those of more than usual capacity, to distinguish between the conclusions of a scientific investigation and the statements of a demagogue. the use of whatever capacity for independent thought which children possess should result in the development of a group of open-minded, inquiring, investigating boys and girls, eager and willing in confronting their common community problems to do their own thinking, or to be guided by those who present conclusions which are recognized as valid. they should learn to act in accordance with well-established conclusions, even though they may have to break with the traditions or superstitions which have operated to interfere with the development of the social welfare of the group with which they are associated. questions . how do children (and adults) most frequently solve their problems? . under what conditions do children think and yet reach wrong conclusions? give examples. . can first-grade children think? give examples which prove your contention. . what are the important elements to be found in all thinking? . show how these elements may be involved in a first-grade lesson in nature study. in an eighth-grade lesson in geography. in the teaching of any high school subject. . when may habit formation involve thinking? memorization? . give five examples of problems which you believe will challenge the brightest pupils in your class. which would seem real and worth solving to the duller members of the group? . how may the analysis of such ideas as come to mind, and the abstraction of the part which is valuable for the solution of a particular problem, be facilitated? . how do you distinguish between thinking and reasoning? . what are the essential elements in reasoning? give an example of reasoning as carried on by one solving a problem in arithmetic or geometry, in geography, physics, or chemistry. . in what respects are the processes of induction and deduction alike? in what do they differ? . at what stage of the inductive process is deduction involved? . give examples of reasoning demanded in school work in which the process is predominantly inductive. deductive. . why are the statements "induction proceeds from particulars to generals" and "deduction from generals to particulars" inadequate to describe either process? . in what sense is thinking dependent upon the operation of the laws of habit? . to what degree is it possible to teach your pupils to think? under what limitations do you work? * * * * * viii. appreciation, an important element in education appreciation belongs to the general field of feeling rather than that of knowing. the element which distinguishes appreciation from memory or imagination or perception is an affective one. any one of these mental states may be present without the state being an appreciative one. but appreciation does not occur by itself as an elementary state, it is rather a complex--a feeling tone accompanying a mental state or process and coloring it. in other words, appreciation involves the presence of some intellectual states, but its addition makes the total complex of an emotional rather than a cognitive nature. the difficulty found in discussing emotions in general, that of defining or describing them in language, which is a tool of the intellect, is felt here. the only way to know what appreciation means is to appreciate. no phase of feeling can be adequately described--its essence is then lost--it must be felt. nevertheless something may be done to differentiate this type of feeling from others. appreciation is an attitude of mind which is passive, contemplative. it may grow out of an active attitude or emotion, or it may lead to one, but in either case the state changes from one of appreciation to something else. in appreciation the individual is quiescent. appreciation, therefore, has no end outside of itself. it is a sufficient cause for being. the individual is satisfied with it. this puts appreciation into the category of recreation. appreciation then always involves the pleasure tone, otherwise it could not be enjoyed. it is always impersonal. it takes the individual outside and beyond his own affairs; it is an other-regarding feeling. possession, achievement, and the like do not arouse appreciation, but rather an egoistical emotion. one of the salient characteristics of emotions is their unifying power. it has aptly been said that in extreme emotional states one _is_ the emotion. the individual and his emotional state become one--a very different state of affairs from what is true in cognition. this element of unification is present to some extent in appreciation, although, because of its complex nature, to a lesser extent than in a simpler, more primitive feeling state. still, in true appreciation one does become absorbed in the object of appreciation; he, for the time being, to some extent becomes identified with what he is appreciating. in, order to appreciate this submerging of one's self, this identification is necessary. appreciation is bound up with four different types of situations which are of most importance to the teacher--( ) appreciation of the beautiful, ( ) appreciation of human nature, ( ) appreciation of the humorous, ( ) appreciation of intellectual powers. the appreciation found in these four types of situations must vary somewhat because of the concomitants, but the characteristics which mark appreciation as such seem to be present in all four. true, in certain of the situations occurring under these types the emotional element may be stronger than in others--in some the intellectual element may seem to almost outweigh the affective, but still the predominant characteristics will be found to be those of an attitude which has the earmarks of appreciation. appreciation of beauty has usually been discussed under the head of aesthetic emotions. as to what rightfully belongs under the head of aesthetics is in dispute--writers on the subject varying tremendously in their opinions. most of the recent writers, however, agree that the stimulus for aesthetic appreciation must be a sense percept or an image of some sense object. ideas, meanings, in and of themselves, are not then objects of aesthetic enjoyment. the two senses which furnish the stimuli for this sort of appreciation are the eye and the ear--the former combining sensations under space form and the latter under time form to produce aesthetic feelings. our senses may cause feelings of pleasure, but the enjoyment is sensuous rather than aesthetic. nature, in all its myriad forms, art, architecture, music, literature, and the dance are the chief sources of aesthetic appreciation. that there is a definite connection between physiological processes and the feeling of appreciation is without doubt true, but just what physiological conditions in connection with visual and auditory perception are fulfilled when some experience gives rise to aesthetic appreciation, and just what is violated when there is lack of such appreciation, is not known. it is known that both harmony and rhythm must be considered in music, and that the structure and muscular control of the eye plus the ease of mental apprehension play important parts in rousing aesthetic feelings in connection with vision, but further than that little is known. the chief danger met in developing the aesthetic appreciation is the tendency to overestimate its dependence on, in the first place, skill in creative work and the active emotions involved in achievement, and in the second place, the intellectual understanding of the situation. it has been largely taken for granted that the constructive work in the arts or in music increased one's power of appreciation. that, if a child used color and painted a little picture, or composed a melody, or modeled in clay, he would therefore be able to appreciate better in these fields. and further that the very development of this power to do necessarily developed the power to appreciate. these two beliefs are true to some extent, but only to a limited extent, and not nearly so far as practice has taken for granted. it is true that some power to do increases power to appreciate, but they parallel each other only for a short time and then diverge, and either may be developed at the expense of the other. in most people the power to appreciate, the passive, contemplative enjoyment, far surpasses the ability to create. on the other hand, men of creative genius often lack power of aesthetic appreciation. this result is natural if one thinks of the mental processes involved in the two. power to do is associated with muscular skill, with technique, and with the personal emotions of active achievement. Æsthetic appreciation, on the other hand, is associated with neither, but with a mental attitude and feelings which are quite different. cultivating one set of processes will not develop the other to any great extent and may, on the other hand, be antagonistic to their development. if the aesthetic emotions, if appreciations of the beautiful, are desired, they must be trained and developed directly. the second danger to be avoided in developing aesthetic appreciation is that of magnifying its dependence on the intellectual factors. to understand, to be able to analyze, to pick out the flaws in a musical selection, or a painting, is not necessary to its appreciation. true, some understanding is necessary, but, as in the case of skill, it is much less than has been taken for granted. appreciation can go far ahead of understanding. the intellectual factor and the feeling response are not absolutely interdependent in degree. not only so, but the prominence of the intellectual factor precludes that of the feeling. when one is emphasized the other cannot be, as they are different sorts of mental stuff. continuous and emphatic development of the intellectual may result in the atrophy of the power of appreciation in any given field either temporarily or permanently. many a boy's power to enjoy the rhythm and melody of poetry has been destroyed by the overemphasis of the critical facility during his high school course. the fact that a person can analyze the painting, point out the plans in its composition, and so on, does not at all mean that he can aesthetically appreciate. contemplative enjoyment may be impossible for him--it bores him. botanists are not noted for their power of aesthetic appreciation. it is an acknowledged fact that some art and music critics have lost their power of appreciation of the things they are continually criticizing. this discussion is not intended to minimize the value of creative skill, or of power of intellectual criticism. both are talents that are well worth while cultivating. but it is necessary for one to decide which of the three, aesthetic appreciation, creative skill, or intellectual criticism, in the fields of art, nature, and music, is most worth while for the majority of people and then make plans accordingly. no one of the three can be best developed and brought to its highest perfection by emphasizing any one of the others. the second type of appreciation is appreciation of human nature: appreciation of the value of human life, appreciation of its virtues and trials, appreciation of great characters, and so on. some writers would probably class this type of appreciation under moral feelings--but moral feelings usually are thought of as active, as accompaniments of conduct, whereas these appreciations are feelings aroused in the onlooker--they are passive and for the time being are an end in themselves. these feelings are stimulated by such studies as literature and history particularly. geography and civics offer some opportunity for their development, and, of course, contact with people is the greatest stimulus. in this latter type of situation the feelings of appreciation easily pass over into active emotions, but so long as one remains an onlooker, they need not do so. this appreciation, sympathy with and enjoyment and approval of human nature, finds its source in the social instincts, but it needs development and training if it is to be perfected. very much of the time this appreciation is inhibited by the emphasis put on understanding. the intellectual faculties of memory, judgment, and criticism are the ones called into play in the study of history and often of literature. these studies leave the learner cold. he knows, but it does not make any difference to him. he can analyze the period or the character, but he lacks any feeling response, any appreciation of the qualities of endurance and loyalty portrayed, lacks any _sympathetic_ understanding of the difficulties met and conquered. as was true of the aesthetic appreciation, a certain amount of understanding is necessary for true appreciation of any kind, but overemphasis of the intellectual element destroys the feeling element. the third type of appreciation to be discussed is the appreciation of humor. perhaps this does not belong with the other type, but it certainly has many of the same characteristics. calkins defines a sense of humor as "enjoyment of an unessential incongruity.... this incongruity must be, as has been said, an unessential one, else the mood of the observer changes from happiness to unhappiness, and the comic becomes the pathetic. a fall on the ice which seemed to offer only a ludicrous contrast between the dignity and grace of the man erect and the ungainly attitude of the falling figure ceases utterly to be funny when it is seen to entail some physical injury; and wit which burns and sears is not amusing to its victim."[ ] the ability to appreciate the humorous in life is a great gift and should be cultivated to a much greater extent than it is at present. a fourth type of appreciation has been called appreciation of intellectual powers--a poor name perhaps, but the feeling is a real one. enjoyment of style, of logical sequence, of the harmony of the whole, of the clear-cut, concise, telling sentences, are illustrations of what is meant. enjoyment of a piece of literature, of a debate, of an argument, of a piece of scientific research, is not limited to the appreciation of the meanings expressed--in fact, in many cases the only factor that can arouse the feeling element, the appreciation, is this element of form. one may _understand_ an argument or a debate as he hears it, but appreciation, enjoyment of it, comes only as a result of the consciousness of these elements of form. _that_ one possesses these feelings of appreciation, at least to some degree, is a matter of human equipment, but _what_ one appreciates in art, literature, human nature, etc., depends primarily on training. there is almost no situation in life that with all people at all times will arouse appreciative feelings. although there are a few fundamental conditions established by the physical make-up of the sense organs and by the original capacities of the human race, still they are few, and at present largely unknown, and experience does much to modify even these. what is crude, vulgar, inharmonious, in art and music to some people, arouses extreme aesthetic appreciation in others. literature that causes one person to throw the book down in disgust will give greatest enjoyment to another. what is malice to one person is humorous to another. what people enjoy and appreciate depends primarily on their experience for the development of these feelings, depends upon the laws of association, readiness, exercise, and effect. to raise power of appreciation from low levels to high, from almost nothing to a controlling force, needs but the application of these laws. but no one of them can be neglected with impunity. it must be a gradual growth, beginning with tracks that are ready, because of the presence of certain instincts, and working on to others through the law of association. to expect a child of seven to appreciate a steel engraving, or a piece of classic music, or moral qualities in another person is to violate the law of readiness. to expect any one in adult life to enjoy music, or art, or nature, who has not had experience with each and enjoyed each continually as a child, is to violate the laws of exercise and effect. two or three suggestions as to aids in the application of these laws may be in place. first, a wealth of images is an aid to appreciation. second, the absence for the time of the critical attitude. third, an encouragement of the passive contemplative attitude. fourth, the example of others. suggestion and association with other people who do appreciate and enjoy are among the best means of securing it. the value of feelings of appreciation are threefold: first, they serve as recreation. it is in enjoyment of this kind that most of the leisure of civilized races is spent. it serves on the mental level much the same purpose that play does, in fact, much of it is mental play of a kind. second, they are impersonal. they are valuable in that they take us out of ourselves, away from self-interests, and therefore make for mental health and sanity as well as for a sympathetic character. they are also a means of broadening one's experience. third, they have a close relationship with ideals and therefore have an active bearing on conduct. it is not necessarily true that one will tend in himself or in his surroundings to be like what he enjoys and appreciates, but the tendency will be strongly in that direction. if an individual truly appreciates, enjoys, beautiful pictures, good music and books, he will be likely, so far as he can, to surround himself with them. if he appreciates loyalty, openmindedness, tolerance, as he meets them in literature and history, he may become more so himself. at least, the developing of appreciations is the first step towards conduct in those lines. in order to insure the conduct, other means must be taken, but without the appreciation the conduct will be less sure. one who would count most in developing power of appreciation upon the part of children may well inquire concerning his own power of appreciation. there is not very much possibility of the development of joy in poetry, in music, or any other artistic form of expression through association with the teacher who finds little satisfaction in these artistic forms, who has little power of aesthetic appreciation. it is only as teachers themselves are sincere in their appreciation of the nobility of character possessed by the men and women whose lives are portrayed in history, in literature, or in contemporary social life that one may expect that their influence will be important in developing such appreciation upon the part of children. those pupils are fortunate who are taught by teachers who have a sense of humor, who are able to grow enthusiastic over the intellectual achievement of the leaders in the field of study or investigation in which the children are at work. children are, indeed, quick to discover sentimentalism or pseudo-appreciation upon the part of teachers, but even though they may not give any certain expression to their enjoyment, they are usually largely influenced by the attitude and genuine power of appreciation possessed by the teacher. in our attempt to have children grow in the field of appreciation we have often made the mistake of attempting to impose upon them adult standards. a great librarian in one of our eastern cities has said that he would rather have children read dime novels than to have them read nothing. from his point of view it was more important to have children appreciating and enjoying something which they read than to have their lives barren in this respect. in literature, in music, and in fine art the development in power of appreciation is undoubtedly from the simple, cruder forms to those which we as adults consider the higher or nobler forms of expression. mother goose, the rhymes of stevenson, of field, or of riley, may be the beginning of the enjoyment of literature which finds its final expression in the reading and in the possession of the greatest literature of the english language. the simple rote songs which the children learn in the first grade, or which they hear on the phonograph, may lead through various stages of development to the enjoyment of grand opera. pictures in which bright color predominates may be the beginning of power of appreciation which finds its fruition in a home which is decorated with reproductions of the world's masterpieces. it is not only in the artistic field that this growth in power of appreciation from the simpler to the more complex is to be found. children instinctively admire the man who is brave rather than the man who endures. achievement is for most boys and girls of greater significance than self-sacrifice. it is only as we adapt our material to their present attainment, or to an attempt to have them reach the next higher stage of development, that we may expect genuine growth. all too often instead of growth we secure the development of a hypocritical attitude, which accepts the judgment of others, and which never really indicates genuine enjoyment. while it is best not to insist upon an analysis of the feelings that one has in enjoying a picture or a poem or a great character, it is worth while to encourage choice. of many stories which have been told, children may very properly choose one which they would like to tell to others. of many poems which have been read in class, a group of boys may admire one and commit it to memory, while the girls may care for another and be allowed to memorize it. wherever such coöperation is possible, the picture which you enjoy most is the one that will mean most in power of appreciation if placed in your room at home. spontaneous approval, rather than an agreement with an adult teacher who is considered an authority, is to be sought for. there is more in the spontaneous laughter which results as children read together their "alice in wonderland" than could possibly result from an analysis of the quality of humor which is involved. we are coming to understand as a matter of education that we may hope to develop relatively few men and women of great creative genius. the producers of work of great artistic worth are, for the most part, to be determined by native capacity rather than by school exercises. we must think of the great majority of school children as possible consumers rather than as producers. schools which furnish a maximum of opportunity to enjoy music and pictures may hope to develop in their community a power of discrimination in these fields which will result in satisfaction with nothing less than the best. the player-piano and the phonograph may mean more in the development of musical taste in a community than all of the lessons which are given in the reading of music. the art gallery in the high school, the folk dances which have been produced as a part of the school festivals, the reading of the best stories, may prepare the way for the utilization of leisure time in the pursuit of the nobler pleasures. the teacher with a saving sense of humor, large in his power of appreciation of the great men and women of his time, and all of the time keen in his own enjoyment and in his ability to interpret for others those things which are most worth while in literature and in art, may count more largely in the life of the community than the one who is a master in some field of investigation. questions . what are the characteristics of the mental states which are involved in appreciation? . name the different types of situations in which appreciation may be developed. give examples. . does the power to criticize poetry or music necessarily involve appreciation? . to what degree may skill in creative work result in power of appreciation? . what are the elements involved in appreciating human nature? . give an example of appreciation of intellectual powers. . what is the essential element in the appreciation of humor? . explain how the power of appreciation is dependent upon training. . what values in the education of an individual are realized through growth in power of appreciation? . why is it important for a teacher to seek to cultivate his own power of appreciation? . what poems, or pictures, or music would you expect first-grade children to enjoy? why? . would you expect fifth-grade children to grow in appreciation of poetry by having them commit to memory selections from milton's paradise lost? why? . why is it important to allow children to choose the poems that they commit to memory, or the pictures which they hang on their walls? . why would you accept spontaneous expression of approval of the characters in literature or in history, rather than seek to control the judgments of children in this respect? . how may teachers prove most effective in developing the power of appreciation upon the part of children? * * * * * ix. the meaning of play in education all human activity might be classified under three heads,--play, work, and drudgery,--but just what activities belong under each head and just what each of the terms means are questions of dispute. that the boundaries between the three are hazy and undefined, and that they shade gradually into each other, are without doubt true, but after all play is different from work, and work from drudgery. much of the disagreement as to the value of play is due to this lack of definition. even to-day when the worth of play is so universally recognized, we still hear the criticism's of "soft pedagogy" and "sugar coating" used in connection with the application of the principle of play in education. although what we call play has its roots in original equipment, still there is no such thing as the play instinct, in the sense that there is a hunting instinct or a fighting instinct. instead of being a definite instinct, which means a definite response to a definite situation, it is rather a tendency characteristic of all instincts and capacities. it is an outgrowth of the general characteristic of all original nature towards activity of some kind. this tendency is so broad and so complex, the machinery governing it is so delicate, that it produces responses that vary tremendously with subtle changes in the individual, and with slight modifications of the situation. what we call play, then, is nothing more than the manifestations of the various instincts and capacities as they appear at times when they are not immediately useful. the connections in the nervous system are ripe and all other factors have operated to put them in a state of readiness: a situation occurs which stimulates these connections and the child plays. these connections called into activity may result in responses which are primarily physical, intellectual, or emotional--all are manifestations of this tendency towards activity. all habits of all kinds grow out of this same activity: habits which we call work and those which we call play. man has not two original natures, one defined in terms of the play instinct, and the other in terms of work. most of the original tendencies involved in play are not peculiar to it, but also are the source of work. manifestation results in making "mud pies and apple pies"; physical activity results in the kicking, squirming, and wriggling of the infant and the monotonous wielding of the hammer of the road mender. the conditions under which an activity occurs, its concomitants, and the attitude of the individual performing it determine whether it is play or work--not its source or root. much, then, of what we call play is simply the manifestation of instincts and capacities not immediately useful to the child. if they were immediately useful, they would probably be put under the head of work, not play. many of the activities which seem playful to us and not of immediate service do so because of the conditions of civilized life. were the infants living under primitive conditions, "in such a community as a human settlement seems likely to have been twenty-five thousand years ago, their restless examination of small objects would perhaps seem as utilitarian as their fathers' hunting."[ ] certainly the tendency of little children to chase a small object going away from them, and to run from a large object approaching slowly, their tendency to collect and hoard, their tendency to outdo another engaged in any instinctive pursuit, would under primitive conditions have a distinct utilitarian value, and yet all such tendencies are ranked as play when manifested by the civilized child. other tendencies become playful rather than useful because of the complexity of the environment and of the nervous system responding to it. in actual life we don't find activity following a neatly arranged situation--response system. on the contrary, a situation seldom stimulates one response, and a response seldom occurs in the typical form required by theory. it is this mingling of responses brought about by varying elements in the situation that gives the playful effect. in a less complex environment this complexity would be lessened. also experience, habit, tends to pin one type of response to a given situation and the minor connections gradually become eliminated. for example, if a boy of nine, alone in the woods, was approached by another with threatening gestures and scowls, the fighting response would be called out, and we would not call it play, because it served as protection. if the same boy in his own garden, with a group of companions, was approached by another with scowls, a perfectly good-natured tussle might take place and we would call it play. the difference between the two would be in minor elements of the situation. some of these differences are absence or presence of companions, the strangeness or familiarity of the surroundings, the suddenness of the appearance of the other boy, and so on. most of the older theories of play did not take into account these three facts, _i.e.,_ the identity in original nature of the roots of play and work; the fact that man's original nature fits him for primitive not civilized society; the complexity of the situation--response connection and its necessary variation with minor elements in the external situation and in the individual. earlier writers, therefore, felt the need of special theories of play. the best known of these theories are, first, the schiller-spencer surplus energy theory; second, the groos preparation for life theory; third, the g. stanley hall atavistic theory; fourth, the appleton biological theory. each of the theories has some element of truth in it, for play is complex enough to include them all, but each, save perhaps the last, falls short of an adequate explanation. two facts growing out of the theory of play accepted by the last few paragraphs need further discussion. first, the order of development in play. the play activities must follow along the line of the developing instincts and capacities. as the nerve tracts governing certain responses become ready to act, these responses become the controlling ones in play. so it is that for a time play is controlled largely by the instinct of manipulation, at another time physical activity combined with competition is most prominent, at another period imagination controls, still later the puzzle-solving tendency comes to the point followed by all the games involving an intellectual factor. this being true, it is not surprising to find certain types of play characterizing certain ages and to find that though the particular games may vary, there is a strong resemblance between plays of children of the same age all over the world. it must not be forgotten, however, that the readiness of nerve tracts to function, and therefore the play responses, depends on other factors as well as maturity. the readiness of other tracts to function; past experience and habits; the stimulus provided by the present situation; absence of competing stimuli; sex, health, fatigue, tradition--all these and many more factors modify the order of development of the play tendencies. still, having these facts in mind, it is possible to indicate roughly the type of play most prominent at different ages. children from four to seven play primarily in terms of sensory responses, imagination, imitation, and curiosity of the cruder sort. love of rhythm also is strong at this period. from seven to ten individual competition or rivalry becomes very strong and influences physical games, the collecting tendency, and manipulation, all of which tendencies are prominent at this time. ten to twelve or thirteen is characterized by the "gang" spirit which shows itself in connection with all outdoor games and adventures; memory is a large factor in some of the plays of this period, and independent thinking in connection with situations engendered by manipulation and the gang spirit becomes stronger. at this period the differences between girls and boys become more marked. the girls choose quieter indoor games, chumming becomes prominent, and interest in books, especially of the semi-religious and romantic type, comes to the front. in the early adolescent period the emotional factor is strong and characterizes many of the playful activities; the intellectual element takes precedence over the physical; the group interest widens, although the interest in leadership and independent action still remains strong; teasing and bullying are also present. this summary is by no means complete, but it indicates in a very general way the prominent tendencies at the periods indicated. the second fact needing further elaboration is that of the complexity of the play activity. take, for instance, a four-year-old playing with a doll. she fondles, cuddles, trundles it, and takes it to bed with her. it is jumped up and down and dragged about. it is put through many of the experiences that the child is having, especially the unpleasant ones. its eyes and hair, its arms and legs, are examined. questions are asked such as, "where did it come from?" "who made it?" "has it a stomach?" "will it die?" in many instances it is personified. the child is often perfectly content to play with it alone, without the presence of other children. this activity shows the presence of the nursing instinct, the tendency towards manipulation, physical activity, imitation and curiosity of the empirical type. the imagination is active but still undifferentiated from perception. the contentment in playing alone, or with an adult, shows the stage of development of the gregarious instinct. a girl of nine no longer cuddles or handles her doll just for the pleasure she gets out of that, nor is the doll put through such violent physical exercises. the child has passed beyond the aimless manipulation and physical activity that characterized the younger child. instead she makes things for it, clothes, furniture, or jewelry, still manipulation, and still the nursing instincts, but modified and directed towards more practical ends. imitation now shows itself in activities that are organized. the child plays sunday, or calling, or traveling, or market day, in which the doll takes her part in a series of related activities. but in these activities constructive imagination appears as an element. situations are not absolutely duplicated, occurrences are changed to suit the fancy of the player, as demanded by the dramatic interest. a fairy prince, or a godmother, may be participants, but at this age the constructive imagination is likely to work along more practical lines. curiosity is also present, but now the questions asked are such as, "what makes her eyes work?" "why can't she stand up?" or they often pertain to the things that are being made for the doll. they have to do with "how" or "why" instead of the "what." the doll may still be talked to and even be supposed to talk back, but the child knows it is all play; it is no longer personified as in the earlier period. for the child fully to enjoy her play, she must now have companions of her own age, the older person no longer suffices. the outdoor games of boys show the same kind of complexity,--for instance, take any of the running games. with little boys they are unorganized manifestations of mere physical activity. the running is more or less at random, arms and vocal organs are used as much as the legs and trunk. imitation comes in-what one does others are likely to do. the mere "follow" instinct is strong, and they run after each other. the beginnings of the fighting instinct appear in the more or less friendly tussles they have. the stage of the gregarious instinct is shown by the fact that they all play together. later with boys of nine or ten the play has become a game, with rules governing it. the general physical activity has been replaced by a specialized form. imitation is less of a factor. the hunting instinct often appears unexpectedly, and in the midst of the play the elements of the chase interfere with the proper conduct of the game. the fighting instinct is strong, and is very easily aroused. the boys now play in gangs or groups, and the tendency towards leadership manifests itself within the group. the intellectual element appears again and again, in planning the game, in judging of the possibility of succeeding at different stages, or in settling disputes that are sure to arise. so it is with all the plays of children: they are complexes of the various tendencies present, and the controlling elements change as the inner development continues. all activities when indulged in playfully have certain common characteristics. first, the activity is enjoyed for its own sake. the process is satisfying in itself. results may come naturally, but they are not separated from the process; the reason for the enjoyment is not primarily the result, but rather the whole activity. second, the activity is indulged in by the player because it satisfies some inner need, and only by indulging in it can the need be satisfied. it uses neurone tracts that were "ready." growing out of these two major characteristics are several others. the attention is free and immediate; much energy is used with comparatively little fatigue; self-activity and initiative are freely displayed. at the other extreme of activity is drudgery. its characteristics are just the opposite of these. first, the activity is engaged in merely for the result--the process counting for nothing and the result being the only thing of value. second, the process, instead of satisfying some need, is rather felt to be in violation of the nature of the one engaged. it uses neurone tracts that are not "ready" and at the same time prevents the action of tracts that are "ready." it becomes a task. the attention necessarily must be of the forced, derived type, in which fatigue comes quickly as a result of divided attention, results are poor, and there is no chance for initiative. between these two extremes lies work. it differs from play in that the results are usually of more value and in that the attention is therefore often of the derived type. it differs from drudgery in that there is not the sharp distinction between the process and the result and in that the attention may often be of the free spontaneous type. it was emphasized at the beginning of this chapter that the boundaries between the three were hazy and ill defined. this is especially true of work; it may be indistinguishable from play as it partakes of its characteristics, or it may swing to the other extreme and be almost drudgery. the difference between the three activities is a subjective matter--a difference largely in mood, in attitude of the person concerned, due to the readiness or unreadiness of the neurone tracts exercised. the same activity may be play for one person, work for another, and drudgery for still another. further, for the same person the same activity may be play, work, or drudgery, at different times, even within the same day. which of the three is the most valuable for educational purposes? certainly not drudgery. it is deadening, uneducative, undevelopmental. any phase of education, though it may be a seemingly necessary one, that has the characteristics of drudgery is valueless in itself. as a means to an end it may serve--but with the antagonistic attitude, the annoyance aroused by drudgery, it seems a very questionable means. education that can obtain the results required by a civilized community and yet use the play spirit is the ideal. but to have children engaged in play, in the sense of free play, cannot be the only measure. there must be supervision and direction. the spirit that characterizes the activities which are not immediately useful must be incorporated into those that are useful by means of the shifting of association bonds. nor can all parts of the process seem worth while to the learner. sometimes the process or parts of it must become a means to an end, for the end is remote. but all this is true to some extent in free play--digging the worms in order to go fishing, finding the scissors and thread in order to make the doll's dress, making arrangements with the other team to play ball, finding the right pieces of wood for the hut, and so on, may not be satisfactory in and of themselves, but may be almost drudgery. they are _not_ drudgery because they become fused in the whole process, they take over and are lost in the joy of the undertaking as a whole; they become a legitimate means to an end, and in so far take over in derived form the interest that is roused by the whole. it is this fusion of work and play that is desirable in education. this is the great lesson of play--it shows the value and encourages the logical combination of the two activities. children learn to work as they play. they learn the meaning and value of work. work becomes a means to an end, and that end not something remote and disconnected from the activity itself, but as part and parcel of it. thus the activity as a whole imbued with the play spirit becomes motivated. the play spirit is the spirit of art. no great result was achieved in any line of human activity without much work, and yet no great result was ever gained unless the play spirit controlled. it is to this interaction of work and play that each owes much of its value. work in and of itself apart from play lacks educative power; it is only as it leads to and increases the power of play that it is of greatest value. its logical place in education is as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. play, on the other hand, that does not necessitate some work, that does not need work in order that it may function more fully, has lost most of its educational value. to work in play and to play while working is the ideal combination. either by itself is dangerous. two misconceptions should be mentioned. first, the play spirit advocated as one of the greatest educational factors must not be limited to the merely physical activities, nor should it be considered synonymous with what is easy. this characterization of play as being the aimless trivial physical activities of a little child is a misconception of the whole play tendency. it has already been pointed out that any activity which in itself satisfies, whether that be physical, emotional, or intellectual, is play, and all these phases of human activity show themselves in play first. also the fact that play does not mean ease of accomplishment has been noted. it is only in the play spirit that the full resources of child or adult are tested. it is only when the activity fully satisfies some need that the individual throws himself whole-souled into it. it is only under the stimulus of the play spirit that all one's energy is spent, and great results, clear, accurate, and far reaching, are obtained. ease of performance often results in drudgery. to be play, the activity must be suited to the child's capacity, but leave chance for initiative and change and development. the second misconception is that because present-day educators advocate play in education, they believe that the child should do nothing that he doesn't want to. this is wrong on two accounts. first, it is part of the business of an environment to stimulate--readiness depends partly on stimulation. the child may never play unless the stimulation is forcibly and continually applied. second, after all it is the result we are most anxious for in education, and that result is an educated adult. by all means let us obtain this result by the most economical and effective method, and that is by use of the play spirit. but if the result cannot be obtained by this means because of the character of civilized ideals, or the difficulties of group education, or lack of capacity of the individual--then surely other methods, even that of drudgery, must be resorted to. the point is, with the goal in mind, adapt the material of education to the needs of the individual child; in other words, use the play spirit so far as is possible--after that gain the rest by any means whatsoever. so far the discussion has been concerned with the characteristics of the play spirit and its use in connection with the more formal materials of education. however, the free plays of children are valuable in two ways--first, as sources of information as to the particular tendencies ready for exercise at different times, and second, as a means of education in themselves. a knowledge of just which tendencies are most prominent in the plays of a group of children, when they change from "play" to "games," the increase in complexity and organization, the predominance of the intellectual factors,--all this could be of direct service to a teacher in the schoolroom. but it means, to some extent, the observation by the teacher of his particular group of children. such observation is extremely fruitful. the more vigorously, the more wholeheartedly, the more completely a child plays, other things being equal, the better. a deprivation of opportunity to play, or a loss of any particular type of play, means a loss of the development of certain traits or characteristics. an all-round, well-developed adult can grow only from a child developed in an all-round way because of many-sided play. hence the value of public playgrounds and of time to play. hence the danger of the isolated, lonely child, for many plays demand the group. hence the opportunities and the dangers of supervision of play. supervision of play is valuable in so far as it furnishes opportunities and suggestions which develop the elements most worth while in play and which keep play at its highest level, and in so far as it concerns the nature of the individual child, protecting, admonishing, or encouraging, as the case may require. it is dangerous to the child's best good, in so far as it results in domination; for domination will mean, usually, the introduction of plays beyond the child's stage of development and the destruction of the independence and initiative which are two of the most valuable characteristics of free play. valuable supervision of play is art that must be acquired. to influence, while effacing oneself, to guide, while being one of the players, to have an adult's understanding of the needs of child nature and yet to be one with the children--these are the essentials of the supervision of play. questions . distinguish between the fighting instinct and the instinctive basis of play. . under what conditions may an activity which we classify as play for a civilized child be called work for a child living under primitive conditions? . what kinds of plays are characteristic of different age periods in the life of children? . trace the development of some game played by the older boys in your school from its simpler beginnings in the play of little children to its present complexity. . name the characteristics common to all playful activity. . distinguish between play and drudgery. . what is the difference between work and play? . to what degree may the activities of the school be made play? . explain why the same activity may be play for one individual, work for another, and drudgery for a third. . why should we seek to make the play element prominent in school activity? . when is one most efficient in individual pursuits--when his activity is play, when he works, or when he is a drudge? . under what conditions should we compel children to work, or even to engage in an activity which may involve drudgery? . explain how play may involve the maximum of utilization of the abilities possessed by the individual, rather than a type of activity easy of accomplishment. . in what does skill in the supervision of play consist? * * * * * x. the significance of individual differences for the teacher it has been indicated here and there throughout the previous chapters that, despite the fact that there are certain laws governing the various mental traits and processes, still there is variation in the working of those laws. it was pointed out that people differ in kind of memory or imagination in which they excel, in their ability to appreciate, in the speed with which they form habits, and so on. in other words, that boys and girls are not exact duplicates of each other, but that they always differ from each other. now a knowledge of these differences, their amounts, interrelations, and causes are very necessary for the planning of a school system or for the planning of the education of a particular child. what we plan and how we plan educational undertakings must always be influenced by our opinion as to inborn traits, sex differences, specialization of mental traits, speed of development, the respective power of nature and of nurture. the various plans of promotion and grouping of children found in different cities are in operation because of certain beliefs concerning differences in general mental ability. coeducation is urged or deplored largely on the ground of belief in the differing abilities of the sexes. exact knowledge of just what differences do exist between people and the causes of these differences is important for two reasons. first, in order that the most efficient measures may be taken for the education of the individual, and second, in order that the race as a whole may be made better. education can only become efficient and economical when we know which differences between people and which achievements of a given person are due to training, and which are due more largely to original equipment or maturity. it is a waste of time on the one hand for education to concern itself with trying to make all children good spellers--if spelling is a natural gift; and on the other hand, it is lack of efficiency for schools to be largely neglecting the moral development of the children, if morality is dependent primarily on education. exact knowledge, not opinions, along all these lines is necessary if progress is to be made. the principal causes for individual differences are sex, remote ancestry, near ancestry, maturity, and training. the question to be answered in the discussion of each of these causes is how important a factor is it in the production of differences and just what differences is it responsible for. that men differ from women has always been an accepted fact, but exact knowledge of how much and how they differ has, until recent years, been lacking. recently quantitative measurement has been made by a number of investigators. in making these investigations two serious difficulties have to be met. first, that the tests measure only the differences brought about by differences in sex, and not by any other cause, such as family or training. this difficulty has been met by taking people of all ages, from all sorts of families, with all kinds of training, the constant factor being the difference in sex. the second difficulty is that of finding groups in which the selection agencies have been the same and equally operative. it would be obviously unfair to compare college men and women, and expect to get a fair result as to sex differences, because college women are a more highly selected group intellectually than the college men. it is the conventional and social demands that are primarily responsible for sending boys to college, while the intellectual impulse is responsible to a greater extent for sending girls. examination of children in the elementary schools, then, gives a fairer result than of the older men and women. the general results of all the studies made point to the fact that the differences between the sexes are small. sex is the cause of only a small fraction of the differences between individuals. the total difference of men from men and women from women is almost as great as the difference between men and women, for the distribution curve of woman's ability in any trait overlaps the men's curve to at least half its range. in detail the exact measurements of intellectual abilities show a slight superiority of the women in receptivity and memory, and a slight superiority of the men in control of movement and in thought about concrete mechanical situations. in interests which cannot be so definitely measured, women seem to be more interested in people and men in things. in instinctive equipment women excel in the nursing impulse and men in the fighting impulse. in physical equipment men are stronger and bigger than women. they excel in muscular tests in ability to "spurt," whereas women do better in endurance tests. the male sex seems on the whole to be slightly more variable than the female, i.e., its curve of distribution is somewhat flatter and extends both lower and higher than does that of the female; or, stated another way, men furnish more than their proportion of idiots and of geniuses. slight though these differences are, they are not to be disregarded, for sometimes the resulting habits are important. for instance, girls should be better spellers than boys. boys should excel in physics and chemistry. women should have more tact than men, whereas men should be more impartial in their judgments. with the same intellectual equipment as women, men should be found more often in positions of prominence because of the strength of the fighting instinct. the geniuses of the world, the leaders in any field, as well as the idiots, should more often be men than women. that these differences do exist, observation as well as experiment prove, but that they are entirely due to essential innate differences in sex is still open to question. differences in treatment of the sexes in ideals and in training for generation after generation _may_ account for some of the differences noted. what these differences mean from the standpoint of practice is still another question. difference in equipment need not mean difference in treatment, nor need identity of equipment necessarily mean identity of training. the kind of education given will have to be determined not only by the nature of the individual, but also by the ideals held for and the efficiency demanded from each sex. another cause of the differences existing between individuals is difference in race inheritance. in causing differences in physical traits this factor is prominent. the american indians have physical traits in common which differentiate them from other races; the same thing is true of the negroes and the mongolians. it has always been taken for granted that the same kind of difference between the races existed in mental traits. to measure the mental differences caused by race is an extremely difficult problem. training, environment, tradition, are such potent factors in confusing the issue. the difficulty is to measure inborn traits, not achievement. hence the results from actual measurement are very few and are confined to the sensory and sensorimotor traits. woodworth, in summing up the results of these tests, says, "on the whole, the keenness of the senses seems to be about on a par in the various races of mankind.... if the results could be taken at their face value, they would indicate differences in intelligence between races, giving such groups as the pygmy and negrito a low station as compared with most of mankind. the fairness of the test is not, however, beyond question."[ ] the generality of this conclusion concerning the differences in intelligence reveals the lack of data. no tests of the higher intellectual processes, such as the ability to analyze, to associate in terms of elements, to formulate new principles, and the like, have, been given. some anthropologists are skeptical of the existence of any great differences, while others believe that though there is much overlapping, still differences of considerable magnitude do exist. at present we do not know how much of the differences existing between individuals is due to differences in remote ancestry. maturity as a cause of differences between individuals gives quite as unsatisfactory results as remote ancestry. every thoughtful student of children must realize that inner growth, apart from training, has something to do with the changes which take place in a child; that he differs from year to year because of a difference in maturity. this same cause, then, must account to some extent for the differences between individuals of different ages. but just how great a part it plays, what per cent of the difference it accounts for, and what particular traits it affects much or little, no one knows. we say in general that nine-year-old children are more suggestible than six-year-old, and than fourteen-year-old; that the point of view of the fifteen-year-old is different from that of the eleven-year-old; that the power of sense discrimination gradually increases up to about sixteen, and so on. that these facts are true, no one can question, but how far they are due to mere change in maturity and how far to training or to the increase in power of some particular capacity, such as understanding directions, or power of forced attention, is unknown. the studies which have been undertaken along this line have failed in two particulars: first, to distribute the actual changes found from year to year among the three possible causes, maturity, general powers of comprehension and the like, and training; second, to measure the same individuals from year to year. this last error is very common in studies of human nature. it is taken for granted that to examine ten year olds and then eleven year olds and then twelve year olds will give what ten year olds will become in one and two years' time respectively. to test a group of grammar grade children and then a group of high school and then a group of college students will not show the changes in maturity from grammar school to college. the method is quite wrong, for it tests only the ten year olds that stay in school long enough to become twelve year olds; it measures only the very small per cent of the grammar school children who get to college. in other words, it is measuring a more highly selected group and accepting the result obtained from them as true of the entire group. because of these two serious errors in the investigations our knowledge of the influence of maturity as a cause of individual differences is no better than opinion. two facts, however, such studies do make clear. first, the supposition that "the increases in ability due to a given amount of progress toward maturity are closely alike for all children save the so-called 'abnormally-precocious' or 'retarded' is false. the same fraction of the total inner development, from zero to adult ability, will produce very unequal results in different children. inner growth acts differently according to the original nature that is growing. the notion that maturity is the main factor in the differences found amongst school children, so that grading and methods of teaching should be fitted closely to 'stage of growth,' is also false. it is by no means very hard to find seven year olds who can do intellectual work in which one in twenty seventeen year olds would fail."[ ] the question as to how far immediate heredity is a cause of differences found between individuals, can only be answered by measuring how much more alike members of the same family are in a given trait than people picked at random, and then making allowance for similarity in their training. the greater the likenesses between members of the same family, and the greater the differences between members of different families, despite similarities in training, the more can individual differences be traced to differences in ancestry as a controlling cause. the answer to this question has been obtained along four different lines: first, likenesses in physical traits; second, likenesses in particular abilities; third, likenesses in achievement along intellectual and moral lines; fourth, greater likenesses between twins, than ordinary siblings. in physical traits, such as eye color, hair color, cephalic index, height, family resemblance is very strong (the coefficient of correlation being about . ), and here training can certainly have had no effect. in particular abilities, such as ability in spelling, the stage reached by an individual is due primarily to his inheritance, the ability being but little influenced by the differences in home or school training that commonly exist. in general achievement, galton's results show that eminence runs in families, that one has more than three hundred times the chance of being eminent if one has a brother, father, or son eminent, than the individual picked at random. wood's investigation in royal families points to the same influence of ancestry in determining achievement. the studies of the edwards family on one hand and the so-called kallikak family on the other, point to the same conclusion. twins are found to be twice as much alike in the traits tested as other brothers and sisters. though the difficulty of discounting the effect of training in all these studies has been great, yet in every case the investigators have taken pains to do so. the fact that the investigations along such different lines all bear out the same conclusion, namely, that intellectual differences are largely due to differences in family inheritance, weighs heavily in favor of its being a correct one. the fifth factor that might account for individual differences is environment. by environment we mean any influence brought to bear on the individual. the same difficulty has been met in attempting to measure the effect of environment that was met in trying to measure the effect of inner nature--namely, that of testing one without interference from the other. the attempts to measure accurately the effect of any one element in the environment have not been successful. no adequate way of avoiding the complications involved by different natures has been found. one of the greatest errors in the method of working with this problem has been found just here. it has been customary when the effect of a certain element in the environment is to be ascertained to investigate people who have been subject to that training or who are in the process of training, thus ignoring the selective influence of the factor itself in original nature. for instance, to study the value of high school training we compare those in training with those who have never had any; if the question is the value of manual training or latin, again the comparison is made between those who have had it and those who haven't. to find out the influence of squalor and misery, people living in the slums are compared with those from a better district. in each case the fact is ignored that the original natures of the two groups examined are different before the influence of the element in question was brought to bear. why do some children go to high school and others not? why do some choose classical courses and some manual training courses? why are some people found in the slums for generations? the answer in each case is the same--the original natures are different. it isn't the slums make the people nearly so often as it is the people make the slums. it isn't training in latin that makes the more capable man, but the more intellectual students, because of tradition and possibly enjoyment of language study, choose the latin. it is unfair to measure a factor in the environment and give it credit or discredit for results, when those results are also due to original nature as well, which has not been allowed for. it must be recognized by all those working in this field that, after all, man to some extent selects his own environment. in the second place, it must be remembered that the environment will influence folks differently according as their natures are different. there can be no doubt that environment is accountable for some individual differences, but just which ones and to what extent are questions to which at present the answers are unsatisfactory. the investigations which have been carried on agree that environment is not so influential a cause for individual differences in intellect as is near ancestry. one rather interesting line of evidence can be quoted as an illustration. if individual differences in achievement are due largely to lack of training or to poor training, then to give the same amount and kind of training to all the individuals in a group should reduce the differences. if such practice does not reduce the differences, then it is not reasonable to suppose that the differences were caused in the first place by differences in training. as a matter of fact, equalizing training _increases_ the differences. the superior man becomes more superior, the inferior is left further behind than ever. a common occurrence in school administration bears out this conclusion reached by experimental means. the child who skips a grade is ready at the end of three years to skip again, and the child who fails a grade is likely at the end of three years to fail again. though environment seems of little influence as compared with near ancestry in determining intellectual ability _per se_, yet it has considerable influence in determining the line along which this ability is to manifest itself. the fact that between - , . per cent of the college men went into teaching as a profession and . per cent into the ministry, while between - , . per cent chose the former and only per cent the latter, can be accounted for only on the basis of environmental influence of some kind.[ ] another fact concerning the influence of environment is that it is very much more effective in influencing morality than intellect. morality is the outcome of the proper direction of capacities and tendencies possessed by the individual, and therefore is extremely susceptible to environmental influences. we are all familiar with the differences in moral standards of different social groups. one boy may become a bully and another considerate of the rights of others, one learns to steal and another to be honest, one to lie and another to be truthful, because of the influence of their environments rather than on account of differences in their original natures. we are beginning to recognize the importance of environment in moral training in the provisions made to protect children from immoral influences, in the opportunities afforded for the right sort of recreation, and even in the removal of children from the custody of their parents when the environment is extremely unfavorable. though changes in method and ideals cannot reduce the differences between individuals in the intellectual field to any marked extent, such changes can raise the level of achievement of the whole group. for instance, more emphasis on silent reading may make the reading ability of a whole school per cent better, while leaving the distance between the best and worst reader in the school the same. granting that heredity, original nature, is the primary cause of individual differences in intellect (aside from those sex differences mentioned) there remains for environment, education in all its forms, the tremendous task of: first, providing conditions favorable for nervous health and growth; second, providing conditions which stimulate useful capacities and inhibit futile or harmful capacities; third, providing conditions which continually raise the absolute achievement of the group and of the race; fourth, providing conditions that will meet the varying original equipments; fifth, assuming primary responsibility for development along moral and social lines. concerning those individual differences of which heredity is the controlling cause, two facts are worthy of note. first, that human nature is very highly specialized and that inheritance may be in terms of special abilities or capacities. for instance, artistic, musical, or linguistic ability, statesmanship, power in the field of poetry, may be handed down from one generation to the next. this also means that two brothers may be extremely alike along some lines and extremely different along others. second, that there seems to be positive combinations between certain mental traits, whereby the presence of one insures the presence of the other to a greater degree than chance would explain. for instance, the quick learner is slow in forgetting, imagery in one field implies power to image in others, a high degree of concentration goes with superior breadth, efficiency in artistic lines is more often correlated with superiority in politics or generalship or science than the reverse, ability to deal with abstract data implies unusual power to deal with the concrete situation. in fact, as far as exact measures go, negative correlations between capacities, powers, efficiencies, are extremely rare, and, when they occur, can be traced to the influence of some environmental factor. individuals differ from each other to a much greater degree than has been allowed for in our public education. the common school system is constructed on the theory that children are closely similar in their abilities, type of mental make-up, and capacities in any given line. experimentation shows each one of these presuppositions to be false. so far as general ability goes, children vary from the genius to the feeble-minded with all the grades between, even in the same school class. this gradation is a continuous one--there are no breaks in the human race. children cannot be grouped into the very bright, bright, mediocre, poor, very poor, failures--each group being distinct from any other. the shading from one to the other of these classes is gradual, there is no sharp break. not only is this true, but a child may be considered very bright along one line and mediocre along another. brilliancy or poverty in intellect does not act as a unit and apply to all lives equally. the high specialization of mental powers makes unevenness in achievement the common occurrence. within any school grade that has been tested, even when the gradings are as close as those secured by term promotions, it has been found in any subject there are children who do from two to five times as well as others, and from two to five times as much as others. of course this great variation means an overlapping of grades on each side. in dr. bonser's test of children in reasoning he found that per cent of the a pupils were below the best pupils of a grade and that per cent of a pupils were below the mid-pupils of the a, and that the best of the a pupils made a score three times as high as the worst pupils of a. not only is this tremendous difference in ability found among children of the same class, but the same difference exists in rate of development. some children can cover the same ground in one half or one third the time as others and do it better. witness the children already quoted who, skipping a grade, were ready at the end of three years to skip again. variability, not uniformity, is what characterizes the abilities and rate of intellectual growth of children in the schools, and these differences, as has already been pointed out, are caused primarily by a difference in original nature. there is also great difference between the general mental make-up of children--a difference in type. there is the child who excels in dealing with abstract ideas. he usually has power also in dealing with the concrete, but his chief interest is in the abstract. he is the one who does splendid work in mathematics, formal grammar, the abstract phases of the sciences. then there is the child who is a thinker too, but his best work is done when he is dealing with a concrete situation. unusual or involved applications of principles disturb him. so long as his work is couched in terms of the concrete, he can succeed, but if that is replaced by the _x, y, z_ elements, he is prone to fail. there is another type of child--the one who has the executive ability, the child of action. true, he thinks, too, but his forte is in control of people and of things. he is the one who manages the athletic team, runs the school paper, takes charge of the elections, and so on. for principles to be grasped he must be able to put them into practice. the fourth type is the feeling type, the child who excels in appreciative power. as has been urged so many times before, these types have boundaries that are hazy and ill defined; they overlap in many cases. some children are of a well-defined mixed type, and most children have something of each of the four abilities characteristic of the types. still it is true that in looking over a class of children these types emerge, not pure, but controlled by the dominant characteristics mentioned. the same variation is found among any group of children if they are tested along one line, such as memory. some have desultory, some rote, some logical memories; some have immediate memories, others the permanent type. in imagery, some have principally productive imagination, others the matter-of-fact reproductive; some deal largely with object images that are vivid and clear-cut, others fail almost entirely with this type, but use word images with great facility. in conduct, some are hesitating and uncertain, others just the reverse; some very open to suggestions, others scarcely touched at all by it; some can act in accordance with principle, others only in terms of particular associations with a definite situation. so one might run the whole gamut of human traits, and in each one any group of individuals will vary: in attention, in thinking, in ideals, in habits, in interests, in sense discrimination, in emotions, and so on. this is one of the greatest contributions of experimental psychology of the past ten years, the tremendous differences between people along all lines, physical as well as mental. it is lack of recognition of such differences that makes possible such a list of histories of misfits as swift quotes in his chapter on standards of human power in "mind in the making." individual differences exist, education cannot eliminate them, they are innate, due to original nature. education that does not recognize them and plan for them is wasteful and, what is worse, is criminal. the range of ability possessed by children of the same grade in the subjects commonly taught seems not always to be clear in the minds of teachers. it will be discussed at greater length in another chapter, but it is important for the consideration of individual differences to present some data at this time. if we rate the quality of work done in english composition from to per cent, being careful to evaluate as accurately as possible the merit of the composition written, we will find for a seventh and an eighth grade a condition indicated by the following table: ========================================== quality of composition grades ------------------------------------------ _no. of pupils_ rated at rated at rated at rated at rated at rated at rated at rated at rated at ========================================== the table reads as follows: two pupils in the seventh grade and one in the eighth wrote compositions rated at ; six seventh-grade and six eighth-grade pupils wrote compositions rated at , and so on for the whole table. a similar condition of affairs is indicated if we ask how many of a given type of addition problems are solved correctly in eight minutes by a fifth- and a sixth-grade class. ============================================= number of grades problems --------------------------------------------- _no. of pupils_ ============================================= in like manner, if we measure the quality of work done in penmanship for a fifth and sixth grade, with a system of scoring that ranks the penmanship in equal steps from a quality which, is ranked four up to a quality which is ranked eighteen, we find the following results: =============================================== quality of penmanship grades ----------------------------------------------- _no. of pupils_ rated at rated at rated at rated at rated at rated at rated at rated at rated at rated at rated at rated at rated at rated at rated at =============================================== results similar to those recorded above will be found if any accurate measurement is made of the knowledge possessed by children in history or in geography, or of the ability to apply or derive principles in physics or in chemistry, or of the knowledge of vocabulary in latin or in german, and the like. all such facts indicate clearly the necessity for differentiating our work for the group of children who are classified as belonging to one grade. under the older and simpler form of school organization, the one-room rural school, it was not uncommon for children to recite in one class in arithmetic, in another in geography or history, and in possibly still another in english. in our more highly organized school systems, with the attempt to have children pass regularly from grade to grade at each promotion period, we have in some measure provided for individual differences through allowing children to skip a grade, or not infrequently by having them repeat the work of a grade. in still other cases an attempt has been made to adapt the work of the class to the needs and capacities of the children by dividing any class group into two or more groups, especially in those subjects in which children seem to have greatest difficulty. teachers who are alive to the problem presented have striven to adjust their work to different members of the class by varying the assignments, and in some cases by excusing from the exercises in which they are already proficient the abler pupils. whatever adjustment the school may be able to make in terms of providing special classes for those who are mentally or physically deficient, or for those who are especially capable, there will always be found in any given group a wide variation in achievement and in capacity. group teaching and individual instruction will always be required of teachers who would adapt their work to the varying capacities of children. a period devoted to supervised study during which those children who are less able may receive special help, and those who are of exceptional ability be expected to make unusual preparation both in extent and in quality of work done, may contribute much to the efficiency of the school. as paradoxical as the statement may seem, it is true that the most retarded children in our school systems are the brightest. expressed in another way, it can be proved that the more capable children have already achieved in the subjects in which they are taught more than those who are tow or three grades farther advanced. possibly the greatest contribution which teachers can make to the development of efficiency upon the part of the children with whom they work is to be found in special attention which is given to capable children with respect to both the quantity and quality of work demanded of them, together with provision for having them segregated in special classes or passed through the school system with greater rapidity than is now common. in an elementary school with which the writer is acquainted, and in which there were four fifth grades, it was discovered during the past year that in one of these fifth grades in which the brighter children had been put they had achieved more in terms of ability to solve problems in arithmetic, in their knowledge of history and geography, in the quality of english composition they wrote, and the like, than did the children in any one of the sixth grades. in this school this particular fifth grade was promoted to the seventh grade for the following year. many such examples could be found in schools organized with more than one grade at work on the same part of the school course, if care were taken to segregate children in terms of their capacity. and even where there is only one teacher per grade, or where one teacher teaches two or three grades, it should be found possible constantly to accelerate the progress of children of more than ordinary ability. the movement throughout the united states for the organization of junior high schools (these schools commonly include the seventh, eighth, and ninth school years) is to be looked upon primarily as an attempt to adjust the work of our schools to the individual capacities of boys and girls and to their varying vocational outlook. such a school, if it is to meet this demand for adjustment to individual differences, must offer a variety of courses. among the courses offered in a typical junior high school is one which leads directly to the high school. in this course provision is made for the beginning of a foreign language, of algebra, and, in some cases, of some other high school subject during the seventh and eighth years. in another course emphasis is placed upon work in industrial or household arts in the expectation that work in these fields may lead to a higher degree of efficiency in later vocational training, and possibly to the retention of children during this period who might otherwise see little or no meaning in the traditional school course. the best junior high schools are offering in the industrial course a variety of shop work. in some cases machine shop practice, sheet metal working, woodworking, forging, printing, painting, electrical wiring, and the like are offered for boys; and cooking, sewing, including dressmaking and designing, millinery, drawing, with emphasis upon design and interior decoration, music, machine operating, pasting, and the like are provided for girls. another type of course has provided for training which looks toward commercial work, even though it is recognized that the most adequate commercial training may require a longer period of preparation. in some schools special work in agriculture is offered. our schools cannot be considered as satisfactorily organized until we make provision for every boy or girl to work up to the maximum of his capacity. the one thing that a teacher cannot do is to make all of his pupils equal in achievement. whatever adjustment may have been made in terms of special classes or segregation in terms of ability, the teacher must always face the problem of varying the assignment to meet the capacities of individual children, and she ought, wherever it is possible, especially to encourage the abler children to do work commensurate with their ability, and to provide, as far as is possible, for the rapid advancement of these children through the various stages of the school system. questions . what are the principal causes of differences in abilities or in achievement among school children? . what, if any, of the differences noticed among children may be attributed to sex? . are any of the sex differences noticeable in the achievements of the school children with whom you are acquainted? . to what extent is maturity a cause of individual differences? . what evidence is available to show the fallacy of the common idea that children of the same age are equal in ability? . how important is heredity in determining the achievement of men and women? . to what extent, if any, would you be interested in the immediate heredity of the children in your class? why? . to what extent is the environment in which children live responsible for their achievements in school studies? . what may be expected in the way of achievement from two children of widely different heredity but of equal training? . for what factor in education is the environment most responsible? why? . if you grant that original nature is the primary cause of individual differences in intellectual achievements, how would you define the work of the school? . why are you not justified in grouping children as bright, ordinary, and stupid? . will a boy who has unusual ability in music certainly be superior in all other subjects? . why are children who skip a grade apt to be able to skip again at the end of two or three years? . are you able to distinguish differences in type of mind (or general mental make-up) among the children in your classes? give illustrations. . what changes in school organization would you advocate for the sake of adjusting the teaching done to the varying capacities of children? . how should a teacher adjust his work to the individual differences in capacity or in achievement represented by the usual class group? * * * * * xi. the development of moral social conduct morality has been defined in many ways. it has been called "a regulation and control of immediate promptings of impulses in conformity with some prescribed conduct"; as "the organization of activity with reference to a system of fundamental values." dewey says, "interest in community welfare, an interest that is intellectual and practical, as well as emotional--an interest, that is to say, in perceiving whatever makes for social order and progress, and in carrying these principles into execution--is the moral habit."[ ] palmer defines it as "the choice by the individual of habits of conduct that are for the good of the race." all these definitions point to control on the part of the individual as one essential of morality. morality is not, then, a matter primarily of mere conduct. it involves conduct, but the essence of morality lies deeper than the act itself; motive, choice, are involved as well. mere law-abiding is not morality in the strict sense of the word. one may keep the laws merely as a matter of blind habit. a prisoner in jail keeps the laws. a baby of four keeps the laws, but in neither case could such conduct be called moral. in neither of these cases do we find "control" by the individual of impulses, nor "conscious choice" of conduct. in the former compulsion was the controlling force, and in the second blind habit based on personal satisfaction. conduct which outwardly conforms to social law and social progress is unmoral rather than moral. a moment's consideration will suffice to convince any one that the major part of conduct is of this non-moral type. this is true of adults and necessarily true of children. as hall says, most of the supposedly moral conduct of the majority of men is blind habit, not thoughtful choosing. in so far as we are ruled by custom, by tradition, in so far as we do as the books or the preacher says, or do as we see others do, without principles to guide us, without thinking, to that extent the conduct is likely to be non-moral. this is the characteristic reaction of the majority of people. we believe as our fathers believed, we vote the same ticket, hold in horror the same practices, look askance on the same doctrines, cling to the same traditions. morality, on the other hand, is rationalized conduct. now this non-moral conduct is valuable so far as it goes. it is a conservative force, making for stability, but it has its dangers. it is antagonistic to progress. so long as the conditions surrounding the non-moral individual remain unchanged, he will be successful in dealing with them, but if conditions change, if he is confronted by a new situation, if strong temptation comes, he has nothing with which to meet it, for his conduct was blind. it is the person whose conduct is non-moral that suffers collapse on the one hand, or becomes a bigot on the other, when criticism attacks what he held as true or right. morality requires that men have a reason for the faith that is in them. in the second place, morality is conduct. ideals, ideas, wishes, desires, all may lead to morality, but in so far as they are not expressed in conduct, to that extent they do not come under the head of morality. one may express the sublimest idea, may claim the highest ideals, and be immoral. conduct is the only test of morality, just as it is the ultimate test of character. not only is morality judged in terms of conduct, but it is judged according as the conduct is consistent. "habits of conduct" make for morality or immorality. it is not the isolated act of heroism that makes a man moral, or the single unsocial act that makes a man immoral. the particular act may be moral or immoral, and the person be just the reverse. it is the organization of activity, it is the habits a man has that places him in one category or the other. in the third place, morality is a matter of individual responsibility. it is "choice by the individual," the "perceiving whatever makes for social order and progress." no one can choose for another, no one can perceive for another. the burden of choosing for the good of the group rests on the individual, it cannot be shifted to society or the church, or any other institution. each individual is moral or not according as he lives up to the light that he has, according as he carries into execution principles that are for the good of his race. a particular act, then, may be moral for one individual and immoral for another, and non-moral for still another. in the third place, morality is a matter of individual responsibility. it is "choice be the individual," the "perceiving whatever makes for social order and progress." no one can choose for another, no one can perceive for another. the burden of choosing for the good of the group rests on the individual, it cannot be shifted to society or the church, or any other institution. each individual is moral or not according as he lives up to the light that he has, according as he carries into execution principles that are for the good of his race. a particular act, then, may be moral for one individual and immoral for another, and non-moral for still another. to go off into the forest to die if one is diseased may be a moral act for a savage in central africa; but for a civilized man to do so would probably be immoral because of his greater knowledge. to give liquor to babies to quiet them may be a non-moral act on the part of ignorant immigrants from russia; but for a trained physician to do so would be immoral. morality, then, is a personal matter, and the responsibility for it rests on the individual. of course this makes possible the setting up of individual opinion as to what is for the good of the group in opposition to tradition and custom. this is, of course, dangerous if it is mere opinion or if it is carried to an extreme. few men have the gift of seeing what makes for social well-being beyond that of the society of thoughtful people of their time. and yet if a man has the insight, if his investigations point to a greater good for the group from doing something which is different from the standards held by his peers, then morality requires that he do his utmost to bring about such changes. if it is borne in mind that every man is the product of his age and that it is evolution, not revolution, that is constructive, this essential of true morality will not seem so dangerous. all the reformers the world has ever seen, all the pioneers in social service, have been men who, living up to their individual responsibility, have acted as they believed for society's best good in ways that were not in accord with the beliefs of the majority of their time. shirking responsibility, not living up to what one believes is right, is immoral just as truly as stealing from one's neighbor. the fourth essential in moral conduct is that it be for the social good. it is the governing of impulses, the inhibition of desires that violate the good of the group, and the choice of conduct that forwards its interests. this does not mean that the group and the individual are set over against each other, and the individual must give way. it means, rather, that certain impulses, tendencies, motives, of the individual are chosen instead of others; it means that the individual only becomes his fullest self as he becomes a social being; it means that what is for the good of the group in the long run is for the good of the units that make up that group. morality, then, is a relative term. what is of highest moral value in one age may be immoral in another because of change in social conditions. as society progresses, as different elements come to the front because of the march of civilization, so the acts that are detrimental to the good of the whole must change. to-day slander and stealing a man's good name are quite as immoral as stealing his property. acts that injure the mental and spiritual development of the group are even more immoral than those which interfere with the physical well-being. a strong will is not necessarily indicative of a good character. a strong will may be directed towards getting what gives pleasure to oneself, irrespective of the effect on other people. it is the goal, the purpose with which it is exercised, that makes a man with a strong will a moral man or an immoral man. only when one's will is used to put into execution those principles that will bring about social progress is it productive of a good character. thus it is seen that morality can be discussed only in connection with group activity. it is the individual as a part of a group, acting in connection with it, that makes the situation a moral one. individual morality is discussed by some authors, but common opinion limits the term to the use that has been discussed in the preceding paragraphs. if social well-being is taken in its broadest sense, then all moral behavior is social, and all social behavior comes under one of the three types of morality. training for citizenship, for social efficiency, for earning a livelihood, all have a moral aspect. it is only as the individual is trained to live a complete life as one of a group that he can be trained to be fully moral, and training for complete social living must include training in morality. hence for the remainder of this discussion the two terms will be considered as synonymous. we hear it sometimes said, "training in morals and manners," as if the two were distinct, and yet a full, realization of what is for social betterment along emotional and intellectual lines must include a realization of the need of manners. of course there are degrees of morality or immorality according as the act influences society much or little--all crimes are not equally odious, nor all virtues equally commendable, but any act that touches the well-being of the group must come under this category. from the foregoing paragraph, the logical conclusion would be that there is no instinct or inborn tendency that is primarily and distinctly moral as over against those that are social. that is the commonly accepted belief to-day. there is no moral instinct. morality finds its root in the original nature of man, but not in a single moral instinct. it is, on the other hand, the outgrowth of a number of instincts all of which have been listed under the head of the social instinct. man has in his original equipment tendencies that will make him a moral individual _if_ they are developed, but they are complex, not simple. some of these social tendencies which are at the root of moral conduct are gregariousness, desire for approval, dislike of scorn, kindliness, attention to human beings, imitation, and others. now, although man possesses these tendencies as a matter of original equipment, he also possesses tendencies which are opposed to these, tendencies which lead to the advancement of self, rather than the well-being of the group. some of these are fighting, mastery, rivalry, jealousy, ownership. which of these sets of tendencies is developed and controls the life of the individual is a matter of training and environment. in the last chapter it was pointed out that morality was much more susceptible to environmental influences than intellectual achievement, because it was much more a direction and guidance of capacities and tendencies possessed by every one. one's character is largely a product of one's environment. in proof of this, read the reports of reform schools, and the like. children of criminal parents, removed from the environment of crime, grow up into moral persons. the pair of jukes who left the juke clan lost their criminal habits and brought up a family of children who were not immoral. education cannot produce geniuses, but it can produce men and women whose chief concern is the well-being of the group. from a psychological point of view the "choice by the individual of habits of conduct that are for the good of the group" involves three considerations: first, the elements implied in such conduct; second, the stages of development; third, the laws governing this development. first, moral conduct involves the use of habits, but these must be rational habits, so it involves the power to think and judge in order to choose. but thinking that shall result in the choice of habits that are for the well-being of the group must use knowledge. the individual must have facts and standards at his disposal by means of which he may evaluate the possible lines of action presented. further, an individual may know intellectually what is right and moral and yet not care. the interest, the emotional appeal, may be lacking, hence he must have ideals to which he has given his allegiance, which will force him to put into practice what his knowledge tells him is right. and then, having decided what is for the social good and having the desire to carry it out, the moral man must be able to put it into execution. he must have the "will power." morality, then, is an extremely complex matter, involving all the powers of the human being, intellectual, emotional, and volitional--involving the coöperation of heredity and environment. it is evident that conduct that is at so high a level, involving experience, powers of judgment, and control, cannot be characteristic of the immature individual, but must come after years of growth, if at all. therefore we find stages of development towards moral conduct. the first stage of development, which lasts up into the pre-adolescent years, is the non-moral stage. the time when a child may conform outwardly to moral law, but only as a result of blind habit--not as a result of rational choice. it is then that the little child conforms to his environment, reflecting the characters of the people by whom he is surrounded. right to him means what those about him approve and what brings him satisfaction. if stealing and lying meet with approval from the people about him, they are right to him. to steal and be caught is wrong to the average child of the streets, because that brings punishment and annoyance. he has no standards of judging other than the example of others and his own satisfaction and annoyance. the non-moral period, then, is characterized by the formation of habits--which outwardly conform to moral law, or are contrary to it, according as his environment directs. the need to form habits that do conform, that are for the social good, is evident. by having many habits of this kind formed in early childhood, truthfulness, consideration for others, respect for poverty, promptness, regularity, taking responsibility, and so on, the dice are weighted in favor of the continuation of such conduct when reason controls. the child has then only to enlarge his view, build up his principles in accord with conduct already in operation--he needs only to rationalize what he already possesses. on the other hand, if during early years his conduct violates moral law, he is in the grip of habits of great strength which will result in two dangers. he may be blind to the other side, he may not realize how his conduct violates the laws of social progress; or, knowing, he may not care enough to put forth the tremendous effort necessary to break these habits and build up the opposite. from the standpoint of conduct this non-moral period is the most important one in the life of the child. in it the twig is bent. to urge that a child cannot understand and therefore should be excused for all sorts of conduct simply evades the issue. he is forming habits--that cannot be prevented; the question is, are those habits in line with the demands of social efficiency or are they in violation of it? but character depends primarily on deliberate choice. we dare not rely on blind habit alone to carry us through the crises of social and spiritual adjustment. there will arise the insistent question as to whether the habitual presupposition is right. occasions will occur when several possible lines of conduct suggest themselves; what kind of success will one choose, what kind of pleasure? choice, personal choice, will be forced upon the individual. this problem does not usually grow acute until early adolescence, although it may along some lines present itself earlier. when it appears will depend to a large extent on the environment. for some people in some directions it never comes. it should come gradually and spontaneously. this period is the period of transition, when old habits are being scrutinized, when standards are being formulated and personal responsibility is being realized, when ideals are made vital and controlling. it may be a period of storm and stress when the youth is in emotional unrest; when conduct is erratic and not to be depended on; when there is reaction against authority of all kinds. these characteristics are unfortunate and are usually the result of unwise treatment during the first period. if, on the other hand, the period of transition is prepared for during the preadolescent years by giving knowledge, opportunities for self-direction and choice, the change should come normally and quietly. the transition period should be characterized by emphasis upon personal responsibility for conduct, by the development of social ideals, and by the cementing of theory and practice. this period is an ever recurring one. the transition period is followed by the period of true morality during which the conduct chosen becomes habit. the habits characteristic of this final period are different from the habits of the non-moral period, in that they have their source in reason, whereas those of the early period grew out of instincts. this is the period of most value, the period of steady living in accordance with standards and ideals which have been tested by reason and found to be right. the transition period is wasteful and uncertain. true morality is the opposite. but so long as growth in moral matters goes on there is a continuous change from transition period to truly moral conduct and back again to a fresh transition period and again a change to morality of a still higher order. each rationalized habit but paves the way for one still higher. morality, then, should be a continual evolution from level to level. only so is progress in the individual life maintained. morality, then, requires the inhibition of some instincts and the perpetuation of others, the formation of habits and ideals, the development of the power to think and judge, the power to react to certain abstractions such as ought, right, duty, and so on, the power to carry into execution values accepted. the general laws of instinct, of habit, the response by piecemeal association, the laws of attention and appreciation, are active in securing these responses that we call moral, just as they are operative in securing other responses that do not come under this category. it is only as these general psychological laws are carried out sufficiently that stable moral conduct is secured. any violation of these laws invalidates the result in the moral field just as it would in any other. there is not one set of principles governing moral conduct and another set governing all other types of conduct. the same general laws govern both. this being true, there is no need of discussing in detail the operation of laws controlling moral conduct--that has all been covered in the previous chapters. however, there are some suggestions which should be borne in mind in the application of these laws to this field. first, it is a general principle that habits, to be fixed and stable, must be followed by satisfactory results and that working along the opposite line, that of having annoyance follow a lapse in the conduct, is uneconomical and unreliable. this principle applies particularly to moral habits. truth telling, bravery, obedience, generosity, thought for others, church going, and so on must be followed by positive satisfaction, if they are to be part of the warp and woof of life. punishing falsehood, selfishness, cowardice, and so on is not enough, for freedom from supervision will usually mean rejection of such forced habits. a child must find that it pays to be generous; that he is happier when he coöperates with others than when he does not. positive satisfaction should follow moral conduct. of course this satisfaction must vary in type with the age and development of the child, from physical pleasure occasioned by an apple as a reward for self-control at table to the satisfaction which the consciousness of duty well done brings to the adolescent. second, the part played by suggestion in bringing about moral habits and ideals must be recognized. the human personalities surrounding the child are his most influential teachers in this line. this influence of personalities begins when the child is yet a baby. reflex imitation first, and later conscious imitation plus the feeling of dependence which a little child has for the adults in his environment, results in the child reflecting to a large extent the characters of those about him. good temper, stability, care for others, self-control, and many other habits; respect for truth, for the opinion of others, and many other ideals, are unconsciously absorbed by the child in his early years. example not precept, actions not words, are the controlling forces in moral education. hence the great importance of the characters of a child's companions, friends, and teachers, to say nothing of his parents. next to personalities, theaters, moving pictures, and books, all have great suggestive power. third, there is always a danger that theory become divorced from practice, and this is particularly true here because morality is conduct. knowing what is right is one thing, doing it is another, and knowing does not result in doing unless definite connections are made between the two. instruction in morals may have but little effect on conduct. it is only as the knowledge of what is right and good comes in connection with social situations when there is the call for action that true morality can be gained. mere classroom instruction cannot insure conduct. it is only as the family and the school become more truly social institutions, where group activity such as one finds in life is the dominant note, that we can hope to have morality and not ethics, ideals and not passive appreciation, as a result of our teaching. fourth, it is without question true that in so far as the habits fixed are "school habits" or "sunday habits," or any other special type of habits, formed only in connection with special situations, to that extent we have no reason to expect moral conduct in the broader life situations. the habits formed are those that will be put into practice, and they are the only ones we are sure of. because a child is truthful in school, prompt in attendance, polite to his teacher, and so on is no warrant that he will be the same on the playground or on the street. because a child can think out a problem in history or mathematics is no warrant that he will therefore think out moral problems. the only sure way is to see to it that he forms many useful habits out of school as well as in, that he has opportunity to think out moral problems as well as problems in school subjects.[ ] fifth, individual differences must not be forgotten in moral training. individual differences in suggestibility will influence the use of this factor in habit formation. individual differences in power of appreciation will influence the formation of ideals. differences in interest in books will result in differing degrees of knowledge. differences in maturity will mean that certain children in a class are ready for facts concerning sex, labor and capital, crime, and so on, long before other children in the same class should have such knowledge. differences in thinking power will determine efficiency in moral situations just as in others. the more carefully we consider the problem of moral social conduct, the more apparent it becomes that the work of the school can be modified so as to produce more significant results than are commonly now secured. indeed, it may be contended that in some respects the activities of the school operate to develop an attitude which is largely individualistic, competitive, and, if not anti-social, at least non-social. although we may not expect that the habits and attitudes which are developed in the school will entirely determine the life led outside, yet one may not forget that a large part of the life of children is spent under school supervision. as children work in an atmosphere of coöperation, and as they form habits of helpfulness and openmindedness, we may expect that in some degree these types of activity will persist, especially in their association with each other. in a school which is organized to bring about the right sort of moral social conduct we ought to expect that children would grow in their power to accept responsibility for each other. the writer knows of a fourth grade in which during the past year a boy was absent from the room after recess. the teacher, instead of sending the janitor, or she herself going to find the boy, asked the class what they were going to do about it, and suggested to them their responsibility for maintaining the good name which they had always borne as a group. two of the more mature boys volunteered to go and find the boy who was absent. when they brought him into the room a little while later, they remarked to the teacher in a most matter-of-fact way, "we do not think that he will stay out after recess again." in the corridor of an elementary school the writer saw during the past year two boys sitting on a table before school hours in the morning. the one was teaching the multiplication tables to the other. they were both sixth-grade pupils,--the one a boy who had for some reason or other never quite thoroughly learned his tables. the teacher had suggested that somebody might help him, and a boy had volunteered to come early to school in order that he might teach the boy who was backward. a great many teachers have discovered that the strongest motive which they can find for good work in the field of english is to be found in providing an audience, both for the reading or story-telling, and for the english composition. the idea which prevails is that if one is to read, he ought to read well enough to entertain others. if one has enjoyed a story, he may, if he prepares himself sufficiently well, tell it to the class or to some other group. much more emphasis on the undertakings in the attempt to have children accept responsibility, and to engage in a type of activity which has a definite moral social value, is to be found in the schools in which children are responsible for the morning exercises, or for publishing a school paper, or for preparing a school festival. one of the most notable achievements in this type of activity which the writer has ever known occurred in a school in which a group of seventh-grade children were thought to be particularly incompetent. the teachers had almost despaired of having them show normal development, either intellectually or socially. after a conference of all of the teachers who knew the members of this group, it was decided to allow them to prepare a patriot's day festival. the idea among those teachers who had failed with this group was that if the children had a large responsibility, they would show a correspondingly significant development. the children responded to the motive which was provided, became earnest students of history in order that they might find a dramatic situation, and worked at their composition when they came to write their play, some of them exercising a critical as well as a creative faculty which no one had known that they possessed. but possibly the best thing about the whole situation was that every member of the class found something to do in their coöperative enterprise. some members of the class were engaged in building and in decorating the stage scenery; others were responsible for costumes; those who were strong in music devoted themselves to this field. the search for a proper dramatic situation in history and the writing of the play have already been suggested. the staging of the play and its presentation to a large group of parents and other interested patrons of the school required still further specialization and ability. out of it all came a realization of the possibility of accomplishing great things when all worked together for the success of a common enterprise. when the festival day came, the most common statement heard in the room on the part of the parents and others interested in the work of the children was expressed by one who said: "this is the most wonderful group of seventh-grade children that i have ever seen. they are as capable as most high school boys and girls." it is to be recalled that this was the group in whom the teachers originally had little faith, and who had sometimes been called in their school a group of misfits. some schools have found, especially in the upper grades, an opportunity for a type of social activity which is entirely comparable with the demand made upon the older members of our communities. this work for social improvement or betterment is carried on frequently in connection with a course in civics. in some schools there is organized what is known as the junior police. this organization has been in some cases coordinated with the police department. the boys who belong pledge themselves to maintain, in so far as they are able, proper conditions on the streets with respect to play, to abstain from the illegal use of tobacco or other narcotics, and to be responsible for the correct handling of garbage, especially to see that paper, ashes, and other refuse are placed in separate receptacles, and that these receptacles are removed from the street promptly after they are emptied by the department concerned. in one city with which the writer is acquainted, the children in the upper grades, according to the common testimony of the citizens of their community, have been responsible for the cleaning up of the street cars. in other cities they have become interested, and have interested their parents, in the question of milk and water supply. in some cases they have studied many different departments of the city government, and have, in so far as it was possible, lent their coöperation. in one case a group of children became very much excited concerning a dead horse that was allowed to remain on a street near the school, and they learned before they were through just whose responsibility it was, and how to secure the action that should have been taken earlier. still another type of activity which may have significance for the moral social development of children is found in the study of the life activities in the communities in which they live. there is no reason why children, especially in the upper grades or in the high school, should not think about working conditions, especially as they involve sweat-shops or work under unsanitary conditions. they may very properly become interested in the problems of relief, and of the measures taken to eliminate crime. indeed, from the standpoint of the development of socially efficient children, it would seem to be more important that some elementary treatment of industrial and social conditions might be found to be more important in the upper grades and in the high school than any single subject which we now teach. another attempt to develop a reasonable attitude concerning moral situations is found in the schools which have organized pupils for the participation in school government. there is no particular value to be attached to any such form of organization. it may be true that there is considerable advantage in dramatizing the form of government in which the children live, and for that purpose policemen, councilmen or aldermen, mayors, and other officials, together with their election, may help in the understanding of the social obligations which they will have to meet later on. but the main thing is to have these children come to accept responsibility for each other, and to seek to make the school a place where each respects the rights of others and where every one is working together for the common good. in this connection it is important to suggest that schemes of self-government have succeeded only where there has been a leader in the position of principal or other supervisory officer concerned. children's judgments are apt to be too severe when they are allowed to discipline members of their group. there will always be need, whatever attempt we may make to have them accept responsibility, for the guidance and direction of the more mature mind. we seek in all of these activities, as has already been suggested, to have children come to take, in so far as they are able, the rational attitude toward the problems of conduct which they have to face. it is important for teachers to realize the fallacy of making a set of rules by which all children are to be controlled. it is only with respect to those types of activity in which the response, in order to further the good of the group, must be invariable that we should expect to have pupils become automatic. it is important in the case of a fire drill, or in the passing of materials, and the like, that the response, although it does involve social obligation, should be reduced to the level of mechanized routine. most school situations involve, or may involve, judgment, and it is only as pupils grow in power of self-control and in their willingness to think through a situation before acting, that we may expect significant moral development. in the case of offenses which seem to demand punishment, that teacher is wise who is able to place responsibility with the pupil who has offended. the question ought to be common, "what can i do to help you?" the question which the teacher should ask herself is not, "what can i do to punish the pupil?" but rather, "how can i have him realize the significance of his action and place upon him the responsibility of reinstating himself with the social group?" the high school principal who solved the problem of a teacher who said that she would not teach unless a particular pupil were removed from her class, and of the pupil who said that she would not stay in school if she had to go to that teacher, by telling them both to take time to think it through and decide how they would reconcile their differences, is a case in point. what we need is not the punishment which follows rapidly upon our feeling of resentment, but rather the wisdom of waiting and accepting the mistake or offense of the pupil as an opportunity for careful consideration upon his part and as a possible means of growth for him. there has been considerable discussion during recent years concerning the obligation of the school to teach children concerning matters of sex. traditionally, our policy has been one of almost entire neglect. the consequence has been, on the whole, the acquisition upon the part of boys and girls of a large body of misinformation, which has for the most part been vicious. it is not probable that we can ever expect most teachers to have the training necessary to give adequate instruction in this field. for children in the upper grades, during the preadolescent period especially, some such instruction given by the men and women trained in biology, or possibly by men and women doctors who have made a specialty of this field, promises a large contribution to the development of the right attitudes with respect to the sex life and the elimination of much of the immorality which has been due to ignorance or to the vicious misinformation which has commonly been spread among children. the policy of secrecy and ignorance cannot well be maintained if we accept the idea of responsibility and the exercise of judgment as the basis of moral social activity. in no other field are the results of a lack of training or a lack of morality more certain to be disastrous both for the individual and for the social group. questions . how satisfactory is the morality of the man who claims that he does no wrong? . how is it possible for a child to be unmoral and not immoral? . are children who observe school rules and regulations necessarily growing in morality? . why is it important, from the standpoint of growth in morality, to have children form socially desirable habits, even though we may not speak of this kind of activity as moral conduct? . what constitutes growth in morality for the adult? . in what sense is it possible for the same act to be immoral, unmoral, and moral for individuals living under differing circumstances and in different social groups? give an example. . why have moral reformers sometimes been considered immoral by their associates? . what is the moral significance of earning a living? of being prompt? of being courteous? . what are the instincts upon which we may hope to build in moral training? what instinctive basis is there for immoral conduct? . to what extent is intellectual activity involved in moral conduct? what is the significance of one's emotional response? . what stages of development are distinguishable in the moral development of children? is it possible to classify children as belonging to one stage or the other by their ages? . why is it true that one's character depends upon the deliberate choices which he makes among several possible modes or types of action? . why is it important to have positive satisfaction follow moral conduct? . how may the conduct of parents and teachers influence conduct of children? . what is the weakness of direct moral instruction, e.g. the telling of stories of truthfulness, the teaching of moral precepts, and the like? . what opportunities can you provide in your class for moral social conduct? . children will do what is right because of their desire to please, their respect for authority, their fear of unpleasant consequences, their careful, thoughtful analysis of the situation and choice of that form of action which they consider right. arrange these motives in order of their desirability. would you be satisfied to utilize the motive which brings results most quickly and most surely? . in what sense is it true that lapses from moral conduct are the teacher's best opportunity for moral teaching? . how may children contribute to the social welfare of the school community? of the larger social group outside of the school? . how may pupil participation in school government be made significant in the development of social moral conduct? * * * * * xii. transfer of training formal discipline or transfer of training concerns itself with the question as to how far training in one subject, along one line, influences other lines. how far, for instance, training in reasoning in mathematics helps a child to reason in history, in morals, in household administration; how far memorizing gems of poetry or dates in history aids memory when it is applied to learning stenography or botany; how far giving attention to the gymnasium will insure attention to sermons and one's social engagements. the question is, how far does the special training one gets in home and school fit him to react to the environment of life with its new and complex situations? put in another way, the question is what effect upon other bonds does forming this particular situation response series of bonds have. the practical import of the question and its answer is tremendous. most of our present school system, both in subject matter and method, is built upon the assumption that one answer is correct--if it is false, much work remains to be done by the present-day education. the point of view which was held until recent years is best made clear by a series of quotations. "since the mind is a unit and the faculties are simply phases or manifestations of its activity, whatever strengthens one faculty indirectly strengthens all the others. the _verbal_ memory seems to be an exception to this statement, however, for it may be abnormally cultivated without involving to any profitable extent the other faculties. but only things that are rightly perceived and rightly understood can be _rightly_ remembered. hence whatever develops the acquisitive and assimilative powers will also strengthen memory; and, conversely, rightly strengthening the memory necessitates the developing and training of the other powers." (r.n. roark, method in education, p. .) "it is as a means of training the faculties of perception and generalization that the study of such a language as latin in comparison with english is so valuable." (c.l. morgan, psychology for teachers, p. .) "arithmetic, if judiciously taught, forms in the pupil habits of mental attention, argumentative sequence, absolute accuracy, and satisfaction in truth as a result, that do not seem to spring equally from the study of any other subject suitable to this elementary stage of instruction." (joseph payne, lectures on education, vol. i, p. .) "by means of experimental and observational work in science, not only will his attention be excited, the power of observation, previously awakened, much strengthened, and the senses exercised and disciplined, but the very important habit of doing homage to the authority of facts rather than to the authority of men, be initiated." (_ibid_., p. .) the view maintained by these writers is that the mind is made up of certain elemental powers such as attention, reasoning, observation, imagination, and the like, each of which acts as a unit. training any one of these powers means simply its exercise irrespective of the material used. the facility gained through this exercise may then be transferred to other subjects or situations, which are quite different. the present point of view with regard to this question is very different, as is shown by the following quotations: "we may conclude, then, that there is something which may be called formal discipline, and that it may be more or less general in character. it consists in the establishment of habitual reactions that correspond to the form of situations. these reactions foster adjustments, attitudes, and ideas that favor the successful dealing with the emergencies that arouse them. on the other hand, both the form that we can learn to deal with more effectively, and the reactions that we associate with it, are definite. there is no general training of the powers or faculties, so far as we can determine." (henderson, , p. f.) "one mental function or activity improves others in so far as and because they are in part identical with it, because it contains elements common to them. addition improves multiplication because multiplication is largely addition; knowledge of latin gives increased ability to learn french because many of the facts learned in the one case are needed in the other. the study of geometry may lead a pupil to be more logical in all respects, for one element of being logical in all respects is to realize that facts can be absolutely proven and to admire and desire this certain and unquestionable sort of demonstration...." (thorndike, ' , pp. - , _passim_.) "mental discipline is the most important thing in education, but it is specific, not general. the ability developed by means of one subject can be transferred to another subject only in so far as the latter has elements in common with the former. abilities should be developed in school only by means of those elements of subject-matter and of method that are common to the most valuable phases of the outside environment. in the high school there should also be an effort to work out general concepts of method from the specific methods used." (heck, ' , edition of ' , p. .) "... no study should have a place in the curriculum for which this general disciplinary characteristic is the chief recommendation. such advantage can probably be gotten in some degree from every study, and the intrinsic values of each study afford at present a far safer criterion of educational work than any which we can derive from the theory of formal discipline." (angell, ' , p. .) these writers also believe in transfer of training, but they believe the transfer to be never complete, to be in general a very small percentage of the special improvement gained and at times to be negative and to interfere with responses in other fields instead of being a help. they also emphasize the belief that when the transfer does occur, it is for some perfectly valid reason and under certain very definite conditions. they reject utterly the machine-like idea of the mind and its elemental faculties held by the writers first quoted. they hold the view of mental activity which has been emphasized in the discussion of original tendencies and inheritance from near ancestry, _i.e._, that the physical correlate of all types of mental activity is a definite forming of connections between particular bonds-these connections, of course, according to the laws of readiness exercise, and effect, would be determined by the situation acting as a stimulus and would, therefore, vary as the total situation varied. they believe in a highly specialized human brain, which reacts in small groups of nerve tracts--not in gross wholes. they would express each of the "elemental" powers in the plural and not in the singular. the basis of this change of view within the last fifteen or twenty years is to be found in experimental work. the question has definitely been put to the test as to how far training in one line did influence others. for a full description of the various types of experiments performed the reader is referred to thorndike's "psychology of learning," chapter . only an indication of the type of work done and the general character of the results can be given here. experiments in the effect of cross education, in memorizing, in observing and judging sensory and perceptual data, and in forming sensori-motor association habits have been conducted in considerable numbers. a few experiments in special school functions have also been carried out. investigations in the correlation between various parts of the same subject and between different subjects supposed to be closely allied also throw light upon this subject. the results from these different lines of experiment, although confusing and sometimes contradictory, seem to warrant the belief stated above. they have made it very clear that the question of transfer is not a simple one, but, on the contrary, that it is extremely complex. they make plain that in some cases where large transfer was confidently expected, that little resulted, while, on the other hand, in some cases when little was expected, much more occurred. it is evident that the old idea of a large transfer in some subtle and unexplained way of special improvements to a general faculty is false. but, on the other hand, it would be equally false to say that no transfer occurred. the general principle seems to be that transfer occurs when the same bonds are used in the second situation to the extent that the alteration in these particular connections affects the second response. both the knowledge of what bonds are used in various responses and to what extent alteration in them will affect different total responses is lacking. therefore, all that is at present possible is a statement of conditions under which transfer is probable. in general, then, transfer of training will occur to the extent that the two responses use the same bonds--to the extent, then, that there is identity of some sort. this identity which makes transfer possible may be of all degrees of generality and of several different types. first, there may be identity of content. for instance, forming useful connections with six, island, and, red, habit, africa, square root, triangle, gender, percentage, and so on, in this or that particular context should be of use in other contexts and therefore allow of transfer of training. the more common the particular responses are to all sorts of life situations, the greater the possibility of transfer. second, the identity may be that of method or procedure. to be able to add, to carry, to know the method of classifying an unknown flower, to have a definite method of meeting a new situation in hand-work, to know how to use source material in history, to have gained the technique of laboratory skill in chemistry, to know how to study in geography, should be useful in other departments where the same method would serve. some of these methods are, of course, of much more general service than others. in establishing skill in the use of these various procedures, two types of responses are needed. the learner must form connections of a positive nature, such as analyzing, collecting material, criticizing according to standard, picking out the essential and so on, and he must also form connections of a negative character which will cause him to neglect certain tendencies. he must learn not to accept the first idea offered, to neglect suggestions, to hurry or to leave half finished, to ignore interruptions, to prevent personal bias to influence criticism, and so on. these connections which result in neglecting certain elements are quite as important as the positive element, both in the production of the particular procedure and in the transfer to other fields. third, the identity may be of still more general character and be in terms of attitude or ideal. to learn to be thorough in connection with history, accurate in handwork, open-minded in science, persistent in latin, critical in geometry, thorough in class and school activities; to form habits of allegiance to ideals of truth, coöperation, fair play, tolerance, courage, and so on, _may_ help the learner to exhibit these same attitudes in other situations in life. here again the connections of neglect are important. to neglect selfish suggestions, to ignore the escape from consequences that falsehood might make possible, to be dead to fear, to ignore bodily aches and pains, are quite as necessary in producing conduct that is generous, truthful, and courageous as are the positive connections made in building up the ideal. in the discussion of transfer because of identity, it was emphasised that the presence of identity of various types explained cases of transfer that exist and made transfer possible. in no case must it be understood, however, that the presence of these identical elements is a warrant of transfer. transfer _may_ take place under such conditions, but it need not do so. transfer is most sure to occur in cases of identity of substance and least likely in cases of identity of attitude or ideals. to have useful responses to six, above, city, quart, and so on, in one situation will very likely mean responses of a useful nature in almost all situations which have such elements present. it is very different with the ideals. a child may be very accurate in handwork, and yet almost nothing of it show elsewhere; he may be truthful to his teacher and lie to his parents; he may be generous to his classmates and the reverse to his brothers and sisters. persistence in latin may not influence his work in the shop, and the critical attitude of geometry be lacking in his science. transfer in methods holds a middle ground. it seems that the more complex and the more subtle the connections involved, the less is the amount and the surety of the transfer. in order to increase the probability of transfer when connections of method or attitudes are being formed, first, it should be made conscious, and second, it should be put into practice in several types of situations. there is grave danger that the method will not be differentiated from the subject, the ideal from the context of the situation. to many children learning how to study in connection with history, or to be critical in geometry, or to be scientific in the laboratory, has never been separated from the particular situation. the method or the ideal and the situation in which they have been acquired are one--one response. the general elements of method or attitude have never been made conscious, they are submerged in the particular subject or situation, and therefore the probability of transfer is lessened. if, on the other hand, the question of method, as an idea by itself, apart from any particular subject, is brought to the child's attention; if truth as an ideal, independent of context, is made conscious, it is much more likely to be reacted to in a different situation, for it has become a free idea and therefore crystallized. then having freed the general somewhat from its particular setting, the learner should be given opportunity to put it in practice in other settings. to simply form the method connections or the attitude responses in latin and then blindly trust that they will be of general use is unsafe. it is the business of the educator to make as sure as he can of the transfer, and that can only be done by practicing in several fields. these two procedures which make transfer more sure, i.e., making the element conscious and giving practice in several fields, are not sharply divided, but interact. practice makes the idea clearer and freer, and this in turn makes fresh practice profitable. it is simply the application of the law of analysis by varying concomitants. in all this matter of transfer it must be borne in mind that a very slight amount of transfer of some of these more general responses may be of tremendous value educationally, provided it is over a very wide field. if a boy's study of high school science made him at all more scientific in his attitude towards such life situations as politics, morals, city sanitation, and the like, it would be of much more value than the particular habit formed. if a girl's work in home economics resulted in but a slight transfer of vital interest to the actual problems of home-making, it would mean much to the homes of america. if a boy's training in connection with the athletics of his school fosters in him an ideal of fair play which influences him at all in his dealings with men in business, with his family, with himself, the training would have been worth while. to discount training simply because the transfer is slight is manifestly unfair. the kind of responses which transfer are quite as important as the amount of the transfer. the idea that every subject will furnish the same amount of discipline provided they are equally well taught is evidently false. every school subject must now be weighed from two points of view,--first, as to the worth of the particular facts, responses, habits, which it forms, and second, as to the opportunity it offers for the formation of connections which are of general application. the training which educators are sure of is the particular training offered by the subject; the general training is more problematic. hence no subject should be retained in our present curriculum whose only value is a claim to disciplinary training. such general training as the subject affords could probably be gained from some other subject whose content is also valuable. just because a subject is difficult, or is distasteful, is no sign that its pursuit will result in disciplinary training. in fact, the psychology of play and drudgery make it apparent that the presence of annoyance, of distaste, will lessen the disciplinary value. only those subjects and activities which are characterized by the play spirit can offer true educational development. the more the play spirit enters in, the greater the possibility of securing not only special training, but general discipline as well. thorndike sums up the present attitude towards special subjects by saying, "an impartial inventory of the facts in the ordinary pupil of ten to eighteen would find the general training from english composition greater than that from formal logic, the training from physics and chemistry greater than that from geometry, and the training from a year's study of the laws and institutions of the romans greater than that from equal study of their language. the grammatical studies which have been considered the chief depositories of disciplinary magic would be found in general inferior to scientific treatments of human nature as a whole. the superiority for discipline of pure overapplied science would be referred in large measure to the fact that pure science could be so widely applied. the disciplinary value of geometry would appear to be due, not to the simplicity of its conditions, but to the rigor of its proofs; the greatest disciplinary value of latin would appear in the case, not of those who disliked it and found it hard, but of those to whom it was a charming game." questions . it has been experimentally determined that the ease with which one memorizes one set of facts may be very greatly improved without a corresponding improvement in ability to memorize in some other field. how would you use this fact to refute the argument that we possess a general faculty of memory? . how is it possible for a man to reason accurately in the field of engineering and yet make very grave mistakes in his reasoning about government or education? . what assurance have we that skill or capacity for successful work developed in one situation will be transferred to another situation involving the same mental processes of habit formation, reasoning, imagination, and the like? . what are the different types of identity which make possible transfer of training? . how can we make the identity of methods of work most significant for transfer of training and for the education of the individual? . why do ideals which seem to control in one situation fail to affect other activities in which the same ideal is called for? . under what conditions may a very slight amount of transfer of training become of the very greatest importance for education? . why may we not hope for the largest results in training by compelling children to study that which is distasteful? do children (or adults) work hardest when they are forced to attend to that from which they derive little or no satisfaction? . which student gets the most significant training from his algebra, the boy who enjoys work in this field or the boy who worries through it because algebra is required for graduation from the high school? . why may we hope to secure more significant training in junior high schools which offer a great variety of courses than was accomplished by the seventh and eighth grades in which all pupils were compelled to study the same subjects? . why is latin a good subject from the standpoint of training for one student and a very poor subject with which to seek to educate another student? * * * * * xiii. types of classroom exercises the exercises which teachers conduct in their classrooms do not commonly involve a single type of mental activity. it is true, however, that certain lessons tend to involve one type of activity predominantly. there are lessons which seek primarily to fix habits, others in which thinking of the inductive type is primarily involved, and still others in which deductive thinking or appreciation are the ends sought. as has already been indicated in the discussion of habit, thinking, and appreciation in the previous chapters, these types of mental activity are not to be thought of as separate and distinct. habit formation may involve thinking. in a lesson predominantly inductive or deductive, some element of drill may enter, or appreciation may be sought with respect to some particular part of the situation presented. these different kinds of exercises, drills, thinking (inductive or deductive), and appreciation are fairly distinct psychological types. in addition to the psychological types of exercises mentioned above, exercises are conducted in the classroom which may be designated under the following heads: lecturing, the recitation lesson, examination and review lessons. in any one of these the mental process involved may be any of those mentioned above as belonging to the purely psychological types of lessons or a combination of any two or more of them. it has seemed worth while to treat briefly of both sorts of lesson types, and to discuss at some length, lecturing, about which there is considerable disagreement, and the additional topic of questioning, which is the means employed in all of these different types of classroom exercises. _the inductive lesson_. it has been common in the discussion of the inductive development lesson to classify the stages through which one passes from his recognition of a problem to his conclusion in five steps. these divisions have commonly been spoken of as ( ) preparation; ( ) presentation; ( )comparison and abstraction; ( ) generalization; and ( ) application. it has even been suggested that all lessons should conform to this order of procedure. from the discussions in the previous chapters, the reader will understand that such a formal method of procedure would not conform to what we know about mental activity and its normal exercise and development. there is some advantage, however, in thinking of the general order of procedure in the inductive lesson as outlined by these steps. the step of preparation has to do with making clear to the pupil the aim or purpose of the problem with which he is to deal. it is not always possible in the classroom to have children at work upon just such problems as may occur to them. the orderly development of a subject to be taught requires that the teacher discover to children problems or purposes which may result in thinking. the skill of the teacher depends upon his knowledge of the previous experiences of the children in the class and his skill in having them word the problem which remains unsolved in their experience in such a way as to make it attractive to them. indeed, it may be said that children never have a worthy aim unless it is one which is intellectually stimulating. a problem exists only when we desire to find the answer. the term "presentation" suggests a method of procedure which we would not want to follow too frequently; that is, we may hope not simply to present facts for acceptance or rejection, but, rather, we want children to search for the data which they may need in solving their problem. from the very beginning of their school career children need, in the light of a problem stated, to learn to utilize all of the possible sources of information available. their own experience, the questions which they may put to other people, observations which they may undertake with considerable care, books or other sources of information which they may consult, all are to be thought of as tools to be used or sources of information available for the solution of problems. it cannot be too often reiterated that it is not simply getting facts, reading books, performing experiments, which is significant, but, rather, which of these operations is conducted in the light of a problem clearly conceived by children. the step of presentation, as above described, is not one that may be begun and completed before other parts of the inductive lesson are carried on. as soon as any facts are available they are either accepted or rejected, as they may help in the solution of the problem; comparisons are instituted, the essential elements of likeness are noticed, and even a partial solution of the problem may be suggested in terms of a new generalization. the student may then begin to gather further facts, to pass through further steps of comparison, and to make still further modifications of his generalization as he proceeds in his work. at any stage of the process the student may stop to apply or test the validity of a generalization which has been formed. it is even true that the statement of the problem with which one starts may be modified in the light of new facts found, or new analyses instituted, or new elements of likeness which have been discovered. in the conduct of an inductive lesson it is of primary importance that the teacher discover to children problems, the solutions of which are important for them, that he guide them in so far as it is possible for them to find all of the facts necessary in their search for data, that he encourage them to discuss with each other, even to the extent of disagreeing, with respect to comparisons which are instituted or generalizations which are premature, and above all, that he develop, in so far as it is possible, the habit of verifying conclusions. _the deductive lesson._ the interdependence of induction and deduction has been discussed in the chapter devoted to thinking. the procedure in a deductive lesson is from a clear recognition of the problem involved, through the analysis of the situation and abstraction of the essential elements, to a search for the laws or principles in which to classify the particular element or individual with which we are dealing, to a careful comparison of this particular with the general that we have found, to our conclusion, which is established by a process of verification. briefly stated, the normal order of procedure might be indicated as follows: ( ) finding the problem; ( ) finding the generalization or principles; ( ) inference; ( ) verification. it is important in this type of exercise, as has been indicated in the discussion of the inductive lesson, that the problem be made clear. so long as children indulge in random guesses as to the process which is involved in the solution of a problem in arithmetic, or the principle which is to be invoked in science, or the rule which is to be called to mind in explaining a grammatical construction, we may take it for granted that they have no very clear conception of the process through which they must pass, nor of the issues which are involved. in the search for the generalization or principle which will explain the problem, a process of acceptance and rejection is involved. it helps children to state definitely, with respect to a problem in arithmetic, that they know that this particular principle is not the one which they need. it is often by a process of elimination that a child can best explain a grammatical construction, either in english or in a foreign language. of course the elimination of the principle or law which is not the right one means simply that we are reducing the number of chances of making a mistake. if out of four possibilities we can immediately eliminate two of them, there are only two left to be considered. after children have discovered the generalization or principle involved, it is well to have them state definitely the inference which they make. just as in the inductive process we pass almost immediately from the step of comparison and abstraction to the statement of generalization, so in the deductive lesson, when once we have related the particular case under consideration to the principle which explains it, we are ready to state our inference. verification involves the trying out of our inference to see that it certainly will hold. this may be done by proposing some other inference which we find to be invalid, or by seeking to find any other law or principle which will explain our particular situation. here again, as in the inductive lesson, the skillful teacher makes his greatest contribution by having children become increasingly careful in this step of verification. almost any one can pass through the several stages involved in deductive thinking and arrive at a wrong conclusion. that which distinguishes the careful thinker from the careless student is the sincerity of the former in his unwillingness to accept his conclusions until they are verified. _the drill lesson._ the drill lesson is so clearly a matter of fixing habits that little needs to be added to the chapter dealing with this subject. if one were to attempt to give in order the steps of the process involved, they might be stated as follows: ( ) establishing a motive for forming the habit; ( ) knowing exactly what we wish to do, or the habit or skill to be acquired; ( ) recognition of the importance of the focusing of attention during the period devoted to repetitions; ( ) variation in practice in order to lessen fatigue and to help to fix attention; ( ) a recognition of the danger of making mistakes, with consequent provision against lapses; ( ) the principle of review, which may be stated best by suggesting that the period between practice exercises may only gradually be lengthened. possibly the greatest deficiency in drill work, as commonly conducted, is found in the tendency upon the part of some teachers to depend upon repetition involving many mistakes. this is due quite frequently to the assignment of too much to be accomplished. twenty-five words in spelling, a whole multiplication table, a complete conjugation in latin, all suggest the danger of mistakes which will be difficult to eliminate later on. the wise teacher is the one who provides very carefully against mistakes upon the part of pupils. he assigns a minimum number of words, or a number of combinations, or a part of a conjugation, and takes care to discover that children are sure of themselves before indulging in that practice which is to fix the habit. in much of the drill work there is, of course, the desirability of gaining in speed. in this field successful teachers have discovered that much is gained by more or less artificial stimuli which seem to be altogether outside of the work required to form a habit. in drill on column addition successful work is done by placing the problem on the board and following through the combinations by pointing the pointer and making a tap on the board as one proceeds through the column. concert work of this sort seems to have the effect of speeding up those who would ordinarily lag, even though they might get the right result. the most skillful teachers of typewriting count or clap their hands or use the phonograph for the sake of speeding up their students. they have discovered that the same amount of time devoted to typewriting practice will produce anywhere from twenty-five to one hundred per cent more speed under such artificial stimulation as they were in the habit of getting merely by asking the students to practice. these experiences, of course, suggest that drill work will require an expenditure of energy and an alertness upon the part of teachers, and not merely an assignment of work to be done by pupils. _appreciation lesson._ the work which the teacher does in securing appreciation has been suggested in a previous chapter. it will suffice here briefly to state what may be thought of as the order of procedure in securing appreciation. it is not as easy in this case to state the development in terms of particular steps or processes, since, as has already been indicated in the chapter on appreciation, the student is passive rather than active, is contemplating and enjoying, rather than attacking and working to secure a particular result. the work of the teacher may, however, be organized around the following heads: ( ) it is of primary importance that the teacher bring to the class an enthusiasm and joy for the picture, music, poetry, person, or achievement which he wishes to present; ( ) children must not be forced to accept nor even encouraged to repeat the evaluation determined by teachers; ( ) spontaneous and sincere response upon the part of children should be accepted, even though it may not conform to the teacher's estimate; ( ) children should be encouraged to choose from among many of the forms or situations presented for their approval those which they like best; ( ) the technique involved in the creation of the artistic form should be subordinated to enjoyment in the field of the fine arts; ( ) throughout, the play spirit should be predominant, for if the element of drudgery enters, appreciation disappears. teachers who get good results in appreciation secure them mainly by virtue of the fact that they have large capacity for enjoyment in the fields which they present to children. a teacher who is enthusiastic, and who really finds great joy in music, will awaken and develop power of appreciation upon the part of his pupils. the teacher who can enter into the spirit of the child poetry, or of the fairy tale, will get a type of appreciation not enjoyed by the teacher who finds delight only in adult literature. it is of the utmost importance to recognize the fact that children only gradually grow from an appreciation or joy in that which is crude to that which represents the highest type of artistic production. it is important to have children try themselves out in creative work; but the influence of a teacher may be far greater than that of the attempts of the children to produce in these fields. _lecturing_. among the various types of methods used in teaching there is probably no one which has received such severe criticism as the so-called lecture method. the result of this criticism has been, theoretically at least, to abolish lecturing from the elementary school and to diminish the use of this method in the high school, although in the colleges and universities it is still the most popular method. although it is true that the lecture method is not the best one for continual use in elementary and high school, still its entire disuse is unfortunate. so is its blind use by those who still adhere to the old ways of doing things. the chief criticisms of the method are, first, that it makes of the learner a mere recipient instead of a thinker; second, that the material so gained does not become part of the mental life of the hearers and so is not so well remembered nor so easily applied as material gained in other ways; third, that the instructor has no means of determining whether his class is getting the right ideas or wholly false ones; fourth, the method lacks interest in the majority of cases. despite the truth of these criticisms, there are occasions when the lecture or telling method is the best one--in fact the only one that can accomplish the desired result. first, the lecture method may sometimes take the place of books. often, even in the elementary school, there is need for the children to get facts,--information in history or geography or literature,--and the getting of these facts from books would be too difficult or too wasteful. in such a case telling the facts is certainly the best way to give them. a teacher in half a period can give material that it might take the children hours to find. by telling them the facts, he not only saves waste of time, but also retains the interest. very often discouragement and even dislike results from a prolonged search for a few facts. of course in the higher schools, when the material to be given is not in print, when the professor is the source of certain theories, methods, and explanations, lecturing is the only way for students to get the material. it must be borne in mind that human beings are naturally a source of interest, particularly to children, and therefore having the teacher tell, other things being equal, will make a greater impression than reading it in a book. second, the lecture method is valuable as a means of explanation. despite the fact that the material given may be adapted to the child's level of development, still it often happens that it is not clear. then, instead of sending the child to the same material again, an explanation by teacher or fellow pupil is much better. it may be just the inflection used, or the choice of different words, that will clear up the difficulty. third, the telling method should be used for illustration. very often when illustration is necessary the lecture method is supplemented by illustrative material of various types--objects, experiments, pictures, models, diagrams, and so on. none of this material, however, is used to its best advantage unless it is accompanied by the telling method. it is through the telling that the essentials of the illustrative material gain the proper perspective. without such explanation some unimportant detail may focus the attention and the value of the material be lost. it has been customary to emphasize the need for and the value of this concrete illustrative material. teachers have felt that if it was possible to have the actual object, it should be obtained; if that was not possible, why then have pictures, but diagrams and words should only be used as a last resort. there can be no doubt as to the value of the concrete material, especially with little children--but its use has been carried to an extreme because it has been used blindly. for instance, sometimes the concrete material because of its general inherent interest, or because of its special appeal to some instinct, attracts the attention of the child in such a way that the point which was to be illustrated is lost sight of. witness work in nature study in the lower grades, and in chemistry in the high school. the concrete material may be so complex that again the essential point is lost in the mass of detail. no perspective can be obtained because of the complexity--witness work with principles of machines in physics and the circulation of the blood in biology. sometimes the diagram or word explanation with nothing of the more concrete material is the best type of illustration. a fresh application of the principle or lesson by the teacher is another means of illustration and one of the best, for it not only broadens the student's point of view and gives another cue to the material, but it may also make direct connection with his own experience. illustrations in the book often fail to do this, but the teacher knowing his particular class can make the application that will mean most. telling a story or incident is another way of illustration. the personal element is nearly always present in this means, and is a valuable spur to interest. illustrations of all kinds, from the concrete to the story form, have been grossly misused in teaching, so that to-day teachers are almost afraid to use any. the difficulty has been that illustrations have been used as a means of regaining wandering attention. it has been the sugar-coating. the illustration, then, has become the important thing and the material nonimportant. the class has watched the experiment or listened to the story, but when that was over the attention was gone again. illustrations should not be the means of holding the attention; that is the function of the material itself. if the lesson cannot hold the interest, illustrations are worse than useless. illustrations, then, of all kinds must be subordinated to the material--they are only a means to an end, and that end is a better understanding of the material. illustrations, further, should have a vital, necessary connection with the point they are used to make clearer. illustrations that are dragged in, that are not vitally connected with the point, are entirely out of place. if illustrations always truly illustrated, then children would not remember the illustration and forget the point, for remembering the illustration they would be led directly to the point because of the closeness of the connection. fourth, telling or lecturing is the best way to get appreciation. this was discussed in the chapter on appreciation, so need only be mentioned here. the interpretation by the teacher of the character, the picture, the poem, the policy, or what not, not only increases the understanding of the listener, but also calls up feeling responses. it is in this telling that the personality of the teacher, his experiences, his ideals, make themselves felt. one can often win appreciation of and allegiance to the best in life by the use of the telling method in the appropriate situations. fifth, the lecture method should sometimes be used as a means of getting the desired mental attitude. the general laws of learning emphasize the importance of the mind's set as a condition to readiness of neurone tracts. five or ten minutes spent at the beginning of a subject, or a new section of work, in introducing the class to it, may give the keynote for the whole course. a whole period may be profitably be spent this way. not only will the telling method used on such occasions give the right emotional attitude towards a subject, but also the right intellectual set as well. it is evident then that the lecture or telling method has its place in all parts of the educational system, but its place should be clearly and definitely recognized. the danger is not in using it, but in using it at the wrong time, and in overusing it. bearing in mind the dangers that adhere to its use, it is always well, whether the method is used in grades or in college, to mix it with other methods or to follow it by another method that will do the things that the lecture method may have left undone. _the recitation lesson._ as has been suggested in the opening of this chapter, the recitation lesson is not a type involving any particular psychological process. it is, rather, a method of procedure which may involve any of the other types of work already discussed. when the recitation lesson means merely reciting paragraphs from the book with little or no reference to problems to be solved or skill to be developed, it has no place in a schoolroom. when, however, the teacher uses the recitation lesson as an exercise in which he assures himself that facts needed for further progress in thinking have been secured, or that habits have been established, or verbatim memorization accomplished, this type of exercise is justified. it is well to remember that the thought process involved in the development of a subject, or the solution even of a single problem, may extend over many class periods. the recitation lesson may be important in organizing the material which is to be used in the larger thought whole. again, this type of exercise may involve the presentation of material which is to be used as a basis for appreciation in literature, in music, in art, in history, and the like. the organization of experiences of children, whether secured through observations, discussions, or from books, around certain topics may furnish a most satisfactory basis for the development of problems or of the gathering of the material essential for their solution. a better understanding of the conditions which make for success in habit formation, in thinking, and the development of appreciation, will tend to eliminate from our schools that type of exercise in which teachers ask merely that children recite to them what they have been able to remember from the books which they have read or the lectures which they have heard. _the examination and review lessons._ in the establishment of habits, the development of appreciation, or the growth in understanding which we seek to secure through thinking, there will be many occasions for checking up our work. successful teaching requires that the habit that we think we have established be called for and additional practice given from time to time in order to be certain that it is fixed. in like manner, the development of our thought in any field is not something which is accomplished without respect to later neglect. we, rather, build a system of thought with reference to a particular field or subject as a result of thinking, and rethinking through the many different situations which are involved. in like manner, in the field of appreciation the very essence of our enjoyment is to be found in the fact that that which we have enjoyed we recall, and strengthen our appreciation through the revival of the experience. the review is, of course, most successful when it is not simply going over the whole material in exactly the same way. in habit formation it is often advisable to arrange in a different order the stimuli which are to bring the desired responses, for the very essence of habit formation is found in the fact that the particular response can be secured regardless of the order in which they are called for. in thinking, as a subject is developed, our control is measured by the better perspective which we secure. this means, of course, that in review we will not be concerned with reviving all of the processes through which we have passed, but, rather, in a reorganization quite different from that which was originally provided. the examination lesson is classified here as of the same type as the review because a good examination involves all that has been suggested by review. the writer has no sympathy with those who argue against examinations. the only proof that we can get of the success or failure of our work is to be found in the achievement of pupils. it is not desirable to set aside a particular period of a week devoted entirely to examinations, because examinations in all subjects cannot to best advantage be given during the same period. there are stages in the development of our thinking, or in the acquiring of skill, or in our understanding and appreciation which occur at irregular intervals and which call for a summing up of what has gone before, in order that we may be sure of success in the work which is to follow. it is, of course, undesirable to devote a whole week to examinations on account of the strain and excitement under which children labor. it is entirely possible to know of the achievements of children through examinations which have been given at irregular intervals throughout the term. it would be best, probably, never to give more than one examination on any one day, and, as a rule, to devote only the regular class period to such work. in another chapter the discussion of more exact methods of measuring the achievements of children will be discussed at some length. in all of the lesson types mentioned above, one of the most important means employed by teachers for the stimulation of pupils is the question. it seems wise, therefore, to devote some paragraphs to a consideration of questioning as determining skill in teaching. _questioning_. the purpose of a question is to serve as a situation which shall arouse to activity certain nerve connections and thus bring a response. questions, oral or written, are the chief tools used in schools to gain responses. in some situations it is the only means a teacher may have of arousing the response. psychologically, then, the value of the question must be judged by the response. questions may be considered from the point of view of the kind of response they call for. probably the most common kind of question is the one that calls for facts as answers. it involves memory--but memory of a rote type. it does not require thinking. all drill questions are of this type. the connections aroused are definitely final in a certain order, and the question simply sets off the train of bonds that leads directly to the answer. another type of question involving the memory process is the one which initiates recall, but here thought is active. the answer cannot be gained in a mechanical way, but selection and rejection are involved. the answer is to be found by examining past experience, but only in a thoughtful way. questions which call for comparison form another type. these may vary from those which involve the comparison of sense material to those which involve the comparison of policies or epochs. words, characters, plots, definitions, plans, subjects--everything with which intellectual life deals is open to comparison. comparison is one of the steps in the process of reasoning, and hence questions of this type are extremely important. then there are the questions which arouse the response of analysis. these questions vary among themselves according to the type of analysis needed, whether piecemeal attention or analysis due to varying concomitants. the former drives the thinker through gradual recognition and elimination of the known elements to a consciousness of the only partly known. the latter, by attracting the attention to unvarying factors in the changing situations, forces out the new and until then unknown element. some questions require judgment as a response. the judgment may be one concerning relationships, or concerning worth or value, or be merely a matter of definition--all questions calling for criticism are of this type. in any case this type of question involves the thought element at its best. the question requiring organization forms another type. there is no sharp line of division between these types of questions. no one of them should be used exclusively. some of them imply operations of a simple type as well as the particular response demanded by that form. for instance, some of the questions involving analysis imply comparison and recalling. a judgment question might call for all the simple processes noted above and others as well. the responses then vary in complexity and difficulty. the order of advance in both complexity and difficulty of the response is from the mere drill question to the judgment question. another type of question is the one which desires appreciation as a response. this question is one of the most difficult to frame, for it must tend to inhibit the critical attitude and by means of the associations it arouses or its own suggestive power get the appreciative response. questions of this type often call for constructive imagery as a means to the desired end. some questions are directive in their tendency. they require as response an attitude or set of the mind. they set the child thinking in this direction rather than that. in a sense they are suggestive, but they suggest the line of search rather than the response. a final type of question is akin to the one just discussed--the question whose response is further questions. here again the response desired is an attitude, but in this case it is more than an attitude, it is also a definite response that shall come in the form of questions. the questions of a good teacher should result in students asking questions both of people and of books. these last three types of questions are perhaps the most difficult of all. because of their complexity and subtlety they often miss fire and fail of their purpose. properly handled they are among the most powerful tools a teacher has. the type of question used must vary, not only with the particular group of children, and the type of lesson, but also with the subject. questions that would be the best type in mathematics might not be so good for an art lesson. the kinds of questions used must be adapted to the particular situation. psychologically a question is valuable not only in accordance with the kind of response it gets, but also in proportion to the readiness of the response. a question that is of such a character that the response is hazy, stumbling, hesitating--a question that brings no clear-cut response because the child does not understand what is wanted, is a poor question. this does not at all mean that the right response must always come immediately. some of the best questions are put with the intention of forcing the child to realize that he can't answer--that he doesn't know. if that type of response comes to that question, it is the best possible answer. nor need the whole answer come immediately. for instance, in many of the judgment questions the thinking process aroused may take some time before the judgment is reached, and meanwhile several partial answers may be given. but if the question asked started the process, without waste of time in trying to find out what it meant, the question is good. with these explanations, then, the second qualification of a good question is that it secures the appropriate response readily. in order to do this, these factors must be considered: first, the principle of apperception must be recognized. every question must deal with material that is on a level with the stage of development of the one questioned. not only so, but the question must connect somewhere with the learner's experience. this means a recognition also of individual differences. the question must also be couched in language that can be understood easily by the one questioned. to have to try to understand the language of the question as well as the question, results in divided attention and delayed responses. second, the question should be clear and definite. a question that has these characteristics will challenge the attention of the class. it is directed straight at the point at issue, and no time will be lost in wondering what the question means, or in trying two or three tentative answers. third, the younger the child, the simpler the question must be. with little children, to be good a question may involve only one idea, or relationship. the amount involved in the question, its scope and content, must be adapted to the mental development of the learner. it is only a mature thinker who can carry simultaneously two or three points of issue, or possibilities. fourth, the question to gain a ready response must be interesting. not only must the lesson as a whole be interesting, but the questions themselves must have the same quality. dull questions can kill an otherwise good lesson. the form of the question is thus a big factor in gaining a ready response. all the qualities which gain involuntary attention can be used in framing an interesting question--novelty, exaggeration, contrast, life, color, and so on. the third point to be considered in determining a good question is whether or not it satisfies the demands of economy. this demand is a fair one both from the standpoint of the best use of the time at the disposal of the learner, and also from the standpoint of the best means of gaining the greatest development on the part of the learner in a given time. the number of questions asked thus enters in as a factor. when a teacher asks four or five questions when one would serve the same purpose, she is not only wasting time, but the child is not getting the opportunity to do any thinking and therefore is not developing. recent studies on the actual number of questions asked in a recitation point to the conclusion that economy both of time and in development is being seriously overlooked. economy in response may also be brightened by preserving a logical sequence between questions. it is a matter of fact in psychology that associations are systematized about central ideas; it is also a fact that the set of the mind, in this direction rather than that, is characteristic of all work. logical sequence, then, makes use of both these facts--both of the systematization of ideas and of the mental attitude. the fourth test of good questioning is the universality of its appeal. some questions which are otherwise good appeal but to comparatively few in the class. this, of course, means that responses are being gained but from few. the best questioning stimulates most of the class; all members of the class are working. in order to secure this result the questions must be properly distributed over the class. the bright pupils must not be allowed to do all the work; or, on the other hand, all the attention of the teachers must not be given to the dull pupils. not only should the questions be well distributed, but they must vary according to the individual ability of the particular child. this has already been emphasized in dealing with readiness of response. many a lesson has been unsuccessful because the teacher gave too difficult a question to a dull child, and while she was struggling with him, she lost the rest of the class. the reverse is also true, to give a bright child a question that requires almost no thinking means that a mechanical answer will be given and no further activity stimulated. the extent to which all the class are mentally active is one measure of a good question. questions . give an example of a lesson which you have taught which was predominantly inductive. show how you proceeded from the discovery of the problem to your pupils to the solution attained. . what is involved in the "step" of presentation? . why may we not consider the several "steps" of the inductive lesson as occurring in a definite and mutually exclusive sequence? . in what respect is the procedure in a deductive lesson like that which you follow in an inductive lesson? . show how verification is an important element in both inductive and deductive lessons. . give illustrations of successful drill lessons and make clear the reason for the degree of success achieved. . what measures have you found most advantageous in securing speed in drill work? . what are the elements which make for success in an appreciation lesson? . upon what grounds and to what extent can lecturing be defended as a method of instruction? . what may be the relation between a good recitation lesson and the solution of a problem? growth in power of appreciation? . for what purposes should examinations be given? when should examinations be given? . when are questions which call for facts justified? . why are questions which call for comparisons to be considered important? . why is it important to phrase questions carefully? . why should a teacher ask some questions which cannot be answered immediately? . what criteria would you apply in testing the questions which you put to your class? . write five questions which in your judgment will demand thinking upon some topic which you plan to teach to your class. * * * * * xiv. how to study the term study has been used very loosely by both teachers and children. as used by teachers it frequently meant something very different from what children had in mind when they used it. further, teachers themselves have often used the term in connection with mental activities which, technically speaking, could not possibly come under that head. much confusion and lack of efficient work has been the result. recently various attempts have been made to give the term study a more exact meaning. mcmurry defines it as "the work that is necessary in the assimilation of ideas"--"the vigorous application of the mind to a subject for the satisfaction of a felt need." in other words, study is thinking. psychologically, what makes for good thinking makes for good study. study is controlled mental activity working towards the realization of a goal. it is the adaptation of means to end, in the attempt to satisfy a felt need. it involves a definite purpose or goal, which is problematic, the selection and rejection of suggestions, tentative judgments, and conclusion. the mind of the one who studies is active, vigorously active, not in an aimless fashion, but along sharply defined lines. this is the essential characteristic of all study. there are, however, various types of study which differ materially from each other according to the subject matter or to the type of response required. some study involves comparatively little thinking. the directed activity must be present, but the choice, the judgment, may need to be exercised only in the beginning when methods of procedure need to be selected, and later on, perhaps, when successes or failures need to be noted and changes made in the methods accordingly. another type of study needs continual thinking of the most active sort all the way through the period. just the proportion of the various factors involved in thinking which is present at any given study period must be determined by the response. a type of study which would be completely satisfactory for one subject needing one response, would be entirely inadequate for another subject needing another response. to illustrate, in some cases the study must deal with habit formation. the need felt is to learn a mechanical response of a very definite nature to this situation; the problem is to get that response. the thinking would come in in deciding upon the method, in watching for successes, in criticizing progress, and in judging when the end was obtained. a large part of the time spent in study would, however, need to be spent in repetition, in drill. of such character is study of spelling, of vocabularies, of dates; study in order to gain skill in adding, or speed in reading, or to improve in writing or sewing. much of habit formation goes on without study--in fact, to some it may seem to be ludicrous to use the word "study" in connection with the formation of habits. it is just because the study elements in connection with responses of this type have been omitted that there has been such a tremendous waste of time in teaching children to form right habits. this omission also explains the poor results, for the process has been mechanical and blind on the part of the student. at the other extreme in types of study is that which can be used in science and mathematics, in geography and history, when the major part of the time is given to selecting and rejecting suggestions and seems required by the goal. in this type the habituation, the fixing of the material, comes largely as a by-product of the factors used in the thinking. study may, then, be classified according as the response required is physical habit, memory, appreciation, or judgment. these types overlap, no one of them can exist absolutely alone, but it is possible to name them according to the response. study may also be classified into supervised study, or unsupervised study, into individual or group study. we might also classify study as it has to do with books, with people, or with materials. the term has been rather arbitrarily applied to activities that dealt with books, but surely much study is accomplished when people are consulted instead of books, and also when the sources of information or the standards are flowers, or rocks, or textiles. study, then, is a big term, including many different varieties of activities, of varying degrees of difficulty and responsibility. it cannot possibly be taught all at once, according to one method, at one spot in the school curriculum. power to study is of very gradual growth. it must proceed slowly, from simple to complex types. from easy to difficult problems, from situations where there is close supervision and direction to situations where the student assumes full responsibility. knowing how to study is not an inborn gift--it does not come as a matter of intuition, nor does it come in some mysterious way when the child is of high school age. it is governed by the laws of learning, or readiness, exercise, and effect, just as truly as any other ability is. if adults are to know how to study, if they are to use the technique of the various kinds of study efficiently, children must be taught how. nor can we expect the upper grammar grade or the high school teachers to do this. habits of study must be formed just as soon as the responses to which it leads are needed. beginning down in the kindergarten with study in connection with physical and mental habits, the child should be taught how to study. the type must gradually become more complex; he must pass from group to individual study, from supervised to unsupervised, but it must all come logically, from step to step. true, it is not easy to teach how to study. a careful analysis of the various types with their peculiar elements should be a help. first, however, there are some general principles that underlie all study which must be discussed. study must have, as has already been stated, a purpose. the individual, in order to exercise his mind in a controlled way, must have an aim. the clearer and more definite the aim, whether it be little or big, the better the study will be. from the beginning, then, children must be taught to make sure they know what they are going to do before beginning to study. it may be necessary to teach them in the early grades to say to themselves or to the class just what they are going to accomplish in the study. teach them when the lesson is assigned to write down in their books just what the problem for study is. warn them never to begin study without definitely knowing the aim--if they don't know it, make them realize that the first thing to do is to find out the purpose by asking some one else. better no study at all than aimless or misdirected activity, because of lack of purpose. no study worthy of the name can be carried on without interest. the child who studies well must be brought to realize this. the value of interest can be brought home to him by having him compare the work he does, the time he spends, and how he feels when studying something in which he has a vital interest with the results when the topic is uninteresting. of course, as will be pointed out later, much of the gaining of interest lies in the hands of the teacher necessarily, but if the child realizes the need of it in efficient study, some responsibility will rest on him to find an interest if it is not already there. no matter how expert the teacher may be, because of individual differences no problem will be equally interesting to all pupils in itself, and no incentive will have an equal appeal to all children. therefore children should be taught to find interest for themselves. certain devices can be suggested, such as working with another child and competing with him, "making believe" in study, and finding some connection with something in which he is interested, working against his own score, and the like. not only do the demands of economy require that the topic of study receive concentrated attention, but the results themselves are better when such is the case. half an hour of concentrated work gives much better results than an hour of study with scattered attention. an hour spent when half an hour would do is thus not only wasteful of time, but is productive of poorer results and bad habits of study as well. children need to be taught this from the beginning. much time is wasted even by mature university students when they suppose themselves to be studying. children can be taught to ignore distractions--to train themselves to keep their eyes on the book, despite the fact that the door is opened, or a seat mate is looking for a book. they should be encouraged to set themselves time limits in various subjects and adhere to them. it is economical to follow a regular schedule in study--either in the school or at home. let each child make out his study schedule and keep to it. teach children that the best work is done when they are calm and steady. that either excitement or worry is a hindrance. therefore they should avoid doing their studying under those conditions, and should do all they can to remove such conditions. training children to do their best and then not to worry would not only improve the health of many upper grammar grade and high school children, but would also improve their work. study requires a certain critical attitude, a checking up of results against the problem set. in order to be efficient in study a child should know when he has reached the solution, when the means have been adapted to the end, when he has reached the goal. this checking up, of course, means habits of self-criticism and standards. sometimes all that is necessary is for the child to be made conscious of this fact so that he can test himself, for instance, in memory work, or in solving a problem in mathematics. on the other hand, sometimes he will have to compare his work with definite standards, such as the thorndike handwriting scale, or the hillegas composition scale.[ ] in other instances, he will have to search for standards. he will need to know what his classmates have accomplished, what other people think, what other text-books say, and so on. gradually he must be made conscious that study is a controlled activity, and unless it reaches the goal, and the correct one, it is useless. he must be made to feel that the responsibility to see that such results are reached rests on him. these, then, are the general factors involved in all types of study, and therefore are fundamental to good habits of study: a clear purpose; vital interest of some kind; concentrated attention, and a critical attitude. there are further additional suggestions which are peculiar to the special type of study. in study which is directed to habit formation, the student should be taught the danger of allowing exceptions. he should know the possibility of undoing much good work through a little carelessness. preaching won't bring this home to him--it must come through having his attention attracted to such an occurrence in his own work or in that of his mates. after that knowledge of the actual experiences of others, athletes, musicians, and others will help to intensify the impression. the value of repetition as one of the chief factors in habit formation must be emphasized. the child should be encouraged to make opportunities for practice both in free minutes during the school program, and outside of school. he must be taught in habit formation to practice the new habit in the way it is to be used: practicing the sounds of letters in words, the writing movements in writing words, swimming movements in the water, and so on. practicing the whole movements, not trying to gain perfection in parts of it and then putting it together. it is important also that the learner be taught to keep his attention on the result to be obtained, instead of the movements. he should attend to the swing of the club, the lightness of the song, the cut the saw is making, the words he is writing, instead of the muscle movements involved. in breaking up bad habits it is sometimes necessary to concentrate on a part or a movement, when that is the crux of the error, but in general it is a bad practice when forming a new habit. the child must also learn to watch the habit of skill he is forming for signs of improvement and then to try to find out the reason for it. it has been proved experimentally that much of the improvement in habits of skill comes unconsciously to the learner, and necessarily so, but that in order for the improvement to continue and be effective, it must become conscious. of course, at the beginning and for a long time it must be the teacher's duty to point out the improvement and to help the child to think out the reasons for it, but if he is to learn to study by himself the child must finally come to habits of self-criticism which will enable him to recognize success or failure in his own work. in all this discussion of teaching children to study it must be constantly borne in mind that it is a gradual process--and only very slowly does the child become conscious of the technique. which elements can be made conscious, how much he can be left to himself, must depend on his maturity and previous training. in time, however, he should be able to apply them all--for only by so doing will he become capable of independent study. when the study is primarily concerned with memory responses, all the elements which have just been discussed in connection with habit apply, for, after all, memory is but mental habit. there are other factors which enter into and which should be used in this type of study. first, the child should realize the need for understanding the material that is to be learned, before beginning to memorize it. he will then be taught to read the entire assignment through--look up difficult words and references, master the content, whether prose or poetry, whether the learning is to be verbatim or not, before doing anything further. second, he will need to know the value of the modified whole method of learning, as well as its difficulties. if in the supervised periods of study and in class work, this method has been followed, it is very easy to make him conscious of it and willing to adopt it when he comes to do independent study. third, he must be taught to distribute his time so that he does not devote too long a stretch to one subject. the value of going over work in the morning, after having studied the night or two nights before, should be emphasized. also the value of beginning on assignments some time ahead, even if there is not time to finish them. fourth, the child should be taught not to stop his work the minute he can give it perfectly. the need for overlearning, for permanent retention, must be made clear. how much overlearning is necessary, each child should find out for himself. fifth, the value of outlining material as a means of aiding memory must be stressed. sixth, the child should be taught to search for associations, connections of all types, in order to help himself remember facts. he might even be encouraged to make up some mnemonic device as an aid if these measures fail. if instead of simply trying to hammer material in by mere repetition children had been taught in their study to consciously make use of the other elements in a good memory, much time would be saved. but the responsibility should rest finally on the child to make use of these helps. the teacher must make him conscious of them, sometimes from their value by experiment, and then teach him to use them himself. much less can be done as a matter of conscious technique when the occasion of study is to further appreciation. a few suggestions might be offered. first, the child should be taught the value of associating with those who do appreciate in the line in which he is striving for improvement. he should be encouraged to consciously associate with them when opportunities for appreciation come. second, he should know the need for coming in contact with the objects of appreciation if true feeling is to be developed. it is only by mingling with people, reading books, listening to music, that appreciation in those fields can be developed. third, the value of concrete imagery and of connections with personal experience in arousing emotional tone should be emphasized. the child might be encouraged to consciously call up images and make connections with his own experience during study. study, when the object is to arrive at responses of judgment, is the type which has received most attention. this type of study includes within itself several possibilities. although judgment is the only response that can solve the problem, still the problem may be one of giving the best expression in art or music or drama. it may be the analysis of a course of action or of a chemical compound. it may be the comparison of various opinions. it may be the arriving at a new law or principle. it is to one of these types of thinking that the term "study" is usually applied. important as it is, the other three types already discussed cannot be neglected. if children are taught to study in connection with the simpler situations provided by the first two types, they will be the better prepared to deal with this complex type, for this highest type of study involves habit formation often and memory work always. in the type of study involving reasoning, because of its complexity, and because the individual must work more independently, the child must learn the danger of following the first suggestion which offers itself. he must learn to weigh each suggestion offered with reference to the goal aimed at. each step in the process must be tested and weighed in this manner. to go blindly ahead, following out a line of suggestions until the end is reached, which is then found to be the wrong one, wastes much time and is extremely discouraging. no suggestion of the way to adapt means to end should be accepted without careful criticism. the pupil should gradually be made conscious of the technique of reasoning, analysis, comparison, and abstraction. he must know that the first thing to do is to analyze the problem and see just what it requires. he must know that the abstraction depends upon the goal. the learner should be taught the sources of some of the commonest mistakes in judgment. for instance, if he knows of the tendency to respond in terms of analogy, and sees some of the errors to which accepting a minor likeness between two situations as identity lead, he will be much more apt to avoid such mistakes than would otherwise be true. if he knows how unsafe it is to form a judgment on limited data,--if from his own and his classmates' thinking first, and later from the history of science, illustrations are drawn of the disastrous effect of such thinking, he will see the value of seeking sources of information and several points of view before forming his own judgment. in his study the child should be taught not to be satisfied until he has tested the correctness of his judgment by verifying the result. this is a very necessary part of studying. he should check up his own thinking by finding out through appeal to facts if it is so; by putting the judgment into execution; by consulting the opinion of others, and so on. study may be considered from the point of view of the type of material which is used in the process. the student may be engaged on a problem which involves the use of apparatus or specimens of various kinds, or he may need to consult people, or he may have to use books. so far as the first type is concerned, it is obviously unwise to have a student at work on a problem which involves the use of material, unless the technique of method of use is well known. until he can handle the material with some degree of facility it is waste of time for him to be struggling with problems which necessitate such use. such practice results in divided attention, poor results from the study, and often bad habits in technique as well. gaining the technique must be in itself a problem for separate study. children should be taught to ask questions which bear directly on the point they wish to know. if they in working out some problem are dependent on getting some information from the janitor, or the postman, or a mason, they must be able to ask questions which will bring them what they want to know. much practice in framing questions, having them criticized, having them answered just as they are asked, is necessary. children should be aware of the question as a tool in their study and therefore they must know how to handle it. in connection with this second type of material, the problem of the best source of information will arise. children must then be made conscious of the relative values of various persons as sources of a particular piece of information. training in choice of the source of information is very important both when that source is people and also when it is books. teaching children to use books in their study is one of the big tasks of the teacher. they must learn that books are written in answer to questions. in order to thoroughly understand a book, students must seek to frame the questions which it answers. they must also know how to use books to answer their own questions. this means they must know how to turn from part to part, gleaning here or there what they need. it means training in the ability to skim, omitting unessentials and picking out essentials. it means the ability to recognize major points, minor points, and illustrative material. children must be taught to use the table of contents, the index, and paragraph headings. they must, in their search for fuller information or criticism, be able to interpret different authors, use different language, and attack from different angles, even when treating the same object. children must in their studying be taught to use books as a means to an end--not an infallible means, but one which needs continual criticism, modification, and amplification. study may be supervised study, or unsupervised study. to some people the requirements in learning to study may seem too difficult to be possible, but it should be remembered that the process is gradual--that one by one these elements in study are taught to the children in their supervised study periods. these periods should begin in the primary grades, and require from the teacher quite as much preparation as any other period. many teachers have taught subjects, but not how to study subjects. the latter is the more important. the matter of distributed learning periods, of search for motive, of asking questions, of criticizing achievement, of use of books; each element is a topic for class discussion before it is accepted as an element in study. even after it is accepted, it may be raised by some child as a source of particular difficulty and fresh suggestions added. very often with little children it is necessary for the teacher to study the lesson with them. teachers need much more practice in doing this, for one of the best ways to teach a child to study is to study with him. not to tell him, and do the work for him, but to really study with him. later on the supervised study period is one in which each child is silently engaged upon his own work and the teacher passes from one to the other. in order to do this well, the teacher needs to be able to do two things. first, to find out when the child is in difficulty and to locate it, and second, to help him over the trouble without giving too much assistance. adequate questioning is needed in both cases. it is probably true that comparatively little new work should be given for unsupervised study. there is too much danger of error as well as lack of interest unless a start is given under supervision. studying, especially unsupervised, may be done in groups or individually. the former is a stepping-stone to the latter. there is a greater chance for suggestions, for getting the problem worded, for arousing interest and checking results, when a group of children are working together than when a child is by himself. two things must be looked after. first, that the children in the group be taught not to waste time, and second, that the personnel of the group be right. it is not very helpful if one child does all the work, nor if one is so far below the level of the group that he is always tagging along behind. more opportunities for group study in the grammar grades would be advantageous. when it comes to individual study, the student then assumes all responsibility for his methods of study. he should be taught the influence of physical conditions or mental reactions. he will therefore be responsible for choosing in the home and in the school the best possible conditions for his study. he will see to it that, in so far as possible, the air and light are good, that there are no unnecessary distractions, and that he is as comfortable bodily as can be. he must think not only in terms of the goal to be reached, but also with respect to the methods to be employed. he should be asked by the teacher to report his methods of work as well as his results. questions . are children always primarily engaged in thinking when they study? . what type of study is involved in learning a multiplication table, a list of words in spelling, a conjugation in french? . how would you teach a pupil to study his spelling lesson? . in what sense may one study in learning to write? in acquiring skill in swimming? . how would you teach your pupils to memorize? . show how ability to study may be developed over a period of years in some subject with which you are familiar. reading? geography? history? latin translation? . is the boy who reads over and over again his lesson necessarily studying? . can one study a subject even though he may dislike it? can one study without interest? . how can you teach children what is meant by concentration of attention? . how have you found it possible to develop a critical attitude toward their work upon the part of children? . of what factors in habit formation must children become conscious, if they are to study to best advantage in this field? . how may we hope to have children learn to study in the fields requiring judgment? why will not consciousness of the technique of study make pupils equally able in studying? . what exercises can you conduct which will help children to learn how to use books? . how can a teacher study with a pupil and yet help him to develop independence in this field? . how may small groups of children work together advantageously in studying? * * * * * xv. measuring the achievements of children the success or failure of the teacher in applying the principles which have been discussed in the preceding chapters is measured by the achievements of the children. of course, it is also possible that the validity of the principle which we have sought to establish may be called in question by the same sort of measurement. we cannot be sure that our methods of work are sound, or that we are making the best use of the time during which we work with children, except as we discover the results of our instruction. teaching is after all the adaptation of our methods to the normal development of boys and girls, and their education can be measured only in terms of the changes which we are able to bring about in knowledge, skill, appreciation, reasoning, and the like. any attempt to measure the achievements of children should result in a discovery of the progress which is being made from week to week, or month to month, or year to year. it would often be found quite advantageous to note the deficiencies as well as the achievements at one period as compared with the work done two or three months later. it will always be profitable to get as clearly in mind as is possible the variation among members of the same class, and for those who are interested in the supervision of schools, the variation from class to class, from school to school, or from school system to school system. for the teacher a study of the variability in achievement among the members of his own class ought to result in special attention to those who need special help, especially a kind of teaching which will remove particular difficulties. there should also be offered unusual opportunity and more than the ordinary demand be made of those who show themselves to be more capable than the ordinary pupils. the type of measurement which we wish to discuss is something more than the ordinary examination. the difficulties with examinations, as we have commonly organized them, has* been their unreliability, either from the standpoint of discovering to us the deficiencies of children, or their achievements. of ten problems in arithmetic or of twenty words in spelling given in the ordinary examination, there are very great differences in difficulty. we do not have an adequate measure of the achievements of children when we assign to each of the problems or words a value of ten or of five per cent and proceed to determine the mark to be given on the examination paper. if we are wise in setting our examinations, we usually give one problem or one word which we expect practically everybody to be able to get right. on the other hand, if we really measure the achievements of children, we must give some problems or some words that are too hard for any one to get right. otherwise, we do not know the limit or extent of ability possessed by the abler pupils. it is safe to say that in many examinations one question may actually be four or five times as hard as some other to which an equal value is assigned. another difficulty that we have to meet in the ordinary examination is the variability among teachers in marking papers. we do not commonly assign the same values to the same result. indeed, if a set of papers is given to a group of capable teachers and marked as conscientiously as may be by each of them, it is not uncommon to find a variation among the marks assigned to the same paper which may be as great as twenty-five per cent of the highest mark given. even more interesting is the fact that upon re-marking these same papers individual teachers will vary from their own first mark by almost as great an amount. still another difficulty with the ordinary examination is the tendency among teachers to derive their standards of achievement from the group itself, rather than from any objective standard by which all are measured. it is possible, for example, for children in english composition to write very poorly for their grade and still to find the teacher giving relatively high marks to those who happen to belong to the upper group in the class. as a result of the establishment of such a standard, the teacher may not be conscious of the fact that children should be spurred to greater effort, and that possibly he himself should seek to improve his methods of work. out of the situation described above, which includes on the one hand the necessity for measurement as a means of testing the success of our theories and of our practice, and on the other hand of having objective standards, has grown the movement for measurement by means of standard tests and scales. a standard test which has been given to some thousands of children classified by grades or by ages, if given to another group of children of the same grade or age group will enable the teacher to compare the achievement of his children with that which is found elsewhere. for example, the courtis tests in arithmetic, which consist of series of problems of equal difficulty in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division may be used to discover how far facility in these fields has been accomplished by children of any particular group as compared with the achievements of children in other school systems throughout the country. in these tests each of the problems is of equal difficulty. the measure is made by discovering how many of these separate problems can be solved in a given number of minutes.[ ] a scale for measuring the achievements of children in the fundamental operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division has been derived by dr. clifford woody,[ ] which differs from the courtis tests in that it affords opportunity to discover what children can achieve from the simplest problem in each of these fields to a problem which is in each case approximately twice as difficult as the problems appearing on the courtis tests. the great value of this type of test is in discovering to teachers and to pupils, as well, their particular difficulties. a pupil must be able to do fairly acceptable work in addition before he can solve one problem on the courtis tests. considerable facility can be measured on the woody tests before an ability sufficient to be registered on the courtis tests has been acquired. in his monograph on the derivation of these tests mr. woody gives results which will enable the teacher to compare his class with children already tested in other school systems. in the case of all of these standard tests, school surveys and superintendents' reports are available which will make it possible to institute comparisons among different classes and different school systems. one form of the woody tests is as follows: * * * * * series a addition scale by clifford woody name...................... when is your next birthday?...... how old will you be?..... are you a boy or girl?....... in what grade are you?...... ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) + = -- -- -- -- -- -- ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) -- + + = -- --- -- ( ) -- -- + = -- ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) $ . $ . / + / = / / . . / / . . ( ) / / ----- . . / ----- --- . . --- . . ( ) ( ) ( ) ----- . ( ) / $ . ------ / + / + / = / . / . --- ----- ------ ( ) ( ) ---- / + / + / + / = / + / = ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) . . / + / = ft. in. yr. mo. / . . ft. in. yr. mo. / . . ft. in. yr. mo. / . . --------- yr. mo. / . . yr. mo. ------ . . --------- . . -------- . ( ) . . + . + + . + . = ( ) . / + / + / = . . . . . . ---- * * * * * series a subtraction scale by clifford woody name...................... when is your next birthday?......how old will you be?..... are you a boy or girl?.......in what grade are you?....... ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) - = -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) / - = -- -- -- -- --- --- ---- ------ ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) . / - / = / yd. ft. in. . / / yd. ft. in. ----- -------- ----- ------ -------------- ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) yd. ft. in. - . / . - . = yd. ft. in. / -------------- ------ ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) . - . = mo. da. / - / = / / - / = mo. da. / --------------- ----- * * * * * series a division scale by clifford woody name............................... when is your next birthday?....... how old will you be?...... are you a boy or girl?.......... in what grade are you?...... ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) __ ___ ___ __ ___ ___ ) ) ) ) ) ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ÷ = __ __ × __ = ___ ÷ = ) ) ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ______________ _____ / of = _____ ÷ = ) lbs. oz. ) ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ______ ÷ = _____ _____ ______ ) . ) . ) ) . ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ____ ________ _______ _____ ) ) ) ) . ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) / of = ______ / ÷ = / ÷ = . ). ( ) ( ) ( ) / ÷ / = / ÷ / = _____ ) ( ) ( ) ( ) . ÷ / = ______ ______________ ) ) lbs. oz. * * * * * series a multiplication scale by clifford woody name...................... when is your next birthday?...... how old will you be?..... are you a boy or girl?....... in what grade are you?....... ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) × = × = × = × = × = -- --- ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) -- --- --- ---- ---- ---- --- --- ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) . × / . / ---- --- --- --- --- -- ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) / × = / × / = . . / × = / . . ------ ---- ---- ----- ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) . dollars cents - / × - / = / × / = -- × -- ---- ------------------ ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) / ft. in. / × / × / = . / ft. / in. . ---- --------- --------- ---------- * * * * * a series of problems in reasoning in arithmetic which were given in twenty-six school systems by dr. c.w. stone furnish a valuable test in this field, as well as an opportunity for comparison with other schools in which these problems have been used.[ ] a list of problems follows. solve as many of the following problems as you have time for; work them in order as numbered: . if you buy tablets at cents each and a book for cents, how much change should you receive from a two-dollar bill? . john sold saturday evening posts at cents each. he kept / the money and with the other / he bought sunday papers at cents each. how many did he buy? . if james had times as much money as george, he would have $ . how much money has george? . how many pencils can you buy for cents at the rate of for cents? . the uniforms for a baseball nine cost $ . each. the shoes cost $ a pair. what was the total cost of uniforms and shoes for the nine? . in the schools of a certain city there are pupils; / are in the primary grades, / in the grammar grades, / in the high school, and the rest in the night school. how many pupils are there in the night school? . if - / tons of coal cost $ , what will - / tons cost? . a news dealer bought some magazines for $ . he sold them for $ . , gaining cents on each magazine. how many magazines were there? . a girl spent / of her money for car fare, and three times as much for clothes. half of what she had left was cents. how much money did she have at first? . two girls receive $ . for making buttonholes. one makes , the other . how shall they divide the money? . mr. brown paid one third of the cost of a building; mr. johnson paid / the cost. mr. johnson received $ more annual rent than mr. brown. how much did each receive? . a freight train left albany for new york at o'clock. an express left on the same track at o'clock. it went at the rate of miles an hour. at what time of day will it overtake the freight train if the freight train stops after it has gone miles? a different type of measurement is accomplished by using thorndike's scale for measuring the quality of handwriting.[ ] a typical distribution of the scores which children receive on the handwriting scale reads as follows: for a fourth grade one child writes quality four, two quality six, five quality seven, seven quality eight, eight quality nine, three quality ten, two quality eleven, two quality twelve, one quality thirteen, one quality fourteen. in a table the distributions of scores in penmanship for a large number of papers selected at random show the following results: ============================================================ | grades scores +------+------+------+------+------+------+----- | | | | | | | ------------+-------------+------+------+------+------+----- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | | | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | | | | | -- | | -- | | | | | | -- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | -- | -- | | | | | | -- | -- | | -- | | | | | -- | -- | | | | | -- | -- | -- | -- | | | | -- | -- | -- | -- | | | -- ------------+------+------+------+------+------+------+----- total papers| | | | | | | ============================================================ * * * * * a scale for handwriting of children in grades - the unit of the scale equals approximately one-tenth of the difference between the best and worst of the formal writings of , children in grades - . the differences - , - , - , etc., represent equal fractions of the combined mental scale of merit of from - competent judges. sample , representing zero merit in handwriting. zero merit is arbitrarily defined as that of a handwriting, recognizable as such, but yet not legible at all and possessed of no beauty. [illustration: qual .png: ] quality . [illustration: qual .png: ] quality . [illustration: qual .png: ] quality . [illustration: qual .png: ] quality . [illustration: qual .png: ] quality . [illustration: qual a.png: ] [illustration: qual b.png: ] quality . [illustration: qual a.png: ] [illustration: qual b.png: ] [illustration: qual c.png: ] quality . [illustration: qual .png: ] quality . [illustration: qual a.png: ] [illustration: qual b.png: ] [illustration: qual c.png: ] quality . [illustration: qual a.png: ] [illustration: qual b.png: ] [illustration: qual c.png: ] quality . [illustration: qual a.png: ] [illustration: qual b.png: ] [illustration: qual c.png: ] [illustration: qual d.png: ] quality . [illustration: qual a.png: ] [illustration: qual b.png: ] quality . [illustration: qual a.png: ] [illustration: qual b.png: ] [illustration: qual c.png: ] [illustration: qual d.png: ] quality . [illustration: qual a.png: ] quality . [illustration: qual .png: ] quality . [illustration: qual .png: ] * * * * * this table reads as follows: quality four was written by five children in the second grade and two in the third grade, quality five was written by twenty-two children in the second grade, two children in the third grade, three in the fourth grade, three in the fifth grade, none in the sixth grade, one in the seventh grade, and none in the eighth grade, and so on for the whole table.[ ] a scale for measuring ability in spelling prepared by dr. leonard p. ayres arranges the thousand words most commonly used in the order of their difficulty. from this sheet it is possible to discover words of approximately the same difficulty for each grade. a test could therefore be derived from this scale for each of the grades with the expectation that they would all do about equally well. there would also be the possibility of determining how well the spelling was done in the particular school system in which these words were given as compared with the ability of children as measured by an aggregate of more than a million spellings by seventy thousand children in eighty-four cities throughout the united states. such a list could be taken from the scale for the second grade, which includes words which have proved to be of a difficulty represented by a seventy-three percent correct spelling for the class. such a list might be composed of the following words: north, white, spent, block, river, winter, sunday, letter, thank, and best. a similar list could be taken from the scale for a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, or eighth grade. for example, the words which have approximately the same difficulty,--seventy-three percent to be spelled correctly by the class for the sixth grade,--read as follows: often, stopped, motion, theater, improvement, century, total, mansion, arrive, supply. the great value of such a measuring scale, including as it does the thousand words most commonly used, is to be found not only in the opportunity for comparing the achievements of children in one class or school with another, but also in the focusing of the attention of teachers and pupils upon the words most commonly used.[ ] one of the fields in which there is greatest need for measurement is english composition. teachers have too often thought of english composition as consisting of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and the like, and have ignored the quality of the composition itself in their attention to these formal elements. a scale for measuring english composition derived by dr. m.b. hillegas,[ ] consisting of sample compositions of values ranging from to . , will enable the teacher to tell just how many pupils in the class are writing each different quality of composition. the use of such a scale will tend to make both teacher and pupil critical of the work which is being done not only with respect to the formal elements, but also with respect to the style or adequacy of the expression of the ideas which the writer seeks to convey. probably in no other field has the teacher been so apt to derive his standard from the performance of the class as in work in composition. even though some teachers find it difficult to evaluate the work of their pupils in terms of the sample compositions given on the scale, much good must come, it seems to the writer, from the attempt to grade compositions by such an objective scale. if such measurements are made two or three times during the year, the performance of individual pupils and of the class will be indicated much more certainly than is the case when teachers feel that they are getting along well without any definite assurance of the amount of their improvement. in one large school system in which the writer was permitted to have the principals measure compositions collected from the sixth and the eighth grades, it was discovered that almost no progress in the quality of composition had been accomplished during these two years. this lack of achievement upon the part of children was not, in the opinion of the writer, due to any lack of conscientious work upon the part of teachers, but, rather, developed out of a situation in which the whole of composition was thought of in terms of the formal elements mentioned above. the hillegas scale, together with the values assigned to each of the samples, is given below. a scale for the measurement of the quality of english composition by milo b. hillegas value . artificial sample _letter_ dear sir: i write to say that it aint a square deal schools is i say they is i went to a school. red and gree green and brown aint it hito bit i say he don't know his business not today nor yeaterday and you know it and i want jennie to get me out. value . artificial sample _my favorite book_ the book i refer to read is ichabod crane, it is an grate book and i like to rede it. ichabod crame was a man and a man wrote a book and it is called ichabod crane i like it because the man called it ichabod crane when i read it for it is such a great book. value . artificial sample _the advantage of tyranny_ advantage evils are things of tyranny and there are many advantage evils. one thing is that when they opress the people they suffer awful i think it is a terrible thing when they say that you can be hanged down or trodden down without mercy and the tyranny does what they want there was tyrans in the revolutionary war and so they throwed off the yok. value . written by a boy in the second year of the high school, aged years _sulla as a tyrant_ when sulla came back from his conquest marius had put himself consul so sulla with the army he had with him in his conquest siezed the government from marius and put himself in consul and had a list of his enemys printy and the men whoes names were on this list we beheaded. value . written by a girl in the third year of the high school, aged years _de quincy_ first: de quincys mother was a beautiful women and through her de quincy inhereted much of his genius. his running away from school enfluenced him much as he roamed through the woods, valleys and his mind became very meditative. the greatest enfluence of de quincy's life was the opium habit. if it was not for this habit it is doubtful whether we would now be reading his writings. his companions during his college course and even before that time were great enfluences. the surroundings of de quincy were enfluences. not only de quincy's habit of opium but other habits which were peculiar to his life. his marriage to the woman which he did not especially care for. the many well educated and noteworthy friends of de quincy. value . written by a boy in the fourth year of the high school, aged years _fluellen_ the passages given show the following characteristic of fluellen: his inclination to brag, his professed knowledge of history, his complaining character, his great patriotism, pride of his leader, admired honesty, revengeful, love of fun and punishment of those who deserve it. value . written by a girl in the first year of the high school, aged years _ichabod crane_ ichabod crane was a schoolmaster in a place called sleepy hollow. he was tall and slim with broad shoulders, long arms that dangled far below his coat sleeves. his feet looked as if they might easily have been used for shovels. his nose was long and his entire frame was most loosely hung to-gether. value . written by a boy in the third year of the high school, aged years _going down with victory_ as we road down lombard street, we saw flags waving from nearly every window. i surely felt proud that day to be the driver of the gaily decorated coach. again and again we were cheered as we drove slowly to the postmasters, to await the coming of his majestie's mail. there wasn't one of the gaily bedecked coaches that could have compared with ours, in my estimation. so with waving flags and fluttering hearts we waited for the coming of the mail and the expected tidings of victory. when at last it did arrive the postmaster began to quickly sort the bundles, we waited anxiously. immediately upon receiving our bundles, i lashed the horses and they responded with a jump. out into the country we drove at reckless speed--everywhere spreading like wildfire the news, "victory!" the exileration that we all felt was shared with the horses. up and down grade and over bridges, we drove at breakneck speed and spreading the news at every hamlet with that one cry "victory!" when at last we were back home again, it was with the hope that we should have another ride some day with "victory." value . written by a boy in the freshman class in college _venus of melos_ in looking at this statue we think, not of wisdom, or power, or force, but just of beauty. she stands resting the weight of her body on one foot, and advancing the other (left) with knee bent. the posture causes the figure to sway slightly to one side, describing a fine curved line. the lower limbs are draped but the upper part of the body is uncovered. (the unfortunate loss of the statue's arms prevents a positive knowledge of its original attitude.) the eyes are partly closed, having something of a dreamy langour. the nose is perfectly cut, the mouth and chin are moulded in adorable curves. yet to say that every feature is of faultless perfection is but cold praise. no analysis can convey the sense of her peerless beauty. value . written by a boy in the freshman class in college _a foreigner's tribute to joan of arc_ joan of arc, worn out by the suffering that was thrust upon her, nevertheless appeared with a brave mien before the bishop of beauvais. she knew, had always known that she must die when her mission was fulfilled and death held no terrors for her. to all the bishop's questions she answered firmly and without hesitation. the bishop failed to confuse her and at last condemned her to death for heresy, bidding her recant if she would live. she refused and was lead to prison, from there to death. while the flames were writhing around her she bade the old bishop who stood by her to move away or he would be injured. her last thought was of others and de quincy says, that recant was no more in her mind than on her lips. she died as she lived, with a prayer on her lips and listening to the voices that had whispered to her so often. the heroism of joan of arc was wonderful. we do not know what form her great patriotism took or how far it really led her. she spoke of hearing voices and of seeing visions. we only know that she resolved to save her country, knowing though she did so, it would cost her her life. yet she never hesitated. she was uneducated save for the lessons taught her by nature. yet she led armies and crowned the dauphin, king of france. she was only a girl, yet she could silence a great bishop by words that came from her heart and from her faith. she was only a woman, yet she could die as bravely as any martyr who had gone before. the following compositions have been evaluated by professor thorndike, and may be used to supplement the scale given above. value last monday the house on the corner of jay street was burned down to the ground and right down by mrs. brons house there is a little child all alone and there is a bad man sleeping in the seller, but we have a wise old monkey in the coal ben so the parents are thankful that they don't have to pay any reward. value some of the house burned and the children were in bed and there were four children and the lady next store broke the door in and went up stars and woke the peple up and whent out of the house when they moved and and the girl was skard to look out of the window and all the time thouhth that she saw a flame. and the wise monkey reward from going to the firehouse and jumping all round and was thankful from his reward and was thankful for what he got. $ . was his reward. value a long time ago, i do not know, how long but a man and a woman and a little boy lived together also a monkey a pet for the little boy it happened that the man and the woman were out, and the monkey and little boy, and the house started to burn, and the monkey took the little boys hand, and, went out. the father had come home and was glad that the monkey had saved his little boy. and that, monkey got a reward. value once upon a time a woman went into a dark room and lit a match. she dropped it on the floor and it of course set the house afire. she jumped out of the window and called her husband to come out too. they both forgot all about the baby. all of a sudden he appeared in the window calling his mother. his father had gone next door to tel afone to the fire house. they had a monkey in the house at the time and he heard the child calling his mother. he had a plan to save the baby. he ran to the window where he was standing. he put his tail about his waist and jumped off the window sill with the baby in his tail. when the people were settled again they gave him a silver collar as a reward. value a university out west, i cannot remember the name, is noted for its hazing, and this is what the story is about. it is the hazing of a freshman. there was a freshman there who had been acting as if he didn't respect his upper class men so they decided to teach him a lesson. the student brought before the black avenger's which is a society in all college to keep the freshman under there rules so they desided to take him to the rail-rode track and tie him to the rails about two hours before a train was suspected and leave him there for about an hour, which was a hour before the . train was expected. the date came that they planned this hazing for so the captured the fellow blindfolded him and lead him to the rail rode tracks, where they tied him. value i should like to see a picture, illustrating a part of l'allegro. where the godesses of mirth and liberty trip along hand in hand. two beautiful girls dressed in flowing garments, dancing along a flower-strewn path, through a pretty garden. their hair flowing down in long curls. their countenances showing their perfect freedom and happiness. their arms extended gracefully smelling some sweet flower. in my mind this would make a beautiful picture. value it was between the dark and the daylight when far away could be seen the treacherous wolves skulking over the hills. we sat beside our campfires and watched them for awhile. sometimes a few of them would howl as if they wanted to get in our camp. then, half discouraged, they would walk away and soon there would be others doing the same thing. they were afraid to come near because of the fires, which were burning brightly. i noticed that they howled more between the dark and the daylight than at any time of the night. value the sun was setting, giving a rosy glow to all the trees standing tall black against the faintly tinted sky. blue, pink, green, yellow, like a conglomeration of paints dropped carelessly onto a pale blue background. the trees were in such great number that they looked like a mass of black crepe, each with its individual, graceful form in view. the lake lay smooth and unruffled, dimly reflecting the beautiful coloring of the sky. the wind started madly up and blew over the lake's glassy surface making mysterious murmurings blending in with the chirping songs of the birds blew through the tree tops setting the leaves rustling and whispering to one another. a squirrel ran from his perch chattering, to the lofty branches--a far and distant hoot echoed in the silence, and soon night, over all came stealing, blotting out the scenery and wrapping all in restful, mysterious darkness. value oh that i had never heard of niagara till i beheld it! blessed were the wanderers of old, who heard its deep roar, sounding through the woods, as the summons to an unknown wonder, and approached its awful brink, in all the freshness of native feeling. had its own mysterious voice been the first to warn me of its existence, then, indeed, i might have knelt down and worshipped. but i had come thither, haunted with a vision of foam and fury, and dizzy cliffs, and an ocean tumbling down out of the sky--a scene, in short, which nature had too much good taste and calm simplicity to realize. my mind had struggled to adapt these false conceptions to the reality, and finding the effort vain, a wretched sense of disappointment weighed me down. i climbed the precipice, and threw myself on the earth feeling that i was unworthy to look at the great falls, and careless about beholding them again. a scale for measuring english composition in the eighth grade, which takes account of different types of composition, such as narration, description, and the like, has been developed by dr. frank w. ballou, of boston.[ ] for those interested in the following up of the problem of english composition this scale will prove interesting and valuable. several scales have been developed for the measurement of the ability of children in reading. among them may be mentioned the scale derived by professor thorndike for measuring the understanding of sentences.[ ] this scale calls attention to that element in reading which is possibly the most important of them all, that is, the attempt to get meanings. we are all of us, for the most part, concerned not primarily with giving expression through oral reading, but, rather, in getting ideas from the printed page. a sample of this scale is given on the following page. * * * * * scale alpha. for measuring the understanding of sentences write your name here............................... write your age.............years............months. set _a_ read this and then write the answers. read it again as often as you need to. john had two brothers who were both tall. their names were will and fred. john's sister, who was short, was named mary. john liked fred better than either of the others. all of these children except will had red hair. he had brown hair. . was john's sister tall or short?..................... . how many brothers had john?.......................... . what was his sister's name?.......................... set _b_ read this and then write the answers. read it again as often as you need to. long after the sun had set, tom was still waiting for jim and dick to come. "if they do not come before nine o'clock," he said to himself, "i will go on to boston alone." at half past eight they came bringing two other boys with them. tom was very glad to see them and gave each of them one of the apples he had kept. they ate these and he ate one too. then all went on down the road. . when did jim and dick come?................................... . what did they do after eating the apples?..................... . who else came besides jim and dick?........................... . how long did tom say he would wait for them?.................. . what happened after the boys ate the apples?.................. set _c_ read this and then write the answers. read it again as often as you need to. it may seem at first thought that every boy and girl who goes to school ought to do all the work that the teacher wishes done. but sometimes other duties prevent even the best boy or girl from doing so. if a boy's or girl's father died and he had to work afternoons and evenings to earn money to help his mother, such might be the case. a good girl might let her lessons go undone in order to help her mother by taking care of the baby. . what are some conditions that might make even the best boy leave school work unfinished?............................................ ................................................................... . what might a boy do in the evenings to help his family?......... . how could a girl be of use to her mother?....................... . look at these words: _idle, tribe, inch, it, ice, ivy, tide, true, tip, top, tit, tat, toe._ cross out every one of them that has an _i_ and has not any _t_ (t) in it. set _d_ read this and then write the answers. read it again as often as you need to. it may seem at first thought that every boy and girl who goes to school ought to do all the work that the teacher wishes done. but sometimes other duties prevent even the best boy or girl from doing so. if a boy's or girl's father died and he had to work afternoons and evenings to earn money to help his mother, such might be the case. a good girl might let her lessons go undone in order to help her mother by taking care of the baby. . what is it that might seem at first thought to be true, but really is false? ....................................................................... . what might be the effect of his father's death upon the way a boy spent his time?................................................................. . who is mentioned in the paragraph as the person who desires to have all lessons completely done?.............................................. ....................................................................... . in these two lines draw a line under every that comes just after a , unless the comes just after a . if that is the case, draw a line under the next figure after the : * * * * * many tests have been devised which have been thought to have more general application than those which have been mentioned above for the particular subjects. one of the most valuable of these tests, called technically a completion test, is that derived by dr. m.r. trabue.[ ] in these tests the pupil is asked to supply words which are omitted from the printed sentences. it is really a test of his ability to complete the thought when only part of it is given. dr. trabue calls his scales language scales. it has been found, however, that ability of this sort is closely related to many of the traits which we consider desirable in school children. it would therefore be valuable, provided always that children have some ability in reading, to test them on the language scale as one of the means of differentiating among those who have more or less ability. the scores which may be expected from different grades appear in dr. trabue's monograph. three separate scales follow. * * * * * _write only one word on each blank_ _time limit: seven minutes_ name .......................... trabue language scale b . we like good boys................girls. . the................is barking at the cat. . the stars and the................will shine tonight. . time................often more valuable................money. . the poor baby................as if it.....................sick. . she................if she will. . brothers and sisters ................ always ................ to help..............other and should................quarrel. . ................ weather usually................ a good effect ................ one's spirits. . it is very annoying to................................tooth-ache, ................often comes at the most................time imaginable. . to................friends is always................the........ it takes. _write only one word on each blank_ _time limit: seven minutes_ name.......................... trabue language scale d . we are going................school. . i................to school each day. . the................plays................her dolls all day. . the rude child does not................many friends. . hard................makes................tired. . it is good to hear................voice....................... ..........friend. . the happiest and................contented man is the one........ ........lives a busy and useful................. . the best advice................usually................obtained ................one's parents. .................things are................ satisfying to an ordinary ................than congenial friends. .................a rule one................association.......... friends. _write only one word on each blank_ _time limit: five minutes_ name ............................ trabue language scale j . boys and................soon become................and women. . the................are often more contented.............. the rich. . the rose is a favorite................ because of................ fragrance and................. . it is very................ to become................acquainted ................persons who................timid. . extremely old..................sometimes..................almost as .................. care as ................... . one's................in life................upon so............ factors ................ it is not ................ to state any single................for................ failure. . the future................of the stars and the facts of............ history are................now once for all,................i like them................not. * * * * * other standard tests and scales of measurement have been derived and are being developed. the examples given above will, however, suffice to make clear the distinction between the ordinary type of examination and the more careful study of the achievements of children which may be accomplished by using these measuring sticks. it is important for any one who would attempt to apply these tests to know something of the technique of recording results. in the first place, the measurement of a group is not expressed satisfactorily by giving the average score or rate of achievement of the class. it is true that this is one measure, but it is not one which tells enough, and it is not the one which is most significant for the teacher. it is important whenever we measure children to get as clear a view as we can of the whole situation. for this purpose we want not primarily to know what the average performance is, but, rather, how many children there are at each level of achievement. in arithmetic, for example, we want to know how many there are who can do none of the courtis problems in addition, or how many there are who can do the first six on the woody test, how many can do seven, eight, and so on. in penmanship we want to know how many children there are who write quality eight, or nine, or ten, or sixteen, or seventeen, as the case may be. the work of the teacher can never be accomplished economically except as he gives more attention to those who are less proficient, and provides more and harder work for those who are capable, or else relieves the able members of the class from further work in the field. it will be well, therefore, to prepare, for the sake of comparing grades within the same school or school system, or for the sake of preparing the work of a class at two different times during the year, a table which shows just how many children there are in the group who have reached each level of achievement. such tables for work in composition for a class at two different times, six months apart, appear as follows: distribution of composition scores for a seventh grade ====================================== | number of children +----------------------- | november | february --------------+-----------+----------- rated at | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | ====================================== a study of such a distribution would show not only that the average performance of the class has been raised, but also that those in the lower levels have, in considerable measure, been brought up; that is, that the teacher has been working with those who showed less ability, and not simply pushing ahead a few who had more than ordinary capacity. it would be possible to increase the average performance by working wholly with the upper half of the class while neglecting those who showed less ability. from a complete distribution, as has been given above, it has become evident that this has not been the method of the teacher. he has sought apparently to do everything that he could to improve the quality of work upon the part of all of the children in the class. it is very interesting to note, when such complete distributions are given, how the achievement of children in various classes overlaps. for example, the distribution of the number of examples on the courtis tests, correctly finished in a given time by pupils in the seventh grades, makes it clear that there are children in the fifth grade who do better than many in the eighth. the distribution of the number of examples correctly finished in the given time by pupils in the several grades =================================================================== addition | subtraction no. of |----------------------+ no. of |------------------------ examples| grades | examples | grades finished| | | | | finished | | | | --------+----+-----+-----+-----+----------+----+-----+-----+------- | | | | | | | | | -- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | -- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | -- | -- | -- | | | | | | | -- | -- | | -- | | | | | | -- | -- | | | | | | | | -- | -- | -- | -- | | | | | | -- | -- | -- | -- | | | | | | -- | -- | -- | | | -- | -- | | | -- | -- | -- | | | -- | -- | | | -- | -- | -- | -- | | -- | | -- | | -- | -- | -- | -- | | -- | -- | -- | | -- | -- | -- | -- | | -- | -- | -- | | -- | -- | -- | -- | | -- | -- | -- | | -- | -- | -- | -- | | -- | -- | -- | | -- | -- | -- | -- | | -- | -- | -- | -- --------+----+-----+-----+-----+----------+----+-----+-----+------- total | | | | | | | | | papers | | | | | | | | | =================================================================== the distribution of the number of examples correctly finished in the given time by pupils in the several grades ======================================================================= multiplication | division ------------------------------------|---------------------------------- no. of | grades |no. of | grades examples|---------------------------|examples|------------------------- finished| | | | |finished| | | | --------|------+-----+-----+--------|--------|------+-----+-----+------ . . .| | | -- | -- | . . .| | | | -- . . .| | | | -- | . . .| | | | . . .| | | | | . . .| | | | . . .| | | | | . . .| | | | . . .| | | | | . . .| | | | . . .| | | | | . . .| | | | . . .| | | | | . . .| | | | . . .| | | | | . . .| | | | . . .| | | | | . . .| | | | . . .| | | | | . . .| | | | . . .| -- | | | | . . .| | | | . . .| | -- | | | . . .| | | | . . .| -- | -- | | | . . .| -- | | | . . .| -- | -- | | | . . .| -- | | -- | . . .| -- | -- | -- | | . . .| | -- | | . . .| -- | -- | -- | -- | . . .| -- | | | . . .| -- | -- | -- | | . . .| -- | -- | -- | . . .| -- | -- | -- | -- | . . .| -- | -- | -- | . . .| -- | -- | -- | | . . .| -- | -- | -- | . . .| -- | -- | -- | | . . .| -- | -- | -- | . . .| -- | -- | -- | -- | . . .| -- | -- | -- | . . .| -- | -- | -- | -- | . . .| -- | -- | -- | . . .| -- | -- | -- | -- | . . .| -- | -- | -- | -- --------+------+-----+-----+--------|--------|------+-----+-----+------- total | | | | | | | | | papers | | | | | | | | | ======================================================================= if the tests had been given in the fourth or the third grade, it would have been found that there were children, even as low as the third grade, who could do as well or better than some of the children in the eighth grade. such comparisons of achievements among children in various subjects ought to lead at times to reorganizations of classes, to the grouping of children for special instruction, and to the rapid promotion of the more capable pupils. in many of these measurements it will be found helpful to describe the group by naming the point above and below which half of the cases fall. this is called the median. because of the very common use of this measure in the current literature of education, it may be worth while to discuss carefully the method of its derivation.[ ] [ ]the _median point_ of any distribution of measures is that point on the scale which divides the distribution into two exactly equal parts, one half of the measures being greater than this point on the scale, and the other half being smaller. when the scales are very crude, or when small numbers of measurements are being considered, it is not worth while to locate this median point any more accurately than by indicating on what step of the scale it falls. if the measuring instrument has been carefully derived and accurately scaled, however, it is often desirable, especially where the group being considered is reasonably large, to locate the exact point within the step on which the median falls. if the unit of the scale is some measure of the variability of a defined group, as it is in the majority of our present educational scales, this median point may well be calculated to the nearest tenth of a unit, or, if there are two hundred or more individual measurements in the distribution, it may be found interesting to calculate the median point to the nearest hundredth of a scale unit. very seldom will anything be gained by carrying the calculation beyond the second decimal place. the best rule for locating the median point of a distribution is to _take as the median that point on the scale which is reached by counting out one half of the measures_, the measures being taken in the order of their magnitude. if we let _n_ stand for the number of measures in the distribution, we may express the rule as follows: count into the distribution, from either end of the scale, a distance covered by *_n/ _ measures. for example, if the distribution contains measures, the median is that point on the scale which marks the end of the th and the beginning of the th measure. if there are measures in the distribution, the median point is reached by counting out - / of the measures; in other words, the median of such a distribution is at the mid-point of that fraction of the scale assigned to the th measure. the _median step_ of a distribution is the step which contains within it the median point. similarly, the _median measure_ in any distribution is the measure which contains the median point. in a distribution containing measures, the th measure is the median measure, because measures are greater and are less than the th, while the th measure is itself divided into halves by the median point. where a distribution contains an even number of measures, there is in reality no median measure but only a median point between the two halves of the distribution. where a distribution contains an uneven number of measures, the median measure is the (_n_+ )/ measurement, at the mid-point of which measure is the median point of the distribution. much inaccurate calculation has resulted from misguided attempts to secure a _median point_ with the formula just given, which is applicable only to the location of the _median measure_. it will be found much more advantageous in dealing with educational statistics to consider only the median point, and to use only the _n_/ formula given in a previous paragraph, for practically all educational scales are or may be thought of as continuous scales rather than scales composed of discrete steps. the greatest danger to be guarded against in considering all scales as continuous rather than discrete, is that careless thinkers may refine their calculations far beyond the accuracy which their original measurements would warrant. one should be very careful not to make such unjustifiable refinements in his statement of results as are often made by young pupils when they multiply the diameter of a circle, which has been measured only to the nearest inch, by . in order to find the circumference. even in the ordinary calculation of the average point of a series of measures of length, the amateur is sometimes tempted, when the number of measures in the series is not contained an even number of times in the sum of their values, to carry the quotient out to a larger number of decimal places than the original measures would justify. final results should usually not be refined far beyond the accuracy of the original measures. it is of utmost importance in calculating medians and other measures of a distribution to keep constantly in mind the significance of each step on the scale. if the scale consists of tasks to be done or problems to be solved, then "doing task correctly" means, when considered as part of a continuous scale, anywhere from doing . up to doing . tasks. a child receives credit for " problems correct" whether he has just barely solved . problems or has just barely fallen short of solving . problems. if, however, the scale consists of a series of productions graduated in quality from very poor to very good, with which series other productions of the same sort are to be compared, then each sample on the scale stands at the middle of its "step" rather than at the beginning. the second kind of scale described in the foregoing paragraph may be designated as "scales for the _quality_ of products," while the other variety may be called "scales for _magnitude_ of achievement." in the one case, the child makes the best production he can and measures its quality by comparing it with similar products of known quality on the scale. composition, handwriting, and drawing scales are good examples of scales for quality of products. in the other case, the scales are placed in the hands of the child at the very beginning, and the magnitude of his achievement is measured by the difficulty or number of tasks accomplished successfully in a given time. spelling, arithmetic, reading, language, geography, and history tests are examples of scales for quantity of achievement. scores tend to be more accurate on the scales for magnitude of achievement, because the judgment of the examiner is likely to be more accurate in deciding whether a response is correct or incorrect than it is in deciding how much quality a given product contains. this does not furnish an excuse for failing to employ the quality-of-products scales, however, for the qualities they measure are not measurable in terms of the magnitude of tasks performed. the fact appears, however, that the method of employing the quality-of-products scales is "by comparison" (of child's production with samples reproduced on the scale), while the method of employing the magnitude-of-achievement scales is "by performance" (of child on tasks of known difficulty). in this connection it may be well to take one of the scales for quality of products and outline the steps to be followed in assigning scores, making tabulations, and finding the medians of distributions of scores. when the hillegas scale is employed in measuring the quality of english composition, it will be advisable to assign to each composition the score of that sample on the scale to which it is nearest in merit or quality. while some individuals may feel able to assign values intermediate to those appearing on the hillegas scale, the majority of those persons who use this scale will not thereby obtain a more accurate result, and the assignment of such intermediate values will make it extremely difficult for any other person to make accurate use of the results. to be exactly comparable, values should be assigned in exactly the same manner. the best result will probably be obtained by having each composition rated several times, and if possible, by a number of different judges, the paper being given each time that value on the hillegas scale to which it seems nearest in quality. the final mark for the paper should be the median score or step (not the median point or the average point) of all the scores assigned. for example, if a paper is rated five times, once as in step number five ( . ), twice as in step number six ( . ), and twice as in step number seven ( . ), it should be given a final mark indicating that it is a number six ( . ) paper. after each composition has been assigned a final mark indicating to what sample on the hillegas scale it is most nearly equal in quality, proceed as follows: make a distribution of the final marks given to the individual papers, showing how many papers were assigned to the zero step on the scale, how many to step number one, how many to step number two, and so on for each step of the scale. we may take as an example the distribution of scores made by the pupils of the eighth grade at butte, montana, in may, . no. of papers rated at all together there were papers from the eighth grade, so that if they were arranged in order according to their merit we might begin at the poorest and count through of them (n/ = / = ) to find the median point, which would lie between the th and the th in quality. if we begin with the composition rated at and count up through the rated at and the rated at in the above distribution, we shall have counted . in order to count out cases, then, it will be necessary to count out of the cases rated at . now we know (if the instructions given above have been followed) that the compositions rated at were so rated by virtue of the fact that the judges considered them nearer in quality to the sample valued at . than to any other sample on the scale. we should expect, then, to find that some of those rated at were only slightly nearer to the sample valued at . than they were to the sample valued at . , while others were only slightly nearer to . than they were to . . just how the compositions rated on were distributed between these two extremes we do not know, but the best single assumption to make is that they are distributed at equal intervals on step . assuming, then, that the papers rated at are distributed evenly over that step, we shall have covered . ( / = . = . ) of the entire step by the time we have counted out of the papers falling on this step. it now becomes necessary to examine more closely just what are the limits of step . it is evident from what has been said above that . is the middle step and that step extends downward from . halfway to . , and upward from . halfway to . . the table given below shows the range and the length of each step in the hillegas scale for english composition. the hillegas scale for english composition ====================================================== step no.|value or sample|range of step |length of step --------+---------------+--------------+-------------- . . . .| | - . [ ] | . . . . .| . | . - . | . . . . .| . | . - . | . . . . .| . | . - . | . . . . .| . | . - . | . . . . .| . | . - . | . . . . .| . | . - . | . . . . .| . | . - . | . . . . .| . | . - . | . . . . .| . | . - | ====================================================== from the above table we find that step has a length of . units. if we count out of the papers, or, in other words, if we pass upward into the step . of the total distance ( . units), we shall arrive at a point . units (. × . = . ) above the lower limit of step , which we find from the table is . . adding . to . gives . as the median point of this eighth grade distribution. the median and the percentiles of any distribution of scores on the hillegas scale may be determined in a manner similar to that illustrated above, if the scores are assigned to the individual papers according to the directions outlined above. a similar method of calculation is employed in discovering the limits within which the middle fifty per cent of the cases fall. it often seems fairer to ask, after the upper twenty-five per cent of the children who would probably do successful work even without very adequate teaching have been eliminated, and the lower twenty-five per cent who are possibly so lacking in capacity that teaching may not be thought to affect them very largely have been left out of consideration, what is the achievement of the middle fifty per cent. to measure this achievement it is necessary to have the whole distribution and to count off twenty-five per cent, counting in from the upper end, and then twenty-five per cent, counting in from the lower end of the distribution. the points found can then be used in a statement in which the limits within which the middle fifty per cent of the cases fall. using the same figures that are given above for scores in english composition, the lower limit is . and the limit which marks the point above which the upper twenty-five per cent of the cases are to be found is . . the limits, therefore, within which the middle fifty per cent of the cases fall are from . to . . it is desirable to measure the relationship existing between the achievements (or other traits) of groups. in order to express such relationship in a single figure the coefficient or correlation is used. this measure appears frequently in the literature of education and will be briefly explained. the formula for finding the coefficient of correlation can be understood from examples of its application. let us suppose a group of seven individuals whose scores in terms of problems solved correctly and of words spelled correctly are as follows:[ ] ====================================== individuals|no. of |no. of words measured |problems|spelled correctly correctly | | -----------+--------+----------------- a | | b | | c | | d | | e | | f | | g | | ====================================== from such distributions it would appear that as individuals increase in achievement in one field they increase correspondingly in the other. if one is below or above the average in achievement in one field, he is below or above and in the same degree in the other field. this sort of positive relationship (going together) is expressed by a coefficient of + . the formula is expressed as follows: (sum x · y) r = ------------------------------ (sqrt(sum x^ ))(sqrt(sum y^ )) here _r_ = coefficient of correlation. _x_ = deviations from average score in arithmetic (or difference between score made and average score). _y_ = deviations from average score in spelling. sum = is the sign commonly used to indicate the algebraic sum (_i.e._ the difference between the sum of the minus quantities and the plus quantities). _x · y _= products of deviation in one trait multiplied by deviation in the other trait with appropriate sign. applying the formula we find: =================================================================== |arith-| | | spel- | | | | |metic | x | x^ | ling | y | y^ | x·y | --+------+---+------------+-------+---+-------------+-------------+ a | |- | | |- | | + | b | |- | | |- | | + | c | |- | | |- | | + | d | | | | | | | | e | |+ | | |+ | | + | f | |+ | | |+ | | + | g | |+ | | |+ | | + | | ___| | __| ___| | ___| __| | | | |sum x^ = | | | |sum y^ = |sum x·y = + | |av. = | | |av. = | | | | =================================================================== sum x · y + + r = ---------------------------- = --------------------- = ---- = + (sqrt(sum x^ )(sqrt(sum y^ ) (sqrt( ))(sqrt( )) if instead of achievement in one field being positively related (going together) in the highest possible degree, these individuals show the opposite type of relationship, _i.e.,_ the maximum negative relationship (this might be expressed as opposition--a place above the average in one achievement going with a correspondingly great deviation below the average in the other achievement), then our coefficient becomes - . applying the formula: =================================================================== |arith-| | | spel- | | | | |metic | x | x^ | ling | y | y^ | x*y | --+------+---+------------+-------+---+-------------+-------------+ a | |- | | |+ | | - | b | |- | | |+ | | - | c | |- | | |+ | | - | d | | | | | | | | e | |+ | | |- | | - | f | |+ | | |- | | - | g | |+ | | |- | | - | | ___| | __| ___| | ___| __| | | | |sum x^ = | | | |sum y^ = |sum x·y = - | |av. = | | |av. = | | | | =================================================================== it will be observed that in this case each plus deviation in one achievement is accompanied by a minus deviation for the other trait; hence, all of the products of _x_ and _y_ are minus quantities. (a plus quantity multiplied by a plus quantity or a minus quantity multiplied by a minus quantity gives us a plus quantity as the product, while a plus quantity multiplied by a minus quantity gives us a minus quantity as the product.) (sum x·y) - - r = ------------------------------ = ------------------- = ---- = - . (sqrt(sum x^ ))(sqrt(sum y^ )) (sqrt( )sqrt( )) = if there is no relationship indicated by the measures of achievements which we have found, then the coefficient of correlation becomes . a distribution of scores which suggests no relationship is as follows: ================================================================= |arith- | | | | | | |metic | x | x^ |spelling | y | y^ | x.y --+-------+----+-----------+---------+----+-------------+-------- | | | | | | | - + a | | - | | | + | | - + b | | - | | | | | + c | | | | | - | | + d | | + | | | + | | - e | | - | | | - | | - + f | | + | | | - | | g | | + | | | + | | | ____| | | ___ | | | | | | |sum x^ = | | | | sum y^ = | x·y= | av.= | | | av.= | | | =================================================================== (sum x·y) r = ---------------------------- = ------------------- = . (sqrt(sum x^ )sqrt(sum y^ )) (sqrt( )sqrt( )) in a similar manner, when the relationship is largely positive as would be indicated by a displacement of each score in the series by one step from the arrangement which gives a + coefficient, the coefficient will approach unity in value. =============================================================== arithmetic| x | x^ |spelling| y | y^ | ---+------+----+-----------+--------+----+------------+-------- a | | - | | | - | |+ b | | - | | | - | |+ c | | - | | | | |+ d | | | | | - | |+ e | | + | | | + | |+ f | | + | | | + | |sx·y= g | | + | | | + | | |av. = | |sum x^ = |av. = | |sum y^ = | =============================================================== sum x·y + r= -------------------------- = ---- = +. . sqrt(sum x^ )sqrt(sum y^ ) other illustrations might be given to show how the coefficient varies from + , the measure of the highest positive relationship (going together) through to - , the measure of the largest negative relationship (opposition). a relationship between traits which we measure as high as +. is to be thought of as quite significant. it is seldom that we get a positive relationship as large as +. when we correlate the achievements of children in school work. a relationship measured by a coefficient of ±. may _not_ be considered to indicate any considerable positive or negative relationship. the fact that relationships among the achievements of children in school subjects vary from +. to +. is a clear indication of the fact that abilities of children are variable, or, in other words, achievement in one subject does not carry with it an _exactly corresponding_ great or little achievement in another subject. that there is some positive relationship, _i.e.,_ that able pupils tend on the whole to show all-round ability and the less able or weak in one subject _tend_ to show similar lack of strength in other subjects, is also indicated by these positive coefficients. questions . calculate the median point in the following distribution of eighth-grade composition scores on the hillegas scale. quality frequency . calculate the median point in the following distribution of third-grade scores on the woody subtraction scale. no. problems frequency + . compare statistically the achievements of the children in two eighth-grade classes whose scores on the courtis addition tests were as follows: class a-- , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . class b-- , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . . if the marks received in algebra and in geometry by a group of high school pupils were as given below, what relationship is indicated by the coefficient of correlation? |geometry |algebra |marks |marks . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . | | . compare the abilities of the -year-old pupils in the sixth grade with the abilities of the -year-old pupils in the same grade, in so far as these abilities are measured by the completion of incomplete sentences. (note: = . - . .) ================================================== no. sentences | | completed | -year-olds | -year-olds --------------+--------------+-------------------- |-- |-- |-- |-- |-- |-- | |-- |-- |-- |-- |-- |-- |-- |-- | | |-- |-- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-- | | | |-- | |-- |-- |-- | |-- |-- |-- |-- =========================================== . from the scores given here, calculate the relationship between ability to spell and ability to multiply. use the average as the central tendency. ============================== pupil|spelling|multiplication -----+--------+--------------- a | | b | | c | | d | | e | | f | | g | | h | | i | | j | | k | | l | | m | | n | | o | | p | | q | | r | | s | | t | | u | | v | | w | | x | | y | | ============================== * * * * * index achievements of children, measuring the, and examinations, in english composition, in arithmetic, arithmetic scale, reasoning problems in arithmetic, distribution of hand-writing scores, handwriting scale, spelling scale, scale for english composition. Æsthetic emotions, appreciation and skill, appreciation, intellectual factors in. aim of education, i analysis and abstraction, iii. angell, j.r. appreciation, types of, passive attitude in, development in, value of, lesson. associations, organization of, number of. attention, situations arousing response of, and inhibition, breadth of, to more than one thing, concentration of, span of, free, forced, immediate free, immediate and derived, derived, forced, and habit formation, focalization of, divided. ayres, l.p. ballou, f.w. bread-and-butter aim. classroom exercises, types of. coefficient of correlation, calculation of, values of. comparison and abstraction, step of. concentration, of attention. habits of. conduct, moral social. consciousness, fringe of. correlation, coefficient of. courtis, s.a. culture as aim of education. curriculum, omissions from. deduction lesson, the, steps in. deduction, process of. dewey, john. differences, individual, sex. disuse, method of. drill, lesson, the, work, deficiency in. education, before school age. effect, law of. emotions, aesthetic. environment and individual differences. examinations, limitations of. exceptions, danger of. fatigue and habits. formal discipline. gray, w.s. habit formation, and attention, laws of, and instinct, complexity of, and interest, and mistakes. habits, of concentration, modification of the nervous system involved, and fatigue, and will power, and original work. harmonious development of aim. heck, w.h. henderson, e.n. heredity and individual differences. hillegas, m.b. illustrations, use of. imagery, type of, and learning, productive, types of. images, classified, object and concrete. imagination. individual differences, causes of, and race inheritance, and maturity, and heredity, and environment, and organization of public education in composition in arithmetic in penmanship induction and deduction differences in relationship of induction, process of inductive lesson, the inquiry in school work instinctive tendencies modifiability of inhibition of instincts transitoriness of delayedness of of physical activity to enjoy mental activity of manipulation of collecting of rivalry of fighting of imitation of gregariousness of motherliness interest an end judd, c.h. junior high school, the kelly, f.j. knowledge aim learning incidental and imagery curves lecturing and appreciation lesson the inductive mcmurry, f.m. maturity and individual differences measurement of group comparison of seventh-grade scores in composition comparison of scores in arithmetic measuring results in education median calculation of point step measure memorization verbatim whole-part method illustrated memory factors in and native retentiveness and recall part and whole methods practice periods immediate desultory rote logical and forgetting permanence of miller, i.e. moral conduct development of morality defined and conduct and habit and choice and individual opinion social nature of and training for citizenship and original nature and environment stages of development in and habit formation transition period in direct teaching of and classroom work and service by pupils and social responsibility and school rules morgan, c.l. openmindedness original nature of children and racial inheritance and aim of education utilization of and morality original work and habits payne, joseph physical welfare of children play theories of types of complexity of characteristics of and drudgery and work and ease of accomplishment and social demands supervision of preparation steps of presentation steps of problems as stimulus to thinking punishment questioning questions types of responses to number of appeal of reasoning and thinking technique of recapitulation theory recitation social purpose of recitation lesson, the repetition retention power of review review lesson, the roark, r.n. satisfaction result of scales of measurement school government participation in sex differences education social aim of education and curriculum and special types of schools stone, c.w. study how to types of and habit formation and memorization and interest necessity for aim in and concentrated attention involves critical attitude general factors in for appreciation involving thinking use of books in supervised substitution method of thinking defined thinking stimulation of and problematic situations by little children and habit formation essentials in process of for its own sake and critical attitude laws governing and association failure in and classroom exercises thorndike, e.l. thought imageless trabue, m.r. training transfer of identity of response probability of amount of transfer of training will power and habits woody, clifford work, independent work and play footnote : the nervous system is composed of units of structure called neurones or nerve cells. "if we could see exactly the structure of the brain itself, we should find it to consist of millions of similar neurones each resembling a bit of string frayed out at both ends and here and there along its course. so also the nerves going out to the muscles are simply bundles of such neurones, each of which by itself is a thread-like connection between the cells of the spinal cord or brain and some muscle. the nervous system is simply the sum total of all these neurones, which form an almost infinitely complex system of connections between the sense organs and the muscles." the word synapses, meaning clasping together, is used as a descriptive term for the connections that exist between neurone and neurone. footnote : this is synonymous with james's involuntary attention, angell's non-voluntary attention, and titchener's secondary-passive attention. footnote : educational psychology, briefer course, pp. - . footnote : thorndike, psychology of learning, p. . footnote : how we think, p. . footnote : the psychology of thinking, p. . footnote : how we think, p. . footnote : how we think, pp. - . footnote : psychology of thinking, p. . footnote : how we think, p. . footnote : thorndike, educational psychology, briefer course, p. . footnote : introduction to psychology, p. . footnote : thorndike, origin of man, p. . footnote : racial differences in mental traits, pp. and . footnote : thorndike, educational psychology, briefer course, p. . footnote : thorndike, educational psychology, vol. iii, p. . footnote : moral principles in education, p. . footnote : for a fuller discussion of this topic see next chapter. footnote : for a discussion of these scales see chapter xv. footnote : the courtis tests, series b, for measuring the achievements of children in the fundamentals of arithmetic, can be secured from mr. s.a. curtis, eliot street, detroit, mich. footnote : measurements of some achievements in arithmetic, by clifford woody, published by the teachers college bureau of publications, columbia university, . footnote : reasoning test in arithmetic, by c.w. stone, published by the bureau of publications, teachers college, columbia university, . footnote : a scale for handwriting of children, by e.l. thorndike, published by the bureau of publications, teachers college, columbia university. footnote : a scale derived by dr. leonard p. ayres of the russell sage foundation is also valuable for measuring penmanship, and can be purchased from the russell sage foundation. footnote : copies of the spelling scale can be secured from the russell sage foundation, new york, for five cents a copy. footnote : a scale for the measurement of quality in english composition, by milo b. hillegas, published by the bureau of publications, teachers college, columbia university. footnote : the harvard-newton scale for the measurement of english composition, published by the harvard university press, cambridge, mass. footnote : scale alpha. for measuring the understanding of sentences, by e.l. thorndike, published by the bureau of publications, teachers college, columbia university. scales for measuring the rate of silent reading and oral reading have been derived by dr. w.s. gray, of the university of chicago, and by dr. f.j. kelly, of the university of kansas. reference to the use of dr. gray's scale will be found in judd's measuring work of the schools, one of the volumes of the cleveland survey, published by the russell sage foundation. dr. kelly's test, called the kansas silent reading test, can be had from the emporia, kansas, state normal school. footnote : completion test language scales, by m.r. trabue, published by the bureau of publications, teachers college, columbia university. footnote : the student who is not interested in the statistical methods involved in measuring with precision the achievements of pupils may omit the remainder of this chapter. footnote : this explanation of the method of finding the median was prepared for one of the classes in teachers college by dr. m.r. trabue. footnote : the third decimal place is omitted in this table. footnote : in order to discover the relationship which exists between two traits which we have measured we would use many more than seven cases. the illustrations given are made short in order to make it easy to follow through the application of the formula. youth its education, regimen, and hygiene by g. stanley hall, ph.d., ll.d. president of clark university and professor of psychology and pedagogy preface i have often been asked to select and epitomize the practical and especially the pedagogical conclusions of my large volumes on adolescence, published in , in such form that they may be available at a minimum cost to parents, teachers, reading circles, normal schools, and college classes, by whom even the larger volumes have been often used. this, with the coöperation of the publishers and with the valuable aid of superintendent c.n. kendall of indianapolis, i have tried to do, following in the main the original text, with only such minor changes and additions as were necessary to bring the topics up to date, and adding a new chapter on moral and religions education. for the scientific justification of my educational conclusions i must, of course, refer to the larger volumes. the last chapter is not in "adolescence," but is revised from a paper printed elsewhere. i am indebted to dr. theodore l. smith of clark university for verification of all references, proof-reading, and many minor changes. g. stanley hall. contents i.--pre-adolescence introduction: characterization of the age from eight to twelve--the era of recapitulating the stages of primitive human development--life close to nature--the age also for drill, habituation, memory work, and regermination--adolescence superposed upon this stage of life, but very distinct from it ii.--the muscles and motor powers in general muscles as organs of the will, of character, and even of thought--the muscular virtues--fundamental and accessory muscles and functions--the development of the mind and of the upright position--small muscles as organs of thought--school lays too much stress upon these--chorea--vast numbers of automatic movements in children--great variety of spontaneous activities--poise, control, and spurtiness--pen and tongue wagging--sedentary school life vs. free out-of-door activities--modern decay of muscles, especially in girls--plasticity of motor habits at puberty iii.--industrial education. trade classes and schools, their importance in the international market--our dangers and the superiority of german workmen--the effects of a tariff--description of schools between the kindergarten and the industrial school--equal salaries for teachers in france--dangers from machinery--the advantages of life on the old new england farm--its resemblance to the education we now give negroes and indians--its advantage for all-sided muscular development iv.--manual training and sloyd. history of the movement--its philosophy--the value of hand training in the development of the brain and its significance in the making of man--a grammar of our many industries hard--the best we do can reach but few--very great defects in manual training methods which do not base on science and make nothing salable--the leipzig system--sloyd is hypermethodic--these crude peasant industries can never satisfy educational needs--the gospel of work; william morris and the arts and crafts movement--its spirit desirable--the magic effects of a brief period of intense work--the natural development of the drawing instinct in the child v.--gymnastics the story of jahn and the turners--the enthusiasm which this movement generated in germany--the ideal of bringing out latent powers--the concept of more perfect voluntary control--swedish gymnastics--doing everything possible for the body as a machine--liberal physical culture--ling's orthogenic scheme of economic postures and movements and correcting defects--the ideal of symmetry and prescribing exercises to bring the body to a standard--lamentable lack of correlation between these four systems--illustrations of the great good that a systematic training can effect--athletic records--greek physical training vi.--play, sports, and games the view of groos partial, and a better explanation of play proposed as rehearsing ancestral activities--the glory of greek physical training, its ideals and results--the first spontaneous movements of infancy as keys to the past--necessity of developing basal powers before those that are later and peculiar to the individual--plays that interest due to their antiquity--play with dolls--play distinguished by age--play preferences of children and their reasons--the profound significance of rhythm--the value of dancing and also its significance, history, and the desirability of reintroducing it--fighting--boxing--wrestling--bushido--foot-ball--military ideals--showing off--cold baths--hill climbing--the playground movement--the psychology of play--its relation to work vii.--faults, lies, and crimes. classification of children's faults--peculiar children--real fault as distinguished from interference with the teacher's ease--truancy, its nature and effects--the genesis of crime--the lie, its classes and relations to imagination--predatory activities--gangs--causes of crime--the effects of stories of crime--temibility--juvenile crime and its treatment viii.--biographies of youth. knightly ideals and honor--thirty adolescents from shakespeare--goethe--c.d. warner--aldrich--the fugitive nature of adolescent experience--extravagance of autobiographies--stories that attach to great names--some typical crazes--illustrations from george eliot, edison, chatterton, hawthorne, whittier, spencer, huxley, lyell, byron, heine, napoleon, darwin, martineau, agassiz, madame roland, louisa alcott, f.h. burnett, helen keller, marie bashkirtseff, mary maclane, ada negri, de quincey, stuart mill, jefferies, and scores of others ix.--the growth of social ideals. change from childish to adult friends--influence of favorite teachers--what children wish or plan to do or be--property and the money sense--social judgments--the only child--first social organizations--student life--associations for youth controlled by adults x.--intellectual education and school work. the general change and plasticity at puberty--english teaching--causes of its failure, ( ) too much time to other languages, ( ) subordination of literary content to form, ( ) too early stress on eye and hand instead of ear and mouth, ( ) excessive use of concrete words--children's interest in words--their favorites--slang--story telling--age of reading crazes--what to read--the historic sense--growth of memory span xi.--the education of girls. equal opportunities of higher education now open--brings new dangers to women--ineradicable sex differences begin at puberty, when the sexes should and do diverge--different interests--sex tension--girls more mature than boys at the same age--radical psychic and physiological differences between the sexes--the bachelor women--needed reconstruction--food--sleep--regimen--manners--religion--regularity-- the topics for a girls' curriculum--the eternally womanly xii.--moral and religious training. dangers of muscular degeneration and overstimulus of brain--difficulties in teaching morals--methods in europe--obedience to commands--good habits should be mechanized--value of scolding--how to flog aright--its dangers--moral precepts and proverbs--habituation--training will through intellect--examinations--concentration--originality--froebel and the naive--first ideas of god--conscience--importance of old and new testaments--sex dangers--love and religion--conversion chapter i pre-adolescence introduction: characterization of the age from eight to twelve--the era of recapitulating the stages of primitive human development--life close to nature--the age also for drill, habituation, memory, work and regermination--adolescence superposed upon this stage of life, but very distinct from it. the years from about eight to twelve constitute a unique period of human life. the acute stage of teething is passing, the brain has acquired nearly its adult size and weight, health is almost at its best, activity is greater and more varied than it ever was before or ever will be again, and there is peculiar endurance, vitality, and resistance to fatigue. the child develops a life of its own outside the home circle, and its natural interests are never so independent of adult influence. perception is very acute, and there is great immunity to exposure, danger, accident, as well as to temptation. reason, true morality, religion, sympathy, love, and esthetic enjoyment are but very slightly developed. everything, in short, suggests that this period may represent in the individual what was once for a very protracted and relatively stationary period an age of maturity in the remote ancestors of our race, when the young of our species, who were perhaps pygmoid, shifted for themselves independently of further parental aid. the qualities developed during pre-adolescence are, in the evolutionary history of the race, far older than hereditary traits of body and mind which develop later and which may be compared to a new and higher story built upon our primal nature. heredity is so far both more stable and more secure. the elements of personality are few, but are well organised on a simple, effective plan. the momentum of these traits inherited from our indefinitely remote ancestors is great, and they are often clearly distinguishable from those to be added later. thus the boy is father of the man in a new sense, in that his qualities are indefinitely older and existed, well compacted, untold ages before the more distinctly human attributes were developed. indeed there are a few faint indications of an earlier age node, at about the age of six, as if amid the instabilities of health we could detect signs that this may have been the age of puberty in remote ages of the past. i have also given reasons that lead me to the conclusion that, despite its dominance, the function of sexual maturity and procreative power is peculiarly mobile up and down the age-line independently of many of the qualities usually so closely associated with it, so that much that sex created in the phylum now precedes it in the individual. rousseau would leave prepubescent years to nature and to these primal hereditary impulsions and allow the fundamental traits of savagery their fling till twelve. biological psychology finds many and cogent reasons to confirm this view _if only a proper environment could be provided_. the child revels in savagery; and if its tribal, predatory, hunting, fishing, fighting, roving, idle, playing proclivities could be indulged in the country and under conditions that now, alas! seem hopelessly ideal, they could conceivably be so organized and directed as to be far more truly humanistic and liberal than all that the best modern school can provide. rudimentary organs of the soul, now suppressed, perverted, or delayed, to crop out in menacing forms later, would be developed in their season so that we should be immune to them in maturer years, on the principle of the aristotelian catharsis for which i have tried to suggest a far broader application than the stagirite could see in his day. these inborn and more or less savage instincts can and should be allowed some scope. the deep and strong cravings in the individual for those primitive experiences and occupations in which his ancestors became skilful through the pressure of necessity should not be ignored, but can and should be, at least partially, satisfied in a vicarious way, by tales from literature, history, and tradition which present the crude and primitive virtues of the heroes of the world's childhood. in this way, aided by his vivid visual imagination, the child may enter upon his heritage from the past, live out each stage of life to its fullest and realize in himself all its manifold tendencies. echoes only of the vaster, richer life of the remote past of the race they must remain, but just these are the murmurings of the only muse that can save from the omnipresent dangers of precocity. thus we not only rescue from the danger of loss, but utilize for further psychic growth the results of the higher heredity, which are the most precious and potential things on earth. so, too, in our urbanized hothouse life, that tends to ripen everything before its time, we must teach nature, although the very phrase is ominous. but we must not, in so doing, wean still more from, but perpetually incite to visit, field, forest, hill, shore, the water, flowers, animals, the true homes of childhood in this wild, undomesticated stage from which modern conditions have kidnapped and transported him. books and reading are distasteful, for the very soul and body cry out for a more active, objective life, and to know nature and man at first hand. these two staples, stories and nature, by these informal methods of the home and the environment, constitute fundamental education. but now another remove from nature seems to be made necessary by the manifold knowledges and skills of our highly complex civilization. we should transplant the human sapling, i concede reluctantly, as early as eight, but not before, to the schoolhouse with its imperfect lighting, ventilation, temperature. we must shut out nature and open books. the child must sit on unhygienic benches and work the tiny muscles that wag the tongue and pen, and let all the others, which constitute nearly half its weight, decay. even if it be prematurely, he must be subjected to special disciplines and be apprenticed to the higher qualities of adulthood; for he is not only a product of nature, but a candidate for a highly developed humanity. to many, if not most, of the influences here there can be at first but little inner response. insight, understanding, interest, sentiment, are for the most part only nascent; and most that pertains to the true kingdom of mature manhood is embryonic. the wisest requirements seem to the child more or less alien, arbitrary, heteronomous, artificial, falsetto. there is much passivity, often active resistance and evasion, and perhaps spasms of obstinacy, to it all. but the senses are keen and alert, reactions immediate and vigorous; and the memory is quick, sure and lasting; and ideas of space, time, and physical causation, and of many a moral and social licit and non-licit, are rapidly unfolding. never again will there be such susceptibility to drill and discipline, such plasticity to habituation, or such ready adjustment to new conditions. it is the age of external and mechanical training. reading, writing, drawing, manual training, musical technic, foreign tongues and their pronunciations, the manipulation of numbers and of geometrical elements, and many kinds of skill have now their golden hour; and if it passes unimproved, all these can never be acquired later without a heavy handicap of disadvantage and loss. these necessities may be hard for the health of body, sense, mind, as well as for morals; and pedagogic art consists in breaking the child into them betimes as intensely and as quickly as possible with minimal strain and with the least amount of explanation or coquetting for natural interest, and in calling medicine confectionery. this is not teaching in its true sense so much as it is drill, inculcation, and regimentation. the method should be mechanical, repetitive, authoritative, dogmatic. the automatic powers are now at their very apex, and they can do and bear more than our degenerate pedagogy knows or dreams of. here we have something to learn from the schoolmasters of the past back to the middle ages, and even from the ancients. the greatest stress, with short periods and few hours, incessant insistence, incitement, and little reliance upon interest, reason or work done without the presence of the teacher, should be the guiding principles for pressure in these essentially formal and, to the child, contentless elements of knowledge. these should be sharply distinguished from the indigenous, evoking, and more truly educational factors described in the last paragraph, which are meaty, content-full, and relatively formless as to time of day, method, spirit, and perhaps environment and personnel of teacher, and possibly somewhat in season of the year, almost as sharply as work differs from play, or perhaps as the virility of man that loves to command a phalanx, be a martinet and drill-master, differs from femininity which excels in persuasion, sympathetic insight, story-telling, and in the tact that discerns and utilizes spontaneous interests in the young. adolescence is a new birth, for the higher and more completely human traits are now born. the qualities of body and soul that now emerge are far newer. the child comes from and harks back to a remoter past; the adolescent is neo-atavistic, and in him the later acquisitions of the race slowly become prepotent. development is less gradual and more saltatory, suggestive of some ancient period of storm and stress when old moorings were broken and a higher level attained. the annual rate of growth in height, weight, and strength is increased and often doubled, and even more. important functions, previously non-existent, arise. growth of parts and organs loses its former proportions, some permanently and some for a season. some of these are still growing in old age and others are soon arrested and atrophy. the old measures of dimensions become obsolete, and old harmonies are broken. the range of individual differences and average errors in all physical measurements and all psychic tests increases. some linger long in the childish stage and advance late or slowly, while others push on with a sudden outburst of impulsion to early maturity. bones and muscles lead all other tissues, as if they vied with each other; and there is frequent flabbiness or tension as one or the other leads. nature arms youth for conflict with all the resources at her command--speed, power of shoulder, biceps, back, leg, jaw--strengthens and enlarges skull, thorax, hips, makes man aggressive and prepares woman's frame for maternity. * * * * * chapter ii the muscles and motor powers in general muscles as organs of the will, of character and even of thought--the muscular virtues--fundamental and accessory muscles and functions--the development of the mind and of the upright position--small muscles as organs of thought--school lays too much stress upon these--chorea--vast numbers of automatic movements in children--great variety of spontaneous activities--poise, control and spurtiness--pen and tongue wagging--sedentary school life _vs_ free out-of-door activities--modern decay of muscles, especially in girls--plasticity of motor habits at puberty. the muscles are by weight about forty-three per cent. of the average adult male human body. they expend a large fraction of all the kinetic energy of the adult body, which a recent estimate places as high as one-fifth. the cortical centers for the voluntary muscles extend over most of the lateral psychic zones of the brain, so that their culture is brain building. in a sense they are organs of digestion, for which function they play a very important rôle. muscles are in a most intimate and peculiar sense the organs of the will. they have built all the roads, cities, and machines in the world, written all the books, spoken all the words, and, in fact, done everything that man has accomplished with matter. if they are undeveloped or grow relaxed and flabby, the dreadful chasm between good intentions and their execution is liable to appear and widen. character might be in a sense defined as a plexus of motor habits. to call conduct three-fourths of life, with matthew arnold; to describe man as one-third intellect and two-thirds will, with schopenhauer; to urge that man is what he does or that he is the sum of his movements, with f.w. robertson; that character is simply muscle habits, with maudsley; that the age of art is now slowly superseding the age of science, and that the artist will drive out with the professor, with the anonymous author of "rembrandt als erzicher";[ ] that history is consciously willed movements, with bluntschli; or that we could form no conception of force or energy in the world but for our own muscular effort; to hold that most thought involves change of muscle tension as more or less integral to it--all this shows how we have modified the antique ciceronian conception _vivere est cogitari_, [to live is to think] to _vivere est velle_, [to live is to will] and gives us a new sense of the importance of muscular development and regimen.[ ] modern psychology thus sees in muscles organs of expression for all efferent processes. beyond all their demonstrable functions, every change of attention and of psychic states generally plays upon them unconsciously, modifying their tension in subtle ways so that they may be called organs of thought and feeling as well as of will, in which some now see the true kantian thing-in-itself the real substance of the world, in the anthropomorphism of force. habits even determine the deeper strata of belief; thought is repressed action; and deeds, not words, are the language of complete men. the motor areas are closely related and largely identical with the psychic, and muscle culture develops brain-centers as nothing else yet demonstrably does. muscles are the vehicles of habituation, imitation, obedience, character, and even of manners and customs. for the young, motor education is cardinal, and is now coming to due recognition; and, for all, education is incomplete without a motor side. skill, endurance, and perseverance may almost be called muscular virtues; and fatigue, velleity, caprice, _ennui_, restlessness, lack of control and poise, muscular faults. to understand the momentous changes of motor functions that characterize adolescence we must consider other than the measurable aspects of the subject. perhaps the best scale on which to measure all normal growth of muscle structure and functions is found in the progress from fundamental to accessory. the former designates the muscles and movements of the trunk and large joints, neck, back, hips, shoulders, knees, and elbows, sometimes called central, and which in general man has in common with the higher and larger animals. their activities are few, mostly simultaneous, alternating and rhythmic, as of the legs in walking, and predominate in hard-working men and women with little culture or intelligence, and often in idiots. the latter or accessory movements are those of the hand, tongue, face, and articulatory organs, and these may be connected into a long and greatly diversified series, as those used in writing, talking, piano-playing. they are represented by smaller and more numerous muscles, whose functions develop later in life and represent a higher standpoint of evolution. these smaller muscles for finer movements come into function later and are chiefly associated with psychic activity, which plays upon them by incessantly changing their tensions, if not causing actual movement. it is these that are so liable to disorder in the many automatisms and choreic tics we see in school children, especially if excited or fatigued. general paralysis usually begins in the higher levels by breaking these down, so that the first symptom of its insidious and never interrupted progress is inability to execute the more exact and delicate movements of tongue or hand, or both. starting with the latest evolutionary level, it is a devolution that may work downward till very many of the fundamental activities are lost before death. nothing better illustrates this distinction than the difference between the fore foot of animals and the human hand. the first begins as a fin or paddle or is armed with a hoof, and is used solely for locomotion. some carnivora with claws use the fore limb also for holding well as tearing, and others for digging. arboreal life seems to have almost created the simian hand and to have wrought a revolution in the form and use of the forearm and its accessory organs, the fingers. apes and other tree-climbing creatures must not only adjust their prehensile organ to a wide variety of distances and sizes of branches, but must use the hands more or less freely for picking, transporting, and eating fruit; and this has probably been a prime factor in lifting man to the erect position, without which human intelligence as we know it could have hardly been possible. "when we attempt to measure the gap between man and the lower animals in terms of the form of movement, the wonder is no less great than when we use the term of mentality."[ ] the degree of approximation to human intelligence in anthropoid animals follows very closely the degree of approximation to human movements. the gradual acquirement of the erect position by the human infant admirably repeats this long phylogenetic evolution.[ ] at first the limbs are of almost no use in locomotion, but the fundamental trunk muscles with those that move the large joints are more or less spasmodically active. then comes creeping, with use of the hip muscles, while all below the knee is useless, as also are the fingers. slowly the leg and foot are degraded to locomotion, slowly the great toe becomes more limited in its action, the thumb increases in flexibility and strength of opposition, and the fingers grow more mobile and controllable. as the body slowly assumes the vertical attitude, the form of the chest changes till its greatest diameter is transverse instead of from front to back. the shoulder-blades are less parallel than in quadrupeds, and spread out till they approximate the same plane. this gives the arm freedom of movement laterally, so that it can be rotated one hundred and eighty degrees in man as contrasted to one hundred degrees in apes, thus giving man the command of almost any point within a sphere of which the two arms are radii. the power of grasping was partly developed from and partly added to the old locomotor function of the fore limbs; the jerky aimless automatisms, as well as the slow rhythmic flexion and extension of the fingers and hand, movements which are perhaps survivals of arboreal or of even earlier aquatic life, are coördinated; and the bilateral and simultaneous rhythmic movements of the heavier muscles are supplemented by the more finely adjusted and specialized activities which as the end of the growth period is approached are determined less by heredity and more by environment. in a sense, a child or a man is the sum total of his movements or tendencies to move; and nature and instinct chiefly determine the basal, and education the accessory parts of our activities. the entire accessory system is thus of vital importance for the development of all of the arts of expression. these smaller muscles might almost be called organs of thought. their tension is modified with the faintest change of soul, such as is seen in accent, inflection, facial expressions, handwriting, and many forms of so-called mind-reading, which, in fact, is always muscle-reading. the day-laborer of low intelligence, with a practical vocabulary of not over five hundred words, who can hardly move each of his fingers without moving others or all of them, who can not move his brows or corrugate his forehead at will, and whose inflection is very monotonous, illustrates a condition of arrest or atrophy of this later, finer, accessory system of muscles. on the other hand, the child, precocious in any or all of these later respects, is very liable to be undeveloped in the larger and more fundamental parts and functions. the full unfoldment of each is, in fact, an inexorable condition precedent for the normal development to full and abiding maturity of the higher and more refined muscularity, just as conversely the awkwardness and clumsiness of adolescence mark a temporary loss of balance in the opposite direction. if this general conception be correct, then nature does not finish the basis of her pyramid in the way ross, mercier, and others have assumed, but lays a part of the foundation and, after carrying it to an apex, normally goes back and adds to the foundation to carry up the apex still higher and, if prevented from so doing, expends her energy in building the apex up at a sharper angle till instability results. school and kindergarten often lay a disproportionate strain on the tiny accessory muscles, weighing altogether but a few ounces, that wag the tongue, move the pen, and do fine work requiring accuracy. but still at this stage prolonged work requiring great accuracy is irksome and brings dangers homologous to those caused by too much fine work in the kindergarten before the first adjustment of large to small muscles, which lasts until adolescence, is established. then disproportion between function and growth often causes symptoms of chorea. the chief danger is arrest of the development and control of the smaller muscles. many occupations and forms of athletics, on the contrary, place the stress mainly upon groups of fundamental muscles to the neglect of finer motor possibilities. some who excel in heavy athletics no doubt coarsen their motor reactions, become not only inexact and heavy but unresponsive to finer stimuli, as if the large muscles were hypertrophied and the small ones arrested. on the other hand, many young men, and probably more young women, expend too little of their available active energy upon basal and massive muscle work, and cultivate too much, and above all too early, the delicate responsive work. this is, perhaps, the best physiological characterization of precocity and issues in excessive nervous and muscular irritability. the great influx of muscular vigor that unfolds during adolescent years and which was originally not only necessary to successful propagation, but expressive of virility, seems to be a very plastic quantity, so that motor regimen and exercise at this stage is probably more important and all-conditioning for mentality, sexuality, and health than at any other period of life. intensity, and for a time a spurty diathesis, is as instinctive and desirable as are the copious minor automatisms which spontaneously give the alphabet out of which complex and finer motor series are later spelled by the conscious will. mercier and others have pointed out that, as most skilled labor, so school work and modern activities in civilized life generally lay premature and disproportionate strains upon those kinds of movement requiring exactness. stress upon basal movements is not only compensating but is of higher therapeutic value against the disorders of the accessory system; it constitutes the best core or prophylactic for fidgets and tense states, and directly develops poise, control, and psycho-physical equilibrium. even when contractions reach choreic intensity the best treatment is to throw activities down the scale that measures the difference between primary and secondary movements and to make the former predominate. the number of movements, the frequency with which they are repeated, their diversity, the number of combinations, and their total kinetic quantum in young children, whether we consider movements of the body as a whole, fundamental movements of large limbs, or finer accessory motions, is amazing. nearly every external stimulus is answered by a motor response. dresslar[ ] observed a thirteen months' old baby for four hours, and found, to follow preyer's classification, impulsive or spontaneous, reflex, instinctive, imitative, inhibitive, expressive, and even deliberative movements, with marked satisfaction in rhythm, attempts to do almost anything which appealed to him, and almost inexhaustible efferent resources. a friend has tried to record every word uttered by a four-year-old girl during a portion of a day, and finds nothing less than verbigerations. a teacher noted the activities of a fourteen-year-old boy during the study time of a single school day[ ], with similar results. lindley[ ] studied common motor automatisms in children, which he divided into classes: in the region of the head, in the feet and legs, in the hands and fingers. arranged in the order of frequency with which each was found, the list stood as follows: fingers, feet, lips, tongue, head, body, hands, mouth, eyes, jaws, legs, forehead, face, arms, ears. in the last five alone adolescents exceeded children, the latter excelling the former most in those of head, mouth, legs, and tongue, in this order. the writer believes that there are many more automatisms than appeared in his returns. school life, especially in the lower grades, is a rich field for the study of these activities. they are familiar, as licking things, clicking with the tongue, grinding the teeth, scratching, tapping, twirling a lock of hair or chewing it, biting the nails (bérillon's onychophagia), shrugging, corrugating, pulling buttons or twisting garments, strings, etc., twirling pencils, thumbs, rotating, nodding and shaking the head, squinting and winking, swaying, pouting and grimacing, scraping the floor, rubbing hands, stroking, patting, flicking the fingers, wagging, snapping the fingers, muffling, squinting, picking the face, interlacing the fingers, cracking the joints, finger plays, biting and nibbling, trotting the leg, sucking things, etc. the average number of automatisms per persons smith found to be in children , in adolescents . swaying is chiefly with children; playing and drumming with the fingers is more common among adolescents; the movements of fingers and feet decline little with age, and those of eyes and forehead increase, which is significant for the development of attention. girls excel greatly in swaying, and also, although less, in finger automatism; and boys lead in movements of tongue, feet, and hands. such movements increase, with too much sitting, intensity of effort, such as to fix attention, and vary with the nature of the activity willed, but involve few muscles directly used in a given task. they increase up the kindergarten grades and fall off rapidly in the primary grades; are greater with tasks requiring fine and exact movements than with those involving large movements. automatisms are often a sign of the difficulty of tasks. the restlessness that they often express is one of the commonest signs of fatigue. they are mostly in the accessory muscles, while those of the fundamental muscles (body, legs, and arms) disappear rapidly with age; those of eye, brow, and jaw show greatest increase with age, but their frequency in general declines with growing maturity, although there is increased frequency of certain specialized contractions, which indicate the gradual settling of expression in the face. often such movements pass over by insensible gradation into the morbid automatism of chorea, and in yet lower levels of decay we see them in the aimless picking and plucking movements of the fingers of the sick. in idiots[ ] arrest of higher powers often goes with hypertrophy of these movements, as seen in head-beaters (as if, just as nature impels those partially blind to rub the eyes for "light-hunger," so it prompts the feeble-minded to strike the head for cerebrations), rockers, rackers, shakers, biters, etc. movements often pass to fixed attitudes and postures of limbs or body, disturbing the normal balance between flexors and extensors, the significance of which as nerve signs or exponents of habitual brain states and tensions warner has so admirably shown. abundance and vigor of automatic movements are desirable, and even a considerable degree of restlessness is a good sign in young children. many of what are now often called nerve signs and even choreic symptoms, the fidgetiness in school on cloudy days and often after a vacation, the motor superfluities of awkwardness, embarrassment, extreme effort, excitement, fatigue, sleepiness, etc., are simply the forms in which we receive the full momentum of heredity and mark a natural richness of the raw material of intellect, feeling, and especially of will. hence they must be abundant. all parts should act in all possible ways at first and untrammeled by the activity of all other parts and functions. some of these activities are more essential for growth in size than are later and more conscious movements. here as everywhere the rule holds that powers themselves must be unfolded before the ability to check or even to use them can develop. all movements arising from spontaneous activity of nerve cells or centers must be made in order even to avoid the atrophy of disease. not only so, but this purer kind of innateness must often be helped out to some extent in some children by stimulating reflexes; a rich and wide repertory of sensation must be made familiar; more or less and very guarded, watched and limited experiences of hunger, thirst, cold, heat, tastes, sounds, smells, colors, brightnesses, tactile irritations, and perhaps even occasional tickling and pain to play off the vastly complex function of laughing, crying, etc., may in some cases be judicious. conscious and unconscious imitation or repetition of every sort of copy may also help to establish the immediate and low-level connection between afferent and efferent processes that brings the organism into direct _rapport_ and harmony with the whole world of sense. perhaps the more rankly and independently they are developed to full functional integrity, each in its season, if we only knew that season, the better. premature control by higher centers, or coördination into higher compounds of habits and ordered serial activities, is repressive and wasteful, and the mature will of which they are components, or which must at least domesticate them, is stronger and more forcible if this serial stage is not unduly abridged. but, secondly, many, if not most, of these activities when developed a little, group after group, as they arise, must be controlled, checked, and organized into higher and often more serial compounds. the inhibiting functions are at first hard. in trying to sit still the child sets its teeth, holds the breath, clenches its fists and perhaps makes every muscle tense with a great effort that very soon exhausts. this repressive function is probably not worked from special nervous centers, nor can we speak with confidence of collisions with "sums of arrest" in a sense analogous to that of herbart, or of stimuli that normally cause catabolic molecular processes in the cell, being mysteriously diverted to produce increased instability or anabolic lability in the sense of wundt's _mechanik der nerven_. the concept now suggested by many facts is that inhibition is irradiation or long circuiting to higher and more complex brain areas, so that the energy, whether spontaneous or reflex, is diverted to be used elsewhere. these combinations are of a higher order, more remote from reflex action, and modified by some jacksonian third level.[ ] action is now not from independent centers, but these are slowly associated, so that excitation may flow off from one point to any other and any reaction may result from any stimulus. the more unified the brain the less it suffers from localization, and the lower is the level to which any one function can exhaust the whole. the tendency of each group of cells to discharge or overflow into those of lower tension than themselves increases as correspondence in time and space widens. the more one of a number of activities gains in power to draw on all the brain, or the more readily the active parts are fed at cost of the resting parts, the less is rest to be found in change from one of these activities to another, and the less do concentration and specialization prove to be dangerous. before, the aim was to wake all parts to function; now it is to connect them. intensity of this cross-section activity now tends to unity, so that all parts of the brain energize together. in a brain with this switchboard function well organized, each reaction has grown independent of its own stimulus and may result from any stimulation, and each act, e.g., a finger movement of a peculiar nature, may tire the whole brain. this helps us to understand why brain-workers so often excel laborers not only in sudden dynamometric strength test, but in sustained and long-enduring effort. in a good brain or in a good machine, power may thus be developed over a large surface, and all of it applied to a small one, and hence the dangers of specialization are lessened in exact proportion as the elements of our ego are thus compacted together. it is in the variety and delicacy of these combinations and all that they imply, far more than in the elements of which they are composed, that man rises farthest above the higher animals; and of these powers later adolescence is the golden age. the aimless and archaic movements of infancy, whether massive and complex or in the form of isolated automatic tweaks or twinges, are thus, by slow processes of combined analysis and synthesis, involving changes as radical as any in all the world of growth, made over into habits and conduct that fit the world of present environment. but, thirdly, this long process carried out with all degrees of completeness may be arrested at any unfinished stage. some automatisms refuse to be controlled by the will, and both they and it are often overworked. here we must distinguish constantly between ( ) those growing rankly in order to be later organized under the will, and ( ) those that have become feral after this domestication of them has lost power from disease or fatigue, and ( ) those that have never been subjugated because the central power that should have used them to weave the texture of willed action--the proper language of complete manhood--was itself arrested or degenerate. with regard to many of these movements these distinctions can be made with confidence, and in some children more certainly than in others. in childhood, before twelve, the efferent patterns should be developed into many more or less indelible habits, and their colors set fast. motor specialties requiring exactness and grace like piano-playing, drawing, writing, pronunciation of a foreign tongue, dancing, acting, singing, and a host of virtuosities, must be well begun before the relative arrest of accessory growth at the dawn of the ephebic regeneration and before its great afflux of strength. the facts seem to show that children of this age, such as hancock[ ] described, who could not stand with feet close together and eyes closed without swaying much, could not walk backward, sit still half a minute, dress alone, tie two ends of a string together, interlace slats, wind thread, spin a top, stand on toes or heels, hop on each foot, drive a nail, roll a hoop, skate, hit fingers together rapidly in succession beginning at the little finger and then reversing, etc., are the very ones in whom automatisms are most marked or else they are those constitutionally inert, dull, or uneducable. in children these motor residua may persist as characteristic features of inflection, accent, or manners; automatisms may become morbid in stammering or stuttering, or they may be seen in gait, handwriting, tics or tweaks, etc. instead of disappearing with age, as they should, they are seen in the blind as facial grimaces uncorrected by the mirror or facial consciousness, in the deaf as inarticulate noises; and they may tend to grow monstrous with age as if they were disintegrated fragments of our personality, split off and aborted, or motor parasites leaving our psycho-physic ego poorer in energy and plasticity of adaptation, till the distraction and anarchy of the individual nature becomes conspicuous and pathetic. at puberty, however, when muscle habits are so plastic, when there is a new relation between quantity or volume of motor energy and qualitative differentiation, and between volitional control and reflex activities, these kinetic remnants strongly tend to shoot together into wrong aggregates if right ones are not formed. good manners and correct motor form generally, as well as skill, are the most economic ways of doing things; but this is the age of wasteful ways, awkwardness mannerisms, tensions that are a constant leakage of vital energy, perhaps semi-imperative acts, contortions, quaint movements, more elaborated than in childhood and often highly anesthetic and disagreeable, motor coördinations that will need laborious decomposition later. the avoidable factor in their causation is, with some modification, not unlike that of the simpler feral movements and faulty attitudes, carriage, and postures in children; viz., some form of overpressure or misfit between environment and nature. as during the years from four to eight there is great danger that overemphasis of the activities of the accessory muscles will sow the seeds of chorea, or aggravate predispositions to it, now again comes a greatly increased danger, hardly existing from eight to twelve, that overprecision, especially if fundamental activities are neglected, will bring nervous strain and stunting precocity. this is again the age of the basal, e.g., hill-climbing muscle, of leg and back and shoulder work, and of the yet more fundamental heart, lung, and chest muscles. now again, the study of a book, under the usual conditions of sitting in a closed space and using pen, tongue, and eye combined, has a tendency to overstimulate the accessory muscles. this is especially harmful for city children who are too prone to the distraction of overmobility at an age especially exposed to maladjustment of motor income and expenditure; and it constitutes not a liberal or power-generating, but a highly and prematurely specialized, narrowing, and weakening education unless offset by safeguards better than any system of gymnastics, which is at best artificial and exaggerated. as bryan well says, "the efficiency of a machine depends so far as we know upon the maximum force, rate, amplitude, and variety of direction of its movements and upon the exactness with which below these maxima the force, rate, amplitude, and direction of the movements can be controlled." the motor efficiency of a man depends upon his ability in all these respects. moreover, the education of the small muscles and fine adjustments of larger ones is as near mental training as physical culture can get; for these are the thought-muscles and movements, and their perfected function is to reflect and express by slight modifications of tension and tone every psychic change. only the brain itself is more closely and immediately an organ of thought than are these muscles and their activity, reflex, spontaneous, or imitative in origin. whether any of them are of value, as lindley thinks, in arousing the brain to activity, or as müller suggests, in drawing off sensations or venting efferent impulses that would otherwise distract, we need not here discuss. if so, this is, of course, a secondary and late function--nature's way of making the best of things and utilizing remnants. with these facts and their implications in mind we can next pass to consider the conditions under which the adolescent muscles best develop. here we confront one of the greatest and most difficult problems of our age. changes in modern motor life have been so vast and sudden as to present some of the most comprehensive and all-conditioning dangers that threaten civilized races. not only have the forms of labor been radically changed within a generation or two, but the basal activities that shaped the body of primitive man have been suddenly swept away by the new methods of modern industry. even popular sports, games, and recreations, so abundant in the early life of all progressive peoples, have been reduced and transformed; and the play age, that once extended on to middle life and often old age, has been restricted. sedentary life in schools and offices, as we have seen, is reducing the vigor and size of our lower limbs. our industry is no longer under hygienic conditions; and instead of being out of doors, in the country, or of highly diversified kinds, it is now specialized, monotonous, carried on in closed spaces, bad air, and perhaps poor light, especially in cities. the diseases and arrest bred in the young by life in shops, offices, factories, and schools increase. work is rigidly bound to fixed hours, uniform standards, stints and piece-products; and instead of a finished article, each individual now achieves a part of a single process and knows little of those that precede or follow. machinery has relieved the large basal muscles and laid more stress upon fine and exact movements that involve nerve strain. the coarser forms of work that involve hard lifting, carrying, digging, etc., are themselves specialized, and skilled labor requires more and more brain-work. it has been estimated that "the diminution of manual labor required to do a given quantity of work in as compared with is no less than per cent."[ ] personal interest in and the old native sense of responsibility for results, ownership and use of the finished products, which have been the inspiration and soul of work in all the past, are in more and more fields gone. those who realize how small a proportion of the young male population train or even engage in amateur sports with zest and regularity, how very few and picked men strive for records, and how immediate and amazing are the results of judicious training, can best understand how far below his possibilities as a motor being the average modern man goes through life, and how far short in this respect he falls from fulfilling nature's design for him. for unnumbered generations primitive man in the nomad age wandered, made perhaps annual migrations, and bore heavy burdens, while we ride relatively unencumbered. he tilled the reluctant soil, digging with rude implements where we use machines of many man-power. in the stone, iron, and bronze age, he shaped stone and metals, and wrought with infinite pains and effort, products that we buy without even knowledge of the processes by which they are made. as hunter he followed game, which, when found, he chased, fought, and overcame in a struggle perhaps desperate, while we shoot it at a distance with little risk or effort. in warfare he fought hand to hand and eye to eye, while we kill "with as much black powder as can be put in a woman's thimble." he caught and domesticated scores of species of wild animals and taught them to serve him; fished with patience and skill that compensated his crude tools, weapons, implements, and tackle; danced to exhaustion in the service of his gods or in memory of his forebears imitating every animal, rehearsing all his own activities in mimic form to the point of exhaustion, while we move through a few figures in closed spaces. he dressed hides, wove baskets which we can not reproduce, and fabrics which we only poorly imitate by machinery, made pottery which set our fashions, played games that invigorated body and soul. his courtship was with feats of prowess and skill, and meant physical effort and endurance. adolescent girls, especially in the middle classes, in upper grammar and high school grades, during the golden age for nascent muscular development, suffer perhaps most of all in this respect. grave as are the evils of child labor, i believe far more pubescents in this country now suffer from too little than from too much physical exercise, while most who suffer from work do so because it is too uniform, one-sided, accessory, or performed under unwholesome conditions, and not because it is excessive in amount. modern industry has thus largely ceased to be a means of physical development and needs to be offset by compensating modes of activity. many labor-saving devices increase neural strain, so that one of the problems of our time is how to preserve and restore nerve energy. under present industrial systems this must grow worse and not better in the future. healthy natural industries will be less and less open to the young. this is the new situation that now confronts those concerned for motor education, if they would only make good what is lost. some of the results of these conditions are seen in average measurements of dimensions, proportions, strength, skill, and control. despite the excellence of the few, the testimony of those most familiar with the bodies of children and adults, and their physical powers, gives evidence of the ravages of modern modes of life that, without a wide-spread motor revival, can bode only degeneration for our nation and our race. the number of common things that can not be done at all; the large proportion of our youth who must be exempted from any kinds of activity or a great amount of any; the thin limbs, collapsed shoulders or chests, the bilateral asymmetry, weak hearts, lungs, eyes, puny and bad muddy or pallid complexions, tired ways, automatism, dyspeptic stomachs, the effects of youthful error or of impoverished heredity, delicate and tender nurture, often, alas, only too necessary, show the lamentable and cumulative effects of long neglect of the motor abilities, the most educable of all man's powers, and perhaps the most important for his well-being. if the unfaithful stewards of these puny and shameful bodies had again, as in sparta, to strip and stand before stern judges and render them account, and be smitten with a conviction of their weakness, guilty deformity, and arrest of growth; if they were brought to realize how they are fallen beings, as weak as stern theologians once deemed them depraved, and how great their need of physical salvation, we might hope again for a physical renaissance. such a rebirth the world has seen but twice or perhaps thrice, and each was followed by the two or three of the brightest culture periods of history, and formed an epoch in the advancement of the kingdom of man. a vast body of evidence could be collected from the writings of anthropologists showing how superior unspoiled savages are to civilized man in correct or esthetic proportions of body, in many forms of endurance of fatigue, hardship, and power to bear exposure, in the development and preservation of teeth and hair, in keenness of senses, absence of deformities, as well as immunity to many of our diseases. their women are stronger and bear hardship and exposure, monthly periods and childbirth, better. civilization is so hard on the body that some have called it a disease, despite the arts that keep puny bodies alive to a greater average age, and our greater protection from contagious and germ diseases. the progressive realization of these tendencies has prompted most of the best recent and great changes motor-ward in education and also in personal regimen. health- and strength-giving agencies have put to school the large motor areas of the brain, so long neglected, and have vastly enlarged their scope. thousands of youth are now inspired with new enthusiasm for physical development; and new institutions of many kinds and grades have arisen, with a voluminous literature, unnumbered specialists, specialties, new apparatus, tests, movements, methods, and theories; and the press, the public, and the church are awakened to a fresh interest in the body and its powers. all this is magnificent, but sadly inadequate to cope with the new needs and dangers, which are vastly greater. [footnote : dieterich. göttingen, .] [footnote : see chap. xii.] [footnote : f. burk in from fundamental to accessory. pedagogical seminary, oct., , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : creeping and walking, by a.w. trettien. american journal of psychology, october, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : a morning observation of a baby. pedagogical seminary, december , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : kate carman. notes on school activity. pedagogical seminary, march, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : a preliminary study of some of the motor phenomena of mental effort. american journal of psychology, july, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : g.e. johnson. psychology and pegagogy of feeble-minded children. pedagogical seminary, october, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : dr. hughlings jackson, the eminent english pathologist, was the first to make practical application of the evolutionary theory of the nervous system to the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsies and mental diseases. the practical success of this application was so great that the hughlings-jackson "three-level theory" is now the established basis of english diagnosis. he conceived the nervous mechanism as composed of three systems, arranged in the form of a hierarchy, the higher including the lower, and yet each having a certain degree of independence. the first level represents the type of simplest reflex and involuntary movement and is localized in the gray matter of the spinal cord, medulla, and pons. the second, or middle level, comprises those structures which receive sensory impulses from the cells of the lowest level instead of directly from the periphery or the non-nervous tissues. the motor cells of this middle level also discharge into the motor mechanisms of the lowest level. jackson located these middle level structures in the cortex of the central convolutions, the basal ganglia and the centers of the special senses in the cortex. the highest level bears the same relation to the middle level that it bears to the lowest i.e., no continuous connection between the highest and the lowest is assumed; the structures of the middle level mediate between them as a system of relays. according to this hierarchical arrangement of the nervous system, the lowest level which is the simplest and oldest "contains the mechanism for the simple fundamental movements in reflexes and involuntary reactions. the second level regroups these simple movements by combinations and associations of cortical structure in wider, more complex mechanisms, producing a higher class of movements. the highest level unifies the whole nervous system and, according to jackson, is the anatomical basis of mind." for a fuller account of this theory see burk: from fundamental to accessory in the nervous system and of movements. pedagogical seminary, october, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : a preliminary study of some of the motor phenomena of mental effort. american journal of psychology, july, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : encyclopedia of social reform, funk and wagnalls, , p. ] * * * * * chapter iii industrial education trade classes and schools, their importance in the international market--our dangers and the superiority of german workmen--the effects of a tariff--description of schools between the kindergarten and the industrial school--equal salaries for teachers in france--dangers from machinery--the advantages of life on the old new england farm--its resemblance to the education we now give negroes and indians--its advantage for all-sided muscular development. we must glance at a few of the best and most typical methods of muscular development, following the order: industrial education, manual training, gymnastics, and play, sports, and games. industrial education is now imperative for every nation that would excel in agriculture, manufacture, and trade, not only because of the growing intensity of competition, but because of the decline of the apprentice system and the growing intricacy of processes, requiring only the skill needed for livelihood. thousands of our youth of late have been diverted from secondary schools to the monotechnic or trade classes now established for horology, glass-work, brick-laying, carpentry, forging, dressmaking, cooking, typesetting, bookbinding, brewing, seamanship, work in leather, rubber, horticulture, gardening, photography, basketry, stock-raising, typewriting, stenography and bookkeeping, elementary commercial training for practical preparation for clerkships, etc. in this work not only is boston, our most advanced city, as president pritchett[ ] has shown in detail, far behind berlin, but german workmen and shopmen a slowly taking the best places even in england; and but for a high tariff, which protects our inferiority, the competitive pressure would be still greater. in germany, especially, this training is far more diversified than here, always being colored if not determined by the prevalent industry of the region and more specialised and helped out by evening and even sunday classes in the school buildings, and by the still strong apprentice system. froebelian influence in manual training reaches through the eight school years and is in some respects better than ours in lower grades, but is very rarely coeducational, girls' work of sewing, knitting, crocheting, weaving, etc., not being considered manual training. there are now over , schools and workshops in germany where manual training is taught; twenty-five of these are independent schools. the work really began in with v. kass, and is promoted by the great society for boys' handwork. much stress is laid on paper and pasteboard work in lower grades, under the influence of kurufa of darmstadt. many objects for illustrating science are made, and one course embraces the seyner water-wheel.[ ] in france it is made more effective by the equal salaries of teachers everywhere, thus securing better instruction in the country. adolescence is the golden period for acquiring the skill that comes by practice, so essential in the struggle for survival. in general this kind of motor education is least of all free, but subservient to the tool, machine, process, finished product, or end in view; and to these health and development are subordinated, so that they tend to be ever more narrow and special. the standard here is maximal efficiency of the capacities that earn. it may favor bad habitual attitudes, muscular development of but one part, excessive large or small muscles, involve too much time or effort, unhealthful conditions, etc., but it has the great advantage of utility, which is the mainspring of all industry. in a very few departments and places this training has felt the influence of the arts and crafts movement and has been faintly touched with the inspiration of beauty. while such courses give those who follow them marked advantage over those who do not, they are chiefly utilitarian and do little to mature or unfold the physical powers, and may involve arrest or degeneration. where not one but several or many professes are taught, the case is far better. of all work-schools, a good farm is probably the best for motor development. this is due to its great variety of occupations, healthful conditions, and the incalculable phyletic reënforcement from immemorial times. i have computed some three-score industries[ ] as the census now classifies them; that were more or less generally known and practiced sixty years ago in a little township, which not only in this but in other respects has many features of an ideal educational environment for adolescent boys, combining as it does not only physical and industrial, but civil and religious elements in wise proportions and with pedagogic objectivity, and representing the ideal of such a state of intelligent citizen voters as was contemplated by the framers of our constitution. contrast this life with that of a "hand" in a modern shoe factory, who does all day but one of the eighty-one stages or processes from a tanned hide to a finished shoe, or of a man in a shirt shop who is one of thirty-nine, each of whom does as piece-work a single step requiring great exactness, speed, and skill, and who never knows how a whole shirt is made, and we shall see that the present beginning of a revival of interest in muscular development comes none too early. so liberal is muscular education of this kind that its work in somewhat primitive form has been restored and copied many features by many educational institutions for adolescents, of the abbotsholme type and grade, and several others, whose purpose is to train for primitive conditions of colonial life. thousands of school gardens have also been lately developed for lower grades, which have given a new impetus to the study of nature. farm training at its best instills love of country, ruralizes taste, borrows some of its ideals from goethe's pedagogic province, and perhaps even from gilman's pie-shaped communities, with villages at the center irradiating to farms in all directions. in england, where by the law of primogeniture holdings are large and in few hands, this training has never flourished, as it has greatly in france, where nearly every adult male may own land and a large proportion will come to do so. so of processes. as a student in germany i took a few lessons each of a bookbinder, a glassblower, a shoemaker, a plumber, and a blacksmith, and here i have learned in a crude way the technique of the gold-beater and old-fashioned broom-maker, etc., none of which come amiss in the laboratory; and i am proud that i can still mow and keep my scythe sharp, chop, plow, milk, churn, make cheese and soap, braid a palm-leaf hat complete, knit, spin and even "put in a piece" in an old-fashioned hand loom, and weave frocking. but thus pride bows low before the pupils of our best institutions for negroes, indians, and juvenile delinquents, whose training is often in more than a score of industries and who to-day in my judgment receive the best training in the land, if judged by the annual growth in mind, morals, health, physique, ability, and knowledge, all taken together. instead of seeking soft, ready-made places near home, such education impels to the frontier, to strike out new careers, to start at the bottom and rise by merit, beginning so low that every change must be a rise. wherever youth thus trained are thrown, they land like a cat on all-fours and are armed _cap-à-pie_ for the struggle of life. agriculture, manufacture, and commerce are the bases of national prosperity; and on them all professions, institutions, and even culture, are more and more dependent, while the old ideals of mere study and brain-work are fast becoming obsolete. we really retain only the knowledge we apply. we should get up interest in new processes like that of a naturalist in new species. those who leave school at any age or stage should be best fitted to take up their life work instead of leaving unfitted for it, aimless and discouraged. instead of dropping out limp and disheartened, we should train "struggle-for-lifeurs," in daudet's phrase, and that betimes, so that the young come back to it not too late for securing the best benefits, after having wasted the years best fitted for it in profitless studies or in the hard school of failure. by such methods many of our flabby, undeveloped, anemic, easy-living city youth would be regenerated in body and spirit. some of the now oldest, richest, and most famous schools of the world were at first established by charity for poor boys who worked their way, and such institutions have an undreamed-of future. no others so well fit for a life of respectable and successful muscle work, and perhaps this should be central for all at this stage. this diversity of training develops the muscular activities rendered necessary by man's early development, which were so largely concerned with food, shelter, clothing, making and selling commodities necessary for life, comfort and safety. the natural state of man is not war, hot peace; and perhaps dawson[ ] is right in thinking that three-fourths of man's physical activities in the past have gone into such vocations. industry has determined the nature and trend of muscular development; and youth, who have pets, till the soil, build, manufacture, use tools, and master elementary processes and skills, are most truly repeating the history of the race. this, too, lays the best foundation for intellectual careers. the study of pure science, as well as its higher technology, follows rather than precedes this. in the largest sense this is the order of nature, from fundamental and generalized to finer accessory and specialized organs and functions; and such a sequence best weeds out and subordinates automatisms. the age of stress in most of these kinds of training is that of most rapid increment of muscular power, as we have seen in the middle and later teens rather than childhood, as some recent methods have mistakenly assumed; and this prepolytechnic work, wherever and in whatever degree it is possible, is a better adjunct of secondary courses than manual training, the sad fact being that, according to the best estimates, only a fraction of one per cent of those who need this training in this country are now receiving it. [footnote : the place of industrial and technical training in public education. technology review, january, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : see an article by dr. h.e. kock, education, december, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : see my boy life in a massachusetts country town forty years ago. pedagogical seminary, june, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : the muscular activities rendered necessary by man's early environment, american physical education review, june, , vol. , pp. - .] * * * * * chapter iv manual training and sloyd history of the movement--its philosophy--the value of hand training in the development of the brain and its significance in the making of man--a grammar of our many industries hard--the best we do can reach but few--very great defects in our manual training methods which do not base on science and make nothing salable--the leipzig system--sloyd is hypermethodic--these crude peasant industries can never satisfy educational needs--the gospel of work, william morris and the arts and crafts movement--its spirit desirable--the magic effects of a brief period of intense work--the natural development of the drawing instinct in the child. manual training has many origins; but in its now most widely accepted form it came to us more than a generation ago from moscow, and has its best representation here in our new and often magnificent manual-training high schools and in many courses in other public schools. this work meets the growing demand of the country for a more practical education, a demand which often greatly exceeds the accommodations. the philosophy, if such it may be called, that underlies the movement, is simple, forcible, and sound, and not unlike pestalozzi's "_keine kentnisse ohne fertigkeiten_," [no knowledge without skill] in that it lessens the interval between thinking and doing; helps to give control, dexterity, and skill an industrial trend to taste; interests many not successful in ordinary school; tends to the better appreciation of good, honest work; imparts new zest for some studies; adds somewhat to the average length of the school period; gives a sense of capacity and effectiveness, and is a useful preparation for a number of vocations. these claims are all well founded, and this work is a valuable addition to the pedagogic agencies of any country or state. as man excels the higher anthropoids perhaps almost as much in hand power as in mind, and since the manual areas of the brain are wide near the psychic zones, and the cortical centers are thus directly developed, the hand is a potent instrument in opening the intellect as well as in training sense and will. it is no reproach to these schools that, full as they are, they provide for but an insignificant fraction of the nearly sixteen millions or twenty per cent of the young people of the country between fifteen and twenty-four. when we turn to the needs of these pupils, the errors and limitations of the method are painful to contemplate. the work is essentially manual and offers little for the legs, where most of the muscular tissues of the body lie, those which respond most to training and are now most in danger of degeneration at this age; the back and trunk also are little trained. consideration of proportion and bilateral asymmetry are practically ignored. almost in proportion as these schools have multiplied, the rage for uniformity, together with motives of economy and administrative efficiency on account of overcrowding, have made them rigid and inflexible, on the principle that as the line lengthens the stake must be strengthened. this is a double misfortune; for the courses were not sufficiently considered at first and the plastic stage of adaptation was too short, while the methods of industry have undergone vast changes since they were given shape. there are now between three and four hundred occupations in the census, more than half of these involving manual work, so that never perhaps was there so great a pedagogic problem as to make these natural developments into conscious art, to extract what may be called basal types. this requires an effort not without analogy to aristotle's attempt to extract from the topics of the marketplace the underlying categories eternally conditioning all thought, or to construct a grammar of speech. hardly an attempt worthy the name, not even the very inadequate one of a committee, has been made in this field to study the conditions and to meet them. like froebel's gifts and occupations, deemed by their author the very roots of human occupations in infant form, the processes selected are underived and find their justification rather in their logical sequence and coherence than in being true norms of work. if these latter be attainable at all, it is not likely that they will fit so snugly in a brief curriculum, so that its simplicity is suspicious. the wards of the keys that lock the secrets of nature and human life are more intricate and mazy. as h.t. bailey well puts it in substance, a master in any art-craft must have a fourfold equipment: . ability to grasp an idea and embody it. . power to utilize all nerve, and a wide repertory of methods, devices, recipes, discoveries, machines, etc. . knowledge of the history of the craft. . skill in technical processes. american schools emphasize chiefly only the last. the actual result is thus a course rich in details representing wood and iron chiefly, and mostly ignoring other materials; the part of the course treating of the former, wooden in its teachings and distinctly tending to make joiners, carpenters, and cabinet-makers; that of the latter, iron in its rigidity and an excellent school for smiths, mechanics, and machinists. these courses are not liberal because they hardly touch science, which is rapidly becoming the real basis of every industry. almost nothing that can be called scientific knowledge is required or even much favored, save some geometrical and mechanical drawing and its implicates. these schools instinctively fear and repudiate plain and direct utility, or suspect its educational value or repute in the community because of this strong bias toward a few trades. this tendency also they even fear, less often because unfortunately trade-unions in this country sometimes jealously suspect it and might vote down supplies, than because the teachers in these schools were generally trained in older scholastic and even classic methods and matter. industry is everywhere and always for the sake of the product, and to cut loose from this as if it were a contamination is a fatal mistake. to focus on process only, with no reference to the object made, is here an almost tragic case of the sacrifice of content to form, which in all history has been the chief stigma of degeneration in education. man is a tool-using animal; but tools are always only a means to an end, the latter prompting even their invention. hence a course in tool manipulation only, with persistent refusal to consider the product lest features of trade-schools be introduced, has made most of our manual-training high schools ghastly, hollow, artificial institutions. instead of making in the lower grades certain toys which are masterpieces of mechanical simplification, as tops and kites, and introducing such processes as glass-making and photography, and in higher grades making simple scientific apparatus more generic than machines, to open the great principles of the material universe, all is sacrificed to supernormalized method. as in all hypermethodic schemes, the thought side is feeble. there is no control of the work of these schools by the higher technical institutions such as the college exercises over the high school, so that few of them do work that fits for advanced training or is thought best by technical faculties. in most of its current narrow forms, manual training will prove to be historically, as it is educationally, extemporized and tentative, and will soon be superseded by broader methods and be forgotten and obsolete, or cited only as a low point of departure from which future progress will loom up. indeed in more progressive centers, many new departures are now in the experimental stage. goetze at leipzig, as a result of long and original studies and trials, has developed courses in which pasteboard work and modeling are made of equal rank with wood and iron, and he has connected them even with the kindergarten below. in general the whole industrial life of our day is being slowly explored in the quest of new educational elements; and rubber, lead, glass, textiles, metallurgical operations, agriculture, every tool and many machines, etc., are sure to contribute their choicest pedagogical factors to the final result. in every detail the prime consideration should be the nature and needs of the youthful body and will at each age, their hygiene and fullest development; and next, the closest connection with science at every point should do the same for the intellect. each operation and each tool--the saw, knife, plane, screw, hammer, chisel, draw-shave, sandpaper, lathe--will be studied with reference to its orthopedic value, bilateral asymmetry, the muscles it develops, and the attitudes and motor habits it favors; and uniformity, which in france often requires classes to saw, strike, plane up, down, right, left, all together, upon count and command, will give place to individuality. sloyd has certain special features and claims. the word means skilful, deft. the movement was organised in sweden a quarter of a century ago as an effort to prevent the extinction by machinery of peasant home industry during the long winter night. home sloyd was installed in an institution of its own for training teachers at nääs. it works in wood only, with little machinery, and is best developed for children of from eleven to fifteen. it no longer aims to make artisans; but its manipulations are meant to be developmental, to teach both sexes not only to be useful but self-active and self-respecting, and to revere exactness as a form of truthfulness. it assumes that all and especially the motor-minded can really understand only what they make, and that one can work like a peasant and think like a philosopher. it aims to produce wholes rather than parts like the russian system, and to be so essentially educational that, as a leading exponent says, its best effects would be conserved if the hands were cut off. this change of its original utilitarianism from the lower to the liberal motor development of the middle and upper classes and from the land where it originated to another, has not eliminated the dominant marks of its origin in its models, the penates of the sloyd household, the unique features of which persist like a national school of art, despite transplantation and transformation.[ ] sloyd at its best tries to correlate several series, viz., exercises, tools, drawing, and models. each must be progressive, so that every new step in each series involves a new and next developmental step in all the others, and all together, it is claimed, fit the order and degree of development of each power appealed to in the child. yet there has been hardly an attempt to justify either the physiological or the psychological reason of a single step in any of these series, and the coördination of the series even with each other, to say nothing of their adaptation to the stages of the child's development. this, if as pat and complete as is urged, would indeed constitute on the whole a paragon of all the harmony, beauty, totality in variety, etc., which make it so magnificent in the admirer's eyes. but the " tools, exercises, models, of which are joints," all learned by teachers in one school year of daily work and by pupils in four years, are overmethodic; and such correlation is impossible in so many series at once. every dual order, even of work and unfoldment of powers, is hard enough, since the fall lost us eden; and woodwork, could it be upon that of the tree of knowledge itself, incompatible with enjoying its fruit. although a philosopher may see the whole universe in its smallest part, all his theory can not reproduce educational wholes from fragments of it. the real merits of sloyd have caused its enthusiastic leaders to magnify its scope and claims far beyond their modest bounds; and although its field covers the great transition from childhood to youth, one searches in vain both its literature and practise for the slightest recognition of the new motives and methods that puberty suggests. especially in its partially acclimatized forms to american conditions, it is all adult and almost scholastic; and as the most elaborate machinery may sometimes be run by a poor power-wheel, if the stream be swift and copious enough, so the mighty rent that sets toward motor education would give it some degree of success were it worse and less economic of pedagogic momentum than it is. it holds singularly aloof from other methods of efferent training and resists coördination with them, and its provisions for other than hand development are slight. it will be one of the last to accept its true but modest place as contributing certain few but precious elements in the greater synthesis that impends. indian industries, basketry, pottery, bead, leather, bows and arrows, bark, etc., which our civilization is making lost arts by forcing the white man's industries upon red men at reservation schools and elsewhere, need only a small part of the systemization that swedish peasant work has received to develop even greater educational values; and the same is true of the indigenous household work of the old new england farm, the real worth and possibilities of which are only now, and perhaps too late, beginning to be seen by a few educators. this brings us to the arts and crafts movement, originating with carlyle's gospel of work and ruskin's medievalism, developed by william morris and his disciples at the red house, checked awhile by the ridicule of the comic opera "patience," and lately revived in some of its features by cobden-sanderson, and of late to some extent in various centers in this country. its ideal was to restore the day of the seven ancient guilds and of hans sachs, the poet cobbler, when conscience and beauty inspired work, and the hand did what machines only imitate and vulgarize. in the past, which this school of motor culture harks back to, work, for which our degenerate age lacks even respect, was indeed praise. refined men and women have remembered these early days, when their race was in its prime, as a lost paradise which they would regain by designing and even weaving tapestries and muslins; experimenting in vats with dyes to rival tyrian purple; printing and binding by hand books that surpass the best of the aldine, and elzevirs; carving in old oak; hammering brass; forging locks, irons, and candlesticks; becoming artists in burned wood and leather; seeking old effects of simplicity and solidity in furniture and decoration, as well as architecture, stained glass, and to some extent in dress and manners; and all this toil and moil was _ad majorem gloriam hominis_ [to the greater glory of man] in a new socialistic state, where the artist, and even the artisan, should take his rightful place above the man who merely knows. the day of the mere professor, who deals in knowledge, is gone; and the day of the doer, who creates, has come. the brain and the hand, too long divorced and each weak and mean without the other; use and beauty, each alone vulgar; letters and labor, each soulless without the other, are henceforth to be one and inseparable; and this union will lift man to a higher level. the workman in his apron and paper hat, inspired by the new socialism and the old spirit of chivalry as revived by scott, revering wagner's revival of the old _deutschenthum_ that was to conquer _christenthum_, or tennyson's arthurian cycle--this was its ideal; even as the jews rekindled their loyalty to the ancient traditions of their race and made their bible under ezra; as we begin to revere the day of the farmer-citizen, who made our institutions, or as some of us would revive his vanishing industrial life for the red man. although this movement was by older men and women and had in it something of the longing regret of senescence for days that are no more, it shows us the glory which invests racial adolescence when it is recalled in maturity, the time when the soul can best appreciate the value of its creations and its possibilities, and really lives again in its glamour and finds in it its greatest inspiration. hence it has its lessons for us here. a touch, but not too much of it, should be felt in all manual education, which is just as capable of idealism as literary education. this gives soul, interest, content, beauty, taste. if not a polyphrastic philosophy seeking to dignify the occupation of the workshop by a pretentious volapük of reasons and abstract theories, we have here the pregnant suggestion of a psychological quarry of motives and spirit opened and ready to be worked. thus the best forces from the past should be turned on to shape and reinforce the best tendencies of the present. the writings of the above gospelers of work not only could and should, but will be used to inspire manual-training high schools, sloyd and even some of the less scholastic industrial courses; but each is incomplete without the other. these books and those that breathe their spirit should be the mental workshop of all who do tool, lathe, and forge work; who design and draw patterns, carve or mold; or of those who study how to shape matter for human uses, and whose aim is to obtain diplomas or certificates of fitness to teach all such things. the muse of art and even of music will have some voice in the great synthesis which is to gather up the scattered, hence ineffective, elements of secondary motor training, in forms which shall represent all the needs of adolescents in the order and proportion that nature and growth stages indicate, drawing, with this end supreme, upon all the resources that history and reform offer to our selection. all this can never make work become play. indeed it will and should make work harder and more unlike play and of another genus, because the former is thus given its own proper soul and leads its own distinct, but richer, and more abounding life. i must not close this section without brief mention of two important studies that have supplied each a new and important determination concerning laws of work peculiar to adolescence. the main telegraphic line requires a speed of over seventy letters per minute of all whom they will employ. as a sending rate this is not very difficult and is often attained after two months' practise. this standard for a receiving rate is harder and later, and inquiry at schools where it is taught shows that about seventy-five per cent of those who begin the study fail to reach this speed and so are not employed. bryan and harter[ ] explained the rate of improvement in both sending and receiving, with results represented for one typical subject in the curve on the following page. from the first, sending improves most rapidly and crosses the dead-line a few months before the receiving rate, which may fall short. curves and represent the same student. i have added line to illustrate the three-fourths who fail. receiving is far less pleasant than sending, and years of daily practise at ordinary rates will not bring a man to his maximum rate; he remains on the low plateau with no progress beyond a certain point. if forced by stress of work, danger of being dropped, or by will power to make a prolonged and intense effort, he breaks through his hidebound rate and permanently attains a faster pace. this is true at each step, and every advance seems to cost even more intensive effort than the former one. at length, for those who go on, the rate of receiving, which is a more complex process, exceeds that of sending; and the curves of the above figure would cross if prolonged. the expert receives so much faster than he sends that abbreviated codes are used, and he may take eighty to eighty-five words a minute on a typewriter in correct form. [illustration: letters per minute x weeks of practice.] the motor curve seems to asymptotically approach a perhaps physiological limit, which the receiving curve does not suggest. this seems a special case of a general though not yet explained law. in learning a foreign language, speaking is first and easiest, and hearing takes a late but often sudden start to independence. perhaps this holds of every ability. to bryan this suggests as a hierarchy of habits, the plateau of little or no improvement, meaning that lower order habits are approaching their maximum but are not yet automatic enough to leave the attention free to attack higher order habits. the second ascent from drudgery to freedom, which comes through automatism, is often as sudden as the first ascent. one stroke of attention comes to do what once took many. to attain such effective speed is not dependent on reaction time. this shooting together of units distinguishes the master from the man, the genius from the hack. in many, if not all, skills where expertness is sought, there is a long discouraging level, and then for the best a sudden ascent, as if here, too, as we have reason to think in the growth of both the body as a whole and in that of its parts, nature does make leaps and attains her ends by alternate rests and rushes. youth lives along on a low level of interest and accomplishment and then starts onward, is transformed, converted; the hard becomes easy; the old life sinks to a lower stratum; and a new and higher order, perhaps a higher brain level and functions, is evolved. the practical implication here of the necessity of hard concentrative effort as a condition of advancement is re-enforced by a quotation from senator stanford on the effect of early and rather intensive work at not too long periods in training colts for racing. let-ups are especially dangerous. he says, "it is the supreme effort that develops." this, i may add, suggests what is developed elsewhere, that truly spontaneous attention is conditioned by spontaneous muscle tension, which is a function of growth, and that muscles are thus organs of the mind; and also that even voluntary attention is motivated by the same nisus of development even in its most adult form, and that the products of science, invention, discovery, as well as the association plexus of all that was originally determined in the form of consciousness, are made by rhythmic alternation of attack, as it moves from point to point creating diversions and recurrence. the other study, although quite independent, is part a special application and illustration of the same principle. at the age of four or five, when they can do little more than scribble, children's chief interest in pictures is as finished products; but in the second period, which lange calls that of artistic illusion, the child sees in his own work not merely what it represents, but an image of fancy back of it. this, then, is the golden period for the development of power to create artistically. the child loves to draw everything with the pleasure chiefly in the act, and he cares little for the finished picture. he draws out of his own head, and not from copy before his eye. anything and everything is attempted in bold lines in this golden age of drawing. if he followed the teacher, looked carefully and drew what he saw, he would be abashed at his production. indians, conflagrations, games, brownies, trains, pageants, battles--everything is graphically portrayed; but only the little artist himself sees the full meaning of his lines. criticism or drawing strictly after nature breaks this charm, since it gives place to mechanical reproduction in which the child has little interest. thus awakens him from his dream to a realization that he can not draw, and from ten to fifteen his power of perceiving things steadily increases and he makes almost no progress in drawing. adolescence arouses the creative faculty and the desire and ability to draw are checked and decline after thirteen or fourteen. the curve is the plateau which barnes has described. the child has measured his own productions upon the object they reproduced and found them wanting, is discouraged and dislikes drawing. from twelve on, barnes found drawing more and more distasteful; and this, too, lukens found to be the opinion of our art teachers. the pupils may draw very properly and improve in technique, but the interest is gone. this is the condition in which most men remain all their lives. their power to appreciate steadily increases. only a few gifted adolescents about this age begin a to develop a new zest in production, rivaling that of the period from five to ten, when their satisfaction is again chiefly in creation. these are the artists whose active powers dominate. lukens[ ] finds in his studies of drawing, that in what he calls his fourth period of artistic development, there are those "who during adolescence experience a rebirth of creative power." zest in creation then often becomes a stronger incentive to work than any pleasure or profit to be derived from the finished product, so that in this the propitious conditions of the first golden age of childhood are repeated and the deepest satisfaction is again found in the work itself. at about fourteen or fifteen, which is the transition period, nascent faculties sometimes develop very rapidly. lukens[ ] draws the interesting curve shown on the following page. [illustration: motor, creative or productive power. sensory or receptive interest in the finished product.] the reciprocity between the power to produce and that to appreciate, roughly represented in the above curve, likely is true also in the domain of music, and may be, perhaps, a general law of development. certain it is that the adolescent power to apperceive and appreciate never so far outstrips his power to produce or reproduce as about midway in the teens. now impressions sink deepest. the greatest artists are usually those who paint later, when the expressive powers are developed, what they have felt most deeply and known best at this age, and not those who in the late twenties, or still later, have gone to new environments and sought to depict them. all young people draw best those objects they love most, and their proficiency should be some test of the contents of their minds. they must put their own consciousness into a picture. at the dawn of this stage of appreciation the esthetic tastes should be stimulated by exposure to, and instructed in feeling for, the subject-matter of masterpieces; and instruction in technique, detail, criticism, and learned discrimination of schools of painting should be given intermittently. art should not now be for art's sake, but for the sake of feeling and character, life, and conduct; it should be adjunct to morals, history, and literature; and in all, edification should be the goal; and personal interest, and not that of the teacher, should be the guide. insistence on production should be eased, and the receptive imagination, now so hungry, should be fed and reinforced by story and all other accessories. by such a curriculum, potential creativeness, if it exists, will surely be evoked in its own good time. it will, at first, attempt no commonplace drawing-master themes, but will essay the highest that the imagination can bode forth. it may be crude and lame in execution, but it will be lofty, perhaps grand; and if it is original in consciousness, it will be in effect. most creative painters before twenty have grappled with the greatest scenes in literature or turning points in history, representations of the loftiest truths, embodiments of the most inspiring ideals. none who deserve the name of artist copy anything now, and least of all with objective fidelity to nature; and the teacher that represses or criticizes this first point of genius, or who can not pardon the grave faults of technique inevitable at this age when ambition ought to be too great for power, is not an educator but a repressor, a pedagogic philistine committing, like so many of his calling in other fields, the unpardonable sin against budding promise, always at this age so easily blighted. just as the child of six or seven should be encouraged in his strong instinct to draw the most complex scenes of his daily life, so now the inner life should find graphic utterance in all its intricacy up to the full limit of unrepressed courage. for the great majority, on the other hand, who only appreciate and will never create, the mind, if it have its rights, will be stored with the best images and sentiments of art; for at this time they are best remembered and sink deepest into heart and life. now, although the hand may refuse, the fancy paints the world in brightest hues and fairest forms; and such an opportunity for infecting the soul with vaccine of ideality, hope, optimism, and courage in adversity, will never come again. i believe that in few departments are current educational theories and practises so hard on youth of superior gifts, just at the age when all become geniuses for a season, very brief for most, prolonged for some, and permanent for the best. we do not know how to teach to, see, hear, and feel when the sense centers are most indelibly impressible, and to give relative rest to the hand during the years when its power of accuracy is abated and when all that is good is idealized furthest, and confidence in ability to produce is at its lowest ebb. finally, our divorce between industrial and manual training is abnormal, and higher technical education is the chief sufferer. professor thurston, of cornell, who has lately returned from a tour of inspection abroad, reported that to equal germany we now need: " . twenty technical universities, having in their schools of engineering instructors and students each. . two thousand technical high schools or manual-training schools, each having not less than students and instructors." if we have elementary trade-schools, this would mean technical high schools enough to accommodate , students, served by , teachers. with the strong economic arguments in this direction we are not here concerned; but that there are tendencies to unfit youth for life by educational method and matter shown in strong relief from this standpoint, we shall point out in a later chapter. [footnote : this i have elsewhere tried to show in detail. criticisms of high school physics and manual training and mechanic arts in high schools. pedagogical seminary, june, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : studies in the physiology and psychology of the telegraphic language. psychological review, january, , vol. , pp. - , and july, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : a study of children's drawings in the early years. pedagogical seminary, october, , vol. , pp. - . see also drawing in the early years, proceedings of the national educational association, , pp. - . das kind als künstler, von c. götze. hamburg, . the genetic _vs._ the logical order in drawing, by f. burk. pedagogical seminary, september, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : die entwickelungsstufen beim zeichnen. die kinderfehler, september, , vol. , pp. - .] * * * * * chapter v gymnastics the story of jahn and the turners--the enthusiasm which this movement generated in germany--the ideal of bringing out latent powers--the concept of more perfect voluntary control--swedish gymnastics--doing everything possible for the body as a machine--liberal physical culture--ling's orthogenic scheme of economic postures and movements and correcting defects--the ideal of symmetry and prescribing exercises to bring the body to a standard--lamentable lack of correlation between these four systems--illustrations of the great good that a systematic training can effect--athletic records--greek physical training. under the term gymnastics, literally naked exercises, we here include those denuded of all utilities or ulterior ends save those of physical culture. this is essentially modern and was unknown in antiquity, where training was for games, for war, etc. several ideals underlie this movement, which although closely related are distinct and as yet by no means entirely harmonized. these may be described as follows: a. one aim of jahn, more developed by spiess, and their successors, was to do everything physically possible for the body as a mechanism. many postures and attitudes are assumed and many movements made that are never called for in life. some of these are so novel that a great variety of new apparatus had to be devised to bring them out; and jahn invented many new names, some of them without etymologies, to designate the repertory of his discoveries and inventions that extended the range of motor life. common movements, industries, and even games, train only a limited number of muscles, activities, and coördinations, and leave more or less unused groups and combinations, so that many latent possibilities slumber, and powers slowly lapse through disuse. not only must these be rescued, but the new nascent possibilities of modern progressive man must be addressed and developed. even the common things that the average untrained youth can not do are legion, and each of these should be a new incentive to the trainer as he realizes how very far below their motor possibilities meet men live. the man of the future may, and even must, do things impossible in the past and acquire new motor variations not given by heredity. our somatic frame and its powers must therefore be carefully studied, inventoried, and assessed afresh, and a kind and amount of exercise required that is exactly proportioned, not perhaps to the size but to the capability of each voluntary muscle. thus only can we have a truly humanistic physical development, analogous to the training of all the powers of the mind in a broad, truly liberal, and non-professional or non-vocational educational curriculum. the body will thus have its rightful share in the pedagogic traditions and inspirations of the renaissance. thus only can we have a true scale of standardised culture values for efferent processes; and from this we can measure the degrees of departure, both in the direction of excess and defect, of each form of work, motor habit; and even play. many modern epigoni in the wake of this great ideal, where its momentum was early spent, feeling that new activities might be discovered with virtues hitherto undreamed of, have almost made fetiches of special disciplines, both developmental and corrective, that are pictured and landed in scores of manuals. others have had expectations no less excessive in the opposite direction and have argued that the greatest possible variety of movements best developed the greatest total of motor energy. jahn especially thus made gymnastics a special art and inspired great enthusiasm of humanity, and the songs of his pupils were of a better race of man and a greater and united fatherland. it was this feature that made his work unique in the world, and his disciples are fond of reminding us of the fact that it was just about one generation of men after the acme of influence of his system that, in , germany showed herself the greatest military power since ancient rome, and took the acknowledged leadership of the world both in education and science. these theorizations even in their extreme forms have been not only highly suggestive but have brought great and new enthusiasms and ideals into the educational world that admirably fit adolescence. the motive of bringing out latent, decaying, or even new powers, skills, knacks, and feats, is full of inspiration. patriotism is aroused, for thus the country can be better served; thus the german fatherland was to be restored and unified after the dark days that followed the humiliation of jena. now the ideals of religion are invoked that the soul may have a better and regenerated somatic organism with which to serve jesus and the church. exercise is made a form of praise to god and of service to man, and these motives are reënforced by those of the new hygiene which strives for a new wholeness-holiness, and would purify the body as the temple of the holy ghost. thus in young men's christian association training schools and gymnasiums the gospel of christianity is preached anew and seeks to bring salvation to man's physical frame, which the still lingering effects of asceticism have caused to be too long neglected in its progressive degeneration. as the greek games were in honor of the gods, so now the body is trained to better glorify god; and regimen, chastity, and temperance are given a new momentum. the physical salvation thus wrought will be, when adequately written, one of the most splendid chapters in the modern history of christianity. military ideals have been revived in cult and song to hearten the warfare against evil within and without. strength is prayed for as well as worked for, and consecrated to the highest uses. last but not least, power thus developed over a large surface may be applied to athletic contests in the field, and victories here are valuable as fore-gleams of how sweet the glory of achievements in higher moral and spiritual tasks will taste later. the dangers and sources of error in this ideal of all-sided training are, alas, only too obvious, although they only qualify its paramount good. first, it is impossible thus to measure the quanta of training needed so as rightly to assign to each its modicum and best modality of training. indeed no method of doing this has ever been attempted, but the assessments have been arbitrary and conjectural, probably right in some and wrong in other respects, with no adequate criterion or test for either save only empirical experience. secondly, heredity, which lays its heavy ictus upon some neglected forms of activity and fails of all support for others, has been ignored. as we shall see later, one of the best norms here is phyletic emphasis, and what lacks this must at best be feeble; and if new powers are unfolding, their growth must be very slow and they must be nurtured as tender buds for generations. thirdly, too little regard is had for the vast differences in individuals, most of whom need much personal prescription. b. in practise the above ideal is never isolated from others. perhaps the most closely associated with it is that of increased volitional control. man is largely a creature of habit, and many of his activities are more or less automatic reflexes from the stimuli of his environment. every new power of controlling these by the will frees man from slavery and widens the field of freedom. to acquire the power of doing all with consciousness and volition mentalizes the body, gives control over to higher brain levels, and develops them by rescuing activities from the dominance of lower centers. thus _mens agitat molem._ [footnote: mind rules the body.] this end is favored by the swedish _commando_ exercises, which require great alertness of attention to translate instantly a verbal order into an act and also, although in somewhat less degree, by quick imitation of a leader. the stimulus of music and rhythm are excluded because thought to interfere with this end. a somewhat sophisticated form of this goal is sought by several delsartian schemes of relaxation, decomposition, and recomposition of movements. to do all things with consciousness and to encroach on the field of instinct involves new and more vivid sense impressions, the range of which is increased directly as that of motion, the more closely it approaches the focus of attention. by thus analyzing settled and established coördinations, their elements are set free and may be organized into new combinations, so that the former is the first stage toward becoming a virtuoso with new special skills. this is the road to inner secrets or intellectual rules of professional and expert successes, such as older athletes often rely upon when their strength begins to wane. every untrained automatism must be domesticated, and every striated muscle capable of direct muscular control must be dominated by volition. thus tensions and incipient contractures that drain off energy can be relaxed by fiat. sandow's "muscle dance," the differentiation of movements of the right and left hand--one, e.g., writing a french madrigal while the other is drawing a picture of a country dance, or each playing tunes of disparate rhythm and character simultaneously on the piano--controlling heart rate, moving the ears, crying, laughing, blushing, moving the bowels, etc., at will, feats of inhibition of reflexes, stunts of all kinds, proficiency with many tools, deftness in sports--these altogether would mark the extremes in this direction. this, too, has its inspiration for youth. to be a universal adept like hippias suggests diderot and the encyclopedists in the intellectual realm. to do all with consciousness is a means to both remedial and expert ends. motor life often needs to be made over to a greater or less extent; and that possibilities of vastly greater accomplishments exist than are at present realized, is undoubted, even in manners and morals, which are both at root only motor habits. indeed consciousness itself is largely and perhaps wholly corrective in its very essence and origin. thus life is adjusted to new environments; and if the platonic postulate be correct, that untaught virtues that come by nature and instinct are no virtues, but must be made products of reflection and reason, the sphere and need of this principle is great indeed. but this implies a distrust of physical human nature as deep-seated and radical as that of calvinism for the unregenerate heart, against which modern common sense, so often the best muse of both psychophysics and pedagogy, protests. individual prescription is here as imperative as it is difficult. wonders that now seem to be most incredible, both of hurt and help, can undoubtedly be wrought, but analysis should always be for the sake of synthesis and never be beyond its need and assured completion. no thoughtful student fully informed of the facts and tentatives in this field can doubt that here lies one of the most promising fields of future development, full of far-reaching and rich results for those, as yet far too few, experts in physical training, who have philosophic minds, command the facts of modern psychology, and whom the world awaits now as never before. c. another yet closely correlated ideal is that of economic postures and movements. the system of ling is less orthopedic than orthogenic, although he sought primarily to correct bad attitudes and perverted growth. starting from the respiratory and proceeding to the muscular system, he and his immediate pupils were content to refer to the ill-shapen bodies of most men about them. one of their important aims was to relax the flexor and tone up the extensor muscles and to open the human form into postures as opposite as possible to those of the embryo, which it tends so persistently to approximate in sitting, and in fatigue and collapse attitudes generally. the head must balance on the cervical vertebra and not call upon the muscles of the neck to keep it from rolling off; the weight of the shoulders must be thrown back off the thorax; the spine be erect to allow the abdomen free action; the joints of the thigh extended; the hand and arm supinated, etc. bones must relieve muscles and nerves. thus an erect, self-respecting carriage must be given, and the unfortunate association, so difficult to overcome, between effort and an involuted posture must be broken up. this means economy and a great saving of vital energy. extensor action goes with expansive, flexor with depressive states of mind; hence courage, buoyancy, hope, are favored and handicaps removed. all that is done with great effort causes wide irradiation of tensions to the other half of the body and also sympathetic activities in those not involved; the law of maximal ease and minimal expenditure of energy must be always striven for, and the interests of the viscera never lost sight of. this involves educating weak and neglected muscles, and like the next ideal, often shades over by almost imperceptible gradation into the passive movements by the zander machines. realizing that certain activities are sufficiently or too much emphasized in ordinary life, stress is laid upon those which are complemental to them, so that there is no pretense of taking charge of the totality of motor processes, the intention being principally to supplement deficiencies, to insure men against being warped, distorted, or deformed by their work in life, to compensate specialties and perform more exactly what recreation to some extent aims at. this wholesome but less inspiring endeavor, which combats one of the greatest evils that under modern civilization threatens man's physical weal, is in some respects as easy and practical as it is useful. the great majority of city bred men, as well as all students, are prone to deleterious effects from too much sitting; and indeed there is anatomical evidence in the structure of the tissues, and especially the blood-vessels of the groins, that, at his best, man is not yet entirely adjusted to the upright position. so a method that straightens knees, hips, spine, and shoulders, or combats the school-desk attitude, is a most salutary contribution to a great and growing need. in the very act of stretching, and perhaps yawning, for which much is to be said, nature itself suggests such correctives and preventives. to save men from being victims of their occupations is often to add a better and larger half to their motor development. the danger of the system, which now best represents this ideal, is inflexibility and overscholastic treatment. it needs a great range of individual variations if it would do more than increase circulation, respiration, and health, or the normal functions of internal organs and fundamental physiological activities. to clothe the frame with honest muscles that are faithful servants of the will adds not only strength, more active habits and efficiency, but health; and in its material installation this system is financially economic. personal faults and shortcomings are constantly pointed out where this work is best represented, and it has a distinct advantage in inciting an acquaintance with physiology and inviting the larger fields of medical knowledge. d. the fourth gymnastic aim is symmetry and correct proportions. anthropometry and average girths and dimensions, strength, etc., of the parts of the body are first charted in percentile grades; and each individual is referred to the apparatus and exercises best fitted to correct weaknesses and subnormalities. the norms here followed are not the canons of greek art, but those established by the measurement of the largest numbers properly grouped by age, weight, height, etc. young men are found to differ very widely. some can lift , pounds, and some not ; some can lift their weight between twenty and forty times, and some not once; some are most deficient in legs, others in shoulders, arms, backs, chests. by photography, tape, and scales, each is interested in his own bodily condition and incited to overcome his greatest defects; and those best endowed by nature to attain ideal dimensions and make new records are encouraged along these lines. thus this ideal is also largely though not exclusively remedial. this system can arouse youth to the greatest pitch of zest in watching their own rapidly multiplying curves of growth in dimensions and capacities, in plotting curves that record their own increment in girths, lifts, and other tests, and in observing the effects of sleep, food, correct and incorrect living upon a system so exquisitely responsive to all these influences as are the muscles. to learn to know and grade excellence and defect, to be known for the list of things one can do and to have a record, or to realize what we lack of power to break best records, even to know that we are strengthening some point where heredity has left us with some shortage and perhaps danger, the realization of all this may bring the first real and deep feeling for growth that may become a passion later in things of the soul. growth always has its selfish aspects, and to be constantly passing our own examination in this respect is a new and perhaps sometimes too self-conscious endeavor of our young college barbarians; but it is on the whole a healthful regulative, and this form of the struggle toward perfection and escape from the handicap of birth will later move upward to the intellectual and moral plane. to kindle a sense of physical beauty of form in every part, such as a sculptor has, may be to start youth on the lowest round of the platonic ladder that leads up to the vision of ideal beauty of soul, if his ideal be not excess of brawn, or mere brute strength, but the true proportion represented by the classic or mean temperance balanced like justice between all extremes. hard, patient, regular work, with the right dosage for this self-cultural end, has thus at the same time a unique moral effect. the dangers of this system are also obvious. nature's intent can not be too far thwarted; and as in mental training the question is always pertinent, so here we may ask whether it be not best in all cases to some extent, and in some cases almost exclusively, to develop in the direction in which we most excel, to emphasize physical individuality and even idiosyncrasy, rather than to strive for monotonous uniformity. weaknesses and parts that lag behind are the most easily overworked to the point of reaction and perhaps permanent injury. again, work for curative purposes lacks the exuberance of free sports: it is not inspiring to make up areas; and therapeutic exercises imposed like a sentence for the shortcomings of our forebears bring a whiff of the atmosphere of the hospital, if not of the prison, into the gymnasium. these four ideals, while so closely interrelated, are as yet far from harmonized. swedish, turner, sargent, and american systems are each, most unfortunately, still too blind to the others' merits and too conscious of the others' shortcomings. to some extent they are prevented from getting together by narrow devotion to a single cult, aided sometimes by a pecuniary interest in the sale of their own apparatus and books or in the training of teachers according to one set of rubrics. the real elephant is neither a fan, a rope, a tree nor a log, as the blind men in the fable contended, each thinking the part he had touched to be the whole. this inability of leaders to combine causes uncertainty and lack of confidence in, and of enthusiastic support for, any system on the part of the public. even the radically different needs of the sexes have failed of recognition from the same partisanship. all together represent only a fraction of the nature and needs of youth. the world now demands what this country has never had, a man who, knowing the human body, gymnastic history, and the various great athletic traditions of the past, shall study anew the whole motor field, as a few great leaders early in the last century tried to do; who shall gather and correlate the literature and experiences of the past and present with a deep sense of responsibility to the future; who shall examine martial training with all the inspirations, warnings, and new demands; and who shall know how to revive the inspiration of the past animated by the same spirit as the turners, who were almost inflamed by referring back to the hardy life of the early teutons and trying to reproduce its best features; who shall catch the spirit of, and make due connections with, popular sports past and present, study both industry and education to compensate their debilitating effects, and be himself animated by a great ethical and humanistic hope and faith in a better future. such a man, if he ever walks the earth, will be the idol of youth, will know their physical secrets, will come almost as a savior to the bodies of men, and will, like jahn, feel his calling and work sacred, and his institution a temple in which every physical act will be for the sake of the soul. the world of adolescence, especially that part which sits in closed spaces conning books, groans and travails all the more grievously and yearningly, because unconsciously, waiting for a redeemer for its body. till he appears, our culture must remain for most a little hollow, falsetto, and handicapped by school-bred diseases. the modern gymnasium performs its chief service during adolescence and is one of the most beneficent agencies of which not a few, but every youth, should make large use. its spirit should be instinct with euphoria, where the joy of being alive reaches a point of high, although not quite its highest, intensity. while the stimulus of rivalry and even of records is not excluded, and social feelings may be appealed to by unison exercises and by the club spirit, and while competitions, tournaments, and the artificial motives of prizes and exhibitions may be invoked, the culture is in fact largely individual. and yet in this country the annual _turnerfest_ brings , or , men from all parts of the union, who sometimes all deploy and go through some of the standard exercises together under one leader. instead of training a few athletes, the real problem now presented is how to raise the general level of vitality so that children and youth may be fitted to stand the strain of modern civilization, resist zymotic diseases, and overcome the deleterious influences of city life. the almost immediate effects of systematic training are surprising and would hardly be inferred from the annual increments tabled earlier in this chapter. sandow was a rather weakly boy and ascribes his development chiefly to systematic training. we have space but for two reports believed to be typical. enebuske reports on the effects of seven months' training on young women averaging . years. the figures are based on the percentile column. ----------------+--------+----------------------------------+-------- | | strength of | |lung | | | |right |left |total |capacity| legs |back |chest|forearm|forearm|strength ----------------+--------+------+-----+-----+-------+-------+-------- before training | . | | . | | | | after six months| . | | . | | | | ----------------+--------+------+-----+-----+-------+-------+-------- by comparing records of what he deems standard normal growth with that of naval cadets from sixteen to twenty-one, who had special and systematic training, just after the period of most rapid growth in height, beyer concluded that the effect of four years of this added a little over an inch of stature, and that this gain as greatest at the beginning. this increase was greatest for the youngest cadets. he found also a marked increase in weight, nearly the same for each year from seventeen to twenty one. this he thought more easily influenced by exercise than height. a high vital index ratio of lung capacity to weight is a very important attribute of good training. beyer[ ] found, however, that the addition of lung area gained by exercise did not keep up with the increase thus caused in muscular substance, and that the vital index always became smaller in those who had gained weight and strength by special physical training. how much gain in weight is desirable beyond the point where the lung capacity increases at an equal rate is unknown. if such measurements were applied to the different gymnastic systems, we might be able to compare their efficiency, which would be a great desideratum in view of the unfortunate rivalry between them. total strength, too, can be greatly increased. beyer thinks that from sixteen to twenty-one it may exceed the average or normal increment fivefold, and he adds, "i firmly believe that the now so wonderful performances of most of our strong men are well within the reach of the majority of healthy men, if such performances were a serious enough part of their ambition to make them do the exercises necessary to develop them." power of the organs to respond to good training by increased strength probably reaches well into middle life. it is not encouraging to learn that, according to a recent writer,[ ] we now have seventy times as many physicians in proportion to the general population as there are physical directors, even for the school population alone considered. we have twice as many physicians per population as great britain, four times a many as germany, or physicians, . ministers, . lawyers per thousand of the general population; while even if all male teachers of physical training taught only males of the military age, we should have but . of a teacher per thousand, or if the school population alone be considered, teachers per million pupils. hence, it is inferred that the need of wise and classified teachers in this field is at present greater than in any other. but fortunately while spontaneous, unsystematic exercise in a well-equipped modern gymnasium may in rare cases do harm, so far from sharing the prejudice often felt for it by professional trainers, we believe that free access to it without control or direction is unquestionably a boon to youth. even if its use be sporadic and occasional, as it is likely to be with equal opportunity for out-of-door exercises and especially sports, practise is sometimes hygienic almost inversely to its amount, while even lameness from initial excess has its lessons, and the sense of manifoldness of inferiorities brought home by experiences gives a wholesome self-knowledge and stimulus. in this country more than elsewhere, especially in high school and college, gymnasium work has been brought into healthful connection with field sports and record competitions for both teams and individuals who aspire to championship. this has given the former a healthful stimulus although it is felt only by a picked few. scores of records have been established for running, walking, hurdling, throwing, putting, swimming, rowing, skating, etc., each for various shorter and longer distances and under manifold conditions, and for both amateurs and professionals, who are easily accessible. these, in general, show a slow but steady advance in this country since , when athletics were established here. in that year there was not a single world's best record held by an american amateur, and high-school boys of to-day could in most, though not in all lines, have won the american championship twenty-five years ago. of course, in a strict sense, intercollegiate contests do not show the real advance in athletics, because it is not necessary for a man in order to win a championship to do his best; but they do show general improvement. we select for our purpose a few of those records longest kept. not dependent on external conditions like boat-racing, or on improved apparatus like bicycling, we have interesting data of a very different order for physical measurements. these down to present writing--july, --are as follows: for the -yard dash, every annual record from to is or seconds, or between these, save in , where owen's record of - / seconds still stands. in the -yard run there is slight improvement since , but here the record of (wefers, - / seconds) has not been surpassed. in the quarter-mile run, the beet record was in (long, seconds). the half-mile record, which still stands, was made in (kilpatrick, minute - / seconds); the mile run in (conneff, minutes - / seconds). the running broad jump shows a very steady improvement, with the best record in (prinstein, feet - / inches). the running high jump shows improvement, but less, with the record of still standing (sweeney, feet - / inches). the record for pole vaulting, corrected to november, , is feet / inches (dole); for throwing the -pound hammer head, feet inches (queckberner); for putting the -pound shot, feet inches (coe, ); the standing high jump, feet - / inches (ewry); for the running high jump, feet - / inches (sweeney). we also find that if we extend our purview to include all kinds of records for physical achievement, that not a few of the amateur records for activities involving strength combined with rapid rhythm movement are held by young men of twenty or even less. in putting the -pound shot under uniform conditions the record has improved since the early years nearly feet (coe, feet inches, best at present writing, ). pole vaulting shows a very marked advance culminating in (dole, feet / inches). most marked of all perhaps is the great advance in throwing the -pound hammer. beginning between and feet in the early years, the record is now feet inches (flanagan, ). the two-mile bicycle race also shows marked gain, partly, of course, due to improvement in the wheel, the early records being nearly minutes, and the best being minutes seconds (mclean, ). some of these are world records, and more exceed professional records.[ ] these, of course, no more indicate general improvement than the steady reduction of time in horse-racing suggests betterment in horses generally. in panhellenic games as well as at present, athleticism in its manifold forms was one of the most characteristic expressions of adolescent nature and needs. not a single time or distance record of antiquity has been preserved, although grasberger[ ] and other writers would have us believe that in those that are comparable, ancient youthful champions greatly excelled ours, especially in leaping and running. while we are far from cultivating mere strength, our training is very one-sided from the greek norm of unity or of the ideals that develop the body only for the salve of the soul. while gymnastics in our sense, with apparatus, exercises, and measurements independently of games was unknown, the ideal and motive were as different from ours as was its method. nothing, so far as is known, was done for correcting the ravages of work, or for overcoming hereditary defects; and until athletics degenerated there were do exercises for the sole purpose of developing muscle. on the whole, while modern gymnastics has done more for the trunk, shoulders, and arms than for the legs, it is now too selfish and ego-centric, deficient on the side of psychic impulsion, and but little subordinated to ethical or intellectual development. yet it does a great physical service to all who cultivate it, and is a safeguard of virtue and temperance. its need is radical revision and coordination of various cults and theories in the light of the latest psycho-physiological science. gymnastics allies itself to biometric work. the present academic zeal for physical development is in great need of closer affiliation with anthropometry. this important and growing department will be represented in the ideal gymnasium of the future--first, by courses, if not by a chair, devoted to the apparatus of measurements of human proportions and symmetry, with a kinesological cabinet where young men are instructed in the elements of auscultation, the use of calipers, the sphygmograph, spirometer, plethysmograph, kinesometer to plot graphic curves, compute average errors, and tables of percentile grades and in statistical methods, etc. second, anatomy, especially of muscles, bones, heart, and skin, will be taught, and also their physiology, with stress upon myology, the effects of exercise on the flow of blood and lymph, not excluding the development of the upright position, and all that it involves and implies. third, hygiene will be prominent and comprehensive enough to cover all that pertains to body-keeping, regimen, sleep, connecting with school and domestic and public hygiene--all on the basis of modern as distinct from the archaic physiology of ling, who, it is sufficient to remember, died in , before this science was recreated, and the persistence of whose concepts are an anomalous survival to-day. mechanico-therapeutics, the purpose and service of each chief kind of apparatus and exercise, the value of work on stall bars with chest weights, of chinning, use of the quarter-staff, somersaults, rings, clubs, dumb-bells, work with straight and flexed knees on machinery, etc., will be taught. fourth, the history of gymnastics from the time of its highest development in greece to the present is full of interest and has a very high and not yet developed culture value for youth. this department, both in its practical and theoretical side, should have its full share of prizes and scholarships to stimulate the seventy to seventy-five per cent of students who are now unaffected by the influence of athletics. by these methods the motivation of gymnastics, which now in large measure goes to waste in enthusiasm, could be utilised to aid the greatly needed intellectualization of those exercises which in their nature are more akin to work than play. indeed, gutsmuths's first definition of athletics was "work under the garb of youthful pleasure." so to develop these courses that they could chiefly, if not entirely, satisfy the requirements for the a.b. degree, would coordinate the work of the now isolated curriculum of the training-schools with that of the college and thus broaden the sphere of the latter; but besides its culture value, which i hold very high, such a step would prepare for the new, important, and, as we have seen, very inadequately manned profession of physical trainers. this has, moreover, great but yet latent and even unsuspected capacities for the morals of our academic youth. grote states that among the ancient greeks one-half of all education as devoted to the body, and galton urges that they as much excelled us as we do the african negro. they held that if physical perfection was cultivated, moral and mental excellence would follow; and that, without this, national culture rests on an insecure basis. in our day there are many new reasons to believe that the best nations of the future will be those which give most intelligent care to the body. [footnote : see h.g. beyer. the influence of exercise on growth. american physical education review, september-december, , vol. i, pp. - .] [footnote : j.h. mccurdy, physical training as a profession. association seminar, march, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : these records are taken from the world almanac, , and olympic games of at athens. edited by j.e. sullivan, commissioner from the united states to the olympic games. spalding's athletic library, new york, july, .] [footnote : o.h. jaeger, die gymnastik der hellenen. heitz, stuttgart . l. grasberger's great standard work, erziehung und untericht im klassischen alterthum. würzburg, - , vols.] * * * * * chapter vi play, sports, and games the view of groos partial and a better explanation of play proposed as rehearsing ancestral activities--the glory of greek physical training, its ideals and results--the first spontaneous movements of infancy as keys to the past--necessity of developing basal powers before those that are later and peculiar to the individual--plays that interest due to their antiquity--play with dolls--play distinguished by age--play preferences of children and their reasons--the profound significance of rhythm--the value of dancing and also its significance, history, and the desirability of re-introducing it--fighting--boxing--wrestling--bushido--foot-ball--military ideals--showing off--cold baths--hill climbing--the playground movement--the psychology of play--its relation to work. play, sports, and games constitute a more varied, far older, and more popular field. here a very different spirit of joy and gladness rules. artifacts often enter but can not survive unless based upon pretty purely hereditary momentum. thus our first problem is to seek both the motor tendencies and the psychic motives bequeathed to us from the past. the view of groos that play is practise for future adult activities is very partial, superficial, and perverse. it ignores the past where lie the keys to all play activities. true play never practises what is phyletically new; and this, industrial life often calls for. it exercises many atavistic and rudimentary functions, a number of which will abort before maturity, but which live themselves out in play like the tadpole's tail, that must be both developed and used as a stimulus to the growth of legs which will otherwise never mature. in place of this mistaken and misleading view, i regard play as the motor habits and spirit of the past of the race, persisting in the present, as rudimentary functions sometimes of and always akin to rudimentary organs. the best index and guide to the stated activities of adults in past ages is found in the instinctive, untaught, and non-imitative plays of children which are the most spontaneous and exact expressions of their motor needs. the young grow up into the same forms of motor activity, as did generations that have long preceded them, only to a limited extent; and if the form of every human occupation were to change to-day, play would be unaffected save in some of its superficial imitative forms. it would develop the motor capacities, impulses, and fundamental forms of our past heritage, and the transformation of these into later acquired adult forms is progressively later. in play every mood and movement is instinct with heredity. thus we rehearse the activities of our ancestors, back we know not how far, and repeat their life work in summative and adumbrated ways. it is reminiscent albeit unconsciously, of our line of descent; and each is the key to the other. the psycho-motive impulses that prompt it are the forms in which our forebears have transmitted to us their habitual activities. thus stage by stage we reënact their lives. once in the phylon many of these activities were elaborated in the life and death struggle for existence. now the elements and combinations oldest in the muscle history of the race are rerepresented earliest in the individual, and those later follow in order. this is why the heart of youth goes out into play as into nothing else, as if in it man remembered a lost paradise. this is why, unlike gymnastics, play has as much soul as body, and also why it so makes for unity of body and soul that the proverb "man is whole only when he plays" suggests that the purest plays are those that enlist both alike. to address the body predominantly strengthens unduly the fleshy elements, and to overemphasize the soul causes weakness and automatisms. thus understood, play is the ideal type of exercise for the young, most favorable for growth, and most self-regulating in both kind and amount. for its forms the pulse of adolescent enthusiasm beats highest. it is unconstrained and free to follow any outer or inner impulse. the zest of it vents and satisfies the strong passion of youth for intense erethic and perhaps orgiastic states, gives an exaltation of self-feeling so craved that with no vicarious outlet it often impels to drink, and best of all realizes the watchword of the turners, _frisch, frei, fröhlich, fromm_ [fresh, free, jovial, pious.]. ancient greece, the history and literature of which owe their perennial charm for all later ages to the fact that they represent the eternal adolescence of the world, best illustrates what this enthusiasm means for youth. jäger and guildersleeve, and yet better grasberger, would have us believe that the panhellenic and especially the olympic games combined many of the best features of a modern prize exhibition, a camp-meeting, fair, derby day, a wagner festival, a meeting of the british association, a country cattle show, intercollegiate games, and medieval tournament; that they were the "acme of festive life" and drew all who loved gold and glory, and that night and death never seemed so black as by contrast with their splendor. the deeds of the young athletes were ascribed to the inspiration of the gods, whose abodes they lit up with glory; and in doing them honor these discordant states found a bond of unity. the victor was crowned with a simple spray of laurel; cities vied with each other for the honor of having given him birth, their walls were taken down for his entry and immediately rebuilt; sculptors, for whom the five ancient games were schools of posture, competed in the representation of his form; poets gave him a pedigree reaching back to the gods, and pindar, who sang that only he is great who is great with his hands and feet, raised his victory to symbolize the eternal prevalence of good over evil. the best body implied the best mind; and even plato, to whom tradition gives not only one of the fairest souls, but a body remarkable for both strength and beauty, and for whom weakness was perilously near to wickedness, and ugliness to sin, argues that education must be so conducted that the body can be safely entrusted to the care of the soul and suggests, what later became a slogan of a more degenerate gladiatorial athleticism, that to be well and strong is to be a philosopher--_valare est philosophari_. the greeks could hardly conceive bodily apart from psychic education, and physical was for the sake of mental training. a sane, whole mind could hardly reside in an unsound body upon the integrity of which it was dependent. knowledge for its own sake, from this standpoint, is a dangerous superstition, for what frees the mind is disastrous if it does not give self-control; better ignorance than knowledge that does not develop a motor side. body culture is ultimately only for the sake of the mind and soul, for body is only its other ego. not only is all muscle culture at the same time brain-building, but a book-worm with soft hands, tender feet, and tough rump from much sitting, or an anemic girl prodigy, "in the morning hectic, in the evening electric," is a monster. play at its best is only a school of ethics. it gives not only strength but courage and confidence, tends to simplify life and habits, gives energy, decision, and promptness to the will, brings consolation and peace of mind in evil days, is a resource in trouble and brings out individuality. how the ideals of physical preformed those of moral and mental training in the land and day of socrates is seen in the identification of knowledge and virtue, "_kennen und können_." [to know and to have the power to do] only an extreme and one-sided intellectualism separates them and assumes that it is easy to know and hard to do. from the ethical standpoint, philosophy, and indeed all knowledge, is the art of being and doing good, conduct is the only real subject of knowledge, and there is no science but morals. he is the best man, says xenophon, who is always studying how to improve, and he is the happiest who feels that he is improving. life is a skill, an art like a handicraft, and true knowledge a form of will. good moral and physical development are more than analogous; and where intelligence is separated from action the former becomes mystic, abstract, and desiccated, and the latter formal routine. thus mere conscience and psychological integrity and righteousness are allied and mutually inspiring. not only play, which is the purest expression of motor heredity, but work and all exercise owe most of whatever pleasure they bring to the past. the first influence of all right exercise for those in health is feeling of well-being and exhilaration. this is one chief source of the strange enthusiasm felt for many special forms of activity, and the feeling is so strong that it animates many forms of it that are hygienically unfit. to act vigorously from a full store of energy gives a reflex of pleasure that is sometimes a passion and may fairly intoxicate. animals must move or cease growing and die. while to be weak is to be miserable, to feel strong is a joy and glory. it gives a sense of superiority, dignity, endurance, courage, confidence, enterprise, power, personal validity, virility, and virtue in the etymological sense of that noble word. to be active, agile, strong, is especially the glory of young men. our nature and history have so disposed our frame that thus all physiological and psychic processes are stimulated, products of decomposition are washed out by oxygenation and elimination, the best reaction of all the ganglionic and sympathetic activities is accused, and vegetative processes are normalized. activity may exalt the spirit almost to the point of ecstasy, and the physical pleasure of it diffuse, irradiate, and mitigate the sexual stress just at the age when its premature localization is most deleterious. just enough at the proper time and rate contributes to permanent elasticity of mood and disposition, gives moral self-control, rouses a love of freedom with all that that great word means, and favors all higher human aspirations. in all these modes of developing our efferent powers, we conceive that the race comes very close to the individual youth, and that ancestral momenta animate motor neurons and muscles and preside over most of the combinations. some of the elements speak with a still small voice raucous with age. the first spontaneous movements of infancy are hieroglyphs, to most of which we have as yet no good key. many elements are so impacted and felted together that we can not analyze them. many are extinct and many perhaps made but once and only hint things we can not apprehend. later the rehearsals are fuller, and their significance more intelligible, and in boyhood and youth the correspondences are plain to all who have eyes to see. pleasure is always exactly proportional to the directness and force of the current of heredity, and in play we feel most fully and intensely ancestral joys. the pain of toil died with our forebears; its vestiges in our play give pure delight. its variety prompts to diversity that enlarges our life. primitive men and animals played, and that too has left its traces in us. some urge that work was evolved or degenerated from play; but the play field broadens with succeeding generations youth is prolonged, for play is always and everywhere the best synonym of youth. all are young at play and only in play, and the best possible characterization of old age is the absence of the soul and body of play. only senile and overspecialized tissues of brain, heart, and muscles know it not. gulick[ ] has urged that what makes certain exercises more interesting than others is to be found in the phylon. the power to throw with accuracy and speed was once pivotal for survival, and non-throwers were eliminated. those who could throw unusually well best overcame enemies, killed game, and sheltered family. the nervous and muscular systems are organized with certain definite tendencies and have back of them a racial setting. so running and dodging with speed and endurance, and hitting with a club, were also basal to hunting and fighting. now that the need of these is leas urgent for utilitarian purposes, they are still necessary for perfecting the organism. this makes, for instance, baseball racially familiar, because it represents activities that were once and for a long time necessary for survival. we inherit tendencies of muscular coördination that have been of great racial utility. the best athletic sports and games a composed of these racially old elements, so that phylogenetic muscular history is of great importance. why is it, this writer asks, that a city man so loves to sit all day and fish! it is because this interest dates back to time immemorial. we are the sons of fishermen, and early life was by the water's side, and this is our food supply. this explains why certain exercises are more interesting than others. it is because they touch and revive the deep basic emotions of the race. thus we see that play is not doing things to be useful later, but it is rehearsing racial history. plays and games change only in their external form, but the underlying neuro-muscular activities, and also the psychic content of them, are the same. just as psychic states must be lived out up through the grades, so the physical activities most be played off, each in its own time. the best exercise for the young should thus be more directed to develop the basal powers old to the race than those peculiar to the individual, and it should enforce those psycho-neural and muscular forms which race habit has banded down rather than insist upon those arbitrarily designed to develop our ideas of symmetry regardless of heredity. the best guide to the former is _interest_, zest, and spontaneity. hereditary moment, really determine, too, the order in which nerve centers come into function. the oldest, racial parts come first, and those which are higher and represent volition come in much later.[ ] as hughlings jackson has well shown, speech uses most of the same organs as does eating, but those concerned with the former are controlled from a higher level of nerve-cells. by right mastication, deglutition, etc., we are thus developing speech organs. thus not only the kind but the time of forms and degrees of exercise is best prescribed by heredity. all growth is more or less rhythmic. there are seasons of rapid increment followed by rest and then perhaps succeeded by a period of augmentation, and this may occur several times. roberts's fifth parliamentary report shows that systematic gymnastics, which, if applied at the right age, produce such immediate and often surprising development of lung capacity, utterly fail with boys of twelve, because this nascent period has not yet come. donaldson showed that if the eyelid of a young kitten be forced open prematurely at birth and stimulated with light, medullation was premature and imperfect; so, too, if proper exercise is deferred too long, we know that little result is achieved. the sequence in which the maturation of levels, nerve areas, and bundles of fibers develop may be, as flechsig thinks, causal; or, according to cajal, energy, originally employed in growth by cell division, later passes to fiber extension and the development of latent cells; or as in young children, the nascent period of finger movements may stimulate that of the thumb which comes later, and the independent movement of the two eyes, their subsequent coördination, and so on to perhaps a third and yet higher level. thus exercise ought to develop nature's first intention and fulfil the law of nascent periods, or else not only no good but great harm may be done. hence every determination of these periods is of great practical as well as scientific importance. the following are the chief attempts yet made to fix them, which show the significance of adolescence. the doll curve reaches its point of highest intensity between eight and nine,[ ] and it is nearly ended at fifteen, although it may persist. children can give no better reason why they stop playing with dolls than because other things are liked better, or they are too old, ashamed, love real babies, etc. the roman girl, when ripe for marriage, hung up her childhood doll as a votive offering to venus. mrs. carlyle, who was compelled to stop, made sumptuous dresses and a four-post bed, and made her doll die upon a funeral pyre like dido, after speaking her last farewell and stabbing herself with a penknife by way of tyrian sword. at thirteen or fourteen it is more distinctly realized that dolls are not real, because they have no inner life or feeling, yet many continue to play with them with great pleasure, in secret, till well on in the teens or twenties. occasionally single women or married women with no children, and in rare cases even those who have children, play dolls all their lives. gales's[ ] student concluded that the girls who played with dolls up to or into pubescent years were usually those who had the fewest number, that they played with them in the most realistic manner, kept them because actually most fond of them, and were likely to be more scientific, steady, and less sentimental than those who dropped them early. but the instinct that "dollifies" new or most unfit things is gone, as also the subtle points of contact between doll play and idolatry. before puberty dolls are more likely to be adults; after puberty they are almost always children or babies. there is no longer a struggle between doubt and reality in the doll cosmos, no more abandon to the doll illusion; but where it lingers it is a more atavistic rudiment, and just as at the height of the fever dolls are only in small part representatives of future children, the saying that the first child is the last doll is probably false. nor are doll and child comparable to first and second dentition, and it is doubtful if children who play with dolls as children with too great abandonment are those who make the best mothers later, or if it has any value as a preliminary practise of motherhood. the number of motor activities that are both inspired and unified by this form of play and that can always be given wholesome direction is almost incredible, and has been too long neglected both by psychologists and teachers. few purer types of the rehearsal by the individual of the history of the race can probably be found even though we can not yet analyze the many elements involved and assign to each its phyletic correlate. in an interesting paper dr. gulick[ ] divides play into three childish periods, separated by the ages three and seven, and attempts to characterize the plays of early adolescence from twelve to seventeen and of later adolescence from seventeen to twenty-three. of the first two periods he says, children before seven rarely play games spontaneously, but often do so under the stimulus of older persons. from seven to twelve, games are almost exclusively individualistic and competitive, but in early adolescence "two elements predominate--first, the plays are predominantly team games, in which the individual is more or less sacrificed for the whole, in which there is obedience to a captain, in which there is coöperation among a number for a given end, in which play has a program and an end. the second characteristic of the period is with reference to its plays, and there seems to be all of savage out-of-door life--hunting, fishing, stealing, swimming, rowing, sailing, fighting, hero-worship, adventure, love of animals, etc. this characteristic obtains more with boys than with girls." "the plays of adolescence are socialistic, demanding the heathen virtues of courage, endurance, self-control, bravery, loyalty, enthusiasm." croswell[ ] found that among , children familiar with kinds of amusements, those involving physical exercises predominated over all others, and that "at every age after the eighth year they were represented as almost two to one and in the sixteenth year rose among boys as four to one." the age of the greatest number of different amusements is from ten to eleven, nearly fifteen being mentioned, but for the next eight or nine years there is a steady decline of number, and progressive specialisation occurs. the games of chase, which are suggestive on the recapitulation theory, rise from eleven per cent in boys of six to nineteen per cent at nine, but soon after decline, and at sixteen have fallen to less than four per cent. toys and original make-believe games decline still earlier, while ball rises steadily and rapidly to eighteen, and card and table games rise very steadily from ten to fifteen in girls, but the increment is much less in boys. "a third or more of all the amusements of boys just entering their teens are games of contest--games in which the end is in one way or another to gain an advantage one's fellows, in which the interest is n the struggle between peers." "as children approach the teens, a tendency arises that is well expressed by one of the girls who no longer makes playthings but things that are useful." parents and society must, therefore, provide the most favorable conditions for the kind of amusement fitting at each age. as the child grows older, society plays a larger rôle in all the child's amusements, and from the thirteenth year "amusements take on a decidedly coöperative and competitive character, and efforts are ore and more confined to the accomplishments of some definite aim. the course for this period will concentrate the effort upon fewer lines," and more time will be devoted to each. the desire for mastery is now at its height. the instinct is to maintain one's self independently and ask no odds. at fourteen, especially, the impulse is, in manual training, to make something and perhaps to coöperate. mcghee[ ] collected the play preferences of , children, and found a very steady decline in running plays among girls from nine to eighteen, but a far more rapid rise in plays of chance from eleven to fifteen, and a very rapid rise from sixteen to eighteen. from eleven onward with the most marked fall before fourteen, there was a distinct decline in imitative games for girls and a slower one for boys. games involving rivalry increased rapidly among boys from eleven to sixteen and still more rapidly among girls, their percentage of preference even exceeding that of boys at eighteen, when it reached nearly seventy per cent. with adolescence, specialization upon a few plays was markedly increased in the teens among boys, whereas with girls in general there were a large number of plays which were popular with none preëminent. even at this age the principle of organization in games so strong with boys is very slight with girls. puberty showed the greatest increase of interest among pubescent girls for croquet, and among boys for swimming, although baseball and football, the most favored for boys, rose rapidly. although the author does not state it, it would seem from his data that plays peculiar to the different seasons were most marked among boys, in part, at least, because their activities are more out of doors. ferrero and others have shown that the more intense activities of primitive people tend to be rhythmic and with strongly automatic features. no form of activity is more universal than the dance, which is not only intense but may express chiefly in terms of fundamental movements, stripped of their accessory finish and detail, every important act, vocation, sentiment, or event in the life of man in language so universal and symbolic that music and poetry themselves seem to have arisen out of it. before it became specialized much labor was cast in rhythmic form and often accompanied by time-marking and even tone to secure the stimulus of concert on both economic and social principles. in the dark background of history there is now much evidence that at some point, play, art, and work were not divorced. they all may have sprung from rhythmic movement which is so deep-seated in biology because it secures most joy of life with least expense. by it eros of old ordered chaos, and by its judicious use the human soul is cadenced to great efforts toward high ideals. the many work-songs to secure concerted action in lifting, pulling, stepping, the use of flail, lever, saw, ax, hammer, hoe, loom, etc., show that areas and thesis represent flexion and extension, that accent originated in the acme of muscular stress, as well as how rhythm eases work and also makes it social. most of the old work-canticles are lost, and machines have made work more serial, while rhythms are obscured or imposed from without so as to limit the freedom they used to express. now all basal, central, or strength movements tend to be oscillatory, automatically repetitive, or rhythmic like savage music, as if the waves of the primeval sea whence we came still beat in them, just as all fine peripheral and late movements tend to be serial, special, vastly complex, end diversified. it is thus natural that during the period of greatest strength increment in muscular development, the rhythmic function of nearly all fundamental movements should be strongly accentuated. at the dawn of this age boys love marching; and, as our returns show, there is a very remarkable rise in the passion for beating time, jigging, double shuffling, rhythmic clapping, etc. the more prominent the factor of repetition the more automatic and the less strenuous is the hard and new effort of constant psychic adjustment and attention. college yells, cheers, rowing, marching, processions, bicycling, running, tug-of-war, calisthenics and class gymnastics with counting, and especially with music, horseback riding, etc., are rhythmic; tennis, baseball and football, basketball, golf, polo, etc., are less rhythmic, but are concerted and intense. these latter emphasise the conflict factor, best brought out in fencing, boxing, and wrestling, and lay more stress on the psychic elements of attention and skill. the effect of musical accompaniment, which the swedish system wrongly rejects, is to make the exercises more fundamental and automatic, and to proportionately diminish the conscious effort and relieve the neuro-muscular mechanism involved in fine movements. adolescence is the golden period of nascency for rhythm. before this change many children have a very imperfect sense of it, and even those who march, sing, play, or read poetry with correct and overemphasised time marking, experience a great broadening of the horizon of consciousness, and a marked, and, for mental power and scope, all-conditioning increase in the carrying power of attention and the sentence-sense. the soul now feels the beauty of cadences, good ascension, and the symmetry of well-developed periods--and all, as i am convinced, because this is the springtime of the strength movements which are predominantly rhythmic. not only does music start in time marking, the drum being the oldest instrument, but quantity long took precedence of sense and form of content, both melody and words coming later. even rhythmic tapping or beating of the foot (whence the poetic feet of prosody and meter thus later imposed monotonous prose to make poetry) exhilarates, makes glad the soul and inspires it to attack, gives compulsion and a sense of unity. the psychology of rhythm shows its basal value in cadencing the soul. we can not conceive what war, love, and religion would be without it. the old adage that "the parent of prose is poetry, the parent of poetry is music, the parent of music is rhythm, and the parent of rhythm is god" seems borne out not only in history, but by the nature of thought and attention that does not move in a continuum, but flies and perches alternately, or on stepping-stones and as if influenced by the tempo of the leg swinging as a compound pendulum. dancing is one of the best expressions of pure play and of the motor needs of youth. perhaps it is the most liberal of all forms of motor education. schopenhauer thought it the apex of physiological irritability and that it made animal life most vividly conscious of its existence and most exultant in exhibiting it. in very ancient times china ritualised it in the spring and made it a large part of the education of boys after the age of thirteen. neale thinks it was originally circular or orbicular worship, which he deems oldest. in japan, in the priestly salic college of ancient rome, in egypt, in the greek apollo cult, it was a form of worship. st. basil advised it; st. gregory introduced it into religious services. the early christian bishops, called præsuls, led the sacred dance around the altar; and only in , and again in , was it forbidden in church. neale and others have shown how the choral processionals with all the added charm of vestment and intonation have had far more to do in christianizing many low tribes, who could not understand the language of the church, than has preaching. savages are nearly all great dancers, imitating every animal they know, dancing out their own legends, with ritual sometimes so exacting that error means death. the character of people is often learned from their dances, and molière says the destiny of nations depends on them. the gayest dancers are often among the most downtrodden and unhappy people. some mysteries can be revealed only in them, as holy passion-plays. if we consider the history of secular dances, we find that some of them, when first invented or in vogue, evoked the greatest enthusiasm. one writer says that the polka so delighted france and england that statesmen forgot politics. the spirit of the old polish aristocracy still lives in the polonaise. the gipsy dances have inspired a new school of music. the greek drama grew out of the evolution of the tragic chorus. national dances like the hornpipe and reel of scotland, the _reihen_, of germany, the _rondes_ of france, the spanish tarantella and _chaconne_, the strathspey from the spey valley, the irish jig, etc., express racial traits. instead of the former vast repertory, the stately pavone, the graceful and dignified saraband, the wild _salterrelle_, the bourrée with song and strong rhythm, the light and skippy bolero, the courtly bayedere, the dramatic plugge, gavotte, and other peasant dances in costume, the fast and furious fandango, weapon and military dances; in place of the pristine power to express love, mourning, justice, penalty, fear, anger, consolation, divine service, symbolic and philosophical conceptions, and every industry or characteristic act of life in pantomime and gesture, we have in the dance of the modern ballroom only a degenerate relict, with at best but a very insignificant culture value, and too often stained with bad associations. this is most unfortunate for youth, and for their sake a work of rescue and revival is greatly needed; for it is perhaps, not excepting even music, the completest language of the emotions and can be made one of the best schools of sentiment and even will, inculcating good states of mind and exorcising bad ones as few other agencies have power to do. right dancing can cadence the very soul, give nervous poise and control, bring harmony between basal and finer muscles, and also between feeling and intellect, body and mind. it can serve both as an awakener and a test of intelligence, predispose the heart against vice, and turn the springs of character toward virtue. that its present decadent forms, for those too devitalized to dance aright, can be demoralizing, we know in this day too well, although even questionable dances may sometimes work off vicious propensities in ways more harmless than those in which they would otherwise find vent. its utilization for and influence on the insane would be another interesting chapter. very interesting scientifically and suggestive practically is another correspondence which i believe to be new, between the mode of spontaneous activity in youth and that of labor in the early history of the race. one of the most marked distinctions between savage and civilized races is in the longer rhythm of work and relaxation. the former are idle and lazy for days, weeks, and perhaps months, and then put forth intense and prolonged effort in dance, hunt, warfare, migration, or construction, sometimes dispensing with sleep and manifesting remarkable endurance. as civilization and specialization advance, hours become regular. the cultured man is less desultory in all his habits, from eating and sleeping to performing social and religious duties, although he may put forth no more aggregate energy in a year than the savage. women are schooled to regular work long before men, and the difficulty of imposing civilization upon low races is compared by bücher[ ] to that of training a eat to work when harnessed to a dog-cart. it is not dread of fatigue but of the monotony of method makes them hate labor. the effort of savages is more intense and their periods of rest more prolonged and inert. darwin thinks all vital function bred to go in periods, as vertebrates are descended from tidal ascidian.[ ] there is indeed much that suggests some other irregular rhythm more or less independent of day and night, and perhaps sexual in its nature, but not lunar, and for males. this mode of life not only preceded the industrial and commercial period of which regularity is a prime condition, but it lasted indefinitely longer than the latter has yet existed; during this early time great exertion, sometimes to the point of utter exhaustion and collapse, alternated with seasons of almost vegetative existence. we see abundant traces of this psychosis in the muscle habits of adolescents, and, i think, in student and particularly in college life, which can enforce regularity only to a limited extent. this is not reversion, but partly expression of the nature and perhaps the needs of this stage of immaturity, and partly the same instinct of revolt against uniformity imposed from without, which rob life of variety and extinguish the spirit of adventure and untrammeled freedom, and make the savage hard to break to the harness of civilization. the hunger for fatigue, too, can become a veritable passion and is quite distinct from either the impulse for activity for its own sake or the desire of achievement. to shout and put forth the utmost possible strength in crude ways is erethic intoxication at a stage when every tissue can become erectile and seems, like the crying of infants, to have a legitimate function in causing tension and flushing, enlarging the caliber of blood vessels, and forcing the blood perhaps even to the point of extravasation to irrigate newly growing fibers, cells, and organs which atrophy if not thus fed. when maturity is complete this need abates. if this be correct, the phenomenon of second breath, so characteristic of adolescence, and one factor in the inebriate's propensity, is ontogenetic expression of a rhythm trait of a long racial period. youth needs overexertion to compensate for underexertion, to undersleep in order to offset oversleep at times. this seems to be nature's provision to expand in all directions its possibilities of the body and soul in this plastic period when, without this occasional excess, powers would atrophy or suffer arrest for want of use, or larger possibilities world not be realized without this regimen peculiar to nascent periods. this is treated more fully elsewhere. perhaps next to dancing in phyletic motivation come personal conflicts, such as wrestling, fighting, boxing, dueling, and in some sense, hunting. the animal world is full of struggle for survival, and primitive warfare is a wager of battle, of personal combat of foes contesting eye to eye and hand to hand, where victory of one is the defeat and perhaps death of the other, and where life is often staked against life. in its more brutal forms we see one of the most degrading of all the aspects of human nature. burk[ ] has shown how the most bestial of these instincts survive and crop out irresistibly in boyhood, where fights are often engaged in with desperate abandon. noses are bitten, ears torn, sensitive places kicked, hair pulled, arms twisted, the head stamped on and pounded on stones, fingers twisted, and hoodlums sometimes deliberately try to strangle, gouge out an eye, pull off an ear, pull out the tongue, break teeth, nose, or bones, or dislocate jaws or other joints, wring the neck, bite off a lip, and torture in utterly nameless ways. in unrestrained anger, man becomes a demon in love with the blood of his victim. the face is distorted, and there are yells, oaths, animal snorts and grunts, cries, and then exultant laughter at pain, and each is bruised, dirty, disheveled and panting with exhaustion. for coarser natures, the spectacle of such conflicts has an intense attraction, while some morbid souls are scarred by a distinct phobia for everything suggestive of even lower degrees of opposition. these instincts, more or less developed in boyhood, are repressed in normal cases before strength and skill are sufficiently developed to inflict serious bodily injury, while without the reductives that orthogenetic growth brings they become criminal. repulsive as are these grosser and animal manifestations of anger, its impulsion can not and should not be eliminated, but its expression transformed and directed toward evils that need all its antagonism. to be angry aright is a good part of moral education, and non-resistance under all provocations is unmanly, craven, and cowardly.[ ] an able-bodied young man, who can not fight physically, can hardly have a high and true sense of honor, and is generally a milksop, a lady-boy, or sneak. he lacks virility, his masculinity does not ring true, his honesty can not be sound to the core. hence, instead of eradicating this instinct, one of the great problems of physical and moral pedagogy is rightly to temper and direct it. sparta sedulously cultivated it in boys; and in the great english schools, where for generations it has been more or less tacitly recognized, it is regulated by custom, and their literature and traditions abound in illustrations of its man-making and often transforming influence in ways well appreciated by hughes and arnold. it makes against degeneration, the essential feature of which is weakening of will and loss of honor. real virtue requires enemies, and women and effeminate and old men want placid, comfortable peace, while a real man rejoices in noble strife which sanctifies all great causes, casts out fear, and is the chief school of courage. bad as is overpugnacity, a scrapping boy is better than one who funks a fight, and i have no patience with the sentimentality that would here "pour out the child with the bath," but would have every healthy boy taught boxing at adolescence if not before. the prize-ring is degrading and brutal, but in lieu of better illustrations of the spirit of personal contest i would interest a certain class of boys in it and try to devise modes of pedagogic utilization of the immense store of interest it generates. like dancing it should be rescued from its evil associations, and its educational force put to do moral work, even though it be by way of individual prescriptions for specific defects of character. at its best, it is indeed a manly art, a superb school for quickness of eye and hand, decision, force of will, and self-control. the moment this is lost stinging punishment follows. hence it is the surest of all cures for excessive irascibility and has been found to have a most beneficent effect upon a peevish or unmanly disposition. it has no mean theoretic side, of rules, kinds of blow and counters, arts of drawing out and tiring an opponent, hindering but not injuring him, defensive and offensive tactics, etc., and it addresses chiefly the fundamental muscles in both training and conflict. i do not underestimate the many and great difficulties of proper purgation, but i know from both personal practise and observation that they are not unconquerable. this form of personal conflict is better than dueling even in its comparatively harmless german student form, although this has been warmly defended by jacob grimm, bismarck, and treitschke, while paulsen, professor of philosophy and pedagogy, and schrempf, of theology, have pronounced it but a slight evil, and several americans have thought it better than hazing, which it makes impossible. the dark side of dueling is seen in the hypertrophied sense of honor which under the code of the corps becomes an intricate and fantastic thing, prompting, according to ziegler,[ ] a club of sixteen students to fight over two hundred duels in four weeks in jena early in this century. it is prone to degenerate to an artificial etiquette demanding satisfaction for slight and unintended offenses. although this professor who had his own face scarred on the _mensur_, pleaded for a student court of honor, with power to brand acts as infamous and even to expel students, on the ground that honor had grown more inward, the traditions in favor of dueling were too strong. the duel had a religious romantic origin as revealing god's judgment, and means that the victim of an insult is ready to stake body, or even life, and this is still its ideal side. anachronism as it now is and degenerating readily to sport or spectacle, overpunishing what is often mere awkwardness or ignorance, it still impresses a certain sense of responsibility for conduct and gives some physical training, slight and specialized though it be. the code is conventional, drawn directly from old french military life, and is not true to the line that separates real honor from dishonor, deliberate insult that wounds normal self-respect from injury fancied by oversensitiveness or feigned by arrogance; so that in its present form it is not the best safeguard of the sacred shrine of personality against invasion of ifs rights. if, as is claimed, it is some diversion from or fortification against corrosive sensuality, it has generally allied itself with excessive beer-drinking. fencing, while an art susceptible of high development and valuable for both pose and poise, and requiring great quickness of eye, arm, and wrist, is unilateral and robbed of the vest of inflicting real pain on an antagonist. bushido,[ ] which means military-knightly ways, designates the japanese conception of honor in behavior and in fighting. the youth is inspired by the ideal of tom brown "to leave behind him the name of a fellow who never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big one." it expresses the race ideal of justice, patriotism, and the duty of living aright and dying nobly. it means also sympathy, pity, and love, for only the bravest can be the tenderest, and those most in love are most daring, and it includes politeness and the art of poetry. honor is a sense of personal dignity and worth, so the _bushi_ is truthful without an oath. at the tender age of five the _samurai_ is given a real sword, and this gives self-respect and responsibility. at fifteen, two sharp and artistic ones, long and short, are given him, which must be his companions for life. they were made by a smith whose shop is a sanctuary and who begins his work with prayer. they have the finest hilts and scabbards, and are besung as invested with a charm or spell, and symbolic of loyalty and self-control, for they must never be drawn lightly. he is taught fencing, archery, horsemanship, tactics, the spear, ethics and literature, anatomy, for offence and defense; he must be indifferent to money, hold his life cheap beside honor, and die if it is gone. this chivalry is called the soul of japan, and if it fades life is vulgarised. it is a code of ethics and physical training. football is a magnificent game if played on honor. an english tennis champion was lately playing a rubber game with the american champion. they were even and near the end when the american made a bad fluke which would have lost this country its championship. the english player, scorning to win on an accident, intentionally made a similar mistake that the best man might win. the chief evil of modern american football which now threatens its suppression in some colleges is the lust to win at any price, and results in tricks and secret practise. these sneaky methods impair the sentiment of honor which is the best and most potent of all the moral safeguards of youth, so that a young man can not be a true gentleman on the gridiron. this ethical degeneration is far worse than all the braises, sprains, broken bones and even deaths it causes. wrestling is a form of personal encounter which in antiquity reached a high development, and which, although now more known and practised as athletics of the body than of the soul, has certain special disciplinary capacities in its various forms. it represents the most primitive type of the struggle of unarmed and unprotected man with man. purged of its barbarities, and in its greco-roman form and properly subject to rules, it cultivates more kinds of movements than any other form--for limbs, trunk, neck, hand, foot, and all in the upright and in every prone position. it, too, has its manual of feints, holds, tricks, and specialties, and calls out wariness, quickness, strength, and shiftiness. victory need involve no cruelty or even pain to the vanquished. the very closeness of body to body, emphasizing flexor rather than extensor arm muscles, imparts to it a peculiar tone, gives it a vast variety of possible activities, developing many alternatives at every stage, and tempts to many undiscovered forms of permanent mayhem. its struggle is usually longer and less interrupted by pauses than pugilism, and its situations and conclusions often develop slowly, so that all in all, its character among contests is unique. as a school of posture for art, its varieties are extremely manifold and by no means developed, for it contains every kind of emphasis of every part and calls out every muscle group and attitude of the human body; hence its training is most generic and least specialized, and victories have been won by very many kinds of excellence. perhaps nothing is more opposed to the idea of a gentleman than the _sæva animi tempestas_ [fierce tempest of the soul] of anger. a testy, quarrelsome, mucky humor is antisocial, and an outburst of rage is repulsive. even non-resistance, turning the other cheek, has its victories and may be a method of moral combat. a strong temper well controlled and kept in leash makes a kinetic character; but in view of bullying, unfair play, cruel injustice to the weak and defenseless, of outrageous wrong that the law can not reach, patience and forbearance may cease to be virtues, and summary redress may have a distinct advantage to the ethical nature of man and to social order, and the strenuous soul must fight or grow stagnant or flabby. if too repressed, righteous indignation may turn to sourness and sulks, and the disposition be spoiled. hence the relief and exhilaration of an outbreak that often clears the psychic atmosphere like a thunderstorm, and gives the "peace that passeth understanding" so often dilated on by our correspondents. rather than the abject fear of making enemies whatever the provocation, i would praise those whose best title of honor is the kind of enemies they make. better even an occasional nose dented by a fist, a broken bone, a rapier-scarred face, or even sometimes the sacrifice of the life of one of our best academic youth than stagnation, general cynicism and censoriousness, bodily and psychic cowardice, and moral corruption, if this indeed be, as it sometimes is, its real alternative. so closely are love and war connected that not only is individual pugnacity greatly increased at the period of sexual maturity, when animals acquire or develop horns, fangs, claws, spurs, and weapons of offense and defense, but a new spirit of organization arises which makes teams possible or more permanent. football, baseball, cricket, etc., and even boating can become schools of mental and moral training. first, the rules of the game are often intricate, and to master and observe them effectively is no mean training for the mind controlling the body. these are steadily being revised and improved, and the reasons for each detail of construction and conduct of the game require experience and insight into human nature. then the subordination of each member to the whole and to a leader cultivates the social and coöperative instincts, while the honor of the school, college, or city, which each team represents, is confided to each and all. group loyalty in anglo-saxon games, which shows such a marked increment in coördination and self-subordination at the dawn of puberty as to constitute a distinct change in the character of sports at this age, can be so utilized as to develop a spirit of service and devotion not only to town, country, and race, but to god and the church. self must be merged and a sportsmanlike spirit cultivated that prefers defeat to tricks and secret practise, and a clean game to the applause of rooters and fans, intent only on victory, however won. the long, hard fight against professionalism that brings in husky muckers, who by every rule of true courtesy and chivalry belong outside academic circles, scrapping and underhand advantages, is a sad comment on the character and spirit of these games, and eliminates the best of their educational advantages. the necessity of intervention, which has imposed such great burdens on faculties and brought so much friction with the frenzy of scholastic sentiment in the hot stage of seasonal enthusiasms, when fanned to a white heat by the excessive interest of friends and patrons and the injurious exploitation of the press, bears sad testimony to the strength and persistence of warlike instincts from our heredity. but even thus the good far predominates. the elective system has destroyed the class games, and our institutions have no units like the english colleges to be pitted against each other, and so colleges grow, an ever smaller percentage of students obtain the benefit of practise on the teams, while electioneering methods often place second-best men in place of the best. but both students and teachers are slowly learning wisdom in the dear school of experience. on the whole, there is less license in "breaking training" and in celebrating victories, and even at their worst, good probably predominates, while the progress of recent years bids us hope. finally, military ideals and methods of psycho-physical education are helpful regulations of the appetite for combat, and on the whole more wholesome and robust than those which are merely esthetic. marching in step gives proper and uniform movement of legs, arms, and carriage of body; the manual of arms, with evolution and involution of figures in the ranks, gives each a corporate feeling of membership, and involves care of personal appearance and accouterments, while the uniform levels social distinction in dress. for the french and italian and especially the german and russian adolescent of the lower classes, the two or three years of compulsory military service is often compared to an academic course, and the army is called, not without some justification, the poor man's university. it gives severe drill, strict discipline, good and regular hours, plain but wholesome fare and out-of-door exercise, exposure, travel, habits of neatness, many useful knacks and devices, tournaments and mimic or play battles; these, apart from its other functions, make this system a great promoter of national health and intelligence. naval schools for midshipmen, who serve before the mast, schools on board ship that visit a wide curriculum of ports each year, cavalry schools, where each boy is given a horse to care for, study and train, artillery courses and even an army drill-master in an academy, or uniform, and a few exterior features of soldierly life, all give a distinct character to the spirit of any institution. the very fancy of being in any sense a soldier opens up a new range of interests too seldom utilized; and tactics, army life and service, military history, battles, patriotism, the flag, and duties to country, should always erect a new standard of honor. youth should embrace every opportunity that offers in this line, and instruction should greatly increase the intellectual opportunities created by every interest in warfare. it would be easy to create pregnant courses on how soldiers down the course of history have lived, thought, felt, fought, and died, how great battles were won and what causes triumphed in them, and to generalize many of the best things taught in detail in the best schools of war in different grades and lands. a subtle but potent intersexual influence is among the strongest factors of all adolescent sport. male birds and beasts show off their charms of beauty and accomplishment in many a liturgy of love antics in the presence of the female. this instinct seems somehow continuous with the growth of ornaments in the mating season. song, tumbling, balking, mock fights, etc., are forms of animal courtship. the boy who turns cartwheels past the home of the girl of his fancy, is brilliant, brave, witty, erect, strong in her presence, and elsewhere dull and commonplace enough, illustrates the same principle. the true cake-walk as seen in the south is perhaps the purest expression of this impulse to courtship antics seen in man, but its irradiations are many and pervasive. the presence of the fair sex gives tonicity to youth's muscles and tension to his arteries to a degree of which he is rarely conscious. defeat in all contests is more humiliating and victory more glorious thereby. each sex is constantly passing the examination of the other, and each judges the other by standards different from its own. alas for the young people who are not different with the other sex from what they are with their own!--and some are transformed into different beings. achievement proclaims ability to support, defend, bring credit and even fame to the object of future choice, and no good point is lost. physical force and skill, and above all, victory and glory, make a hero and invest him with a romantic glamour, which, even though concealed by conventionality or etiquette, is profoundly felt and makes the winner more or less irresistible. the applause of men and of mates is sweet and even intoxicating, but that of ladies is ravishing. by universal acclaim the fair belong to the brave, strong, and victorious. this stimulus is wholesome and refining. as is shown later, a bashful youth often selects a maiden onlooker and is sometimes quite unconsciously dominated in his every movement by a sense of her presence, stranger and apparently unnoticed though she be, although in the intellectual work of coeducation girls are most influenced thus. in athletics this motive makes for refinement and good form. the ideal knight, however fierce and terrible, must not be brutal, but show capacity for fine feeling, tenderness, magnanimity, and forbearance. evolutionists tell us that woman has domesticated and educated savage man and taught him all his virtues by exercising her royal prerogative of selecting in her mate just those qualities that pleased her for transmission to future generations and eliminating others distasteful to her. if so, she is still engaged in this work as much as ever, and in his dull, slow way man feels that her presence enforces her standards, abhorrent though it would be to him to compromise in one iota his masculinity. most plays and games in which both sexes participate have some of the advantages with some of the disadvantages of coeducation. where both are partners rather than antagonists, there is less eviration. a gallant man would do his best to help, but his worst not to beat a lady. thus, in general, the latter performs her best in her true rule of sympathetic spectator rather than as fellow player, and is now an important factor in the physical education of adolescents. how pervasive this femininity is, which is slowly transforming our schools, is strikingly seen in the church. gulick holds that the reason why only some seven per cent of the young men of the country are in the churches, while most members and workers are women, is that the qualities demanded are the feminine ones of love, rest, prayer, trust, desire for fortitude to endure, a sense of atonement--traits not involving ideals that most stir young men. the church has not yet learned to appeal to the more virile qualities. fielding hall[ ] asks why christ and buddha alone of great religious teachers were rejected by their own race and accepted elsewhere. he answers that these mild beliefs of peace, nonresistance, and submission, rejected by virile warrior races, jews and ancient hindus, were adopted where women were free and led in these matters. confucianism, mohammedanism, etc., are virile, and so indigenous, and in such forms of faith and worship women have small place. this again suggests how the sex that rules the heart controls men. too much can hardly be said in favor of cold baths and swimming at this age. marro[ ] quotes father kneipp, and almost rivals his hydrotherapeutic enthusiasm. cold bathing sends the blood inward partly by the cold which contracts the capillaries of the skin and tissue immediately underlying it, and partly by the pressure of the water over all the dermal surface, quickens the activity of kidneys, lungs, and digestive apparatus, and the reactive glow is the best possible tonic for dermal circulation. it is the best of all gymnastics for the nonstriated or involuntary muscles and for the heart and blood vessels. this and the removal of the products of excretion preserve all the important dermal functions which are so easily and so often impaired in modern life, lessen the liability to skin diseases, promote freshness of complexion; and the moral effects of plunging into cold and supporting the body in deep water is not inconsiderable in strengthening a spirit of hardihood and reducing overtenderness to sensory discomforts. the exercise of swimming is unique in that nearly all the movements and combinations are such as are rarely used otherwise, and are perhaps in a sense ancestral and liberal rather than directly preparatory for future avocations. its stimulus for heart and lungs is, by general consent of all writers upon the subject, most wholesome and beneficial. nothing so directly or quickly reduces to the lowest point the plethora of the sex organs. the very absence of clothes and running on the beach is exhilarating and gives a sense of freedom. where practicable it is well to dispense with bathing suits, even the scantiest. the warm bath tub is enfeebling and degenerative, despite the cold spray later, while the free swim in cold water is most invigorating. happily, city officials, teachers, and sanitarians are now slowly realizing the great improvement in health and temper that comes from bathing and are establishing beach and surf, spray, floating and plunge summer baths and swimming pools; often providing instruction even in swimming in clothes, undressing in the water, treading water, and rescue work, free as well as fee days, bathing suits, and, in london, places for nude bathing after dark; establishing time and distance standards with certificates and even prizes; annexing toboggan slides, swings, etc., realizing that in both the preference of youth and in healthful and moral effects, probably nothing outranks this form of exercise. such is its strange fascination that, according to one comprehensive census, the passion to get to the water outranks all other causes of truancy, and plays an important part in the motivation of runaways. in the immense public establishment near san francisco, provided by private munificence, there are accommodations for all kinds of bathing in hot and cold and in various degrees of fresh and salt water, in closed spaces and in the open sea, for small children and adults, with many appliances and instructors, all in one great covered arena with seats in an amphitheater for two thousand spectators, and many adjuncts and accessories. so elsewhere the presence of visitors is now often invited and provided for. sometimes wash-houses and public laundries are annexed. open hours and longer evenings and seasons are being prolonged. prominent among the favorite games of early puberty and the years just before are those that involve passive motion and falling, like swinging in its many forms, including the may-pole and single rope varieties. mr. lee reports that children wait late in the evening and in cold weather for a turn at a park swing. psychologically allied to these are wheeling and skating. places for the latter are now often provided by the fire department, which in many cities floods hundreds of empty lots. ponds are cleared of snow and horse-plowed, perhaps by the park commission, which often provides lights and perhaps ices the walks and streets for coasting, erects shelters, and devises space economy for as many diamonds, bleachers, etc., as possible. games of hitting, striking, and throwing balls and other objects, hockey, tennis, all the courts of which are usually crowded, golf and croquet, and sometimes fives, cricket, bowling, quoits, curling, etc., have great "thumogenic" or emotional power. leg exercise has perhaps a higher value than that of any other part. man is by definition an upright being, but only after a long apprenticeship.[ ] thus the hand was freed from the necessity of locomotion and made the servant of the mind. locomotion overcomes the tendency to sedentary habits in modern schools and life, and helps the mind to helpful action, so that a peripatetic philosophy is more normal than that of the easy chair and the study lamp. hill-climbing is unexcelled as a stimulus at once of heart, lungs, and blood. if hippocrates is right, inspiration is possible only on a mountain-top. walking, running, dancing, skating, coasting are also alterative and regulative of sex, and there is a deep and close though not yet fully explained reciprocity between the two. arm work is relatively too prominent a feature in gymnasia. those who lead excessively sedentary lives are prone to be turbulent and extreme in both passion and opinion, as witness the oft-adduced revolutionary disposition of cobblers. the play problem is now fairly open and is vast in its relation to many other things. roof playgrounds, recreation piers, schoolyards and even school-buildings, open before and after school hours; excursions and outings of many kinds and with many purposes, which seem to distinctly augment growth; occupation during the long vacation when, beginning with spring, most juvenile crime is committed; theatricals, which according to some police testimony lessen the number of juvenile delinquents; boys' clubs with more or less self-government of the george junior republic and other types, treated in another chapter; nature-study; the distinctly different needs and propensities of both good and evil in different nationalities; the advantages of playground fences and exclusion, their disciplinary worth, and their value as resting places; the liability that "the boy without a playground will become the father without a job"; the relation of play and its slow transition to manual and industrial education at the savage age when a boy abhors all regular occupation; the necessity of exciting interest, not by what is done for boys, but by what they do; the adjustment of play to sex; the determination of the proper average age of maximal zest in and good from sandbox, ring-toss, bean-bag, shuffle-board, peg top, charity, funeral play, prisoner's base, hill-dill; the value and right use of apparatus, and of rabbits, pigeons, bees, and a small menagerie in the playground; tan-bark, clay, the proper alternation of excessive freedom, that often turns boys stale through the summer, with regulated activities; the disciplined "work of play" and sedentary games; the value of the washboard rubbing and of the hand and knee exercise of scrubbing, which a late writer would restore for all girls with clever and greek-named play apparatus; as well as digging, shoveling, tamping, pick-chopping, and hod-carrying exercises in the form of games for boys; the relations of women's clubs, parents' clubs, citizens' leagues and unions, etc., to all this work--such are the practical problems. the playground movement encounters its chief obstacles in the most crowded and slum districts, where its greatest value and success was expected for boys in the early teens, who without supervision are prone to commit abuses upon property and upon younger children,[ ] and are so disorderly as to make the place a nuisance, and who resent the "fathering" of the police, without, at least, the minimum control of a system of permits and exclusions. if hoodlums play at all, they become infatuated with baseball and football, especially punting; they do not take kindly to the soft large ball of the hall house or the civic league, and prefer at first scrub games with individual self-exhibition to organized teams. lee sees the "arboreal instincts of our progenitors" in the very strong propensity of boys from ten to fourteen to climb in any form; to use traveling rings, generally occupied constantly to their fullest extent; to jump from steps and catch a swinging trapeze; to go up a ladder and slide down poles; to use horizontal and parallel bars. the city boy has plenty of daring at this age, but does not know what he can do and needs more supervision than the country youth. the young tough is commonly present, and though admired and copied by younger boys, it is, perhaps, as often for his heroic as for his bad traits. dr. sargent and others have well pointed out that athletics afford a wealth of new and profitable topics for discussion and enthusiasm which helps against the triviality and mental vacuity into which the intercourse of students is prone to lapse. it prompts to discussion of diet and regimen. it gives a new standard of honor. for a member of a team to break training would bring reprobation and ostracism, for he is set apart to win fame for his class or college. it supplies a splendid motive against all errors and vices that weaken or corrupt the body. it is a wholesome vent for the reckless courage that would otherwise go to disorder or riotous excess. it supplies new and advantageous topics for compositions and for terse, vigorous, and idiomatic theme-writing, is a great aid to discipline, teaches respect for deeds rather than words or promises, lays instructors under the necessity of being more interesting, that their work be not jejune or dull by contrast; again the business side of managing great contests has been an admirable school for training young men to conduct great and difficult financial operations, sometimes involving $ , or more, and has thus prepared some for successful careers. it furnishes now the closest of all links between high school and college, reduces the number of those physically unfit for college, and should give education generally a more real and vigorous ideal. its obvious dangers are distraction from study and overestimation of the value of victory, especially in the artificial glamours which the press and the popular furor give to great games; unsportsmanlike secret tricks and methods, over-emphasis of combative and too stalwart impulses, and a disposition to carry things by storm, by rush-line tactics; friction with faculties, and censure or neglect of instructors who take unpopular sides on hot questions; action toward license after games, spasmodic excitement culminating in excessive strain for body and mind, with alternations of reaction; "beefiness"; overdevelopment of the physical side of life, and, in some cases, premature features of senility in later life, undergrowth of the accessory motor parts and powers, and erethic diathesis that makes steady and continued mental toil seem monotonous, dull, and boresome. the propensity to codify sports, to standardize the weight and size of their implements, and to reduce them to what spencer calls regimentation, is a outcrop of uniformitarianism that works against that individuation which is one of the chief advantages of free play. this, to be sure, has developed old-fashioned rounders to modern baseball, and this is well, but it is seen in the elaborate draconian laws, diplomacy, judicial and legislative procedures, concerning "eligibility, transfer, and even sale of players." in some games international conformity is gravely discussed. even where there is no tyranny and oppression, good form is steadily hampering nature and the free play of personality. togs and targets, balls and bats, rackets and oars are graded or numbered, weighed, and measured, and every emergency is legislated on and judged by an autocratic martinet, jealous of every prerogative and conscious of his dignity. all this separates games from the majority and makes for specialism and professionalism. not only this, but men are coming to be sized up for hereditary fitness in each point and for each sport. runners, sprinters, and jumpers,[ ] we are told, on the basis of many careful measurements, must be tall, with slender bodies, narrow but deep chests, longer legs than the average for their height, the lower leg being especially long, with small calf, ankle, and feet, small arms, narrow hips, with great power of thoracic inflation, and thighs of small girth. every player must be studied by trainers for ever finer individual adjustments. his dosage of work must be kept well within the limits of his vitality, and be carefully adjusted to his recuperative power. his personal nascent periods must be noted, and initial embarrassment carefully weeded out. the field of play is as wide as life and its varieties far outnumber those of industries and occupations in the census. plays and games differ in seasons, sex, and age. mcghee[ ] has shown on the basis of some , children, that running plays are pretty constant for boys from six to seventeen, but that girls are always far behind boys and run steadily less from eight to eighteen. in games of choice, boys showed a slight rise at sixteen and seventeen, and girls a rapid increase at eleven and a still more rapid one after sixteen. in games of imitation girls excel and show a marked, as boys do a slight, pubescent fall. in those games involving rivalry boys at first greatly excel girls, but are overtaken by the latter in the eighteenth year, both showing marked pubescent increment. girls have the largest number of plays and specialise on a few less than boys, and most of these plays are of the unorganized kinds. johnson[ ] selected from a far larger number plays and games and arranged the best of them in a course by school grades, from the first to the eighth, inclusive, and also according to their educational value as teaching observation, reading and spelling, language, arithmetic, geography, history, and biography, physical training, and specifically as training legs, hand, arm, back, waist, abdominal muscles, chest, etc. most of our best games are very old and, johnson thinks, have deteriorated. but children are imitative and not inventive in their games, and easily learn new ones. since the berlin play congress in the sentiment has grown that these are of national importance and are preferable to gymnastics both for soul and body. hence we have play-schools, teachers, yards, and courses, both for their own value and also to turn on the play impulse to aid in the drudgery of school work. several have thought that a well-rounded, liberal education could be given by plays and games alone on the principle that there is no profit where there is no pleasure or true euphoria. play is motor poetry. too early distinction between play and work should not be taught. education perhaps should really begin with directing childish sports aright. froebel thought it the purest and most spiritual activity of childhood, the germinal leaves of all later life. schooling that lacks recreation favors dulness, for play makes the mind alert and its joy helps all anabolic activities. says brinton, "the measure of value of work is the amount of play there is in it, and the measure of value of play is the amount of work there is in it." johnson adds that "it is doubtful if a great man ever accomplished his life work without having reached a play interest in it." sully[ ] deplores the increase of "agolasts" or "non-laughers" in our times in merry old england[ ] every one played games; and laughter, their natural accompaniment, abounded. queen elizabeth's maids of honor played tag with hilarity, but the spirit of play with full abandon seems taking its departure from our overworked, serious, and tons, age. to requote stevenson with variation, as _laborari_, [to labor] so _ludere, et joculari orare sunt_. [to play and to jest are to pray] laughter itself, as kühne long ago showed, is one of the most precious forms of exercise, relieving the arteries of their tension.[ ] the antithesis between play and work is generally wrongly conceived, for the difference is essentially in the degree of strength of the psycho-physic motivations. the young often do their hardest work in play. with interest, the most repellent tasks become pure sport, as in the case johnson reports of a man who wanted a pile of stone thrown into a ditch and, by kindling a fire in the ditch and pretending the stones were buckets of water, the heavy and long-shirked job was done by tired boys with shouting and enthusiasm. play, from one aspect of it, is superfluous energy over and above what is necessary to digest, breathe, keep the heart and organic processes going; and most children who can not play, if they have opportunity, can neither study nor work without overdrawing their resources of vitality. bible psychology conceives the fall of man as the necessity of doing things without zest, and this is not only ever repeated but now greatly emphasized when youth leaves the sheltered paradise of play to grind in the mills of modern industrial civilization. the curse is overcome only by those who come to love their tasks and redeem their toil again to play. play, hardly less than work, can be to utter exhaustion; and because it draws upon older stores and strata of psycho-physic impulsion its exhaustion may even more completely drain our kinetic resources, if it is too abandoned or prolonged. play can do just as hard and painful tasks as work, for what we love is done with whole and undivided personality. work, as too often conceived, is all body and no soul, and makes for duality and not totality. its constraint is external, mechanical, or it works by fear and not love. not effort but zestless endeavor is the tragedy of life. interest and play are one and inseparable as body and soul. duty itself is not adequately conceived and felt if it is not pleasure, and is generally too feeble and fitful in the young to awaken much energy or duration of action. play is from within from congenital hereditary impulsion. it is the best of all methods of organizing instincts. its cathartic or purgative function regulates irritability, which may otherwise be drained or vented in wrong directions, exactly as breuer[ ] shows psychic traumata may, if overtense, result in "hysterical convulsions." it is also the best form of self-expression; and its advantage is variability, following the impulsion of the idle, perhaps hyperemic, and overnourished centers most ready to act. it involves play illusion and is the great agent of unity and totalization of body and soul, while its social function develops solidarity and unison of action between individuals. the dances, feasts, and games of primitive people, wherein they rehearse hunting and war and act and dance out their legends, bring individuals and tribes together.[ ] work is menial, cheerless, grinding, regular, and requires more precision and accuracy and, because attended with less ease and pleasure and economy of movement, is more liable to produce erratic habits. antagonistic as the forms often are, it may be that, as carr says, we may sometimes so suffuse work with the play spirit, and _vice versa_, that the present distinction between work and play will vanish, the transition will be less tragic and the activities of youth will be slowly systematised into a whole that better fits his nature and needs; or, if not this, we may at least find the true proportion and system between drudgery and recreation. the worst product of striving to do things with defective psychic impulsion is fatigue in its common forms, which slows down the pace, multiplies errors and inaccuracies, and develops slovenly habits, ennui, flitting will specters, velleities and caprices, and neurasthenic symptoms generally. it brings restlessness, and a tendency to many little heterogeneous, smattering efforts that weaken the will and leave the mind like a piece of well-used blotting paper, covered with traces and nothing legible. all beginnings are easy, and only as we leave the early stages of proficiency behind and press on in either physical or mental culture and encounter difficulties, do individual differences and the tendency of weak will, to change and turn to something else increase. perhaps the greatest disparity between men is the power to make a long concentrative, persevering effort, for _in der beschränkung zeigt sich der meister_ [the master shows himself in limitation]. now no kind or line of culture is complete till it issues in motor habits, and makes a well-knit soul texture that admits concentration series in many directions and that can bring all its resources to bear at any point. the brain unorganized by training has, to recur to richter's well-worn aphorism, saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal, or all the ingredients of gunpowder, but never makes a grain of it because they never get together. thus willed action is the language of complete men and the goal of education. when things are mechanized by right habituation, there is still further gain; for not only is the mind freed for further and higher work, but this deepest stratum of motor association is a plexus that determines not only conduct and character, but even beliefs. the person who deliberates is lost, if the intellect that doubts and weighs alternatives is less completely organised than habits. all will culture is intensive and should safeguard us against the chance influence of life and the insidious danger of great ideas in small and feeble minds. now fatigue, personal and perhaps racial, is just what arrests in the incomplete and mere memory or noetic stage. it makes weak bodies that command, and not strong ones that obey. it divorces knowing and doing, _kennen_ and _können_, a separation which the greeks could not conceive because for them knowledge ended in skill or was exemplified in precepts and proverbs that were so clear cut that the pain of violating them was poignant. ideas must be long worked over till life speaks as with the rifle and not with the shotgun, and still less with the water hose. the purest thought, if true, is only action repressed to be ripened to more practical form. not only do muscles come before mind, will before intelligence, and sound ideas rest on a motor basis, but all really useless knowledge tends to be eliminated as error or superstition. the roots of play lie close to those of creative imagination and idealism. the opposite extreme is the factitious and superficial motivation of fear, prizes, examinations, artificial and immediate rewards and penalties, which can only tattoo the mind and body with conventional patterns pricked in, but which lead an unreal life in the soul because they have no depth of soil in nature or heredity. however precious and coherent in themselves, all subject-matters thus organized are mere lugs, crimps, and frills. all such culture is spurious, unreal, and parasitic. it may make a scholastic or sophistic mind, but a worm is at the root and, with a dim sense of the vanity of all knowledge that does not become a rule of life, some form of pessimism is sure to supervene in every serious soul. with age a civilization accumulates such impedimenta, traditional flotsam and jetsam, and race fatigue proceeds with equal step with its increasing volume. immediate utilities are better, but yet not so much better than acquisitions that have no other than a school or examination value. if, as ruskin says, all true work is praise, all true play is love and prayer. instil into a boy's soul learning which he sees and feels not to have the highest worth and which can not become a part of his active life and increase it, and his freshness, spontaneity, and the fountains of play slowly run dry in him, and his youth fades to early desiccation. the instincts, feelings, intuitions, the work of which is always play, are superseded by method, grind, and education by instruction which is only an effort to repair the defects of heredity, for which, at its best, it is vulgar, pinchbeck substitute. the best play is true genius, which always comes thus into the world, and has this way of doing its work, and all the contents of the memory pouches is luggage to be carried rather than the vital strength that carries burdens. grosswell says that children are young because they play, and not _vice versa_; and he might have added, men grow old because they stop playing, and not conversely, for play is, at bottom, growth, and at the top of the intellectual scale it is the eternal type of research from sheer love of truth. home, school, church, state, civilization, are measured in one supreme scale of values, viz., whether and how, for they aid in bringing youth to its fullest maturity. even vice, crime, and decline are often only arrest or backsliding or reversion. national and racial decline beginning in eliminating one by one the last and highest styles of development of body and mind, mental stimulus of excessive dosage lowers general nutrition. a psychologist that turns his back on mere subtleties and goes to work in a life of service has here a great opportunity, and should not forget, as horace mann said, "that for all that grows, one former is worth one hundred reformers." [footnote : interest in relation to muscular exercise. american physical education review, june, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : the influence of exercise upon growth by frederic burk. american physical education review, december, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : a study of dolls, by g. stanley hall and a.c. ellis. pedagogical seminary, december, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : studies in imagination, by lilian h. chalmers. pedagogical seminary, april, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : some psychical aspects of physical exercise. popular science monthly, october, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : amusements of worcester school children. pedagogical seminary, september, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : a study in the play life of some south carolina children. pedagogical seminary, december, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : arbeit und rythmus. trubner, leipzig, .] [footnote : descent of man. d. appleton and co., , vol. , chap. vi, p. _et seq_] [footnote : teasing and bullying. pedagogical seminary, april, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : see my study of anger. american journal of psychology, july, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : der deutsche student am ende des jahrhunderts, th ed., göschen, leipzig, . see also h. p. shelden: history and pedagogy of american student societies, new york, , p. _et seq_.] [footnote : bushido: the soul of japan. an exposition of japanese thought, by inazo nitobé. new york, , pp. _et seq_.] [footnote : the hearts of men. macmillan, , chap. xxii.] [footnote : la puberté. schleicher frères, éditeurs, paris, .] [footnote : see a.w. trettien. creeping and walking. american journal of psychology, october, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : constructive and preventive philanthropy, by joseph lee. macmillan, new york, , chaps. x and xi.] [footnote : c.o. bernies. physical characteristics of the runner and jumper. american physical education review, september, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : a study in the play life of some south carolina children. pedagogical seminary, december, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : education by plays and games. pedagogical seminary, october, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : an essay on laughter. longmans, green and co., london, , p. _et seq_.] [footnote : see brand's popular antiquities of great britain, vols., london, .] [footnote : psychology of tickling, laughing, and the comic, by g. stanley hall and arthur allin. american journal of psychology, october, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : i. breuer and s. freud. studien über hysterie. f. deuticke, wien, . see especially p. _et seq_.] [footnote : see a valuable discussion by h. a. carr. the survival values of play, investigations of the department of psychology and education of the university of colorado, arthur allin, ph.d., editor, november, , vol. , pp. - ] * * * * * chapter vii faults, lies, and crimes classifications of children's faults--peculiar children--real faults as distinguished from interference with the teacher's ease--truancy, its nature and effects--the genesis of crime--the lie, its classes and relations to imagination--predatory activities--gangs--causes of crime--the effects of stories of crime--temibility--juvenile crime and its treatment. siegert[ ] groups children of problematical nature into the following sixteen classes: the sad, the extremely good or bad, star-gazers, scatter-brains, apathetic, misanthropic, doubters and investigators, reverent, critical, executive, stupid and clownish, naive, funny, anamnesic, disposed to learn, and _blasé_; patience, foresight, and self-control, he thinks, are chiefly needed. a unique and interesting study was undertaken by közle[ ] by collecting and studying thirty german writers on pedagogical subjects since pestalozzi, and cataloguing all the words they use describing the faults of children. in all, this gave faults, far more in number than their virtues. these were classified as native and of external origin, acute and chronic, egoistic and altruistic, greed, perverted honor, self-will, falsity, laziness, frivolity, distraction, precocity, timidity, envy and malevolence, ingratitude, quarrelsomeness, cruelty, superstition; and the latter fifteen were settled on as resultant groups, and the authors who describe them best are quoted. bohannon[ ] on the basis of _questionnaire_ returns classified peculiar children as heavy, tall, short, small, strong, weak, deft, agile, clumsy, beautiful, ugly, deformed, birthmarked, keen and precocious, defective in sense, mind, and speech, nervous, clean, dainty, dirty, orderly, obedient, disobedient, disorderly, teasing, buoyant, buffoon, cruel, selfish, generous, sympathetic, inquisitive, lying, ill-tempered, silent, dignified, frank, loquacious, courageous, timid, whining, spoiled, gluttonous and only child. marro[ ] tabulated the conduct of , boys in gymnasial and lyceal classes in italy from eleven to eighteen years of age (see table given above). conduct was marked as good, bad, and indifferent, according to the teacher's estimate, and was good at eighteen in per cent of the cases; at eleven in per cent; at seventeen in per cent; and at fourteen in only per cent. in positively bad conduct, the age of fifteen led, thirteen and fourteen were but little better, while it improved at sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen. in general, conduct was good at eleven; declined at twelve and thirteen; said, to its worst at fourteen; and then improved in yearly increments that did not differ much, and at seventeen was nearly as good as at eleven, and at eighteen four points better. [illustration: percentage x age] he computed also the following percentage table of the causes of punishments in certain italian schools for girls and boys near pubescent ages: boys girls quarrels and blows . . laziness, negligence . . untidiness . . improper language . . indecent acts and words . . refusal to work . . various offenses against discipline . . truancy . . plots to run away . . running away . . mr. sears[ ] reports in percentages statistics of the punishments received by a thousand children for the following offenses: disorder, - / ; disobedience, ; carelessness, - / ; running away, - / ; quarreling, ; tardiness, - / ; rudeness, ; fighting, - / ; lying, ; stealing, ; miscellaneous, - / . he names a long list of punishable offenses, such as malice, swearing, obscenity, bullying, lying, cheating, untidiness, insolence, insult, conspiracy, disobedience, obstinacy, rudeness, noisiness, ridicule; injury to books, building, or other property; and analyzes at length the kinds of punishment, modes of making it fit the offense and the nature of the child, the discipline of consequences, lapse of time between the offense and its punishment, the principle of slight but sure tasks as penalties, etc. triplett[ ] attempted a census of faults and defeats named by the teacher. here inattention by far led all others. defects of sense and speech, carelessness, indifference, lack of honor and of self-restraint, laziness, dreamy listlessness, nervousness, mental incapacity, lack of consideration for others, vanity, affectation, disobedience, untruthfulness, grumbling, etc., follow. inattention to a degree that makes some children at the mercy of their environment and all its changes, and their mental life one perpetual distraction, is a fault which teachers, of course, naturally observe. children's views of their own faults and those of other children lay a very different emphasis. here fighting, bullying, and teasing lead all others; then come stealing, bad manners, lying, disobedience, truancy, cruelty to animals, untidiness, selfishness, etc. parents' view of this subject triplett found still different. here wilfulness and obstinacy led all others with teasing, quarreling, dislike of application and effort, and many others following. the vast number of faults mentioned contrasts very strikingly with the seven deadly sins. in a suggestive statistical study on the relations of the conduct of children to the weather, dexter[ ] found that excessive humidity was most productive of misdemeanors; that when the temperature was between and the probability of bad conduct was increased per cent, when between and it was increased per cent. abnormal barometric pressure, whether great or small, was found to increase misconduct per cent; abnormal movements of the wind increased it from to per cent; while the time of year and precipitation seemed to have almost no effect. while the effect of weather has been generally recognized by superintendents and teachers and directors of prisons and asylums, and even by banks, which in london do not permit clerks to do the more important bookkeeping during very foggy days, the statistical estimates of its effect in general need larger numbers for more valuable determinations. temperature is known to have a very distinct effect upon crime, especially suicide and truancy. workmen do less in bad weather, blood pressure is modified, etc.[ ] in his study of truancy, kline[ ] starts with the assumption that the maximum metabolism is always consciously or unconsciously sought, and that migrations are generally away from the extremes of hot and cold toward an optimum temperature. the curve of truancies and runaways increases in a marked ratio at puberty, which probably represents the age of natural majority among primitive people. dislike of school, the passion for out-of-door life, and more universal interests in man and nature now arise, so that runaways may be interpreted as an instinctive rebellion against limitations of freedom and unnatural methods of education as well as against poor homes. hunger is one of its most potent, although often unconscious causes. the habitual environment now begins to seem dull and there is a great increase in impatience at restraint. sometimes there is a mania for simply going away and enjoying the liberty of nomadic life. just as good people in foreign parts sometimes allow themselves unwonted liberties, so vagrancy increases crime. the passion to get to and play at or in the water is often strangely dominant. it seems so fine out of doors, especially in the spring, and the woods and fields make it so hard to voluntarily incarcerate oneself in the schoolroom, that pubescent boys and even girls often feel like animals in captivity. they long intensely for the utter abandon of a wilder life, and very characteristic is the frequent discarding of foot and head dress and even garments in the blind instinct to realise again the conditions of primitive man. the manifestations of this impulse, if read aright, are grave arraignments of the lack of adaptability of the child's environment to his disposition and nature, and with home restraints once broken, the liabilities to every crime, especially theft, are enormously increased. the truant, although a cording to kline's measurements slightly smaller than the average child, is more energetic and is generally capable of the greatest activity and usefulness in more out-of-door vocations. truancy is augmented, too, just in proportion as legitimate and interesting physical exercise is denied. the vagrant, itinerant, vagabond, gadabout, hobo, and tramp, that riis has made so interesting, is an arrested, degenerate, or perverted being who abhors work; feels that the world owes him a living; and generally has his first real nomad experience in the teens or earlier. it is a chronic illusion of youth that gives "elsewhere" a special charm. in the immediate present things are mean, dulled by wont, and perhaps even nauseating because of familiarity. there must be a change of scene to see the world; man is not sessile but locomotor; and the moment his life becomes migratory all the restraints and responsibilities of settled life vanish. it is possible to steal and pass on undiscovered and unsuspected, and to steal again. the vagabond escapes the control of public sentiment, which normally is an external conscience, and having none of his own within him thus lapses to a feral state. the constraint of city, home, and school is especially irksome, and if to this repulsion is added the attraction of a love of nature and of perpetual change, we have the diathesis of the roadsman already developed. adolescence is the normal time of emancipation from the parental roof, when youth seeks to set up a home of its own, but the apprentice to life must wander far and long enough to find the best habitat in which to set up for himself. this is the spring season of emigration; and it should be an indispensable part of every life curriculum, just before settlement, to travel far and wide, if resources and inclination permit. but this stage should end in wisely chosen settlement where the young life can be independently developed, and that with more complacency and satisfaction because the place has been wisely chosen on the basis of a wide comparison. the chronic vagrant has simply failed to develop the reductives of this normal stage. crime is cryptogamous and flourishes in concealment, so that not only does falsehood facilitate it, but certain types of lies often cause and are caused by it. the beginning of wisdom in treatment is to discriminate between good and bad lies. my own study[ ] of the lies of normal children, by a method carefully devised in order to avoid all indelicacy to the childish consciousness, suggested the following distinct species of lies. it is often a well-marked epoch when the young child first learns that it can imagine and state things that have no objective counterpart in its life, and there is often a weird intoxication when some absurd and monstrous statement is made, while the first sensation of a deliberate break with truth causes a real excitement which is often the birth pang of the imagination. more commonly this is seen in childish play, which owes a part of its charm to self-deception. children make believe they are animals, doctors, ogres, play school, that they are dead, mimic all they see and hear. idealising temperaments sometimes prompt children of three or four suddenly to assert that they saw a pig with five ears, apples on a cherry tree, and other munchausen wonders, which really means merely that they have had a new mental combination independently of experience. sometimes their fancy is almost visualisation and develops into a kind of mythopeic faculty which spins clever yarns and suggests in a sense, quite as pregnant as froschmer asserts of all mental activity and of the universe itself, that all their life is imagination. its control and not its elimination in a gradgrind age of crass facts is what should be sought in the interests of the highest truthfulness and of the evolution of thought as something above reality, which prepares the way for imaginative literature. the life of hartley coleridge,[ ] by his brother, is one of many illustrations. he fancied cataract of what he named "jug-force" would burst out in a certain field and flow between populous banks, where an ideal government, long wars, and even a reform in spelling, would prevail, illustrated in a journal devoted to the affairs of this realm--all these developed in his imagination, where they existed with great reality for years. the vividness of this fancy resembles the pseudo-hallucinations of kandinsky. two sisters used to say, "let us play we are sisters," as if this made the relation more real. cagliostro found adolescent boys particularly apt for training for his exhibition of phrenological impostures, illustrating his thirty-five faculties. "he lied when he confessed he had lied," said a young sancho panza, who had believed the wild tales of another boy who later admitted their falsity. sir james mackintosh, near puberty, after reading roman history, used to fancy himself the emperor of constantinople, and carried on the administration of the realm for hours at a time. his fancies never quite became convictions, but adolescence is the golden age of this kind of dreamery and reverie which supplements reality and totalizes our faculties, and often gives a special charm to dramatic activities and in morbid cases to simulation and dissimulation. it is a state from which some of the bad, but far more of the good qualities of life and mind arise. these are the noble lies of poetry, art, and idealism, but their pedagogic regime must be wise. again with children as with savages, truth depends largely upon personal likes and dislikes. truth is for friends, and lies are felt to be quite right for enemies. the young often see no wrong in lies their friends wish told, but may collapse and confess when asked if they would have told their mother thus. boys best keep up complotted lies and are surer to own up if caught than girls. it is harder to cheat in school with a teacher who is liked. friendships are cemented by confidences and secrets, and when they wane, promises not to tell weaken in their validity. lies to the priest, and above all to god, are the worst. all this makes special attention to friendships, leaders, and favorites important, and suggests the high value of science for general veracity. the worst lies, perhaps, are those of selfishness. they ease children over many hard places in life, and are convenient covers for weakness and vice. these lies are, on the whole, judging from our census, most prevalent. they are also most corrupting and hard to correct. all bad habits particularly predispose to the lie of concealment; for those who do wrong are almost certain to have recourse to falsehood, and the sense of meanness thus slowly bred, which may be met by appeals to honor, for so much of which school life is responsible, is often mitigated by the fact that falsehoods are frequently resorted to in moments of danger and excitement, are easily forgotten when it is over, and rarely rankle. these, even more than the pseudomaniac cases mentioned later, grow rankly in those with criminal predispositions. the lie heroic is often justified as a means of noble ends. youth has an instinct which is wholesome for viewing moral situations as wholes. callow casualists are fond of declaring that it would be a duty to state that their mother was out when she was in, if it would save her life, although they perhaps would not lie to save their own. a doctor, many suggested, might tell an overanxious patient or friend that there was hope, saving his conscience perhaps by reflecting that there was hope, although they had it while he had none. the end at first in such cases may be very noble and the fib or quibble very petty, but worse lies for meaner objects may follow. youth often describes such situations with exhilaration as if there were a feeling of easement from the monotonous and tedious obligation of rigorous literal veracity, and here mentors are liable to become nervous and err. the youth who really gets interested in the conflict of duties may reverently be referred to the inner lie of his own conscience, the need of keeping which as a private tribunal is now apparent. many adolescents become craven literalists and distinctly morbid and pseudophobiac, regarding every deviation from scrupulously literal truth as alike heinous; and many systematized palliatives and casuistic word-splittings, methods of whispering or silently interpolating the words "not," "perhaps," or "i think," sometimes said over hundreds of times to neutralize the guilt of intended or unintended falsehoods, appear in our records as a sad product of bad methods. next to the selfish lie for protection--of special psychological interest for adolescent crime--is what we may call pseudomania, seen especially in pathological girls in their teens, who are honeycombed with selfishness and affectation and have a passion for always acting a part, attracting attention, etc. the recent literature of telepathy and hypnotism furnishes many striking examples of this diathesis of impostors of both sexes. it is a strange psychological paradox that some can so deliberately prefer to call black white and find distinct inebriation in flying diametrically in the face of truth and fact. the great impostors, whose entire lives have been a fabric of lies, are cases in point. they find a distinct pleasure not only in the sense of power which their ability to make trouble gives, but in the sense of making truth a lie, and of decreeing things into and out of existence. sheldon's interesting statistics show that among the institutional activities of american children,[ ] predatory organizations culminate from eleven to fifteen, and are chiefly among boys. these include bands of robbers, clubs for hunting and fishing, play armies, organized fighting bands between separate districts, associations for building forts, etc. this form of association is the typical one for boys of twelve. after this age their interests are gradually transferred to less loosely organized athletic clubs. sheldon's statistics are as follows: age total no. of predatory = girls societies ( ) = boys innocent though these predatory habits may be in small boys, if they are not naturally and normally reduced at the beginning of the teens and their energy worked off into athletic societies, they become dangerous. "the robber knight, the pirate chief, and the marauder become the real models." the stealing clubs gather edibles and even useless things, the loss of which causes mischief, into some den, cellar, or camp in the woods, where the plunder of their raids is collected. an organized gang of boy pilferers for the purpose of entering stores had a cache, where the stolen goods were brought together. some of these bands have specialized on electric bells and connections, or golf sticks and balls. jacob riis says that on the east side of new york, every corner has its gang with a program of defiance of law and order, where the young tough who is a coward alone becomes dangerous when he hunts with the pack. he is ambitious to get "pinched" or arrested and to pose as a hero. his vanity may obliterate common fear and custom as his mind becomes inflamed with flash literature and "penny dreadfuls." sometimes whole neighborhoods are terrorized so that no one dares to testify against the atrocities they commit. riis even goes so far as to say that "a bare enumeration of the names of the best-known gangs would occupy the pages of this book."[ ] the names are sufficiently suggestive--hell's kitchen gang, stable gang, dead men, floaters, rock, pay, hock gang, the soup-house gang, plug uglies, back-alley men, dead beats, cop beaters, and roasters, hell benders, chain gang, sheeny skinners, street cleaners, tough kids, sluggers, wild indians, cave and cellar men, moonlight howlers, junk club, crook gang, being some i have heard of. some of the members of these gangs never knew a home, were found perhaps as babies wrapped in newspapers, survivors of the seventy-two dead infants riis says were picked up on the streets in new york in , or of baby farming. they grow up street arabs, slum waifs, the driftwood of society, its flotsam and jetsam, or plankton, fighting for a warn corner in their resorts or living in crowded tenement-houses that rent for more than a house on fifth avenue. arrant cowards singly, they dare and do anything together. a gang stole a team in east new york and drove down the avenue, shopping to throw in supplies, one member sitting in the back of the wagon and shooting at all who interfered. one gang specialized on stealing baby carriages, depositing their inmates on the sidewalk. another blew up a grocery store because its owner refused a gift they demanded. another tried to saw off the head of a jewish pedler. one member killed another for calling him "no gent." six murderous assaults were made at one time by these gangs within a single week. one who is caught and does his "bit" or "stretch" is a hero, and when a leader is hanged, as has sometimes happened, he is almost envied for his notoriety. a frequent ideal is to pound a policeman with his own club. the gang federates all nationalities. property is depreciated and may be ruined if it is frequented by these gangs or becomes their lair or "hang-out." a citizen residing on the hudson procured a howitzer and pointed it at a boat gang, forbidding them to land on his river frontage. they have their calls, whistles, signs, rally suddenly from no one knows where, and vanish in the alleys, basements, roofs, and corridors they know so well. their inordinate vanity is well called the slum counterpart of self-esteem, and riis calls the gang a club run wild. they have their own ideality and a gaudy pinchbeck honor. a young tough, when arrested, wrenched away the policeman's club, dashed into the street, rescued a baby from a runaway, and came back and gave himself up. they batten on the yellowest literature. those of foreign descent, who come to speak our language better than their parents, early learn to despise them. gangs emulate each other in hardihood, and this is one cause of epidemics in crime. they passionately love boundless independence, are sometimes very susceptible to good influence if applied with great wisdom and discretion, but easily fall away. what is the true moral antitoxin for this class, or at least what is the safety-valve and how and when to pull it, we are now just beginning to learn, but it is a new specialty in the great work of salvage from the wreckage of city life. in london, where these groups are better organised and yet more numerous, war is often waged between them, weapons are used and murder is not so very infrequent. normally this instinct passes harmlessly over into associations for physical training, which furnishes a safe outlet for these instincts, until the reductives of maturer years have perfected their work. the causation of crime, which the cure seeks to remove, is a problem comparable with the origin of sin and evil. first, of course, comes heredity, bad antenatal conditions, bad homes, unhealthful infancy and childhood, overcrowded slums with their promiscuity and squalor, which are always near the border of lawlessness, and perhaps are the chief cause of crime. a large per cent of juvenile offenders, variously estimated, but probably one-tenth of all, are vagrants or without homes, and divorce of parents and illegitimacy seem to be nearly equal as causative agencies. if whatever is physiologically wrong is morally wrong, and whatever is physiologically right is morally right, we have an important ethical suggestion from somatic conditions. there is no doubt that conscious intelligence during a certain early stage of its development tends to deteriorate the strength and infallibility of instinctive processes, so that education is always beset with the danger of interfering with ancestral and congenital tendencies. its prime object ought to be moralization, but it can not be denied that in conquering ignorance we do not thereby conquer poverty or vice. after the free schools in london were opened there was an increase of juvenile offenders. new kinds of crime, such as forgery, grand larceny, intricate swindling schemes, were doubled, while sneak thieves, drunkards, and pick-pockets decreased, and the proportion of educated criminals was greatly augmented.[ ] to collect masses of children and ram them with the same unassimilated facts is not education in this sense, and we ought to confess that youthful crime is an expression of educational failure. illiterate criminals are more likely to be detected, and also to be condemned, than are educated criminals. every anthropologist knows that the deepest poverty and ignorance among primitive people are in nowise incompatible with honesty, integrity, and virtue. indeed there is much reason to suspect that the extremes of wealth and poverty are more productive of crime than ignorance, or even intemperance. educators have no doubt vastly overestimated the moral efficiency of the three r's and forgotten that character in infancy is all instinct; that in childhood it is slowly made over into habits; while at adolescence more than at any other period of life, it can be cultivated through ideals. the dawn of puberty, although perhaps marked by a certain moral hebetude, is soon followed by a stormy period of great agitation, when the very worst and best impulses in the human soul struggle against each other for its possession, and when there is peculiar proneness to be either very good or very bad. as the agitation slowly subsides, it is found that there has been a renaissance of either the best or the worst elements of the soul, if not indeed of both. although pedagogues make vast claims for the moralizing effect of schooling, i cannot find a single criminologist who is satisfied with the modern school, while most bring the severest indictments against it for the blind and ignorant assumption that the three r's or any merely intellectual training can moralize. by nature, children are more or less morally blind, and statistics show that between thirteen and sixteen incorrigibility is between two and three times as great as at any other age. it is almost impossible for adults to realize the irresponsibility and even moral neurasthenia incidental to this stage of development. if we reflect what a girl would do if dressed like a boy and leading his life and exposed to the same moral contagion, or what a boy would do if corseted and compelled to live like a girl, perhaps we can realize that whatever rôle heredity plays, the youth who go wrong are, in the vast majority of cases, victims of circumstances or of immaturity, and deserving of both pity and hope. it was this sentiment that impelled zarnadelli to reconstruct the criminal law of italy, in this respect, and it was this sympathy that made rollet a self-constituted advocate, pleading each morning for the twenty or thirty boys and eight or ten girls arrested every day in paris. those smitten with the institution craze or with any extreme correctionalist views will never solve the problem of criminal youths. first of all, they must be carefully and objectively studied, lived with, and understood as in this country gulick, johnson, forbush and yoder are doing in different ways, but each with success. criminaloid youth is more sharply individualized than the common good child, who is less differentiated. virtue is more uniform and monotonous than sin. there is one right but there are many wrong ways, hence they need to be individually studied by every paidological method, physical and psychic. keepers, attendants, and even sponsors who have to do with these children should be educators with souls full of fatherhood and motherhood, and they should understand that the darkest criminal propensities are frequently offset by the very best qualities; that juvenile murderers are often very tender-hearted to parents, sisters, children, or pets;[ ] they should understand that in the criminal constitution there are precisely the same ingredients, although perhaps differently compounded, accentuated, mutually controlled, etc., by the environment, as in themselves, so that to know all would, in the great majority of cases, be to pardon all; that the home sentiments need emphasis; that a little less stress of misery to overcome the effects of economic malaise and, above all, a friend, mentor, adviser are needed. i incline to think that many children would be better and not worse for reading, provided it can be done in tender years, stories like those of captain kidd, jack sheppard, dick turpin, and other gory tales, and perhaps later tales like eugene aram, and the ophidian medicated novel, elsie venner, etc., on the principle of the aristotelian catharsis to arouse betimes the higher faculties which develop later, and whose function it is to deplete the bad centers and suppress or inhibit their activity. again, i believe that judicious and incisive scolding is a moral tonic, which is often greatly needed, and if rightly administered would be extremely effective, because it shows the instinctive reaction of the sane conscience against evil deeds and tendencies. special pedagogic attention should be given to the sentiment of justice, which is almost the beginning of personal morals in boys; and plays should be chosen and encouraged that hold the beam even, regardless of personal wish and interest. further yet benevolence and its underlying impulse to do more than justice to our associates; to do good in the world; to give pleasure to those about, and not pain, can be directly cultivated. truth-telling presents a far harder problem, as we have seen. it is no pedagogical triumph to clip the wings of fancy, but effort should be directed almost solely against the cowardly lies, which cover evil; and the heroism of telling the truth and taking the consequences is another of the elements of the moral sense, so complex, so late in development, and so often permanently crippled. the money sense, by all the many means now used for its development in school, is the surest safeguard against the most common juvenile crime of theft, and much can be taught by precept, example, and moral regimen of the sacredness of property rights. the regularity of school work and its industry is a valuable moralizing agent, but entirely inadequate and insufficient by itself. educators must face the fact that the ultimate verdict concerning the utility of the school will be determined, as talleck well says, by its moral efficiency in saving children from personal vice and crime. wherever any source of pollution of school communities occurs, it must be at once and effectively detected, and some artificial elements must be introduced into the environment. in other words, there must be a system of moral orthopedics. garofalo's[ ] new term and principle of "temibility" is perhaps of great service. he would thus designate the quantum of evil feared that is sufficient to restrain criminal impulsion. we can not measure guilt or culpability, which may be of all degrees from nothing to infinity perhaps, but we can to some extent scale the effectiveness of restraint, if criminal impulse is not absolutely irresistible. pain then must be so organised as to follow and measure the offense by as nearly a natural method as possible, while on the other hand the rewards for good conduct must also be more or less accentuated. thus the problem of criminology for youth can not be based on the principles now recognised for adults. they can not be protective of society only, but must have marked reformatory elements. solitude[ ] which tends to make weak, agitated, and fearful, at this very gregarious age should be enforced with very great discretion. there must be no personal and unmotivated clemency or pardon in such scheme, for, according to the old saw, "mercy but murders, pardoning those who kill"; nor on the other hand should there be the excessive disregard of personal adjustments, and the uniformitarian, who perhaps celebrated his highest triumph in the old sentence, "kill all offenders and suspects, for god will know his own," should have no part nor lot here. the philosopher hartmann has a suggestive article advocating that penal colonies made up of transported criminals should be experimented upon by statesmen in order to put various theories of self-government to a practical test. however this may be, the penologist of youth must face some such problem in the organization of the house of detention, boys' club, farm, reformatory, etc. we must pass beyond the clumsy apparatus of a term sentence., or the devices of a jury, clumsier yet, for this purpose; we must admit the principle of regret, fear, penance, material restoration of damage, and understand the sense in which, for both society and for the individual, it makes no practical difference whether experts think there is some taint of insanity, provided only that irresponsibility is not hopelessly complete. in few aspects of this theme do conceptions of and practises in regard to adolescence need more radical reconstruction. a mere accident of circumstance often condemns to criminal careers youths capable of the highest service to society, and for a mere brief season of temperamental outbreak or obstreperousness exposes them to all the infamy to which ignorant and cruel public opinion condemns all those who have once been detected on the wrong side of the invisible and arbitrary line of rectitude. the heart of criminal psychology is here; and not only that, but i would conclude with a most earnest personal protest against the current methods of teaching and studying ethics in our academic institutions as a speculative, historical, and abstract thing. here in the concrete and saliently objective facts of crime it should have its beginning, and have more blood and body in it by getting again close to the hot battle line between vice and virtue, and then only, when balanced and sanified by a rich ballast of facts, can it with advantage slowly work its way over to the larger and higher philosophy of conduct, which, when developed from this basis, will be a radically different thing from the shadowy phantom, schematic speculations of many contemporary moralists, taught in our schools and colleges. [footnote : problematische kindesnaturen. eine studie für schule und haus. voigtländer, leipzig, .] [footnote : die pädagogische pathologie in der erziehungskunde des jahrhunderts. bertelsman, gütersloh, , p. .] [footnote : peculiar and exceptional children. pedagogical seminary, october, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : la puberté. schleicher frères, paris, , p. .] [footnote : home and school punishments. pedagogical seminary, march, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : a study of the faults of children. pedagogical seminary, june, , vol. , p. _et seq._] [footnote : the child and the weather, by edwin g. dexter. pedagogical seminary, april, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : psychic effects of the weather, by j.s. lemon. american journal of psychology, january, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : truancy as related to the migrating instinct, by l.w. kline. pedagogical seminary, january, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : children's lies. american journal of psychology, january, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : poems. with memoir by his brother, vols., london, .] [footnote : american journal of psychology, july, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : how the other half lives. scribner's sons, new york, , p. .] [footnote : the curse in education, by rebecca harding davis. north american review, may, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : holtzendorff: psychologie des mordes. c. pfeiffer, berlin, ] [footnote : la criminologie. paris, alcan, , p. ] [footnote : see its psychology and dangers well pointed out by m.h. small: psychical relations of society and solitude. pedagogical seminary, april, , vol. , pp. - ] * * * * * chapter viii biographies of youth knightly ideals and honor--thirty adolescents from shakespeare--goethe--c.d. warner--aldrich--the fugitive nature of adolescent experience--extravagance of autobiographies--stories that attach to great names--some typical crazes--illustrations from george eliot, edison, chatterton, hawthorne, whittier, spencer, huxley, lyell, byron, heine, napoleon, darwin, martineau, agassiz, madame roland, louisa alcott, f.h. burnett, helen keller, marie bashkirtseff, mary maclane, ada negri, de quincey, stuart mill, jefferies, and scores of others. the knightly ideals and those of secular life generally during the middle ages and later were in striking contrast to the ascetic ideals of the early christian church; in some respects they were like those of the greeks. honor was the leading ideal, and muscular development and that of the body were held in high respect; so that the spirit of the age fostered conceptions not unlike those of the japanese bushido. where elements of christianity were combined with this we have the spirit of the pure chivalry of king arthur and the knights of the round table, which affords perhaps the very best ideals for youth to be found in history, as we shall see more fully later. in a very interesting paper, entitled "shakespeare and adolescence," dr. m.f. libby[ ] very roughly reckons "seventy-four interesting adolescents among the comedies, forty-six among the tragedies, and nineteen among the histories." he selects "thirty characters who, either on account of direct references to their age, or because of their love-stories, or because they show the emotional and intellectual plasticity of youth, may be regarded as typical adolescents." his list is as follows: romeo, juliet, hamlet, ophelia, imogen, perdita, arviragus, guiderius, palamon, arcite, emilia, ferdinand, miranda, isabella, mariana, orlando, rosalind, biron, portia, jessica, phebe, katharine, helena, viola, troilus, cressida, cassio, marina, prince hal, and richard of gloucester. the proof of the youth of these characters, as set forth, is of various kinds, and libby holds that besides these, the sonnets and poems perhaps show a yet greater, more profound and concentrated knowledge of adolescence. he thinks "venus and adonis" a successful attempt to treat sex in a candid, naive way, if it be read as it was meant, as a catharsis of passion, in which is latent a whole philosophy of art. to some extent he also finds the story of the passionate pilgrim "replete with the deepest knowledge of the passions of early adolescence" the series culminates in sonnet , which makes love the sole beacon of humanity. it might be said that it is connected by a straight line with the best teachings of plato, and that here humanity picked up the clue, lost, save with some italian poets, in the great interval. in looking over current autobiographies of well-known modern men who deal with their boyhood, one finds curious extremes. on the one hand are those of which doctor's is a type, where details are dwelt upon at great length with careful and suggestive philosophic reflections. the development of his own tastes, capacities, and his entire adult consciousness was assumed to be due to the incidents of childhood and youth, and especially the latter stage was to him full of the most serious problems essential to his self-knowledge; and in the story of his life he has exploited all available resources of this genetic period of storm and stress more fully perhaps than any other writer. at the other extreme, we have writers like charles dudley warner,[ ] a self-made man, whose early life was passed on the farm, and who holds his own boyhood there in greater contempt than perhaps any other reputable writer of such reminiscences. all the incidents are treated not only with seriousness, but with a forced drollery and catchy superficiality which reflect unfavorably at almost every point upon the members of his household, who are caricatured; all the precious associations of early life on a new england farm are not only made absurd, but from beginning to end his book has not a scintilla of instruction or suggestion for those that are interested in child life. aldrich[ ] is better, and we have interesting glimpses of the pet horse and monkeys, of his fighting the boy bully, running way, and falling in love with an older girl whose engagement later blighted his life. howells,[ ] white,[ ] mitter,[ ] grahame,[ ] heidi,[ ] and mrs. barnett,[ ] might perhaps represent increasing grades of merit in this field in this respect. yoder,[ ] in his interesting study of the boyhood of great men, has called attention to the deplorable carelessness of their biographers concerning the facts and influences of their youth. he advocates the great pedagogic influence of biography, and would restore the high appreciation of it felt by the bolandists, which comte's positivist calendar, that renamed all the days of the year from three hundred and sixty-five such accounts in , also sought to revive. yoder selected fifty great modern biographies, autobiographies preferred, for his study. he found a number of lives whose equipment and momentum have been strikingly due to some devoted aunt, and that give many glimpses of the first polarization of genius in the direction in which fame is later achieved. he holds that, while the great men excelled in memory, imagination is perhaps still more a youthful condition of eminence; magnifies the stimulus of poverty, the fact that elder sons become prominent nearly twice as often as younger ones; and raises the question whether too exuberant physical development does not dull genius and talent. one striking and cardinal fact never to be forgotten considering its each and every phenomenon and stage is that the experiences of adolescence are extremely transitory and very easily forgotten, so that they are often totally lost to the adult consciousness. lancaster[ ] observes that we are constantly told by adults past thirty that they never had this and that experience, and that those who have had them are abnormal; that they are far more rare than students of childhood assert, etc. he says, "not a single young person with whom i have had free and open conversation has been free from serious thoughts of suicide," but these are forgotten later. a typical case of many i could gather is that of a lady, not yet in middle life, precise and carefully trained, who, on hearing a lecture on the typical phases of adolescence, declared that she must have been abnormal, for she knew nothing of any of these experiences. her mother, however, produced her diary, and there she read for the first time since it was written, beginning in the january of her thirteenth year, a long series of resolutions which revealed a course of conduct that brought the color to her face, that she should have found it necessary to pledge not to swear, lie, etc., and which showed conclusively that she had passed through about all the phases described. these phenomena are sometimes very intense and may come late in life, but it is impossible to remember feelings and emotions with definiteness, and these now make up a large part of life. hence we are prone to look with some incredulity upon the immediate records of the tragic emotions and experiences typical and normal at this time, because development has scored away their traces from the conscious soul. there is a wall around the town of boyville, says white,[ ] in substance, which is impenetrable when its gates have once shut upon youth. an adult may peer over the wall and try to ape the games inside, but finds it all a mockery and himself banished among the purblind grown-ups. the town of boyville was old when nineveh was a hamlet; it is ruled by ancient laws; has its own rulers and idols; and only the dim, unreal noises of the adult world about it have changed. in exploring such sources we soon see how few writers have given true pictures of the chief traits of this developmental period, which can rarely be ascertained with accuracy. the adult finds it hard to recall the emotional and instinctive life of the teens which is banished without a trace, save as scattered hints may be gathered from diaries, chance experiences, or the recollections of others. but the best observers see but very little of what goes on in the youthful soul, the development of which is very largely subterranean. only when the feelings erupt in some surprising way is the process manifest. the best of these sources are autobiographies, and of these only few are full of the details of this stage. just as in the mythic prehistoric stage of many nations there is a body of legendary matter, which often reappears in somewhat different form, so there is a floating plankton-like mass of tradition and storiology that seems to attach to eminence wherever it emerges and is repeated over and over again, concerning the youth of men who later achieve distinction, which biographers often incorporate and attach to the time, place, and person of their heroes. as burnham[ ] well intimates, many of the literary characterizations of adolescence are so marked by extravagance, and sometimes even by the struggle for literary effects, that they are not always the best documents, although often based on personal experience. confessionalism is generally overdrawn, distorted, and especially the pains of this age are represented as too keen. of george eliot's types of adolescent character, this may best be seen in maggie tulliver, with her enthusiastic self-renunciation, with "her volcanic upheavings of imprisoned passions," with her "wide, hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth," and in gwendolen, who, from the moment she caught deronda's eye, was "totally swayed in feeling and action by the presence of a person of the other sex whom she had never seen before." there was "the resolute action from instinct and the setting at defiance of calculation and reason, the want of any definite desire to marry, while all her conduct tended to promote proposals." exaggeration, although not the perversions of this age often found in adult characterizations, is marked trait of the writings of adolescents, whose conduct meanwhile may appear rational, so that this suggests that consciousness may at this stage serve as a harmless vent for tendencies that would otherwise cause great trouble if turned to practical affairs. if harmodius and aristogeiton, the adolescent tyrant slayers of greece, had been theorists, they might have been harmless on the principle that its analysis tends to dissipate emotion. lancaster[ ] gathered and glanced over a thousand biographies, from which he selected for careful study, choosing them to show different typical directions of activity. of these, showed a distinct craze for reading in adolescence; became great lovers of nature; wrote poetry, showed a great and sudden development of energy; showed great eagerness for school; devoted themselves for a season to art and music; became very religious; left home in the teens; showed dominant instincts of leadership; had great longings of many kinds; developed scientific tastes; grew very anxious about the future; developed increased keenness of sensation or at least power of observation; in cases health was better; were passionately altruistic; became idealists; showed powers of invention; were devoted to older friends; would reform society; hated school. these, like many other statistics, have only indicative value, as they are based on numbers that are not large enough and upon returns not always complete. a few typical instances from lancaster must here suffice. savonarola was solitary, pondering, meditating, felt profoundly the evils of the world and need of reform, and at twenty-two spent a whole night planning his career. shelley during these years was unsocial, much alone, fantastic, wandered much by moonlight communing with stars and moon, was attached to an older man. beecher was intoxicated with nature, which he declared afterward to have been the inspiration of his life. george eliot at thirteen had a passion for music and became a clever pianist. at sixteen she was religious, founded societies for the poor and for animals, and had fitting spells of misanthropy. edison undertook to read the detroit free library through, read fifteen solid feet as the books stand on the shelves, was stopped, and says he has read comparatively little since. tolstoi found the aspect of things suddenly changed. nature put on a new appearance. he felt he might commit the most dreadful crimes with no purpose save curiosity and the need of action. the future looked gloomy. he became furiously angry without cause; thought he was lost, hated by everybody, was perhaps not the son of his father, etc. at seventeen he was solitary, musing about immortality, human destiny, feeling death at hand, giving up his studies, fancying himself a great man with new truths for humanity. by and by he took up the old virtuous course of life with fresh power, new resolutions, with the feeling that he had lost much time. he had a deep religious experience at seventeen and wept for joy over his new life. he had a period before twenty when he told desperate lies, for which he could not account, then a passion for music, and later for french novels. rousseau at this age was discontented, immensely in love, wept often without cause, etc. keats had a great change at fourteen, wrestling with frequent obscure and profound stirrings of soul, with a sudden hunger for knowledge which consumed his days with fire, and "with passionate longing to drain the cup of experience at a draft." he was "at the morning hour when the whole world turns to gold." "the boy had suddenly become a poet." chatterton was too proud to eat a gift dinner, though nearly starved, and committed suicide at seventeen for lack of appreciation. john hunter was dull and hated study, but at twenty his mind awoke as did that of patrick henry, who before was a lonely wanderer, sitting idly for hours under the trees. alexander murray awoke to life at fifteen and acquired several languages in less than two years. gifford was distraught for lack of reading, went to sea at thirteen, became a shoemaker, studying algebra late at night, was savagely unsociable, sunk into torpor from which he was roused to do splenetic and vexatious tricks, which alienated his friends. rittenhouse at fourteen was a plowboy, covering the fences with figures, musing on infinite time and space. benjamin thompson was roused to a frenzy for sciences at fifteen; at seventeen walked nine miles daily to attend lectures at cambridge; and at nineteen married a widow of thirty-three. franklin had a passion for the sea; at thirteen read poetry all night; wrote verses and sold them on the streets of boston; doubted everything at fifteen; left home for good at seventeen; started the first public library in philadelphia before he was twenty-one. robert fulton was poor, dreamy, mercurial, devoted to nature, art, and literature. he became a painter of talent, then a poet, and left home at seventeen. bryant was sickly till fourteen and became permanently well thereafter; was precociously devoted to nature, religion, prayed for poetic genius and wrote thanatopsis before he was eighteen. jefferson doted on animals and nature at fourteen, and at seventeen studied fifteen hours a day. garfield, though living in ohio, longed for the sea, and ever after this period the sight of a ship gave him a strange thrill. hawthorne was devoted to the sea and wanted to sail on and on forever and never touch shore again. he would roam through the maine woods alone; was haunted by the fear that he would die before twenty-five. peter cooper left home at seventeen; was passionately altruistic; and at eighteen vowed he would build a place like his new york institute. whittier at fourteen found a copy of burns, which excited him and changed the current of his life. holmes had a passion for flowers, broke into poetry at fifteen, and had very romantic attachments to certain trees. j. t. trowbridge learned german, french, and latin alone before twenty-one; composed poetry at the plow and wrote it out in the evening. henry followed a rabbit under the public library at albany, found a hole in the floor that admitted him to the shelves, and, unknown to any one, read all the fiction the library contained, then turned to physics, astronomy, and chemistry, and developed a passion for the sciences. he was stage-struck, and became a good amateur actor. h. h. boyesen was thrilled by nature and by the thought that he was a norseman. he had several hundred pigeons, rabbits, and other pets; loved to be in the woods at night; on leaving home for school was found with his arms around the neck of a calf to which he was saying good-by. maxwell, at sixteen, had almost a horror of destroying a leaf, flower, or fly. jahn found growing in his heart, at this age, an inextinguishable feeling for right and wrong--which later he thought the cause of all his inner weal and outer woe. when nansen was in his teens he spent weeks at a time alone in the forest, full of longings, courage, altruism, wanted to get away from every one and live like crusoe. t. b. reed, at twelve and thirteen, had a passion for reading; ran away at seventeen; painted, acted, and wrote poetry. cartwright, at sixteen, heard voices from the sky saying, "look above, thy sins are forgiven thee." herbert spencer became an engineer at seventeen, after one idle year. he never went to school, but was a private pupil of his uncle. sir james mackintosh grew fond of history at eleven; fancied he was the emperor of constantinople; loved solitude at thirteen; wrote poetry at fourteen; and fell in love at seventeen. thomas buxton loved dogs, horses, and literature, and combined these while riding on an old horse. at sixteen be fell in love with an older literary woman, which aroused every latent power to do or die, and thereafter he took all the school prizes. scott began to like poetry at thirteen. pascal wrote treatises on conic sections at sixteen and invented his arithmetical machine at nineteen. nelson went to sea at twelve; commanded a boat in peril at fifteen, which at the same age he left to fight a polar bear. banks, the botanist, was idle and listless till fourteen, could not travel the road marked out for him; when coming home from bathing, he was struck by the beauty of the flowers and at once began his career. montcalm and wolfe both distinguished themselves as leaders in battle at sixteen. lafayette came to america at nineteen, thrilled by our bold strike for liberty. gustavus adolphus declared his own majority at seventeen and was soon famous. ida lewis rescued four men in a boat at sixteen. joan of arc began at thirteen to have the visions which were the later guide of her life. mr. swift has collected interesting biographical material[ ] to show that school work is analytic, while life is synthetic, and how the narrowness of the school enclosure prompts many youth in the wayward age to jump fences and seek new and more alluring pastures. according to school standards, many were dull and indolent, but their nature was too large or their ideals too high to be satisfied with it. wagner at the nikolaischule at leipzig was relegated to the third form, having already attained to the second at dresden, which so embittered him that he lost all taste for philology and, in his own words, "became lazy and slovenly." priestley never improved by any systematic course of study. w.h. gibson was very slow and was rebuked for wasting his time in sketching. james russell lowell was reprimanded, at first privately and then publicly, in his sophomore year "for general negligence in themes, forensics, and recitations," and finally suspended in "on account of continued neglect of his college duties." in early life goldsmith's teacher thought him the dullest boy she had ever taught. his tutor called him ignorant and stupid. irving says that a lad "whose passions are not strong enough in youth to mislead him from that path of science which his tutors, and not his inclinations, have chalked out, by four or five years' perseverance, will probably obtain every advantage and honor his college can bestow. i would compare the man whose youth has been thus passed in the tranquility of dispassionate prudence, to liquors that never ferment, and, consequently, continue always muddy." huxley detested writing till past twenty. his schooling was very brief, and he declared that those set over him "cared about as much for his intellectual and moral welfare as if they were baby farmers." humphry davy was faithful but showed no talent in school, having "the reputation of being an idle boy, with a gift for making verses, but with no aptitude for studies of a graver sort." later in life he considered it fortunate that he was left so much to himself. byron was so poor a scholar that he only stood at the head of the class when, as was the custom, it was inverted, and the bantering master repeatedly said to him, "now, george, man, let me see how soon you'll be at the foot." schiller's negligence and lack of alertness called for repeated reproof, and his final school thesis was unsatisfactory. hegel was a poor scholar, and at the university it was stated "that he was of middling industry and knowledge but especially deficient in philosophy." john hunter nearly became a cabinetmaker. lyell had excessive aversion to work. george combe wondered why he was so inferior to other boys in arithmetic. heine agreed with the monks that greek was the invention of the devil. "god knows what misery i suffered with it." he hated french meters, and his teacher vowed he had no soul for poetry. he idled away his time at bonn, and was "horribly bored" by the "odious, stiff, cut-and-dried tone" of the leathery professors. humboldt was feeble as a child and "had less facility in his studies than most children." "until i reached the age of sixteen," he says, "i showed little inclination for scientific pursuits." he was essentially self-taught, and acquired most of his knowledge rather late in life. at nineteen he had never heard of botany. sheridan was called inferior to many of his schoolfellows. he was remarkable for nothing but idleness and winning manners, and was "not only slovenly in construing, but unusually defective in his greek grammar." swift was refused his degree because of "dulness and insufficiency," but given it later as a special favor. wordsworth was disappointing. general grant was never above mediocrity, and was dropped as corporal in the junior class and served the last year as a private. w. h. seward was called "too stupid to learn." napoleon graduated forty-second in his class. "who," asks swift, "were the forty-one above him?" darwin was singularly incapable of mastering any language. "when he left school," he says, "i was considered by all my masters and by my father as a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect. to my deep mortification, my father once said to me, 'you care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and to all your family.'" harriet martineau was thought very dull. though a horn musician, she could do absolutely nothing in the presence of her irritable master. she wrote a cramped, untidy scrawl until past twenty. a visit to some very brilliant cousins at the age of sixteen had much to do in arousing her backward nature. at this age j. pierpont morgan wrote poetry and was devoted to mathematics. booker t. washington, at about thirteen or fourteen (he does not know the date of his birth), felt the new meaning of life and started off on foot to hampton, five hundred miles away, not knowing even the direction, sleeping under a sidewalk his first night in richmond. vittorino da feltre,[ ] according to dr. burnham, had a low, tardy development, lingering on a sluggish dead level from ten to fourteen, which to his later unfoldment was as the barren, improving years sometimes called the middle ages, compared with the remainder which followed when a new world-consciousness intensified his personality. lancaster's summaries show that of actors, the average age of their first great success was exactly years. those he chose had taken to the stage of their own accord, for actors are more born than made. nearly half of them were irish, the unemotional american stock having furnished far less. few make their first success on the stage after , but from to is the time to expect talent in this line, although there is a second rise in his curve before and still more after , representing those whose success is more due to intellect. taking the average age of novelists when their first story met with public approval, the curve reaches its highest point between and . averaging poets, the age at which most first poems were published falls between and . the average age at which first publication showed talent he places at , which is in striking contrast with the average age of inventors at time of the first patent, which is years. a still more striking contrast is that between musicians and professional men. music is by far the most precocious and instinctive of all talents. the average age when marked talent was first shown is a little less than years, per cent showed rare talent before , while the professional men graduated at an average age of years and months, and years must be added to mark the point of recognized success. of artists, per cent showed talent before , the average age being . years. of pioneers who made their mark in the far west, leaving home to seek fortunes near the frontier, the greatest number departed before they were . of scientists, lancaster estimates that their life interest first began to glow on the average a little before they were . in general, those whose success is based on emotional traits antedate by some years those whose renown is more purely in intellectual spheres, and taking all together, the curves of the first class culminate between and . while men devoted to physical science, and their biographers, give us perhaps the least breezy accounts of this seething age, it may be, because they mature late, nearly all show its ferments and its circumnutations, as a few almost random illustrations clearly show: tycho brahe, born in of illustrious danish stock, was adopted by an uncle, and entered the university of copenhagen at thirteen, where multiplication, division, philosophy, and metaphysics were taught. when he was fourteen, an eclipse of the sun occurred, which aroused so much interest that he decided to devote himself to the study of the heavenly bodies. he was able to construct a series of interesting instruments on a progressive scale of size, and finally to erect the great observatory of uraniberg on the island of hven. strange to say, his scientific conclusions had for him profound astrological significance. an important new star he declared was "at first like venus and jupiter and its effects will therefore first be pleasant; but as it then became like mars, there will next come a period of wars, seditions, captivity, and death of princes, and destruction of cities, together with dryness and fiery meteors in the air, pestilence, and venomous snakes. lastly, the star became like saturn, and thus will finally come a time of want, death, imprisonment, and all kinds of sad things!" he says that "a special use of astronomy is that it enables us to draw conclusions from the movements in the celestial regions as to human fate." he labored on his island twenty years. he was always versifying, and inscribed a poem over the entrance of his underground observatory expressing the astonishment of urania at finding in the interior of the earth a cavern devoted to the study of the heavens. galileo[ ] was born in of a florentine noble, who was poor. as a youth he became an excellent lutist, then thought of devoting himself to painting, but when he was seventeen studied medicine, and at the university of pisa fell in love with mathematics. isaac newton,[ ] born in , very frail and sickly, solitary, had a very low piece in the class lists of his school; wrote poetry, and at sixteen tried farming. in one of his university examinations in euclid be did so poorly as to incur special censure. his first incentive to diligent study came from being severely kicked by a high class boy. he then resolved to pass him in studies, and soon rose to the head of the school. he made many ingenious toys and windmills; a carriage, the wheels of which were driven by the hands of the occupants, and a clock which moved by water; curtains, kites, lanterns, etc.; and before he was fourteen fell in love with miss storey, several yeas older than himself. he entered trinity college at cambridge at eighteen. william herschel, born in , at the outbreak of the seven years' war, when he was eighteen, was a performer in the regimental band, and after a battle passed a night in a ditch and escaped in disguise, to england, where he eked out a precarious livelihood by teaching music. he supported himself until middle age as an organist. in much of his later work he was greatly aided by his sister caroline. when he discovered a sixth planet he became famous, and devoted himself exclusively to astronomy, training his only son to follow in his footsteps, and dying in . agassiz[ ] at twelve had developed a mania for collecting. he memorized latin names, of which he accumulated "great volumes of mss.", and "modestly expressed the hope that in time he might be able to give the name of every known animal." at fourteen he revolted at mercantile life, for which he was designed, and issued a manifesto planning to spend four years at a cermem university, then in paris, when he could begin to write. rooks were scarce, and a little later he copied, with the aid of his brother, several large volumes, and had fifty live birds in his room at one time. at twelve huxley[ ] became an omnivorous reader, and two or three years later devoured hamilton's logic and became deeply interested in metaphysics. at fourteen he saw and participated in his first post-mortem examination, was left in a strange state of apathy by it, and dates his life-long dyspepsia to this experience. his training was irregular; he taught himself german with a book in one hand while he made hay with the other; speculated about the basis of matter, soul, and their relations, on radicalism and conservatism; and reproached himself that he did not work and get on enough. at seventeen he attempted a comprehensive classification of human knowledge, and having finished his survey, resolved to master the topics one after another, striking them out from his table with ink as soon us they were done. "may the list soon get black, although at present i shall hardly be able, i am afraid, to spot the paper." beneath the top skimmings of these years he afterward conceived seething depths working beneath the froth, but could give hardly any account of it. he undertook the practise of pharmacy, etc. women with literary gifts perhaps surpass men in their power to reproduce and describe the great but so often evanescent ebullitions of this age; perhaps because their later lives, on account of their more generic nature, depart less from this totalizing period, or because, although it is psychologically shorter than in men, the necessities of earning a livelihood less frequently arrest its full development, and again because they are more emotional, and feeling constitutes the chief psychic ingredient of this stage of life, or they dwell more on subjective states. manon philipon (madame roland) was born in . her father was an engraver in comfortable circumstances. her earliest enthusiasm was for the bible and lives of the saints, and she had almost a mania for reading books of any kind. in the corner of her father's workshop she would read plutarch for hours, dream of the past glories of antiquity, and exclaim, weeping, "why was i not born a greek?" she desired to emulate the brave men of old. books and flowers aroused her to dreams of enthusiasm, romantic sentiment, and lofty aspiration. finding that the french society afforded no opportunity for heroic living, in her visionary fervor she fell back upon a life of religious mysticism, and xavier, loyola, st. elizabeth, and st. theresa became her new idols. she longed to follow even to the stake those devout men and women who had borne obloquy, poverty, hunger, thirst, wretchedness, and the agony of a martyr's death for the sake of jesus. her capacities for self-sacrifice became perhaps her leading trait, always longing after a grand life like george eliot's dorothea brooke. she was allowed at the age of eleven to enter a convent, where, shunning her companions, she courted solitude apart, under the trees, reading and thinking. artificial as the atmosphere was here, it no doubt inspired her life with permanent tenderness of feeling and loftiness of purpose, and gave a mystic quality to her imagination. later she experienced to the full revulsion of thought and experience which comes when doubt reacts upon youthful credulity. it was the age of the encyclopedia, and now she came to doubt her creed and even god and the soul, but clung to the gospels as the best possible code of morals, and later realized that while her intellect had wandered her heart had remained constant. at seventeen she was, if not the moat beautiful, perhaps the noblest woman in all france, and here the curtain moat drop upon her girlhood. all her traits were, of course, set off by the great life she lived and the yet greater death she died. gifted people seem to conserve their youth and to be all the more children, and perhaps especially all the more intensely adolescents, because of their gifts, and it is certainly one of the marks of genius that the plasticity and spontaneity of adolescence persists into maturity. sometimes even its passions, reveries, and hoydenish freaks continue. in her "histoire de ma vie," it is plain that george sand inherited at this age an unusual dower of gifts. she composed many and interminable stories, carried on day after day, so that her confidants tried to tease her by asking if the prince had got out of the forest yet, etc. she personated an echo and conversed with it. her day-dreams and plays were so intense that she often came back from the world of imagination to reality with a shock. she spun a weird zoological romance out of a rustic legend of _la grande bête_. when her aunt sent her to a convent, she passed a year of rebellion and revolt, and was the leader of _les diables_, or those who refused to be devout, and engaged in all wild pranks. at fifteen she became profoundly interested in the lives of the saints, although ridiculing miracles. she entered one evening the convent church for service, without permission, which was an act of disobedience. the mystery and holy charm of it penetrated her; she forgot everything outward and was left alone, and some mysterious change stole over her. she "breathed an atmosphere of ineffable sweetness" more with the mind than the senses; had a sudden indescribable perturbation; her eyes swam; she was enveloped in a white glimmer, and heard a voice murmur the words written under a convent picture of st. augustine, _tolle, lege,_ and turned around thinking mother alicia spoke, but she was alone. she knew it was an hallucination, but saw that faith had laid hold of her, as she wished, by the heart, and she sobbed and prayed to the unknown god till a nun heard her groaning. at first her ardor impelled her not only to brave the jeers of her madcap club of harum-scarums and tomboys, but she planned to become a nun, until this feverish longing for a recluse life passed, but left her changed.[ ] when she passed from the simple and catholic faith of her grisette mother to the atmosphere of her cynical grandmother at nohant, who was a disciple of voltaire, she found herself in great straits between the profound sentiments inspired by the first communion and the concurrent contempt for this faith, instilled by her grandmother for all those mummeries through which, however, for conventional reasons she was obliged to pass. her heart was deeply stirred, and yet her head holding all religion to be fiction or metaphor, it occurred to her to invent a story which might be a religion or a religion which might be a story into any degree of belief in which she could lapse at will. the name and the form of her new deity was revealed to her in a dream. he was corambé, pure as jesus, beautiful as gabriel, as graceful as the nymphs and orpheus, less austere than the christian god, and as much woman as man, because she could best understand this sex from her love for her mother. he appeared in many aspects of physical and moral beauty; was eloquent, master of all arts, and above all of the magic of musical improvisation; loved as a friend and sister, and at the same time revered as a god; not awful and remote from impeccability, but with the fault of excess of indulgence. she estimated that she composed about a thousand sacred books or songs developing phases of his mundane existence. in each of these he became incarnate man on touching the earth, always in a new group of people who were good, yet suffering martyrdoms from the wicked known only by the effects of their malice. in this "gentle hallucination" she could lose herself in the midst of friends, and turn to her hero deity for comfort. there must be not only sacred books, but a temple and ritual, and in a garden thicket, which no eye could penetrate, in a moss-carpeted chamber she built an altar against a tree-trunk, ornamented with a wreath hung over it. instead of sacrificing, which seemed barbaric, she proceeded to restore life and liberty to butterflies, lizards, green frogs, and birds, which she put in a box, laid on the altar, and "after having invoked the good genius of liberty and protection," opened it. in these mimic rites and delicious reveries she found the germs of a religion that fitted her heart. from the instant, however, that a boy playmate discovered and entered this sanctuary, "corambé ceased to dwell in it. the dryads and the cherubim deserted it," and it seemed unreal. the temple was destroyed with great care, and the garlands and shells were buried under the tree.[ ] louisa alcott's romantic period opened at fifteen, when she began to write poetry, keep a heart journal, and wander by moonlight, and wished to be the bettine of emerson, in whose library she foraged; wrote him letters which were never sent; sat in a tall tree at midnight; left wild flowers on the doorstep of her master; sang mignon's song under his window; and was refined by her choice of an idol. her diary was all about herself. if she looked in the glass at her long hair and well-shaped head, she tried to keep down her vanity; her quick tongue, moodiness, poverty, impossible longings, made every day a battle until she hardly wished to live, only something must be done, and waiting is so hard. she imagined her mind a room in confusion which must be put in order; the useless thought swept out; foolish fancies dusted away; newly furnished with good resolutions. but she was not a good housekeeper; cobwebs got in, and it was hard to rule. she was smitten with a mania for the stage, and spent most of her leisure in writing and acting plays of melodramatic style ad high-strung sentiment, improbable incidents, with no touch of common life or sense of humor, full of concealments and surprises, bright dialogues, and lofty sentiments. she had much dramatic power and loved to transform herself into hamlet and declaim in mock heroic style. from sixteen to twenty-three was her apprenticeship to life. she taught, wrote for the papers, did housework for pay as a servant, and found sewing a pleasant resource because it was tranquillizing, left her free, and set her thoughts going. mrs. burnett,[ ] like most women who record their childhood and adolescent memories, is far more subjective and interesting than most men. in early adolescence she was never alone when with flowers, but loved to "speak to them, to bend down and say caressing things, to stoop and kiss them, to praise them for their pretty ways of looking up at her as into the eyes of a friend and beloved. there were certain little blue violets which always seemed to lift their small faces childishly, as if they were saying, 'kiss me; don't go by like that.'" she would sit on the porch, elbows on knees and chin on hands, staring upward, sometimes lying on the grass. heaven was so high and yet she was a part of it and was something even among the stars. it was a weird, updrawn, overwhelming feeling as she stared so fixedly and intently that the earth seemed gone, left far behind. every hour and moment was a wonderful and beautiful thing. she felt on speaking terms with the rabbits. something was happening in the leaves which waved and rustled as she passed. just to walk, sit, lie around out of doors, to loiter, gaze, watch with a heart fresh as a young dryad, following birds, playing hide-and-seek with the brook-these were her halcyon hours. with the instability of genius, beth[ ] did everything suddenly. when twelve or thirteen, she had grown too big to be carried, pulled or pushed; she suddenly stood still one day, when her mother, commanded her to dress. she had been ruled before by physical force, but her will and that of her mother were now in collision, and the latter realised she could make her do nothing unless by persuasion or moral influence. being constantly reproved, scolded, and even beaten by her mother, beth one day impulsively jumped into the sea, and was rescued with difficulty. she had spells of being miserable with no cause. she was well and happy, but would burst into tears suddenly, which seemed often to surprise her. being very sensitive herself, she was morbidly careful of the feelings of others and incessantly committed grave sins of insincerity without compunction in her effort to spare them. to those who confided in her abilities, praised her, and thought she could do things, her nature expanded, but her mother checked her mental growth over and over, instead of helping her by saying, "don't try, you can't do it," etc. just before the dawn of adolescence she had passed through a long period of abject superstition, largely through the influence of a servant. all the old woman's signs were very dominant in her life. she even invented methods of divination, as, "if the boards do not creak when i walk across the room i shall get through my lessons without trouble." she always preferred to see two rooks together to one and became expert in the black arts. she used to hear strange noises at night for a time, which seemed signs and portents of disaster at sea, fell into the ways of her neighbors, and had more faith in incantations than in doctors' doses. she not only heard voices and very ingeniously described them, but claimed to know what was going to happen and compared her forebodings with the maid. she "got religion" very intensely under the influence of her aunt, grew thin, lost her appetite and sleep, had heartache to think of her friends burning in hell, and tried to save them. beth never thought at all of her personal appearance until she overheard a gentleman call her rather nice-looking, when her face flushed and she had a new feeling of surprise and pleasure, and took very clever ways of cross-examining her friends to find if she was handsome. all of a sudden the care of her person became of great importance, and every hint she had heard of was acted on. she aired her bed, brushed her hair glossy, pinched her waist and feet, washed in buttermilk, used a parasol, tortured her natural appetite in every way, put on gloves to do dirty work, etc. the house always irked her. once stealing out of the school by night, she was free, stretched herself, drew a long breath, bounded and waved her arms in an ecstasy of liberty, danced around the magnolia, buried her face in the big flowers one after another and bathed it in the dew of the petals, visited every forbidden place, was particularly attracted to the water, enjoyed scratching and making her feet bleed and eating a lot of green fruit. this liberty was most precious and all through a hot summer she kept herself healthy by exercise in the moonlight. this revived her appetite, and she ended these night excursions by a forage in the kitchen. beth had times when she hungered for solitude and for nature. sometimes she would shut herself in her room, but more often would rove the fields and woods in ecstasy. coming home from school, where she had long been, she had to greet the trees and fields almost before she did her parents. she had a great habit of stealing out often by the most dangerous routes over roofs, etc., at night in the moonlight, running and jumping, waving her arms, throwing herself on the ground, rolling over, walling on all-fours, turning somersaults, hugging trees, playing hide-and-seek with the shadow fairy-folk, now playing and feeling fear and running away. she invoked trees, stars, etc. beth's first love affair was with a bright, fair-haired, fat-faced boy, who sat near her pew sundays. they looked at each other once during service, and she felt a glad glow in her chest spread over her, dwelt on his image, smiled, and even the next day felt a new desire to please. she watched for him to pass from school. when he appeared, "had a most delightful thrill shoot through her." the first impulse to fly was conquered; she never thought a boy beautiful before. they often met after dark, wrote; finally she grew tired of him because she could not make him feel deeply, sent him off, called him an idiot, and then soliloquized on the "most dreadful grief of her life." the latter stages of their acquaintance she occasionally used to beat him, but his attraction steadily waned. once later, as she was suffering from a dull, irresolute feeling due to want of a companion and an object, she met a boy of seventeen, whose face, like her own, brightened as they approached. it was the first appearance of nature's mandate to mate. this friendly glance suffused her whole being with the "glory and vision of love." religion and young men were her need. they had stolen interviews by night and many an innocent embrace and kiss, and almost died once by being caught. they planned in detail what they would do after they were married, but all was taken for granted without formal vows. only when criticized did they ever dream of caution and concealment, and then they made elaborate parades of ignoring each other in public and fired their imaginations with thoughts of disguises, masks, etc. this passion was nipped in the bud by the boy's removal from his school. in preparing for her first communion, an anonymous writer[ ] became sober and studious, proposing to model her life on that of each fresh saint and to spend a week in retreat examining her conscience with vengeance. she wanted to revive the custom of public confession and wrote letters of penitence and submission, which she tore up later, finding her mind not "all of a piece." she lay prostrate on her prie-dieu weeping from ecstasy, lying on the rim of heaven held by angels, wanting to die, now bathed in bliss or aching intolerably with spiritual joy, but she was only twelve and her old nature often reasserted itself. religion at that time became an intense emotion nourished on incense, music, tapers, and a feeling of being tangible. it was rapturous and sensuous. while under its spell, she seemed to float and touch the wings of angels. here solemn gregorian chants are sung, so that when one comes back to earth there is a sense of hunger, deception, and self-loathing. now she came to understand how so many sentimental and virtuous souls sought oblivion in the narcotic of religious excitement. here, at the age of twelve, youth began and childhood ended with her book. pathetic is the account of helen keller's effort to understand the meaning of the word "love" in its season.[ ] is it the sweetness of flowers? she asked. no, said her teacher. is it the warm sun? not exactly. it can not be touched, "'but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. without love, you would not be happy or want to play.' the beautiful truth burst upon my mind. i felt that there were invisible lines stretched between my spirit and the spirit of others." this period seems to have came gradually and naturally to this wonderful child, whose life has been perhaps the purest ever lived and one of the sweetest. none has ever loved every aspect of nature accessible to her more passionately, or felt more keenly the charm of nature or of beautiful sentiments. the unhappy frost king episode has been almost the only cloud upon her life, which unfortunately came at about the dawn of this period, that is perhaps better marked by the great expansion of mind which she experienced at the world's fair in chicago in , when she was thirteen. about this time, too, her great ambition of going to college and enjoying all the advantages that other girls did, which, considering her handicap, was one of the greatest human resolutions, was strengthened and deepened. the fresh, spontaneous, and exquisite reactions of this pellucid mind, which felt that each individual could comprehend all the experiences and emotions of the race and that chafed at every pedagogical and technical obstacle between her soul and nature, and the great monuments of literature, show that she has conserved to a remarkable degree, which the world will wish may be permanent, the best impulses of this golden age. marie bashkirtseff,[ ] who may be taken as one of the best types of exaggerated adolescent confessionalists, was rich and of noble birth, and began in , at the age of twelve, to write a journal that should be absolutely true and frank, with no pretense, affectation, or concealment. the journal continues until her death, october, , at the age of twenty-three. it may be described as in some sense a feminine counterpart of rousseau's confessions, but is in some respects a more precious psychological document than any other for the elucidation of the adolescent ferment in an unusually vigorous and gifted soul. twice i have read it from cover to cover and with growing interest. at twelve she is passionately in love with a duke, whom she sometimes saw pass, but who had no knowledge of her existence, and builds many air castles about his throwing himself at her feet and of their life together. she prays passionately to see him again, would dazzle him on the stage, would lead a perfect life, develop her voice, and would be an ideal wife. she agonizes before the glass on whether or not she is pretty, and resolves to ask some young man, but prefers to think well of herself even if it is an illusion; constantly modulates over into passionate prayer to god to grant all her wishes; is oppressed with despair; gay and melancholy by turn; believes in god because she prayed him for a set of croquet and to help her to learn english, both of which he granted. at church some prayers and services seem directly aimed at her; paris now seems a frightful desert, and she has no motive to avoid carelessness in her appearance. she has freaky and very changeable ideas of arranging the things in her room. when she hears of the duke's marriage she almost throws herself over a bridge, prays god for pardon of her sins, and thinks all is ended; finds it horrible to dissemble her feelings in public; goes through the torture of altering her prayer about the duke. she is disgusted with common people, harrowed by jealousy, envy, deceit and every hideous feeling, yet feels herself frozen in the depth, and moving only on the surface. when her voice improves she welcomes it with tears and feels an all-powerful queen. the man she loves should never speak to another. her journal she resolves to make the most instructive book that ever was or ever will be written. she esteems herself so great a treasure that no one is worthy of her; pities those who think they can please her; thinks herself a real divinity; prays to the moon to show her in dreams her future husband, and quarrels with her photographs. in some moods she feels herself beautiful, knows she shall succeed, everything smiles upon her and she is absolutely happy and yet in the next paragraph the fever of life at high pressure palls upon her and things seem asleep and unreal. her attempts to express her feelings drive her to desperation because words are inadequate. she loves to weep, gives up to despair to think of death, and finds everything transcendently exquisite. she comes to despise men and wonder whether the good are always stupid and the intelligent always false and saturated with baseness, but on the whole believes that some time or other she is destined to meet one true good and great man. now she is inflated with pride of her ancestry, her gifts, and would subordinate everybody and everything; she would never speak a commonplace word, and then again feels that her life has been a failure and she is destined to be always waiting. she falls on her knees sobbing, praying to god with outstretched hands as if he were in her room; almost vows to make a pilgrimage to jerusalem one-tenth of the way on foot; to devote her money to good works; lacks the pleasures proper to her age; wonders if she can ever love again. on throwing a bouquet from a window into a crowd in the corso a young man choked so beautifully a workman who caught it that by that one act of strangling and snatching the bouquet she fell in love. the young man calls and they see each other often. now she is clad from head to foot in an armor of cold politeness, now vanity and now passion seem uppermost in their meetings. she wonders if a certain amount of sin, like air, is necessary to a man to sustain life. finally they vow mutual love and pietro leaves, and she begins to fear that she has cherished illusions or been insulted; is torments at things unsaid or of her spelling in french. she coughs and for three days has a new idea that she is going to die; prays and prostrates herself sixty times, one for each bead in her rosary, touching the floor with her forehead every time; wonders if god takes intentions into account; resolves to read the new testament, but can not find one and reads dumas instead. in novel-reading she imagines herself the heroine of every scene; sees her lover and they plan their mode of life together and at last kiss each other, but later she feels humiliated, chilled, doubts if it is real love; studies the color of her lips to see if they have changed; fears that she has compromised herself; has eye symptoms that make her fear blindness. once on reading the testament she smiled and clasped her hands, gazed upward, was no longer herself but in ecstasy; she makes many programs for life; is haunted by the phrase "we live but once"; wants to live a dozen lives in one, but feels that she does not live one-fourth of a life; has several spells of solitary illumination. at other times she wishes to be the center of a salon and imagines herself to be so. she soars on poets' wings, but often has hell in her heart; slowly love is vowed henceforth to be a word without meaning to her. although she suffers from _ennui_, she realizes that women live only from sixteen to forty and cannot bear the thought of losing a moment of her life; criticizes her mother; scorns marriage and child-bearing, which any washerwoman can attain, but pants for glory; now hates, now longs to see new faces; thinks of disguising herself as a poor girl and going out to seek her fortunes; thinks her mad vanity is her devil; that her ambitions are justified by no results; hates moderation in anything, would have intense and constant excitement or absolute repose; at fifteen abandons her idea of the duke but wants an idol, and finally decides to live for fame; studies her shoulders, hips, bust, to gauge her success in life; tries target-shooting, hits every time and feels it to be fateful; at times despises her mother because she is so easily influenced by her; meets another man whose affection for her she thinks might be as reverent as religion and who never profaned the purity of his life by a thought, but finally drops him because the possible disappointment would be unbearable; finds that the more unhappy any one is for love of us the happier we are; wonders why she has weeping spells; wonders what love that people talk so much about really is, and whether she is ever to know. one night, at the age of seventeen, she has a fit of despair which vents itself in moans until arising, she seizes the dining-room clock, rushes out and throws it into the sea, when she becomes happy. "poor clock!" at another time she fears she has used the word love lightly and resolves to no longer invoke god's help, yet in the next line prays him to let her die as everything is against her, her thoughts are incoherent, she hates herself and everything is contemptible; but she wishes to die peacefully while some one is singing a beautiful air of verdi. again she thinks of shaving her head to save the trouble of arranging her hair; is crazed to think that every moment brings her nearer death; to waste a moment of life is infamous, yet she can trust no one; all the freshness of life is gone; few things affect her now; she wonders how in the past she could have acted so foolishly and reasoned so wisely; is proud that no advice in the world could ever keep her from doing anything she wished. she thinks the journal of her former years exaggerated and resolves to be moderate; wants to make others feel as she feels; finds that the only cure for disenchantment with life is devotion to work; fears her face is wearing an anxious look instead of the confident expression which was its chief charm. "impossible" is a hideous, maddening word; to think of dying like a dog as most people do and leaving nothing behind is a granite wall against which she every instant dashes her head. if she loved a man, every expression of admiration for anything, or anybody else in her presence would be a profanation. now she thinks the man she loves must never know what it is to be in want of money and must purchase everything he wishes; must weep to see a woman want for anything, and find the door of no palace or club barred to him. art becomes a great shining light in her life of few pleasures and many griefs, yet she dares hope for nothing. at eighteen all her caprices are exhausted; she vows and prays in the name of the father, son, and holy ghost for her wishes. she would like to be a millionaire, get back her voice, obtain the _prix de rome_ under the guise of a man and marry napoleon iv. on winning a medal for her pictures she does nothing but laugh, cry, and dream of greatness, but the next day is scolded and grows discouraged. she has an immense sense of growth and transformation, so that not a trace of her old nature remains; feels that she has far too much of some things, and far too little of others in her nature; sees defects in her mother's character, whose pertinacity is like a disease; realizes that one of her chief passions is to inspire rather than to feel love; that her temper is profoundly affected by her dress; deplores that her family expect her to achieve greatness rather than give her the stimulus of expecting nothing; declares that she thanks a million thoughts for every word that she writes; is disgusted with and sometimes absolutely hates herself. at one time she coquets with kant, and wonders if he is right that all things exist only in the imagination; has a passion for such "abracadabrante follies" that seem so learned and logical, but is grieved to feel them to be false; longs to penetrate the intellectual world, to see, learn, and know everything; admires balzac because he describes so frankly all that he has felt; loves fleury, who has shown her a wider horizon; still has spells of admiring her dazzling complexion and deploring that she can not go out alone; feels that she is losing her grip on art and also on god, who no longer hears her prayers, and resolves to kill herself if she is not famous at thirty. at nineteen, and even before, she has spells of feeling inefficient cries, calls on god, feels exhausted; is almost stunned when she hears that the young french prince about whom she has spun romances was killed by the kaffirs; feels herself growing serious and sensible; despises death; realizes that god is not what she thought, but is perhaps nature and life or is perhaps chance; she thinks out possible pictures she might paint; develops a platonic friendship for her professor; might marry an old man with twenty-seven millions, but spurns the thought; finds herself growing deaf gradually, and at nineteen finds three grey hairs; has awful remorse for days, when she cannot work and so loses herself in novels and cigarettes; makes many good resolutions and then commits some folly as if in a dream; has spells of reviewing the past. when the doctor finds a serious lung trouble and commands iodine, cod-liver oil, hot milk, and flannel, she at first scorns death and refuses all, and is delighted at the terror of her friends, but gradually does all that is necessary; feels herself too precocious and doomed; deplores especially that consumption will cost her her good looks; has fits of intense anger alternating with tears; concludes that death is annihilation; realizes the horrible thought that she has a skeleton within her that some time or other will come out; reads the new testament again and returns to belief in miracle, and prayer to jesus and the virgin; distributes one thousand francs to the poor; records the dreamy delusions that flow through her brain at night and the strange sensations by day. her eye symptoms cause her to fear blindness again; she grows superstitious, believing in signs and fortune-tellers; is strongly impelled to embrace and make up with her mother; at times defies god and death; sees a spanish bull-fight and gets from it a general impression of human cowardice, but has a strange intoxication with blood and would like to thrust a lance into the neck of every one she meets; coquets a great deal with the thought of marriage; takes up her art and paints a few very successful pictures; tries to grapple with the terrible question, "what is my unbiased opinion concerning myself?" pants chiefly for fame. when the other lung is found diseased the diary becomes sometimes more serious, sometimes more fevered; she is almost racked to find some end in life; shall she marry, or paint? and at last finds much consolation in the visits of bastien-lepage, who comes to see her often while he is dying of some gastric trouble. she keeps up occasional and often daily entries in her journal until eleven days before her death, occurring in october, , at the age of twenty-three, and precipitated by a cold incurred while making an open-air sketch. the confessional outpourings of mary maclane[ ] constitute a unique and valuable adolescent document, despite the fact that it seems throughout affected and written for effect; however, it well illustrates a real type, although perhaps hardly possible save in this country, and was inspired very likely by the preceding. she announces at the outset that she is odd, a genius, an extreme egotist; has no conscience; despises her father, "jim maclane of selfish memory"; loves scrubbing the floor because it gives her strength and grace of body, although her daily life is an "empty damned weariness." she is a female napoleon passionately desiring fame; is both a philosopher and a coward; her heart is wooden; although but nineteen, she feels forty; desires happiness even more than fame, for an hour of which she would give up at once fame, money, power, virtue, honor, truth, and genius to the devil, whose coming she awaits. she discusses her portrait, which constitutes the frontispiece; is glad of her good strong body, and still awaits in a wild, frenzied impatience the coming of the devil to take her sacrifice, and to whom she would dedicate her life. she loves but one in all the world, an older "anemone" lady, once her teacher. she ran not distinguish between right and wrong; love is the only thing real which will some day bring joy, but it is agony to wait. "oh, dame! damn! damn! damn! every living thing in the world!--the universe be damned!" herself included. she is "marvelously deep," but thanks the good devil who has made her without conscience and virtue so that she may take her happiness when it comes. her soul seeks but blindly, for nothing answers. how her happiness will seethe, quiver, writhe, shine, dance, rush, surge, rage, blare, and wreak with love and light when it comes! the devil she thinks fascinating and strong, with a will of steel, conventional clothes, whom she periodically falls in love with and would marry, and would love to be tortured by him. she holds imaginary conversations with him. if happiness does not come soon she will commit suicide, and she finds rapture in the thought of death. in butte, montana, where she lives, she wanders among the box rustlers, the beer jerkers, biscuit shooters, and plunges out into the sand and barrenness, but finds everything dumb. the six toothbrushes in the bathroom make her wild and profane. she flirts with death at the top of a dark, deep pit, and thinks out the stages of decomposition if she yielded herself to death, who would dearly love to have her. she confesses herself a thief on several occasions, but comforts herself because the stolen money was given to the poor. sometimes her "very good legs" carry her out into the country, where she has imaginary love confabs with the devil, but the world is so empty, dreary, and cold, and it is all so hard to bear when one is a woman and nineteen. she has a litany from which she prays in recurrent phrases "kind devil, deliver me"--as, e.g., from musk, boys with curls, feminine men, wobbly hips, red note-paper, codfish-balls, lisle-thread stockings, the books of a.c. gunter and albert ross, wax flowers, soft old bachelors and widowers, nice young men, tin spoons, false teeth, thin shoes, etc. she does not seem real to herself everything is a blank. though she doubts everything else, she will keep the one atom of faith in love and the truth that is love and life in her heart. when something shrieks within her, she feels that all her anguish is for nothing and that she is a fool. she is exasperated that people call her peculiar, but confesses that she loves admiration; she can fascinate and charm company if she tries; imagines an admiration for messalina. she most desires to cultivate badness when there is lead in the sky. "i would live about seven years of judicious badness, and then death if you will." "i long to cultivate the of badness in me." she describes the fascination of making and eating fudge; devotes a chapter to describing how to eat an olive; discusses her figure. "in the front of my shirt-waist there are nine cambric handkerchiefs cunningly distributed." she discusses her foot, her beautiful hair, her hips; describes each of the seventeen little engraved portraits of napoleon that she keeps, with each of which she falls in love; vows she would give up even her marvelous genius far one dear, bright day free from loneliness. when her skirts need sewing, she simply pins them; this lasts longer, and had she mended them with needle and thread she would have been sensible, which she hates. as she walks over the sand one day she vows that she would like a man to come so be that he was strong and a perfect villain and she would pray him to lead her to what the world calls her ruin. nothing is of consequence to her except to be rid of unrest and pain. she would be positively and not merely negatively wicked. to poison her soul would rouse her mental power. "oh, to know just once what it is to be loved!" "i know that i am a genius more than any genius that has lived," yet she often thinks herself a small vile creature for whom no one cares. the world is ineffably dull, heaven has always fooled her, and she is starving for love. ada negri illustrates the other extreme of genuineness and is desperately in earnest.[ ] she began to teach school in a squalid, dismal italian village, and at eighteen to write the poetry that has made her famous. she lived in a dim room back of a stable, up two flights, where the windows were not glass but paper, and where she seems to have been, like her mother, a mill head before she was a teacher. she had never seen a theater, but had read of duse with enthusiasm; had never seen the sea, mountain, or even a hill, lake, or large city, but she had read of them. after she began to write, friends gave her two dream days in the city. then she returned, put on her wooden shoes, and began to teach her eighty children to spell. the poetry she writes is from the heart of her own experience. she craved "the kiss of genius and of light;" but the awful figure of misfortune with its dagger stood by her bed at night. she writes: "i have no name--my home a hovel damp; i grew up from the mire; wretched and outcast folk my family, and yet within me burns a flame of fire." there is always a praying angel and an evil dwarf on either side. the black abyss attracts her yet she is softened by a child's caress. she laughs at the blackest calamities that threaten her, but weeps over thin, wan children without bread. her whole life goes into song. the boy criminal on the street fascinates her and she would kiss him. she writes of jealousy as a ghost of vengeance. if death comes, she fears "that the haggard doctor will dissect my naked corpse," and pictures herself dying on the operating-table like a stray dog and her well-made body "disgraced by the lustful kiss of the too eager blade" as, "with sinister smile untiring, they tear my bowels out and still gloat over my sold corpse, go on to bare my bones, and veins at will, wrench out my heart," probe vainly for the secrets of hunger and the mystery of pain, until from her "dead breast gurgles a gasp of malediction." much of her verse is imprecation. "a crimson rain of crying blood dripping from riddled chests" of those slain for liberty falls, on her heart; the sultry factories where "monsters, of steel, huge engines, snort all day," and where the pungent air poisons the blood of the pale weaver girls; the fate of the mason who felt from a high roof and struck the stone flagging, whose funeral she attends, all inspire her to sing occasionally the songs of enfranchised labor. misery as a drear, toothless ghost visits her, as when gloomy pinions had overspread her dying mother's bed, to wrench with sharp nails all the hope from her breast with which she had defied it. a wretched old man on the street inspires her to sing of what she imagines is his happy though humble prime. there is the song of the pickaxe brandished in revolution when mobs cry "peace, labor bread," and in mines of industry beneath the earth. she loves the "defeated" in whose house no fire glows, who live in caves and dens, and writes of the mutilation of a woman in the factory machinery. at eighteen years "a loom, two handsome eyes that know no tears, a cotton dress, a love, belong to me." she is inspired by a master of the forge beating a red-hot bar, with his bare neck swelled. he is her demon, her god, and her pride in him is ecstasy. she describes jealousy of two rival women, so intense that they fight and bite, and the pure joy of a guileless, intoxicating, life-begetting first kiss. she longs for infinite stretches of hot, golden sand, over which she would gallop wildly on her steed; anticipates an old age of cap and spectacles; revels in the hurricane, and would rise in and fly and whirl with it adrift far out in the immensity of space. she tells us, "of genius and light i'm a blithe, millionaire," and elsewhere she longs for the everlasting ice of lofty mountains, the immortal silence of the alps; sings of her "sad twenty years," "how all, all goes when love is gone and spent." she imagines herself springing into the water which closes over her, while her naked soul, ghostly pale, whirls past through the lonely dale. she imprecates the licentious world of crafty burghers, coquettes, gamblers, well-fed millionaires, cursed geese and serpents that make the cowardly vile world, and whom she would smite in the face with her indignant verse. "thou crawlest and i soar." she chants the champions of the spade, hammer, pick, though they are ground and bowed with toil, disfigured within, with furrowed brows. she pants for war with outrage and with wrong; questions the abyss for its secret; hears moans and flying shudders; and sees phantoms springing from putrid tombs. the full moon is an old malicious spy, peeping stealthily with evil eye. she is a bird caught in a cursed cage, and prays some one to unlock the door and give her space and light, and let her soar away in ecstasy and glory. nothing less than infinite space will satisfy her. even the tempest, the demon, or a malevolent spirit might bear her away on unbridled wings. in one poem she apostrophizes marie bashkirtseff as warring with vast genius against unknown powers, but who now is in her coffin among worms, her skull grinning and showing its teeth. she would be possessed by her and thrilled as by an electric current. a dwarf beggar wrings her heart with pity, but she will not be overwhelmed. though a daring peasant, she will be free and sing out her pæan to the sun, though amid the infernal glow of furnaces, forges, and the ringing noise of hammers and wheels. literary men who record their experiences during this stage seem to differ from women in several important respects. first, they write with less abandon. i can recall no male maclanes. a bashkirtseff would be less impossible, and a negri with social reform in her heart is still less so. but men are more prone to characterize their public metamorphoses later in life, when they are a little paled, and perhaps feel less need of confessionalism for that reason. it would, however, be too hazardous to elaborate this distinction too far. secondly and more clearly, men tend to vent their ephebic calentures more in the field of action. they would break the old moorings of home and strike out new careers, or vent their souls in efforts and dreams of reconstructing the political, industrial, or social world. their impracticabilities are more often in the field of practical life and remoter from their own immediate surroundings. this is especially true in our practical country, which so far lacks subjective characterizations of this age of eminent literary merit, peculiarly intense as it is here. thirdly, they erupt in a greater variety of ways, and the many kinds of genius and talent that now often take possession of their lives like fate are more varied and individual. this affords many extreme contrasts, as, e.g., between trollope's pity for, and goethe's apotheosis of his youth; mill's loss of feeling, and jefferies's unanalytic, passionate outbursts of sentiment; the esthetic ritualism of symonds, and the progressive religious emancipation of fielding hall; the moral and religious supersensitiveness of oliphant, who was a reincarnation of medieval monkhood, and the riotous storminess of müller and ebers; the abnormalities and precocity of de quincey, and the steady, healthful growth of patterson; the simultaneity of a fleshly and spiritual love in keller and goethe, and the duality of pater, with his great and tyrannical intensification of sensation for nature and the sequent mysticity and symbolism. in some it is fulminating but episodic, in others gradual and lifelong like the advent of eternal spring. fourth, in their subjective states women outgrow less in their consciousness, and men depart farther from their youth, in more manifold ways. lastly, in its religious aspects, the male struggles more with dogma, and his enfranchisement from it is more intellectually belabored. yet, despite all these differences, the analogies between the sexes are probably yet more numerous, more all-pervasive. all these biographic facts reveal nothing not found in _questionnaire_ returns from more ordinary youth, so that for our purposes they are only the latter, writ large because superior minds only utter what all more inwardly feel. the arrangement by nationality which follows gives no yet adequate basis for inference unless it be the above american peculiarity. in his autobiography from - , de quincey[ ] remembered feeling that life was finished and blighted for him at the age of six, up to which time the influence of his sister three years older had brooded over him. his first remembrance, however, is of a dream of terrific grandeur before he was two, which seemed to indicate that his dream tendencies were constitutional and not due to morphine, but the chill was upon the first glimpse that this was a world of evil. he had been brought up in great seclusion from all knowledge of poverty and oppression in a silent garden with three sisters, but the rumor that a female servant had treated one of them rudely just before her death plunged him into early pessimism. he felt that little jane would come back certainly in the spring with the roses, and he was glad that his utter misery with the blank anarchy confusion which her death brought could not be completely remembered. he stole into the chamber where her corpse lay, and as he stood, a solemn wind, the saddest he ever heard, that might have swept the fields of mortality for a thousand centuries, blew, and that same hollow memnonian wind he often had heard since, and it brought back the open summer window and the corpse. a vault above opened into the sky, and he slept and dreamed there, standing by her, he knew not how long; a worm that could not die was at his heart, for this was the holy love between children that could not perish. the funeral was full of darkness and despair for him, and after it he sought solitude, gazed into the heavens to see his sister till he was tired, and realized that he was alone. thus, before the end of his sixth year, with a mind already adolescent, although with a retarded body, the minor tone of life became dominant and his awakening to it was hard. as a penniless schoolboy wandering the streets of london at night, he was on familiar and friendly terms of innocent relationship with a number of outcast women. in his misery they were to him simply sisters in calamity, but he found in them humanity, disinterested generosity, courage, and fidelity. one night, after he had walked the streets for weeks with one of these friendless girls who had not completed her sixteenth year, as they sat on the steps of a house, he grew very ill, and had she not rushed to buy from her slender purse cordials and tenderly ministered to and revived him, he would have died. many years later he used to wander past this house, and he recalled with real tenderness this youthful friendship; he longed again to meet the "noble-minded ann ----" with whom he had so often conversed familiarly "_more socratico_," whose betrayer he had vainly sought to punish, and yearned to hear from her in order to convey to her some authentic message of gratitude, peace, and forgiveness. his much older brother came home in his thirty-ninth year to die. he had been unmanageable in youth and his genius for mischief was an inspiration, yet he was hostile to everything pusillanimous, haughty, aspiring, ready to fasten a quarrel on his shadow for running before, at first inclined to reduce his boy brother to a fag, but finally before his death became a great influence in his life. prominent were the fights between de quincey and another older brother on the one hand, and the factory crowd of boys on the other, a fight incessantly renewed at the close of factory hours, with victory now on one and now on the other side; fought with stones and sticks, where thrice he was taken prisoner, where once one of the factory women kissed him, to the great delight of his heart. he finally invented a kingdom like hartley coleridge, called gom broon. he thought first that it had no location, but finally because his brother's imaginary realm was north and he wanted wide water between them, his was in the far south. it was only two hundred and seventy miles in circuit, and he was stunned to be told by his brother one day that his own domain swept south for eighty degrees, so that the distance he had relied on vanished. here, however, he continued to rule for well or ill, raising taxes, keeping an imaginary standing army, fishing herring and selling the product of his fishery for manure, and experiencing how "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." he worried over his obligations to gom broon, and the shadow froze into reality, and although his brother's kingdom tigrosylvania was larger, his was distinguished for eminent men and a history not to be ashamed of. a friend had read lord monboddo's view that men had sprung from apes, and suggested that the inhabitants of gom broon had tails, so that the brother told him that his subjects had not emerged from apedom and he must invent arts to eliminate the tails. they must be made to sit down for six hours a day as a beginning. abdicate he would not, though all his subjects had three tails apiece. they had suffered together. vain was his brother's suggestion that they have a roman toga to conceal their ignominious appendages. he was greatly interested in two scrofulous idiots, who finally died, and feared that his subjects were akin to them. john stuart mill's autobiography presents one of the most remarkable modifications of the later phases of adolescent experience. no boy ever had more diligent and earnest training than his father gave him or responded better. he can not remember when he began to learn greek, but was told that it was at the age of three. the list of classical authors alone that he read in the original, to say nothing of history, political, scientific, logical, and other works before he was twelve, is perhaps unprecedented in all history. he associated with his father and all his many friends on their own level, but modestly ascribes everything to his environment, insists that in natural gifts he is other below than above par, and declares that everything he did could be done by every boy of average capacity and healthy physical constitution. his father made the greek virtue of temperance or moderation cardinal, and thought human life "a poor thing at best after the freshness of youth and unsatisfied curiosity had gone by." he scorned "the intense" and had only contempt for strong emotion. in his teens mill was an able debater and writer for the quarterlies, and devoted to the propagation of the theories of bentham, ricardo, and associationism. from the age of fifteen he had an object in life, viz., to reform the world. this gave him happiness, deep, permanent, and assured for the future, and the idea of struggling to promote utilitarianism seemed an inspiring program for life. but in the autumn of , when he was twenty years of age, he felt into "a dull state of nerves," where he could no longer enjoy and what had produced pleasure seemed insipid; "the state, i should think, in which converts to methodism usually are when smitten by their first 'conviction of sin.' in this frame of mind it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself; 'suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to could be completely effected at this very instant; would this be a great joy and happiness to you?' and an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, 'no.' at this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. all my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. the end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? i seemed to have nothing left to live for. at first i hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself, but it did not. a night's sleep, the sovereign remedy for the smaller vexations of life, had no effect on it. i awoke to a renewed consciousness of the woful fact. i carried it with me into all companies, into all occupations. hardly anything had power to cause me even a few minutes' oblivion of it. for some months the cloud seemed to grow thicker and thicker. the lines in coleridge's 'dejection'--i was not then acquainted with them--exactly described my case: "'a grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear, a drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, which finds no natural outlet or relief in word, or sigh, or tear.' "in vain i sought relief from my favorite books, those memorials of past nobleness and greatness from which i had always hitherto drawn strength and animation. i read them now without feeling, or with the accustomed feeling minus all its charm; and i became persuaded that my love of mankind, and of excellence for its own sake, had worn itself out. i sought no comfort by speaking to others of what i felt. if i had loved any one sufficiently to make confiding my griefs a necessity, i should not have been in the condition i was. i felt, too, that mine was not an interesting or in anyway respectable distress. there was nothing in it to attract sympathy. advice, if i had known where to seek it, would have been most precious. the words of macbeth to the physician often occurred to my thoughts. but there was no one on whom i could build the faintest hope of such assistance. my father, to whom it would have been natural to me to have recourse in any practical difficulties, was the last person to whom, in such a case as this, i looked for help. everything convinced me that he had no knowledge of any such mental state as i was suffering from, and that even if he could be made to understand it, he was not the physician who could heal it. my education, which was wholly his work, had been conducted without any regard to the possibility of its ending in this result, and i saw no use in giving him the pain of thinking that his plans had failed, when the failure was probably irremediable, and, at all event, beyond the power of his remedies. of other friends, i had at that time none to whom i had any hope of making my condition intelligible. it was, however, abundantly intelligible to myself, and the more i dwelt upon it the more hopeless it appeared." he now saw what had hitherto seemed incredible, that the habit of analysis tends to wear away the feelings. he felt "stranded at the commencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, but no sail; without any real desire for the ends which i had been so carefully fitted out to work for: no delight in virtue, or the general good, but also just as little in anything else. the fountains of vanity and ambition seemed to have dried up within me as completely as those of benevolence." his vanity had been gratified at too early an age, and, like all premature pleasures, they had caused indifference, until he despaired of creating any fresh association of pleasure with any objects of human dire. meanwhile, dejected and melancholy as he was through the winter, he went on mechanically with his tasks; thought he found in coleridge the first description of what he was feeling; feared the idiosyncrasies of his education had made him a being unique and apart. "i asked myself if i could or if i was bound to go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. i generally answered to myself that i did not think i could possibly bear it beyond a year." but within about half that time, in reading a pathetic page of how a mere boy felt that he could save his family and take the place of all they had lost, a vivid conception of the scene came over him and he was moved to tears. from that moment, his burden grew lighter. he saw that his heart was not dead and that he still had some stuff left of which character and happiness are made; and although there were several later lapses, some of which lasted many months, he was never again as miserable as he had been. these experience left him changed in two respects. he had a new theory of life, having much in common with the anti-consciousness theory of carlyle. he still held happiness the end of life, but thought it must be aimed at indirectly and taken incidentally. the other change was that for the first time he gave its proper place to internal culture of the individual, especially the training of the feelings which became now cardinal. he relished and felt the power of poetry and art; was profoundly moved by music; fell in love with wordsworth and with nature, and his later depressions were best relieved by the power of rural beauty, which wrought its charm not because of itself but by the states and feelings it aroused. his ode on the intimations of immortality showed that he also had felt that the first freshness of youthful joy was not lasting, and had sought and found compensation. he had thus come to a very different standpoint from that of his father, who had up to this time formed his mind and life, and developed on this basis his unique individuality. jefferies, when eighteen, began his "story of my heart,"[ ] which he said was an absolutely true confession of the stages of emotion in a soul from which all traces of tradition and learning were erased, and which stood face to face with nature and the unknown. his heart long seemed dusty and parched for want of feeling, and he frequented a hill, where the pores of his soul opened to a new air. "lying down on the grass, i spoke in my soul to the earth, the sun, the air and the distant sea.... i desired to have its strength, its mystery and glory. i addressed the sun, desiring the sole equivalent of his light and brilliance, his endurance, and unwearied race. i turned to the blue heaven over, gazing into its depth, inhaling its exquisite color and sweetness. the rich blue of the unobtainable flower of the sky drew my soul toward it, and there it rested, for pure color is the rest of the heart. by all these i prayed. i felt an emotion of the soul beyond all definition; prayer is a puny thing to it." he prayed by the thyme; by the earth; the flowers which he touched; the dust which he let fall through his fingers; was filled with "a rapture, an ecstasy, an inflatus. with this inflatus i prayed.... i hid my face in the grass; i was wholly prostrated; i lost myself in the wrestle.... i see now that what i labored for was soul life, more soul learning." after gazing upward he would turn his face into the grass, shutting out everything with hands each side, till he felt down into the earth and was absorbed in it, whispering deep down to its center. every natural impression, trees, insects, air, clouds, he used for prayer, "that my soul might be more than the cosmos of life." his "lyra" prayer was to live a more exalted and intense soul life; enjoy more bodily pleasure and live long and find power to execute his designs. he often tried, but failed for years to write at least a meager account of these experiences. he felt himself immortal just as he felt beauty. he was in eternity already; the supernatural is only the natural misnamed. as he lay face down on the grass, seizing it with both hands, he longed for death, to be burned on a pyre of pine wood on a high hill, to have his ashes scattered wide and broadcast, to be thrown into the space he longed for while living, but he feared that such a luxury of resolution into the elements would be too costly. thus his naked mind, close against naked mother nature, wrested from her the conviction of soul, immortality, deity, under conditions as primitive as those of the cave man, and his most repeated prayer was "give me the deepest soul life." in other moods he felt the world outré-human, and his mind could by no twist be fitted to the cosmos. ugly, designless creatures caused him to cease to look for deity in nature, where all happens by chance. he at length concluded there is something higher than soul and above deity, and better than god, for which he searched and labored. he found favorite thinking places, to which he made pilgrimages, where he "felt out into the depths of the ether." his frame could not bear the labor his heart demanded. work of body was his meat and drink. "never have i had enough of it. i wearied long before i was satisfied, and weariness did not bring a cessation of desire, the thirst was still there. i rode; i used the ax; i split tree-trunks with wedges; my arms tired, but my spirit remained fresh and chafed against the physical weariness." had he been indefinitely stronger, he would have longed for more strength. he was often out of doors all day and often half the night; wanted more sunshine; wished the day was sixty hours long; took pleasure in braving the cold so that it should be not life's destroyer but its renewer. yet he abhorred asceticism. he wrestled with the problem of the origin of his soul and destiny, but could find no solution; revolted at the assertion that all is designed for the best; "a man of intellect and humanity could cause everything to happen in an infinitely superior manner." he discovered that no one ever died of old age, but only of disease; that we do not even know what old age would be like; found that his soul is infinite, but lies in abeyance; that we are murdered by our ancestors and must roll back the tide of death; that a hundredth part of man's labor would suffice for his support; that idleness is no evil; that in the future nine-tenths of the time will be leisure, and to that end he will work with all his heart. "i was not more than eighteen when an inner and esoteric meaning began to come to me from all the visible universe, and indefinable aspirations filled me." interesting as is this document, it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that the seventeen years which intervened between the beginning of these experiences and their final record, coupled with the perhaps unconscious tendency toward literary effect, detract more or less from their value as documents of adolescent nature. mr. h. fielding hall, author of "the soul of a people," has since written a book[ ] in which, beginning with many definitions of christianity, weighing the opinion of those who think all our advance is made because of, against those who think it in spite of christianity, he proceeds to give the story of a boy, probably himself, who till twelve was almost entirely reared by women and with children younger than himself. he was sickly, and believed not in the old but in the new testament; in the sermon on the mount, which he supposed all accepted and lived by; that war and wealth were bad and learning apt to be a snare; that the ideal life was that of a poor curate, working hard and unhappy. at twelve, he went to a boarding-school, passed from a woman's world into a man's, out of the new testament into the old, out of dreams into reality. war was a glorious opportunity, and all followed the british victories, which were announced publicly. big boys were going to sandhurst or woolwich; there were parties; and the school code never turned the other cheek. wars were god's storms, stirring stagnant natures to new life; wealth was worshiped; certain lies were an honor; knowledge was an extremely desirable thing--all this was at first new and delightful, but extremely wicked. sunday was the only other old testament rule, but was then forgotten. slowly a repugnance of religion in all its forms arose. he felt his teachers hypocrites; he raised no alarm, "for he was hardly conscious that his anchor had dragged or that he had lost hold" of it forever. at eighteen, he read darwin and found that if he were right, genesis was wrong; man had risen, not fallen; if a part was wrong, the whole was. if god made the world, the devil seemed to rule it; prayer can not influence him; the seven days of creation were periods, heaven knows how long. why did all profess and no one believe religion? why is god so stern and yet so partial, and how about the trinity? then explanations were given. heaven grew repulsive, as a place for the poor, the maimed, the stupid, the childish, and those unfit for earth generally. faiths came from the east. "the north has originated only thor, odin, balder, valkyres." the gloom and cold drive man into himself; do not open him. in the east one can live in quiet solitude, with no effort, close to nature. the representatives of all faiths wear ostentatiously their badges, pray in public, and no one sneers at all religions. oriental faiths have no organization; there is no head of hinduism, buddhism, or hardly of mohammedanism. there are no missions, but religion grows rankly from a rich soil, so the boy wrote three demands: a reasonable theory of the universe, a workable and working code of conduct, and a promise of something desirable hereafter. so he read books and tried to make a system. on a hill, in a thunder-storm in the east, he realized how thor was born. man fears thunder; it seems the voice of a greater man. deny eyes, legs, and body of the deity, and nothing is left. god as an abstract spirit is unthinkable, but buddhism offers us no god, only law. necessity, blind force, law, or a free personal will--that is the alternative. freedom limits omnipotence; the two can never mix. "the german emperor's god, clanking round the heavenly mansions wearing a german _pickelhaube_ and swearing german oaths," is not satisfactory. man's god is what he admires most in himself; he can be propitiated, hence atonement; you can not break a law, but you can study it. inquiry, not submission, is the attitude. perhaps both destiny and freedom are true, but truth is for the sake of light. thor had no moral code; the greeks were unmoral. jehovah at first asked only fear, reverence, and worship. this gives no guide to life. most codes are directed against a foe and against pain. truth, mercy, courtesy--these were slowly added to reverence; then sanitary rules, hence castes. two codes, those of christ and buddha, tower above all others. they are the same in praising not wealth, greatness, or power, but purity, renunciation of the world, as if one fitted one's self for one by being unfitted for the other world. is heaven a bribe? its ideals are those of children, of girl angels, white wings, floating dresses, no sheep, but lambs. "surely there is nothing in all the world so babyish." one can hardly imagine a man with a deep voice, with the storm of life beating his soul, amid those baby faces. if happiness in any act or attitude is perfect, it will last forever. where is due the weariness or satiety? but if happiness be perfect, this is impossible; so life would be monotony akin to annihilation. but life is change, and change is misery. there is effort here; but there will be none in the great peace that passes understanding; no defeat, therefore no victory; no friends, because no enemies; no joyous meetings, because no farewells. it is the shadows and the dark mysteries that sound the depths of our hearts. no man that ever lived, if told that he could be young again or go to any heaven, would choose the latter. men die for many things, but all fear the beyond. thus no religion gives us an intelligible first cause, a code or a heaven that we want. the most religious man is the peasant listening to the angelus, putting out a little _ghi_ for his god; the woman crying in the pagoda. thus we can only turn to the hearts of men for the truth of religion. biographies and autobiographies furnish many photographic glimpses of the struggles and experiences of early adolescent years. anthony trollope's autobiography[ ] is pitiful. he was poor and disliked by most of his masters and treated with ignominy by his fellow pupils. he describes himself as always in disgrace. at fifteen he walked three miles each way twice a day to and from school. as a sizar he seemed a wretched farmer's boy, reeking from the dunghill, sitting next the sons of big peers. all were against him, and he was allowed to join no games, and learned, he tells us, absolutely nothing but a little greek and latin. once only, goaded to desperation, he rallied and whipped a bully. the boy was never able to overcome the isolation of his school position, and while he coveted popularity with an eagerness which was almost mean, and longed exceedingly to excel in cricket or with the racquet, was allowed to know nothing of them. he remembers at nineteen never to have had a lesson in writing, arithmetic, french, or german. he knew his masters by their ferules and they him. he believes that he has "been flogged oftener than any human being alive. it was just possible to obtain five scourgings in one day at winchester, and i have often boasted that i have obtained them all." prizes were distributed prodigally, but he never got one. for twelve years of tuition, he says, "i do not remember that i ever knew a lesson." at this age he describes himself as "an idle, desolate, hanger on ... without an idea of a career or a profession or a trade," but he was tolerably happy because he could fancy himself in love with pretty girls and had been removed from the real misery of school, but had not a single aspiration regarding his future. three of his household were dying of consumption, and his mother was day nurse, night nurse, and divided her time between pill-boxes and the ink-bottle, for when she was seventy-six she had written one hundred and forty volumes, the first of which was not written till she was fifty. gradually the boy became alive to the blighted ambition of his father's life and the strain his mother was enduring, nursing the dying household and writing novels to provide a decent roof for them to die under. anthony got a position at the post-office without an examination. he knew no french nor science; was a bad speller and worse writer and could not have sustained an examination on any subject. still he could not bear idleness, and was always going about with some castle in the air finely built in his mind, carrying on for weeks and years the same continuous story; binding himself down to certain laws, proprieties, and unities; always his own hero, excluding everything violently improbable. to this practise, which he calls dangerous and which began six or seven years before he went to the post-office, he ascribes his power to maintain an interest in a fictitious story and to live in a entirely outside imaginative life. during these seven years he acquired a character of irregularity and grew reckless. mark pattison[ ] shows us how his real life began in the middle teens, when his energy was "directed to one end, to improve myself"; "to form my own mind; to sound things thoroughly; to be free from the bondage of unreason and the traditional prejudices which, when i first began to think, constituted the whole of my mental fabric." he entered upon life with a "hide-bound and contracted intellect," and depicts "something of the steps by which i emerged from that frozen condition." he believes that to "remember the dreams and confusions of childhood and never to lose the recollection of the curiosity and simplicity of that age, is one of the great gifts of the poetic character," although this, he tells us, was extraordinarily true of george sand, but not of himself. from the age of twelve on, a fellowship at oriel was the ideal of his life, and although he became a commoner there at seventeen, his chief marvel is that he was so immature and unimpressionable. william hale white[ ] learned little at school, save latin and good penmanship, but his very life was divided into halves--sundays and week days--and he reflects at some length upon the immense dangers of the early teens; the physiological and yet subtler psychic penalties of error; callousness to fine pleasures; hardening of the conscience; and deplores the misery which a little instruction might have saved him. at fourteen he underwent conversion, understood in his sect to be a transforming miracle, releasing higher and imprisoning lower powers. he compares it to the saving of a mind from vice by falling in love with a woman who is adored, or the reclamation of a young woman from idleness and vanity by motherhood. but as a boy he was convinced of many things which were mere phrases, and attended prayer-meetings for the clanship of being marked off from the world and of walking home with certain girls. he learned to say in prayer that there was nothing good in him, that he was rotten and filthy and his soul a mass of putrefying sores; but no one took him at his word and expelled him from society, but thought the better of him. soon he began to study theology, but found no help in suppressing tempestuous lust, in understanding the bible, or getting his doubts answered, and all the lectures seemed irrelevant chattering. an infidel was a monster whom he had rarely ever seen. at nineteen he began to preach, but his heart was untouched till he read wordsworth's lyrical ballads, and this recreated a living god for him, melted his heart to tears, and made him long for companionship; its effect was instantly seen in his preaching, and soon made him slightly suspected as heretical.[ ] john addington symonds, in his autobiography, describes his "insect-like" devotion to creed in the green infancy of ritualism. in his early teens at boarding-school he and his mates, with half sincerity, followed a classmate to compline, donned surplices, tossed censers, arranged altars in their studies, bought bits of painted glass for their windows and illuminated crucifixes with gold dust and vermilion. when he was confirmed, this was somewhat of an epoch. preparation was like a plowshare, although it turned up nothing valuable, and stimulated esthetic and emotional ardor. in a dim way he felt god near, but he did not learn to fling the arms of the soul in faith around the cross of christ. later the revelation he found in plato removed him farther from boyhood. he fell in love with gray gothic churches, painted glass, organ lofts, etc. walter pater has described phases of ferment, perhaps largely his own, in the character of florian deleal; his rapture of the red hawthorn blossoms, "absolutely the reddest of all things"; his times of "seemingly exclusive predominance of interest in beautiful physical things, a kind of tyranny of the senses"; and his later absorbing efforts to estimate the proportion of the sensuous and ideal, assigning most importance to sensible vehicles and occasions; associating all thoughts with touch and sight as a link between himself and things, till he became more and more "unable to care for or think of soul but as in an actual body"; comforted in the contemplation of death by the thought of flesh turning to violets and almost oppressed by the pressure of the sensible world, his longings for beauty intensifying his fear of death. he loved to gaze on dead faces in the paris morgue although the haunt of them made the sunshine sickly for days, and his long fancy that they had not really gone nor were quite motionless, but led a secret, half fugitive life, freer by night, and perhaps dodging about in their old haunts with no great good-will toward the living, made him by turns pity and hate the ghosts who came back in the wind, beating at the doors. his religious nature gradually yielded to a mystical belief in bible personages in some indefinite place as the reflexes and patterns of our nobler self, whose companionship made the world more satisfying. there was "a constant substitution of the typical for the actual," and angels might be met anywhere. "a deep mysticity brooded over real things and partings," marriages and many acts and accidents of life. "the very colors of things became themselves weighty with meanings," or "full of penitence and peace." "for a time he walked through the world in a sustained, not unpleasurable awe generated by the habitual recognition, beside every circumstance and event of life, of its celestial correspondent." in d. c. boulger's life of general charles gordon[ ] he records how, like nelson clive, his hero was prone to boys' escapades and outbreaks that often made him the terror of his superiors. he was no bookworm, but famous as the possessor of high spirits, very often involved in affairs that necessitated discipline, and seemed greatly out of harmony with the popular idea of the ascetic of mount carmel. as a schoolboy he made wonderful squirts "that would wet you through in a minute." one sunday twenty-seven panes of glass in a large storehouse were broken with screws shot through them by his cross-bow "for ventilation." ringing bells and pushing young boys in, butting an unpopular officer severely in the stomach with his head and taking the punishment, hitting a bully with a clothes-brush and being put back six months in the royal military academy at woolwich; these are the early outcrops of one side of his dual character. although more soldier than saint, he had a very cheery, genial side. he was always ready to take even the severest punishment for all his scrapes due to excessive high spirits. when one of his superiors declared that he would never make an officer, he felt his honor touched, and his vigorous and expressive reply was to tear the epaulets from his shoulders and throw them at his superior's feet. he had already developed some of the rather moody love of seclusion that was marked later, but religion did not strike him deeply enough to bring him into the church until he was twenty-one, when he took his first sacrament. on one occasion he declined promotion within his reach because he would have had to pass a friend to get it. he acted generally on his impulses, which were perhaps better than his judgments, took great pleasure in corresponding on religious topics with his elder sister, and early formed the habit of excessive smoking which gravely affected his health later. his was the rare combination of inner repose and confidence, interrupted by spells of gaiety. williamson, in his "life of holman hunt,"[ ] tells us that at thirteen he was removed from school as inapt in study. he began to spend his time in drawing in his copybooks. he was made clerk to an auctioneer, who fortunately encouraged his passion, and at sixteen was with a calico printer. here he amused himself by drawing flies on the window, which his employer tried to brush off. there was the greatest home opposition to his studying art. after being rejected twice, he was admitted at seventeen to the academy school as a probationer, and the next year, in , as a student. here he met millais and rossetti and was able to relieve the strain on his mind, which the worry of his father concerning his course caused him, and very soon his career began. at thirteen fitzjames stephen[ ] roused himself to thrash a big boy who had long bullied him, and became a fighter. in his sixteenth year, he grew nearly five inches, but was so shy and timid at eton that he says, "i was like a sensible grown-up woman among a crowd of rough boys"; but in the reaction to the long abuse his mind was steeled against oppression, tyranny, and every kind of unfairness. he read paine's "age of reason," and went "through the bible as a man might go through a wood, cutting down trees. the priests can stick them in again, but they will not make them grow." dickens has given us some interesting adolescents. miss dingwall in "sketches by boz," "very sentimental and romantic"; the tempery young nickleby, who, at nineteen, thrashed squeers; barnaby rudge, idiotic and very muscular; joe willet, persistently treated as a boy till he ran away to join the army and married dolly varden, perhaps the most exuberant, good-humored, and beautiful girl in all the dickens gallery; martin chuzzlewit, who also ran away, as did david copperfield, perhaps the most true to adolescence because largely reminiscent of the author's own life; steerforth, a stranger from home, and his victim, little emily; and to some extent sam weller, dick swiveller, the marchioness, young podsnap, the artful dodger, and charley bates; while oliver twist, little nell, and little dorrit, joe and turveydrop in bleak house, and paul dombey, young as they were, show the beginning of the pubescent change. most of his characters, however, are so overdrawn and caricatured as to be hardly true to life.[ ] in the "romance of john inglesant,"[ ] by j. h. shorthouse, we have a remarkable picture of an unusually gifted youth, who played an important rôle in the days of cromwell and king charles, and who was long poised in soul between the church of rome and the english party. he was very susceptible to the fascination of superstition, romance, and day-dreaming, and at eleven absorbed his master's rosicrucian theories of spiritual existence where spirits held converse with each other and with mankind. a mystic platonism, which taught that pindar's story of the argo was only a recipe for the philosopher's stone, fascinated him at fourteen. the philosophy of obedience and of the subjection of reason to authority was early taught him, and he sought to live from within, hearing only the divine law, as the worshipers of cybele heard only the flutes. his twin brother eustace was an active worldling, and soon he followed him to court as page to the queen, but delighted more and more in wandering apart and building air castles. for a time he was entirely swayed, and his life directed, by a jesuit father, who taught him the crucifix and the rosary. at sixteen the doctrine of divine illumination fascinated him. he struggled to find the path of true devotion; abandoned himself to extremely ritualistic forms of worship; dabbled a little in alchemy and astrology to help develop the divine nature within him and to attain the beatific vision. soon he was introduced to the "protestant nunnery," as it was called, where the venerable mr. ferran, a friend of george herbert's, was greatly taken by inglesant's accomplishments and grace of manner. various forms of extremely high church yet protestant worship were celebrated here each day with great devotion, until he became disgusted with puritanism and craved to participate in the office of mass. at this point, however, he met mr. hobbes, whose rude but forcible condemnation of papacy restrained him from casting his lot with it. at seventeen, he saw one night a real apparition of the just executed strafford. the last act of his youth, which we can note here, was soon after he was twenty, when he fell in love with the charming and saintly mary collet. the rough puritan thorne had made her proposals at which she revolted, but she and inglesant confessed love to each other; she saw, however, that they had a way of life marked out for themselves by an inner impulse and light. this calling they must follow and abandon love, and now john plunged into the war on the side of the king. w. j. stillman[ ] has written with unusual interest and candor the story of his own early life. as a boy he was frenzied at the first sight of the sea; caught the whip and lashed the horses in an unconscious delirium, and always remembered this as one of the most vivid experiences of his life. he had a period of nature worship. his first trout was a delirium, and he danced about wildly and furiously. he relates his very vivid impressions of the religious orthodoxy in which he was reared, especially revival sermons; his occasional falsehoods to escape severe punishment; his baptism at ten or eleven in a river in midwinter; the somberness of his intellectual life, which was long very apathetic; his phenomenal stupidity for years; his sudden insurrections in which he thrashed bullies at school; his fear that he should be sent home in disgrace for bad scholarship; and how at last, after seven years of dulness, at the age of fourteen, "the mental fog broke away suddenly, and before the term ended i could construe the latin in less time than it took to recite it, and the demonstrations of euclid were as plain and clear as a fairy story. my memory came back so distinctly that i could recite long poems after a single reading, and no member of the class passed a more brilliant examination at the end of the term than i; and, at the end of the second term, i could recite the whole of legendre's geometry, plane and spherical, from beginning to end without a question, and the class examination was recorded as the most remarkable which the academy had witnessed for many years. i have never been able to conceive an explanation of this curious phenomenon, which i record only as of possible interest to some one interested in psychology." a. bronson alcott[ ] was the son of a connecticut farmer. he began a diary at twelve; aspired vainly to enter yale, and after much restlessness at the age of nineteen left home with two trunks for virginia to peddle on foot, hoping to teach school. here he had a varying and often very hard experience for years. hornes bushnell's[ ] parents represented the episcopal and liberal congregational church. his early life was spent on a farm and in attending a country academy. he became profoundly interested in religion in the early teens and developed extreme interest in nature. at seventeen, while tending a carding machine, he wrote a paper on calvinism. at nineteen he united with the church, and entered yale when he was twenty-one, in . later he tried to teach school, but left it, declaring he would rather lay stone wall; worked on a journal, but withdrew, finding it a terrible life; studied law for a year, became a tutor at yale, experienced a reconversion and entered the ministry. a well-known american, who wishes his name withheld, writes me of his youth as follows: "first came the love of emotion and lurid romance reading. my mind was full of adventure, dreams of underground passages, and imprisoned beauties whom i rescued. i wrote a story in red ink, which i never read, but a girl friend did, and called it magnificent. the girl fever, too, made me idealize first one five years older than i, later another three years older, and still later one of my own age. i would have eaten dirt for each of them for a year or two; was extremely gallant and the hero of many romances for two, but all the time so bashful that i scarcely dared speak to one of them, and no schoolmate ever suspected it all. music also became a craze at fourteen. before, i had hated lessons, now i was thrilled and would be a musician, despite my parents' protests. i practised the piano furiously; wrote music and copied stacks of it; made a list of several hundred pieces and tunes, including everything musical i knew; would imagine a crowded hall, where i played and swayed with fine airs. the vast assembly applauded and would not let me go, but all the time it was a simple piece and i was a very ordinary player. at fifty years, this is still a relic. i now in hours of fatigue pound the piano and dreamily imagine dazed and enchanted audiences. then came oratory, and i glowed and thrilled in declaiming webster's "reply to hayne," "thanatopsis," byron's "darkness," patrick henry, and best of all "the maniac," which i spouted in a fervid way wearing a flaming red necktie. i remember a fervid scene with myself on a high solitary hill with a bald summit two miles from home, where i once went because i had been blamed. i tried to sum myself up, inventory my good and bad points. it was sunday, and i was keyed up to a frenzy of resolve, prayer, idealization of life; all grew all in a jumble. my resolve to go to college was clinched then and there, and that hill will always remain my pisgah and moriah, horeb and sinai all in one. i paced back and forth in the wind and shouted, 'i will make people know and revere me; i will do something'; and called everything to witness my vow that i never again would visit this spot till all was fulfilled." "alas!" he says, "i have never been there since. once, to a summer party who went, i made excuse for not keeping this rendezvous. it was too sacramental. certainly it was a very deep and never-to-be-forgotten experience there all alone, when something of great moment to me certainly took place in my soul." in the biography of frederick douglas[ ] we are told that when he was about thirteen he began to feel deeply the moral yoke of slavery and to seek means of escaping it. he became interested in religion, was converted, and dreamed of and prayed for liberty. with great ingenuity he extracted knowledge of the alphabet and reading from white boys of his acquaintance. at sixteen, under a brutal master he revolted and was beaten until he was faint from loss of blood, and at seventeen he fought and whipped the brutal overseer covey, who would have invoked the law, which made death the punishment for such an offense, but for shame of having been worsted by a negro boy and from the reflection that there was no profit from a dead slave. only at twenty did he escape into the new world of freedom. jacob riis[ ] "fell head over heels in love with sweet elizabeth" when he was fifteen and she thirteen. his "courtship proceeded at a tumultuous pace, which first made the town laugh, then put it out of patience and made some staid matrons express the desire to box my ears soundly." she played among the lumber where he worked, and he watched her so intently that he scarred his shinbone with an adze he should have been minding. he cut off his forefinger with an ax when she was dancing on a beam near by, and once fell off a roof when craning his neck to see her go round a corner. at another time he ordered her father off the dance-floor, because he tried to take his daughter home a few minutes before the appointed hour of midnight. young as he was, he was large and tried to run away to join the army, but finally went to copenhagen to serve his apprenticeship with a builder, and here had an interview with hans christian andersen. ellery sedgwick tells as that at thirteen the mind of thomas paine ran on stories of the sea which his teacher had told him, and that he attempted to enlist on the privateer _terrible_. he was restless at home for years, and shipped on a trading vessel at nineteen. indeed, modern literature in our tongue abounds in this element, from "childe harold" to the second and third long chapters in mrs. ward's "david grieve," ending with his engagement to lucy purcell; thackeray's arthur pendennis and his characteristic love of the far older and scheming fanny fotheringay; david in james lane allen's "reign of law," who read darwin, was expelled from the bible college and the church, and finally was engaged to gabriella; and scores more might be enumerated. there is even sonny,[ ] who, rude as he was and poorly as he did in all his studies, at the same age when he began to keep company, "tallered" his hair, tied a bow of ribbon to the buggy whip, and grew interested in manners, passing things, putting on his coat and taking off his hat at table, began to study his menagerie of pet snakes, toads, lizards, wrote john burroughs, helped him and got help in return, took to observing, and finally wrote a book about the forest and its occupants, all of which is very _bien trouvé_ if not historic truth. two singular reflections always rearise in reading goethe's autobiographical writings: first, that both the age and the place, with its ceremonies, festivals, great pomp and stirring events in close quarters in the little province where he lived, were especially adapted to educate children and absorb them in externals; and, second, that this wonderful boy had an extreme propensity for moralizing and drawing lessons of practical service from all about him. this is no less manifest in wilhelm meister's apprenticeship and travels, which supplements the autobiography. both together present a very unique type of adolescence, the elaborate story of which defies epitome. from the puppet craze well on into his precocious university life it was his passion to explore the widest ranges of experience and then to reflect, moralize, or poetize upon them. perhaps no one ever studied the nascent stages of his own life and elaborated their every incident with such careful observation and analysis. his peculiar diathesis enabled him to conserve their freshness on to full maturity, when he gave them literary form. most lack power to fully utilize their own experience even for practical self-knowledge and guidance, but with goethe nothing was wasted from which self-culture could be extracted. goethe's first impression of female loveliness was of a girl named gretchen, who served wine one evening, and whose face and form followed him for a long time. their meetings always gave him a thrill of pleasure, and though his love was like many first loves, very spiritual and awakened by goodness and beauty, it gave a new brightness to the whole world, and to be near her seemed to him an indispensable condition of his being. her _fiancé_ was generally with her, and goethe experienced a shock in finding that she had become a milliner's assistant for although, like all natural boys of aristocratic families, he loved common people, this interest was not favored by his parents. the night following the coronation day several were compelled to spend in chairs, and he and his gretchen, with others, slept, she with her head upon his shoulder, until all the others had awakened in the morning. at last they parted at her door, and for the first and last time they kissed but never met again, although he often wept in thinking of her. he was terribly affronted to fully realize that, although only two years older than himself, she should have regarded him as a child. he tried to strip her of all loving qualities and think her odious, but her image hovered over him. the sanity of instinct innate in youth prompted him to lay aside as childish the foolish habit of weeping and railing, and his mortification that she regarded him somewhat as a nurse might, gradually helped to work his cure. he was very fond of his own name, and, like young and uneducated people, wrote or carved it anywhere; later placed near it that of a new love, annette, and afterward on finding the tree he shed tears, melted toward her, and made an idyl. he was also seized with a passion of teasing her and dominating over her devotedness with wanton and tyrannical caprice, venting upon her the ill humor of his disappointments, and grew absurdly jealous and lost her after she had borne with him with incredible patience and after terrible scenes with her by which he gained nothing. frenzied by his loss, he began to abuse his physical nature and was only saved from illness by the healing power of his poetic talent; the "lover's caprice" was written with the impetus of a boiling passion. in the midst of many serious events, a reckless humor, which was due to the excess of life, developed which made him feel himself superior to the moment, and even to court danger. he played tricks, although rarely with premeditation. later he mused much upon the transient nature of love and the mutability of character; the extent to which the senses could be indulged within the bounds of morality; he sought to rid himself of all that troubled him by writing song or epigram about it, which made him seem frivolous and prompted one friend to seek to subdue him by means of church forms, which he had severed on coming to leipzig. by degrees he felt an epoch approaching when all respect for authority was to vanish, and he became suspicious and even despairing with regard to the best individuals he had known before and grew chummy with a young tutor whose jokes and fooleries were incessant. his disposition fluctuated between gaiety and melancholy, and rousseau attracted him. meanwhile his health declined until a long illness, which began with a hemorrhage, caused him to oscillate for days between life and death; and convalescence, generally so delightful, was marred by a serious tumor. his father's disposition was stern, and he could become passionate and bitter, and his mother's domesticity made her turn to religion, so that on coming home he formed the acquaintance of a religious circle. again goethe was told by a hostile child that he was not the true son of his father. this inoculated him with a disease that long lurked in his system and prompted various indirect investigations to get at the truth, during which he compared all distinguished guests with his own physiognomy to detect his own likeness. up to the leipzig period he had great joy in wandering unknown, unconscious of self; but he soon began to torment himself with an almost hypertrophied fancy that he was attracting much attention, that others' eyes were turned on his person to fix it in their memories, that he was scanned and found fault with; and hence he developed a love of the country, of the woods and solitary places, where he could be hedged in and separated from all the world. here he began to throw off his former habit of looking at things from the art standpoint and to take pleasure in natural objects for their own sake. his mother had almost grownup to consciousness in her two oldest children, and his first disappointment in love turned his thought all the more affectionately toward her and his sister, a year younger. he was long consumed with amazement over the newly awakening sense impulse that took intellectual forms and the mental needs that clothed themselves in sense images. he fell to building air castles of opposition lecture courses and gave himself up to many dreams of ideal university conditions. he first attended lectures diligently, but suffered much harm from being too advanced; learned a great deal that he could not regulate, and was thereby made uncomfortable; grew interested in the fit of his clothes, of which hitherto he had been careless. he was in despair at the uncertainty of his own taste and judgment, and almost feared he must make a complete change of mind, renouncing what he had hitherto learned, and so one day in great contempt for his past burned up his poetry, sketches, etc. he had learned to value and love the bible, and owed his moral culture to it. its events and symbols were deeply stamped upon him, so without being a pietist he was greatly moved at the scoffing spirit toward it which he met at the university. from youth he had stood on good terms with god, and at times he had felt that he had some things to forgive god for not having given better assistance to his infinite good-will. under all this influence he turned to cabalism and became interested in crystals and the microcosm and macrocosm, and fell into the habit of despair over what he had been and believed just before. he conceived a kind of hermetical or neoplatonic godhead creating in more and more eccentric circles, until the last, which rose in contradiction, was lucifer to whom creation was committed. he first of all imagined in detail an angelic host, and finally a whole theology was wrought out _in petto_. he used a gilt ornamented music-stand as a kind of altar with fumigating pastils for incense, where each morning god was approached by offerings until one day a conflagration put a sudden end to these celebrations. hans anderson,[ ] the son of a poor shoemaker, taught in a charity school at the dawn of puberty; vividly animated bible stories from pictures painted on the wall; was dreamy and absent-minded; told continued stories to his mates; at confirmation vowed he would be famous and finally, at fourteen, left home for copenhagen, where he was violently stage-struck and worked his way from friendship with the bill-poster to the stage as page, shepherd, etc.; called on a famous dancer, who scorned him, and then, feeling that he had no one but god to depend on, prayed earnestly and often. for nearly a year, until his voice broke, he was a fine singer. he wet with his tears the eyes of a portrait of a heartless man that he might feel for him. he played with a puppet theater and took a childish delight in decking the characters with gay remnants that he begged from shops; wrote several plays which no one would accept; stole into an empty theater one new year's day to pray aloud on the middle of the stage; shouted with joy; hugged and kissed a beech-tree till people thought him insane; abhorred the thought of apprenticeship to latin as he did to that of a trade, which was a constant danger; and was one of the most dreamy and sentimental, and by spells religious and prayerful, of youth. george ebers[ ] remembered as a boy of eleven the revolution of ' in berlin, soon after which he was placed in froebel's school at keilhau. this great teacher with his noble associates, middendorf, barop, and langekhal, lived with the boys; told the stirring stories of their own lives as soldiers in the war of liberation; led their pupils on long excursions in vacation, often lasting for months, and gave much liberty to the boys, who were allowed to haze not only their new mates, but new teachers. this transfer from the city to the country roused a veritable passion in the boy, who remained here till he was fifteen. trees and cliffs were climbed, collections made, the saale by moonlight and the lofty steiger at sunset were explored. there were swimming and skating and games, and the maxim of the school, "_friede, freude, freiheit_,"[peace, joy, freedom] was lived up to. the boys hung on their teachers for stories. the teachers took their boys into their confidence for all their own literary aims, loves, and ideals. one had seen the corpse of körner and another knew prohaska. "the roman postulate that knowledge should be imparted to boys according to a thoroughly tested method approved by the mature human intellect and which seems most useful to it for later life" was the old system of sacrificing the interests of the child for those of the man. here childhood was to live itself out completely and naturally into an ever renewed paradise. the temperaments, dispositions, and characters of each of the sixty boys were carefully studied and recorded. some of these are still little masterpieces of psychological penetration, and this was made the basis of development. the extreme teutonism cultivated by wrestling, shooting, and fencing, giving each a spot of land to sow, reap, and shovel, and all in an atmosphere of adult life, made an environment that fitted the transition period as well as any that the history of education affords. every tramp and battle were described in a book by each boy. when at fifteen ebers was transferred to the kottbus gymnasium, he felt like a colt led from green pastures to the stable, and the period of effervescence made him almost possessed by a demon, so many sorts of follies did he commit. he wrote "a poem of the world," fell in love with an actress older than himself, became known as foolhardy for his wild escapades, and only slowly sobered down. in gottfried kelley's "der grüne heinrich,"[ ] the author, whom r.m. meyer calls "the most eminent literary german of the nineteenth century," reviews the memories of his early life. this autobiography is a plain and very realistic story of a normal child, and not adulterated with fiction like goethe's or with psychoses like rousseau or bashkirtseff. he seems a boy like all other boys, and his childhood and youth were in no wise extraordinary. the first part of this work, which describes his youth up to the age of eighteen, is the most important, and everything is given with remarkable fidelity and minuteness. it is a tale of little things. all the friendships and loves and impulses are there, and he is fundamentally selfish and utilitarian; god and nature were one, and only when his beloved army died did he wish to believe in immortality. he, too, as a child, found two kinds of love in his heart--the idea and the sensual, very independent--the one for a young and innocent girl and the other for a superb young woman years older than he, pure, although the personification of sense. he gives a rich harvest of minute and sagacious observations about his strange simultaneous loves; the peculiar tastes of food; his day-dream period; and his rather prolonged habit of lying, the latter because he had no other vent for invention. he describes with great regret his leaving school at so early an age; his volcanic passion of anger; his self-distrust; his periods of abandon; his passion to make a success of art though he did not of life; his spells of self-despair and cynicism; his periods of desolation in his single life; his habit of story-telling; his wrestling with the problem of theology and god; the conflict between his philosophy and his love of the girls, etc. from a private school in leipzig, where he had shown all a boy's tact in finding what his masters thought the value of each subject they taught; where he had joined in the vandalism of using a battering-ram to break a way to the hated science apparatus and to destroy it; feeling that the classical writers were overpraised; and where at the age of sixteen he had appeared several times in public as a reciter of his own poems, max müller returned to leipzig and entered upon the freedom of university life there at the age of seventeen. for years his chief enjoyment was music.[ ] he played the piano well, heard everything he could in concert or opera, was an oratorio tenor, and grew more and more absorbed in music, so that he planned to devote himself altogether to it and also to enter a musical school at dessau, but nothing came of it. at the university he saw little of society, was once incarcerated for wearing a club ribbon, and confesses that with his boon companions he was guilty of practises which would now bring culprits into collision with authorities. he fought three duels, participated in many pranks and freakish escapades, but nevertheless attended fifty-three different courses of lectures in three years. when hegelism was the state philosophy, he tried hard to understand it, but dismissed it with the sentiments expressed by a french officer to his tailor, who refused to take the trousers he had ordered to be made very tight because they did not fit so closely that he could not get into them. darwin attracted him, yet the wildness of his followers repelled. he says, "i confess i felt quite bewildered for a time and began to despair altogether of my reasoning powers." he wonders how young minds in german universities survive the storms and fogs through which they pass. with bated breath he heard his elders talk of philosophy and tried to lay hold of a word here and there, but it all floated before his mind like mist. later he had an hegelian period, but found in herbart a corrective, and at last decided upon sanskrit and other ancient languages, because he felt that he must know something that no other knew, and also that the germans had then heard only the after-chime and not the real striking of the bells of indian philosophy. from twenty his struggles and his queries grew more definite, and at last, at the age of twenty-two, he was fully launched upon his career in paris, and later went to oxford. at thirteen wagner[ ] translated about half the "odyssey" voluntarily; at fourteen began the tragedy which was to combine the grandeur of two of shakespeare's dramas; at sixteen he tried "his new-fledged musical wings by soaring at once to the highest peaks of orchestral achievement without wasting any time on the humble foot-hills." he sought to make a new departure, and, compared to the grandeur of his own composition, "beethoven's ninth symphony appeared like a simple pleyel sonata." to facilitate the reading of his astounding score, he wrote it in three kinds of ink--red for strings, green for the wood-wind, and black for the brass instruments. he writes that this overture was the climax of his absurdities, and although the audience before which an accommodating orchestra played it were disgusted and the musicians were convulsed with laughter, it made a deep impression upon the author's mind. even after matriculating at the university he abandoned himself so long to the dissipations common to student life before the reaction came that his relatives feared that he was a good-for-nothing. in his "hannele," hauptmann, the dramatist, describes in a kind of dream poem what he supposed to pass through the mind of a dying girl of thirteen or fourteen, who does not wish to live and is so absorbed by the "brownies of her brain" that she hardly knows whether she is alive on earth or dead in heaven, and who sees the lord jesus in the form of the schoolmaster whom she adores. in her closing vision there is a symbolic representation of her own resurrection. to the passionate discussions in germany, england, and france, as to whether this character is true to adolescence, we can only answer with an emphatic affirmative; that her heaven abounds in local color and in fairy tale items, that it is very material, and that she is troubled by fears of sin against the holy ghost, is answer enough in an ill-used, starving child with a fevered brain, whose dead mother taught her these things. saint-pierre's "paul and virginia" is an attempt to describe budding adolescence in a boy and girl born on a remote island and reared in a state of natural simplicity the descriptions are sentimental after the fashion of the age in france, and the pathos, which to us smacks of affectation and artificiality, nevertheless has a vein of truth in it. the story really begins when the two children were twelve; and the description of the dawn of love and melancholy in virginia's heart, for some time concealed from paul, of her disquiet and piety, of the final frank avowal of eternal love by each, set of by the pathetic separation, and of the undying love, and finally the tragic death and burial of each--all this owes its charm, for its many generations of readers, to its merits as an essentially true picture of the human heart at this critical age. this work and rousseau[ ] have contributed to give french literature its peculiar cast in its description of this age. "the first explosions of combustible constitution" in rousseau's, precocious nature were troublesome, and he felt premature sensations of erotic voluptuousness, but without any sin. he longed "to fall at the feet of an imperious mistress, obey her mandates or implore pardon." he only wanted a lady, to become a knight errant. at ten he was passionately devoted to a mlle. vulson, whom he publicly and tyrannically claimed as his own and would allow no other to approach. he had very different sensuous feelings toward mlle. goton, with whom his relations were very passionate, though pure. absolutely under the power of both these mistresses, the effects they produced upon him were in no wise related to each other. the former was a brother's affection with the jealousy of a lover added, but the latter a furious, tigerish, turkish rage. when told of the former's marriage, in his indignation and heroic fury he swore never more to see a perfidious girl. a slightly neurotic vein of prolonged ephebeitis pervades much of his life. pierre loti's "story of a child"[ ] was written when the author was forty-two, and contains hardly a fact, but it is one of the best of inner autobiographies, and is nowhere richer than in the last chapters, which bring the author down to the age of fourteen and a half. he vividly describes the new joy at waking, which he began to feel at twelve or thirteen; the clear vision into the bottomless pit of death; the new, marvelous susceptibility to nature as comradeship with boys of his own age was lacking; the sudden desires from pure bravado and perversity to do something unseemly, e. g., making a fly omelet and carrying it in a procession with song; the melting of pewter plates and pouring them into water and salting a wild tract of land with them; organizing a band of miners, whom he led as if with keen scent to the right spot and rediscovered his nuggets, everything being done mysteriously and as a tribal secret. loti had a new feeling for the haunting music of chopin, which he had been taught to play but had not been interested in; his mind was inflamed, by a home visit of an elder brother, with the idea of going to the south sea islands, and this became a long obsession which finally led him to enlist in the navy, dropping, with a beating heart, the momentous letter into the post-office after long misgivings and delays. he had a superficial and a hidden self, the latter somewhat whimsical and perhaps ridiculous, shared only with a few intimate friends for whom he would have let himself be cut into bits. he believes his transition period lasted longer than with the majority of men, and during it he was carried from one extreme to another; had rather eccentric and absurd manners, and touched moat of the perilous rocks on the voyage of life. he had an early love for an older girl whose name he wrote in cipher on his books, although he felt it a little artificial, but believed it might have developed into a great and true hereditary friendship, continuing that which their ancestors had felt for many generations. the birth of love in his heart was in a dream after having read the forbidden poet, alfred de musset. he was fourteen, and in his dream it was a soft, odorous twilight. he walked amid flowers seeking a nameless some one whom he ardently desired, and felt that something strange and wonderful, intoxicating as it advanced, was going to happen. the twilight grew deeper, and behind a rose-bush he saw a young girl with a languorous and mysterious smile, although her forehead and eyes were hidden. as it darkened rather suddenly, her eyes came out, and they were very personal and seemed to belong to some one already much beloved, who had been found with "transports of infinite joy and tenderness." he woke with a start and sought to retain the phantom, which faded. he could not conceive that was a mere illusion, and as he realized that she had vanished he felt overwhelmed with hopelessness. it was the first stirring "of true love with all its great melancholy and deep mystery, with its overwhelming but sad enchantment--love which like a perfume endows with a fragrance all it touches." it is, i believe, high time that ephebic literature should be recognized as a class by itself, and have a place of its own in the history of letters and in criticism. much of it should be individually prescribed for the reading of the young, for whom it has a singular zest and is a true stimulus and corrective. this stage of life now has what might almost be called a school of its own. here the young appeal to and listen to each other as they do not to adults, and in a way the latter have failed to appreciate. again, no biography, and especially no autobiography, should henceforth be complete if it does not describe this period of transformation so all-determining for future life to which it alone can often give the key. rightly to draw the lessons of this age not only saves us from waste ineffable of this rich but crude area of experience, but makes maturity saner and more complete. lastly, many if not most young people should be encouraged to enough of the confessional private journalism to teach them self-knowledge, for the art of self-expression usually begins now if ever, when it has a wealth of subjective material and needs forms of expression peculiar to itself. for additional references on the subject of this chapter, see: alcafarado, marianna, love letters of a portuguese nun. translated by r. h., new york, . richardson, abby sage, abelard and héloise, and letters of héloise, houghton, mifflin and co., boston. smith, theodote l., types of adolescent affection. pedagogical seminary, june, , vol. ii, pp. - . [footnote : pedagogical seminary, june , vol. , pp. - ] [footnote : being a boy.] [footnote : story of a bad boy.] [footnote : a boy's town.] [footnote : court of boyville.] [footnote : the spoilt child, by peary chandmitter. translated by g. d. oswell. thacker, spink and co., calcutta, .] [footnote : the golden age] [footnote : frau spyri.] [footnote : the one i knew the best of all.] [footnote : the study of the boyhood of great men. pedagogical seminary, october, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : the vanishing character of adolescent experiences. northwestern monthly, june, , vol. , p. .] [footnote : the count of boyville, by william allen white. new york, , p. .] [footnote : the study of adolescence. pedagogical seminary, june, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : lancaster: the psychology and pedagogy of adolescence. pedagogical seminary, july, , vol. , p. .] [footnote : standards of efficiency in school and in life. pedagogical seminary, march, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : see also vittorio da feltre and other humanist educators, by w. h. woodward. cambridge university press, .] [footnote : see the private life of galileo; from his correspondence and that of his eldest daughter. anon, macmillan, london, .] [footnote : see sir david brewster's life of newton. harper, new york, .] [footnote : louis agassiz, his life and work, by c. f. holder. g. p. putnam's sons, new york, .] [footnote : life and letters of thomas h. huxley, by his son leonard huxley. d. appleton and co., new york, .] [footnote : see also sully: a girl's religion. longman's magazine, may, , pp. - .] [footnote : sheldon (institutional activities of american children; american journal of psychology, july, , vol. , p. ) describes a faintly analogous case of a girl of eleven, who organised the worship of pallas athena on two flat rocks, in a deep ravine by a stream where a young sycamore grew from an old stump, as did pallas from the head of her father zeus. there was a court consisting of king, queen and subjects, and priests who officiated at sacrifices. the king and queen wore goldenrod upon their heads and waded in streams attended by their subjects; gathered flowers for athena; caught crayfish which were duly smashed upon her altar. "sometimes there was a special celebration, when, in addition to the slaughtered crayfish and beautiful flower decorations, and pickles stolen from the dinner-table, there would be an elaborate ceremony," which because of its uncanny acts was intensely disliked by the people at hand.] [footnote : the one i know the best of all. a memory of the mind of a child. by frances hodgson burnett. scribner's sons, new york, ] [footnote : the beth book, by sarah grand. d. appleton and co., new york, .] [footnote : autobiography of a child. hannah lynch, w. blackwood and sons, london, , p. .] [footnote : the story of my life. by helen keller. doubleday, page and co., new york, , p. .] [footnote : journal of a young artist. cassell and co., new york, , p. .] [footnote : the story of mary maclane. by herself. herbert s. stone and co., chicago, , p. .] [footnote : fate. translated from the italian by a.m. von blomberg. copeland and day, boston, .] [footnote : confessions of an opium eater. part i. introductory narrative. (cambridge classics) .] [footnote : longmans, green and co. london, , nd ed.] [footnote : the hearts of men. macmillan, london, , p. .] [footnote : an autobiography. edited by h.m. trollope. vols. london, .] [footnote : see his memoirs. london, .] [footnote : see autobiography of mark rutherford (pseudonym for w.h. white), edited by reuben shapcott. vols. london, .] [footnote : the rest of the two volumes is devoted to his further life as a dissenting minister, who later became something of a literary man; relating how he was slowly driven to leave his little church, how he outgrew and broke with the girl to whom he was engaged, whom he marvelously met and married when both were well on in years, and how strangely he was influenced by the free-thinker mardon and his remarkable daughter. all in all it is a rare study of emancipation.] [footnote : london, , vol. .] [footnote : macmillan, .] [footnote : life of sir j.f. stephen. by his brother, leslie stephen, london, .] [footnote : see the very impressive account of dicken's characterization of childhood and youth, and of his great but hitherto inadequately recognized interest and influence as an educator. dickens as an educator. james l. hughes. d. appleton and co., new york, , p. .] [footnote : john inglesant: a romance. th ed. macmillan, .] [footnote : the autobiography of a journalist. vols. houghton, mifflin and co., boston, .] [footnote : a. bronson alcott, his life and philosophy. by f. b. sanborn and w. t. harris. roberts bros., boston, .] [footnote : horace bushnell, preacher and theologian. by theodore f. munger. houghton, mifflin and co., boston, .] [footnote : by c.w. chesnutt. (beacon biographies.) small, maynard and co., boston, .] [footnote : the making of an american. macmillan, .] [footnote : sonny. by ruth mcenery stuart. the century co., new york, .] [footnote : the story of my life. works, vol. new edition. houghton, mifflin and co., boston, .] [footnote : the story of my life. translated by m. j. safford. d. appleton and co., new york .] [footnote : gesammelte werke. vierter band. wilhelm hertz, berlin, .] [footnote : my autobiography, p. . chas. scribner's sons, new york, .] [footnote : wagner and his works. by henry t. finck. chas. scribner's sons, new york, .] [footnote : les confessions. oeuvres complètes, vols. and . hachette et cie., paris, .] [footnote : translated from the french by c.f. smith. c.c. birchard and co., boston, .] * * * * * chapter ix the growth of social ideals change from childish to adult friends--influence of favorite teachers--what children wish or plan to do or be--property and the money sense--social judgments--the only child--first social organizations--student life--associations for youth, controlled by adults. in a few aspects we are already able to trace the normal psychic outgrowing of the home of childhood as its interests irradiate into an ever enlarging environment. almost the only duty of small children is habitual and prompt obedience. our very presence enforces one general law--that of keeping our good-will and avoiding our displeasure. they respect all we smile at or even notice, and grow to it like the plant toward the light. their early lies are often saying what they think will please. at bottom, the most restless child admires and loves those who save him from too great fluctuations by coercion, provided the means be rightly chosen and the ascendency extend over heart and mind. but the time comes when parents are often shocked at the lack of respect suddenly shown by the child. they have ceased to be the highest ideals. the period of habituating morality and making it habitual is ceasing; and the passion to realize freedom, to act on personal experience, and to keep a private conscience is in order. to act occasionally with independence from the highest possible ideal motives develops the impulse and the joy of pure obligation, and thus brings some new and original force into the world and makes habitual guidance by the highest and best, or by inner as opposed to outer constraint, the practical rule of life. to bring the richest streams of thought to bear in interpreting the ethical instincts, so that the youth shall cease to live in a moral interregnum, is the real goal of self-knowledge. this is true education of the will and prepares the way for love of overcoming obstacles of difficulty, perhaps even of conflict. this impulse is often the secret of obstinacy.[ ] and yet, "at no time in life will a human being respond so heartily if treated by older and wiser people as if he were an equal or even a superior. the attempt to treat a child at adolescence as you would treat an inferior is instantly fatal to good discipline."[ ] parents still think of their offspring as mere children, and tighten the rein when they should loosen it. many young people feel that they have the best of homes and yet that they will go crazy if they must remain in them. if the training of earlier years has been good, guidance by command may now safely give way to that by ideals, which are sure to be heroic. the one unpardonable thing for the adolescent is dullness, stupidity, lack of life, interest, and enthusiasm in school or teachers, and, perhaps above all, too great stringency. least of all, at this stage, can the curriculum school be an ossuary. the child must now be taken into the family councils and find the parents interested in all that interests him. where this is not done, we have the conditions for the interesting cases of so many youth, who now begin to suspect that father, mother, or both, are not their true parents. not only is there interest in rapidly widening associations with coevals, but a new lust to push on and up to maturity. one marked trait now is to seek friends and companions older than themselves, or next to this, to seek those younger. this is marked contrast with previous years, when they seek associates of their own age. possibly the merciless teasing instinct, which culminates at about the same time, may have some influence, but certain it is that now interest is transpolarized up and down the age scale. one reason is the new hunger for information, not only concerning reproduction, but a vast variety of other matters, so that there is often an attitude of silent begging for knowledge. in answer to lancaster's[ ] questions on this subject, some sought older associates because they could learn more from them, found them better or more steadfast friends, craved sympathy and found most of it from older and perhaps married people. some were more interested in their parents' conversation with other adults than with themselves, and were particularly entertained by the chance of hearing things they had no business to. there is often a feeling that adults do not realize this new need of friendship with them and show want of sympathy almost brutal. stableton,[ ] who has made interesting notes on individual boys entering the adolescent period, emphasizes the importance of sympathy, appreciation, and respect in dealing with this age. they must now be talked to as equals, and in this way their habits of industry and even their dangerous love affairs run be controlled. he says, "there is no more important question before the teaching fraternity today than how to deal justly and successfully with boys at this time of life. this is the age when they drop out of school" in far too large numbers, and he thinks that the small percentage of male graduates from our high schools is due to "the inability of the average grammar grade or high-school teacher to deal rightly with boys in this critical period of their school life." most teachers "know all their bad points, but fail to discover their good ones." the fine disciplinarian, the mechanical movement of whose school is so admirable and who does not realize the new need of liberty or how loose-jointed, mentally and physically, all are at this age, should be supplanted by one who can look into the heart and by a glance make the boy feel that he or she is his friend. "the weakest work in our schools is the handling of boys entering the adolescent period of life, and there is no greater blessing that can come to a boy at this age, when he does not understand himself, than a good strong teacher that understands him, has faith in him, and will day by day lead him till he can walk alone." small[ ] found the teacher a focus of imitation whence many influences, both physical and mental, irradiated to the pupils. every accent, gesture, automatism, like and dislike is caught consciously and unconsciously. every intellectual interest in the teacher permeates the class--liars, if trusted, became honest; those treated as ladies and gentlemen act so; those told by favorite teachers of the good things they are capable of feel a strong impulsion to do them; some older children are almost transformed by being made companions to teachers, by having their good traits recognized, and by frank apologies by the teacher when in error. an interesting and unsuspected illustration of the growth of independence with adolescence was found in , papers from the second to eighth grades on the characteristics of the best teacher as seen by children.[ ] in the second and third grades, all, and in the fourth, ninety-five per cent specified help in studies. this falls off rapidly in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades to thirty-nine per cent, while at the same time the quality of patience in the upper grades rises from a mention by two to twenty-two per cent. sanford bell[ ] collated the answers of males and females as to who of all their past teachers did them most good, and wherein; whom they loved and disliked most, and why. his most striking result is presented in which shows that fourteen in girls and sixteen in boys is the age in which most good was felt to have been done, and that curves culminating at twelve for both sexes but not falling rapidly until fifteen or sixteen represent the period when the strongest and most indelible dislikes were felt. what seems to be most appreciated in teachers is the giving of purpose, arousing of ideals, kindling of ambition to be something or do something and so giving an object in life, encouragement to overcome circumstances, and, in general, inspiring self-confidence and giving direction. next came personal sympathy and interest, kindness, confidence, a little praise, being understood; and next, special help in lessons, or timely and kindly advice, while stability and poise of character, purity, the absence of hypocrisy, independence, personal beauty, athleticism and vigor are prominent. it is singular that those of each sex have been most helped by their own sex and that this prominence is far greatest in men. four-fifths of the men and nearly one-half of the women, however, got most help from men. male teachers, especially near adolescence, seem most helpful for both sexes. the qualities that inspire most dislike are malevolence, sarcasm, unjust punishment, suspicion, severity, sternness, absence of laughing and smiling, indifference, threats and broken vows, excessive scolding and "roasting," and fondness for inflicting blows. the teacher who does not smile is far more liable to excite animosity. most boys dislike men most, and girls' dislikes are about divided. the stories of school cruelties and indignities are painful. often inveterate grudges are established by little causes, and it is singular how permanent and indelible strong dislike, are for the majority of children. in many cases, aversions engendered before ten have lasted with little diminution till maturity, and there is a sad record of children who have lost a term, a year, or dropped school altogether because of ill treatment or partiality. nearly two thousand children were asked what they would do in a specific case of conflict between teacher and parents. it was found that, while for young children parental authority was preferred, a marked decline began about eleven and was most rapid after fourteen in girls and fifteen in boys, and that there was a nearly corresponding increase in the number of pubescents who preferred the teacher's authority. the reasons for their choice were also analyzed, and it was found that whereas for the young, unconditioned authority was generally satisfactory, with pubesecents, abstract authority came into marked predominance, "until when the children have reached the age of sixteen almost seventy-five per cent of their reasons belong to this class, and the children show themselves able to extend the idea of authority without violence to their sense of justice." on a basis of , papers answering the question whom, of anyone ever heard or read of, they would like to resemble, barnes[ ] found that girls' ideals were far more often found in the immediate circle of their acquaintance than boys, and that those within that circle were more often in their own family, but that the tendency to go outside their personal knowledge and choose historical and public characters was greatly augmented at puberty, when also the heroes of philanthropy showed marked gain in prominence. boys rarely chose women as their ideals; but in america, half the girls at eight and two-thirds at eighteen chose male characters. the range of important women ideals among the girls was surprisingly small. barnes fears that if from the choice of relative as ideals, the expansion to remote or world heroes is too fast, it may "lead to disintegration of character and reckless living." "if, on the other hand, it is expanded too slowly we shall have that arrested development which makes good ground in which to grow stupidity, brutality, and drunkenness--the first fruits of a sluggish and self-contained mind." "no one can consider the regularity with which local ideals die out and are replaced by world ideals without feeling that he is in the presence of law-abiding forces," and this emphasizes the fact that the teacher or parent does not work in a world governed by caprice. the compositions written by thousands of children in new york on what they wanted to do when they were grown up were collated by dr. thurber.[ ] the replies were serious, and showed that poor children looked forward willingly to severe labor and the increased earnestness of adolescent years, and the better answers to the question _why_ were noteworthy. all anticipated giving up the elastic joyousness of childhood and felt the need of patience. up to ten, there was an increase in the number of those who had two or more desires. this number declined rapidly at eleven, rose as rapidly at twelve, and slowly fell later. preferences for a teacher's life exceeded in girls up to nine, fell rapidly at eleven, increased slightly the next year, and declined thereafter. the ideal of becoming a dressmaker and milliner increased till ten, fell at eleven, rose rapidly to a maximum at thirteen, when it eclipsed teaching, and then fell permanently again. the professions of clerk and stenographer showed a marked rise from eleven and a half. the number of boys who chose the father's occupation attained its maximum at nine and its minimum at twelve, with a slight rise to fourteen, when the survey ended. the ideal of tradesman culminated at eight, with a second rise at thirteen. the reason "to earn money" reached its high maximum of fifty per cent at twelve, and fell very rapidly. the reason "because i like it" culminated at ten and fell steadily thereafter. the motive that influenced the choice of a profession and which was altruistic toward parents or for their benefit culminated at twelve and a half, and then declined. the desire for character increased somewhat throughout, but rapidly after twelve, and the impulse to do good to the world, which had risen slowly from nine, mounted sharply after thirteen. thus, "at eleven all the ideas and tendencies are increasing toward a maximum. at twelve we find the altruistic desires for the welfare of parents, the reason 'to earn money'; at thirteen the desire on the part of the girls to be dressmakers, also to be clerks and stenographers. at fourteen culminates the desire for a business career in bank or office among the boys, the consciousness of life's uncertainties which appeared first at twelve, the desire for character, and the hope of doing the world good." "what would you like to be in an imaginary new city?" was a question answered by , written papers.[ ] one hundred and fourteen different occupations were given; that of teacher led with the girls at every age except thirteen and fourteen, when dressmaker and milliner took precedence. the motive of making money led among the boys at every age except fourteen and sixteen, when occupations chosen because they were liked led. the greatest number of those who chose the parent's occupation was found at thirteen, but from that age it steadily declined and independent choice came into prominence. the maximum of girls who chose parental vocations was at fourteen. motives of philanthropy reached nearly their highest point in girls and boys at thirteen. jegi[ ] obtained letters addressed to real or imaginary friends from , german children in milwaukee, asking what they desired to do when they grew up, and why, and tabulated returns from boys and girls for each age from eight to fourteen inclusive. he also found a steadily decreasing influence of relatives to thirteen; in early adolescence, the personal motive of choosing an occupation because it was liked increased, while from twelve in boys and thirteen in girls the consideration of finding easy vocations grew rapidly strong. l. w. cline[ ] studied by the census method returns from , children, who were asked what they wished to be and do. he found that in naming both ideals and occupations girls were more conservative than boys, but more likely to give a reason for their choice. in this respect country children resembled boys more than city children. country boys were prone to inattention, were more independent and able to care for themselves, suggesting that the home life of the country child is more effective in shaping ideals and character than that of the city child. industrial occupations are preferred by the younger children, the professional and technical pursuits increasing with age. judgments of rights and justice with the young are more prone to issue from emotional rather than from intellectual processes. country children seem more altruistic than those in the city, and while girls are more sympathetic than boys, they are also more easily prejudiced. many of these returns bear unmistakable marks that in some homes and schools moralization has been excessive and has produced a sentimental type of morality and often a feverish desire to express ethical views instead of trusting to suggestion. children are very prone to have one code of ideals for themselves and another for others. boys, too, are more original than girls, and country children more than city children. friedrich[ ] asked german school children what person they chose as their pattern. the result showed differences of age, sex, and creed. first of all came characters in history, which seemed to show that this study for children of the sixth and seventh grades was essentially ethical or a training of mood and disposition (_gesinnungsunterricht_), and this writer suggests reform in this respect. he seems to think that the chief purpose of history for this age should be ethical. next came the influence of the bible, although it was plain that this was rather in spite of the catechism and the method of memoriter work. here, too, the immediate environment at this age furnished few ideals (four and one-fifth per cent), for children seem to have keener eyes for the faults than for the virtues of those near them. religion, therefore, should chiefly be directed to the emotions and not to the understanding. this census also suggested more care that the reading of children should contain good examples in their environment, and also that the matter of instruction should be more fully adapted to the conditions of sex. friedrich found as his chief age result that children of the seventh or older class in the german schools laid distinctly greater stress upon characters distinguished by bravery and courage than did the children of the sixth grade, while the latter more frequently selected characters illustrating piety and holiness. the author divided his characters into thirty-five classes, illustrating qualities, and found that national activity led, with piety a close second; that then came in order those illustrating firmness of faith, bravery, modesty, and chastity; then pity and sympathy, industry, goodness, patience, etc. taylor, young, hamilton, chambers, and others, have also collected interesting data on what children and young people hope to be, do, whom they would like to be, or resemble, etc. only a few at adolescence feel themselves so good or happy that they are content to be themselves. most show more or less discontent at their lot. from six to eleven or twelve, the number who find their ideals among their acquaintances falls off rapidly, and historical characters rise to a maximum at or before the earliest teens. from eleven or twelve on into the middle teens contemporary ideals increase steadily. london children are more backward in this expansion of ideals than americans, while girls choose more acquaintance ideals at all ages than do boys. the expansion, these authors also trace largely to the study of history. the george washington ideal, which leads all the rest by far and is greatly overworked, in contrast with the many heroes of equal rank found in england, pales soon, as imperfections are seen and those now making history loom up. this is the normal age to free from bondage to the immediate present, and this freedom is one measure of education. bible heroes are chosen as ideals by only a very small percentage, mostly girls, far more characters being from fiction and mythology; where jesus is chosen, his human is preferred to his divine side. again, it would seem that teachers would be ideals, especially as many girls intend to teach, but they are generally unpopular as choices. in an ideal system they would be the first step in expansion from home ideals. military heroes and inventors play leading rôles in the choices of pubescent boys. girls at all school ages and increasingly up the grades prefer foreign ideals, to be the wife of a man of title, as aristocracies offer special opportunities for woman to shine, and life near the source of fashion is very attractive, at least up to sixteen. the saddest fact in these studies is that nearly half our american pubescent girls, or nearly three times as many as in england, choose male ideals, or would be men. girls, too, have from six to fifteen times as many ideals as boys. in this significant fact we realize how modern woman has cut loose from all old moorings and is drifting with no destination and no anchor aboard. while her sex has multiplied in all lower and high school grades, its ideals are still too masculine. text-books teach little about women. when a woman's bible, history, course of study, etc., is proposed, her sex fears it may reduce her to the old servitude. while boys rarely, and then only when very young, choose female ideals, girls' preference for the life of the other sex sometimes reaches sixty and seventy per cent. the divorce between the life preferred and that demanded by the interests of the race is often absolute. saddest and most unnatural of all is the fact that this state of things increases most rapidly during just those years when ideals of womanhood should be developed and become most dominant, till it seems as if the female character was threatened with disintegration. while statistics are not yet sufficient to be reliable on the subject, there is some indication that woman later slowly reverts toward ideals not only from her own sex but also from the circle of her own acquaintances. the reasons for the choice of ideals are various and not yet well determined. civic virtues certainly rise; material and utilitarian considerations do not seem to much, if at all, at adolescence, and in some data decline. position, fame, honor, and general greatness increase rapidly, but moral qualities rise highest and also fastest just before and near puberty and continue to increase later yet. by these choices both sexes, but girls far most, show increasing admiration of ethical and social qualities. artistic and intellectual traits also rise quite steadily from ten or eleven onward, but with no such rapidity, and reach no such height as military ability and achievement for boys. striking in these studies is the rapid increase, especially from eight to fourteen, of the sense of historic time for historic persons. these long since dead are no longer spoken of as now living. most of these choices are direct expressions of real differences of taste and character. _property,_ kline and france[ ] have defined as "anything that the individual may acquire which sustains and prolongs life, favors survival, and gives an advantage over opposing forces." many animals and even insects store up food both for themselves and for their young. very early in life children evince signs of ownership. letourneau[ ] says that the notion of private property, which seems to us so natural, dawned late and slowly, and that common ownership was the rule among primitive people. value is sometimes measured by use and sometimes by the work required to produce it. before puberty, there is great eagerness to possess things that are of immediate service; but after its dawn, the desire of possession takes another form, and money for its own sake, which is at first rather an abstraction, comes to be respected or regarded as an object of extreme desire, because it is seen to be the embodiment of all values. the money sense, as it is now often called, is very complex and has not yet been satisfactorily analyzed by psychology. ribot and others trace its origin to provision which they think animals that hoard food feel. monroe[ ] has tabulated returns from boys and , girls from six to sixteen in answer to the question as to what they would do with a small monthly allowance. the following table shows the marked increase at the dawn of adolescence of the number who would save it: age. boys. girls. | age. boys. girls. .... per cent per cent | .... per cent per cent .... " " | .... " " .... " " | .... " " .... " " | .... " " .... " " | .... " " this tendency to thrift is strongest in boys, and both sexes often show the tendency to moralize, that is so strong in the early teens. much of our school work in arithmetic is dominated by the money sense; and school savings-banks, at first for the poor, are now extending to children of all classes. this sense tends to prevent pauperism, prodigality, is an immense stimulus to the imagination and develops purpose to pursue a distant object for a long time. to see all things and values in terms of money has, of course, its pedagogic and ethical limitations; but there is a stage when it is a great educational advance, and it, too, is full of phylogenetic suggestions. _social judgement, cronies, solitude_--the two following observations afford a glimpse of the development of moral judgments. from , boys and , girls of each age from six to sixteen who answered the question as to what should be done to a girl with a new box of paints who beautified the parlor chairs with them with a wish to please her mother, the following conclusion was drawn.[ ] most of the younger children would whip the girl, but from fourteen on the number declines very rapidly. few of the young children suggest explaining why it was wrong; while at twelve, , and at sixteen, would explain. the motive of the younger children in punishment is revenge; with the older ones that of preventing a repetition of the act comes in; and higher and later comes the purpose of reform. with age comes also a marked distinction between the act and its motive and a sense of the girl's ignorance. only the older children would suggest extracting a promise not to offend again. thus with puberty comes a change of view-point from judging actions by results to judging by motives, and only the older ones see that wrong can be done if there are no bad consequences. there is also with increased years a great development of the quality of mercy. one hundred children of each sex and age between six and sixteen asked what they would do with a burglar, the question stating that the penalty was five years in prison.[ ] of the younger children nearly nine-tenths ignored the law and fixed upon some other penalty, but from twelve years there is a steady advance in those who would inflict the legal penalty, while at sixteen, seventy-four per cent would have the criminal punished according to law. thus "with the dawn of adolescence at the age of twelve or shortly after comes the recognition of a larger life, a life to be lived in common with others, and with this recognition the desire to sustain the social code made for the common welfare," and punishment is no longer regarded as an individual and arbitrary matter. from another question answered by , children[ ] it was found that with the development of the psychic faculties in youth, there was an increasing appreciation of punishment as preventive; an increasing sense of the value of individuality and of the tendency to demand protection of personal rights; a change from a sense of justice based on feeling and on faith in authority to that based on reason and understanding. children's attitude toward punishment for weak time sense, tested by , children from six to sixteen,[ ] showed also a marked pubescent increase in the sense of the need of the remedial function of punishment as distinct from the view of it as vindictive, or getting even, common in earlier years. there is also a marked increase in discriminating the kinds and degrees of offenses; in taking account of mitigating circumstances, the inconvenience caused others, the involuntary nature of the offense and the purpose of the culprit. all this continues to increase up to sixteen, where these studies leave the child. an interesting effect of the social instinct appears in august mayer's[ ] elaborate study made up on fourteen boys in the fifth and sixth grade of a würzburg school to determine whether they could work better together or alone. the tests were in dictation, mental and written arithmetic, memory, and ebbinghaus's combination exercises and all were given with every practicable precaution to make the other conditions uniform. the conclusions demonstrate the advantages of collective over individual instruction. under the former condition, emulation is stronger and work more rapid and better in quality. from this it is inferred that pupils should not be grouped according to ability, for the dull are most stimulated by the presence of the bright, the bad by the good, etc. thus work at home is prone to deteriorate, and experimental pedagogy shows that the social impulse is on the whole a stronger spur for boys of eleven or twelve than the absence of distraction which solitude brings. from the answers of , boys and , girls from seven to sixteen on the kind of chum they liked best,[ ] it appears that with the teens children are more anxious for chums that can keep secrets and dress neatly, and there is an increased number who are liked for qualities that supplement rather than duplicate those of the chooser. "there is an apparent struggle between the real actual self and the ideal self; a pretty strong desire to have a chum that embodies the traits youth most desire but which they are conscious of lacking." the strong like the weak; those full of fun the serious; the timid the bold; the small the large, etc. only children[ ] illustrate differing effects of isolation, while "mashes" and "crushes" and ultra-crony-ism with "selfishness for two" show the results of abnormal restriction of the irradiation of the social instinct which should now occur.[ ] m. h. small,[ ] after pointing out that communal animals are more intelligent than those with solitary habits, and that even to name all the irradiations of the social instinct would be write a history of the human race, studied nearly five hundred cases of eminent men who developed proclivities to solitude. it is interesting to observe in how many of these cases this was developed in adolescence when, with the horror of mediocrity, comes introspection, apathy, irresolution, and subjectivism. the grounds of repulsion from society at this age may be disappointed hunger for praise, wounded vanity, the reaction from over-assertion, or the nursing of some high ideals, as it is slowly realized that in society the individual cannot be absolute. the motives to self-isolation may be because youth feels its lack of physical or moral force to compete with men, or they may be due to the failure of others to concede to the exactions of inordinate egotism and are directly proportional to the impulse to magnify self, or to the remoteness of common social interests from immediate personal desire or need, and inversely as the number and range of interests seen to be common and the clearness with which social relations are realized. while maturity of character needs some solitude, too much dwarfs it, and more or less of the same paralysis of association follows which is described in the nostalgia of arctic journeys, deserts, being lost in the jungle, solitary confinement, and in the interesting stories of feral men.[ ] in some of these cases the mind is saved from entire stultification by pets, imaginary companions, tasks, etc. normally "the tendency to solitude at adolescence indicates not fulness but want"; and a judicious balance between rest and work, pursuit of favorite lines, genuine sympathy, and wise companionship will generally normalize the social relation. _first forms of spontaneous social organizations.--_ gulick has studied the propensity of boys from thirteen on to consort in gangs, do "dawsies" and stumps, get into scrapes together, and fight and suffer for one another. the manners and customs of the gang are to build shanties or "hunkies," hunt with sling shots, build fires before huts in the woods, cook their squirrels and other game, play indian, build tree-platforms, where they smoke or troop about some leader, who may have an old revolver. they find or excavate caves, or perhaps roof them over; the barn is a blockhouse or a battleship. in the early teens boys begin to use frozen snowballs or put pebbles in them, or perhaps have stone-fights between gangs than which no contiguous african tribes could be more hostile. they become toughs and tantalize policemen and peddlers; "lick" every enemy or even stranger found alone on their grounds; often smash windows; begin to use sticks and brass knuckles in their fights; pelt each other with green apples; carry shillalahs, or perhaps air-rifles. the more plucky arrange fights beforehand; rifle unoccupied houses; set ambushes for gangs with which they are at feud; perhaps have secrets and initiations where new boys are triced up by the legs and butted against trees and rocks. when painted for their indian fights, they may grow so excited as to perhaps rush into the water or into the school-room yelling; mimic the violence of strikes; kindle dangerous bonfires; pelt policemen, and shout vile nicknames. the spontaneous tendency to develop social and political organizations among boys in pubescent years was well seen in a school near baltimore in the midst of an eight-hundred-acre farm richly diversified with swamp and forest and abounding with birds, squirrels, rabbits, etc. soon after the opening of this school[ ] the boys gathered nuts in parties. when a tree was reached which others had shaken, an unwritten law soon required those who wished to shake it further first to pile up all nuts under the tree, while those who failed to do so were universally regarded as dishonest and every boy's hand was against them. to pile them involved much labor, so that the second party usually sought fresh trees, and partial shaking practically gave possession of all the fruits on a tree. they took birds' eggs freely, and whenever a bird was found in building, or a squirrel's hole was discovered, the finder tacked his name on the tree and thereby confirmed his ownership, as he did if he placed a box in which a nest was built. the ticket must not blow off, and the right at first lasted only one season. in the rabbit-land every trap that was set preëmpted ground for a fixed number of yards about it. some grasping boys soon made many traps and set them all over a valuable district, so that the common land fell into a few hands. traps were left out all winter and simply set the next spring. all these rights finally came into the ownership of two or three boys, who slowly acquired the right and bequeathed their claims to others for a consideration, when they left school. the monopolists often had a large surplus of rabbits which they bartered for "butters," the unit being the ounce of daily allowance. these could be represented by tickets transferred, so that debts were paid with "butters" that had never been seen. an agrarian party arose and demanded a redistribution of land from the monopolists, as sir henry maine shows often happened in the old village community. legislation and judicial procedure were developed and quarrels settled by arbitration, ordeal, and wager, and punishment by bumping often followed the decision of the boy folk-mote. scales of prices for commodities in "butters" or in pie-currency were evolved, so that we here have an almost entirely spontaneous but amazingly rapid recapitulation of the social development of the race by these boys. from a study of , children's organizations described as a language lesson in school composition, mr. sheldon[ ] arrives at some interesting results. american children tend strongly to institutional activities, only about thirty per cent of all not having belonged to some such organization. imitation plays a very important rôle, and girls take far more kindly than boys to societies organized by adults for their benefit. they are also more governed by adult and altruistic motives in forming their organizations, while boys are nearer to primitive man. before ten comes the period of free spontaneous imitation of every form of adult institution. the child reproduces sympathetically miniature copies of the life around him. on a farm, his play is raking, threshing, building barns, or on the seashore he makes ships and harbors. in general, he plays family, store, church, and chooses officers simply because adults do. the feeling of caste, almost absent in the young, culminates about ten and declines thereafter. from ten to fourteen, however, associations assume a new character; boys especially cease to imitate adult organizations and tend to form social units characteristic of lower stages of human evolution--pirates, robbers, soldiers, lodges, and other savage reversionary combinations, where the strongest and boldest is the leader. they build huts, wear feathers and tomahawks as badges, carry knives and toy-pistols, make raids and sell the loot. cowards alone, together they fear nothing. their imagination is perhaps inflamed by flash literature and "penny-dreadfuls." such associations often break out in decadent country communities where, with fewer and feebler offspring, lax notions of family discipline prevail and hoodlumism is the direct result of the passing of the rod. these barbaric societies have their place and give vigor; but if unreduced later, as in many unsettled portions of this country, a semisavage state of society results. at twelve the predatory function is normally subordinated, and if it is not it becomes dangerous, because the members are no longer satisfied with mere play, but are stronger and abler to do harm, and the spice of danger and its fascination may issue in crime. athleticism is now the form into which these wilder instincts can be best transmuted, and where they find harmless and even wholesome vent. another change early in adolescence is the increased number of social, literary, and even philanthropic organizations and institutions for mutual help--perhaps against vice, for having a good time, or for holding picnics and parties. altruism now begins to make itself felt as a motive. _student life and organizations._ student life is perhaps the best of all fields, unworked though it is, for studying the natural history of adolescence. its modern record is over eight hundred years old and it is marked with the signatures of every age, yet has essential features that do not vary. cloister and garrison rules have never been enforced even in the hospice, bursa, inn, "house," "hall," or dormitory, and _in loco parentis_ [in place of a parent] practises are impossible, especially with large numbers. the very word "school" means leisure, and in a world of toil and moil suggests paradise. some have urged that _élite_ youth, exempt from the struggle to live and left to the freedom of their own inclinations, might serve as a biological and ethnic compass to point out the goal of human destiny. but the spontaneous expressions of this best age and condition of life, with no other occupation than their own development, have shown reversions as often as progress. the rupture of home ties stimulates every wider vicarious expression of the social instinct. each taste and trait can find congenial companionship in others and thus be stimulated to more intensity and self-consciousness. very much that has been hitherto repressed in the adolescent soul is now reënforced by association and may become excessive and even aggressive. while many of the race-correlates of childhood are lost, those of this stage are more accessible in savage and sub-savage life. freedom is the native air and vital breath of student life. the sense of personal liberty is absolutely indispensable for moral maturity; and just as truth can not be found without the possibility of error, so the _posse non peccare_ [ability not to sin] precedes the _non posse peccare_, [inability to sin] and professors must make abroad application of the rule _abusus non tollit usum_ [abuse does not do away with use]. the student must have much freedom to be lazy, make his own minor morals, vent his disrespect for what he can see no use in, be among strangers to act himself out and form a personality of his own, be baptized with the revolutionary and skeptical spirit, and go to extremes at the age when excesses teach wisdom with amazing rapidity, if he is to become a true knight of the spirit and his own master. ziegler[ ] frankly told german students that about one-tenth of them would be morally lost in this process, but insisted that on the whole more good was done than by restraint; for, he said, "youth is now in the stage of schiller's bell when it was molten metal." of all safeguards i believe a rightly cultivated sense of honor is the most effective at this age. sadly as the written code of student honor in all lands needs revision, and partial, freaky, and utterly perverted, tainted and cowardly as it often is, it really means what kant expressed in the sublime precept, "thou canst because thou oughtest." fichte said that _faulheit, feigheit_, and _falschheit_ [laziness, cowardice, falsehood] were the three dishonorable things for students. if they would study the history and enter into the spirit of their own fraternities, they would often have keener and broader ideas of honor to which they are happily so sensitive. if professors made it always a point of honor to confess and never to conceal the limitation of their knowledge, would scorn all pretense of it, place credit for originality frankly where it belongs, teach no creeds they do not profoundly believe, or topics in which they are not interested, and withhold nothing from those who want the truth, they could from this vantage with more effect bring students to feel that the laziness that, while outwardly conforming, does no real inner work; that getting a diploma, as a professor lately said, an average student could do, on one hour's study a day; living beyond one's means, and thus imposing a hardship on parents greater than the talent of the son justifies; accepting stipends not needed, especially to the deprivation of those more needy; using dishonest ways of securing rank in studies or positions on teams, or social standing, are, one and all, not only ungentlemanly but cowardly and mean, and the axe would be laid at the root of the tree. honor should impel students to go nowhere where they conceal their college, their fraternity, or even their name; to keep themselves immaculate from all contact with that class of women which, ziegler states, brought twenty-five per cent of the students of the university of berlin in a single year to physicians; to remember that other's sisters are as cherished as their own; to avoid those sins against confiding innocence which cry for vengeance, as did valentine against faust, and which strengthen the hate of social classes and make mothers and sisters seem tedious because low ideas of womanhood have been implanted, and which give a taste for mucky authors that reek with suggestiveness; and to avoid the waste of nerve substance and nerve weakness in ways which ibsen and tolstoi have described. these things are the darkest blot on the honor of youth. _associations for youth, devised or guided by adults._ here we enter a very different realm. forbush[ ] undertakes an analysis of many such clubs which he divides according to their purpose into nine chief classes: physical training, handicraft, literary, social, civic and patriotic, science-study, hero-love, ethical, religious. these he classifies as to age of the boys, his purview generally ending at seventeen; discusses and tabulates the most favorable number, the instincts chiefly utilized, the kinds of education gained in each and its percentage of interest, and the qualities developed. he commends riis's mode of pulling the safety-valve of a rather dangerous boy-gang by becoming an adult honorary member, and interpreting the impulsions of this age in the direction of adventure instead of in that of mischief. he reminds us that nearly one-third of the inhabitants of america are adolescents, that , , are boys between twelve and sixteen, "that the do-called heathen people are, whatever their age, all in the adolescent stage of life." a few american societies of this class we may briefly characterize as follows: (a) typical of a large class of local juvenile clubs is the "captains of ten," originally for boys of from eight to fourteen, and with a later graduate squad of those over fifteen. the "ten" are the fingers; and whittling, scrap-book making, mat-weaving, etc., are taught. the motto is, "the hand of the diligent shall bear rule"; its watchword is "loyalty"; and the prime objects are "to promote a spirit of loyalty to christ among the boys of the club," and to learn about and work for christ's kingdom. the members wear a silver badge; have an annual photograph; elect their leaders; vote their money to missions (on which topic they hold meetings); act bible stories in costume; hear stories and see scientific experiments; enact a chinese school; write articles for the children's department of religious journals; develop comradeship, and "have a good time." (b) the agassiz association, founded in "to encourage personal work in natural science," now numbers some , members, with chapters distributed all over the country, and was said by the late professor hyatt to include "the largest number of persons ever bound together for the purpose of mutual help in the study of nature." it furnishes practical courses of study in the sciences; has local chapters in thousands of towns and cities in this and other countries; publishes a monthly organ, the swiss cross, to facilitate correspondence and exchange of specimens; has a small endowment, a badge, is incorporated, and is animated by a spirit akin to that of university extension; and, although not exclusively for young people, is chiefly sustained by them. (c) the catholic total abstinence union is a strong, well-organized, and widely extended society, mostly composed of young men. the pledge required of all members explains its object: "i promise with the divine assistance and in honor of the sacred thirst and the agony of our saviour, to abstain from all intoxicating drinks and to prevent as much as possible by advice and example the sin of intemperance in others and to discountenance the drinking customs of society." a general convention of the union has been held annually since . (d) the princely knights of character castle is an organization founded in for boys from twelve to eighteen to "inculcate, disseminate, and practise the principles of heroism--endurance--love, purity, and patriotism." the central incorporated castle grants charters to local castles, directs the ritual and secret work. its officers are supreme prince, patriarch, scribes, treasurer, director, with captain of the guard, watchman, porter, keeper of the dungeon, musician, herald, and favorite son. the degrees of the secret work are shepherd lad, captive, viceroy, brother, son, prince, knight, and royal knight. there are jewels, regalia, paraphernalia, and initiations. the pledge for the first degree is, "i hereby promise and pledge that i will abstain from the use of intoxicating liquor in any form as a beverage; that i will not use profane or improper language; that i will discourage the use of tobacco in any form; that i will strive to live pure in body and mind; that i will obey all rules and regulations of the order and not reveal any of the secrets in any way." there are benefits, reliefs, passwords, a list of offenses and penalties. (e) some , bands of mercy are now organized under the direction of the american humane education society. the object of the organization is to cultivate kindness to animals and sympathy with the poor and oppressed. the prevention of cruelty in driving, cattle transportation, humane methods of killing, care for the sick and abandoned or overworked animals, are the themes of most of its voluminous literature. it has badges, hymnbooks, cards, and certificates of membership, and a motto, "kindness, justice, and mercy to all." its pledge is, "i will try to be kind to all harmless living creatures, and try to protect them from cruel usage," and is intended to include human as well as dumb creatures. the founder and secretary, with great and commendable energy, has instituted prize contests for speaking on humane subjects in schools, and has printed and circulated prize stories; since the incorporation of the society in , he has been indefatigable in collecting funds, speaking before schools and colleges, and prints fifty to sixty thousand copies of the monthly organ. in addition to its mission of sentiment, and to make it more effective, this organization clearly needs to make more provision for the intellectual element by well-selected or constructed courses, or at least references on the life, history, habits, and instincts of animals, and it also needs more recognition that modern charity is a science as well as a virtue. (f) the coming men of america, although organized only in , now claims to be the greatest chartered secret society for boys and young men in the country. it began two years earlier in a lodge started by a nineteen-year-old boy in chicago in imitation of such ideas of masons, odd-fellows, etc., as its founder could get from his older brother, and its meetings were first held in a basement. on this basis older heads aided in its development, so that it is a good example of the boy-imitative helped out by parents. the organization is now represented in every state and territory, and boys travel on its badge. there is an official organ, the star, a badge, sign, and a secret sign language called "bestography." its secret ritual work is highly praised. its membership is limited to white boys under twenty-one. (g) the first harry wadsworth club was established in as a result of e.e. hale's ten times one, published the year before. its motto is, "look up, and not down; look forward, and not back; look out, and not in; lend a hand," or "faith, hope, and charity." its organ is the ten times one record; its badge is a silver maltese cross. each club may organize as it will, and choose its own name, provided it accepts the above motto. its watchword is, "in his name." it distributes charities, conducts a noonday rest, outings in the country, and devotes itself to doing good.[ ] [footnote : tarde: l'opposition universelle. alcan, paris, , p. .] [footnote : the adolescent at home and in school. by e. g. lancaster. proceedings of the national educational association, , p. .] [footnote : the psychology and pedagogy of adolescence. pedagogical seminary, july, , vol. , p. .] [footnote : study of boys entering the adolescent period of life. north western monthly, november, , vol. , pp. - , and a series thereafter.] [footnote : the suggestibility of children. pedagogical seminary, december, , vol. , p. ] [footnote : characteristics of the best teacher as recognized by children. by h.e. kratz. pedagogical seminary, june, , vol. , pp. - . see also the high school teacher from the pupil's point of view, by w.f. book. pedagogical seminary, september, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : a study of the teacher's influence. pedagogical seminary, december, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : children's ideals. pedagogical seminary, april, , vol. , pp. - ] [footnote : transactions of the illinois society for child study, vol. , no. , , pp. - .] [footnote : children's ambitions. by h.m. willard. barnes's studies in education, vol. , pp. - . (privately printed by earl barnes, sansom street, philadelphia.)] [footnote : transactions of the illinois society for child study, october, , vol. , no. , pp. - .] [footnote : a study in juvenile ethics. pedagogical seminary, june, , vol. , pp. - ] [footnote : die ideale der kinder. zeitschrift für pädagogische psychologie, pathologie und hygiene, jahrgang , heft , pp. - .] [footnote : the psychology of ownership, pedagogical seminary, december, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : property: its origin and development. chas. scribner's sons, .] [footnote : money-sense of children. will s. monroe. pedagogical seminary, march, , vol. , pp. - ] [footnote : a study of children's rights, as seen by themselves. by m.e. schallenberger. pedagogical seminary, october, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : children's attitude toward law. by e. m darrah. barnes's studies in education, vol. , pp. - . (stanford university, .) g. e. stechert and co., new york.] [footnote : class punishment. by caroline frear. barnes's studies in education, vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : children's attitude toward punishment for weak time sense. by d.s. snedden. barnes's studies in education, vol. , pp. - ] [footnote : ueber einzel- und gesamtleistung des schulkindes. archiv für die gesamte psychologie, band, and heft, , pp. - ] [footnote : development of the social consciousness of children. by will s. monroe. north-western monthly, september, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : bohannon: the only child in a family. pedagogical seminary, april, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : j. delitsch: Über schülerfreundschaften in einer volksschulklasse, die kinderfehler. fünfter jahrgang, mai, , pp. - .] [footnote : on some psychical relations of society and solitude. pedagogical seminary, april , vol. , pp. - ] [footnote : a. rauber: homo sapiens ferus. j. brehse, leipzig, . see also my social aspects of education; pedagogical seminary, march, , vol. , pp. - . also kropotkin: mutual aid a factor of evolution. w. heinemann, london, .] [footnote : rudimentary society among boys, by john h. johnson, mcdonogh, md. mcdonogh school, , reprinted from johns hopkins university studies series (historical and political studies, vol. , no. ).] [footnote : the institutional activities of american children. american journal of psychology, july, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : der deutsche student am ende des . jahrhunderts. th ed. göschen, leipzig, .] [footnote : the social pedagogy of boyhood. pedagogical seminary, october, , vol. , pp. - . see also his the boy problem, with an introduction by g. stanley hall, the pilgrim press, boston, , p. . also winifred buck (boys' self-governing clubs, macmillan, new york, ), who thinks ten million dollars could be used in training club advisers who should have the use of schools and grounds after hours and evenings, conduct excursions, organize games, etc., but avoid all direct teaching and book work generally. this writer thinks such an institution would soon result in a marked increase of public morality and an augmented demand for technical instruction, and that for the advisers themselves the work would be the best training for high positions in politics and reform. clubs of boys from eight to sixteen or eighteen must not admit age disparities of more than two years.] [footnote : see young people's societies, by l.w. bacon. d. appleton and co., new york, , p. . also, f.g. cressey: the church and young men. fleming h. revell co., new york, , p. .] * * * * * chapter x intellectual education and school work the general change and plasticity at puberty--english teaching--causes of its failure: ( ) too much time to other languages, ( ) subordination of literary content to form, ( ) too early stress on eye and hand instead of ear and mouth, ( ) excessive use of concrete words--children's interest in words--their favorites--slang--story telling--age of reading crazes--what to read--the historic sense--growth of memory span. just as about the only duty of young children is implicit obedience, so the chief mental training from about eight to twelve is arbitrary memorization, drill, habituation, with only limited appeal to the understanding. after the critical transition age of six or seven, when the brain has achieved its adult size and weight, and teething has reduced the chewing surface to its least extent, begins a unique stage of life marked by reduced growth and increased activity and power to resist both disease and fatigue, which suggests what was, in some just post-simian age of our race, its period of maturity. here belong discipline in writing, reading, spelling, verbal memory, manual training, practise of instrumental technic, proper names, drawing, drill in arithmetic, foreign languages by oral methods, the correct pronunciation of which is far harder if acquired later, etc. the hand is never so near the brain. most of the content of the mind has entered it through the senses, and the eye-and ear-gates should be open at their widest. authority should now take precedence of reason. children comprehend much and very rapidly if we can only refrain from explaining, but this slows down intuition, tends to make casuists and prigs and to enfeeble the ultimate vigor of reason. it is the age of little method and much matter. the good teacher is now a _pedotrieb_, or boy-driver. boys of this age at now not very affectionate. they take pleasure in obliging and imitating those they like and perhaps in disobliging those they dislike. they have much selfishness and little sentiment. as this period draws to a close and the teens begin, the average normal child will not be bookish but should read and write well, know a few dozen well-chosen books, play several dozen games, be well started in one or more ancient and modern languages--if these must be studied at all, should know something of several industries and how to make many things he is interested in, belong to a few teams and societies, know much about nature in his environment, be able to sing and draw, should have memorized much more than he now does, and be acquainted, at least in story form, with the outlines of many of the best works in literature and the epochs and persons in history.[ ] morally he should have been through many if not most forms of what parents and teachers commonly call "badness," and professor yoder even calls "meanness". he should have fought, whipped and been whipped, used language offensive to the prude and to the prim precisian, been in some scrapes, had something to do with bad, if more with good, associates, and been exposed to and already recovering from as many forms of ethical mumps and measles as, by having in mild form now he can be rendered immune to later when they become far more dangerous, because his moral and religious as well as his rational nature is normally rudimentary. he is not depraved, but only in a savage or half-animal stage, although to a large-brained, large-hearted and truly parental soul that does not call what causes it inconvenience by opprobrious names, an altogether lovable and even fascinating stage. the more we know of boyhood the more narrow and often selfish do adult ideals of it appear. something is amiss with the lad of ten who is very good, studious, industrious, thoughtful, altruistic, quiet, polite, respectful, obedient, gentlemanly, orderly, always in good toilet, docile to reason, who turns away from stories that reek with gore, prefers adult companionship to that of his mates, refuses all low associates, speaks standard english, or is as pious and deeply in love with religious services as the typical maiden teacher or the _à la mode_ parent wishes. such a boy is either under-vitalized and anemic and precocious by nature, a repressed, overtrained, conventionalized manikin, a hypocrite, as some can become under pressure thus early in life, or else a genius of some kind with a little of all these. but with the teens all this begins to be changed and many of these precepts must be gradually reversed. there is an outburst of growth that needs a large part of the total kinetic energy of the body. there is a new interest in adults, a passion to be treated like one's elders, to make plans for the future, a new sensitiveness to adult praise or blame. the large muscles have their innings and there is a new clumsiness of body and mind. the blood-vessels expand and blushing is increased, new sensations and feelings arise, the imagination blossoms, love of nature is born, music is felt in a new, more inward way, fatigue comes easier and sooner; and if heredity and environment enable the individual to cross this bridge successfully there is sometimes almost a break of continuity, and a new being emerges. the drill methods of the preceding period must be slowly relaxed and new appeals made to freedom and interest. we can no longer coerce a break, but must lead and inspire if we would avoid arrest. individuality must have a longer tether. never is the power to appreciate so far ahead of the power to express, and never does understanding so outstrip ability to explain. overaccuracy is atrophy. both mental and moral acquisition sink at once too deep to be reproduced by examination without injury both to intellect and will. there is nothing in the environment to which the adolescent nature does not keenly respond. with pedagogic tact we can teach about everything we know that is really worth knowing; but if we amplify and morselize instead of giving great wholes, if we let the hammer that strikes the bell rest too long against it and deaden the sound, and if we wait before each methodic step till the pupil has reproduced all the last, we starve and retard the soul, which is now all insight and receptivity. plasticity is at its maximum, utterance at its minimum. the inward traffic obstructs the outer currents. boys especially are often dumb-bound, monophrastic, inarticulate, and semi-aphasic save in their own vigorous and inelegant way. nature prompts to a modest reticence for which the deflowerers of all ephebic naiveté should have some respect. deep interests arise which are almost as sacred as is the hour of visitation of the holy ghost to the religious teacher. the mind at times grows in leaps and bounds in a way that seems to defy the great enemy, fatigue; and yet when the teacher grows a little tiresome the pupil is tired in a moment. thus we have the converse danger of forcing knowledge upon unwilling and unripe minds that have no love for it, which is in many ways psychologically akin to a nameless crime that in some parts of the country meets summary vengeance. (_a_) the heart of education as well as its phyletic root is the vernacular literature and language. these are the chief instruments of the social as well as of the ethnic and patriotic instinct. the prime place of the former we saw in the last chapter, and we now pass to the latter, the uniqueness of which should first be considered. the century, the largest complete dictionary of english, claims to have , words, as against , in the old webster's unabridged. worcester's unabridged of has , ; murray's, now in l, it is said, will contain , principal and , compound words, or , words in all. the dictionary of the french academy has , ; that of the royal spanish academy, , ; the dutch dictionary of van dale, , ; the italian and portuguese, each about , literary, or , encyclopedic words. of course, words can really be counted hardly more than ideas or impressions, and compounds, dialects, obsolete terms, localisms, and especially technical terms, swell the number indefinitely. a competent philologist[ ] says, if given large liberty, he "will undertake to supply , , english words for , , american dollars." chamberlain[ ] estimates that our language contains more than two score as many words as all those left us from the latin. many savage languages contain only a very few thousand, and some but a few hundred, words. our tongue is essentially saxon in its vocabulary and its spirit and, from the time when it was despised and vulgar, has followed an expansion policy, swallowing with little modification terms not only from classical antiquity, but from all modern languages--indian, african, chinese, mongolian--according to its needs, its adopted children far outnumbering those of its own blood. it absorbs at its will the slang of the street gamin, the cant of thieves and beggars; is actually creative in the baby talk of mothers and nurses; drops, forgets, and actually invents new words with no pedigree like those of lear, carrol, and many others.[ ] in this vast field the mind of the child early begins to take flight. here his soul finds its native breath and vital air. he may live as a peasant, using, as max müller says many do, but a few hundred words during his lifetime; or he may need , , like milton, , , like shakespeare, , or , , like huxley, who commanded both literary and technical terms; while in understanding, which far outstrips, use, a philologist may master perhaps , or , words. the content of a tongue may contain only folk-lore and terms for immediate practical life, or this content may be indefinitely elaborated in a rich literature and science. the former is generally well on in its development before speech itself becomes an abject of study. greek literature was fully grown when the sophists, and finally aristotle, developed the rudiments of grammar, the parts of speech being at first closely related with his ten metaphysical categories. our modern tongue had the fortune, unknown to those of antiquity, when it was crude and despised, to be patronized and regulated by latin grammarians, and has had a long experience, both for good and evil, with their conserving and uniformitizing instincts. it has, too, a long history of resistance to this control. once spelling was a matter of fashion or even individual taste; and as the constraint grew, two pedagogues in the thirteenth century fought a duel for the right spelling of the word, and that maintained by the survivor prevailed. phonic and economic influences are now again making some headway against orthographic orthodoxy here; so with definitions. in the days of johnson's dictionary, individuality still had wide range in determining meanings. in pronunciation, too: we may now pronounce the word _tomato_ in six ways, all sanctioned by dictionaries. of our tongue in particular it is true, as tylor says in general, condensing a longer passage, "take language all in all, it is the product of a rough-and-ready ingenuity and of the great rule of thumb. it is an old barbaric engine, which in its highest development is altered, patched, and tinkered into capability. it is originally and naturally a product of low culture, developed by ages of conscious and unconscious improvement to answer more or less perfectly the requirements of modern civilization." it is plain, therefore, that no grammar, and least of all that derived from the prim, meager latin contingent of it, is adequate to legislate for the free spirit of our magnificent tongue. again, if this is ever done and english ever has a grammar that is to it what latin grammar is to that language, it will only be when the psychology of speech represented, e.g., in wundt's psychologie der sprache,[ ] which is now compiling and organizing the best elements from all grammars, is complete. the reason why english speakers find such difficulty in learning other languages is because ours has so far outgrown them by throwing off not only inflections but many old rules of syntax, that we have had to go backward to an earlier and more obsolescent stage of human development. in , at the council of constance, when emperor sigismund was rebuked for a wrong gender, he replied, "i am king of the romans and above grammar." thomas jefferson later wrote, "where strictures of grammar does not weaken expression it should be attended to; but where by a small grammatical negligence the energy of an idea is condensed or a word stands for a sentence, i hold grammatical rigor in contempt." browning, whitman, and kipling deliberately violate grammar and secure thereby unique effects neither asking nor needing excuse. by general consent both high school and college youth in this country are in an advanced stage of degeneration in the command of this the world's greatest organ of the intellect; and that, despite the fact that the study of english often continues from primary into college grades, that no topic counts for more, and that marked deficiency here often debars from all other courses. every careful study of the subject for nearly twenty years shows deterioration, and professor shurman, of nebraska, thinks it now worse than at any time for forty years. we are in the case of many christians described by dante, who strove by prayers to get nearer to god when in fact with every petition they were departing farther from him. such a comprehensive fact must have many causes. i. one of these is the excessive time given to other languages just at the psychological period of greatest linguistic plasticity and capacity for growth. school invention and tradition is so inveterate that it is hard for us to understand that there is little educational value--and perhaps it is deëducational--to learn to tell the time of day or name a spade in several different tongues or to learn to say the lord's prayer in many different languages, any one of which the lord only can understand. the polyglot people that one meets on great international highways of travel are linguists only in the sense that the moke on the variety stage who plays a dozen instruments equally badly is a musician. it is a psychological impossibility to pass through the apprenticeship stage of learning foreign languages at the age when the vernacular is setting without crippling it. the extremes are the youth in ancient greece studying his own language only and the modern high school boy and girl dabbling in three or perhaps four languages. latin, which in the eight years preceding increased one hundred and seventy-four per cent. in american high schools, while the proportion entering college in the country and even in massachusetts steadily declined, is the chief offender. in the day of its pedagogical glory latin was the universal tongue of the learned. sturm's idea was to train boys so that if suddenly transported to ancient rome or greece they would be at home there. language, it was said, was the chief instrument of culture; latin, the chief language and therefore a better drill in the vernacular than the vernacular itself. its rules were wholesome swathing bands for the modern languages when in their infancy. boys must speak only latin on the playground. they thought, felt, and developed an intellectual life in and with that tongue.[ ] but how changed all this is now. statistical studies show that five hours a week for a year gives command of but a few hundred words, that two years does not double this number, and that command of the language and its resources in the original is almost never attained, but that it is abandoned not only by the increasing percentage that do not go to college but also by the increasing percentage who drop it forever at the college door. its enormous numerical increase due to high school requirements, the increasing percentage of girl pupils more ready to follow the teacher's advice, in connection with the deteriorating quality of the girls--inevitable with their increasing numbers, the sense that latin means entering upon a higher education, the special reverence for it by catholic children, the overcrowded market for latin teachers whom a recent writer says can be procured by the score at less rates than in almost any other subject, the modern methods of teaching it which work well with less knowledge of it by the teacher than in the case of other school topics, have been attended perhaps inevitably by steady pedagogic decline despite the vaunted new methods; until now the baby latin in the average high school class is a kind of sanctified relic, a ghost of a ghost, suggesting swift's struldbrugs, doomed to physical immortality but shriveling and with increasing horror of all things new. in the german emperor declared it a shame for a boy to excel in latin composition, and in the high schools of sweden and norway it has been practically abandoned. in the present stage of its educational decadence the power of the dead hand is strongly illustrated by the new installation of the old roman pronunciation with which our tongue has only remote analogies, which makes havoc with proper names which is unknown and unrecognized in the schools of the european continent, and which makes a pedantic affectation out of more vocalism. i do not know nor care whether the old romans pronounced thus or not, but if historic fidelity in this sense has pedagogic justification, why still teach a text like the _viri romae_, which is not a classic but a modern pedagogue's composition? i believe profoundly in the latin both as a university specialty and for all students who even approach mastery, but for the vast numbers who stop in the early stages of proficiency it is disastrous to the vernacular. compare the evils of translation english, which not even the most competent and laborious teaching can wholly prevent and which careless mechanical instruction directly fosters, with the vigorous fresh productions of a boy or girl writing or speaking of something of vital present interest. the psychology of translation shows that it gives the novice a consciousness of etymologies which rather impedes than helps the free movement of the mind. jowett said in substance that it is almost impossible to render either of the great dead languages into english without compromise, and this tends to injure the idiomatic mastery of one's own tongue, which can be got only by much hard experience in uttering our own thoughts before trying to shape the dead thoughts of others into our language. we confound the little knowledge of word-histories which latin gives with the far higher and subtler sentence-sense which makes the soul of one language so different from that of another, and training in which ought not to end until one has become more or less of a stylist and knows how to hew out modes of expressing his own individuality in great language. there is a sense in which macaulay was not an englishman at all, but a ciceronian latinist who foisted an alien style upon our tongue; and even addison is a foreigner compared to the virile kipling. the nature and needs of the adolescent mind demand bread and meat, while latin rudiments are husks. in his autobiography, booker washington says that for ten years after their emancipation, the two chief ambitions of the young negro of the south were to hold office and to study latin, and he adds that the chief endeavor of his life has been against these tendencies. for the american boy and girl, high school too often means latin. this gives at first a pleasing sense of exaltation to a higher stage of life, but after from one to three years the great majority who enter the high school drop out limp and discouraged for many reasons, largely, however, because they are not fed. defective nutrition of the mind also causes a restlessness, which enhances all the influences which make boys and girls leave school. ii. the second cause of this degeneration is the subordination of literature and content to language study. grammar arises in the old age of language. as once applied to our relatively grammarless tongue it always was more or less of a school-made artifact and an alien yoke, and has become increasingly so as english has grown great and free. its ghost, in the many textbooks devoted to it, lacks just the quality of logic which made and besouled it. philology, too, with all its magnificence, is not a product of the nascent stages of speech. in the college, which is its stronghold, it has so inspired professors of english that their ideal is to be critical rather than creative till they prefer the minute reading of a few masterpieces to a wide general knowledge, and a typical university announces that "in every case the examiners will treat mere knowledge of books as less important than the ability to write good english" that will parse and that is spelled, punctuated, capitalized, and paragraphed aright. good professors of english literature are hard to find, and upon them philologists, who are plentiful, look with a certain condescension. many academic chairs of english are filled by men whose acquaintance of our literature is very narrow, who wish to be linguistic and not literary, and this is true even in ancient tongues. at a brilliant examination, a candidate for the doctor's degree who had answered many questions concerning the forms of lucretius, when asked whether he was a dramatist, historian, poet, or philosopher, did not know, and his professor deemed the question improper. i visited the eleventh recitation in othello in a high school class of nineteen pupils, not one of whom knew how the story ended, so intent had they been kept on its verbiage. hence, too, has come the twelve feet of text-books on english on my shelves with many standard works, edited for schools, with more notes than text. fashion that works from above down the grades and college entrance requirements are in large measure responsible for this, perhaps now the worst case of the prostitution of content to form. long exposure to this method of linguistic manicuring tends to make students who try to write ultra-fastidiously, seeking an over-refined elaboration of petty trifles, as if the less the content the greater the triumph of form alone could be. these petty but pretty nothings are like german confectionery, that appeals to the eye but has little for taste and is worse than nothing for the digestion. it is like straining work on an empty stomach. for youth this embroidery of details is the precocious senescence that nordau has so copiously illustrated as literary decadence. language is vastly larger than all its content, and the way to teach it is to focus the mind upon story, history, oratory, drama, bible, for their esthetic, mental, and above all, moral content, as shown in the last chapter. the more unconscious processes that reflect imitatively the linguistic environment and that strike out intuitively oral and written vents for interests so intense that they must be told and shared, are what teach us how to command the resources of our mother tongue. these prescriptions and corrections and consciousness of the manifold ways of error are never so peculiarly liable to hinder rather than to help as in early adolescence, when the soul has a new content and a new sense for it, and so abhors and is so incapable of precision and propriety of diction. to hold up the flights of exuberant youth by forever being on the hunt for errors is, to borrow the language of the gridiron, low tackle, and i would rather be convicted of many errors by such methods than use them. of course this has its place, but it must always be subordinated to a larger view, as in one of the newly discovered _logia_ ascribed to jesus, who, when he found a man gathering sticks on sunday, said to him, "if you understand what you are doing, it is well, but if not, thou shalt be damned." the great teacher who, when asked how he obtained such rare results in expression, answered, "by carefully neglecting it and seeking utter absorption in subject-matter," was also a good practical psychologist. this is the inveterate tendency that in other ages has made pedagogic scribes, talmudists, epigoni, and sophists, who have magnified the letter and lost the spirit. but there are yet other seats of difficulty. iii. it is hard and, in the history of the race, a late change, to receive language through the eye which reads instead of through the ear which hears. not only is perception measurably quite distinctly slower, but book language is related to oral speech somewhat as an herbarium is to a garden, or a museum of stuffed specimens to a menagerie. the invention of letters is a novelty in the history of the race that spoke for countless ages before it wrote. the winged word of mouth is saturated with color, perhaps hot with feeling, musical with inflection, is the utterance of a living present personality, the consummation of man's gregarious instincts. the book is dead and more or less impersonal, best apprehended in solitude, its matter more intellectualized; it deals in remoter second-hand knowledge so that plato reproached aristotle as being a reader, one remove from the first spontaneous source of original impressions and ideas, and the doughty medieval knights scorned reading as a mere clerk's trick, not wishing to muddle their wits with other people's ideas when their own were good enough for them. but although some of the great men in history could not read, and though some of the illiterate were often morally and intellectually above some of the literate, the argument here is that the printed page must not be too suddenly or too early thrust between the child and life. the plea is for moral and objective work, more stories, narratives, and even vivid readings, as is now done statedly in more than a dozen of the public libraries of the country, not so often by teachers as by librarians, all to the end that the ear, the chief receptacle of language, be maintained in its dominance, that the fine sense of sound, rhythm, cadence, pronunciation, and speech-music generally be not atrophied, that the eye which normally ranges freely from far to near be not injured by the confined treadmill and zigzag of the printed page. closely connected with this, and perhaps psychologically worse, is the substitution of the pen and the scribbling fingers for the mouth and tongue. speech is directly to and from the soul. writing, the deliberation of which fits age better than youth, slows down its impetuosity many fold, and is in every way farther removed from vocal utterance than is the eye from the ear. never have there been so many pounds of paper, so many pencils, and such excessive scribbling as in the calamopapyrus [pen-paper] pedagogy of to-day and in this country. not only has the daily theme spread as infection, but the daily lesson is now extracted through the point of a pencil instead of from the mouth. the tongue rests and the curve of writer's cramp takes a sharp turn upward, as if we were making scribes, reporters, and proof-readers. in some schools, teachers seem to be conducting correspondence classes with their own pupils. it all makes excellent busy work, keeps the pupils quiet and orderly, and allows the school output to be quantified, and some of it gives time for more care in the choice of words. but is it a gain to substitute a letter for a visit, to try to give written precedence over spoken forms? here again we violate the great law that the child repeats the history of the race, and that, from the larger historic standpoint, writing as a mode of utterance is only the latest fashion. of course the pupils must write, and write well, just as they must read, and read much; but that english suffers from insisting upon this double long circuit too early and cultivates it to excess, devitalizes school language and makes it a little unreal, like other affectations of adult ways, so that on escaping from its thraldom the child and youth slump back to the language of the street as never before. this is a false application of the principle of learning to do by doing. the young do not learn to write by writing, but by reading and hearing. to become a good writer one must read, feel, think, experience, until he has something to say that others want to hear. the golden age of french literature, as gaston deschamps and brunetière have lately told us, was that of the salon, when conversation dominated letters, set fashions, and made the charm of french style. its lowest ebb was when bookishness led and people began to talk as they wrote. iv. the fourth cause of degeneration of school english is the growing preponderance of concrete words for designating things of sense and physical acts, over the higher element of language that names and deals with concepts, ideas, and non-material things. the object-lesson came in as a reaction against the danger of merely verbal and definition knowledge and word memory. now it has gone so far that not only things but even languages, vernacular and foreign, are taught by appeals to the eye. more lately, elementary science has introduced another area of pictures and things while industrial education has still further greatly enlarged the material sensori-motor element of training. geography is taught with artifacts, globes, maps, sand boxes, drawing. miss margaret smith[ ] counted two hundred and eighty objects that must be distributed and gathered for forty pupils in a single art lesson. instruction, moreover, is more and more busied upon parts and details rather than wholes, upon analysis rather than synthesis. thus in modern pedagogy there is an increased tyranny of things, a growing neglect or exclusion of all that is unseen. the first result of this is that the modern school child is more and more mentally helpless without objects of sense. conversation is increasingly concrete, if not of material things and persons present in time and even place. instead of dealing with thoughts and ideas, speech and writing is close to sense and the words used are names for images and acts. but there is another higher part of language that is not so abjectly tied down to perception, but that lives, moves, and has its being in the field of concepts rather than percepts, which, to use earle's distinction, is symbolic and not presentative, that describes thinking that is not mere contiguity in space or sequence in time but that is best in the far higher and more mental associations of likeness, that is more remote from activity, that, to use logical terminology, is connotative and not merely denotative, that has extension as well as intension, that requires abstraction and generalization. without this latter element higher mental development is lacking because this means more than word-painting the material world. our school youth today suffer from just this defect. if their psychic operations can be called thought it is of that elementary and half animal kind that consists imagery. their talk with each other is of things of present and immediate interest. they lack even the elements of imagination, which makes new combinations and is creative, because they are dominated by mental pictures of the sensory. large views that take them afield away from the persons and things and acts they know do not appeal to them. attempts to think rigorously are too hard. the teacher feels that all the content of mind must come in through the senses, and that if these are well fed, inferences and generalizations will come of themselves later. many pupils have never in their lives talked five minutes before others on any subject whatever that can properly be called intellectual. it irks them to occupy themselves with purely mental processes, so enslaved are they by what is near and personal, and thus they are impoverished in the best elements of language. it is as if what are sometimes called the associative fibers, both ends of which are in the brain, were dwarfed in comparison with the afferent and efferent fibers that mediate sense and motion. that the soul of language as an instrument of thought consists in this non-presentative element, so often lacking, is conclusively shown in the facts of speech diseases. in the slowly progressive aphasias, of late so carefully studied, the words first lost are those of things and acts most familiar to the patient, while the words that persist longest in the wreckage of the speech-centers are generally words that do not designate the things of sense. a tailor loses the power to name his chalk, measure, shears, although he can long talk fluently of what little he may chance to know of god, beauty, truth, virtue, happiness, prosperity, etc. the farmer is unable to name the cattle in his yard or his own occupations, although he can reason as well as ever about politics; can not discuss coin or bills, but can talk of financial policies and securities, or about health and wealth generally. the reason obvious. it is because concrete thinking has two forms, the word and the image, and the latter so tends to take the place of the former that it can be lost to both sense and articulation without great impairment, whereas conceptual thinking lacks imagery and depends upon words alone, and hence these must persist because they have no alternate form which vicariates for them. in its lower stages, speech is necessarily closely bound up with the concrete world; but its real glory appears in its later stages and its higher forms, because there the soul takes flight in the intellectual world, learns to live amidst its more spiritual realities, to put names to thoughts, which is far higher than to put names to things. it is in this world that the best things in the best books live; and the modern school-bred distaste for them, the low-ranged mental action that hovers near the coastline of matter and can not launch out with zest into the open sea of thoughts, holding communion with the great dead of the past or the great living of the distant present, seems almost like a slow progressive abandonment of the high attribute of speech and the lapse toward infantile or animal picture-thinking. if the school is slowly becoming speechless in this sense, if it is lapsing in all departments toward busy work and losing silence, repose, the power of logical thought, and even that of meditation, which is the muse of originality, this is perhaps the gravest of all these types of decay. if the child has no resources in solitude, can not think without the visual provocation, is losing subjective life, enthusiasm for public, social, ethical questions, is crippled for intellectual pursuits, cares only in a languid way for literary prose and poetry, responds only to sensuous stimuli and events at short range, and is indifferent to all wide relations and moral responsibility, cares only for commercial self-interest, the tactics of field sport, laboratory occupations and things which call be illustrated from a pedagogic museum, then the school is dwarfing, in dawning maturity, the higher powers that belong to this stage of development and is responsible for mental arrest. in this deplorable condition, if we turn to the child study of speech for help, we find that, although it has been chiefly occupied with infant vocabularies, there are already a very few and confessedly crude and feeble beginnings, but even these shed more light on the lost pathway than all other sources combined. the child once set in their midst again corrects the wise men. we will first briefly recapitulate these and then state and apply their lessons. miss williams[ ] found that out of young ladies only did not have favorite sounds, _[long "a"]_ and _a_ leading among the vowels, and _l_, _r_ and _m_ among the constants. eighty-five had favorite words often lugged in, being good. two hundred and twenty-one, as children, had favorite proper names in geography, and also for boys, but especially for girls. the order of a few of the latter is as follows: helen, ; bessie, ; violet and lilly, ; elsie and beatrice, ; dorothy and alice, ; ethel, ; myrtle, ; mabel, marguerite, pearl, and rose, ; may, ; margaret, daisy, and grace, ; ruth and florence, ; gladys, ; maud, nellie, and gertrude, ; blanche and mary, ; eveline and pansy, ; belle, beulah, constance, eleanor, elizabeth, eve, laura, lulu, pauline, virginia, and vivian, each, etc. of ten words found interesting to adolescents, murmur was the favorite, most enjoying its sound. lullaby, supreme, annannamannannaharoumlemay, immemorial, lillibulero, burbled, and incarnadine were liked by most, while zigzag and shigsback were not liked. this writer says that adolescence is marked by some increased love of words for motor activity and in interest in words as things in themselves, but shows a still greater rise of interest in new words and pronunciations; "above all, there is a tremendous rise in interest in words as instruments of thought." the flood of new experiences, feelings, and views finds the old vocabulary inadequate, hence "the dumb, bound feeling of which most adolescents at one time or another complain and also i suspect from this study in the case of girls, we have an explanation of the rise of interest in slang." "the second idea suggested by our study is the tremendous importance of hearing in the affective side of language." conradi[ ] found that of returns concerning children's pleasure in knowing or using new words, ninety-two per cent were affirmative, eight per cent negative, and fifty per cent gave words especially "liked." some were partial to big words, some for those with z in them. some found most pleasure in saying them to themselves and some in using them with others. in all there were nearly three hundred such words, very few of which were artificial. as to words pretty or queer in form or sound, his list was nearly as large, but the greater part of the words were different. sixty per cent of all had had periods of spontaneously trying to select their vocabulary by making lists, studying the dictionary, etc. the age of those who did so would seem to average not far from early puberty, but the data are too meager for conclusion. a few started to go through the dictionary, some wished to astonish their companions or used large new words to themselves or their dolls. seventy percent had had a passion for affecting foreign words when english would do as well. conradi says "the age varies from twelve to eighteen, most being fourteen to sixteen." some indulge this tendency in letters, and would like to do so in conversation, but fear ridicule. fifty-six per cent reported cases of superfine elegance or affected primness or precision in the use of words. some had spells of effort in this direction, some belabor compositions to get a style that suits them, some memorise fine passages to this end, or modulate their voices to aid them, affect elegance with a chosen mate by agreement soliloquize before a glass with poses. according to his curve this tendency culminates at fourteen. adjectivism, adverbism, and nounism, or marked disposition to multiply one or more of the above classes of words, and in the above order, also occur near the early teens. adjectives are often used as adverbial prefixes to other adjectives, and here favorite words are marked. nearly half of conradi's reports show it, but the list of words so used is small. [illustration: graph showing slang, reading craze, and precision by age.] miss williams presents on interesting curve of slang confessed as being both attractive and used by out of . from this it appears that early adolescence is the curve of greatest pleasure in its use, fourteen being the culminating year. there is very little until eleven, when the curve for girls rises very rapidly, to fall nearly us rapidly from fifteen to seventeen. ninety-three out of who used it did so despite criticism. conradi, who collected and prints a long list of current slang words and phrases, found that of young boys and girls not one failed to confess their use, and eighty-five per cent of all gave the age at which they thought it most common. on this basis he constructs the above curve, comparing with this the curve of a craze for reading and for precision in speech. the reasons given are, in order of frequency, that slang was more emphatic, more exact, more concise, convenient, sounded pretty, relieved formality, was natural, manly, appropriate, etc. only a very few thought it was vulgar, limited the vocabulary, led to or was a substitute for swearing, destroyed exactness, etc. this writer attempts a provisional classification of slang expressions under the suggestive heads of rebukes to pride, boasting and loquacity, hypocrisy, quaint and emphatic negatives, exaggerations, exclamations, mild oaths, attending to one's own business and not meddling or interfering, names for money, absurdity, neurotic effects of surprise or shock, honesty and lying, getting confused, fine appearance and dress, words for intoxication which partridge has collected,[ ]for anger collated by chamberlain,[ ] crudeness or innocent naïveté, love and sentimentality, etc. slang is also rich in describing conflicts of all kinds, praising courage, censuring inquisitiveness, and as a school of moral discipline, but he finds, however, a very large number unclassified; and while he maintains throughout a distinction between that used by boys and by girls, sex differences are not very marked. the great majority of terms are mentioned but once, and a few under nearly all of the above heads have great numerical precedence. a somewhat striking fact is the manifold variations of a pet typical form. twenty-three shock expletives, e.g., are, "wouldn't that ---- you?" the blank being filled by jar, choke, cook, rattle, scorch, get, start, etc., or instead of _you_ adjectives are devised. feeling is so intense and massive, and psychic processes are so rapid, forcible, and undeveloped that the pithiness of some of those expressions makes them brilliant and creative works of genius, and after securing an apprenticeship are sure of adoption. their very lawlessness helps to keep speech from rigidity and desiccation, and they hit off nearly every essential phrase of adolescent life and experience. conventional modes of speech do not satisfy the adolescent, so that he is often either reticent or slangy. walt whitman[ ] says that slang is "an attempt of common humanity to escape from bald literalism and to express itself illimitably, which in the highest walks produces poets and poems"; and again, "daring as it is to say so, in the growth of language it is certain that the retrospect of slang from the start would be the recalling from their nebulous condition of all that is poetical in the stores of human utterance." lowell[ ] says, "there is death in the dictionary, and where language is too strictly limited by convention, the ground for expression to grow in is limited also, and we get a potted literature, chinese dwarfs instead of healthy trees." lounsbury asserts that "slang is an effort on the part of the users of language to say something more vividly, strongly, concisely than the language existing permits it to be said. it is the source from which the decaying energies of speech are constantly refreshed." conradi adds in substance that weak or vicious slang is too feeble to survive, and what is vital enough to live fills a need. the final authority is the people, and it is better to teach youth to discriminate between good and bad slang rather than to forbid it entirely. emerson calls it language in the making, its crude, vital, material. it is often an effective school of moral description, a palliative for profanity, and expresses the natural craving for superlatives. faults are hit off and condemned with the curtness sententiousness of proverbs devised by youth to sanctify itself and correct its own faults. the pedagogue objects that it violates good form and established usage, but why should the habits of hundreds of years ago control when they can not satisfy the needs of youth, which requires a _lingua franca_ of its own, often called "slanguage"? most high school and college youth of both sexes have two distinct styles, that of the classroom which is as unnatural as the etiquette of a royal drawing-room reception or a formal call, and the other, that of their own breezy, free, natural life. often these two have no relation to or effect upon each other, and often the latter is at times put by with good resolves to speak as purely and therefore as self-consciously as they knew, with petty fines for every slang expression. but very few, and these generally husky boys, boldly try to assert their own rude but vigorous vernacular in the field of school requirements. these simple studies in this vast field demonstrate little or nothing, but they suggest very much. slang commonly expresses a moral judgment and falls into ethical categories. it usually concerns ideas, sentiment, and will, has a psychic content, and is never, like the language of the school, a mere picture of objects of sense or a description of acts. to restate it in correct english would be a course in ethics, courtesy, taste, logical predication and opposition, honesty, self-possession, modesty, and just the ideal and non-presentative mental content that youth most needs, and which the sensuous presentation methods of teaching have neglected. those who see in speech nothing but form condemn it because it is vulgar. youth has been left to meet these high needs alone, and the prevalence of these crude forms is an indictment of the delinquency of pedagogues in not teaching their pupils to develop and use their intellect properly. their pith and meatiness are a standing illustration of the need of condensation for intellectual objects that later growth analyzes. these expressions also illustrate the law that the higher and larger the spiritual content, the grosser must be the illustration in which it is first couched. further studies now in progress will, i believe, make this still clearer. again, we see in the above, outcrops of the strong pubescent instinct to enlarge the vocabulary in two ways. one is to affect foreign equivalents. this at first suggests an appetency for another language like the dog-latin gibberish of children. it is one of the motives that prompts many to study latin or french, but it has little depth, for it turns out, on closer study, to be only the affectation of superiority and the love of mystifying others. the other is a very different impulse to widen the vernacular. to pause to learn several foreign equivalents of things of sense may be anti-educational if it limits the expansion of thought in our own tongue. the two are, in fact, often inversely related to each other. in giving a foreign synonym when the mind seeks a new native word, the pedagogue does not deal fairly. in this irradiation into the mother tongue, sometimes experience with the sentiment or feeling, act, fact, or object precedes, and then a name for it is demanded, or conversely the sound, size, oddness or jingle of the word is first attractive and the meaning comes later. the latter needs the recognition and utilization which the former already has. lists of favorite words should be wrought out for spelling and writing and their meanings illustrated, for these have often the charm of novelty as on the frontier of knowledge and enlarge the mental horizon like new discoveries. we must not starve this voracious new appetite "for words as instruments of thought." interest in story-telling rises till twelve or thirteen, and thereafter falls off perhaps rather suddenly, partly because youth is now more interested in receiving than in giving. as in the drawing curve we saw a characteristic age when the child loses pleasure in creating as its power of appreciating pictures rapidly arises, so now, as the reading curve rises, auditory receptivity makes way for the visual method shown in the rise of the reading curve with augmented zest for book-method of acquisition. darkness or twilight enhances the story interest in children, for it eliminates the distraction of sense and encourages the imagination to unfold its pinions, but the youthful fancy is less bat-like and can take its boldest flights in broad daylight. a camp-fire, or an open hearth with tales of animals, ghosts, heroism, and adventure can teach virtue, and vocabulary, style, and substance in their native unity. the pubescent reading passion is partly the cause and partly an effect of the new zest in and docility to the adult world and also of the fact that the receptive are now and here so immeasurably in advance of the creative powers. now the individual transcends his own experience and learns to profit by that of others. there is now evolved a penumbral region in the soul more or less beyond the reach of all school methods, a world of glimpses and hints, and the work here is that of the prospector and not of the careful miner. it is the age of skipping and sampling, of pressing the keys lightly. what is acquired is not examinable but only suggestive. perhaps nothing read now fails to leave its mark. it can not be orally reproduced at call, but on emergency it is at hand for use. as augustine said of god, so the child might say of most of his mental content in these psychic areas, "if you ask me, i do not know; but if you do not ask me, i know very well"--a case analogous to the typical girl who exclaimed to her teacher, "i can do and understand this perfectly if you only won't explain it." that is why examinations in english, if not impossible, as goldwin smith and oxford hold, are very liable to be harmful, and recitations and critical notes an impertinence, and always in danger of causing arrest of this exquisite romantic function in which literature comes in the closest relation to life, keeping the heart warm, reënforcing all its good motives, preforming choices, and universalizing its sympathies. r. w. bullock[ ] classified and tabulated , returns from school-children from the third to the twelfth grade, both inclusive, concerning their reading. from this it appeared that the average boy of the third grade "read . books in six months; that the average falls to . in the fourth and fifth grades and rises to a maximum of . at the seventh grade, then drops quite regularly to in the twelfth grade at the end of the high school course." the independent tabulation of returns from other cities showed little variation. "grade for grade, the girls read more than the boys, and as a rule they reach their maximum a year sooner, and from a general maximum of . books there is a drop to . at the end of the course." the age of reading may be postponed or accelerated perhaps nearly a year by the absence or presence of library facilities. tabulating the short stories read per week, it was found that these averaged . in the third grade, rose to . per week in the seventh grade, and in the twelfth had fallen to . , showing the same general tendency. the percentage tables for boys' preference for eight classes of stories are here only suggestive. "war stories seem popular with third grade boys, and that liking seems well marked through the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. stories of adventure are popular all through the heroic period, reaching their maximum in the eighth and ninth grades. the liking for biography and travel or exploration grows gradually to a climax in the ninth grade, and remains well up through the course. the tender sentiment has little charm for the average grade boy, and only in the high school course does he acknowledge any considerable use of love stories. in the sixth grade he is fond of detective stories, but they lose their charm for him as he grows older." for girls, "stories of adventure are popular in the sixth grade, and stories of travel are always enjoyed. the girl likes biography, but in the high school, true to her sex, she prefers stories of great women rather than great men, but because she can not get them reads those of men. pity it is that the biographies of so few of the world's many great women are written. the taste for love stories increases steadily to the end of the high school course. beyond that we have no record." thus "the maximum amount of reading is done in every instance between the sixth and eighth grades, the average being in the seventh grade at an average age of fourteen and one-tenth years." seventy-five per cent of all discuss their reading with some one, and the writer urges that "when ninety-five per cent of the boys prefer adventure or seventy-five per cent of the girls prefer love stories, that is what they are going to read," and the duty of the teacher or librarian is to see that they have both in the highest, purest form. henderson[ ] found that of , children from nine to fifteen, least books were read at the age of nine and most at the age of fifteen, and that there was "a gradual rise in amount throughout, the only break being in the case of girls at the age of fourteen and the boys at the age of twelve." for fiction the high-water mark was reached for both sexes at eleven, and the subsequent fall is far less rapid for girls than for boys. "at the age of thirteen the record for travel and adventure stands highest in the case of the boys, phenomenally so. there is a gradual rise in history with age, and a corresponding decline in fiction." kirkpatrick[ ] classified returns from , children from the fourth to the ninth grade in answer to questions that concerned their reading. he found a sudden increase in the sixth grade, when children are about twelve, when there is often a veritable, reading craze. dolls are abandoned and "plays, games, and companionship of others are less attractive, and the reading hunger in many children becomes insatiable and is often quite indiscriminate." it seems to "most frequently begin at about twelve years of age and continue at least three or four years," after which increased home duties, social responsibilities, and school requirements reduce it and make it more discriminating in quality. "the fact that boys read about twice, as much history and travel as girls and only about two-thirds as much poetry and stories shows beyond question that the emotional and intellectual wants of boys and girls are essentially different before sexual maturity." miss vostrovsky[ ] found that among , children there was a great increase of taste for reading as shown by the number of books taken from the library, which began with a sharp rise at eleven and increased steadily to nineteen, when her survey ended; that boys read most till seventeen, and then girls took the precedence. the taste for juvenile stories was declining and that for fiction and general literature was rapidly increased. at about the sixteenth year a change took place in both sexes, "showing then the beginning of a greater interest in works of a more general character." girls read more fiction than boys at every age, but the interest in it begins to be very decided at adolescence. with girls it appears to come a little earlier and with greater suddenness, while the juvenile story maintains a strong hold upon boys even after the fifteenth year. the curve of decline in juvenile stories is much more pronounced in both sexes than the rise of fiction. through the teens there is a great increase in the definiteness of answers to the questions why books were chosen. instead of being read because they were "good" or "nice," they were read because recommended, and later because of some special interest. girls relied on recommendations more than boys. the latter were more guided by reason the former by sentiment. nearly three times as many boys in the early teens chose books because they were exciting or venturesome. even the stories which girls called exciting were tame compared with those chosen by boys. girls chose books more than four times as often because of children in them, and more often because they ware funny. boys care very little for style, but must have incidents and heroes. the author says "the special interest that girls have in fiction begins about the age of adolescence. after the sixteenth year the extreme delight in stories fades," or school demands become more imperative and uniform. girls prefer domestic stories and those with characters like themselves and scenes like those with which they are familiar. "no boy confesses to a purely girl's story, while girls frankly do to an interesting story about boys. women writers seem to appeal more to girls, men writers to boys. hence, the authors named by each sex are almost entirely different. in fiction more standard works, were drawn by boys than by girls." "when left to develop according to chance, the tendency is often toward a selection of books which unfit one for every-day living, either by presenting, on the one hand, too many scenes of delicious excitement or, on the other, by narrowing the vision to the wider possibilities of life." out of full answers, lancaster found that "had what might be called a craze for reading at some time in the adolescent period," and thinks parents little realize the intensity of the desire to read or how this nascent period is the golden age to cultivate taste and inoculate against reading what is bad. the curve rises rapidly from eleven to fourteen, culminates at fifteen, after which it falls rapidly. some become omnivorous readers of everything in their way; others are profoundly, and perhaps for life, impressed with some single book; others have now crazes for history, now for novels, now for dramas or for poetry; some devour encyclopedias; some imagine themselves destined to be great novelists and compose long romances; some can give the dates with accuracy of the different periods of the development of their tastes from the fairy tales of early childhood to the travels and adventures of boyhood and then to romance, poetry, history, etc; and some give the order of their development of taste for the great poets. the careful statistics of dr. reyer show that the greatest greed of reading is from the age of fifteen to twenty-two, and is on the average greatest of all at twenty. he finds that ten per cent of the young people of this age do forty per cent of all the reading. before twenty the curve ascends very rapidly, to fall afterward yet more rapidly as the need of bread-winning becomes imperative. after thirty-five the great public reads but little. every youth should have his or her own library, which, however small, should be select. to seal some knowledge of their content with the delightful sense of ownership helps to preserve the apparatus of culture, keeps green early memories, or makes one of the best tangible mementoes of parental care and love. for the young especially, the only ark of safety in the dark and rapidly rising flood of printer's ink is to turn resolutely away from the ideal of quantity to that of quality. while literature rescues youth from individual limitations and enables it to act and think more as spectators of all time, and sharers of all existence, the passion for reading may be excessive, and books which from the silent alcoves of our nearly , american libraries rule the world more now than ever before, may cause the young to neglect the oracles within, weaken them by too wide reading, make conversation bookish, and overwhelm spontaneity and originality with a superfetation of alien ideas. the reading passion may rage with great intensity when the soul takes its first long flight in the world of books, and ninety per cent of all conradi's cases showed it. of these, thirty-two per cent read to have the feelings stirred and the desire of knowledge was a far less frequent motive. some read to pass idle time, others to appear learned or to acquire a style or a vocabulary. romance led. some specialized, and with some the appetite was omnivorous. some preferred books about or addressed to children, some fairy tales, and some sought only those for adults. the night is often invaded and some become "perfectly wild" over exciting adventures or the dangers and hardships of true lovers, laughing and crying as the story turns from grave to gay, and a few read several books a week. some were forbidden and read by stealth alone, or with books hidden in their desks or under school books. some few live thus for years in an atmosphere highly charged with romance, and burn out their fires wickedly early with a sudden and extreme expansiveness that makes life about them uninteresting and unreal, and that reacts to commonplace later. conradi prints some two or three hundred favorite books and authors of early and of later adolescence. the natural reading of early youth is not classic nor blighted by compulsion or uniformity for all. this age seeks to express originality and personality in individual choices and tastes. suggestive and briefly descriptive lists of best books and authors by authorities in different fields on which some time is spent in making selection, talks about books, pooling knowledge of them, with no course of reading even advised and much less prescribed, is the best guidance for developing the habit of rapid cursory reading. others before professor de long, of colorado, have held that the power of reading a page in moment, as a mathematician sums up a column of figures and as the artist doré was able to read a book by turning the leaves, can be attained by training and practise. school pressure should not suppress this instinct of omnivorous reading, which at this age sometimes prompts the resolve to read encyclopedias, and even libraries, or to sample everything to be found in books at home. along with, but never suppressing, it there should be some stated reading, but this should lay down only kinds of reading like the four emphasized in the last chapter or offer a goodly number of large alternative groups of books and authors, like the five of the leland stanford university, and permit wide liberty of choice to both teacher and pupil. few triumphs of the uniformitarians, who sacrifice individual needs to mechanical convenience in dealing with youth in masses, have been so sad as marking off and standardizing a definite quantum of requirements here. instead of irrigating a wide field, the well-springs of literary interest are forced to cut a deep canyon and leave wide desert plains of ignorance on either side. besides imitation, which reads what others do, is the desire to read something no one else does, and this is a palladium of individuality. bad as is the principle, the selections are worse, including the saccharinity ineffable of tennyson's princess (a strange expression of the progressive feminization of the high school and yet satirizing the scholastic aspiration of girls) which the virile boy abhors, books about books which are two removes from life, and ponderous latinity authors which for the saxon boy suggest david fighting in saul's armor, and which warp and pervert the nascent sentence-sense on a foreign model. worst of all, the prime moral purpose of youthful reading is ignored in choices based on form and style; and a growing profusion of notes that distract from content to language, the study of which belongs in the college if not in the university, develops the tendencies of criticism before the higher powers of sympathetic appreciation have done their work.[ ] (b) other new mental powers and aptitudes are as yet too little studied. very slight are the observations so far made, of children's historic, which is so clearly akin to literary, interest and capacity. with regard to this and several other subjects in the curriculum we are in the state of watts when he gazed at the tea-kettle and began to dream of the steam-engine; we are just recognizing a new power and method destined to reconstruct and increase the efficiency of education, but only after a long and toilsome period of limited successes. mrs. barnes[ ], told a story without date, place, name, or moral and compared the questions which , children would like to have answered about it. she found that the interest of girls in persons, or the number who asked the question "who," culminated at twelve, when it coincided with that of boys, but that the latter continued to rise to fifteen. the interest to know "place where" events occurred culminated at eleven with girls, and at fifteen, and at a far higher point, with boys. the questions "how" and "why," calling for the method and reason, both culminated at twelve for girls and fifteen for boys, but were more infrequent and showed less age differences than the preceding question. interest in the results of the action was most pronounced of all, culminating at twelve in girls and fifteen in boys. details and time excited far less interest, the former jointly culminating for both sexes at eleven. interest in the truth of the narrative was extremely slight, although it became manifest at fifteen, and was growing at sixteen. the number of inferences drawn steadily increased with age, although the increase was very slight after thirteen. both legitimate and critical inferences increased after eleven, while imaginative inferences at that age had nearly reached their maximum. interest in names was very strong throughout, as in primitive people. boys were more curious concerning "who," "where," and "how"; girls as to "why." in general, the historic curiosity of boys was greater than that of girls, and culminated later. the inferences drawn from an imagined finding of a log-house, boat, and arrows on a lonely island indicate that the power of inference, both legitimate and imaginative, develops strongly at twelve and thirteen, after which doubt and the critical faculties are apparent; which coincides with mr. m.a. tucker's conclusion, that doubt develops at thirteen and that personal inference diminishes about that age. the children were given two accounts of the fall of fort sumter, one in the terms of a school history and the other a despatch of equal length from major anderson, and asked which was best, should be kept, and why. choice of the narrative steadily declined after eleven and that of the despatch increased, the former reaching its lowest, the latter its highest, point at fifteen, indicating a preference for the first-hand record. the number of those whose choice was affected by style showed no great change, from twelve to fifteen, but rose very rapidly for the nest two years. those who chose the despatch because it was true, signed, etc., increased rapidly in girls and boys throughout the teens, and the preference for the telegram as a more direct source increased very rapidly from thirteen to seventeen. other studies of this kind led mrs. barnes to conclude that children remembered items by groups; that whole groups were often omitted; that those containing most action were best remembered; that what is remembered is remembered with great accuracy; that generalities are often made more specific; that the number of details a child carries away from a connected narrative is not much above fifty, so that their numbers should be limited; and from it all was inferred the necessity of accuracy, of massing details about central characters or incidents, letting action dominate, omitting all that is aside from the main line of the story, of bringing out cause and effect and dramatizing where possible. miss patterson[ ] collated the answers of , children to the question "what does mean?" the blanks "don't know" decreased very rapidly from six to eight, and thereafter maintained a slight but constant percentage. those who expanded the phase a little without intelligence were most numerous from eight to ten, while the proportion who gave a correct explanation rose quite steadily for both sexes and culminated at fourteen for girls and fifteen for boys. the latter only indicates the pupils of real historic knowledge. the writer concludes that "the sense of historical time is altogether lacking with children of seven, and may be described as slight up to the age of twelve." history, it is thought, should be introduced early with no difference between boys and girls, but "up to the age of twelve or thirteen it should be presented in a series of striking biographies and events, appearing if possible in contemporary ballads and chronicles, and illustrated by maps, chronological charts, and as richly as possible by pictures of contemporary objects, buildings, and people." at the age of fourteen or fifteen, another sort of work should appear. original sources should still be used, but they should illustrate not "the picture of human society moving before us in a long panorama, but should give us the opportunity to study the organization, thought, feeling, of a time as seen in its concrete embodiments, its documents, monuments, men, and books." the statesmen, thinkers, poets, should now exceed explorers and fighters; reflection and interpretation, discrimination of the true from the false, comparison, etc., are now first in order; while later yet, perhaps in college, should come severer methods and special monographic study. studies of mentality, so well advanced for infants and so well begun for lower grades, are still very meager for adolescent stages so far as they bear on growth in the power to deal with arithmetic, drawing and pictures, puzzles, superstitions, collections, attention, reason, etc. enough has been done to show that with authority to collect data on plans and by methods that can now be operated and with aid which should now be appropriated by school boards and teachers' associations, incalculable pedagogic economy could be secured and the scientific and professional character of teaching every topic in upper grammar and high school and even in the early college grades be greatly enhanced. to enter upon this laborious task in every branch of study is perhaps our chief present need and duty to our youth in school, although individual studies like that of binet[ ] belong elsewhere. (c) the studies of memory up the grades show characteristic adolescent changes, and some of these results are directly usable in school. bolton[ ] tested the power of , children to remember and write dictated digits, and found, of course, increasing accuracy with the older pupils. he also found that the memory span increased with age rather than with the growth of intelligence as determined by grade. the pupils depended largely upon visualisation, and this and concentrated attention suggested that growth of memory did not necessarily accompany intellectual advancement. girls generally surpassed boys, and as with clicks too rapid to be counted, it was found that when the pupils reached the limits of their span, the number of digits was overestimated. the power of concentrated and prolonged attention was tested. the probability of error for the larger number of digits, and , decreased in a marked way with the development of pubescence, at least up to fourteen years, with the suggestion of a slight rise again at fifteen. in comprehensive tests of the ability of chicago children to remember figures seen, heard, or repeated by them, it was found that, from seven to nine, auditory were slightly better remembered than visual impressions. from that age the latter steadily increased over the former. after thirteen, auditory memory increased but little, and was already about ten per cent behind visual, which continued to increase at least till seventeen. audiovisual memory was better than either alone, and the span of even this was improved when articulatory memory was added. when the tests were made upon pupils of the same age in different grades it was found in chicago that memory power, whether tested by sight, hearing, or articulation, was best in those pupils whose school standing was highest, and least where standing was lowest. when a series of digits was immediately repeated orally and a record made, it was found[ ] that while from the age of eight to twelve the memory span increased only eight points, from fourteen to eighteen it increased thirteen points. the number of correct reproductions of numbers of seven places increased during the teens, although this class of children remain about one digit behind normal children of corresponding age. in general, though not without exceptions, it was found that intelligence grew with memory span, although the former is far more inferior to that of the normal child than the latter, and also that weakness of this kind of memory is not an especially prominent factor of weak-mindedness. shaw[ ] tested memory in school children by dividing a story of words into phrases, having it read and immediately reproduced by them, and selecting alternate grades from the third grammar to the end of the high school, with a few college students. the maximum power of this kind of memory was attained by boys in the high school period. girls remembered forty-three per cent in the seventh grade, and in the high school forty-seven per cent. the increase by two-year periods was most rapid between the third and fifth grades. four terms were remembered on the average by at least ninety per cent of the pupils, by fifty per cent, and by ten per cent. the story written out in the terms remembered by each percentage from ten to ninety affords a most interesting picture of the growth of memory, and even its errors of omission, insertion, substitution and displacement. "the growth of memory is more rapid in the case of girls than boys, and the figures suggest a coincidence with the general law, that the rapid development incident to puberty occurs earlier in girls than in boys." in a careful study of children's memory, kemsies[ ] concludes that the quality of memory improves with age more rapidly than the quantity. w.g. monroe tested boys and girls, well distributed, from seven to seventeen years of age, and found a marked rise for both visual and auditory memory at fifteen for both sexes. for both sexes, also, auditory memory was best at sixteen and visual at fifteen. when accuracy in remembering the length of tone was used as a test, it was found there was loss from six to seven and gain from seven to eight for both sexes. from eight to nine girls lost rapidly for one and gained rapidly for the following year, while boys were nearly stationary till ten, after which both sexes gained to their maximum at fourteen years of age and declined for the two subsequent years, both gaining power from sixteen to seventeen, but neither attaining the accuracy they had at fourteen.[ ] [illustration: girls and boys at memory reproductions compared.] netschajeff[ ] subjected school children, well distributed between the ages of nine and eighteen, to the following tests. twelve very distinct objects were shown them, each for two seconds, which must them be immediately written down. twelve very distinct noises were made out of sight; numbers of two figures each were read; three-syllable words, which were names of familiar objects, objects that suggested noises, words designating touch, temperature, and muscle sensations, words describing states of feeling, and names of abstract ideas also were given them. the above eight series of twelve each were all reproduced in writing, and showed that each kind of memory here tested increased with age, with some slight tendency to decline at or just before puberty, then to rise and to slightly decline after the sixteenth or seventeenth year. memory for objects showed the greatest amount of increase during the year studied, and works for feeling next, although at all ages the latter was considerably below the former. boys showed stronger memory for real impressions, and girls excelled for numbers and words. the difference of these two kinds of memory was less with girls than with boys. the greatest difference between the sexes lay between eleven and fourteen years. this seems, at eighteen or nineteen, to be slightly increased. "this is especially great at the age of puberty." children from nine to eleven have but slight power of reproducing emotions, but this increases in the next few years very rapidly, as does that of the abstract words. girls from nine to eleven deal better with words than with objects; boys slightly excel with objects. illusions in reproducing words which mistake sense, sound, and rhythm, which is not infrequent with younger children, decline with age especially at puberty. up to this period girls are most subject to these illusions, and afterward boys. the preceding tables, in which the ordinates represent the number of correct reproductions and the abscissas the age, are interesting. lobsien made tests similar to those of netschajeff,[ ] with modifications for greater accuracy, upon boys and girls from nine to fourteen and a half years of age. the preceding tables show the development of the various kinds of memory for boys and girls: boys. age. objects noises number visual acoustic touch feeling sounds concepts concepts concepts concepts - - / . . . . . . . . - . . . . . . . . - . . . . . . . . - . . . . . . . . - . . . . . . . . normal . . . . . . . . value. girls. - - / . . . . . . . . - . . . . . . . . - . . . . . . . . - . . . . . . . . - . . . . . . . . normal . . . . . . . . value. the table for boys shows in the fourteenth year a marked increase of memory for objects, noises, and feelings, especially as compared with the marked relative decline the preceding year, when there was a decided increase in visual concepts and senseless sounds. the twelfth year shows the greatest increase in number memory, acoustic impressions, touch, and feeling. the tenth and eleventh years show marked increase of memory for objects and their names. thus the increase in the strength of memory is by no means the same year by year, but progress focuses on some forms and others are neglected. hence each type of memory shows an almost regular increase and decrease in relative strength. the table for girls shown marked increase of all memory forms about the twelfth year. this relative increase is exceeded only in the fourteenth year for visual concepts. the thirteenth year shows the greatest increase for sounds and a remarkable regression for objects in passing from the lowest to the next grade above. in the accuracy of reproducing the order of impressions, girls much exceeded boys at all ages. for seen object, their accuracy was twice that of boys, the boys excelling in order only in number. in general, ability to reproduce a series of impressions increases and decreases with the power to reproduce in any order, but by no means in direct proportion to it. the effect of the last member in a series by a purely mechanical reproduction is best in boys. the range and energy of reproduction is far higher than ordered sequence. in general girls slightly exceed boys in recalling numbers, touch concepts, and sounds, and largely exceed in recalling feeling concepts, real things and visual concept. colegrove[ ] tabulated returns from the early memories of , correspondents with , memories, from which he reached the conclusions, represented in the following curves, for the earliest three memories of white males and females. in the cuts on the following page, the heavy line represents the first memory, the broken the second, and the dotted the third. age at the time of reporting is represented in distance to the right, and the age of the person at the time of the occurrence remembered is represented by the distance upward. "there is a rise in all the curves at adolescence. this shows that, from the age of twelve to fifteen, boys do not recall so early memories as they do both before and after this period." this colegrove ascribes to the fact that the present seems so large and rich. at any rate, "the earliest memories of boys at the age of fourteen average almost four years." his curves for girls show that the age of all the first three memories which they are able to recall is higher at fourteen than at any period before or after; that at seven and eight the average age of the first things recalled is nearly a year earlier than it is at fourteen. this means that at puberty there is a marked and characteristic obliteration of infantile memories which lapse to oblivion with augmented absorption in the present. [illustration: untitled graph.] it was found that males have the greatest number of memories for protracted or repeated occurrences, for people, and clothing, topographical and logical matters; that females have better memories for novel occurrences or single impressions. already at ten and eleven motor memories begin to decrease for females and increase for males. at fourteen and fifteen, motor memories nearly culminate for males, but still further decline for females. the former show a marked decrease in memory for relatives and playmates and an increase for other persons. sickness and accidents to self are remembered less by males and better by females, as are memories of fears. at eighteen and nineteen there is a marked and continued increase in the visual memories of each sex and the auditory memory of females. memory for the activity of others increases for both, but far more strongly for males. colegrove concludes from his data that "the period of adolescence is one of great psychical awaking. a wide range of memories is found at this time. from the fourteenth year with girls and the fifteenth with boys the auditory memories are strongly developed. at the dawn of adolescence the motor memory of voice nearly culminates, and they have fewer memories of sickness and accidents to self. during this time the memory of other persons and the activity of others is emphasized in case of both boys and girls. in general, at this period the special sensory memories are numerous, and it is the golden age for motor memories. now, too, the memories of high ideals, self-sacrifice, and self-forgetfulness are cherished. wider interests than self and immediate friends become the objects of reflection and recollection." after twenty there is marked change in the memory content. the male acquires more and the female less visual and auditory memories. the memories of the female are more logical, and topographical features increase. memories of sickness and accidents to self decrease with the males and increase with the females, while in the case of both there is relative decline in the memories of sickness and accident to others. from all this it would appear that different memories culminate at different periods, and bear immediate relation to the whole mental life of the period. while perhaps some of the finer analyses of colegrove may invite further confirmation, his main results given above are not only suggestive, but rendered very plausible by his evidence. statistics based upon replies to the question as to whether pleasant or unpleasant experiences were best remembered, show that the former increase at eleven, rise rapidly at fourteen, and culminate at eighteen for males, and that the curve of painful memories follows the same course, although for both there is a drop at fifteen. for females, the pleasant memories increase rapidly from eleven to thirteen, decline a little at fourteen, rise again at sixteen, and culminate at seventeen, and the painful memories follow nearly the same course, only with a slight drop at fifteen. thus, up to twenty-two for males, there is a marked preponderance of pleasant over painful memories, although the two rise and fall together. after thirty, unpleasant memories are but little recalled. for the indians and negroes in this census, unpleasant memories play a far more and often preponderating rôle suggesting persecution and sad experiences. different elements of the total content of memory come to prominence at different ages. he also found that the best remembered years of life are sixteen to seventeen for males and fifteen for females, and that in general the adolescent period has more to do than any other in forming and furnishing the memory plexus, while the seventh and eighth year are most poorly remembered. it is also known that many false memories insert themselves into the texture of remembered experiences. one dreams a friend is dead and thinks she is till she is met one day in the street; or dreams of a fire and inquires about it in the morning; dreams of a present and searches the house for it next day; delays breakfast for a friend, who arrived the night before in a dream, to come down to breakfast; a child hunts for a bushel of pennies dreamed of, etc. these phantoms falsify our memory most often, according to dr. colegrove, between sixteen and nineteen. mnemonic devices prompt children to change rings to keep appointments, tie knots in the handkerchief, put shoes on the dressing-table, hide garments, associate faces with hoods, names with acts, things, or qualities they suggest; visualize, connect figures, letters with colors, etc. from a scrutiny of the original material, which i was kindly allowed to make, this appears to rise rapidly at puberty. [footnote : see my ideal school as based on child study. proceedings of the national educational association, , pp. - .] [footnote : charles p.g. scott: the number of words in the english and other languages. princeton university bulletin, may, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : the teaching of english. pedagogical seminary, june, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : see my some aspects of the early sense of self. american journal of psychology, april, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : sprachgeschichte und sprachpsychologie, mit rucksicht auf b. delbrück's "grundfragen der sprachforschung." leipzig, w. engelmann, ] [footnote : latin in the high school. by edward conradi. pedagogical seminary, march, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : the psychological and pedagogical aspect of language. pedagogical seminary, december, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : children's interest in words. pedagogical seminary, september, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : children's interests in words, slang, stories, etc. pedagogical seminary, october, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : american journal of psychology, april, , vol. , p. _et seq._] [footnote : american journal of psychology, january, , vol. , pp. - . see also vol. , p. _et seq._] [footnote : north american review, november, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : introduction to the biglow papers, series ii.] [footnote : some observations on children's reading. proceedings of the national educational association, , pp. - l.] [footnote : report on child reading. new york report of state superintendent, , vol. , p. .] [footnote : children's reading. north-western monthly, december, , vol. , pp. - , and january, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : a study of children's reading tastes. pedagogical seminary, december, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : perhaps the best and most notable school reader is das deutsche lesebuch, begun nearly fifty years ago by hopf and paulsiek, and lately supplemented by a corps of writers headed by döbeln, all in ten volumes of over , pages and containing nearly six times as much matter as the largest american series. many men for years went over the history of german literature, from the eddas and nibelungenlied down, including a few living writers, carefully selecting saga, legends, _märchen_, fables, proverbs, hymns, a few prayers, bible tales, conundrums, jests, and humorous tales, with many digests, epitomes and condensation of great standards, quotations, epic, lyric, dramatic poetry, adventure, exploration, biography, with sketches of the life of each writer quoted, with a large final volume on the history of german literature. all this, it is explained, is "_stataric_" or required to be read between _octava_[a] and _obersecunda_. it is no aimless anthology or chrestomathy like chambers's encyclopedia, but it is perhaps the best product of prolonged concerted study to select from a vast field the best to feed each nascent stage of later childhood and early youth, and to secure the maximum of pleasure and profit. the ethical end is dominant throughout this pedagogic canon.] [footnote a: the prussian gymnasium, whose course is classical and fits for the university, has nine classes in three divisions of three classes each. the lower classes are octava, septa, sexta, quinta, and quarta; the middle classes, untertertia, obertertia, and untersecunda; the higher classes, obersecunda, unterprima, and oberprima. pupils must be at least nine years of age and have done three years preparatory work before entrance.] [footnote : the historic sense among children. in her studies in historical method. d. c. heath and co., boston, , p. .] [footnote : special study on children's sense of historical time. mrs. barnes's studies in historical method, d.c. heath and co., boston, , p. .] [footnote : l'etude expérimentale de l'intelligence. schleicher frères, paris, .] [footnote : the growth of memory in school children. american journal of psychology, april, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : contribution to the psychology and pedagogy of feeble-minded children. by g.e. johnson. pedagogical seminary, october, , vol. , p. .] [footnote : a test of memory in school children. pedagogical seminary, october, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : zeitschrift für pädagogische psychologie, pathologie und hygiene. february, . jahrgang ii, heft , pp. - .] [footnote : see scripture: scientific child study. transactions of the illinois society for child study, may, , vol. , no. , pp. - .] [footnote : experimentelle untersuchungen über die gedächtnissentwickelung bei schulkindern. zeits. f. psychologie, u. physiologie der sinnes-organe, november, . bd. . heft , pp. - .] [footnote : see note , p. .] [footnote : memory: an inductive study. by f.w. colegrove. henry holt and co., new york, , p. . see also individual memories. american journal of psychology, january, , vol. , pp - .] * * * * * chapter xi the education of girls equal opportunities of higher education now open--brings new dangers to women--ineradicable sex differences begin at puberty, when the sexes should and do diverge--different interests--sex tension--girls more mature than boys at the same age--radical psychic and physiological differences between the sexes--the bachelor women--needed reconstruction--food--sleep--regimen--manners--religion--regularity--the topics for a girls' curriculum--the eternal womanly. the long battle of woman and her friends for equal educational and other opportunities is essentially won all along the line. her academic achievements have forced conservative minds to admit that her intellect is not inferior to that of man. the old cloistral seclusion and exclusion is forever gone and new ideals are arising. it has been a noble movement and is a necessary first stage of woman's emancipation. the caricatured maidens "as beautiful as an angel but as silly as a goose" who come from the kitchen to the husband's study to ask how much is two times two, and are told it is four for a man and three for a woman, and go back with a happy "thank you, my dear"; those who love to be called baby, and appeal to instincts half parental in their lovers and husbands; those who find all the sphere they desire in a doll's house, like nora's, and are content to be men's pets; whose ideal is the clinging vine, and who take no interest in the field where their husbands struggle, will perhaps soon survive only as a diminishing remainder. marriages do still occur where woman's ignorance and helplessness seem to be the chief charm to men, and may be happy, but such cases are no farther from the present ideal and tendency on the one hand than on the other are those which consist in intellectual partnerships, in which there is no segregation of interests but which are devoted throughout to joint work or enjoyment. a typical contemporary writer[ ] thinks the question whether a girl shall receive a college education is very like the same question for boys. even if the four k's, _kirche, kinder, kuchen,_ and _kleider_ (which may be translated by the four c's, _church, children, cooking,_ and _clothes_), are her vocation, college may help her. the best training for a young woman is not the old college course that has proven unfit for young men. most college men look forward to a professional training as few women do. the latter have often greater sympathy, readiness of memory, patience with technic, skill in literature and language, but lack originality, are not attracted by unsolved problems, are less motor-minded; but their training is just as serious and important as that of men. the best results are where the sexes are brought closer together, because their separation generally emphasizes for girls the technical training for the profession of womanhood. with girls, literature and language take precedence over science; expression stands higher than action; the scholarship may be superior, but is not effective; the educated woman "is likely to master technic rather than art; method, rather than substance. she may know a good deal, but she can do nothing." in most separate colleges for women, old traditions are more prevalent than in colleges for men. in the annex system, she does not get the best of the institution. by the coeducation method, "young men are more earnest, better in manners and morals, and in all ways more civilized than under monastic conditions. the women do more work in a more natural way, with better perspective and with saner incentives than when isolated from the influence of the society of men. there is less silliness and folly where a man is not a novelty. in coeducational institutions of high standards, frivolous conduct or scandals of any form are rarely known. the responsibility for decorum is thrown from the school to the woman, and the woman rises to the responsibility." the character of college work has not been lowered but raised by coeducation, despite the fact that most of the new, small, weak colleges are coeducational. social strain, jordan thinks, is easily regulated, and the dormitory system is on the whole best, because the college atmosphere is highly prized. the reasons for the present reaction against coeducation are ascribed partly to the dislike of the idle boy to have girls excel him and see his failures, or because rowdyish tendencies are checked by the presence of women. some think that girls do not help athletics; that men count for most because they are more apt to be heard from later; but the most serious new argument is the fear that woman's standards and amateurishness will take the place of specialization. women take up higher education because they like it; men because their careers depend upon it. hence their studies are more objective and face the world as it is. in college the women do as well as men, but not in the university. the half-educated woman as a social factor has produced many soft lecture courses and cheap books. this is an argument for the higher education of the sex. finally, jordan insists that coeducation leads to marriage, and he believes that its best basis is common interest and intellectual friendship. from the available data it seems, however, that the more scholastic the education of women, the fewer children and the harder, more dangerous, and more dreaded is parturition, and the less the ability to nurse children. not intelligence, but education by present man-made ways, is inversely as fecundity. the sooner and the more clearly this is recognized as a universal rule, not, of course, without many notable and much vaunted exceptions, the better for our civilization. for one, i plead with no whit less earnestness and conviction than any of the feminists, and indeed with more fervor because on nearly all their grounds and also on others, for the higher education of women, and would welcome them to every opportunity available to men if they can not do better; but i would open to their election another education, which every competent judge would pronounce more favorable to motherhood, under the influence of female principals who do not publicly say that it is "not desirable" that women students should study motherhood, because they do not know whether they will marry; who encourage them to elect "no special subjects because they are women," and who think infant psychology "foolish." various interesting experiments in coeducation are now being made in england.[ ] some are whole-hearted and encourage the girls to do almost everything that the boys do in both study and play. there are girl prefects; cricket teams are formed sometimes of both sexes, but often the sexes matched against each other; one play-yard, a dual staff of teachers, and friendships between the boys and girls are not tabooed, etc. in other schools the sexes meet perhaps in recitation only, have separate rooms for study, entrances, play-grounds, and their relations are otherwise restricted. the opinion of english writers generally favors coeducation up to about the beginning of the teens, and from there on views are more divided. it is admitted that, if there is a very great preponderance of either sex over the other, the latter is likely to lose its characteristic qualities, and something of this occurs where the average age of one sex is distinctly greater than that of the other. on the other hand, several urge that, where age and numbers are equal, each sex is more inclined to develop the best qualities peculiar to itself in the presence of the other. some girls are no doubt far fitter for boys' studies and men's careers than others. coeducation, too, generally means far more assimilation of girls' to boys' ways and work than conversely. many people believe that girls either gain or are more affected by coeducation, especially in the upper grades, than boys. it is interesting, however, to observe the differences that still persist. certain games, like football and boxing, girls can not play; they do not fight; they are not flogged or caned as english boys are when their bad marks foot up beyond a certain aggregate; girls are more prone to cliques; their punishments must be in appeals to school sentiment, to which they are exceedingly sensitive; it is hard for them to bear defeat in games with the same dignity and unruffled temper as boys; it is harder for them to accept the school standards of honor that condemn the tell-tale as a sneak, although they soon learn this. they may be a little in danger of being roughened by boyish ways and especially by the crude and unique language, almost a dialect in itself, prevalent among schoolboys. girls are far more prone to overdo; boys are persistingly lazy and idle. girls are content to sit and have the subject-matter pumped into them by recitations, etc., and to merely accept, while boys are more inspired by being told to do things and make tests and experiments. in this, girls are often quite at sea. one writer speaks of a certain feminine obliquity, but hastens to say that girls in these schools soon accept its code of honor. it is urged, too, that singing classes the voices of each sex are better in quality for the presence of the other. in many topics of all kinds boys and girls are interested in different aspects of the same theme, and therefore the work is broadened. in manual training, girls excel in all artistic work; boys, in carpentry. girls can be made not only less noxiously sentimental and impulsive, but their conduct tends to become more thoughtful; they can be made to feel responsibility for bestowing their praise aright and thus influencing the tone of the school. calamitous as it world be for the education of boys beyond a certain age to be entrusted entirely or chiefly to women, it would be less so for that of girls to be given entirely to men. perhaps the great women teachers, whose life and work have made them a power with girls comparable to that of arnold and thring with boys, are dying out. very likely economic motives are too dominant for this problem to be settled on its merits only. finally, several writers mention the increased healthfulness of moral tone. the vices that infest boys' schools, which arnold thought a quantity constantly changing with every class, are diminished. healthful thoughts of sex, less subterranean and base imaginings on the one hand, and less gushy sentimentality on the other, are favored. for either sex to be a copy of the other is to be weakened, and each comes normally to respect more and to prefer its own sex. not to pursue this subject further here, it is probable that many of the causes for the facts set forth are very different and some of them almost diametrically opposite in the two sexes. hard as it is _per se_, it is after all a comparatively easy matter to educate boys. they are less peculiarly responsive in mental tone to the physical and psychic environment, tend more strongly and early to special interests, and react more vigorously against the obnoxious elements of their surroundings. this is truest of the higher education, and more so in proportion as the tendencies of the age are toward special and vocational training. woman, as we saw, in every fiber of her soul and body is a more generic creature than man, nearer to the race, and demands more and more with advancing age an education that is essentially liberal and humanistic. this is progressively hard when the sexes differentiate in the higher grades. moreover, nature decrees that with advancing civilization the sexes shall not approximate, but differentiate, and we shall probably be obliged to carry sex distinctions, at least of method, into many if not most of the topics of the higher education. now that woman has by general consent attained the right to the best that man has, she must seek a training that fits her own nature as well or better. so long as she strives to be manlike she will be inferior and a pinchbeck imitation, but she must develop a new sphere that shall be like the rich field of the cloth of gold for the best instincts of her nature. divergence is most marked and sudden in the pubescent period--in the early teens. at this age, by almost world-wide consent, boys and girls separate for a time, and lead their lives during this most critical period more or less apart, at least for a few years, until the ferment of mind and body which results in maturity of functions then born and culminating in nubility, has done its work. the family and the home abundantly recognize this tendency. at twelve or fourteen, brothers and sisters develop a life more independent of each other than before. their home occupations differ as do their plays, games, tastes. history, anthropology, and sociology, a well as home life, abundantly illustrate this. this is normal and biological. what our schools and other institutions should do, is not to obliterate these differences but to make boys more manly and girls more womanly. we should respect the law of sexual differences, and not forget that motherhood is a very different thing from fatherhood. neither sex should copy nor set patterns to the other, but all parts should be played harmoniously and clearly in the great sex symphony. i have here less to say against coeducation in college, still less in university grades after the maturity which comes at eighteen or twenty has been achieved; but it is high time to ask ourselves whether the theory and practise of identical coeducation, especially in the high school, which has lately been carried to a greater extreme in this country than the rest of the world recognizes, has not brought certain grave dangers, and whether it does not interfere with the natural differentiations seen everywhere else. i recognize, of course, the great argument of economy. indeed, we should save money and effort could we unite churches of not too diverse creeds. we could thus give better preaching, music, improve the edifice, etc. i am by no means ready to advocate the radical abolition of coeducation, but we can already sum up in a rough, brief way our account of profit and loss with it. on the one hand, no doubt each sex develops some of its own best qualities best in the presence of the other, but the question still remains, how much, when, and in what way, identical coeducation secures this end? as has been said, girls and boys are often interested in different aspects of the same topic, and this may have a tendency to broaden the view-point of both and bring it into sympathy with that of the other, but the question still remains whether one be not too much attracted to the sphere of the other, especially girls to that of boys. no doubt some girls become a little less gushy, their conduct more thoughtful, and their sense of responsibility greater; for one of woman's great functions, which is that of bestowing praise aright, is increased. there is also much evidence that certain boys' vices are mitigated; they are made more urbane and their thoughts of sex made more healthful. in some respects boys are stimulated to good scholarship by girls, who in many schools and topics excel them. we should ask, however, what is nature's way at this stage of life? whether boys, in order to be well virified later, ought not to be so boisterous and even rough as to be at times unfit companions for girls; or whether, on the other hand, girls to be best matured ought not to have their sentimental periods of instability, especially when we venture to raise the question, whether for a girl in the early teens, when her health for her whole life depends upon normalizing the lunar month, there is not something unhygienic, unnatural, not to say a little monstrous, in school associations with boys when she must suppress and conceal her feelings and instinctive promptings at those times which suggest withdrawing, to let nature do its beautiful work of inflorescence. it is a sacred time of reverent exemption from the hard struggle of existence in the world and from mental effort in the school. medical specialists, many of the best of whom now insist that through this period she should be, as it were, "turned out to grass," or should lie fallow, so far as intellectual efforts go, one-fourth the time, no doubt often go too far, but their unanimous voice should not entirely be disregarded. it is not this, however, that i have chiefly in mind here, but the effects of too familiar relations and, especially, of the identical work, treatment, and environment of the modern school. we have now at least eight good and independent statistical studies which show that the ideals of boys from ten years on are almost always those of their own sex, while girls' ideals are increasingly of the opposite sex, or those of men. that the ideals of pubescent girls are not found in the great and noble women of the world or in their literature, but more and more in men, suggests a divorce between the ideals adopted and the line of life best suited to the interests of the race. we are not furnished in our public schools with adequate womanly ideals in history or literature. the new love of freedom which women have lately felt inclines girls to abandon the home for the office. "it surely can hardly be called an ideal education for women that permits eighteen out of one hundred college girls to state boldly that they would rather be men than women." more than one-half of the schoolgirls in these censuses choose male ideals, as if those of femininity are disintegrating. a recent writer,[ ] in view of this fact, states that "unless there is a change of trend, we shall soon have a female sex without a female character." in the progressive numerical feminization of our schools most teachers, perhaps naturally and necessarily, have more or less masculine ideals, and this does not encourage the development of those that constitute the glory of womanhood. "at every age from eight to sixteen, girls named from three to twenty more ideals than boys." "these facts indicate a condition of diffused interests and lack of clear-cut purposes and a need of integration." when we turn to boys the case is different. in most public high schools girls preponderate, especially in the upper classes, and in many of them the boys that remain are practically in a girls' school, sometimes taught chiefly, if not solely, by women teachers at an age when strong men should be in control more than at any other period of life. boys need a different discipline and moral regimen and atmosphere. they also need a different method of work. girls excel them in learning and memorization, accepting studies upon suggestion or authority, but are often quite at sea when set to make tests and experiments that give individuality and a chance for self-expression, which is one of the best things in boyhood. girls preponderate in our overgrown high school latin and algebra, because custom and tradition and, perhaps, advice incline them to it. they preponderate in english and history classes more often, let us hope, from inner inclination. the boy sooner grows restless in a curriculum where form takes precedence over content. he revolts at much method with meager matter. he craves utility, and when all these instincts are denied, without knowing what is the matter, he drops out of school, when with robust tone and with a truly boy life, such as prevails at harrow, eton, and rugby, he would have fought it through and have done well. this feminization of the school spirit, discipline, and personnel is bad for boys. of course, on the whole, perhaps, they are made more gentlemanly, more at ease, their manners improved, and all this to a woman teacher seems excellent, but something is the matter with the boy in early teens who can be truly called "a perfect gentleman." that should come later, when the brute and animal element have had opportunity to work themselves off in a healthful normal way. they still have football to themselves, and are the majority perhaps in chemistry, and sometimes in physics, but there is danger of a settled eviration. the segregation, which even some of our schools are now attempting, is always in some degree necessary for full and complete development. just as the boys' language is apt to creep into that of the girl, so girls' interests, ways, standards and tastes, which are crude at this age, sometimes attract boys out of their orbit. while some differences are emphasized by contact, others are compromised. boys tend to grow content with mechanical, memorized work and, excelling on the lines of girls' qualities, fail to develop those of their own. there is a little charm and bloom rubbed off the ideal of girlhood by close contact, and boyhood seems less ideal to girls at close range. in place of the mystic attraction of the other sex that has inspired so much that is best in the world, familiar comradeship brings a little disenchantment. the impulse to be at one's best in the presence of the other sex prows lax and sex tension remits, and each comes to feel itself seen through, so that there is less motive to indulge in the ideal conduct which such motives inspire, because the call for it is incessant. this disillusioning weakens the motivation to marriage sometimes on both sides, when girls grow careless in their dress and too negligent in their manners, one of the best schools of woman's morals; and when boys lose all restraints which the presence of girls usually enforces, there is a subtle deterioration. thus, i believe, although of course it is impossible to prove, that this is one of the factors of a decreasing percentage of marriage among educated young men and women. at eighteen or twenty the girl normally reaches a stage of first maturity when her ideas of life are amazingly keen and true; when, if her body is developed, she can endure a great deal; when she is nearest, perhaps, the ideal of feminine beauty and perfection. of this we saw illustrations in chapter viii. in our environment, however, there is a little danger that this age once well past there will slowly arise a slight sense of aimlessness or lassitude, unrest, uneasiness, as if one were almost unconsciously feeling along the wall for a door to which the key was not at hand. thus some lose their bloom and, yielding to the great danger of young womanhood, slowly lapse to a anxious state of expectancy, or desire something not within their reach, and so the diathesis of restlessness slowly supervenes. the best thing about college life for girls is, perhaps, that it postpones this incipient disappointment; but it is a little pathetic to me to read, as i have lately done, the class letters of hundreds of girl graduates, out of college one, two, or three years, turning a little to art, music, travel, teaching, charity work, one after the other, or trying to find something to which they can devote themselves, some cause, movement, occupation, where their capacity for altruism and self-sacrifice can find a field. the tension is almost imperceptible, perhaps quite unconscious. it is everywhere overborne by a keen interest in life, by a desire to know the world at first hand, while susceptibilities are at their height. the apple of intelligence has been plucked at perhaps a little too great cost of health. the purely mental has not been quite sufficiently kept back. the girl wishes to know a good deal more of the world and perfect her own personality, and would not marry, although every cell of her body and every unconscious impulse points to just that end. soon, it may be in five or ten years or more, the complexion of ill health is in these notes, or else life has been adjusted to independence and self-support. many of these bachelor women are magnificent in mind and body, but they lack wifehood and yet more--motherhood. in fine, we should use these facts as a stimulus to ask more searchingly the question whether the present system of higher education for both sexes is not lacking in some very essential elements, and if so what these are. indeed, considering the facts that in our social system man makes the advances and that woman is by nature more prone than man to domesticity and parenthood, it is not impossible that men's colleges do more to unfit for these than do those for women. one cause may be moral. ethics used to be taught as a practical power for life and reënforced by religious motives. now it is theoretical and speculative and too often led captive by metaphysical and epistemological speculations. sometimes girls work or worry more over studies and ideals than is good for their constitution, and boys grow idle and indifferent, and this proverbially tends to bad habits. perhaps fitting for college has been too hard at the critical age of about eighteen, and requirements of honest, persevering work during college years too little enforced, or grown irksome by physiological reaction of lassitude from the strain of fitting and entering. again, girls mature earlier than boys; and the latter who have been educated with them tend to certain elements of maturity and completeness too early in life, and their growth period is shortened or its momentum lessened by an atmosphere of femininity. something is clearly wrong, and more so here than we have at present any reason to think is the case among the academic male or female youth of other lands. to see and admit that there is an evil very real, deep, exceedingly difficult and complex in its causes, but grave and demanding a careful reconsideration of current educational ideas and practises, is the first step; and this every thoughtful and well-informed mind, i believe, must now take. it is utterly impossible without injury to hold girls to the same standards of conduct, regularity, severe moral accountability, and strenuous mental work that boys need. the privileges and immunities of her sex are inveterate, and with these the american girl in the middle teens fairly tingles with a new-born consciousness. already she occasionally asserts herself in the public high school against a male teacher or principal who seeks to enforce discipline by methods boys respect, in a way that suggests that the time is at hand when popularity with her sex will be as necessary in a successful teacher as it is in the pulpit. in these interesting oases where girl sentiment has made itself felt in school it has generally carried parents, committeemen, the press, and public sentiment before it, and has already made a precious little list of martyrs whom, were i an educational pope, i would promptly canonize. the progressive feminization of secondary education works its subtle demoralization on the male teachers who remain. public sentiment would sustain them in many parental exactions with boys which it disallows in mixed classes. it is hard, too, for male principals of schools with only female teachers not to suffer some deterioration in the moral tone of their virility and to lose in the power to cope successfully with men. not only is this often confessed and deplored, but the incessant compromises the best male teachers of mixed classes must make with their pedagogic convictions in both teaching and discipline make the profession less attractive to manly men of large caliber and of sound fiber. again, the recent rapid increase of girls, the percentage of which to population in high schools has in many communities doubled in but little more than a decade, almost necessarily involves a decline in the average quality of girls, perhaps as much greater for them as compared with boys as their increase has been greater. when but few were found in these institutions they were usually picked girls with superior tastes and ability, but now the average girl of the rank and file is, despite advanced standard, of admission, of an order natively lower. from this deterioration both boys and teachers suffer, even though the greatest good for the greatest number may be enhanced. once more, it is generally admitted that girls in good boarding-schools, where evenings, food, and regimen are controlled, are in better health than day pupils with social, church, and domestic duties and perhaps worries to which boys are less subject. this is the nascent stage of periodicity to the slow normalization of which, during these few critical years, everything that interferes should yield. some kind of tacit recognition of this is indispensable, but in mixed classes every form of such concession is baffling and demoralizing to boys. the women who really achieve the higher culture should make it their "cause" or "mission" to work out the new humanistic or liberal education which the old college claimed to stand for and which now needs radical reconstruction to meet the demands of modern life. in science they should aim to restore the humanistic elements of its history, biography, its popular features at their best, and its applications in all the more non-technical fields, as described in chapter xii, and feel responsibility not to let the moral, religious, and poetic aspects of nature be lost in utilities. woman should be true to her generic nature and take her stand against all premature specialization, and when the _zeitgeist_ [spirit of the times] insists on specialized training for occupative pursuits without waiting for broad foundations to be laid, she should resist all these influences that make for psychological precocity. _das ewig-weibliche_ [the eternal womanly] is no iridescent fiction but a very definable reality, and means perennial youth. it means that woman at her best never outgrows adolescence as man does, but lingers in, magnifies and glorifies this culminating stage of life with its all-sided interests, its convertibility of emotions, its enthusiasm, and zest for all that is good, beautiful, true, and heroic. this constitutes her freshness and charm, even in age, and makes her by nature more humanistic than man, more sympathetic and appreciative. it is not chiefly the , superfluous massachusetts women of the last census, but representatives of every class and age in the , women's clubs of this country that now find some leisure for general culture in all fields, and in which most of them no doubt surpass their husbands. those who still say that men do not like women to be their mental superiors and that no man was ever won by the attraction of intellect, on the one hand, and those who urge that women really want husbands to be their intellectual superiors, both misapprehend. the male in all the orders of life is the agent of variation and tends by nature to expertness and specialisation, without which his individuality is incomplete. in his chosen line he would lead and be authoritative, and he rarely seeks partnership in it in marriage. this is no subjection, but woman instinctively respects and even reveres, and perhaps educated woman coming to demand, it in the man of her whole-hearted choice. this granted, man was never more plastic to woman's great work of creating in him all the wide range of secondary sex qualities which constitute his essential manhood. in all this, the pedagogic fathers we teach in the history of education are most of them about as luminous and obsolete as is patristics for the religious teacher, or as methods of other countries are coming to be in solving our own peculiar pedagogic problems. the relation of the academically trained sexes is faintly typified by that of the ideal college to the ideal university, professional or technical school. this is the harmony of counterparts and constitutes the best basis of psychic amphimixis. for the reinstallation of the humanistic college, the time has come when cultivated woman ought to come forward and render vital aid. if she does so and helps to evolve a high school and an a.b. course that is truly liberal, it will not only fit her nature and needs far better than anything now existing, but young men at the humanistic stage of their own education will seek to profit by it, and she will thus repay her debt to man in the past by aiding him to de-universitize the college and to rescue secondary education from its gravest dangers. but even should all this be done, coeducation would by means be thus justified. if adolescent boys normally pass through a generalized or even feminized stage of psychic development in which they are peculiarly plastic to the guidance of older women who have such rare insight into their nature, such infinite sympathy and patience with all the symptoms of their storm and stress metamorphosis, when they seek everything by turns and nothing long, and if young men will forever afterward understand woman's nature better for living out more fully this stage of their lives and will fail to do so if it is abridged or dwarfed, it by no means follows that intimate daily and class-room association with girls of their own age is necessary or best. the danger of this is that the boy's instinct to assert his own manhood will thus be made premature and excessive, that he will react against general culture, in the capacity for which girls, who are older than boys at the same age, naturally excel them. companionship and comparisons incline him to take premature refuge in some one talent that emphasizes his psycho-sexual difference too soon. again, he is farther from nubile maturity than the girl classmate of his own age, and coeducation and marriage between them are prone to violate the important physiological law of disparity that requires the husband to be some years the wife's senior, both in their own interests, as maturity begins to decline to age, and in those of their offspring. thus the young man with his years of restraint and probation ahead, and his inflammable desires, is best removed from the half-conscious cerebrations about wedlock, inevitably more insistent with constant girl companionship. if he resists this during all the years of his apprenticeship, he grows more immune and inhibitive of it when its proper hour arrives, and perhaps becomes in soul a bachelor before his time. in this side of his nature he is forever incommensurate with and unintelligible to woman, be she even teacher, sister, or mother. better some risk of gross thoughts and even acts, to which phylogeny and recapitulation so strongly incline him, than this subtle eviration. but if the boy is unduly repelled from the sphere of girls' interests, the girl is in some danger of being unduly drawn to his, and, as we saw above, of forgetting some of the ideals of her own sex. riper in mind and body than her male classmate, and often excelling him in the capacity of acquisition, nearer the age of her full maturity than he to his, he seems a little too crude and callow to fulfil the ideals of manhood normal to her age which point to older and riper men. in all that makes sexual attraction best, a classmate of her own age is too undeveloped, and so she often suffers mute disenchantment, and even if engagement be dreamed of, it would be, on her part, with unconscious reservations if not with some conscious renunciation of ideals. thus the boy is correct in feeling himself understood and seen through by his girl classmates to a degree that is sometimes quite distasteful to him, while the girl finds herself misunderstood by and disappointed in men. boys arrive at the humanistic stage of culture later than girls and pass it sooner; and to find them already there and with their greater aptitude excelling him, is not an inviting situation, and so he is tempted to abridge or cut it out and to hasten on and be mature and professional before his time, for thus he gravitates toward his normal relation to her sex of expert mastership on some bread- or fame-winning line. of course, these influences are not patent, demonstrable by experiment, or measurable by statistics; but i have come to believe that, like many other facts and laws, they have a reality and a dominance that is all-pervasive and inescapable, and that they will ultimately prevail over economic motives and traditions. to be a true woman means to be yet more mother than wife. the madonna conception expresses man's highest comprehension of woman's real nature. sexual relations are brief, but love and care of offspring are long. the elimination of maternity is one of the great calamities, if not diseases, of our age. marholm[ ] points out at length how art again to-day gives woman a waspish waist with no abdomen, as if to carefully score away every trace of her mission; usually with no child in her arms or even in sight; a mere figurine, calculated perhaps to entice, but not to bear; incidentally degrading the artist who depicts her to a fashion-plate painter, perhaps with suggestions of the arts of toilet, cosmetics, and coquetry, as if to promote decadent reaction to decadent stimuli. as in the munchausen tale, the wolf slowly ate the running nag from behind until he found himself in the harness, so in the disoriented woman the mistress, virtuous and otherwise, is slowly supplanting the mother. please she must, even though she can not admire, and can so easily despise men who can not lead her, although she become thereby lax and vapid. the more exhausted men become, whether by overwork, unnatural city life, alcohol, recrudescent polygamic inclinations, exclusive devotion to greed and pelf; whether they become weak, stooping, blear-eyed, bald-headed, bow-legged, thin-shanked, or gross, coarse, barbaric, and bestial, the more they lose the power to lead woman or to arouse her nature, which is essentially passive. thus her perversions are his fault. man, before he lost the soil and piety, was not only her protector and provider, but her priest. he not only supported and defended, but inspired the souls of women, so admirably calculated to receive and elaborate suggestions, but not to originate them. in their inmost souls even young girls often experience disenchantment, find men little and no heroes, and so cease to revere and begin to think stupidly of them as they think coarsely of her. sometimes the girlish conceptions of men are too romantic and exalted; often the intimacy of school and college wear off a charm, while man must not forget that to-day he too often fails to realize the just and legitimate expectations and ideals of women. if women confide themselves, body and soul, less to him than he desires, it is not she, but he, who is often chiefly to blame. indeed, in some psychic respects, it seems as if in human society the processes of subordinating the male to the female, carried so far in some of the animal species, had already begun. if he is not worshiped as formerly, it is because he is less worshipful or more effeminate, less vigorous and less able to excite and retain the great love of true, not to say great, women. where marriage and maternity are of less supreme interest to an increasing number of women, there are various results, the chief of which are as follows: . women grow dollish; sink more or less consciously to man's level; gratify his desires and even his selfish caprices, but exact in return luxury and display, growing vain as he grows sordid; thus, while submitting, conquering, and tyrannizing over him, content with present worldly pleasure, unmindful of the past, the future, or the above. this may react to intersexual antagonism until man comes to hate woman as a witch, or, as in the days of celibacy, consider sex a wile of the devil. along these lines even the stage is beginning to represent the tragedies of life. . the disappointed woman in whom something is dying comes to assert her own ego and more or less consciously to make it an end, aiming to possess and realize herself fully rather than to transmit. despairing of herself as a woman, she asserts her lower rights in the place of her one great right to be loved. the desire for love may be transmuted into the desire for knowledge, or outward achievement become a substitute for inner content. failing to respect herself as a productive organism, she gives vent to personal solutions; seeks independence; comes to know very plainly what she wants; perhaps becomes intellectually emancipated, and substitutes science for religion, or the doctor for the priest, with the all-sided impressionability characteristic of her sex which, when cultivated, is so like an awakened child. she perhaps even affects mannish ways, unconsciously copying from those not most manly, or comes to feel that she has been robbed of something; competes with men, but sometimes where they are most sordid, brutish, and strongest; always expecting, but never finding, she turns successively to art, science, literature, and reforms; craves especially work that she can not do; and seeks stimuli for feelings which have never found their legitimate expression. . another type, truer to woman's nature, subordinates self; goes beyond personal happiness; adopts the motto of self-immolation; enters a life of service, denial, and perhaps mortification, like the countess schimmelmann; and perhaps becomes a devotee, a saint, and, if need be, a martyr, but all with modesty, humility, and with a shrinking from publicity. in our civilization, i believe that bright girls of good environment of eighteen or nineteen, or even seventeen, have already reached the above-mentioned peculiar stage of first maturity, when they see the world at first hand, when the senses are at their very best, their susceptibilities and their insights the keenest, tension at its highest, plasticity and all-sided interests most developed, and their whole psychic soil richest and rankest and sprouting everywhere with the tender shoots of everything both good and bad. some such--stella klive, mary maclane, hilma strandberg, marie bashkirtseff--have been veritable epics upon woman's nature; have revealed the characterlessness normal to the prenubile period in which everything is kept tentative and plastic, and where life seems to have least unity, aim, or purpose. by and by perhaps they will see in all their scrappy past, if not order and coherence, a justification, and then alone will they realize that life is governed by motives deeper than those which are conscious or even personal. this is the age when, if ever, no girl should be compelled. it is the experiences of this age, never entirely obliterated in women, that enable them to take adolescent boys seriously, as men can rarely do, in whom these experiences are more limited in range though no less intense. it is this stage in woman which is most unintelligible to man and even unrealized to herself. it is the echoes from it that make vast numbers of mothers pursue the various branches of culture, often half secretly, to maintain their position with their college sons and daughters, with their husbands, or with society. but in a very few years, i believe even in the early twenties with american girls, along with rapidly in creasing development of capacity there is also observable the beginnings of loss and deterioration. unless marriage comes there is lassitude, subtle symptoms of invalidism, the germs of a rather aimless dissatisfaction with life, a little less interest, curiosity, and courage, certain forms of self-pampering, the resolution to be happy, though at too great cost; and thus the clear air of morning begins to haze over and unconsciously she begins to grope. by thirty, she is perhaps goaded into more or less sourness; has developed more petty self-indulgences; has come to feel a right to happiness almost as passionately as the men of the french revolution and as the women in their late movement for enfranchisement felt for liberty. very likely she has turned to other women and entered into innocent platonic pairing-off relations with some one. there is a little more affectation, playing a rôle, and interest in dress and appearance is either less or more specialized and definite. perhaps she has already begun to be a seeker who will perhaps find, lose, and seek again. her temper is modified; there is a slight stagnation of soul; a craving for work or travel; a love of children with flitting thoughts of adopting one, or else aversion to them; an analysis of psychic processes until they are weakened and insight becomes too clear; sense of responsibility without an object; a slight general _malaise_ and a sense that society is a false "margarine" affair; revolt against those that insist that in her child the real value of a woman is revealed. there are alternations between excessive self-respect which demands something almost like adoration of the other sex and self-distrust, with, it may be, many dreameries about forbidden subjects and about the relations of the sexes generally. a new danger, the greatest in the history of her sex, now impends, viz., arrest, complacency, and a sense of finality in the most perilous first stage of higher education for girls, when, after all, little has actually yet been won save only the right and opportunity to begin reconstructions, so that now, for the first time in history, methods and matter could be radically transformed to fit the nature and needs of girls. now most female faculties, trustees, and students are content to ape the newest departures in some one or more male institutions as far as their means or obvious limitations make possible with a servility which is often abject and with rarely ever a thought of any adjustment, save the most superficial, to sex. it is the easiest, and therefore the most common, view typically expressed by the female head of a very successful institution,[ ] who was "early convinced in my teaching experience that the methods for mental development for boys and girls applied equally without regard to sex, and i have carried the same thought when i began to develop the physical, and filled my gymnasium with the ordinary appliances used in men's gymnasia." there is no sex in mind or in science, it is said, but it might as well be urged that there is no age, and hence that all methods adapted to teaching at different stages of development may be ignored. that woman can do many things as well as man does not prove that she ought to do the same things, or that man-made ways are the best for her. mrs. alice freeman palmer[ ] was right in saying that woman's education has all the perplexities of that of man, and many more, still more difficult and intricate, of its own. hence, we must conclude that, while women's colleges have to a great extent solved the problem of special technical training, they have done as yet very little to solve the larger one of the proper education of woman. to assume that the latter question is settled, as is so often done, is disastrous. i have forced myself to go through many elaborate reports of meetings where female education was discussed by those supposed to be competent; but as a rule, not without rare, striking exceptions, these proceedings are smitten with the same sterile and complacent artificiality that was so long the curse of woman's life. i deem it almost reprehensible that, save a few general statistics, the women's colleges have not only made no study themselves of the larger problems that impend, but have often maintained a repellent attitude toward others who wished to do so. no one that i know of connected with any of these institutions, where the richest material is going to waste, is making any serious and competent research on lines calculated to bring out the psycho-physiological differences between the sexes and those in authority are either conservative by constitution or else intimidated because public opinion is still liable to panics if discussion here becomes scientific and fundamental, and so tend to keep prudery and the old habit of ignoring everything that pertains to sex in countenance. again, while i sympathize profoundly with the claim of woman for every opportunity which she can fill, and yield to none in appreciation of her ability, i insist that the cardinal defect in the woman's college is that it is based upon the assumption, implied and often expressed, if not almost universally acknowledged, that girls should primarily be trained to independence and self-support, and that matrimony and motherhood, if it come, will take care of itself, or, as some even urge, is thus best provided for. if these colleges are, as the above statistics indicate, chiefly devoted to the training of those who do not marry, or if they are to educate for celibacy, this is right. these institutions may perhaps come to be training stations of a new-old type, the agamic or even agenic woman, be she nut, maid--old or young--nun, school-teacher, or bachelor woman. i recognize the very great debt the world owes to members of this very diverse class in the past. some of them have illustrated the very highest ideals of self-sacrifice, service, and devotion in giving to mankind what was meant for husband and children. some of them belong to the class of superfluous women, and others illustrate the noblest type of altruism and have impoverished the heredity of the world to its loss, as did the monks, who leslie stephens thinks contributed to bring about the dark ages, because they were the best and most highly selected men of their age and, by withdrawing from the function of heredity and leaving no posterity, caused europe to degenerate. modern ideas and training are now doing this, whether for racial weal or woe, can not yet be determined, for many whom nature designed for model mothers. the bachelor woman is an interesting illustration of spencer's law of the inverse relation of individuation and genesis. the completely developed individual is always a terminal representative in her line of descent. she has taken up and utilized in her own life all that was meant for her descendants, and has so overdrawn her account with heredity that, like every perfectly and completely developed individual, she is also completely sterile. this is the very apotheosis of selfishness from the standpoint of every biological ethics. while the complete man can do and sometimes does this, woman has a far greater and very peculiar power of overdrawing her reserves. first she loses mammary functions, so that should she undertake maternity its functions are incompletely performed because she can not nurse, and this implies defective motherhood and leaves love of the child itself defective and maimed, for the mother who has never nursed can not love or be loved aright by her child. it crops out again in the abnormal or especially incomplete development of her offspring, in the critical years of adolescence, although they may have been healthful before, and a less degree of it perhaps is seen in the diminishing families of cultivated mothers in the one-child system. these women are the intellectual equals and often the superiors of the men they meet; they are very attractive as companions, like miss mehr, the university student, in hauptmann's "lonely lives," who alienated the young husband from his noble wife; they enjoy all the keen pleasures of intellectual activity; their very look, step, and bearing is free; their mentality makes them good fellows and companionable in all the broad intellectual spheres; to converse with them is as charming and attractive for the best men as was socrates's discourse with the accomplished hetaerae; they are at home with the racquet and on the golf links; they are splendid friends; their minds, in all their widening areas of contact, are as attractive as their bodies; and the world owes much and is likely to owe far more to high platonic friendships of this kind. these women are often in every way magnificent, only they are not mothers, and sometimes have very little wifehood in them, and to attempt to marry them to develop these functions is one of the unique and too frequent tragedies of modern life and literature. some, though by no means all, of them are functionally castrated; some actively deplore the necessity of child-bearing, and perhaps are parturition phobiacs, and abhor the limitations of married life; they are incensed whenever attention is called to the functions peculiar to their sex, and the careful consideration of problems of the monthly rest are thought "not fit for cultivated women." the slow evolution of this type is probably inevitable as civilization advances, and their training is a noble function. already it has produced minds of the greatest acumen who have made very valuable contributions to science, and far more is to be expected of them in the future. indeed, it may be their noble function to lead their sex out into the higher, larger life, and the deeper sense of its true position and function, for which i plead. hitherto woman has not been able to solve her own problems. while she has been more religious than man, there have been few great women preachers; while she has excelled in teaching young children, there have been few pestalozzis, or even froebels; while her invalidism is a complex problem, she has turned to man in her diseases. this is due to the very intuitiveness and naïveté of her nature. but now that her world is so rapidly widening, she is in danger of losing her cue. she must be studied objectively and laboriously as we study children, and partly by men, because their sex must of necessity always remain objective and incommensurate with regard to woman, and therefore more or less theoretical. again, in these days of intense new interest in feelings, emotions, and sentiments, when many a psychologist now envies and, like schleiermacher, devoutly wishes he could become a woman, he can never really understand _das ewig-weibliche_, [the eternal womanly] one of the two supreme oracles of guidance in life, because he is a man; and here the cultivated woman must explore the nature of her sex as man can not, and become its mouthpiece. in many of the new fields opening in biology since darwin, in embryology, botany, the study of children, animals, savages (witness miss fletcher), sociological investigation, to say nothing of all the vast body of work that requires painstaking detail, perseverance, and conscience, woman has superior ability, or her very sex gives her peculiar advantages where she is to lead and achieve great things in enlarging the kingdom of man. perhaps, too, the present training of women may in the end develop those who shall one day attain a true self-knowledge and lead n the next step of devising a scheme that shall fit woman's nature and needs. for the slow evolution of such a scheme, we must first of all distinctly and ostensively invert the present maxim, and educate primarily and chiefly for motherhood, assuming that, if that does not come, single life can best take care of itself, because it is less intricate and lower and its needs far more easily met. while girls may be trained with boys, coeducation should cease at the dawn of adolescence, at least for a season. great daily intimacy between the sexes in high school, if not in college, tends to rub of the bloom and delicacy which can develop in each, and girls suffer in this respect, let us repeat, far more than boys. the familiar comradeship that ignores sex should be left to the agenic class. to the care of their institutions, we leave with pious and reverent hands the ideals inspired by characters like hypatia, madame de staël, the misses cobb, martineau, fuller, bronté, by george eliot, george sand, and mrs. browning; and while accepting and profiting by what they have done, and acknowledging every claim for their abilities and achievements, prospective mothers must not be allowed to forget a still larger class of ideal women, both in history and literature, from the holy mother to beatrice clotilda de vaux, and all those who have inspired men to great deeds, and the choice and far richer anthology of noble mothers. we must premise, too, that she must not be petted or pampered with regimen or diet unsuited to her needs; left to find out as best she can, from surreptitious or worthy sources, what she most of all needs to know; must recognize that our present civilization is hard on woman and that she is not yet adjusted to her social environment; that as she was of old accused of having given man the apple of knowledge of good and evil, so he now is liable to a perhaps no less serious indictment of having given her the apple of intellectualism and encouraged her to assume his standards at the expense of health. we must recognize that riches are probably harder on her, on the whole, than poverty, and that poor parents should not labor too hard to exempt her from its wholesome discipline. the expectancy of change so stamped upon her sex by heredity as she advances into maturity must not be perverted into uneasiness or her soul sown with the tares of ambition or fired by intersexual competition and driven on, to quote dr. r.t. edes, "by a tireless sort of energy which is a compound of conscience, ambition, and desire to please, plus a peculiar female obstinacy." if she is bright, she must not be overworked in the school factory, studying in a way which parodies hood's "song of the shirt"; and if dull or feeble, she should not be worried by preceptresses like a eminent lady principal,[ ] who thought girls' weakness is usually imaginary or laziness, and that doctors are to blame for suggesting illness and for intimating that men will have to choose between a healthy animal and an educated invalid for a wife. without specifying here details or curricula, the ideals that should be striven toward in the intermediate and collegiate education of adolescent girls with the proper presupposition of motherhood, and which are already just as practicable as abbotsholme[ ] or _l'ecole des roches_,[ ] may be rudely indicated somewhat as follows. first, the ideal institution for the training of girls from twelve or thirteen on into the twenties, when the period most favorable to motherhood begins, should be in the country in the midst of hills, the climbing of which is the best stimulus for heart and lungs, and tends to mental elevation and breadth of view. there should be water for boating, bathing, and skating, aquaria and aquatic life; gardens both for kitchen vegetables and horticulture; forests for their seclusion and religious awe; good roads, walks, and paths that tempt to walking and wheeling: playgrounds and space for golf and tennis, with large covered but unheated space favorable for recreations in weather really too bad for out-of-door life and for those indisposed; and plenty of nooks that permit each to be alone with nature, for this develops inwardness, poise, and character, yet not too great remoteness from the city for a wise utilization of its advantages at intervals. all that can be called environment is even more important for girls than boys, significant as it is for the latter. the first aim, which should dominate every item, pedagogic method and matter, should be health--a momentous word that looms up beside holiness, to which it is etymologically akin. the new hygiene of the last few years should be supreme and make these academic areas soared to the cult of the goddess hygeia. only those who realize what advances have been made in health culture and know something of its vast new literature can realize all that this means. the health of woman is, as we have seen, if possible even more important for the welfare of the race than that of man; and the influence of her body upon her mind is, in a sense, greater, so that its needs should be supreme and primary. foods should favor the completest digestion, so that metabolism be on the highest plane. the dietary should be abundant, plain, and varied, and cooked with all the refinements possible in the modern cooking-school, which should be one of its departments, with limited use of rich foods or desserts and stimulating drinks, but with wholesome proximity to dairy and farm. nutrition is the first law of health and happiness, the prime condition and creator of euphoria; and the appetite should be, as it always is if unperverted, like a kind of somatic conscience steadfastly pointing toward the true pole of needs. sleep should be regular, with a fixed retiring hour and curfew, on plain beds in rooms of scrupulous neatness reserved chiefly for it with every precaution for quiet, and, if possible, with windows more or less open the year round, and, like other rooms, never overheated. bathing in moderation, and especially dress and toilet should be almost raised to fine arts and objects of constant suggestion. each student should have three rooms, for bath, sleep, and study, respectively, and be responsible for their care, with every encouragement for expressing individual tastes; but will, an all-dominant idea of simplicity, convenience, refinement, and elegance, without luxury. girls need to go away from home a good part of every year to escape the indiscretion and often the coddling of parents and to learn self-reliance; and a family dormitory system, with but few, twelve to twenty, in each building, to escape nervous wear and distraction, to secure intimacy and acquaintance with one or more matrons or teachers and to ensure the most pedagogic dietetics, is suggested. exercise comes after regimen, of which it is a special reform. swedish gymnastics should be abandoned or reduced to a minimum of best points, because it is too severe and, in forbidding music, lays too little stress upon the rhythm element. out-of-door walks and games should have precedence over all else. the principle sometimes advocated, that methods of physical training should apply to both boys and girls without regard to sex, and with all the ordinary appliances found in the men's gymnasia introduced, should be reversed and every possible adjustment made to sex. free plays and games should always have precedence over indoor or uniform _commando_ exercises. boating and basket-ball should be allowed, but with the competition element sedulously reduced, and with dancing of many kinds and forms the most prominent of indoor exercises. the dance cadences the soul; the stately minuet gives poise; the figure dances train the mind; and pantomime and dramatic features should be introduced and even specialties, if there are strong individual predispositions. the history of the dance, which has often been a mode of worship, a school of morals, and which is the root of the best that is in the drama, the best of all exercises and that could be again the heart of our whole educational system, should be exploited, and the dancing school and class rescued from its present degradation. no girl is educated who can not dance, although she need not know the ballroom in its modern form.[ ] manners, a word too often relegated to the past as savoring of the primness of the ancient dame school or female seminary, are really minor or sometimes major morals. they can express everything in the whole range of the impulsive or emotional life. now that we understand the primacy of movement over feeling, we can appreciate what a school of bearing and repose in daily converse with others means. i would revive some of the ancient casuistry of details, but less the rules of the drawing-room, call and party, although these should not be neglected, than the deeper expressions of true ladyhood seen in an exquisite, tender and unselfish regard for the feelings of others. women's ideal of compelling every one whom they meet to like them is a noble one, and the control of every automatism is not only a part of good breeding, but nervous health. regularity should be another all-pervading norm. in the main, even though he may have "played his sex symphony too harshly," e.h. clark was right. periodicity, perhaps the deepest law of the cosmos, celebrates its highest triumphs in woman's life. for years everything must give way to its thorough and settled establishment. in the monthly sabbaths of rest, the ideal school should revert to the meaning of the word leisure. the paradise of stated rest should be revisited, idleness be actively cultivated; reverie, in which the soul, which needs these seasons of withdrawal for its own development, expatiates over the whole life of the race, should be provided for and encouraged in every legitimate way, for, in rest, the whole momentum of heredity is felt in ways most favorable to full and complete development. then woman should realize that _to be_ is greater than _to do_; should step reverently aside from her daily routine and let lord nature work. in this time of sensitiveness and perturbation, when anemia and chlorosis are so peculiarly immanent to her sex, remission of toil should not only be permitted, but required; and yet the greatest individual liberty should be allowed to adjust itself to the vast diversities of individual constitutional needs. (see chapter vii on this point.) the cottage home, which should take the place of the dormitory, should always have special interest and attractions for these seasons. there should always be some personal instruction at these seasons during earlier adolescent years. i have glanced over nearly a score of books and pamphlets that are especially written for girls; while all are well meant and far better than the ordinary modes by which girls acquire knowledge of their own nature if left to themselves, they are, like books for boys, far too prolix, and most are too scientific and plain and direct. moreover, no two girls need just the same instruction, and to leave it to reading is too indirect and causes the mind to dwell on it for too long periods. best of all is individual instruction at the time, concise, practical, and never, especially in the early years, without a certain mystic and religious tone which should pervade all and make everything sacred. this should not be given by male physicians--and indeed most female doctors would make it too professional, and the maiden teacher must forever lack reverence for it--but it should come from one whose soul and body are full of wifehood and motherhood and who is old enough to know and is not without the necessary technical knowledge. another principle should be to broaden by retarding; to keep the purely mental back and by every method to bring the intuitions to the front; appeals to tact and taste should be incessant; a purely intellectual man is no doubt biologically a deformity, but a purely intellectual woman is far more so. bookishness is probably a bad sign in a girl; it suggests artificiality, pedantry, the lugging of dead knowledge. mere learning is not the ideal, and prodigies of scholarship are always morbid. the rule should be to keep nothing that is not to become practical; to open no brain tracts which are not to be highways for the daily traffic of thought and conduct; not to overburden the soul with the impedimenta of libraries and records of what is afar off in time or zest, and always to follow truly the guidance of normal and spontaneous interests wisely interpreted. religion will always bold as prominent a place in woman's life as politics does in man's, and adolescence is still more its seedtime with girls than with boys. its roots are the sentiment of awe and reverence, and it is the great agent in the world for transforming life from its earlier selfish to its only really mature form of altruism. the tales of the heroes of virtue, duty, devotion, and self-sacrifice from the old testament come naturally first; then perhaps the prophets paraphrased as in the pedagogic triumph of kent and saunders's little series; and when adolescence is at its height then the chief stress of religious instruction should be laid upon jesus's life and work. he should be taught first humanly, and only later when the limitations of manhood seem exhausted should his deity be adduced as welcome surplusage. the supernatural is a reflex of the heart; each sustains and neither can exist without the other. if the transcendent and supernal had no objective existence, we should have to invent and teach it or dwarf the life of feeling and sentiment. whatever else religion is, therefore, it is the supremest poetry of the soul, reflecting like nothing else all that is deepest, most generic and racial in it. theology should be reduced to a minimum, but nothing denied where wanted. paul and his works and ways should be for the most part deferred until after eighteen. the juvenile well as the cyclone revivalist should be very carefully excluded; and yet in every springtime, when nature is recreated, service and teaching should gently encourage the revival and even the regeneration of all the religious instincts. the mission recruiter should be allowed to do his work outside these halls, and everything in the way of infection and all that brings religion into conflict with good taste and good sense should be excluded, while esthetics should supplement, reënforce, and go hand in hand with piety. religion is in its infancy; and woman, who has sustained it in the past, must be the chief agent in its further and higher development. orthodoxies and all narrowness should forever give place to cordial hospitality toward every serious view, which should be met by the method of greater sympathy rather than by that of criticism. nature in her many phases should, of course, make up a large part of the entire curriculum, but here again the methods of the sexes should differ somewhat after puberty. the poetic and mythic factors and some glimpses of the history of science should be given more prominence; the field naturalist rather than the laboratory man of technic should be the ideal especially at first; nature should be taught as god's first revelation, as an old testament related to the bible as a primordial dispensation to a later and clearer and more special one. reverence and love should be the motive powers, and no aspect should be studied without beginning and culminating in interests akin to devotion. mathematics should be taught only in its rudiments, and those with special talents or tastes for it should go to agamic schools. chemistry, too, although not excluded, should have a subordinate place. the average girl has little love of sozzling and mussing with the elements, and cooking involves problems in organic chemistry too complex to be understood very profoundly, but the rudiments of household chemistry should be taught. physics, too, should be kept to elementary stages. meteorology should have a larger, and geology and astronomy increasingly larger places, and are especially valuable because, and largely in proportion as, they are taught out of doors, but the general principles and the untechnical and practical aspects should be kept in the foreground. with botany more serious work should be done. plant-lore and the poetic aspect, as in astronomy, should have attention throughout, while latin nomenclature and microscopic technic should come late if at all, and vulgar names should have precedence over latin terminology. flowers, gardening, and excursions should never be wanting. economic and even medical aspects should appear, and prominent and early should come the whole matter of self cross-fertilization and that by insects. the moral value of this subject will never be fully understood till we have what might almost be called a woman's botany, constructed on lines different from any of the text-books i have glanced at. here much knowledge interesting in itself can be early taught, which will spring up into a world of serviceable insights as adolescence develops and the great law of sex unfolds. zoology should always be taught with plenty of pets, menagerie resources, and with aquaria, aviaries, apiaries, formicaries, etc., as adjuncts. it should start in the environment like everything else. bird and animal lore, books, and pictures should abound in the early stages, and the very prolific chapter of instincts should have ample illustration, while the morphological nomenclature and details of structure should be less essential. woman has domesticated nearly all the animals, and is so superior to man in insight into their modes of life and psychoses that many of them are almost exemplifications of moral qualities to her even more than to man. the peacock is an embodied expression of pride; the pig, of filth; the fox, of cunning; the serpent, of subtle danger; the eagle, of sublimity; the goose, of stupidity; and so on through all the range of human qualities, as we have seen. at bottom, however, the study of animal life is coming to be more and more a problem of heredity, and its problems should have dominant position and to them the other matter should grade up. this shades over into and prepares for the study of the primitive man and child so closely related to each other. the myth, custom, belief, domestic practises of savages, vegetative and animal traits in infancy and childhood, the development of which is a priceless boon for the higher education of women, open of themselves a great field of human interest where she needs to know the great results, the striking details, the salient illustrations, the basal principles rather than to be entangled in the details of anthropometry, craniometry, philology, etc. all this lays the basis for a larger study of modern man--history, with the biographical element very prominent throughout, with plenty of stories of heroes of virtue, acts of valor, tales of saintly lives and the personal element more prominent, and specialization in the study of dynasties, wars, authorities, and controversies relegated to a very subordinate place. sociology, undeveloped, rudimentary, and in some places suspected as it is, should have in the curriculum of her higher education a place above political economy. the stories of the great reforms, and accounts of the constitution of society, of the home, church, state, and school, and philanthropies and ideals, should to the fore. art in all its forms should be opened at least in a propædeutic way and individual tastes amply and judiciously fed, but there should be no special training in music without some taste and gift, and the aim should be to develop critical and discriminative appreciation and the good taste that sees the vast superiority of all that is good and classic over what is cheap and fustian. in literature, myth, poetry, and drama should perhaps lead, and the knowledge of the great authors in the vernacular be fostered. greek, hebrew, and perhaps latin languages should be entirely excluded, not but that they are of great value and have their place, but because a smattering knowledge is bought at too high a price of ignorance of more valuable things. german, french, and italian should be allowed and provided for by native teachers and by conversational methods if desired, and in their proper season. in the studies of the soul of man, generally called the philosophic branches, metaphysics and epistemology should have the smallest, and logic the next least place. psychology should be taught on the genetic basis of animals and children, and one of its tap-roots should be developed from the love of infancy and youth, than which nothing in all the world is more worthy. if a woman descartes ever arises, she will put life before theory, and her watchword will be not _cogito, ergo sum_, [i think, therefore i am] but _sum, ergo cogito_ [i am, therefore i think]. the psychology of sentiments and feelings and intuitions will take precedence of that of pure intellect; ethics will be taught on the basis of the whole series of practical duties and problems, and the theories of the ultimate nature of right or the constitution of conscience will have small place. domesticity will be taught by example in some ideal home building by a kind of laboratory method. a nursery with all carefully selected appliances and adjuncts, a dining-room, a kitchen, bedroom, closets, cellars, outhouses, building, its material, the grounds, lawn, shrubbery, hothouse, library, and all the other adjuncts of the hearth will be both exemplified and taught. a general course in pedagogy, especially its history and ideals, another in child study, and finally a course in maternity the last year taught broadly, and not without practical details of nursing, should be comprehensive and culminating. in its largest sense maternity might be the heart of all the higher training of young women. applied knowledge will thus be brought to a focus in a department of teaching as one of the specialties of motherhood and not as a vocation apart. the training should aim to develop power of maternity in soul as well as in body, so that home influence may extend on and up through the plastic years of pubescence, and future generations shall not rebel against these influences until they have wrought their perfect work. the methods throughout should be objective, with copious illustrations by way of object-lessons, apparatus, charts, pictures, diagrams, and lectures, far less book work and recitation, only a limited amount of room study, the function of examination reduced to a minimum, and everything as suggestive and germinal as possible. hints that are not followed up; information not elaborated into a thin pedagogic sillabub or froth; seed that is sown on the waters with no thought of reaping; faith in a god who does not pay at the end of each week, month, or year, but who always pays abundantly some time; training which does not develop hypertrophied memory-pouches that carry, or creative powers that discover and produce--these are lines on which such an institution should develop. specialization has its place, but it always hurts a woman's soul more than a man's, should always come later, and if there is special capacity it should be trained elsewhere. unconscious education is a power of which we have yet to learn the full ranges. in most groups in this series of ideal departments there should be at least one healthful, wise, large-souled, honorable, married and attractive man, and, if possible, several of them. his very presence in an institution for young women gives poise, polarizes the soul, and gives wholesome but long-circuited tension at root no doubt sexual, but all unconsciously so. this mentor should not be more father than brother, though he should combine the best of each, but should add another element. he need not be a doctor, a clergyman, or even a great scholar, but should be accessible for confidential conferences even though intimate. he should know the soul of the adolescent girl and how to prescribe; he should be wise and fruitful in advice, but especially should be to all a source of contagion and inspiration for poise and courage even though religious or medical problems be involved. but even if he lack all these latter qualities, though he so poised that impulsive girls can turn their hearts inside out in his presence and perhaps even weep on his shoulder, the presence of such a being, though a complete realization of this ideal could be only remotely approximated, would be the center of an atmosphere most wholesomely tonic. in these all too meager outlines i have sketched a humanistic and liberal education and have refrained from all details and special curriculization. many of the above features i believe would be as helpful for boys as for girls, but woman has here an opportunity to resume her exalted and supreme position, to be the first in this higher field, to lead man and pay her debt to his educational institutions, by resuming her crown. the ideal institutions, however, for the two will always be radically and probably always increasingly divergent. as a psychologist, penetrated with the growing sense of the predominance of the heart over the mere intellect, i believe myself not alone in desiring to make a tender declaration of being more and more passionately in love with woman as i conceive she came from the hand of god. i keenly envy my catholic friends their maryolatry. who ever asked if the holy mother, whom the wise men adored, knew the astronomy of the chaldees or had studied egyptian or babylonian, or even whether she knew how to read or write her own tongue, and who has ever thought of caring? we can not conceive that she bemoaned any limitations of her sex, but she has been an object of adoration all these centuries because she glorified womanhood by being more generic, nearer the race, and richer in love, pity, unselfish devotion and intuition than man. the glorified madonna ideal shows us how much more whole and holy it is to be a woman than to be artist, orator, professor, or expert, and suggests to our own sex that to be a man is larger than to be gentleman, philosopher, general, president, or millionaire. but with all this love and hunger in my heart, i can not help sharing in the growing fear that modern woman, at least in more ways and places than one, is in danger of declining from her orbit; that she is coming to lack just confidence and pride in her sex as such, and is just now in danger of lapsing to mannish ways, methods, and ideals, until her original divinity may become obscured. but, if our worship at her shrine is with a love and adoration a little qualified and unsteady, we have a fixed and abiding faith without which we should have no resource against pessimism for the future of our race, that she will ere long evolve a sphere of life and even education which fits her needs as well as, if not better than those of man fit his. meanwhile, if the eternally womanly seems somewhat less divine, we can turn with unabated faith to the eternally childish, the best of which in each are so closely related. the oracles of infancy and childhood will never fail. distracted as we are in the maze of new sciences, skills, ideals, knowledges that we can not fully coördinate by our logic or curriculize by our pedagogy; confused between the claims of old and new methods; needing desperately, for survival as a nation and a race, some clue to thrid the mazes of the manifold modern cultures, we have now at least one source to which we can turn--we have found the only magnet in all the universe that points steadfastly to the undiscovered pole of human destiny. we know what can and will ultimately coördinate in the generic, which is larger than the logical order, all that is worth knowing, teaching, or doing by the best methods, that will save us from misfits and the waste ineffable of premature and belated knowledge, and that is in the interests and line of normal development in the child in our midst that must henceforth ever lead us which epitomizes in its development all the stages, human and prehuman; that is the proper object of all that strange new love of everything that is naive, spontaneous, and unsophisticated in human nature. the heart and soul of growing childhood is the criterion by which we judge the larger heart and soul of mature womanhood; and these are ultimately the only guide into the heart of the new education which is to be, when the school becomes what melanchthon said it must be--a true workshop of the holy ghost--and what the new psychology, when it rises to the heights of prophecy, foresees as the true paradise of restored intuitive human nature. [footnote : david starr jordan: the higher education of women. popular science monthly, december, , vol. , pp. - . see also my article on this subject in munsey's magazine, february, , and president jordan's reply in the march number, .] [footnote : coeducation. a series of essays by various authors, edited by alice woods, with an introduction by m.e. sadler. longmans, green and co., london , p. _et seq_.] [footnote : the evolution of ideals. w.g. chambers, pedagogical seminary, march, , vol. , pp. - . also, b.e. warner: the young woman in modern life. dodd, mead & co., new york, , p. .] [footnote : the psychology of woman. translated by g.a. etchison. richards, london, .] [footnote : physical development of women and children. by miss m.e. allen. american association for physical education., april, .] [footnote : a review of the higher education of women. forum, september, , vol. , pp - . see also g. von bunge: die zunehmende unfähigkeit der frauen ihre kinder zu stillen. münchen reinhardt, , d ed. also president harper's decennial report, pp. xciv-cxi.] [footnote : physical hindrances to teaching girls, by charlotte w. porter. forum, september, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : abbotsholme, - : or ten years' work in an educational laboratory, by cecil reddie, g. allen london, .] [footnote : see l'ecole des roches, a school of the twentieth century, by t.r. croswell. pedagogical seminary, december, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : see chapter vi.] * * * * * chapter xii moral and religious training dangers of muscular degeneration and overstimulus of brain--difficulties in teaching morals--methods in europe--obedience to commands--good habits should be mechanized--value of scolding--how to flog aright--its dangers--moral precepts and proverbs--habituation--training will through intellect--examinations--concentration--originality--froebel and the naive--first ideas of god--conscience--importance of old and new testaments--sex dangers--love and religion--conversion. from its nature as well as from its central importance it might be easily shown that the will is no less dependent on the culture it receives than is the mind. it is fast becoming as absurd to suppose that men can survive in the great practical strain to which american life subjects all who would succeed, if the will is left to take its doubtful chances of training and discipline, as to suppose that the mind develops in neglect. our changed conditions make this chance of will-culture more doubtful than formerly. a generation or two ago[ ] most school-boys had either farm work, chores, errands, jobs self-imposed, or required by less tender parents; they _made_ things, either toys or tools, out of school. most school-girls did house-work, more or less of which is, like farm-work, perhaps the most varied and most salutary as well as most venerable of all schools for the youthful body and mind. they undertook extensive works of embroidery, bed-quilting, knitting, sewing, mending, if not cleaning, and even spinning and weaving their own or others' clothing, and cared for the younger children. the wealthier devised or imposed tasks for will-culture, as the german kaiser has his children taught a trade as part of their education. ten days at the hoe-handle, axe, or pitchfork, said an eminent educator lately in substance, with no new impression from without, and one constant and only duty, is a schooling in perseverance and sustained effort such as few boys now get in any shape; while city instead of country life brings so many new, heterogeneous and distracting impressions of motion rather than rest, and so many privileges with so few corresponding duties, that with artificial life and bad air the will is weakened, and eupeptic minds and stomachs, on which its vigor so depends, are rare. machines supersede muscles, and perhaps our athleticism gives skill too great preponderance over strength, or favors intense rather than constant, long-sustained, unintermittent energy. perhaps too many of our courses of study are better fitted to turn out many-sided but superficial paragraphists, than men who can lay deep plans, and subordinate many complex means to one remote end. meanwhile, if there is any one thing of which our industries and practical arts are in more crying need than another, it is the old-fashioned virtue of thoroughness, of a kind and degree which does not address merely the eye, is not limited by the letter of a contract, but which has some regard for its products for their own sake, and some sense for the future. whether in science, philosophy, morals, or business, the fields for long-ranged cumulative efforts are wider, more numerous, and far more needy than in the days when it was the fashion for men contentedly to concentrate themselves to one vocation, life-work, or mission, or when cathedrals or other yet vaster public works were transmitted, unfinished but ever advancing, from one generation of men to another. it is because the brain is developed, while the muscles are allowed to grow flabby and atrophied, that the deplored chasm between knowing and doing is so often fatal to the practical effectiveness of mental and moral culture. the great increase of city and sedentary life has been far too sudden for the human body--which was developed by hunting, war, agriculture, and manifold industries now given over to steam and machinery--to adapt itself healthfully or naturally to its new environment. let any of us take down an anatomical chart of the human muscles, and reflect what movements we habitually make each day, and realize how disproportionately our activities are distributed compared with the size or importance of the muscles, and how greatly modern specialization of work has deformed our bodies. the muscles that move the scribbling pen are insignificant fraction of those in the whole body, and those that wag the tongue and adjust the larynx are also comparatively few and small. their importance is, of course, not underrated, but it is disastrous to concentrate education upon them too exclusively or too early in life. the trouble is that few realize what physical vigor is in man or woman, or how dangerously near weakness often is to wickedness, how impossible healthful energy of will is without strong muscles which are its organ, or how endurance and self-control, no less than great achievement, depend on muscle-habits. both in germany and greece, a golden age of letters was preceded, by about a generation, by a golden age of national gymnastic enthusiasm which constitutes, especially in the former country, one of the most unique and suggestive chapters in the history of pedagogy. symmetry and grace, hardihood and courage, the power to do everything that the human body can do with and without all conceivable apparatus, instruments, and even tools, are culture ideals that in greece, rome, and germany respectively have influenced, as they might again influence, young men, as intellectual ideals never can do save in a select few. we do not want "will-virtuosos," who perform feats hard to learn, but then easy to do and good for show; nor spurtiness of any sort which develops an erethic habit of work, temper, and circulation, and is favored by some of our popular sports but too soon reacts into fatigue. even will-training does not reach its end till it leads the young up to taking a intelligent, serious and life-long interest in their own physical culture and development. this is higher than interest in success in school or college sport; and, though naturally later than these, is one of the earliest forms of will-culture in which it is safe and wise to attempt to interest the young for its own sake alone. in our exciting life and trying climate, in which the experiment of civilization has never been tried before, these thoughts are merely exercises. but this is, of course, preliminary. great as is the need, the practical difficulties in the way are very great. first, there are not only no good text-books in ethics, but no good manual to guide teachers. some give so many virtues or good habits to be taught per term, ignoring the unity of virtue as well as the order in which the child's capacities for real virtue unfold. advanced text-books discuss the grounds of obligation, the nature of choice or freedom, or the hedonistic calculus, as if pleasures and pains could be balanced as measurable quantities, etc., so that philosophic morality is clearly not for children or teachers. secondly, evolution encourages too often the doubt whether virtue can be taught, when it should have the opposite effect. perversity and viciousness of will are too often treated as constitutional disease; and insubordination or obstinacy, especially in school, are secretly admired as strength, instead of being vigorously treated as crampy disorders of will, and the child is coddled into flaccidity. becomes the lowest develops first, there is danger that it will interfere with the development of the higher, and thus, if left to his own, the child may come to have no will. the third and greatest difficulty is, that with the best effort to do so, so few teachers can separate morality from religious creed. so vital is the religions sentiment here that it is hard to divorce the end of education from the end of life, proximate from ultimate grounds of obligation, or finite from infinite duties. those whose training has been more religious than ethical can hardly teach morality _per se_ satisfactorily to the _noli me tangere_ [touch me not] spirit of denominational freedom so wisely jealous of conflicting standards and sanctions for the young. how then can we ever hope to secure proper training for the will? more than a generation ago germany developed the following method: children of lutheran, catholic and jewish parentage, which include most german children, were allowed one afternoon a week for several years, and two afternoons a week for a few months preceding confirmation, to spend half of a school day with instructors of these respective professions, who were nominated by the church, but examined by the state as to their competence. these teachers are as professional, therefore, as those in the regular class work. each religion is allowed to determine its own course of religious instruction, subject only to the approval of the cultus minister or the local authorities. in this way a rupture between the religious sentiments and teaching of successive generations is avoided and it is sought to bring religious training to bear upon morals. these classes learn scripture, hymns, church service,--the catholics in latin and the jewish in hebrew,--the history of their church and people, and sometimes a little systematic theology. in some of these schools, there are prizes and diplomas, and the spirit of competition is appealed to. a criticism sometimes made against them, especially against the lutheran religious pedagogy, is that it is too intellectual. it is, of course, far more systematic and effective from this point of view than the american sunday school, so that whatever may be said of its edifying effects, the german child knows these topics far better than the american. this system, with modifications, has been adopted in some places in france, england and in america, more often in private than in public schools, however. the other system originated in france some years after the franco-prussian war when the clerical influence in french education gave way to the lay and secular spirit. in these classes, for which also stated times are set apart and which are continued through all the required grades under the name of moral and civic instruction, the religious element is entirely absent, except that there are a few hymns, bible passages and stories which all agree upon as valuable. most of the course is made up of carefully selected maxims and especially stories of virtue, records of heroic achievements in french history and even in literature and the drama. everything, however, has a distinct moral lesson, although that lesson is not made offensively prominent. we have here nearly a score of these textbooks, large and small. it would seen as though the resources of the french records and literature had been ransacked, and indeed many deeds of heroism are culled from the daily press. the matter is often arranged under headings such as cleanliness, acts of kindness, courage, truthfulness versus lying, respect for age, good manners, etc. each virtue is thus taught in a way appropriate to each stage of childhood, and quite often bands of mercy, rescue leagues and other societies are the outgrowth of this instruction. it is, of course, exposed to much criticism from the clergy on the cogent ground that morality needs the support of religion, at the very least, in childhood. this system has had much influence in england where several similar courses have been evolved, and in this country we have at least one very praiseworthy effort in this direction, addressed mainly, however, to older children. besides this, two ways suggest themselves. first, we may try to assume, or tediously enucleate a consensus of religious truth as a basis of will training, e.g., god and immortality, and, ignoring the minority who doubt these, vote them into the public school. pedagogy need have nothing whatever to say respecting the absolute truth or falsity of these ideas, but there is little doubt that they have an influence on the will, at a certain stage of average development, greater and more essential than any other; so great that even were their vitality to decay like the faith in the greek or german mythology, we should still have to teach god and a future life as the most imperative of all hypotheses in a field where, as in morals, nothing is so practical as a good theory; and we should have to fall to teaching the bible as a moral classic, and cultivate a critical sympathy for its view of life. but this way ignores revelation and supernatural claims, while some have other objections to emancipating or "rescuing" the bible from theology just yet. indeed, the problem how to teach anything that the mind could not have found out for itself, but that had to be revealed, has not been solved by modern pedagogy, which, since pestalozzi, has been more and more devoted to natural and developing methods. the latter teaches that there must not be too much seed sown, too much or too high precept, or too much iteration, and that, in jean paul's phrase, the hammer must not rest on bell, but only tap and rebound, to bring out a clear tone. again, a consensus of this content would either have to be carefully defined and would be too generic and abstract for school uses, or else differences of interpretation, which so pervade and are modified by character, culture, temperament, and feeling, would make the consensus itself nugatory. religious training must be specific at first, and, omitting qualifications, the more explicit the denominational faith the earlier may religious motives affect the will. this is the way of our hopes, to the closer consideration of which we intend to return in the future, though it must be expected that the happiest consensus will be long quarantined from most schools. meanwhile a second way, however unpromising, is still open. noble types of character may rest on only the native instincts of the soul or even on broadly interpreted utilitarian considerations. but if morality without religion were only a bloodless corpse or a plank in a shipwreck, there is now need enough for teachers to study its form, drift, and uses by itself alone. this, at least, is our purpose in considering the will, and this only. the will, purpose, and even mood of small children when alone, are fickle, fluctuating, contradictory. our very presence imposes one general law on them, viz., that of keeping our good will and avoiding our displeasure. as the plant grows towards the light, so they unfold in the direction of our wishes, felt as by divination. they respect all you smile at, even buffoonery; look up in their play to call your notice, to study the lines of your sympathy, as if their chief vocation was to learn your desires. their early lies are often saying what they think will please us, knowing no higher touchstones of truth. if we are careful to be wisely and without excess happy and affectionate when they are good, and saddened and slightly cooled in manifestations of love if they do wrong, the power of association in the normal, eupeptic child will early choose right as surely as pleasure increases vitality. if our love is deep, obedience is an instinct if not a religion. the child learns that while it can not excite our fear, resentment or admiration, etc., it can act on our love, and this should be the first sense of its own efficiency. thus, too, it first learns that the way of passion and impulse is not the only rule of life, and that something is gained by resisting them. it imitates our acts long before it can understand our words. as if it felt its insignificance, and dreaded to be arrested in some lower phase of its development, its instinct for obedience becomes almost a passion. as the vine must twine or grovel, so the child comes unconsciously to worship idols, and imitates bad patterns and examples in the absence of worthy ones. he obeys as with a deep sense of being our chattel, and, at bottom, admires those who coerce him, if the means be wisely chosen. the authority must, of course, be ascendancy over heart and mind. the more absolute such authority the more the will is saved from caprice and feels the power of steadiness. such authority excites the unique, unfathomable sense of reverence, which measures the capacity for will-culture, and is the strongest and soundest of all moral motives. it is also the most comprehensive, for it is first felt only towards persons, and personality is a bond, enabling any number of complex elements to act or be treated as whole, as everything does and is in the child's soul, instead of in isolation and detail. in the feeling of respect culminating in worship almost all educational motives are involved, but especially those which alone can bring the will to maturity; and happy the child who is bound by the mysterious and constraining sympathy of dependence, by which, if unblighted by cynicism, a worthy mentor directs and lifts the will. this unconscious reflection of our character and wishes is the diviner side of childhood, by which it is quick and responsive to everything in its moral environment. the child may not be able to tell whether its teacher often smiles, dresses in this way or that, speaks loud or low, has many rules or not, though every element of her personality affects him profoundly. his acts of will have not been _choices_, but a mass of psychic causes far greater than consciousness can estimate have laid a basis of character, than which heredity alone is deeper, before the child knows he has a will. these influences are not transient but life-long, for if the conscious and intentional may anywhere be said to be only a superficial wave over the depths of the unconscious, it is in the sphere of will-culture. but command and obedience must also be specific to supplant nature. here begins the difficulty. a young child can know no general commands. "sit in your chair," means sit a moment, a sort of trick, with no prohibition to stand the next instant. any just-forbidden act may be done in the next room. all is here and now, and patient reiteration, till habit is formed, and no havoc-making rules which it cannot understand or remember, is our cue. obedience can, however, be instinct even here, and is its chief virtue, and there is no more fear of weakening the will by it than in the case of soldiers. as the child grows older, however, and as the acts commanded are repugnant, or unusual, there should be increasing care, lest authority be compromised, sympathy ruptured, or lest mutual timidity and indecision, if not mutual insincerity and dissimulation, as well as parodied disobedience, etc., to test us, result. we should, of course, watch for favorable moods, assume no unwonted or preternatural dignity or owlish air of wisdom, and command in a low voice which does not too rudely break in upon the child's train of impressions. the acts we command or forbid should be very few at first, but inexorable. we should be careful not to forbid where we cannot follow a untrusty child, or what we can not prevent. our own will should be a rock and not a wave. our requirements should be uniform, with no whim, mood, or periodicity of any sort about them. if we alternate from caresses to severity, are fields and capricious instead of commanding by a fixed and settled plan, if we only now and then take the child in hand, so he does not know precisely what to expect, we really require the child to change its nature with every change in us, and well for the child who can defy such a changeable authority, which not only unsettles but breaks up character anew when it is just at the beginning of the formative period. neglect is better than this, and fear of inconsistency of authority makes the best parents often jealous of arbitrariness in teachers. only thus can we develop general habits of will and bring the child to know general maxims of conduct inductively, and only thus by judicious boldness and hardihood in command can we bring the child to feel the conscious strength that comes only from doing unpleasant things. even if instant obedience be only external at first, it will work inward, for moods are controlled by work, and it is only will which enlarges the bounds of personality. yet we must not forget that even morality is relative, and is one thing for adults and often quite another for children. the child knows nothing of absolute truth, justice, or virtues. the various stimuli of discipline are to enforce the higher though weaker insights which the child has already unfolded, rather than to engraft entirely unintuited good. the command must find some ally, feeble though it be, in the child's own soul. we should strive to fill each moment with as little sacrifice or subordination, as mere means or conditions to the future, as possible, for fear of affectation and insincerity. but yet the hardier and sounder the nature, the more we may address training to barely nascent intuitions, with a less ingredient of immediate satisfaction, and the deeper the higher element of interest will be grounded in the end. the child must find as he advances towards maturity, that every new insight, or realization of his own reveals the fact that you have been there before with commands, cultivating sentiments and habits, and not that he was led to mistake your convenience or hobby for duty, or failed to temper the will by temporizing with it. the young are apt to be most sincere at an age when they are also most mistaken, but if sincerity be kept at its deepest and best, will be least harmful and easiest overcome. if authority supplement rather than supersede good motives, the child will so love authority as to overcome your reluctance to apply it directly, and as a final result will choose the state and act you have pre-formed in its slowly-widening margin of freedom, and will be all the less liable to undue subservience to priest or boss, or fashion or tradition later, as obedience gives place to normal, manly independence. in these and many other ways everything in conduct should be mechanized as early and completely as possible. the child's notion of what is right is what is habitual, and the simple, to which all else is reduced in thought, is identified with the familiar. it is this primitive stratum of habits which principally determines our deepest belief which all must have over and above knowledge--to which men revert in mature years from youthful vagaries. if good acts are a diet and not a medicine, are repeated over and over again, as every new beat of the loom pounds in one new thread, and sense of justice and right is wrought into the very nerve-cells and fibers; if this ground texture of the soul, this "memory and habit-plexus," this sphere of thoughts we oftenest think and acts we oftenest do, is early, rightly and indiscerptibly wrought, not only does it become a web of destiny for us, so all-determining is it, but we have something perdurable to fall back on if moral shock or crisis or change or calamity shall have rudely broken up the whole structure of later associations. not only the more we mechanize thus, the more force of soul is freed for higher work, but we are insured against emergencies in which the choice and deed is likely to follow the nearest motive, or that which acts quickest, rather than to pause and be influenced by higher and perhaps intrinsically stronger motives. reflection always brings in a new set of later-acquired motives and considerations, and if these are better than habit-mechanism, then pause is good; if not, he who deliberates is lost. our purposive volitions are very few compared with the long series of desires, acts and reactions, often contradictory, many of which were never conscious, and many once willed but now lapsed to reflexes, the traces of which crowding the unknown margins of the soul, constitute the organ of the conscious will. it is only so far as this primitive will is wrong by nature or training, that drastic reconstructions of any sort are needed. only those who mistake weakness for innocence, or simplicity for candor, or forget that childish faults are no less serious because universal, deny the, at least, occasional depravity of all children, or fail to see that fear and pain are among the indispensables of education, while a parent, teacher, or even a god, _all_ love, weakens and relaxes the will. children do not cry for the alphabet; the multiplication table is more like medicine than confectionery, and it is only affected thoroughness that omits all that is hard. "the fruits of learning may be sweet, but its roots are always bitter," and it is this alone that makes it possible to strengthen the will while instructing the mind. the well-schooled will comes, like herder, to scorn the luxury of knowing without the labor of learning. we must anticipate the future penalties of sloth as well as of badness. the will especially is a trust we are to administer for the child, not as he may now wish, but as he will wish when more mature. we must now compel what he will later wish to compel himself to do. to find his habits already formed to the same law that his mature will and the world later enjoin, cements the strongest of all bonds between mentor and child. nothing, however, must be so individual as punishment. for some, a threat at rare intervals is enough; while for others, however ominous threats may be, they become at once "like scarecrows, on which the foulest birds soonest learn to perch." to scold well and wisely is an art by itself. for some children, pardon is the worst punishment; for others, ignoring or neglect; for others, isolation from friends, suspension from duties; for others, seclusion--which last, however, is for certain ages beset with extreme danger--and for still others, shame from being made conspicuous. mr. spencer's "natural penalties" can be applied to but few kinds of wrong, and those not the worst. basedow tied boys who fell into temptation to a strong pillar to brace them up; if stupid and careless, put on a fool's cap and bells; if they were proud, they were suspended near the ceiling in a basket, as aristophanes represented socrates. two boys who quarreled, were made to look into each other's eyes before the whole school till their angry expressions gave way before the general sense of the ridiculous. this is more ingenious than wise. the object of discipline is to avoid punishment, but even flogging should never be forbidden. it maybe reserved, like a sword in its scabbard, but should not get so rusted in that it can not be drawn on occasion. the law might even limit the size and length of the rod, and place of application, as in germany, but it should be of no less liberal dimensions here than there. punishment should, of course, be minatory and reformatory, and not vindictive, and we should not forget that certainty is more effective than severity, nor that it is apt to make motives sensuous, and delay the psychic restraint which should early preponderate over the physical. but will-culture for boys is rarely as thorough as it should be without more or less flogging. i would not, of course, urge the extremes of the past. the spartan beating as a gymnastic drill to toughen, the severity which prevailed in germany for a long time after its thirty years' wars,[ ] the former fashion in many english schools of walking up not infrequently to take a flogging as a plucky thing to do, and with no notion of disgrace attaching to it, shows at least an admirable strength of will. severe constraint gives poise, inwardness, self-control, inhibition, and not-willingness, if not willingness, while the now too common habit of coquetting for the child's favor, and tickling its ego with praises and prizes, and pedagogic pettifogging for its good-will, and sentimental fear of a judicious slap to rouse a spoiled child with no will to break, to make it keep step with the rest in conduct, instead of delaying a whole school-room to apply a subtle psychology of motives on it, is bad. this reminds one of the jain who sweeps the ground before him lest he unconsciously tread on a worm. possibly it may be well, as schleiermacher suggests, not to repress some one nascent bad act in some natures, but let it and the punishment ensue for the sake of dr. spankster's tonic. dermal pain is not the worst thing in the world, and by a judicious knowledge of how it feels at both ends of the rod, by flogging and being flogged, far deeper pains may be forefended. insulting defiance, deliberative disobedience, ostentatious carelessness and bravado, are diseases of the will, and, in very rare cases of promethean obstinacy, the severe process of breaking the will is needful, just as in surgery it is occasionally needful to rebreak a limb wrongly set, or deformed, to set it over better. it is a cruel process, but a crampy will in childhood means moral traumatism of some sort in the adult. few parents have the nerve to do this, or the insight to see just when it is needed. it is, as some one has said, like knocking a man down to save him from stepping off a precipice. even the worst punishments are but very faint types of what nature has in store in later life for some forms of perversity of will, and are better than sarcasm, ridicule, or tasks, as penalties. the strength of obstinacy is admirable, and every one ought to have his own will; but a false direction, though almost always the result of faulty previous training when the soul more fluid and mobile, is all the more fatal. while so few intelligent parents are able to refrain from the self-indulgence of too much rewarding or giving, even though it injures the child, it is perhaps too much to expect the hardihood which can be justly cold to the caresses of a child who seeks, by displaying all its stock of goodness and arts of endearment, to buy back good-will after punishment has been deserved. if we wait too long, and punish in cold blood, a young child may hate us; while, if we punish on the instant, and with passion, a little of which is always salutary, on the principle, _ohne affekt kein effekt_, [without passion, no effect] an older child may fail of the natural reactions of conscience, which should always be secured. the maxim, _summum jus summa injuria_, [the rigor of the law may be the greatest wrong] we are often told, is peculiarly true in school, and so it is; but to forego all punishment is no less injustice to the average child, for it is to abandon one of the most effective means of will-culture. we never punish but a part, as it were, of the child's nature; he has lied, but is not therefore a liar, and we deal only with the specific act, and must love all the rest of him. and yet, after all, indiscriminate flogging is so bad, and the average teacher is so inadequate to that hardest and most tactful of all his varied duties, viz., selecting the right outcrop of the right fault of the right child at the right time and place, mood, etc., for best effect, that the bold statement of such principles as above is perhaps not entirely without practical danger, especially in two cases which madame necker and sigismund have pointed out, and in several cases of which the present writer has notes. first, an habitually good child sometimes has a saturnalia of defiance and disobedience; a series of insubordinate acts are suddenly committed which really mark the first sudden epochful and belated birth of the instinct of independence and self-regulation, on which his future manliness will depend. he is quite irresponsible, the acts are never repeated, and very lenient treatment causes him, after the conflict of tumultuous feelings has expanded his soul, to react healthfully into habitual docility again, if some small field for independent action be at once opened him. the other case is that of _ennui_, of which children suffer such nameless qualms. when i should open half a dozen books, start for a walk, and then turn back, wander about in mind or body, seeking but not finding content in anything, a child in my mood will wish for a toy, an amusement, food, a rare indulgence, only to neglect or even reject it petulantly when granted. these flitting "will-spectres" are physical, are a mild form of the many fatal dangers of fatigue; and punishment is the worst of treatment. rest or diversion is the only cure, and the teacher's mind must be fruitful of purposes to that end. perhaps a third case for palliative treatment is, those lies which attend the first sense of badness. the desire to conceal it occasionally accompanies the nascent effort to reform and make the lie true. these cases are probably rare, while the temptation to lie is far greater for one who does ill than for one who does well, for fear is the chief motive, and a successful lie which concealed would weaken the desire to cure a fault. we have thus far spoken of obedience, and come now to the later necessity of self-guidance, which, if obedience has wrought its perfect work, will be natural and inevitable. it is very hard to combine reason and coercion, yet it is needful that children think themselves free long before we cease to determine them. as we slowly cease to prescribe and begin to inspire, a very few well-chosen mottoes, proverbs, maxims, should be taught very simply, so that they will sink deep. education has been defined as working against the chance influences of life, and it is certain that without some precepts and rules the will will not exert itself. if reasons are given, and energy is much absorbed in understanding, the child will assent but will not do. if the mind is not strong, many wide ideas are very dangerous. strong wills are not fond of arguments, and if a young person falls to talking or thinking beyond his experience, subjective or objective, both conduct and thought are soon confused by chaotic and incongruous opinions and beliefs; and false expectations, which are the very seducers of the will, arise. there can be little will-training by words, and the understanding can not realize the ideals of the will. all great things are dangerous, as plato said, and the truth itself is not only false but actually immoral to unexpanded minds. will-culture is intensive, not extensive, and the writer knows a case in which even a vacation ramble with a moralizing fabulist has undermined the work of years. our precepts must be made very familiar, copiously illustrated, well wrought together by habit and attentive thought, and above all clear cut, that the pain of violating them may be sharp and poignant. vague and too general precepts beyond the horizon of the child's real experience do not haunt him if they are outraged. now the child must obey these, and will, if he has learned to obey well the command of others. one of the best sureties that he will do so is muscle-culture, for if the latter are weaker than the nerves and brain, the gap between knowing and doing appears and the will stagnates. gutsmuths, the father of gymnastics in germany before jahn, used to warn men not to fancy that the few tiny muscles that moved the pen or tongue had power to elevate men. they might titillate the soul with words and ideas; but rigorous, symmetrical muscle-culture alone, he and his turner societies believed, could regenerate the fatherland, for it was one thing to paint the conflict of life, and quite another to bear arms in it. they said, "the weaker the body the more it commands; the stronger it is the more it obeys." in this way we shall have a strong, well-knit soul-texture, made up of volitions and ideas like warp and woof. mind and will will be so compactly organized that all their forces can be brought to a single point. each concept or purpose will call up those related to it, and once strongly set toward its object, the soul will find itself borne along by unexpected forces. this power of totalizing, rather than any transcendent relation of elements, constitutes at least the practical unity of the soul, and this unimpeded association of its elements is true or inner freedom of will. nothing is wanting or lost when the powers of the soul are mobilized for a great task, and its substance is impervious to passion. with this organization, men of really little power accomplish wonders. without it great minds are confused and lost. they have only velleity or caprice. the will makes a series of vigorous, perhaps almost convulsive, but short, inconsistent efforts. as jean paul says, there is sulphur, charcoal, and saltpetre in the soul, but powder is not made, for they never find each other. to understand this will-plexus is preeminent among the new demands now laid on educators. but, although this focalizing power of acting with the whole rather than with a part of the soul, gives independence of many external, conventional, proximate standards of conduct, deepening our interests in life, and securing us against disappointment by defining our expectations, while such a sound and simple will-philosophy is proof against considerable shock and has firmness of texture enough to bear much responsibility, there is, of course, something deeper, without which all our good conduct is more or less hollow. this is that better purity established by mothers in the plastic heart, before the superfoetation of precept is possible, or even before the "soul takes flight in language"; it is perhaps pre-natal or hereditary. much every way depends on how aboriginal our goodness is, whether the will acts with effort, as we solve an intricate problem, in solitude, or as we say the multiplication table, which only much distraction can confuse, or as we repeat the alphabet, which the din of battle could not hinder. later and earlier training should harmonize with each other and with nature. thrice happy he who is so wisely trained that he comes to believe he believes what his soul deeply does believe, to say what he feels and feel what he really does feel, and chiefly whose express volitions square with the profounder drift of his will as the resultant of all he has desired or wished, expected, attended to, or striven for. when such an one comes to his moral majority by standing for the first time upon his own careful conviction, against the popular cry, or against his own material interests or predaceous passions, and feels the constraint and joy of pure obligation which comes up from this deep source, a new, original force is brought into the world of wills. call it inspiration, or kant's transcendental impulse above and outside of experience, or spencer's deep reverberations from a vast and mysterious past of compacted ancestral experiences, the most concentrated, distilled and instinctive of all psychic products, and as old as mr. tyndall's "fiery cloud"--the name or even source is little. we would call it the purest, freest, most prevailing, because most inward, will or conscience. this free, habitual guidance by the highest and best, by conviction with no sense of compulsion or obligation, impractical if not dangerous ideal, for it can be actually realized only by the rarest moral genius. for most of us, the best education is that which makes us the best and most obedient servants. this is the way of peace and the way of nature, for even if we seriously try to keep up a private conscience at all, apart from feeling, faction, party or class spirit, or even habit, which are our habitual guides, the difficulties are so great that most hasten, more or less consciously and voluntarily, to put themselves under authority again, serving only the smallest margin of independence in material interests, choice of masters, etc, and yielding to the pleasing and easy illusion that inflates the minimum to seem the maximum of freedom, and uses the noblest ideal of history, viz., that of pure autonomous oughtness, as a pedestal for idols of selfishness, caprice and conceit. the trouble is in interpreting these moral instincts, for even the authorities lack the requisite self-knowledge in which all wisdom culminates. the moral interregnum which the _aufklärung_ [enlightenment] has brought will not end till these instincts are rightly interpreted by in intelligence. the richest streams of thought must flow about them, the best methods must peep and pry till their secrets are found and put into the idea-pictures in which most men think. this brings us, finally, to the highest and also immediately practical method of moral education, viz., training the will by and for intellectual work. youth and childhood must not be subordinated as means to maturity. learning is more useful than knowing. it is the way and not the goal, the work and not the product, the acquiring and not the acquisition, that educates will and character. to teach only results, which are so simple, without methods by which they were obtained, which are so complex and hard, to develop the sense of possession without the strain of activity, to teach great matters too easily or even as play, always to wind along the lines of least resistance into the child's mind, is imply to add another and most enervating luxury to child-life. only the sense and power of effort, which made lessing prefer the search to the possession of truth, which trains the will in the intellectual field, which is becoming more and more the field of its activity, counts for character and makes instruction really educating. this makes mental work a series of acts, or living thoughts, and not merely words. real education, that we can really teach, and that which is really most examinable, is what we do, while those who acquire without effort may be extremely instructed without being truly educated. it is those who have been trained to put forth mental power that come to the front later, while it is only those whose acquisitions are not transpeciated into power who are in danger of early collapse. it is because of this imperfect appropriation through lack of volitional reaction that mental training is so often dangerous, especially in its higher grades. especially wherever good precepts are allowed to rest peacefully beside undiscarded bad habits, moral weakness is directly cultivated. volitional recollection, or forcing the mind to reproduce a train of impressions, strengthens what we may call the mental will; while if multifarious impressions which excite at the time are left to take their chances, at best, fragmentary reproduction, incipient amnesia, the prelude of mental decay, may be soon detected. few can endure the long working over of ideas, especially if at all fundamental, which is needful to full maturity of mind, without grave moral danger. new standpoints and ideas require new combinations of the mental elements, with constant risk that during the process, what was already secured will fall back into its lower components. even oar immigrants suffer morally from the change of manners and customs and ideas, and yet education menus change; the more training the more change, as a rule, and the more danger during the critical transition period while we oscillate between control by old habits, or association within the old circle of thought, and by the new insights, as a medical student often suffers from trying to bring the regulation of his physical functions under new and imperfect hygienic insights. thus most especially if old questions, concerning which we have long since ceased to trust ourselves to give reasons, need to be reopened, there is especial danger that the new equilibrium about which the dynamic is to be re-resolved into static power will be established, if at all, with loss instead of with gain. indeed, it is a question not of schools but of civilization, whether mental training, from the three r's to science and philosophy, shall really make men better, as the theory of popular education assumes, and whether the genius and talent of the few who can receive and bear it can be brought to the full maturity of a knowledge fully facultized--a question paramount, even in a republic, to the general education of the many. the illusion is that beginnings are hard. they are easy. almost any mind can advance a little way into almost any subject. the feeblest youth can push on briskly in the beginning of a new subject, but he forgets, and so does the examiner who marks him, that difficulties increase not in arithmetical but in almost geometrical ratio as he advances. the fact, too, that all topics are taught by all teachers and that we have no specialized teaching in elementary branches, and that examinations are placed in the most debilitating part of our peculiarly debilitating spring, these help us to solve the problem which china has solved so well, viz., how to instruct and not to educate. a pass mark, say of fifty, should be given not for mastery of the first half of the book, or for knowledge of half the matter in it, but for that of three-fourths or more. suppose one choose the easier method of tattooing his mind by attaining the easy early stages of proficiency in many subjects, as is possible and even encouraged in too many of our school and college curricula, he weakens the will-quality of his mind. smattering is dissipation of energy. only great, concentrated and prolonged efforts in one direction really train the mind, because only _they_ train the will beneath it. many little, heterogeneous efforts of different sorts leave the mind in a muddle of heterogeneous impressions, and the will like a rubber band is stretched to flaccidity around one after another bundle of objects too large for it to clasp into unity. here again, _in der beschränkung zeigt sich der meister_ [the master shows himself in self-limitation]; all-sidedness through one-sidedness; by stalking the horse or cow out in the spring time, till he gnaws his small allotted circle of grass to the ground, and not by roving and cropping at will, can he be taught that the sweetest joint is nearest the root, are convenient symbols of will-culture in the intellectual field. even a long cram, if only on one subject, which brings out the relations of the parts, or a "one-study college," as is already devised in the west, or the combination of several subjects even in primary school grades into a "concentration series," as devised by ziller and rein, the university purpose as defined by ziller of so combining studies that each shall stand in the course next to that with which it is inherently closest connected by matter and method, or the requirements of one central and two collateral branches for the doctorate examination--all these devices no doubt tend to give a sense of efficiency, which is one of the deepest and proudest joys of life, in the place of a sense of possession so often attended by the exquisite misery of conscious weakness. the unity of almost any even ideal purpose is better than none, if it tend to check the superficial one of learning to repeat again or of boxing the whole compass of sciences and liberal arts, as so many of our high schools or colleges attempt. finally, in the sphere of mental productivity and originality, a just preponderance of the will-element makes men distrust new insights, quick methods, and short cuts, and trust chiefly to the genius of honest and sustained work, in power of which perhaps lies the greatest intellectual difference between men. when ideas are ripe for promulgation they have been condensed and concentrated, thought traverses them quickly and easily--in a word, they have become practical, and the will that waits over a new idea patiently and silently, without anxiety, even though with a deepening sense of responsibility, till all sides have been seen, all authorities consulted, all its latent mental reserves heard from, is the man who "talks with the rifle and not with the water-hose," or, in a rough farmer's phrase, "boils his words till he can give his hearers sugar and not sap." several of the more important discoveries of the present generation, which cost many weary months of toil, have been enumerated in a score or two of lines, so that every experimenter could set up his apparatus and get the results in a few minutes. let us not forget that, in most departments of mental work, the more we revise and reconstruct our thought, the longer we inhibit its final expression, while the oftener we return to it refreshed from other interests, the clearer and more permeable for other minds it becomes, because the more it tends to express itself in terms of willed action, which is "the language of complete men." so closely bound together are moral and religious training that a discussion of one without the other would be incomplete. in a word, religion is the most generic kind of culture as opposed to all systems or departments which are one sided. all education culminates in it because it is chief among human interests, and because it gives inner unity to the mind, heart, and will. how now should this common element of union be taught? to be really effective and lasting, moral and religious training must begin in the cradle. it was a profound remark of froebel that _the unconsciousness of a child is rest in god_. this need not be understood in guy pantheistic sense. from this rest in god the childish soul should not be abruptly or prematurely aroused. even the primeval stages of psychic growth are rarely so all-sided, so purely unsolicited, spontaneous, and unprecocious, as not to be in a sense a fall from froebel's unconsciousness or rest in god. the sense of touch, the mother of all the other senses, is the only one which the child brings into the world already experienced; but by the pats, caresses, hugs, etc., so instinctive with young mothers, varied feelings and sentiments are communicated to the child long before it recognizes its own body as distinct from things about it. the mother's face and voice are the first conscious objects as the infant soul unfolds, and she soon comes to stand in the very place of god to her child. all the religion of which the child is capable during this by no means brief stage of its development consists of those sentiments--gratitude, trust, dependence, love, etc., now felt only for her--which are later directed toward god. the less these are now cultivated toward the mother, who is now their only fitting if not their only possible object, the more feebly they will later be felt toward god. this, too, adds greatly to the sacredness and the responsibilities of motherhood. froebel perhaps is right that thus fundamental religious sentiments can be cultivated in the earliest months of infancy. it is of course impossible not to seem, perhaps even not to be, sentimental upon this theme, for the infant soul has no other content than sentiments, and because upon these rests the whole superstructure of religion in child or adult. the mother's emotions, and physical and mental states, indeed, imparted and reproduced in the infant so immediately, unconsciously, and through so many avenues, that it is no wonder that these relations see mystic. whether the mother is habitually under the influence of calm and tranquil emotions, or her temper is fluctuating or violent, or her movements are habitually energetic or soft and caressing, or she be regular or irregular in her ministrations to the infant in her arms, all these characteristics and habits are registered in the primeval language of touch upon the nervous system of the child. from this point of view, poise and calmness, the absence of all intense annuli and of sensations or transitions which are abrupt or sudden, and an atmosphere of quieting influences, like everything which retards by broadening, is in the general line of religious culture. the soul of an infant is well compared to a seed planted in a garden. it is not pressed or moved by the breezes which rustle the leaves overhead. the sunlight does not fall upon it, and even dew and evening coolness scarcely reach it; but yet there is not a breath of air or a ray of sunshine, nor a drop of moisture to which it is responsive, and which does not stir all its germinant forces. the child is a plant, must live out of doors in proper season, and there must be no forcing. religion, then, at this important stage, at least, is naturalism pure and simple, and religious training is the supreme art of standing out of nature's way. so implicit is the unity of soul and body at this formative age that care of the body is the most effective ethico-religious culture. next to be considered are the sentiments which unfold under the influence of that fresh and naive curiosity which attends the first impressions of natural objects from which both religion and science spring as from one common root. the awe and sublimity of a thunderstorm, the sights and sounds of a spring morning, objects which lead the child's thoughts to what is remote in time and space, old trees, ruins, the rocks, and, above all, the heavenly bodies--the utilization of these lessons is the most important task of the religious teacher during the _kindergarten_ stage of childhood. still more than the undevout astronomer, the undevout child under such influences is abnormal. in these directions the mind of the child is as open and plastic as that of the ancient prophet to the promptings of the inspiring spirit. the child can recognize no essential difference between nature and the supernatural, and the products of mythopoeic fancy which have been spun about natural objects, and which have lain so long and so warm about the hearts of generations and races of men, are now the best of all nutriments for the soul. to teach scientific rudiments only about nature, on the shallow principle that nothing should be taught which must be unlearned, or to encourage the child to assume the critical attitude of mind, is dwarfing the heart and prematurely forcing the head. it has been said that country life is religion for children at this stage. however this may be, it is clear that natural religion is rooted in such experiences, and precedes revealed religion in the order of growth and education, whatever its logical order in systems of thought may be. a little later, habits of truthfulness[ ] are best cultivated by the use of the senses in exact observation. to see a simple phenomenon in nature and report it fully and correctly is no easy matter, but the habit of trying to do so teaches what truthfulness is and leaves the impress of truth upon the whole life and character. i do not hesitate to say, therefore, that elements of science should be taught to children for the moral effects of its influences. at the same time all truth is not sensuous, and this training alone at this age tends to make the mind pragmatic, dry, and insensitive or unresponsive to that other kind of truth the value of which is not measured by its certainty so much as by its effect upon us. we must learn to interpret the heart and our native instincts as truthfully as we do external nature, for our happiness in life depends quite as largely upon bringing our beliefs into harmony with the deeper feelings of our nature as it does upon the ability to adapt ourselves to our physical environment. thus not only all religious beliefs and moral acts will strengthen if they truly express the character instead of cultivating affectation and insincerity in opinion, word, and deed, as with mistaken pedagogic methods they may do. this latter can be avoided only by leaving all to naturalism and spontaneity at first, and feeding the soul only according to its appetites and stage of growth. no religious truth must be taught as fundamental--especially as fundamental to morality--which can be seriously doubted or even misunderstood. yet it must be expected that convictions will be transformed and worked over and over again, and only late, if at all, will an equilibrium between the heart and the truth it clings to as finally satisfying be attained. hence most positive religious instruction, or public piety, if taught at all, should be taught briefly as most serious but too high for the child yet, or as rewards to stimulate curiosity for them later, but sacred things should not become too familiar or be conventionalized before they can be felt or understood. the child's conception of god should not be personal or too familiar _at first_, but he should appear distant and vague, inspiring awe and reverence far more than love; in a word, as the god of nature rather than as devoted to serviceable ministrations to the child's individual wants. the latter should be taught to be a faithful servant rather than a favorite of god. the inestimable pedagogic value of the god-idea consists in that it widens the child's glimpse of the whole, and gives the first presentment of the universality of laws, such as are observed in its experiences and that of others, so that all things seem comprehended under one stable system or government. the slow realization that god's laws are not like those of parents and teachers, evadible, suspensible, but changeless, and their penalties sure as the laws of nature, is most important factor of moral training. first the law, the schoolmaster, then the gospel; first nature, then grace, is the order of growth. the pains or pleasures which follow many acts are immediate, while the results that follow others are so remote or so serious that the child must utilize the experience of others. artificial rewards and punishments must be cunningly devised so as to simulate and typify as closely as possible the real natural penalty, and they must be administered uniformly and impartially like laws of nature. as commands are just, and as they are gradually perceived to spring from superior wisdom, respect arises, which kant called the bottom motive of duty, and defined as the immediate determination of the will by law, thwarting self-love. here the child reverences what is not understood as authority, and to the childish "why?" which always implies imperfect respect for the authority, however displeasing its behest, the teacher or parent should always reply, "you cannot understand why yet," unless quite sure that a convincing and controlling insight can be given, such as shall make all future exercise of outward authority in this particular unnecessary. from this standpoint the great importance of the character and native dignity of the teacher is best seen. daily contact with some teachers is itself all-sided ethical education for the child without a spoken precept. here, too, the real advantage of male over female teachers, especially for boys, is seen in their superior physical strength, which often, if highly estimated, gives real dignity and commands real respect, and especially in the unquestionably greater uniformity of their moods and their discipline. during the first years of school life, a point of prime importance in ethico-religious training is the education of conscience. this latter is the most complex and perhaps the most educable of all our so-called "faculties." a system of carefully arranged talks, with copious illustrations from history and literature, about such topics as fair play, slang, cronies, dress, teasing, getting mad, prompting in class, white lies, affectation, cleanliness, order, honor, taste, self-respect, treatment of animals, reading, vacation pursuits, etc., can be brought quite within the range of boy-and-girl interests by a sympathetic and tactful teacher, and be made immediately and obviously practical. all this is nothing more or less than conscience-building. the old superstition that children have innate faculties of such a finished sort that they flash up and grasp the principle of things by a rapid sort of first "intellection," an error that made all departments of education so trivial, assumptive and dogmatic for centuries before comenius, basedow and pestalozzi, has been banished everywhere save from moral and religious training, where it still persists in full force. the senses develop first, and all the higher intuitions called by the collective name of conscience gradually and later in life. they first take the form of sentiments without much insight, and are hence liable to be unconscious affectation, and are caught insensibly from the environment with the aid of inherited predisposition, and only made more definite by such talks as the above. but parents are prone to forget that healthful and correct sentiments concerning matters of conduct are, at first, very feeble, and that the sense of obligation needs the long and careful guardianship of external authority. just as a young medical student with a rudimentary notion of physiology and hygiene is sometimes disposed to undertake a more or less complete reform of his diet, regimen, etc., to make it "scientific" in a way that an older and a more learned physician would shrink from, so the half-insights of boys into matters of moral regimen are far too apt, in the american temperament, to expend, in precocious emancipation and crude attempts at practical realization, the force which is needed to bring their insights to maturity. authority should be relaxed gradually, explicitly, and provisionally over one definite department of conduct at a time. to distinguish right and wrong in their own nature is the highest and most complex of intellectual processes. most men and all children are guided only by associations of greater or less subtlety. perhaps the whole round of human duties might be best taught by gathering illustrations of selfishness and tracing it in its countless disguises and ramifications through every stage of life. selfishness is opposed to a sense of the infinite and is inversely as real religion, and the study of it is not, like systematic ethics, apt to be confused and made unpractical by conflicting theories. the bible, the great instrument in the education of conscience, is far less juvenile than it is now the fashion to suppose. at the very least, it expresses the result of the ripest human experience, the noblest traditions of humanity. old testament history, even more than most very ancient history, is distilled to an almost purely ethical content. for centuries scripture was withheld from the masses for the same reason that plato refused at first to put his thoughts into writing, because it would be sure to be misunderstood by very many and lead to that worst of errors and fanaticism caused by half-truths. children should not approach it too lightly. the old testament, perhaps before or more than the new, is the bible for childhood. a good, protracted course of the law pedagogically prepares the way for the apprehension of the gospel. then the study of the old testament should begin with selected tales, told, as in the german schools, impressively, in the teacher's language, but objectively, and without exegetical or hortatory comment. the appeal is directly to the understanding only at first, but the moral lesson is brought clearly and surely within the child's reach, but not personally applied after the manner common with us. probably the most important changes for the educator to study are those which begin between the ages of twelve and sixteen and are completed only some years later, when the young adolescent receives from nature a new capital of energy and altruistic feeling. it is physiological second birth, and success in life depends upon the care and wisdom with which this new and final invoice of energy is husbanded. these changes constitute a natural predisposition to a change of heart, and may perhaps be called, in kantian phrase, its _schema_. even from the psychophysic standpoint it is a correct instinct which has slowly led churches to center so much of their cultus upon regeneration. in this i, of course, only assert here the neurophysical side, which is everywhere present, even if everywhere subordinate to the spiritual side. as everywhere, so here, too, the physical may be called in a sense regulative rather than constitutive. it is therefore not surprising that statistics show that far more conversions, proportionately, take place during the adolescent period, which does not normally end before the age of twenty-four or five, than during any other period of equal length. at this age most churches confirm. before this age the child lives in the present, is normally selfish, deficient in sympathy, but frank and confidential, obedient to authority, and without affectation save the supreme affectation of childhood, viz., assuming the words, manners, habits, etc., of those older than itself. but now stature suddenly increases, and the power of physical and mental endurance and effort diminishes for a time; larynx, nose, chin change, and normal and morbid ancestral traits and features appear. far greater and more protracted, though unseen, are the changes which take place in the nervous system, both in the development of the cortex and expansion of the convolutions and the growth of association-fibers by which the elements shoot together and relation of things are seen, which hitherto seemed independent, to which it seems as if for a few years the energies of growth were chiefly directed. hence this period is so critical and changes in character are so rapid. no matter how confidential the relations with the parent may have been, an important domain of the soul now declares its independence. confidences are shared with those of equal age and withheld from parents, especially by boys, to an extent probably little suspected by most parents. education must be addressed to freedom, which recognizes only self-made law, and spontaneity of opinion and conduct is manifested, often in extravagant and grotesque forms. there is now a longing for that kind of close sympathy and friendship which makes cronies and intimates; there is a craving for strong emotions which gives pleasure in exaggerations; and there are nameless longings for what is far, remote, strange, which emphasizes the self-estrangement which hegel so well describes, and which marks the normal rise of the presentiment of something higher than self. instincts of rivalry and competition now grow strong in boys, and girls grow more conscientious and inward, and begin to feel their music, reading, religion, painting, etc., and to realize the bearing of these upon their future adult life. there is often a strong instinct of devotion and self-sacrifice toward some, perhaps almost any, object, or in almost any cause which circumstances may present. moodiness and perhaps a love of solitude are developed. "growing fits" make hard and severe labor of body and mind impossible without dwarfing or arresting the development, by robbing of its nutrition some part of the organism--stomach, lungs, chest, heart, back, brain, etc.--which is peculiarly liable to disease later. it is never so hard to tell the truth plainly and objectively and without any subjective twist. the life of the mere individual ceases and that of person, or better, of the race, begins. it is a period of realization, and hence often of introspection. in healthy natures it is the golden age of life, in which enthusiasm, sympathy, generosity, and curiosity are at their strongest and best, and when growth is so rapid that, e.g., each college class is conscious of a vast interval of development which separates it from the class below; but it is also a period subject to wertherian crises, such as hume, richter, j.s. mill, and others passed through, and all depends on the direction given to these new forces. the dangers of this period are great and manifest. the chief of these, far greater even than the dangers of intemperance, is that the sexual elements of soul and body will be developed prematurely and disproportionately. indeed, early maturity in this respect is itself bad. if it occurs before other compensating and controlling powers are unfolded, this element is hypertrophied and absorbs and dwarfs their energy and it is then more likely to be uninstructed and to suck up all that is vile in the environment. far more than we realize, the thoughts and feelings of youth center about this factor of his nature. quite apart, therefore, from its intrinsic value, education should serve the purpose of preoccupation, and should divert attention from an element of our nature the premature or excessive development of which dwarfs every part of soul and body. intellectual interests, athleticism, social and esthetic tastes, should be cultivated. there should be some change in external life. previous routine and drill-work must be broken through and new occupations resorted to, that the mind may not be left idle while the hands are mechanically employed. attractive home-life, friendships well chosen and on a high plane, and regular habits, should of course be cultivated. now, too, though the intellect is not frequently judged insane, so that pubescent insanity is comparatively rare, the feelings, which are yet more fundamental to mental sanity, are most often perverted, and lack of emotional steadiness, violent and dangerous impulses, unreasonable conduct, lack of enthusiasm and sympathy, are very commonly caused by abnormalities here. neurotic disturbances, such as hysteria, chorea, and, in the opinion of some physicians, sick-headache and early dementia are peculiarly liable to appear and become seated during this period. in short, the previous selfhood is broken up like the regulation copy handwriting of early school years, and a new individual is in process of crystallization. all is solvent, plastic, peculiarly susceptible to external influences. between love and religion, god and nature have wrought a strong and indissoluble bond. flagellations, fasts, exposure, excessive penances of many kinds, the hindoo cultus of quietude, and mental absorption in vacuity and even one pedagogic motive of a cultus of the spiritual and supernatural, e. g. in the symposium of plato, are all designed as palliatives and alteratives of degraded love. change of heart before pubescent years, there are several scientific reasons for thinking means precocity and forcing. the age signalized by the ancient greeks as that at which the study of what was comprehensively called music should begin, the age at which roman guardianship ended, as explained by sir henry maine, at which boys are confirmed in the modern greek, catholic, lutheran and episcopal churches, and at which the child jesus entered the temple, is as early as any child ought consciously to go about his heavenly father's business. if children are instructed in the language of these sentiments too early, the all-sided deepening and broadening of soul and of conscience which should come with adolescent years will be incomplete. revival sermon which the writer has heard preached to very young children are analogous to exhorting them to imagine themselves married people and inculcating the duties of that relation. it is because this precept is violated in the intemperate haste for immediate results that we may so often hear childish sentiments and puerile expressions so strangely mingled in the religious experience of otherwise apparently mature adults, which remind one of a male voice constantly modulating from manly tones into boyish falsetto. some one has said of very early risers that they were apt to be conceited all the forenoon, and stupid and uninteresting all the afternoon and evening. so, too, precocious infant christians are apt to be conceited and full of pious affectations all the forenoon of life, and thereafter commonplace enough in their religious life. one is reminded of aristotle's theory of catharsis, according to which the soul was purged of strong or bad passions by listening to vivid representations of them on the stage. so, by the forcing method we deprecate, the soul is given just enough religious stimulus to act as an inoculation against deeper and more serious interest later. at this age the prescription of a series of strong feelings is very apt to cause attention to concentrate on physical states in a way which may culminate in the increased activity of the passional nature, or may induce that sort of self-flirtation which is expressed in morbid love of autobiographic confessional outpourings, or may issue in the supreme selfishness of incipient and often unsuspected hysteria. those who are led to christ normally by obeying conscience are not apt to endanger the foundation of their moral character if they should later chance to doubt the doctrine of verbal inspiration or some of the miracles, or even get confused about the trinity, because their religious nature is not built on the sand. the art of leading young men through college without ennobling or enlarging any of the religious notions of childhood is anti-pedagogic and unworthy philosophy, and is to leave men puerile in the highest department of their nature. at the age we have indicated, when the young man instinctively takes the control of himself into his own hands, previous ethico-religious training should be brought to a focus and given a personal application, which, to be most effective, should probably, in most cases, be according to the creed of the parent. it is a serious and solemn epoch, and ought to be fittingly signalised. morality now needs religion, which cannot have affected life much before. now duties should be recognised as divine commands, for the strongest motives, natural and supernatural, are needed for the regulation of the new impulses, passions, desires, half insights, ambitions, etc., which come to the american temperament so suddenly before the methods of self-regulation can become established and operative. now a deep personal sense of purity and impurity are first possible, and indeed inevitable, and this natural moral tension is a great opportunity to the religious teacher. a serious sense of god within, and of responsibilities which transcend this life as they do the adolescent's power of comprehension; a feeling for duties deepened by a realization and experience of their conflict such as some have thought to be the origin of religion itself in the soul--these, too, are elements of the "theology of the heart" revealed at this age to every serious youth, but to the judicious emphasis and utilization of which, the teacher should lend his consummate skill. while special lines of interest leading to a career must be now well grounded, there must also be a culture of the ideal and an absorption in general views and remote and universal ends. if all that is pure and disciplining in what is transcendent, whether to the christian believers, the poet or the philosopher, had even been devised only for the better regulation of human energies set free at this age, but not yet fully defined or realized, they would still have a most potent justification on this ground alone. at any rate, what is often wasted in excess here, if husbanded, ripens into philosophy, the larger love to the world, the true and the good, in a sense not unlike that in the symposium of plato. finally, there is danger lest this change, as prescribed and formulated by the church, be too sudden and violent, and the capital of moral force which should last a lifetime be consumed in a brief, convulsive effort, like the sudden running down of a watch if its spring be broken. piety is naturally the slowest because the most comprehensive kind of growth. quetelet says that the measure of the state of civilization in a nation is the way in which it achieves its revolutions. as it becomes truly civilized, revolutions cease to be sudden and violent, and become gradually transitory and without abrupt change. the same is true of that individual crisis which psycho-physiology describes as adolescence, and of which theology formulates a higher spiritual potency as conversion. the adolescent period lasts ten years or more, during all of which development of every sort is very rapid and constant, and it is, as already remarked, intemperate haste for immediate results, of reaping without sowing, which has made so many regard change of heart as an instantaneous conquest rather than as a growth, and persistently to forget that there is something of importance before and after it in healthful religious experience. [footnote : see author's boy life, in massachusetts country town forty years ago. pedagogical seminary, june, , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : those interested in school statistics may value the record kept by a swabian schoolmaster named hauberle, extending over fifty-one years and seven months' experience as a teacher, as follows: , blows with a cane; , with a rod; , with a ruler; , with the hand; , over the mouth; , boxes on the ear; , , snaps on the head; , nota benes with bible, catechism, hymnbook and grammar; times boys had to kneel on peas; times on triangular blocks of wand; , had to carry a timber mare; and, , hold the rod high; the last two being punishments of his own invention. of the blows with the cane , were for latin vowels, and , of those with the rod for bible verses and hymns. he used a scolding vocabulary of over , terms, of which one-third were of his own invention.] [footnote : for most recent and elaborate study of children's lies see zeitschrift für pädagogische psychologie, pathologie und hygiene, juli, . jahrgang , heft , pp. - .] * * * * * glossary agamic. unmarried; unmarriageable, sometimes non-sexed. agenic. lacking in reproductive power; sterile. amphimixis. that form of reproduction which involves the mingling of substance from two individuals so as to effect a mixture of hereditary characteristics. it includes the phenomena of conjugation and fertilization among both unicellular and multicellular organisms. anabolism. _see_ metabolism. anamnesic. pertaining to or aiding recollection. anemic. deficient in blood; bloodless. anthropomorphism. the attributing of human characteristics to natural, supernatural, or divine beings. anthropometry. science of measurement of the human body. artifact. any artificial product. aphasia. impairment or lose of the ability to understand or use speech. associationism. the psychological theory which regards the laws of association as the fundamental laws of mental action and development. atavistic. pertaining to reversion through the influence of heredity to remote ancestral characteristics. ataxic. pertaining to inability to coördinate voluntary movements; irregular. calamo-papyrus. reed papyrus or pen-paper. catabolism. _see_ metabolism. catharsis. purgation or cleansing. aristotle's esthetic theory that little renders immune for much. cerebration. brain action, conscious or unconscious. chorea. st. vitus's dance; a nervous disease marked by irregular and involuntary movements of the limbs and face. chrestomathy. a collection of extracts and choice pieces. christenthum. the christian belief; the spirit of christianity. commando exercises. gymnastic exercises whose order is dependent upon the spoken command of the director. cortex. the gray matter of the brain, mostly on its surface. cortical. pertaining to the cortex. craniometry. the measurement of skulls. cryptogamous. having an obscure mode of fertilization; or, of plants that do not blossom. cultus. a system of religious belief and worship. deutschenthum. the spirit of the german people. diathesis. a constitutional predisposition. ephebic. pertaining to the greek system of instruction given to young men to fit them for citizenship; adolescent. epigoni. successors; followers who only follow. epistemology. the theory of knowledge; that branch of logic which undertakes to explain how knowledge is possible and to define its limitations, meaning, and worth. eupeptic. having good digestion. euphoria. the sense of well-being; of fullness of life. eviration. emasculation; loss of manly characteristics. feral. wild by nature; untamed; undomesticated. formicary. an artificial ants' nest. gemÜth. disposition; the entire affective soul and its habitual state. hebetude. dullness; stupidity. hedonistic. relating to hedonism, that form of greek philosophy which taught that pleasure is the chief end of existence. hetaera. a greek courtesan. this class was often highly trained in music and social art, and represented the highest grade of culture among greek women. heterogeny. ( ) the spontaneous generation of animals and vegetables, low in the scale of organization, from inorganic elements. ( ) that kind of generation in which the parent, whether plant or animal, produces offspring differing in structure or habit from itself, but in which after one or more generations the original form reappears. heteronomous. having a different name. horology. the science of measuring time and of constructing instruments for that purpose. hygeia. the greek goddess of health; health. hypermethodic. methodic to excess; overmethodic. hypertrophy. excessive growth. indiscerptible. incapable of being destroyed by separation of parts. inhibition. interference with the normal result of a nervous excitement by an opposing force. irradiation. the diffusion of nervous stimuli out of the path of normal discharge which, as a result of the excitation of a peripheral end organ may excite other central organs than those directly connected with it. kinesological. pertaining to the science of tests and measurements of bodily strength. kinesometer. an instrument for measuring muscular strength. medullation. the investment of nerve fibers with a protective covering or medullary sheath, consisting of white, fat-like matter. meristic. pertaining to the levels or spinal and cerebral segments of the body. metabolism. the act or process by which, on the one hand, dead food is built up into living matter--anabolism, and by which, on the other, the living matter is broken down into simpler products within a cell or organism--catabolism. metamorphosis. change of form or structure; transformation. metempsychosis. the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul from one body to another. monophrastic. pertaining to or consisting of a single phrase. monotechnic. pertaining to a single art or craft. morphology. the science of form and structure of plants and animals without regard to function. myology. the scientific knowledge of the muscular system. mythopoeic. producing or having a tendency to produce myths. noetic. of, pertaining to, or conceived by, mind. nuance. slight shade; difference; distinction; degree. orthogenic. pertaining to right beginning and development. orthopedic. relating to the art of curing deformities. ossuary. a depository of dry bones. paleopsychic. pertaining to the antiquity of the soul. pantheistic. relating to that doctrine which holds that the entire phenomenal universe, including man and nature, is the ever-changing manifestation of god, who rises to self-consciousness and personality only in man. patristics. that department of study occupied with the doctrines and writings of the fathers of the christian church. phobia. excessive or morbid fear of anything. phyletically. in accordance with the phylum or race; racially. phyletic. pertaining to a race or clan. phylogeny. the history of the evolution of a species or group; tribal history; ancestral development as opposed to ontogeny or the development of the individual. phylum. a term introduced by haeckel to designate the great branches of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. each phylum may include several classes. pickelhaube. the spiked helmet of the german army. plankton. sea animals and plants collectively; distinguished from coast or bottom forms and floating in a great mass. polygamic (love). pertaining to the habit of having more than one mate of the opposite sex. polyphrastic. having many phrases; pertaining to rambling, incoherent speech. post-simian. pertaining to an age later than that in which simian or monkey-like forms prevailed. prenubile. pertaining to the age before sexual maturity or marriageability is reached. prie dieu. a praying desk. propedeutic. preliminary; introductory. prophylactic. any medicine or measure efficacious in preventing disease. pseudophobiac. pertaining to a morbid condition in which the subject is continually in fear of having said something not strictly true. psychogenesis. the origin and development of soul. psychonomic. pertaining to the laws of mind. psychosis. mental constitution or condition; any change in consciousness, especially if abnormal. puberty. the age of sexual maturity. pubescent. relating to the dawning of puberty. pygmoid. of pygmy size and form. rabulist. a chronic wrangler; one who argues about everything. schema. a synopsis; a summary. in the kantian sense, a general type. schematism. an outline of any systematic arrangement; an outline. superfoetation. a second conception some time after a prior one, by which two foetuses of different age exist together in the same female. often used figuratively. temibility. (from italian _temibile_, to be feared.) the principle of adjustment of penalty to crime in just that degree necessary to prevent a repetition of the criminal act. tic. a nervous affection of the muscles; a twitching. transcendental. in the kantian system having an _a priori_ character, transcending experience, presupposed in and necessary to experience. traumata. wounds. traumatism. a wound; any morbid condition produced by wounds or other external violence. verbigeration. the continual utterance of certain words or phrases at short intervals, without reference to their meaning, as seen in insane _gedankenflucht_ or rapid flight of thought. index * * * * * abstract words, need of accessory and fundamental movement accuracy of memory overdone activity of children, motor adolescence biography and literature of characterized agriculture alternations of physical and psychic states altruism of country children of woman, cutlet for amphimixis, psychic, basis of anger anthropometry and ideal of gymnastics arboreal life and the hand art study arts and crafts movement associations devised or guided by adults astronomy athletic festivals in greece athletics as a conversation topic dangers and defects of records in attention fostered by _commando_ exercises rhythm in spontaneous authority and adolescence autobiographies of boyhood automatisms motor, causes and kinds of control and serialization of danger of premature control of desirable bachelor women basal muscles, development of basal powers, development of bathing beauty, age of feminine belief, habit and muscle determining bible, the influence of, in adolescence methods of teaching study of, for girls study of, in german method of will training study of, order in study of, postponed study of, preparation for biography and adolescence blood vessels, expansion at puberty blushing, characteristic of puberty body training, greek botany boxing boys age of little affection in dangers of coeducation for differences between, and girls latitude in conduct and studies of, before puberty puberty in, characteristics of brain action, unity in bullying bushido cakewalk castration, functional in women catharsis, aristotle's theory of character and muscles children faults and crimes of motor activity of motor defects of selfishness of chivalry, medieval chorea christianity, muscular chums and cronies church, feminity in the city children vs. country children civilized men, savages physically superior to climbing hill muscles, age for exercise of coeducation, dangers in college coeducation in english requirements of woman's ideal school and combat, personal, as exercise _commando_ exercises restricted for girls concentration concreteness in modern language study, criticized conduct mechanized of italian schoolboys tabulated weather and confessionalism of young women passional inducement to conflict, _see_ combat control nervous, through dancing of anger of brute instincts of children's movements conversation, athletics in degeneration in, causes of conversion coördination loosened at adolescence inherited tendencies of muscular corporal punishment country children vs. city children crime, juvenile causes of education and reading and cruelty, a juvenile fault culture heroes dancing deadly sins, the seven, vs. modern juvenile faults debate and will-training doll curve domesticity dramatic instinct of puberty drawing, curve of stages of dueling education art in crime and industrial intellectual manual moral and religious of boys of girls physical effort, as a developing force emotions dancing completest language of the religion directed to endurance energy and laziness english language and literature, pedagogy of pedagogic degeneration in, causes of requirements of college sense language, dangers of _ennui_ erect position and true life ethics, study of, criticized ethical judgments of children euphoria and exercise evolution, movement as a measure of exercise health and measurements and music and nascent periods and rhythm and farm work fatigue at puberty chores and not a cause for punishment play and restlessness expressive of result of labor with defective psychic impulsion rhythm of activity and will-culture and faults of children favorite sounds and words fecundity of college women femininity in the church in the school and college feminists fighting flogging foreign languages, dangers of france, religious training in friendships of adolescence fundamental and accessory future life, as a school teaching games groups panhellenic gangs, organized juvenile genius, early development of germany, will-training in girl graduates aversion to marriage of fecundity of sterility of girls and boys, differences between coeducation for, dangers of education of education of, humanistic education of, manners in education of, more difficult than of boys education of, nature in education of, regularity in education of, religion in ideal school and curriculum for overdrawing their energy grammar, place of greece, athletic festivals in greek body training group games growth at puberty gymnastics and its effect on of muscle structure and function, measure of periods rhythmic gymnastics effect on growth, its ideal of, and anthropometry ideals, its four unharmonized, and military ideals and nascent periods and patriotism and proportion and measurement for, criticized swedish habits and muscle hand and arboreal life health, exercise and of girls heredity, a factor in development high school, the coeducation in language study and hill-climbing historic interest, growth of home, restraint of, detrimental honor, among hoodlums in sports hoodlums hysteria imagination, at puberty of children play and individuality, growth of, at puberty industrial education industry and movement inhibition intellect, adolescence in intemperance knightly ideas of youth knowing and doing language, concreteness in, degeneration through dangers of, through eye and hand precision curve of _vs_. literature latin, danger of laughter laziness and energy lies literary men, youth of women, youth of literature and adolescence language _vs_. machinery and movement mammae, loss of function of manners in girls' education manual training defects and criticisms of difficulties of marriage, dangers in delay of influenced by coeducation influenced by college training mastery in art-craft, equipment for maternity, dangers of deferred measurements and exercise memory, accuracy, age, and kinds of sex curve of types of military drill ideals and gymnastics mind and motility money sense monthly period and sabbath motherhood, training for motor, activity, primitive automatisms defects of children defects, general economies powers, general growth of precocity psychoses, muscles and recaptulation regularity movement and industry movements, passive precocity of muscle tension and thought muscles, per cent by weight of body character and motor psychoses and small, and thought will and muscular christianity music and exercise myths, study of nascent periods and exercises nature in girls' education obedience panhellenic games passive movements patriotism and gymnastics peace, man's normal state periodicity in growth in women philology, dangers of plasticity of growth at puberty play course of study imagination and prehistoric activity and problem sex and stages and ages of work and plays and games, codification of precocity, motor in the motor sphere predatory organizations primitive motor activity punishments in school, causes of reading age crime and curve reason, development of recapitulation and motor heredity records in athletics regularity in education of girls religious training, age for for girls in europe premature two methods of retardation as a means of broadening revivalists rhythm, exercise and in primitive activities of work and rest savages physically superior to civilized men school, language study in need of enthusiasm in punishments in, causes of reading in scientific men, youth of sedentary life selfishness of children sex, play and sports and slang curve value of sleep, in education of girls sloyd, origin, aims, criticism of social activities organizations of youth solitude sounds, favorite, and words sports, values of different codification of sexual influence in team work in spurtiness sterility of girl graduates story-telling, interest in struggle-for-lifeurs students' associations stuttering and stammering swedish gymnastics swimming talent, early development of teachers, aversions to team spirit technical courses, need of telegraphic skill temibility theft, juvenile thought and muscle tension transitory nature of youthful experiences tree life and erect posture truancy truth-telling turner movement unmarried women, dangers to vagabondage vagrancy virility in the church weather and conduct will, muscles and training womanly, the eternal women, bachelors dangers to, in not marrying education of, ideal young, confessionalism of work at its best, play play and rest and, rhythm of wrestling young men's christian association * * * * * international education series. * * * * * an ideal school; or, looking forward. by preston w. search, honorary fellow in clark university. with an introduction by pres. g. stanley hall. vol. . mo. cloth, $ . net. "i am not concerned that the things presented in this little constructive endeavor will not find bodily incorporation in schools; for it is cross-fertilization and not grafting that has given us our richest varieties of fruits and flowers. this work is an attempt at spirit, not letter; at principle, not method."--_from the author's preface_. "a book i wish i could have written myself; and i can think of no single educational volume in the world-wide range of literature in this field that i believe so well calculated to do so much good at the present time, and which i could so heartily advise every teacher in the land, of whatever grade, to read and ponder."--_pres. g. stanley hall, clark university_. "it is to my mind the most stimulating book that has appeared for a long time. the conception here set forth of the function of the school is, i believe, the broadest and best that has been formulated. the chapter on illustrative methods is worth more than all the books on 'method' that i know of. the diagrams and tables are very convincing. i am satisfied that the author has given us an epoch-making book."--_henry h. goddard, ph.d., state normal school, west chester, pa_. "i received a copy of 'an ideal school,' and i am satisfied that i made no mistake when i, with the other two members of the book committee, recommended the book to the teachers in our county."--_j.g. dundore, lycoming county, pennsylvania_. "certainly one of the most notable books on education published in many years"--_p.p. claxton, editor atlantic educational journal_. "you have done the cause of real education an important service. this book is, in my opinion, one of the most useful in the international education series."--_albert leonard, editor of the journals of pedagogy_. * * * * * d. appleton and company, new york. dickens as an educator. by james i. hughes, inspector of schools, toronto. vol. . mo. cloth, $ . . adopted by several state teachers' reading circles. all teachers have read dickens's novels with pleasure. probably few, however have presumably thought definitely of him as a great educational reformer. but inspector hughes demonstrates that such is his just title. william t. harris says of "dickens as an educator": "this book is sufficient to establish the claim for dickens as an educational reformer. he has done more than any one else to secure for the child considerate treatment of his tender age. dickens stands apart and alone as one of the most potent influences of social reform in the nineteenth century, and therefore deserves to be read and studied by all who have to do with schools, and by all parents everywhere in our day and generation." professor hughes asserts that "dickens was the most profound exponent of the kindergarten and the most comprehensive student of childhood that england has yet produced." the book brings into connected form, under proper headings, the educational principles of this most sympathetic friend of children. "mr. james l. hughes has just published a book that will rank as one of the finest appreciations of dickens ever written."--_colorado school journal._ "mr. hughes has brought together in an interesting and most effective manner the chief teachings of dickens on educational subjects. his extracts make the reader feel again the reality of dickens's descriptions and the power of the appeal that he made for a saner, kindlier, more inspiring pedagogy, and thus became, through his immense vogue, one of the chief instrumentalities working for the new education."--_wisconsin journal of education._ images generously made available by internet archive (https://archive.org) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/introductiontops mbp an introduction to psychology by wilhelm wundt professor of philosophy in the university of leipsic translated from the second german edition by rudolf pintner, m. a. (edin.), ph. d., (leipsic) publication of the "pädagogische literatur gesellschaft neue bahnen" london: george allen & unwin, ltd. ruskin house, museum st. w. c. i. published --reprint author's preface it is not the intention of this introduction to psychology to discuss the scientific or philosophical conceptions of psychology, or even to make a survey of the investigations and their results. what this little book attempts is rather to introduce the reader to the principal thoughts underlying present-day experimental psychology, leaving out many facts and methods which would be necessary for a thorough study of the subject. to omit all mention of experimental methods and their results is at the present day impossible. yet we only need to consider a comparatively small number of results of the first importance in order to comprehend the basal principles of the new psychology. to characterise the methods of this psychology it would be impossible to omit all reference to experiments, but we can and will omit reference to the more or less complicated instruments on which the carrying out of such experiments depends. i must refer the reader who wishes a fuller account of the new psychology to my _outlines of psychology_, which also contains the necessary bibliography of the subject. w. wundt. leipsic, june . translator's note the present volume is a popular introduction to the wundtian psychology. it is a shorter and simpler sketch than the same author's _outlines of psychology_, and it should prove invaluable to the english-speaking student who wishes to gain some conception of the subject before entering upon a deeper study of the same. its popularity in germany has been phenomenal. in translating the work the translator has, as far as possible, used the same english terms as those employed in the translations of wundt by judd and titchener. he is greatly indebted to mr. robert wilson, m.a., b. sc., for his advice and help in reading over the manuscript before going to press. rudolf pintner. edinburgh, may . contents chapter i consciousness and attention psychology as a description of processes of consciousness--the metronome--the rhythmical disposition of consciousness--the scope of consciousness--the threshold of consciousness--the fixation-point and field of consciousness--the focus of attention--the scope of attention--apprehension and apperception chapter ii the elements of consciousness psychical elements and compounds--sensation and idea--memory images and perceptions--quality and intensity of sensations--feelings--difference between sensation and feeling--the three pairs of feelings--the affective process--emotions and moods--volitional processes--motives--instinctive, voluntary, and discriminative actions--the qualities of feelings--feeling and apperception chapter iii association associations and apperceptions--the fusion of tones into clangs--spatial and temporal perception --assimilation and dissimilation--direct and reproduced forms of the same--complications--the recognition and cognition of objects--successive association--the so-called "feeling of familiarity"--secondary ideas --the affective processes in recognition--the so-called states of consciousness in forgetting, remembering, &c. --memory associations chapter iv apperception general characteristics of apperceptive combinations as compared to associations--the aggregate idea and its analysis--concrete and abstract thought--speech and thought--understanding and imagination--examples of primitive forms of speech in the language of primitive races--development of apperceptive combinations out of associative ones--inadequacy of the method of introspection in dealing with the psychological problems of thought--psychology of language and race chapter v the laws of psychical life the relation between psychical and natural laws--the psycho-physical individual--the question as to the universal validity of the laws--the principle of creative resultants--the principle of heterogony of ends--the principle of conditioning relations--the principle of intensifying contrasts--the psychological and physical standpoints--relation between physical and psychical values--physical and psychical elements--the nature of the soul--mythological views--the "substance" hypothesis--the principle of the actuality of mind an introduction to psychology chapter i consciousness and attention if psychologists are asked, what the business of psychology is, they generally make some such answer as follows, if they belong to the empirical school: that this science has to investigate the facts of consciousness, its combinations and relations, so that it may ultimately discover the laws which govern these relations and combinations. now although this definition seems quite perfect, it is really to some extent a vicious circle. for if we ask further, what is this consciousness which psychology investigates? the answer will be, "it consists of the sum total of facts of which we are conscious." in spite of this, our definition is the simplest, and therefore for the present it will be well for us to keep to it. all objects of experience have this peculiarity, namely, that we cannot really define them but only point to them, and if they are of a complex nature analyse them into their separate qualities. such an analysis we call a description. we will therefore best be able to answer more accurately the question as to the nature of psychology by describing as exactly as possible all the separate qualities of that consciousness, the content of which psychological investigation has to deal with. for this purpose let us make use of a little instrument to help us--an instrument well known to all who have studied music, i.e. the metronome. it is really nothing more than a clockwork with an upright standing pendulum, on which a sliding weight is attached, so that beats may follow each other at equal intervals in greater or less rapidity. if the weight is fixed at the upper end of the pendulum, the beats follow each other at an interval of two seconds; if at the lower end, the interval is shortened to about a third of a second. between these limits every different length of beat can be produced. we can, however, increase these limits considerably by taking off the sliding weight altogether. now the lower limit falls to a quarter of a second. similarly we can obtain any longer time we choose with a sufficient degree of accuracy, if we have some one to help us. instead of letting the pendulum swing of its own accord, the assistant moves it backwards and forwards with his hand, measuring off the longer interval fixed upon, by means of a watch, that marks the seconds. this instrument is not only very useful for teaching singing and music, but it is also a psychological apparatus of the simplest kind. in psychology, as we shall see, we can use it for so many purposes that we are almost justified in saying that with its help we can demonstrate the most important part of the psychology of consciousness. in order to be able to do this the instrument must satisfy one requirement, which every instrument does not possess. the strength of the beats must be sufficiently uniform, so that even to the most attentive listener differences in the intensity of the successive beats may not be noticed. to test an instrument in this respect, we proceed thus. we subjectively emphasise the one beat and then the other, as the two following rows of notes show:-- [illustration] this diagram represents the separate beats by notes, and the accent shows those beats that are subjectively emphasised. row a shows an ascending beat, and row b a descending one. now if it happens that we can at will hear into the beats of the metronome an ascending or a descending beat (a or b), i.e. we can hear one and the same beat now emphasised and now unemphasised, then we may regard the instrument as suitable for all the psychological experiments to be described in the following pages. although the experiment described was only meant to serve as a test for the metronome, yet we can derive from it a remarkable psychological result. for we notice in this experiment that it is really extraordinarily difficult to hear the beats in absolutely the same intensity, or, to put it in other words, to hear unrhythmically. again and again we recur to the ascending or descending beat. we can express this phenomenon in this sentence: our consciousness is rhythmically disposed. the reason of this scarcely lies in a specific quality, peculiar to consciousness alone, but it clearly stands in the closest relationship to our whole psycho-physical organisation. consciousness is rhythmically disposed, because the whole organism is rhythmically disposed. the movements of the heart, of breathing, of walking, take place rhythmically. in a normal state we certainly are not aware of the pulsations of the heart, but we do feel the movements of breathing, and they act upon us as very weak stimuli. above all, the movements of walking form a very clear and recognisable background to our consciousness. now our means of locomotion are in a certain sense natural pendulums, the movements of which generally follow with a certain regularity, as with the pendulum of the metronome. therefore whenever we receive impressions in consciousness at similar stated intervals, we arrange them in a rhythmical form similar to that of our own outward movements. the special form of rhythm, ascending or descending, is within certain limits left to our own free choice, just as with the movements of locomotion, which may take the form of walking, of running, of jumping, and lastly of all different kinds of dances. our consciousness is not a thing separated from our whole physical and mental being, but a collection of the contents that are most important for the mental side of this being. we can obtain a further result from the experiment with the metronome described above, if we change the length of the ascending or descending row of beats. in our diagram each row, a and b, contains sixteen separate beats, or, taking one rise and fall together, eight double beats. if we listen attentively to a row of beats of this length when the metronome is going at a medium rapidity of, say, to / seconds, and then after a short pause repeat a row of exactly the same length, we recognise immediately the identity of the two. in the same way a difference will be immediately noticed, if the second row is only by one beat longer or shorter than the first. it is immaterial whether we beat in ascending or descending rhythm. now it is obvious that such an immediate recognition of the identity of two successive rows is only possible if each of them is in consciousness as a whole. it is not at all necessary for both of them to be in consciousness at the same time. we can see at once that consciousness must grasp them as wholes, if we consider for one moment an analogous case, e.g. the recognition of a complex visual image. if we look, for example, at a regular hexagon for a short time, and then cast another glance at the same figure, we recognise at once that both images are identical. such a recognition is impossible if we divide the figure up into several parts and show these parts separately. just as the two visual images appeared in consciousness as wholes, so must each of our rows of beats appear as a whole, if the second is to call up a similar impression to the first. the difference consists in this, that the hexagon was perceived in all its parts at once, whereas the beats followed each other in succession. just because they follow in this way, such a row of beats possesses this advantage, that we can thereby determine precisely how far we can extend such a row so that it is still possible to grasp it in consciousness as a whole. it has been proved by such experiments that sixteen successive beats, alternately rising and falling, or so-called / time, is the maximum for such a row, in order that all the separate elements may still find room in our consciousness. we may therefore consider such a row as a measure for the scope of consciousness under these given conditions. at the same time it appears that this measure is, between certain limits, independent of the rapidity of succession of the beats. a grasping together of the row as a whole becomes, however, impossible, when the beats follow each other so slowly that no rhythm may be heard, or when the rapidity is so great that the / time is lost, and the mind tries to group the beats together in a more complicated rhythm. the former limit lies at about / seconds, and the latter at second. when we take the longest row of beats that can be grasped together as one whole in consciousness under the given conditions and call this the scope of consciousness, it is of course obvious that we do not mean by this expression the total content of consciousness that is present at one given moment. we mean only to denote the maximum scope of one single complex whole. let us picture consciousness for a moment as a plane surface of a limited extension. then our scope of consciousness is one diameter of this surface, and not the whole extent. there may at the same time be many other elements of consciousness scattered about beside the ones we are just measuring. they can, however, in general be left out of account, since in a case such as ours consciousness will be directed to the content that is being measured, and the elements outside of this will be unclear, fluctuating, and isolated. the scope of consciousness, in accordance with our definition, is a relatively constant value, if we keep to a special time, e.g. the / time. it does not change with a different rapidity of beat within the above-mentioned limits. a change in the time, however, exercises great influence. such a change is to some extent dependent upon our will. we can hear into our uniform row of beats not only a simple / time, but a more complicated rhythm, e.g. the following / time:-- [illustration: letter diagram; cardboard with point in the middle.] such a row arises if we let different intensities of accent enter, say the strongest at the beginning of the row, a medium one in the middle, and a weak one in the middle of each of the two halves of the whole row, as in the diagram above. the strongest emphasis is denoted by three accents, the medium one by two, and the weak ones by one. this transition to more complicated rhythms is to a great degree dependent upon the rapidity of the beat, as well as upon our will. with long intervals it is very difficult to go beyond the simple / time. with short ones a certain exertion is necessary to withstand the impulse of transition to more complicated rhythms. when listening unconcernedly to the beats of the metronome when the interval between the beats is / second or less, the above-described / time generally appears. this groups together eight beats into one unity, whereas the / time only embraces two beats. now if we measure the scope of consciousness for such a complicated row of beats, we find that five bars of / time can be grouped together and grasped as a whole; and if this row is repeated after a short interval, it can be recognised as identical with the preceding row. here, then, we have forty beats as the scope of consciousness for this complicated rhythm, whereas with the most simple rhythmical arrangement we had only sixteen beats. this scope of forty seems to be the greatest we can attain by any means. we can, it is true, voluntarily call forth more complicated rhythmic arrangements, e.g. / time. but such an increase in the number of beats in the rhythmic arrangement demands a certain exertion, and the length of the row that can be grouped together as one whole does not increase, but decreases. in these experiments a further remarkable quality of consciousness appears, which is closely connected to the rhythmical disposition of consciousness. the three degrees of emphasis, which the diagram of / time shows, form a maximum of differentiation which cannot be surpassed. counting the unaccented beat as well, we arrive at a scale of intensity of four grades as the highest limit in the gradation of the intensity of impressions. this value clearly determines the rhythmical arrangement of the whole row, and with it the comprehension of this in consciousness, just as on the contrary the rhythm of the beats determines the number of gradations in intensity, which are necessary in the arrangement of the row of beats as supports for the comprehension by consciousness. both factors therefore stand in close relationship to each other. the rhythmical disposition of consciousness demands certain limits for the number of grades of emphasis, and these on their part demand that specific rhythmical disposition which is peculiar to the human consciousness. the more extensive the rows of beats become, which we join together in the experiments described, the more clearly does another important phenomenon of consciousness appear. if we pay attention to the relation between a beat, perceived in a certain given moment, and one that has immediately preceded it, and if we further compare this latter with a beat further back in the row that is being grouped together as a whole, differences of a certain kind between all these impressions appear. they are quite different from the variations in intensity and emphasis. to describe them we do best to make use of expressions, which were first of all formed in all languages to describe the perception of visual impressions, where the same differences also appear and are relatively independent of differences in the intensity of light. these expressions are "clearness" and "distinctness." their meanings almost coincide, but still they differ inasmuch as they denote different sides of the faculty of perception. "clearness" refers more to the special constitution of the impression itself; "distinctness" to the relation of the impression to other impressions from which it seems to stand out. let us transfer these conceptions in a generalised sense to the content of consciousness. one row of beats clearly shows in each of its separate elements the most varying degrees of clearness and distinctness. they all in a regular manner bear upon the beat that is affecting consciousness at the moment. this beat is the one that is most clear and most distinct. the ones immediately preceding are most like this one, whereas those that lie further back lose more and more in clearness. if the beat furthest away lies so far back that the impression has absolutely disappeared, then we speak in a picturesque way of a sinking beneath the threshold of consciousness. for the opposite process we have at once the picture of a rising above the threshold. in a similar sense for that gradual approach to the threshold of consciousness, which we notice in our experiments in the beats that lie further back, we use the expression "a darkening," and for the reverse process "a brightening" of the content of consciousness. with the use of these expressions we can formulate in the following manner the condition necessary for the comprehension of a whole consisting of many parts, e.g. a row of beats: a comprehension as a whole is possible as long as no part sinks beneath the threshold of consciousness. for the most obvious differences in the clearness and distinctness of the content of consciousness, we generally use two other expressions, which, like our former ones of darkening and brightening, illustrate the meaning. we say that that element of consciousness, which is mostly clearly apprehended, lies in the fixation-point of consciousness, and that all the rest belongs to the field of consciousness. in our metronome experiments, therefore, the beat, that is at the moment affecting consciousness, lies in this subjective fixation-point, whereas the preceding beats, the further back they stretch, the more do they belong merely to this subjective field. this latter we may picture to ourselves as a region surrounding the fixation-point, which becomes gradually darker towards the periphery and at last is bounded by the threshold of consciousness. in this last figure of speech we have already suggested that the so-called fixation-point of consciousness denotes in general only the ideal middle point of a central region, within which several impressions can be clearly and distinctly apprehended. so in one row of beats the beat heard at a certain moment would lie within the fixation-point; yet the immediately preceding beats are still clear and distinct enough, in order to be included within the same narrow region, which contrasts with the more extensive field by reason of its greater clearness. the psychological process agrees also in this respect with the expressions we have borrowed from the sense of sight, where we have a single point of the field of vision as fixation-point, around which a great number of impressions may be clearly perceived. only because of this are we able to apprehend a larger image in a single moment, e.g. to read a word. for this central part of the field of our consciousness, which immediately surrounds the subjective fixation-point, the practical necessity of language has already coined a word, which has been accepted by psychology. we call that psychical process, which is operative in the clear perception of a narrow region of the content of consciousness, attention. when impressions, or any other content, at a certain moment are remarkable for their special clearness in comparison to the other elements in consciousness, we say that they lie within the focus of attention. keeping to our former figure, we imagine this as the central region that surrounds the subjective fixation-point, and it is cut off by a more or less clearly defined boundary-line from the larger and darker field that surrounds it. and this immediately gives rise to a new experimental problem, which forms an important supplement to the above-described measurement of the whole scope of consciousness. the problem consists in answering the question that immediately arises, how big is this narrower scope of attention? rhythmical rows of beats, because of the arrangement of the successive impressions in them, were excellently suited to determine the total scope of consciousness. but because of this very same quality they can give us little help in solving our second problem. for it is obvious that just that connection between the focus of attention and the wider field of consciousness, that the rhythm of a row of beats causes--this connection makes a clear boundary between these two regions impossible. we notice clearly enough that along with the beat that is directly affecting consciousness a few of the preceding ones also fall within the focus of attention, but how many remains uncertain. the sense of sight obviously offers us more favourable conditions. we must, however, first of all note the fact that the physiological conditions of vision in themselves limit the apprehension of an extended object, not taking into account the psychological boundary of clear perception. the keenest differentiation of impressions is limited to the so-called region of clearest vision, which surrounds the fixation-point. the reader can test this for himself by fixating the middle letter "_o_" in the following diagram of letters from a distance of about - cm, while keeping one eye closed. we can in this position, by directing our attention alone to the outlying parts of the field of vision, still recognise letters, which lie at the sides of our figure, as, for example, the _h_ at the top or the _i_ at the right-hand side. to carry out this experiment a little practice in fixation is required, since in natural vision we are always inclined to direct our line of vision to that point, to which our attention is turned. if, however, we practise letting our attention wander over the different parts of the field of vision while keeping the same fixation-point, it will soon be clear to us that the fixation-point of attention and the fixation-point of the field of vision are by no means identical. they can by practice be separated, and the attention can be directed to a point in indirect vision, i.e. a point lying to this or to that side of the line of vision. from this we see that clear perception in the psychological sense and clear vision in the physiological sense do not necessarily coincide. for example, if we fixate the middle letter _o_, and at the same time direct our attention to the "_n_" at the right-hand side, we also perceive clearly the letters that surround _n_, i.e. _f g s i_, whereas the letters around _o_, i.e. _h t i n_, seem to retreat into the darker field of consciousness. this diagram of letters has been printed so large, that when we look at it from a distance of - cm. it almost corresponds in scope to the region of clearest vision, taking as a measure for this the recognisability of letters of the size of those printed in this book. we see, therefore, at once from the above-described observations, that the scope of the focus of attention and the region of clearest vision in the physiological sense differ widely from each other. the latter, under the conditions of observation we have chosen, comprises a far wider field than the former. in our figure there are letters: if it were possible simultaneously clearly to perceive in the psychological sense all the objects clearly seen physiologically, then we should be able by fixating the point _o_ to perceive all these letters. this is, however, by no means the case. at one given moment we can differentiate only a few, which surround the fixation-point of attention, whether this coincides with the objective fixation-point of the field of vision, as in ordinary vision, or whether it lies in any way outside of this point owing to a severance of the two fixation-points. although these observations as to the simultaneous recognition of haphazardly arranged simple objects, e.g. letters, point decisively to a fairly narrow limitation of the scope of attention, still we cannot give an exact numerical answer by this method as to the size of this scope, as we could by means of our metronome experiments in regard to the scope of consciousness. still, without any great change and without any complicated apparatus, we can make these visual experiments suffice to answer our question. our immediate results will, of course, only be valid under the special conditions we set up. for this purpose a great number of such diagrams, with letters arranged in the same manner, must be constructed. the position of the letters in each diagram must be different. then a fairly large square of white cardboard, with a black point in the middle, is made (as in the figure on p. ). with this we cover the diagram chosen for the experiment. the observer, who previously must not have seen the diagrams, is told to fixate with one eye the point in the middle, and to keep the other eye closed. the cover is then taken away rapidly for one moment, and then as rapidly replaced. the rapidity of this procedure must be such that no movement of the eye, or wandering of the attention over the field of vision, can take place, as long as the diagram remains uncovered.[ ] each time we repeat the experiment a new diagram must be chosen, otherwise the individual momentary impression will supplement the preceding ones. if we wish to obtain unambiguous results we must choose conditions which exclude such influences of previous perceptions. our question will therefore be limited to this: what is the number of simple and new impressions in consciousness that the focus of attention can grasp in one given moment? in reference to this way of stating the question, an objection to our method of experimenting might be raised. it might be objected that a letter is not a simple element of consciousness, and that we ought rather to use simpler objects, e.g. dots. but since these lack all means of differentiation, the carrying out of the experiment would be rendered much more difficult, if not impossible. on the other hand, we must not forget that our familiarity with letters is of the greatest importance. because of this a letter of ordinary print can be perceived as quickly as a single dot--a fact any one can easily prove for himself by means of observation. such symbols, because of their characteristic differences, have this advantage, that after a momentary impression they can be easily retained in consciousness, and thus an account of what has been clearly perceived can be given after the experiment. if we carry out the experiments in the manner described, it appears that an unpractised observer can perceive, at most, only - letters. after a few more experiments this number increases to . of course, as before mentioned, a new diagram must be used in every new experiment. this value cannot be increased by further practice, and it remains the same for different observers. we are therefore entitled to regard it as a constant for attention for the human consciousness. [footnote : to carry out such experiments more exactly and more uniformly it is best to make use of the simple apparatus called the tachistoscope. a falling screen exposes the object to sight for a very short time, which can be accurately measured. still, if this apparatus cannot be procured, the procedure described above suffices. special practice should be devoted to covering and uncovering the diagram, so that this may be done as rapidly as possible.] this determination of the scope of attention is, however, dependent upon one condition, which is exactly the opposite of that introduced in measuring the scope of consciousness. this latter was only possible by using rows of impressions that were bound together into one complex whole. to measure the scope of attention, on the other hand, we must isolate the separate impressions from each other, so that they form an unarranged multiplicity of elements. this is a difference in conditions which certainly does not only depend upon the fact that in the first case the sense of hearing and in the second case the sense of sight was used. we rather conjecture at the very outset that here the chief influence lay in the psychological conditions, in the first case in the combination of the elements into a whole, and in the second in the isolation of the elements. at once the following question naturally arises: what will happen if we, so to speak, change the rôles of these two senses, if we let impressions, connected together as wholes, work upon the sense of sight, and isolated impressions upon the sense of hearing? in the first case we have simply to combine letters together, so that they form words or sentences. a letter is nothing more than an element that has been artificially taken out of such a natural combination. now if we carry out with these parts of speech experiments in the same manner as we have described above, we obtain, in fact, an absolutely different result. if we show the observer a word such as this-- miscellaneousness, he can read it at once, without being prepared for it and without previous practice. with isolated elements he could at most grasp six, but here, under exactly the same conditions, the scope is extended to seventeen or more elements without the slightest difficulty. it is clear that this is essentially the same phenomenon that we encountered in our experiments on rhythm with the sense of hearing. the conditions of combination are, however, in so far different, as the stimuli for the sense of sight were simultaneous, whereas for the sense of hearing the whole was made up of simple impressions that followed each other. and with this another difference is connected. a word can only be recognised at a momentary glance, if it has been known to us before as a whole, or with compound words, if their chief parts have been familiar to us. therefore a word of an absolutely unknown language appears as a complex of unarranged letters, and with such a complex our scope is again limited to six isolated elements. with a rhythmical row of beats, on the other hand, it is of no consequence what the form of rhythm is that binds them together, since we can think into such a row whatever rhythmical arrangement we choose, as long as it conforms to the general rhythmical disposition of consciousness, i.e. as long as it does not exceed the maximum of three different accents, as we have previously shown. at the same time this requirement shows us that the differences in apprehending a successive and a simultaneous whole, which appear in our experiments with sight and hearing, are in reality only apparent differences. a musical time that is adequate to our sense of rhythm behaves in exactly the same way as a word or sentence that is adequate to our sense of language. therefore we may presuppose that in the reading, as in the rhythm experiments, it is not the whole of a complex consisting of many elements that is instantaneously grasped by the attention. only a limited part of such a word falls within the scope of attention, and from this part the psychical power of combination goes over to those other elements that lie in the wider field of consciousness. in fact there is a well-known phenomenon that gives a striking proof for this combination of the parts of a word or sentence grasped by attention with unclearly perceived elements. it consists in the fact that misprints are so often unnoticed, especially in rapid reading. this would be impossible if we were forced to perceive with our attention equally clearly all the separate elements of a long word or of a sentence in order to be able to read. in fact, in each separate moment there are only a few elements within the focus of attention. from these the threads of psychical combination stretch to the elements unclearly perceived--yes, sometimes even to the impressions only physiologically seen that lie in the regions of indirect vision. just as in hearing a rhythm, the sound impressions affecting consciousness at the moment are bound to the preceding ones that have retreated into the darker regions of consciousness, and, on the other hand, they are preparing the way for further expected impressions. the chief difference of the two cases lies not so much in the formal relations of the scope of attention and of consciousness, as in the constitution of the elements and their combinations. let us now, equipped with the results of our visual experiments, turn our attention again to our metronome experiments. the analogy between the two immediately gives rise to this question: can we not in our rhythm experiments arrange the conditions so that we may obtain a similar isolation of simple impressions, as was necessary in measuring the scope of attention for the sense of sight? now in fact such an isolation of single beats arises at once, as soon as we restrain a "hearing into" the beats of any kind of accentuation whatever. even the simplest rhythm, the / time, must be avoided. this is not so easy as it appears to be at the first glance, because of the rhythmical disposition of our consciousness and of our whole psycho-physical organisation. again and again we are inclined to hear into a row of beats following each other at similar intervals, at least the / time. and yet it is possible to conform to this condition, if the metronome beats do not show any noticeable objective differences. the interval between the beats must be chosen long enough to check any tendency to rhythmical grouping, and yet not too long, so that it may still remain possible to grasp so many beats as one whole. in general an interval of from / - / seconds will conform to this requirement. with such an interval, after a fair amount of practice, it is possible to change at will from a rhythmical to an unrhythmical or absolutely monotonous perception of the beats. if this is done, and if in exactly the same manner as in the rhythm experiments a number of metronome beats is given, and then after a pause the same or a slightly differing number is given, the observer can clearly perceive the identity or difference of the two rows. if in the first test a row of six beats is given (row a), and in the second a row of nine, it appears in repeating two rows of the same length, that a precise recognition of identity is present with row a, whereas with row b this is impossible. even with seven or eight beats recognition is very uncertain. we arrive therefore at the same result as in our optical experiments. six simple impressions form the limit for the scope of attention. [illustration row a - row b] since this value is the same for optical and acoustical, for successive and simultaneous impressions, it surely denotes some psychical constant independent of any special sense. and in fact in using different kinds of impressions we always arrive at the same result. the number six with very minor variations denotes the maximum of simple impressions that can be grasped by attention. if we choose syllables of any form, that are not combined into words, and if we read out a row of such to an observer, and require him to repeat them, we find that a correct repetition is possible with a row such as the following:-- ap ku no li sa ro whereas it is not possible with a row like this:-- ra po su am na il ok pu we notice that even with seven such senseless syllables the repetition is generally unsuccessful. we may by practice become successful with seven syllables. this is obviously exactly the same result as we obtained above with our rows of metronome beats. there still remains another phenomenon that coincides with this result. it is the more worthy of note since it belongs to a third sense, namely the sense of touch, and since it was discovered from practical considerations quite independent of psychology. there had been many futile attempts to discover the most useful method of printing for the blind, before braille, a french teacher of the blind, about the middle of last century solved this important practical problem. he himself had become blind, and was therefore in a better position than others to make sure of the requirements that were necessary, by means of experiments upon himself. he came to this result, that, first of all, groups of distinct points were the only suitable means of establishing letter-signs that could be easily distinguished, and that, secondly, not more than six definite points were to be used for one letter. these points must not spread over an extent greater than that which can be covered by the sense of touch, if the symbols are to be distinguished by the fingers of the blind with ease and certainty. he decided for an arrangement of points as seen in fig. i., out of which the alphabet for the blind was arranged:-- [illustration: fig. i - ii - iii.] this limitation to six points in certain positions certainly did not come about by chance. this can clearly be seen from the fact that a greater number, e.g. an arrangement of nine points as in fig. iii., would have greater practical advantages. by means of them it would have been possible for example to represent the most important punctuation marks or numbers with separate signs, a thing which is not possible in braille's type for the blind. but such complications in the positions of the points are at once made useless by the fact that it is impossible clearly to grasp the difference of such a large number of points. any one can convince himself of this by immediate observation, if he arranges more than six similar signs and tries to distinguish by touch alone. thus we arrive again at the same limit that our metronome and optical experiments led us to. the importance of these results as to the scope of consciousness and of attention does not lie merely in the fact that we are able to state the relation of both in values that can be expressed in figures. above all, our results give us an important insight into the relations between those elements that stand in the focus of attention and those that belong to the wider field of consciousness. in order, then, to denote clearly the most important results that have come to light in these experiments, let us use two short expressions for the two processes of the entrance into consciousness, and of the elevation into the focus of attention--two expressions that were first of all introduced by leibnitz in a similar sense. we shall call the entrance into the large region of consciousness--apprehension, and the elevation into the focus of attention--apperception. we shall take no account of the philosophical meanings, in which leibnitz uses these expressions in his theory of monads. we shall use these expressions purely in their empirical and psychological sense. accordingly we understand by apprehension simply the entrance of some content into consciousness--an entrance that can be in fact proved, and by apperception the grasping of this by the attention. the apprehended content is that of which we are more or less darkly aware; it is always, however, above the threshold of consciousness. the apperceived content is that of which we are clearly aware, or, keeping to the figure of speech of a threshold, that which lies above the narrower threshold of attention. we can further define the relation between these two regions of consciousness. if the apperception is directed to one isolated element, the rest, the merely psychically apprehended elements, disappear as if they were non-existent. on the other hand, if the apperceived content is bound to certain merely apprehended elements of consciousness, it is combined into one total apprehension, which is only limited by the threshold of consciousness itself. in close relationship with this stands the fact that the scope of apperception is a relatively limited and constant one, and that the scope of apprehension is not only larger, but also much more variable. and, as we have clearly seen from our comparison of simple and complex rhythmical rows, it varies according to the scope of the psychical complexes that are united together into one whole. thereby the difference between the merely apprehended and the apperceived parts of such a whole by no means disappears. for it is only a limited part of this latter that lies within the focus of attention, as has been strikingly shown in reading experiments, where we can vary single and merely apprehended parts of a word, without thereby disturbing the comprehension of the total complex. to use a picture which is itself an example of this phenomenon, we may say that that wider darkly apprehended content stands in the same relation here as the chords of the piano accompaniment to the voice of the singer. slight variations in the former are mostly unobserved, so long as the guiding voice is correct in pitch and rhythm. on the other hand, the impression of the whole would be feeble if the accompaniment was wanting. in this relationship between the apprehended and apperceived content of consciousness another factor appears, which brings to light the great importance of the processes of apperception. we started out from the fact that it was extremely difficult to apprehend with absolute uniformity a row of identical beats, since we are always inclined to accentuate certain beats. this phenomenon is clearly connected with a fundamental characteristic of apperception, which intervenes in all processes of consciousness. we know, from ordinary life, that we are not able to direct our attention perfectly steadily and uniformly to one and the same object. when we attempt to do this, we notice that a continual change takes place in the apperception of the object in question. at times the attention turns towards the object most intensively, and at times its energy flags. where the conditions remain uniform, this change gradually becomes regular and periodic. the rise of such a process is of course materially assisted, if the outside impressions themselves, to which our attention is directed, possess a regular periodicity. this is the case in a high degree with a row of beats. and so it happens that those oscillations of apperception are directly adjusted to the periodicity of the impressions. therefore we emphasise an impression that coincides with a rise in the apperception wave, so that the beats which are in fact uniform become rhythmically arranged. the manner of this arrangement depends to a certain degree upon our own choice, and also upon the extent in which we are trying to combine the single impressions into a whole. if the beats follow each other very quickly, our endeavour to combine leads us easily into complicated rhythmical arrangements, as we have in fact noticed above. with other and especially with simultaneous impressions similar relations between the apperceived and the merely apprehended content of consciousness arise, but in varying form according to the sense in question. for example, if we expose a very short word in our reading experiments, the whole is easily apprehended at one glance. if, however, we expose a long word, e.g. "miscellaneousness," we notice at once, even by direct observation, that the apprehension time is a little longer and that it really is made up of two or three very rapid and successive acts of apperception, and these acts may last longer than the actual time the impression is affecting consciousness. this succession is seen more clearly, if instead of a word we expose a sentence of about the same length as the following:-- "honesty is the best policy." here the breaking up of apperception into successive acts is materially assisted by the divisions of the words. with such a sentence we observe as a rule three successive acts of apperception, and it is the last that combines the whole into one unified thought. in such a case this is only possible as long as the preceding parts of the sentence from the last apperception remain in the field of consciousness. if the sentence is so long that this cannot happen, then the same thing occurs as we have observed with rhythmical rows of beats, that have passed the limits of possible rhythmical arrangement. we can only combine a part of such a successively exposed whole into one conclusive act of apperception. it is obvious therefore that the two phenomena, the apprehension of connected beats and of connected words and sentences, are essentially the same. the only difference consists in the fact that in the first case the apperceived impression is connected with the preceding one, that has retreated into the apprehension field, by means of the rhythmical arrangement, whereas the connection in the second case is brought about by means of the sense that binds the word or the parts of the word together. the process consists by no means of a mere successive apperception of the parts. these have already disappeared out of the apperception and have become merely apprehended elements, when they are combined into one whole along with the last apperceived impression. this act of combination is itself a uniform and instantaneous act of apperception. from this we see that, in all cases of a combination of a larger complex of elements, apperception is the function that unites these elements, and that in general it always combines directly apperceived parts of the whole with the merely apprehended parts that stand in connection. and so the great importance of the relations between these two functions of apperception and of apprehension lies precisely in the great change of these relations and in their adjustment to the needs of our psychical life, which finds expression in this change of relation to each other. at times the apperception concentrates upon a very narrow region, in order completely to free itself from the enormous manifoldness of incoming impressions. at other times, with the help of its capacity for grouping together successive elements which arises from the oscillating nature of its function, it winds its threads through a wide web of psychical contents, that stretches over the whole field of consciousness. through it all apperception remains the unifying function which binds that manifold content into one ordered whole. contrasted with it and subordinate to it, and in a certain sense acting as centrifugal forces, are the processes of apprehension, which with apperception together form the whole of our psychical life. chapter ii the elements of consciousness in our last chapter we have discussed the general and formal characteristics of consciousness. these have appeared to us in the scope of consciousness, in the different grades of clearness and distinctness of its content, and lastly, connected with this, in the relations of apprehension and apperception. the next question that immediately presents itself is: of what kind is the specific content that appears to us in these forms? the answer to this question includes the task of explaining the ultimate parts of this content, that cannot be further disintegrated. such ultimate parts are generally called elements. now it is one of the first tasks of each science, that deals with the investigation of empirical facts, to discover the elements of the phenomena. its second task is to find out the laws according to which these elements enter into combinations. the whole task of psychology can therefore be summed up in these two problems: ( ) what are the elements of consciousness? ( ) what combinations do these elements undergo and what laws govern these combinations? in contradistinction to the elements of consciousness let us call any combination of such elements a psychical compound. the relation of the two to each other can be at once made clear by the examples that lie at hand. let us return to our metronome. if we let one single beat work upon consciousness and then immediately arrest the pendulum, we have a psychical element. such a beat cannot in general be further disintegrated if we, as can easily be done in such a case, abstract from the fact that we hear it from some special direction in space, &c. if, on the other hand, we let two beats work, they constitute at once a psychical compound. this becomes always more complex, the more such beats we combine into a row, and the more we increase this complication by different degrees of accentuation, as in the examples of / and / time described above. such an element of consciousness as the single beat is called a sensation, a combination of elements into rhythms of more or less complicated constitution is called an idea. even at the present time many psychologists use the word "idea" only for a complex that does not arise from direct outward impressions, i.e. only for so-called "memory images." for ideas formed by outward sense impressions they generally use the word "perception." now this distinction is psychologically of absolutely no importance, since there are really no valid differences between memory ideas and so-called sense-perceptions. the memory ideas of our dreams are in general quite as lively as sense impressions in the waking state, and it is for this reason that they are often held to be really experienced phenomena. the word "idea" denotes well the essential characteristic of all these complexes. the idea (greek idea) is the form or appearance of something in the outer world. in the same sense, as belonging to the outer world, we speak of the sensations and their complexes arising in our own body as organic sensations, because we locate them in out own body, e.g. the sensations of fatigue of our muscles, the pressure and pain sensations of the inner organs, &c. the relatively uniform elements of touch and organic sensations are distributed among the sensations of pressure, warmth, cold, and pain. in contra-distinction to these, the special senses of hearing, seeing, smelling, and tasting present an abundance of sensations, each of which, according to its peculiar constitution, is called a quality of sensation. each such quality is besides variable in its intensity. we can, for example, produce a certain beat in very variable intensities, while the quality remains the same. in all these cases we meet with the same relations between sensations and ideas, as we saw in the metronome beats described above. green or red, white or black, &c., are called visual sensations; a green surface or a black body is called a visual idea. the relation is exactly the same as between the single beat and the row of beats. only in this case the combination of several sensations to an idea of a surface or of a body forces itself upon us much more directly, and it requires a very careful abstraction from this combination into an ideational complex, in order to retain the conception of a sensation. but we can vary our ideas of surfaces and bodies at will, while the colour remains the same. so at last we are forced to look upon this element, that remains the same in spite of all changes in the combinations, as a simple sensation. in the same way we consider a simple tone as a sensation of hearing, and a clang or chord, composed of several tones, as an auditory idea, and so on. if the tones follow each other in a melodious and rhythmical combination, then ideas of increasing complexity arise, and in the same manner several relatively simple visual ideas may be bound together into more extensive simultaneous or successive unities. the senses of sight and of hearing in especial form in this way a great variety of sensations and ideas, and they do this in two ways--firstly, through the qualities of their simple sensations, and secondly, through the complications of ideas, into which these sensations may be combined. the simple scale of tones, from the deepest to the highest tone that can be heard, consists of an infinite gradation of tonal qualities, out of which our musical scale chooses only certain tones, which lie at relatively large distances from each other. musical clangs are combinations of a number of such simple tonal sensations, and the so-called compound clangs increase this complicated constitution of the clangs by emphasising to a greater degree certain partial tones. the simple light-sensations form a more concise manifoldness, but one that stretches into different directions. red, for example, on the one hand goes over by constant gradations into orange and then into yellow, and on the other hand we have just as many constant gradations from each of these colour-shades through the lighter colour-tones into white, or through the darker ones into black, and so on. the ideas of this sense are absolutely inexhaustible. if we think of the manifold forms of surfaces and bodies, and of the differences in distance and direction, in which we perceive objects, it is obvious that it is absolutely impossible to find any limit here. thus the richness in sensations and ideas, which each of the senses conveys, stands in close relation to the spatial distance of the objects which they introduce into consciousness. the narrowest region is that of the touch and organic sense, where the impressions all refer to our own body. then come the sensations of the two so-called chemical senses of taste and of smell. even in man they have the important function of organs of help or protection in the choice of food, as is the case in the whole animal kingdom. the sensations and ideas of hearing stretch much further. by means of them the outer world enters into relation with our consciousness in language, song, and music. and last of all, the sense of sight, the sense of distance in the real meaning of the word, gives form and content to the whole picture of the outer world, that we carry in our consciousness. however different the qualities of sensations and the forms of ideas may be, yet these elements and complexes all agree in one particular--they all refer to the objective world, to things and processes outside of us, to their qualities, their combinations, and their relations. our own body, to which touch and organic sensations relate, forms in contradistinction to our consciousness a part of this outer world. it is the nearest to us, but still a mere part of the outer world. the question immediately arises: do these objective elements and complexes form the only content of consciousness? or in other words, are the only psychical elements such as we project outwards? or are there in our consciousness, besides this picture of the outer world, other elements, which we do not apprehend as objects or their qualities that stand in contradistinction to ourselves? to answer this question let us use the metronome to help us. if we choose time intervals of a medium length, say / to / seconds, and if we make such a row of beats rhythmical by the voluntary emphasis of certain beats in the manner described above, then each single beat represents a sensation and the whole row of beats represents an idea. at the same time, during the impression on consciousness of such a rhythmical whole we notice phenomena that are not contained in our definition of sensation or idea. above all, we have at the end of the row of beats the impression of an agreeable whole. if we wish to define this concept of "agreeable" more accurately, we may describe it as a subjective feeling of pleasure, which is caused by outward impressions, which we therefore call agreeable. this concept consists therefore of two parts--an objective idea, in our case the row of beats, and a subjective feeling of pleasure. this latter is obviously not in itself included in the impression of the row of beats or in that which we call the idea. it is clearly an added subjective element. it also shows itself to be such from the fact that we do not project it into the outer world. it is apprehended directly as a reaction of our consciousness, or rather, to express it at once more fittingly, of our apperception. this shows itself also in the relative independence of this feeling of pleasure from the objective constitution of the impression. since in such a simple compound as a rhythmical row of beats the agreeableness is generally very moderate, we clearly observe that with many individuals the feeling of pleasure contained in it often sinks below the threshold of consciousness, so that they only perceive the objective constitution of the beats. with others this subjective reaction becomes very prominent. the feeling of pleasure will, as is well known, become more intense, when harmonious tones combine with the rhythmical beat into one melodious whole. the agreeable feeling that then arises from the melody can scarcely be wanting in any individual consciousness. just here we note that the degree of this feeling of pleasure for one and the same melody can vary extraordinarily for different individuals. and these subjective differences increase more and more as the melodious compound becomes more complicated. a complicated tone-structure may produce the greatest ecstasy in a musician, whereas it may leave an unmusical person absolutely cold. the latter, on the other hand, may perhaps find a very simple melody agreeable, and this same melody may appear trivial to the musician and therefore disagreeable. in all these cases we see that the feeling of pleasure, which is bound to certain sensations and ideas, is purely subjective. it is an element that is not only dependent upon the impression itself, but also and always and most of all dependent upon the subject receiving the impression. and negatively the subjective character of this feeling is shown in the fact that it is never projected into the outer world, although it may be so closely bound up with the idea that refers to the outer world. but feelings of pleasure are not the only ones that we observe in our rhythm experiments. if we call to mind the exact state of consciousness between two beats of a rhythmical row, we notice that the apprehension of the identity of two intervals arises by means of a subjective process. this process takes place in the same manner within each of the two compared intervals, and thereby gives rise to the impression that they coincide. in ordinary life we generally speak of the phenomena, that are observed in such cases, as a change from "expectation" to "realisation." if we follow these phenomena a little more closely, we notice that in our case the process of expectation is a continuous and regularly varying one. at the moment immediately following one beat, expectation strains itself to catch the next one, and this straining increases until this beat really occurs. at the same moment the strain is suddenly relieved by the realisation of the expected, when the new beat comes. then the same process is repeated during the next interval. if the arrangement of the beat is more complicated because of different degrees of emphasis, then these subjective processes become in proportion more complicated, since several such processes of expectation and realisation overlap one another. what do these processes, which we so often meet, although not always in such regular change as in a rhythmical row of beats, consist of? it is obvious at a glance that expectation and realisation are both elements that are not bound to the objective impression itself. these processes can vary subjectively just as much as the agreeable feeling that arises from a rhythmical row of beats or from a melody. it is now pretty generally agreed that these peculiar elements of consciousness arise within us and not without us. there is, however, still one possibility that remains. it might be that sensations are the bearers of these subjective phenomena of expectation, perhaps sensations that are perceived while listening to a row of beats, arising partly in the interior of the ear because of the straining of the membrane of the tympanum, and partly in the mimic muscles that surround the ear. these sensations correspond to the similar sensations in the eye in expectation of visual impressions. yet this hypothesis, on closer examination, proves untenable for various reasons. first of all these sensations continue, during the whole period of expectation, in a relatively constant intensity, as far as can be observed. there is no trace of that regular increase and that sudden transition to the opposite process of realisation, such as we observed in our rhythm experiments. secondly, we can produce exactly similar sensations in our ear, or round about our ear, or in the region surrounding the eye, if we voluntarily contract the muscles in question, without our being in a state of expectation, or if we send a slight electric current through such muscles. in both cases the characteristic element of expectation is wanting. lastly, it is obviously impossible to account for these phenomena by means of uniform muscle-sensations if we wish to explain that superposition of states of expectation of different degrees and extents, which we observed in more complicated rhythmical rows of beats, or which happens in complicated psychical states arising through intellectual processes. how could the sensations of the membrane of the tympanum, or of the fixation muscles of the eye, account for that intense feeling of expectation which an exciting novel or a good play may cause? add to this the fact that these states are quite as subjective and dependent on the individual disposition of consciousness as a feeling of pleasure that is awakened by an agreeable rhythm, and it is at once obvious that these states, which we shall call for shortness the contrasts of strain and relaxation, have the very same right to be called feelings. for feelings, wherever they arise, accompany, as subjective reactions of consciousness, sensations and ideas, but are never identical with them. we obtain therefore, with the above-mentioned medium rapidity of the metronome, feelings of pleasure and feelings of strain and relaxation in close connection with each other, as regular concomitants of rhythmical impressions. this, however, is essentially changed if the rapidity of the beats is altered. if we chose intervals of from to seconds, strain and relaxation follow similarly as before. they appear even more distinctly, since the strain increases, to a greater intensity because of the longer intervals. but just as distinctly does the feeling of pleasure decrease with this increase in the length of the interval, and we soon reach the limit where the strain of expectation becomes painful. here, then, the former feeling of pleasure is transformed into a feeling of displeasure, which is again closely connected with the feelings of strain and relaxation. now let us proceed in the opposite direction by making the metronome beats follow each other after intervals of / to / of a second, and we notice that the feelings of strain and relaxation disappear. in their place appears an excitement that increases with the rapidity of the impressions, and along with this we have generally a more or less lively feeling of displeasure. we see, therefore, a new feeling added to those already found. we may call it most appropriately excitation. it is sufficiently well known to us in ordinary life in its more complicated forms, where it obviously forms an essential component of many emotions, e.g. anger, lively joy, &c. we can also find the contrast to this feeling of excitation with the help of the same instrument, by suddenly decreasing the rapidity of the beats to their medium rapidity again. this change is regularly accompanied by a very distinct feeling of quiescence (a quieting or subduing feeling). accordingly our metronome experiments have brought to light three pairs of feelings--pleasure and pain, strain and relaxation, excitation and quiescence. at the same time it has been shown that only very seldom do these forms of feeling appear isolated. several of them are generally combined together into one feeling-compound. we may call this latter the aggregate feeling, and the former the partial feelings. it is evident that between these two a similar relation exists as between ideas and pure sensations. besides this, the contrasts of each pair of feelings--e.g. pleasure and displeasure--include the possibility of all these contrasts balancing each other, so that a state almost free from feeling may result. just as, on the other hand, several partial feelings very often join together to form one aggregate feeling, so in more complicated states of emotion contrasting feelings may be intertwined. they do not therefore in all cases compensate one another. they sometimes join together to make contrasting combinations. simple cases of such contrasting combinations or disjointed moods can be brought about in a simple form by means of the metronome. we arrange the time of the beats so that the feeling of strain just begins to become painful, while at the same time the feeling of relaxation, and partly also the strain directed on this, still causes pleasure. let us now leave rhythmical acoustical impressions and consider any other sense. we find everywhere the same pairs of feelings that we produced by means of the metronome. it is very striking how the feeling-character always follows in the same directions, if we give successive impressions that give rise to contrasting feelings. red is exciting, while blue in contrast to it is quieting. in the same way a deep and a high tone contrast. at the same time, the feeling-contrast is here a mixed one, as the expressions "serious" and "solemn" for deep tones, and "bright" and "lively" for the high ones, show. it would seem as if with the deepest tones pleasure and displeasure combine together to that total impression of seriousness, and to this a quieting feeling is added when the deep tone stands in contrast to preceding high tones. the feelings joined to the impressions of the senses of touch and smell and taste are in general more uniform and simpler. here we have as contrasts the strong displeasure of a sensation of pain, and the feeling of pleasure of a weak sensation of tickling. similarly with the pleasant impression of a sweet and the unpleasant impression of an intensely bitter or sour taste, and so on. it is obvious, however, that already among the smells we find many that possess a composite feeling-quality, e.g. pleasant and at the same time exciting, as menthol-ether, or unpleasant and exciting, as ammonia and asafoetida. the organic or common sensations are also often of a mixed feeling-character. yet pleasure and displeasure predominate here most of all. an important characteristic of feelings consists lastly in the fact that they combine themselves into an affective process, which as a rule is joined to an ideational process. a temporal process of this kind with an affective and ideational content, that changes but is nevertheless joined together, we call an emotion, or with less intensity and a more lasting nature of the feelings, a disposition. joy, delight, merriness, hope are emotions in which the predominant feeling is pleasure; anger, grief, sorrow, and fear are emotions in which displeasure predominates. now in both these series of emotions the exciting and quieting feelings and the feelings of strain and relaxation in many cases often play an important part. the quieting feeling combined with displeasure we call depression. joy and anger are exciting emotions, grief and fear are depressing, hope, sorrow, and fear are straining. when, however, an expected result takes place, or when the emotion of fear disappears, a strong feeling of relaxation generally occurs. many emotions are also characterised by a fluctuating affective process, sometimes changing in intensity and sometimes in quality. anger, hope, and sorrow in especial show great fluctuations in intensity. with hope, fear, and sorrow we very often find fluctuations in quality. hope and sorrow often change between themselves, and in most cases increase in intensity because of this contrast. especially with the emotions we can perceive this affective process objectively in the movements of the mimic muscles of the face, and when the emotions are very strong in the other muscles of the body. these so-called mimic and pantomimic "expression movements" are always combined with characteristic changes of the movements of the heart and lungs. they are in so far the most sensitive characteristics of these subjective processes, since they can be observed even with the weakest emotions and even with the simplest feelings, that have not yet been bound together into an affective process. the expansion and contraction of the small blood-vessels, especially of the face, that often happens in a state of emotion, must also be mentioned here. in anger and shame we notice blushing, and in fear and fright pallor. a further class of important compound processes stands in close connection with the emotions, i.e. the volitional processes. in many cases, even at the present day, the will is held to be a specific psychical element, or it is considered in its essence to be identical with the idea of an intended act. a closer investigation of the volitional process as to its subjective and objective characteristics shows, however, that it is most closely connected with the emotions, and that it really is to be considered an affective process. there is no act of volition in which feelings of greater or less intensity, which combine into an affective process, are not present. the characteristic in which a volitional process differs from an emotion consists essentially in the end of the process that immediately precedes and accompanies the act of volition. if this end is not reached, it remains simply an emotion. we speak of the emotion of anger if a man merely shows his angry excitement in his expression movements. on the other hand we speak of an act of emotion if he fells to the ground the person who has excited his anger. in many cases the emotions and their feeling-content, which form the constituent parts of the volitional process, are weaker, but they are never absolutely wanting. a voluntary action without feeling, one that follows from purely intellectual motives, as many philosophers presuppose, does not exist at all. on the other hand the volitional processes are marked out from the ordinary emotions by characteristics which give volition its peculiar character. firstly there are certain ideas in the process which possess a more or less strong feeling-tone, and which are in direct connection with the end stage of the act of volition, and prepare for it. we call such ideas the motives of volition. secondly, the end stage consists of characteristic feelings, which always occur in essentially the same manner in all volitional processes. these we generally call feelings of activity. they are very probably compounded of feelings of excitation, of strain, and of relaxation, as a closer subjective analysis and the concomitant objective expression-symptoms, especially the movements of breathing, show. excitation and strain precede the conclusive act, relaxation and excitation accompany the act, and continue for a short time afterwards. it is obvious that the number and the reciprocal action of the motives are of decisive moment for the constitution of the volitional process. if only one single motive is present, which prepares the emotion and its discharge into action, we call the volitional process an impulsive act; the acts of animals are clearly in most cases such simple volitional acts. so also in the psychical life of man they play a very important part--the leading part in the more composite volitional processes, and they very often arise out of these latter when these have been often repeated. the actions that arise out of several conflicting motives of strong feeling-tone we call voluntary acts, or if we are clearly aware of a previous conflict of opposite motives, selective or discriminative acts. according to this complication of motives, the end stage, which is especially characteristic of the volitional processes, takes different forms. with impulsive acts the whole process takes place quickly; the concluding feelings of excitation, strain, and relaxation are generally crowded together in a very short time. with voluntary and especially with selective acts, the whole process is much slower, and the feelings often fluctuate up and down. the same is often the case with those complex volitional acts, which do not show themselves outwardly in certain bodily movements, but which give rise to changes in the process of consciousness itself. such inner volitional acts are noticed above all in the voluntary concentration of attention, in the direction of thought guided by special motives, and so on. now if we investigate more closely these feelings of strain, excitation, and relaxation, which make up these inner volitional acts, we notice at once the great conformity of these with the processes which accompany the apperception of an impression or of an idea arising in consciousness through recollection. it is obvious that these elements, grouped together under the name of "feelings of activity," make up along with varying sensations the essential part of impulsive and voluntary acts in the one case, and of the processes of attention and apperception in the other. these processes also coincide in so far as different forms of apperception correspond to impulsive and voluntary action. if we apprehend an impression which is given to us without our assistance, the attention seems in a sense to be compelled to turn to this impression, following this single motive. we can express this by saying we apprehend it passively. the feeling of activity always follows such an impression. if on the other hand we turn to an expected impression, then these feelings of strain and excitation clearly precede the impression. we are aware that our apperception is active. these have often been called processes of involuntary and voluntary attention. but these expressions are unsuitable, since in reality volitional processes are present in both cases. they are, like impulsive and voluntary acts, merely processes of different grades. it is at once evident that, by reason of this inner conformity, apperception itself may be looked upon as a volitional process. it occurs as an essential factor in all inner and outer volitional acts, and as an ever-present one in the feelings of activity so characteristic of the will. herein lies the chief motive for the fact that we look upon the will as our most private possession, the one that is most identical with our inner nature itself. our ideas seem in comparison with it to be something external, upon which our will reacts according to its feelings. and so at bottom our will coincides with our "ego." now this ego is neither an idea, nor a specific feeling, but it consists of those elementary volitional processes of apperception which accompany the processes of consciousness. they are always changing but they are always present, and in this way form the lasting substratum of our self-consciousness. the inner line of fortifications of this ego are the feelings, which represent nothing more than the reactions of apperception to outer experience. the next line consists of this experience itself--the ideas, of which the ones that are nearest to us, i.e. those of our own body, are most closely connected with the volitional processes that are at work in the apprehension of them. and so it happens at a naive stage of consciousness that they are combined together with the ego itself into one unity. we have now learned to recognise the emotions, dispositions, and volitional processes as psychical contents, all of which differ from each other in their characteristic processes. none of them, however, contain anywhere specific elements. they can all of them be analysed into the same forms of feelings. although the volitional process in especial is very peculiar, yet this peculiarity nowhere depends upon specific ideational or affective elements, but solely upon the mode of combination of these elements into emotions with their end stages again composed merely of general affective forms. still there remains another question to be answered, which has not yet been settled by the reduction of all feelings to the above-mentioned six principal forms, viz. pleasure, displeasure, strain, relaxation, excitation, and quiescence. is each of these forms perfectly uniform? does it always return in the same quality? or does it stand in a similar relation as the colour "blue" stands to the different shades of that colour, so that the principal form may not only appear in different grades of intensity, but also in various qualities? to answer these questions let us turn again to our metronome. it has again the advantage of illustrating our problem by means of a very simple example. let us take two rows of beats in / time with the accents arranged differently as in a and b, obtained by the method of subjective rhythm as described above. [illustration] both contain the same number of rises and falls, but in a different arrangement. a shows a pronounced example of a descending row of beats, b a similar example of a row that first ascends and then descends. with a suitable rapidity of the metronome we can easily hear at will into the uniform beats of the pendulum each of these rhythms. if, however, we have once made our choice between the two forms, then we group the beats that follow the row a in exactly the same manner as the row a, and the same thing happens with the row b. such a spontaneous repetition is only possible owing to the fact that at the last beat of each row we group the whole together. this we do with the succeeding beats as well, just as we have seen to be generally the case in measuring the scope of consciousness. now if we observe our feelings we obtain an important addition to our previous observations. they showed us that a very important part of such a process was composed of the alternating feelings of strain and relaxation, and perhaps also of excitation and quiescence, and lastly of agreeableness. this last feeling was especially strong at the end of a row of beats, caused by the arrangement of the single element into one rhythmically ordered whole. it is obvious now that the centre of gravity of the affective process lies every time at the end of a row, where the superimposed rhythmical feelings run together into one unity. for it is unmistakably this feeling that allows us directly to apprehend the succeeding rows as identical with the preceding ones in a succession of similar rows. what we apperceive is not the preceding row itself. the greater number of its elements lie already in the darker field of consciousness. we apperceive rather this aggregate feeling, which is joined to the last directly apperceived element, and which is the resultant of the preceding affective processes. now let us compare this terminal feeling, that lends a given rhythm its essential and peculiar affective character, as it appears in the two examples represented by a and b. it is evident that however much on the one hand a row may depend upon the constitution and the arrangement of the preceding components, it yet on the other hand always possesses its own specific quality. it is true that we can always classify this under one or more of the six chief qualities, and yet we do not thereby account for its own peculiar quality, which differentiates it from the others of the same class. it also cannot be considered a mere summation of the simple feelings that axe joined to the separate parts of the process. the feelings of strain and relaxation that are distributed over the rows a and b are the same. they differ at most in the degree of intensity. we cannot therefore understand why the feelings that remain behind at the end of each row should be so different. but it is so. we can convince ourselves of this more directly than in the experiments with voluntary rhythmical emphasis, if we produce the rows a and b after one another by means of knocking and without a metronome. here the emphasised beats are not only subjectively, but also objectively accentuated. if, by this method, another observer compares the rows a and b given successively, he obtains at the end of each row such differing impressions that he cannot decide with certainty whether the rows are of equal or of different lengths. we saw above, that with the repetition of similar rows of beats, five rows of / time could be apprehended at once. now, however, as soon as the rhythm is changed, it is impossible to compare one single row with another of differing rhythm. the aggregate feeling concentrated at the end of each row of beats possesses each time a qualitative colouring dependent upon the constitution of the rhythm. this colouring coincides in its general form with the feeling of agreeableness that arises at the end and with the feeling of relaxation following the strain of expectation. these observations supplement essentially our former results as to the apprehension of longer rows of beats. we found that the knowledge that two rows were the same, always came at the end of a row, and that this verification followed the rows directly in one uniform act of apperception. now we can explain this phenomenon perfectly by the uniform nature and the instantaneous rise of that resulting aggregate feeling. because of this the last beat in a rhythmical row comes to represent the whole row. 'the quality of the rhythmical feeling that corresponds to the time in question concentrates itself in a perfectly adequate manner in the apperception. thus the qualitative shades of feeling that are bound to the idea come to represent the idea itself. this substitution is of the greatest importance, above all from the fact, as we have clearly seen in the rhythmical experiments, that the ideas and their components lying in the darker fields of consciousness influence in their apperceptive affective power the process of consciousness. what has been here explained with the simple example of a row of beats, can now be applied to ideational content of every kind. if we form a melody by combining the rhythm with a certain ordered change of tones, and if it is repeated, exactly the same process takes place as with the repetition of an unmelodious row of beats. the qualitative resultant of this whole, which here again is concentrated on the apperception of the last impression and which makes an immediate repetition possible, has, however, become very much richer. here in the terminal feeling, preparing itself during the course of the melodious collection of tones, the whole concentrates itself again to a perfectly uniform affective product complete in itself. it is the very same with any other ideational compound. even although the affective value is very weak, it always receives a qualitative colouring from the composition of the idea. this colouring appears, where other more lively affective reactions are wanting, as a modification of the delicate feelings of strain and excitation which accompany all processes of consciousness, and especially of apperception. the great importance which feelings have for all the processes of consciousness is often overlooked. this applies to the processes of memory, cognition and recognition, and also to the so-called activities of imagination and understanding. we shall return to this when we discuss these various forms of psychical combinations. at this point let us emphasise once again the result that our observations have led us to as to the real nature of feeling. we have called the feelings states that were connected with the subject, subjective reactions of consciousness. we see now that this description is not exactly incorrect, but that it is inadequate. what gives its psychical value to a feeling arising from any objective content of consciousness is not its connection with consciousness, but the fact that it is closely bound up with the apperceptive processes. feeling is always bound to an apperceptive act. this came plainly to light in the rhythmical experiments where the feeling arose from preceding impressions. feeling may therefore be looked upon as the specific way in which the apperception reacts upon the content of consciousness that stands in connection with the immediately apperceived impression. lastly, two other questions present themselves. how is it that feeling possesses the characteristic of appearing in certain contrasts, viz. pleasure and displeasure, &c.? and how is it that just three such pairs of contrasts exist, which we shall call for the sake of shortness the three dimensions of feeling? since we are here dealing with ultimate facts of psychological experience, which cannot be further analysed, the answers to our questions cannot in the proper sense give an explanation of these facts. that is, in reality, as impossible as to explain why a blue colour is blue and a red one red. considering, however, the connection of the feelings with the total processes of consciousness, we can try to explain these contrasts in this connection the view of feeling as a way of reaction of the apperception upon a given content gives us some help in understanding these affective contrasts. we found that the act of apperception represented a simple volitional act. now each volition contains latently either an attracting or an opposing element. our volition is attracted by the desired object, and it turns away from the one that opposes us. herein lies expressed, as we can see, that fundamental relation of affective contrasts which now spreads into different directions in the basal forms of feeling. among these the pair of contrasts of pleasure and displeasure may be looked upon as a modification of the attracting and opposing elements, which are directly connected with the qualitative constitution of the impression or the idea. what we desire is joined with pleasure, what opposes us with displeasure. on the other hand, the pair of contrasts of excitation and quiescence will very likely stand in direct relation to the intensity with which apperception enters into action, even although qualitatively the content that calls it into action be pleasurable, or the reverse, or indifferent. now in so far as this action, called forth by a certain content, consists of an increase or decrease of the normal function of apperception, so the intensive side of the reaction divides up into these two opposites--excitation and quiescence. lastly, because of the relation between the successive processes of consciousness, each act of apperception stands at the same time in connection with the preceding and the succeeding processes. now, according as apperception is directed to an immediately passed or to an immediately coming row, a feeling of relaxation or of strain arises. we may therefore look upon each single feeling in principle as a compound that can be divided up into all these dimensions and into their two principal directions. in each feeling these components are emphasised more or less strongly or are quite wanting, while all the time the total qualitative constitution of the content of consciousness gives to the whole its specific colouring, which distinguishes it from every other content. chapter iii association the elements of our consciousness, as the foregoing discussion has taught us, stand in general combinations with each other. even where objective impressions lack steady combinations, we are accustomed to construct such by means of subjective sensations and feelings. the single beats of a row on the metronome are as such isolated, but we combine them into a rhythmical whole by means of our feelings of strain and relaxation, and by means of weak accompanying muscle-sensations. we have seen that in this way the different ideational compounds, the complex feelings, the emotions, and the volitional processes are all resultants of the psychical processes of combination. now, how are these combinations constituted, and what laws are they subject to? psychologists generally have called them "associations," since the english philosophy of the eighteenth century turned its attention to the importance of this process of combination. the opinion has often been expressed that this one concept is sufficient to include under it all psychical processes of combination. we shall soon see, however, that thereby a very important and characteristic difference is left out of account. we shall choose this difference, since it certainly influences all processes of consciousness, as our chief principle in a division of these combinations. this distinctive characteristic consists in the fact that one set of psychical combinations acts of its own accord, i.e. without the accompaniment of those feelings of activity which we learnt were constituent parts of the processes of apperception and volition; whereas another set is closely connected with these activities. at the same time, further distinctive characteristics in the combination processes run parallel to this one. let us therefore call only those generally passive combination processes associations, and the active ones apperceptive combinations, or for shortness apperceptions. if we limit in this way the concept "association" in contra-distinction to the ordinary use of the term, still we must enlarge it considerably on the other side, if we wish to do justice to all the combinations of this sort that really exist. the old theory of association was founded exclusively on the observation of the memory-processes. with such a process we are accustomed to take note, first of all, merely of the ideational compounds of consciousness, and secondly, the ideas in such a schematic memory-process are arranged regularly in a temporal succession; for example, an outward impression acts first of all upon consciousness, and then we remember something previous that was similar to this impression, or stood in relation to it. now these memory-processes, as a closer inspection will show, make up a remarkably small part of our associations. they are in fact of much less importance than many other forms. as soon as we compare this form with other forms, we recognise at once that it is merely a secondary form. if we wish to arrange associations according to their simplicity and the closeness of their combinations, we can start with the following simple experiment. if we make the string of a piano sound by plucking it in the middle, then, as the science of physics teaches us, not only does the whole string vibrate, but each half vibrates as well in a smaller degree, and in general each third part, each fourth, &c., in ever decreasing amplitudes. these segments, which decrease in length according to the numerical series , , , &c., correspond to tones of increasing pitch--the half string corresponds to the octave, the third part to the fifth of the octave, the fourth to the double octave, and so on. if these high tones are then produced alone, one after another, by making the corresponding part of the string vibrate each time, and if we then return to the tone of the whole string, we can then, if we listen attentively, hear clearly, along with the stronger sounding fundamental tone, these overtones, or at least those nearest to the fundamental. we therefore say that the clang of a string, or of any other musical source, does not only consist of the one tone according to which we determine its pitch, but also of a series of overtones, which give it its timbre or clang-colour. this expression itself points to the fact that in hearing a clang there takes place psychologically an association, which is of a specially intimate kind. the above-described experiment of comparing a clang with some of its overtones teaches us that these latter really exist in sensation, and that we can perceive them with very intense attention. nevertheless under ordinary circumstances we do not perceive them as independent tones, but they appear to us massed together only as a specific modification of the fundamental tone, and we call this its clang-colour or timbre. an association of this kind, in which the sensation-components are so fused into the resulting product that they can no longer be clearly perceived as isolated component parts, is called a fusion. such a fusion can be either a very close one or a very loose one. a single clang is for example a close fusion, a chord is a loose one. the separate fundamental tones of a chord are bound fairly closely into one whole, but we can hear at least some of them quite plainly. similar fusions occur in the various senses, and they become very complicated owing to the fact that sensation-elements of several senses are joined together at the same time. the disappearance of the components into one resulting product brings it about that we cannot directly perceive the separate elements that make up this product by means of direct sensation, as is in part possible in the case of clang-fusions. we are forced to make use of an indirect method. we proceed from the principle, that each sensation, a change in which is of essential influence on the resulting idea, belongs to the components of this idea. a pronounced case of this kind is seen very clearly in spatial ideas of the senses of touch and sight. if any part of the skin is touched with a little rod, we can, as is well known, with a fair degree of certainty apprehend the place touched, without looking at it. now in the pathological cases of partial paralysis, it is shown that there are two kinds of sensations that are of essential influence on this localisation. firstly, it is considerably disturbed by a partial suspension of the outer cutaneous sensitivity. in this case the patient often localises the impression on a place far removed from the place touched. secondly, complete or partial paralysis of the muscles in the region of the place touched, e.g. the muscles of the arm and hand in the case of a touch sensation on the hand, causes just as much confusion in localisation. in this case as well the patient may localise the impression on an absolutely wrong part of the body. therefore we must presuppose that neither cutaneous nor muscle sensations alone are the original cause of the idea of the place touched, but that both together by fusion give rise to this idea. after this has once happened, the quality of the touch sensation which is peculiar to each part of the skin and which varies with the place of the impression, can in itself bring about a localisation. that in general both components, i.e. cutaneous and movement sensations, must fuse together in order to produce an idea of a certain place or locality, is clearly shown in blind people, and especially in those born blind. in their case the sense of sight, which determines the whole perception of space for those who can see, is wanting, and we observe in them a continuous and very lively co-operation of cutaneous sensations and movements of touch. exactly corresponding to these relations in the sense of touch are the phenomena that we observe in the formation of visual spatial ideas. here as well we notice two sensation-components regularly working together. the one consists of the sensations of the retina. analogous to the touch sensations of the skin, they vary in quality not only according to the constitution of the outer impressions, but also according to the part of the retina which is affected by the impression. the other component consists of the extremely delicate sensations which accompany the positions and movements of the eye. they vary in their intensity according to the length of the distance through which the movement travels, just like the sensations of movement of the other muscles of the body. we notice, therefore, that changes in the position of the retinal elements, which may occur in inflammations of the inside of the eye, or abnormalities in the mechanism of the eye-movements may disturb considerably our spatial perception. they cause sometimes apparent dislocations in the objects seen, and at other times illusions as to their size and distance. these influences can be demonstrated on the normal eye by means of experiments. by making the movement of the eye more difficult, we cause the length of a distance to be over-valued. if we compare two straight lines of exactly the same length, one of which is interrupted by a number of transverse lines, so that a continuous movement of the eye is hindered, then this divided line appears longer than the undivided one. we can also by systematic experiments change the normal relation between eye-movements and retinal sensations. it will then be observed that our vision slowly begins to adapt itself to this new relation between the eye-movements and the position of the retinal elements. this can be done by wearing spectacles with prismatic glasses for a considerable length of time. at first all objects appear distorted. a straight line appears curved, a circle looks like an oval, and so on. if the spectacles are worn for several days, these distortions disappear. it may happen that distortions again appear when the glasses are discarded. this phenomenon can scarcely be accounted for except in the following manner. the retinal sensations by means of local differences in quality, which we may call qualitative local signs, correspond to definite sensations of movement graduated as to intensity, which we may call intensive local signs. their relation to the centre of the retina probably determines this correspondence. now our experiment with the prismatic glasses shows that this relation is neither an absolutely permanent nor an innate one, but that it is acquired by practice. it is acquired by the function itself, and therefore, when the functional relations are changed, gives way to a different relation or correspondence. this combination possesses distinctly the character of an association, and in so far as in it the sensation-components only appear as modified elements of the resulting spatial idea, it also possesses the characteristics of a fusion. in contradistinction, however, to the intensive fusions of clangs and chords, this possesses the special characteristic, that it consists of elements out of different senses. for the qualitative local signs belong to the sense of sight or to the sense of touch if we are dealing with spatial cutaneous perceptions which are exactly analogous to visual perceptions; whereas the intensive local signs belong to sensations of movement or muscle sensations. both together form a complex system of local signs. just as sensations fuse together into more or less complex ideas, so also do feelings fuse together into complex compounds, in which single elements appear to bear the rest, which act in a modifying manner upon the form, something analogous to the overtones of a clang. these affective fusions are again bound up most closely with the ideational fusions that correspond to them. the impression of a musical chord is composed of both. only in a psychological analysis can we separate the ideational from the affective associations, which are the essential causes of the æthetic character of the chord. one of the most important and simplest affective fusions of this kind is that of the so-called "common or organic feeling." it consists of an indefinite number of organic feelings, to which more or less lively feelings are joined, which in this case pre-eminently belong to the class of pleasant-unpleasant feelings. in this case, just as in the case of a chord, certain elements are predominant, while the others are merely modifying concomitants. our general state of health, e.g. freshness and activeness or general displeasure and exhaustion, is essentially a product of this affective complex, in which under normal conditions the sensuous feelings joined to the strain and movement sensations of the muscles play the most important part. a most important form of fusion consists of the impressions of our sense of hearing and of our organs of locomotion. these impressions are the intermediaries of our ideas of time. if we divide up into their elements the processes of consciousness caused by metronome beats of a medium rapidity, we find two classes--those that belong to the class of sensations and those that belong to feelings. as sensations we have first of all the single metronome beats divided from each other by empty intervals. these are not the only sensations. as we have shown above, there is also a weak sensation of strain which probably arises from the tensor muscle of the tympanum, and which lasts continuously from one beat to the other. to this is joined a further sensation in the mimic muscles surrounding the ear. the whole process, therefore, looked at from the point of view of sensation, appears as a continuous sensation-process, which is interrupted at regular intervals by stronger impulses arising from the objective impressions of the beats. to all this, however, as we saw before, there is added the regularly alternating feelings of strain and relaxation, which determine the rhythmical ideas. all these elements of sensation and feeling form in reality an indivisible whole. if a temporal idea is to arise, none of these components may be wanting, if the sensations are wanting, the feelings have, so to speak, no foundation. they can only arise if sensation impressions are present, upon which the feelings of expectation and realisation can be founded. on the other land the sensations remain unconnected, they lack a combination into a successive row, if the feelings of strain and relaxation are not present, for they directly help in the apprehension of the equality or inequality of the successive periods of time. if the beats are allowed to follow each other so slowly that the last one disappears out of the scope of consciousness when the new one enters, then the idea of time becomes absolutely uncertain. the same thing happens if, on the other hand, the time is so rapid that feelings of strain and relaxation cannot arise. in both cases it is obvious that any uncertain idea of time is only possible by reason of other extraneous factors. just as all our objective measures of time, from the course of the sun to the vibrations of a tuning-fork used to measure time, depend upon regular periodic movements, so also is our subjective time-consciousness absolutely dependent upon rhythmical ideas. these arise first of all from our movements of locomotion, and then in a much richer and finer form are transmitted to us by our sense of hearing. in all these cases, however, the resulting idea of time can be divided up into a substratum of sensation and into an affective process of strain and relaxation, of expectation and realisation. in the idea of time they fuse perfectly together, so that the influence of these factors can only be shown by the essential changes, which the resulting idea undergoes, if one of these sensation or affective factors is altered in some marked degree. just as elements of consciousness are joined together by fusion into compounds, so these compounds themselves undergo manifold changes, out of which new combinations arise. of great importance among these associations of the second class are those which we shall call assimilations and dissimilations. as ideational combinations they can be easily demonstrated, whereas the corresponding affective associations are joined to them rather as secondary components or form a special class of complex feelings, which are connected with the processes of recollection, recognition, memory, &c, and which we shall treat of in detail later on. let us first of all glance at some of the most important phenomena in connection with assimilation and dissimilation. to begin with the simplest case, we let one object of sight work in an assimilating manner upon another. we can achieve this most readily if we first of all make the difference between the two objects very small, and if secondly we bring them into a familiar relationship to each other, and so promote the idea of their identity. for example, we draw from one and the same centre sectors of a circle, and make one less than the others only by a few degrees. in spite of this we are inclined to apprehend all the sectors as equal. the larger ones work assimilatively upon the smaller one. to cause the opposite process of dissimilation, we draw one large sector among several smaller sectors. this appears, in contrast to the surrounding smaller sectors, very much enlarged, and we can convince ourselves of this by drawing on another piece of paper a sector of the same size as the one changed by dissimilation. this independent sector will then appear smaller than the one of its own size that is lying among the smaller sectors. this dissimilative change is generally called a contrast. we must not, however, confuse this dissimilative contrast with the contrast of feelings, where it is not a case of the formation of apparent differences in size, but of qualitative contrasts, such as pleasure and displeasure, or the increase of these. more important than the assimilations and dissimilations between directly given impressions are those that arise out of the reciprocal action of a direct impression and of ideational elements, which belong to previous impressions, and therefore arise by means of an act of memory. reproductive assimilations of this kind we have already met with in our reading experiments (see p. ). we saw there that a well-known word can in general be read almost instantaneously, although its scope greatly exceeds that of the focus of attention. it is clear that this great facilitation in apprehension is only possible owing to the familiarity of the object, because by its action it gives rise to the reproduction of former corresponding impressions, and thereby causes the completion of the image only partially perceived. we can convince ourselves of this in a striking manner by means of reading experiments, in which certain letters of a fairly long word have been voluntarily altered. such changes are then in general only partially or not at all perceived in these quick reading experiments. it may easily happen that we take the following combination of letters "miscaldoniousness" for the word "miscellaneousness," although four out of the seventeen letters of the word have been changed, if by chance our attention is very strongly concentrated upon one of the wrong letters, we can perceive the mistake, but for the other wrong letters the right ones are as a rule substituted. it is obvious that this phenomenon is exactly the same as the one we continually meet with when we overlook misprints in a book, only that in our experiments a false reading is greatly favoured by the shortness of the exposition-time. in all these cases we generally take it for granted that it is nothing more nor less than an inaccurate apprehension, as the expression "overlook" suggests. yet our rapid reading experiments convince us that this expression is really incorrect. in reality it is not a mere not-seeing of the wrong letters, but a seeing of the right ones in the place of the wrong ones. if we call into our mind directly after the experiment the image we have seen, we can see very often in those very places, where a wrong letter stands, the right letter in the full distinctness of an immediate impression. this is, of course, only possible if the wrong letter is displaced by the reproduction of the right one. such a process is obviously made up of two parts--firstly, the displacement of the wrong letter, and secondly, the reproduction of the right one. naturally both acts take place quite simultaneously, and therefore we may look upon the displacement as an effect of the reproduction. in this combination of the two acts an assimilation process and a dissimilation process are joined together. by means of an assimilation caused by the other letters the right letter is reproduced, and this together with all the rest of the word has a dissimilating effect upon the wrong letter. at the same time a further conclusion follows from these phenomena, which is of importance for the understanding of all the processes of association. it is impossible to imagine that a combination of letters, such as we have given above, could work as a whole, and then, because it was wrong, be replaced by the right word. it is on the contrary obvious that processes of assimilation and displacement have only occurred at certain places. it is also difficult to take for granted that the observer has ever seen the word printed in exactly the same size and type as employed in the reading experiments. it cannot, therefore, be a single definite word-image that he calls to memory, but there must be an indefinite number of similar word-images, which affect assimilatively the given impression, and cast it into the word-form which we ultimately apprehend. from this it follows that these associations do not by any means consist of a combination of complex ideas, but of a combination of ideational elements, which may possibly belong to very different ideas. with this we see that assimilation is at the same time closely connected with the associations by fusion considered above. in both cases the association is an elementary process. the difference between the two forms consists only in the fact that the elements in a fusion are constituent parts of a complex impression, whereas in an assimilation they already belong to complex ideas, from which they then break away in order to enter into new ideational compounds. thus fusion and assimilation work together in all sense-perceptions. the moment we see an object, hear a musical chord, &c., not only do the parts of the impression itself fuse together, but the impression also immediately gives rise to reproductive elements, which fill up any gaps in it, and arrange it among the ideas familiar to us. these processes continually overlap each other, and extend over all the regions of sense. what we imagine we perceive directly, really belongs in a great extent to our memory of innumerable previous impressions, and we are not aware of a separation between what is directly given us and what is supplied by assimilation. only when the reproductive elements attain to such a striking ascendancy, that they come into an irreconcilable contradiction with our usual perceptions, are we accustomed to speak of a deception of the senses or of an illusion. but this is only a limiting case, and it goes over by unnoticeable intermediate gradations into normal associations, which we might just as well call "normal illusions." many words of a lecture are imperfectly heard; the contours of a drawing or painting are only imperfectly represented in our eye. in spite of this we notice none of the gaps. that does not happen because we perceive the things inaccurately, as this phenomenon is often incorrectly interpreted, but because we have at our disposal the rich stores of memory, which fill out and perfect the perceived image. this complementary association is met with in a striking manner, when a real assimilation is hindered by the associated elements belonging to different senses. in this case the difference in sense-quality erects, as it were, a partition-wall, which prevents the unobservable union of the elements. but at the same time even then close combinations can be formed, which at the operation of a sense-impression immediately reproduce the associated sensations of another sense. for example, we often observe in silent reading weak clang-images of the words, to which are joined slight movements of the articulation-organs, or at least indications of such movements. at the sight of a musical instrument we often perceive in ourselves a weak auditory sensation of its clang; the sight of a gun will often give rise to a weak sound sensation, or if we hear the gun fired, to a reproduced visual image, and so forth. such associations of disparate senses are called complications. they form an important supplement to the associations, since together with these they essentially determine the ideational process in consciousness. such a co-operation of assimilations and complications is seen in the most striking manner in those processes of association which in ordinary life are called "recognitions," or, if the scope of the region of association over which the recognition stretches is indefinitely larger, are called "cognitions." we recognise, for example, an acquaintance, whom we have not seen for a long time. we know a table as a table, although we may never have seen the particular table in question before. we can do this by means of the indefinite number of associations with other tables, which the image of the table in question gives rise to. from what we have said above, it is at once obvious that all such recognitions or cognitions are nothing more than assimilations. the usual expression (to know or to be cognisant of) must not tempt us to look upon the process as a logical process, as an act of "knowledge." an act of knowledge may possibly follow a process of pure associative assimilation, if we afterwards try to account for the motives of the same. but the processes themselves, as they continually occur and make up an important part of our sense-experience, are pure associations. to place in them any acts of judgment or of reflection, as is customary in the scholastic psychology of ancient and modern times, can only serve to disguise the real psychological character of these processes. among the associations called recognitions, only those are of special interest in which the consummation of the assimilation process is in any way hindered, either because the perceived object has but seldom been met with, or because it has undergone changes since a previous perception of it. for example it may, as is well known, take a long time before we recognise a friend, who meets us unexpectedly after many years' absence. if we observe the process in such a case a little more closely, it appears regularly that the impression of the individual which we first of all receive, appears to change because of certain lineaments, that are apperceived by means of our feelings, rather than brought into connection with the personality in question. thus there arises a feeling of being acquainted with him, and then there occurs a second act, the real recognition, which follows in some cases very rapidly. this is the consummation of the assimilation proper. here we see assimilation has turned into successive association, and we generally call it a process of memory. in fact this obviously arises out of an ordinary simultaneous assimilation, if the latter is hindered by some disturbing factor, so that the first impression and the assimilation of this impression form two successive acts. such a dividing up into a succession generally occurs very distinctly, especially when the factors hindering the assimilation are so strong that it requires the addition of a further helping factor in order to overcome the hindrance. how often does it happen that some one greets us and we do not recognise him! if, however, he comes forward and mentions his name, suddenly the whole personality as a well-known one rises up in front of us. the reproductive assimilations are only set into motion by the addition of a helping idea. at the same time this example shows us how, in the dividing up of an assimilation process into a memory process, a complication may occasionally intervene. the name and the visual image are joined together as a complication, although in regard to the impression of human personalities in general they form fairly strong associations. in these processes of hindrance and assistance of associations, which are to be observed in recognitions, feelings play a not unimportant part. we have indicated this already. in the above example, before we recognised the friend we had not seen for a long time, the act of recognition was prepared for by an indefinite kind of feeling, which with a certain suddenness, experiencing at the same time a noticeable increase in intensity, changed into the real act of recognition. how are we to explain this feeling? whence does it come, and how can we explain its transition into the assimilation? the term a "feeling of familiarity" or a "quality of familiarity" with a thing has been used and has been regarded as a name for a specific element common to all acts of recognition. this was supposed to be affixed to every known object as a kind of outward sign. but the supposition of such an abstract symbol contradicts absolutely our observation. for, however indefinite this feeling may be in the period that prepares for the assimilation, it nevertheless possesses in each separate case its own peculiar quality, which is quite dependent upon the constitution of the recognised object. for example, the feeling differs, if we recognise an old friend, and if we recognise a district through which we have once wandered long ago. and it is by no means the same when we meet our friend mr. x., and when we meet mr. y. whom we did not wish to see again. just as much as the objects themselves differ, so do the so-called "qualities of familiarity" diverge from each other. from this we must conclude that these qualities are integral parts of the objects, naturally not of their objective nature, but of their effect upon us, or, more precisely expressed, of our apperception. now we have learnt that the essence of feeling was just this influence of the ideational content of consciousness upon the apperception. it follows therefore incontestably, that this quality of familiarity is nothing more than the feeling character, which the recognised idea possesses for us. now this feeling of being acquainted with a thing, as the above-mentioned observations teach us, may be very strong, while the assimilation of the new idea by the old is taking place not quite unhindered. we must therefore conclude that, in the period of preparation for the recognition, the assimilating previous idea is already beginning to make its appearance in the darker region of consciousness, and that it causes its corresponding affective reaction, but that it cannot itself force its way through to apperception. this interpretation of the process obviously receives fundamental support from our previous observations of the rhythmical feelings. with them it was also a case of recognition. if we repeat two similar rows of beats one after the other, we recognise the second as similar to the first. now this can only happen, as we have convinced ourselves, if the total feeling concentrates itself upon the last beat of each row, which in its specific feeling-quality corresponds to the previous rhythmical whole. exactly the same thing that happened in these rhythmical experiments, repeats itself now in these retarded recognitions of ordinary experience, except that in a way the distribution of the feelings is reversed. in the recognition of a rhythm the feeling corresponding to it arises out of the influence of the elements, that have receded out of the focus of attention into the darker field of consciousness, upon the apperception; in the steady rise of an impression to a state of recognition, the feeling is caused by the influence of the elements that are already in the darker field of consciousness but have not yet entered into the focus of attention. in these complex processes of the recognition of objects, a further condition is added, which in the repetition of rows of beats did not make itself felt, at least not in the same degree, because of the simplicity of the phenomenon, it consists in the fact that each idea possesses a background of other ideas that are joined to it in a spatial or temporal connection, and that in the process of recognition these ideas may hinder or assist the assimilation process. they may retard the recognition or make it absolutely impossible, or they may form essential aids to it. such secondary ideas can be observed very distinctly in cases where they join the chief idea after some time has elapsed. so in the above example, where the mentioning of the man's name caused a sudden recognition of the person himself; or, to take the reverse of this example, where the assimilation that is being formed is retarded owing to the fact that the name is other than the one suited to the motives of assimilation. such secondary ideas are of course always present, even although we do not notice them. even although they are in the darkest region of consciousness, they form, along with the feeling-tone of the chief idea, important components of the feelings accompanying the processes of cognition and recognition, especially in regard to their influence upon the apperception. in this way these latter are in reality always resultants of a sum of influences, and thus each separate experience, because of the unlimited variation of the secondary ideas accompanying assimilations and recognitions, possesses its specific feeling-tone, which distinguishes it from other previous or succeeding experiences. many phenomena that belong here escape ordinary observation, because their continuous repetition makes us insensitive to them. in those cases where an impression was accompanied by a very strong feeling-tone, and where its return is accompanied by a totally different affective state, we notice distinctly how the original feeling-tone becomes modified owing to the changed background. thus every psychical process possesses its specific tone, even if it appears as a mere repetition of a previous process. the changing secondary ideas, by means of their own affective influences, give it its special temporal and local signs. by means of these each single process can be distinguished from any other, however similar this may be. the opposite phenomenon may also occur. who does not know the strange feeling which occasionally comes over us at some process, the feeling that we have already in the past experienced this thing, although we know with certainty that this is in reality impossible? these phenomena also belong to the department of feelings, and we must connect them with the influences which arise from the indistinct secondary ideas, and which may at times almost exactly correspond, even when the chief ideas themselves are absolutely different. if such feelings become particularly strong, they very likely exert a reactive influence upon the assimilation process, and thus cause the new experience to appear as the repetition of a previous one. it may be that the so-called "second sight," which some people imagine they possess, depends upon very strong individual affective reactions of this kind and their assimilative influences. the ever-changing constellations of secondary ideas give each single experience its specific feeling-tone, by means of which it is distinguished from previous and following experiences. so it may happen that similar constellations of the darkly perceived content return in processes that otherwise are different, i.e. in the components that stand in the focus of consciousness. there is also another experience that may be mentioned here--one that has certainly escaped no keen observer of his own psychical life. if one calls to mind any previous experience, or in general any previous period of life--e.g. any definite period of one's childhood, of one's student life, or the beginning of one's professional career, &c.--each such striking experience or each such period of life is connected with a peculiar feeling, which also in this case enters into a distinct reciprocal action with the recalled ideas, inasmuch as it raises them to a greater degree of clearness and is itself increased by them. any single recalled idea could scarcely account for the unusual intensity and the specific quality which these feeling-tones often reach. we must also remember that a clearly apperceived content in such cases seldom arises, and that in the second set (the periods of life) we have not as a rule one single idea. we can understand such cases by considering the fact that, if fewer definite ideas clearly arise, a great number of indistinct secondary ideas are active, and, since they are peculiar to each experience and to each period of life, call up again the corresponding total feeling, where a more definite reproduction of single ideas is absolutely wanting. let us return after this digression to the processes of recognition. the activity of the secondary ideas, that came to light in the experiences described above, helps us to understand some special characteristics that we met with in ordinary recognition, and still more so in the hindrances that this may experience. especially in acts of recognition that are in some way or other retarded, we can in general observe a strong affective reaction arising, which, wherever we can bring it into connection with special motives, points to the effect of secondary ideas. they are as a rule only indistinct in consciousness, but sometimes they are afterwards recognised and prove themselves to be the motive, not only of the specific accompanying feeling, but also of the recognition itself. with these are closely connected other phenomena, which arise under circumstances where a real act of recognition never takes place, or under circumstances where the process, which is at first taking place absolutely within the region of the affective influences of the indistinct content of consciousness, more or less suddenly changes at most into an act of memory. a few examples will make such cases clear. who has not had the experience of being for hours at a time oppressed with the feeling that he has forgotten something, or missed something, or done something wrong, without being able to explain what it is that oppresses him in this manner? or who has not had experiences such as the following? i leave my house, and the moment i walk along the street i feel there is something i have forgotten; then by chance i pass a pillar-box, and it suddenly strikes me that i have forgotten to take with me an important letter. to such examples also belongs the torture we sometimes endure in trying to recall a name well-known to us. in such cases it often happens that we voluntarily try to obtain similar aids to our memory, as sometimes play a part in the retarded recognition of an individual known to us. attempts have been made to explain all such cases by speaking of "states of consciousness"--an expression that tells us nothing and gives us no information as to the nature of these phenomena themselves. now these feelings of forgetting, of thinking over a thing, of missing a thing, &c., are by no means always the same. they depend in each single case upon the special constitution of the idea in question. we can, therefore, in a manner analogous to our recognition experiments, interpret them as affective reactions to indistinct ideational content, in which the affective quality is dependent upon the specific constitution of the ideas, whereas the general affective character in the above-mentioned cases mostly belongs to the directions of strain and excitation. the phenomena of recognition in their origin could be represented as simultaneous assimilations with occasional intervening complications. in their inhibition-forms, which we have just discussed, they lead us directly over to memory-associations. the old theory of association derived from these its schematism of association forms. in reality they are the association phenomena that are most of all noticed, because with them the ideas that are bound together seem to be distinguishable from each other because of their succession in time. our previous discussion has, however, shown us that they are neither the only combinations of this class, nor even the most important ones. in fact they may be defined in accordance with their psychological origin as assimilations and complications, in which the combination of the constituent components is hindered by opposing motives, so that these components appear as independent ideas. this is seen clearly in such cases in which a continuous transition from the direct assimilative recognition, that takes place in a single act, to a memory-association is possible. let us take, for example, the case of looking at a portrait of a well-known person, and let us imagine the portrait executed in the most differing grades of likeness to the original. in the very rare cases, in which the painter achieves the greatest degree of likeness, it can happen that the picture gives rise to a very strong impression of identity with the original. there then arises a direct assimilation, which follows without any hindrance or retardation. if the picture is fairly good, so that the person may be recognised without any difficulty, but nevertheless possesses some strange lineaments, the process is one of retarded assimilation. the false parts of the portrait are after a longer inspection pushed aside by reproductive assimilation, and it may also happen after some time, that we see into this less excellent picture also the known personality. but if in the third and last case the portrait is much too unlike, there arises a peculiar competition between assimilation and dissimilation, in which it sometimes happens that we try to call up the memory-image of the person independently of the portrait we are looking at. it is usual to call this process "association by similarity," and to take for granted that the seen and the reproduced picture have been successively in consciousness. this is, as can easily be seen, a one-sided way of looking at the process; it is an attempt to make up a scheme out of an occasionally secondary phenomenon, whereas the essential part of the process, the competition between the assimilative and dissimilative influences, is quite overlooked. there is yet another occasion, in which the assimilation of an impression may be analysed into a succession of ideas. this happens if the impression has been a component of a compound idea in previous experiences. the separate parts of this compound idea have been arranged in a succession, and this row itself may either be a temporal or a spatial one, and, in order to go through it, a succession of acts of apprehension are necessary. both cases, temporal and spatial, are in essence identical, since they coincide as to the factor of succession. for example, if the words "i am the lord" are seen or heard, then any one who is familiar with the ten commandments will feel inclined to continue, "thy god," &c., and this continuation may appear to him in visual word-images, or in weak sound-images, or the words may arise in the memory in complications made up out of impressions of both senses. it is usual to call this process "association by contiguity." here also it is taken for granted that the directly impressed and the reproduced members of the row have joined together in pure succession. but this is also an imaginary scheme that does not correspond to reality. if we pay special attention to the course of the process, we clearly observe that the unseen or unheard part of the row does not by any means only enter consciousness, when the directly perceived part has already disappeared out of our apperception. we have rather in this case a phenomenon quite similar to the one we observed in the course of a row of beats or, in the reverse order, in the retarded recognition of an object. in the moment in which in the above example the word "lord" was apperceived, already the whole succeeding content of the decalogue was in the dark region of consciousness, so that from this the feeling-character, not only of the next words, but of the whole ten commandments, immediately conditioned the apperception. in reality, therefore, we have also in this case to do with a reproductive assimilation, in which the parts are apperceived successively because of the temporal arrangement of these parts, which are in reciprocal assimilation with each other. just in the same way do the separate beats of a rhythmical row form a succession and still are at the same time a united whole in consciousness. this process becomes in a way modified, if an impression calls up memory-elements of different kinds, by which it can be assimilated according to the individual disposition of consciousness. if, for example, i hear the word "father" without any special connection with other ideas, i may according to circumstances bring the word "mother" or "house" or "land," &c., into assimilative combination with it. in such cases it may happen that a competition between these different reproductions may arise, similar to the one we observed in the examination of a bad portrait, and this is generally shown in feelings of displeasure and excitation, as also in a retardation of the whole process. but such phenomena seldom occur under the normal conditions of psychical life, although they form the rule in the so-called association experiments. our observations have therefore made it clear that the division, which to some extent still exists in present-day psychology, of all memory-associations into "combinations by similarity" and "by contiguity," rests upon a schematisation of these processes, in which their essential content, and in particular their close connection with simultaneous assimilations, remains unnoticed. the deeper reason for this method of observation, that operates more with fictions and formulæ than with real phenomena, may be looked for in the false materialisation of ideas. this has been consolidated rather than abolished by the conventional association psychology. a more thorough analysis of associations should have tended to abolish such a materialisation. the memory-associations were looked upon as the typical and only forms of association, instead of being considered as mere limiting cases, which are only developed under certain conditions out of processes of fusion, assimilation, and complication. the succession of two independent ideas, only joined together by outward similarity or by habitual contiguity, was made the basis for a scheme for all psychical processes. and thus the view was formed that each idea was an unchangeable thing, very similar to the object from which it arose. if we take an unprejudiced view of the processes of consciousness, free from all the so-called association rules and theories, we see at once that an idea is no more an even relatively constant thing than is a feeling or emotion or volitional process. there exist only changing and transient ideational processes; there are no permanent ideas that return again and disappear again. in the ideational processes there is a continual interaction among the elements out of which they are formed. a remembered idea is therefore as little identical with the previous memory-act of the same idea as with the original impression with which it is connected. just as ideas are not permanent objects, so they are not processes that take place independent of feelings and emotions, for the more indistinct ideational content of consciousness by means of its feeling-tone influences apperception. from these again arise other combinations, which join together into one whole a number of contents of consciousness which belong together. even with memory associations it is therefore never the complex ideas themselves which associate together, but each association divides up into a number of more elementary combinations. in these there are always processes of hindrance and retardation at work, so that the associated idea, in contradistinction to the original idea, of which it seems the renewal, can always show further changes, which depend upon the special conditions of their origin. here those assimilations and dissimilations, which continually intervene as reproductive factors in our immediate sense-perceptions, make up the fundamental forms of the process, which determine all acts of memory. and these themselves can always be reduced to assimilation processes, which have been divided up into a succession, partly because of hindrances, and partly because of the temporal arrangement of the ideational processes themselves. chapter iv apperception there are cases of severe insanity in which the patients utter with great rapidity a number of words, joined together without sense and sometimes intermingled with absolutely meaningless sounds. this symptom is considered a component of the so-called "flight of ideas." a sane person can also produce this, if he, without any train of thought, simply repeats any words that may occur to him. for example, the following is such a series of words: "school house garden build stones ground hard soft long see harvest rain move pain." compare with this a context like the following out of the seventh book of goethe's _wilhelm meister_: "spring had come in all its glory. a spring thunder-storm, that had been threatening the whole day long, passed angrily over the hills. the rain-clouds swept over the land, the sun came out again in his majesty, and the glorious rainbow appeared against the grey background." wherein do these two word-combinations differ from each other? we are perhaps inclined to answer that the first series is lacking in any connection between the separate elements. it seems almost like a series of words taken at haphazard out of a dictionary and placed aimlessly one after the other. and yet one soon notices that the separate words are not quite so unconnected, as at the first glance they seem to be. as a rule it is obviously some memory-association that combines the succeeding word with the preceding one, as "house" with "school," and "garden" with "house," and so on. sometimes the association may join a word with one preceding it at a greater distance back, or it may join two different words to the same one, e.g. "stones" with "build" and "house," "ground" with "garden." sometimes also it may not be the ideational content itself, but the mere rhyme, that brings about the combination, as with "rain" and "pain." in other cases we may not be able to find a definite association at all. and yet, considering the many-sided and darkly perceived ideas often caused by mere affective influences, which we have considered above, we cannot help taking for granted latent associations in such cases as well, and especially since these cases happen very seldom. a "free, unconnected chain of ideas," as is sometimes presupposed, we shall place at once in the same category with "chance" in the region of physical phenomena. just as in the latter case, it simply means for us that the cause cannot be found in the case in question. from this point of view the first series of words is in some way or other psychologically conditioned in each of its elements by association, and still the series does not form a whole. it resembles in a way a heap of stones, out of which a house or several houses could possibly be built, but to make them into a whole the building plan, the unifying thought, is wanting. now if we look at the second series of words, we see at once that in this case also the different parts are joined together by association. the general ideas of spring, thunderstorm, hills, rain, sun, and rainbow are all links in an association-chain. but these elements are so arranged as to make a unified image. the impression of this image places us at once in the situation and mood that the author wishes to awaken in the reader. in this picture none of the chief component parts are superfluous; each is in close connection with the whole, which as a total idea binds all these associated elements together. now if we wished to distinguish the second from the first of the above ideational series by the objective characteristic of the sensible arrangement of its separate components, it would not be possible in consequence of the subjective nature of the process. let us suppose that a child learns by heart the sentences from _wilhelm meister_ without in the least paying attention to the meaning of the words, as it occasionally may happen, then the reproduction of these sentences has for the child no sense. the difference between this and the first series as to its psychological character is only apparent and not real. the separate words in both cases are joined to each other by mere association. in the consciousness of the child they do not form a unified whole. wherein lies the difference between this mere apparent unity of sentences learned senselessly by heart and the real unity in the mind of the author, who wrote them, or of the intelligent reader, who reproduces the picture in his mind? let us try to answer this question in detail the author who first formed the picture, and the reader who reproduces it, do not behave psychologically in exactly the same manner. the whole, even although in indistinct outlines, must be present in the consciousness of the author, before he writes down his sentences. he behaves, to take an example from our metronome experiments, in the same way as we do in listening to a certain rhythm, which we are hearing into the uniform beats of the metronome, or again, as we do when we beat with our finger a certain predetermined rhythm. the whole was in his consciousness, but the separate parts entered successively into the fixation-point of apperception and then ultimately ended at the end of the paragraph with the total feeling joined to the whole, which even at the beginning prepared for and influenced the coming paragraph. the state of the reader, who reproduces the author's thoughts, is a little different. from the beginning his attention is directed towards one total idea made up of many components, but this total idea is only produced from the impression of the words read. with the author the whole is there at the beginning and at the end of the production of the thought, which is itself developed in the successive apperceptions of the separate parts. with the reader there is at first only an expectation directed towards a whole. this expectation is shown in feelings of strain which are mostly regulated into definite qualitative directions, and these feelings are sufficient to guide the conception of the developing parts of the image into clear consciousness in the way in which the author himself raised his total idea, which was at first indistinct. thus in both cases the activity of apperception is the essential factor, which makes a difference in the formation of such a combination from that of a mere association row. the thought-context changes into a mere association, if the separate parts of the same are joined together by memory alone and if they are reproduced without the inner unity of thought. now such a reproduction becomes a passively experienced process, which lacks the consciousness of activity peculiar to the self-production of a thought and also, with the above-mentioned modifications, to its reproduction in the mind of the hearer or reader. in both these cases it is that feeling of activity, that we have mentioned above as the characteristic of active apperception, made up of alternating feelings of excitation, strain, and relaxation--it is this feeling of activity which gives the process the character whereby it differs essentially from mere association. while all apperceptions agree in the objective characteristics of the combination of a complex into a unity and in the subjective one of voluntary activity, yet in a further comparison of our thought processes we meet with a very evident difference in the content of the combined ideas. think, for example, of a sentence such as the following one from kant: "whether the treatment of knowledge, that belongs to a critique of reason, is proceeding along the sure way of science or not, can easily be judged by the result." if we compare this sentence out of the critique of pure reason with the above description, out of _wilhelm meister_, may we not be inclined to say that each belongs to quite a different world of thought? in our first example everything is graphic, each word represents a sensuous idea, the whole is a picture in words. in kant not one single word is the expression of a concrete object, they are all abstract concepts, which only obtain some living content by means of further processes of thought, which they stimulate. and yet the abstract thought-compound corresponds with the concrete description in so far as it can be reduced ultimately to concrete concepts. it has to make use of words, which as impressions of the senses of hearing and seeing are themselves sensuous ideas. certainly such concepts as "knowledge," "reason," "science," and even "treatment," "way," "result," which make up the sentence out of kant, are not in the least of a concrete character in the way they are used. but if we go back to the original meanings of all these words, we find every time that it is a sensuous one, i.e. relates to the senses. "treatment" at an earlier stage of language means something that we can treat in a material sense, "knowledge" refers to sensuous knowledge --something that we know by means of our senses, "reason" is nothing but the understanding of words or similar sensible impressions. as regards "way" it clearly bears the stamp of a concrete concept, it can be used as synonymous with "road." and yet in all these cases, the words in the thought, which they here help to express, are far removed from their origins. thus the most abstract thought can ultimately be reduced in all its components to concrete concepts. and these words, the means of expression, which we cannot dispense with, at the same time bear witness to the fact that abstract thinking has developed itself step by step from concrete. the history of knowledge teaches us that this happened in the following manner. the original sensuous ideas entered into the most manifest relations with each other, and then just as at the primitive stage of thought the concrete ideas themselves were joined together as separate elements of one thought, so at a higher stage these relations between ideas were then treated as elements. so the word "knowledge" represents an almost unlimited number of processes of objective knowing, and thereby it becomes an abstract concept, which can no longer be directly considered concrete. in this way there is brought about, by an unceasing concatenation of apperceptions, a continuous concentration of the thought process, which at the same time represents a great saving and concentration in the work of thinking. a concept, such as "knowledge," is like a bank-note that represents an inexhaustible value of current coin. very appropriate in this connection is what mephistopheles says to the student in faust, "one throw of the shuttle stirs up a thousand combinations." and even although with the help of this development in meaning of word-ideas the process of thinking may have very greatly diverged from its original sensuous basis, it nevertheless remains in the actual process always sensuous and concrete. for, to continue with mephistopheles, "just where concepts are lacking, a word comes in at the right moment." only in our sense the "word" has quite a serious meaning. the word is the real ideational equivalent for the concept, that cannot be formed into an idea. it changes abstract thoughts into concrete ideational processes that can be heard and seen. by the side of these concentrations caused by continuous apperceptions, the primitive concrete thinking, along with all the intermediate steps between the concrete object and the abstract concept, always preserves its own value peculiar to each of these steps. and among this row of values it is the most primitive one, the one that is directed solely to the apprehension of reality, that receives a favoured place in our life and thought--in our life, since we belong to the immediate reality and intervene in it in our activity; in our thought, since we always must think the abstract thought-complexes made real in their separate applications, if we do not wish to lose ourselves altogether. the special value of primitive apprehension, unweakened by any kind of abstraction, finds expression in the fact that the two divisions of human mental activity, which as complements to each other make up the chief value of human life, i.e. science and art, make real the two forms of thinking. hence the creations of art are no less thought-compounds than those of science. they follow in the general laws of their construction exactly the same laws of apperception, which we observed in the productions of thought contained in speech. the thought is as a whole in our consciousness, and at first only works upon the apperception by means of the resulting total feeling, and then develops into its separate component parts by successive acts of apperception. in exactly the same way the artist, the poet, or the composer is accustomed to grasp the whole of the work of art in its outlines, sometimes very indistinct, before he begins to carry out any of the parts, and while carrying them out a total idea is formed, which in its turn has a reciprocal influence upon the original idea. in both cases, especially through the influence of intervening associations, the thought-process or the composition of the work of art may undergo deviations or additions in its separate parts. the regularity of the process as a whole remains undisturbed by this. a work of art is just as little a mere product of association as is a thought arranged in sentences. various phenomena of everyday experience find their explanation in these psychological observations. first of all must be mentioned the seldom-noted fact, that we are able in our speech to bring to an end a fairly complicated thought without difficulty, although at the beginning of the sentences we are not at all clear as to the separate words and ideas or their combinations. some people, when they are obliged to speak in public, fail simply because their confidence in this self-regulation of the train of thoughts is lacking at such moments. and this again is due to the fact that they think they must first of all find the suitable transition from one word to the next. in free conversation they can carry to an end without a break the most complicated sentences, while in public their speech is hesitating and embarrassed, and they are every moment in danger of breaking down. in such a case absolute confidence in the possibility of expressing freely and involuntarily the thought in one's mind is the surest help to overcome these difficulties. of course a sensible training will also help. let us call to mind the processes by means of which the beginning and end of an expression of thought are held together into one sentence or into several sentences joined together by the same thought. we note at once that the general content in its whole feeling-quality is already present as soon as the first word is spoken, while the ideas and the corresponding words are not clearly in consciousness beyond that first beginning. if the process continues without associative distractions and additions, by which, occasionally, parts that lie far from the original thought are added to it, then we notice at the same time that that beginning feeling corresponds perfectly with the terminal feeling that accompanies the termination of the spoken thought. this terminal feeling is generally at first much stronger than the initial feeling, but then it gradually goes over into the feeling-quality that is preparing the next thought. now it is obvious at once that all these phenomena correspond in essentials with those we observed in our metronome experiments. in these experiments the conditions were much more simple and exact, so that they strengthen the more uncertain observations in ordinary reading and thinking. more complicated than in ordinary speaking and thinking are the phenomena where the sequence of thought-processes stretches over vast creations of the mind. very likely the whole of the idea hovers in the mind of the artist, who has received an inspiration for a work of art, or of the philosopher, who's filled with the conception of a complicated system of thought, before either of them carries it out. this anticipation can only be considered an indefinite total feeling, which points the direction for the continuation of the thoughts, and which becomes clearer itself during this continuation. at the same time, in such complicated cases the distracting influences increase in power continually, and accordingly continually alter the quality of the feeling-tone that hovers over the whole. so it sometimes happens that the resulting product becomes in its execution quite different from what it was in its first conception, and it sometimes may happen that such changes occur several times in the course of the process. in all such cases this is generally caused by new associations, which arise from single elements of the total thought, and which, if they do not fit into the regular course, often assimilate with the total thought in a similar manner, or crowd it out altogether. in combinations of creations of thought these secondary influences ultimately increase so much that the regular steady course becomes an exception, and the preponderance of these transforming forces becomes the rule. although in most cases these phenomena defy objective control, yet there are examples enough in which they can be clearly seen, at least their broad outlines. so goethe's _faust_ shows clearly traces of a repeated change in the idea of the whole, and the supposition is forced upon us that the author in his later conceptions had forgotten his first ones. in _wilhelm meister_ it almost seems as if he purposely had given as much free scope as possible to the play of associations caused by the plot. these may be extreme cases, and yet there is hardly in the province of science or art any creation of thought which in its execution remains free from any such intervening influences, which have their source partly in new impressions and partly in the thought-compounds caused by the execution or the elaboration of the same in the mind. the two psychical processes, that here interact, have been brought by psychologists under the concepts of "understanding" and "imagination." where a regular arrangement of the thought-compounds, bound up with a tendency to form them abstractly, is uppermost, it is the custom to assign this to the understanding. where consciousness is more inclined to the free play of associations and of newly excited thought-forms, and at the same time to a more concrete form of thinking, it is customary to speak of the activity of the imagination. but really we are here not dealing with faculties of thought that can in any way be separated, not even with functions of a different kind, but at bottom always and only with a participation of the apperceptions and associations that enter into all processes of thought, though distributed in a relatively different manner. it is therefore an absolutely wrong conception, if, according to the tradition of the old psychology, imagination is called the specific property of art, and understanding that of science. science without imagination is worth just as little as art without understanding. these general conceptions of understanding and imagination correspond in a certain sense only to different points of view, under which we look at the mental functions, in themselves indivisible, and by means of which we separate them according to the relative, participation of their factors. so in the same way associations and combinations of apperception are not processes which belong to differing regions of our psychical life. on the contrary, not only are they always in a state of interaction, but apperceptions show that they arise out of associations, wherever we are able to trace them back to the conditions of their development. nowhere can we see so clearly this rise of apperceptive combinations out of association as in spoken thought, the region of mental activity which is more than any other open to us in its objective forms. let us explain this by means of an example, which is closely connected with the above examples of concrete and abstract forms of thought. we have taken the sentences out of _wilhelm meister_, which describe the coming of spring, as a sample of sensuous objective expression in the sense of forms of thought-construction familiar to us. and yet they are absolutely controlled by the laws of our abstract thinking, which join together widely separated elements of thought to one total idea in the interests of a unified combination, and compel us to use, in the form of particles and inflections, abstract elements of conception in order to arrange the parts of the scene described. this is different at a more primitive stage of thinking and expression in speech. let us take, for example, the following simple statement in our own language: "he gave the children the slate-pencil." this sentence is for us directly concrete. if, however, we were to translate it just as it stands into the language of the inhabitants of the african colony togo, they would probably not understand it. for such an individual even "slate-pencil" would be too abstract a conception. further, he would not be able to imagine how any one could give something without having first of all taken it from somewhere else. the elements inserted between "slate-pencil" and the action of giving, which to us serve to combine the whole into one single idea, would mean to him rather a mixture of disparate elements. lastly, he cannot form the concept "children" without thinking that they are children of some people or other. accordingly our sentence would run somewhat as follows in the speech of the togo negro: "he take stone to write something this gives of somebody child they." we must note here that even this literal translation still bears traces of the abstract culture of our language. the difference between substantives and verbs, which we have been forced to use, does not exist in the togo language. if we look at such a sentence a little more closely, it is at once evident that the ideas are arranged exactly in the same order in which the objective process takes place. each word denotes only one idea and is not placed in any grammatical category, since there are none such in this language. therefore the expression of thought is still in essentials at the stage of pure association of ideas. such a sentence only differentiates itself from a perfectly unsystematic association, that strays from one member to the other--as in the above-mentioned series, "school house garden &c."--by the fact that it follows directly the action described element for element, and therefore reproduces this in the memory exactly as it took place in perception. here we meet clearly the two motives which raise pure associations to apperceptive combinations by means of the impulses that lie in the association itself. one of these motives is an objective one. it lies in the regular concatenation of the outward phenomena which present themselves to our view, and which force the association to combine the ideas in the same regularity. a series, such as "school house garden &c.," is only possible when the thought process frees itself from perception and gives itself up to the incidental inner motives, which remain when the continuous succession of phenomena that regulates our thinking is wanting. therefore association that is joined to these phenomena is in itself the more primitive, and in this way it is the regularity of the course of nature, which transfers its regularity to the normal association of our ideas. added to this objective motive there is a second, a subjective one. we would not be able to hold together in association a series of impressions given to us in a certain order and to reproduce them again, were it not for our attention that follows from member to member the separate parts of the series, and ultimately binds them together into a whole. thus ordered thinking arises out of the ordered course of nature in which man finds himself, and this thinking is from the beginning nothing more than the subjective reproduction of the regularity according to law of natural phenomena. on the other hand, this reproduction is only possible by means of the will that controls the concatenation of ideas. thus human thought, like the human being himself, is at the same time the product of nature and a creation of his own mental life, which in the human will finds that unity which binds together the unbounded manifoldness of mental contents into one whole. in this way the development of apperceptive thought-combinations out of associations corroborates further the result obtained above in considering volitional processes, namely that to every outward voluntary action there correspond inner acts of volition which are occupied in influencing the course of thought. in the close combination between thought and speech this connection between inner and outer volition comes most clearly to light. we cannot act outwardly without at the same time executing inner acts of will. therefore ordered expression of thought in speech corresponds as outward volitional activity to the control of the will over the associations that originally stray here and there without order. even although thought in a primitive speech, as in the above example, may be ever so near to mere association of ideas, yet the control by the will is also to be seen in it, from the fact that the association series is one that inwardly is connected together. and with this we have the basis upon which the more complicated forms of apperception can rise, because of the continuous concentrations and combinations in thinking, and these latter at the same time find their adequate expression in the forms of speech. this connection between inner and outer volition, as we see it living in the connection between thought and speech, is ultimately of as great practical as theoretical importance. only by considering this connection do we arrive at a sufficient understanding for the higher productions of human mental life. it also points forcibly to the fact that the most important part of education for the formation of character--i.e. the training of the will--should not only, and not even in the first instance, be directed to the outward act. rather must education pay most attention to that inner volition which is occupied with ordered thinking. to make this strong, to make this able to resist the distracting play of associations, is its most important and also one of its most difficult tasks. many attempts have been made to investigate the processes of thought in other ways than in the way described above. at first it was thought that the surest way would be to take as a foundation for the psychological analysis of the thought-processes the laws of logical thinking, as they had been laid down from the time of aristotle by the science of logic. scholastic philosophy showed great subtlety in this direction in changing psychical processes into logical judgments and conclusions, and there are still followers of this direction at the present day. starting with the thought-processes in the narrow meaning of the word, this logical explanation of everything psychical was allowed to spread over to associations, the processes of sense-perception, the pure sensations, feelings, emotions, &c., so that in this old scholastic psychology the human consciousness was in danger of becoming a scholastic philosopher, who regulated each of his actions according to the laws of logic. now such laws are a late product of scientific thinking, which presupposes a long history of thinking determined by a number of specific factors. these norms, even for the fully-developed consciousness, only apply to a small part of the thought-processes. any attempt to explain, out of these norms, thought in the psychological sense of the word can only lead to an entanglement of the real facts in a net of logical reflections. we can in fact say of such attempts, that measured by results they have been absolutely fruitless. they have disregarded the psychical processes themselves, and have gained nothing at all for the interpretation of the laws of logic simply because they saw in them the primitive facts of consciousness itself. many psychologists thought that this method could be improved by making use of direct introspection. they thought by turning their attention to their own consciousness to be able to explain what happened when we were thinking. or they sought to attain the same end by asking another person a question, by means of which certain processes of thought would be excited, and then by questioning the person about the introspection he had made. it is obvious to the reader, who has followed our discussion so far, that nothing can be discovered in such experiments, where the most complicated psychical processes are investigated directly and without any further preparation. we need first of all a careful analysis of the more elementary psychical processes, of the facts of attention and of the wider scope of consciousness as well as of the relations between them and of the manifold affective processes that intervene in all these cases. without having gained by these means the necessary information as to the general conditions and, so to say, as to the scene over which our thought-processes move, it is impossible in any way to understand these themselves in their psychical combinations. many psychologists have connected this difficulty, not with the wrongness of their own method but with the essence of the thought-process. this was explained as an unconscious and (since all sense-perception belongs to consciousness) as a supersensual phenomenon, in the interpretation of which each one must be left to his own speculation. this opened the door at once to the explanation of psychical phenomena according to logical reflections, that were at will read into such phenomena. this alleged method of exact introspection ended ultimately at the point from whence it started, i.e. the scholastic philosophy. in contradistinction to all this let us remember the rule, valid for psychology as well as for any other science, that we cannot understand the complex phenomena, before we have become familiar with the simple ones, which presuppose the former. now the general phenomena of the course of simple processes in consciousness, as we have seen them in their most concrete form and under the simplest conditions in our observations of the combination and comparison of rows of beats, give us the most general preliminary conditions, which must be held as a criterion for much more complicated thought-processes. it is evident, however, that these formal conditions of all processes of consciousness cannot be sufficient to account for the special characteristics and phenomena of the development of thought. to do this we must turn our attention to this development itself, as it is shown in the documents of the spoken expression of thought at different stages of consciousness. it is unfortunate that in these and in other cases the development of the child, that is for us the easiest to observe, can give, as is obvious, only a few and in part only doubtful results. the speech and thought of the child, under the present conditions of culture, not only presuppose a number of inherited dispositions, whose influences can scarcely be accurately traced, but it is also absolutely impossible to withdraw the child from the influences to which, from the very beginning, its environment gives rise. therefore the mental development of our children is under all circumstances not only an accelerated but also in many respects an essentially changed one, in comparison to a purely spontaneous development. on the other hand there are, at least in a relative manner, such stages of a spontaneous development of thinking, in many cases relatively independent of outward influences of culture, in the mental life of more primitive peoples. the different stages, which this mental life shows, find their most adequate expression in the outward phenomena of this mental life itself, and above all in those of speech, which is a means of expression and an instrument of thought at the same time. we can by means of the different stages of the development of speech follow that gradual transition of associative into apperceptive processes of consciousness from step to step. the example given above of a relatively primitive form of spoken thought shows the relation in which it stands to our languages of culture. a closer investigation of this subject would lead us beyond the scope of individual psychology into that of racial psychology, where the most important part deals with the psychological development of thought and speech. chapter v the laws of psychical life many psychologists and philosophers have denied the existence of special laws for our psychical life, if we understand this to mean specific laws, differing from the universal physical ones. some say that everything that is called a psychical law is nothing but a psychological reflex of physical combinations, which is made up of sensations joined to certain central cerebral processes. others maintain that there are no laws at all in the mental sphere. they say that the essential difference between natural and mental sciences consists in the fact that only the former can be reduced to definite laws, whereas the latter are absolutely wanting in any arrangement of phenomena according to law. the first of these opinions, that of materialistic psychology, can be passed over rapidly. it is contradicted by all the phenomena of consciousness that we have up till now discussed. it is contradicted by the fact of consciousness itself, which cannot possibly be derived from any physical qualities of material molecules or atoms. the indisputable affirmation, that there exist no processes of consciousness that are not in some manner or other connected with physical processes, is changed by this materialistic hypothesis into the dogma that the processes of consciousness themselves are in their real essence physical processes. now this is an assertion that directly contradicts our immediate experience, which teaches us that a human being, or any other similar living creature, is a psycho-physical and not only a physical unity. the second of the above opinions ascribes to the natural sciences alone laws in the sense of universally valid rules for phenomena, and therefore limits psychology in principle to the description of facts, which appear in their combinations to be arranged purely by chance or at will. this opinion rests obviously on a mistaken use of the conception of law. we are only allowed to consider those regularities in phenomena as according to law, which always repeat themselves in exactly the same manner. but there are in reality no such laws, not even in the natural sciences. for this principle is valid here: laws determine the course of phenomena only in so far as they are not annulled by other laws. now because of the complex nature of all phenomena in general each process stands under the influence of many laws, and so it happens that just the most universal natural laws can never in experience be demonstrated in their full power. there is no law of dynamics which has a more universal validity than the so-called "law of inertia" or newton's first law of motion. it can be formulated as follows: "a body in motion, and not acted on by any external force, will continue to move indefinitely in a straight line and with uniform velocity." it is obvious that this law can never and nowhere be realised in experience, since a case of independence from other external forces, which alter the motion, never and nowhere exists. and yet the law of inertia is for us an infallible law of nature, since all real processes of motion may be looked upon as lawful modifications of that ideal case (never existing in concrete experience) of a motion not acted upon by any external influences. let us now in the light of these considerations, universally acknowledged in natural science, consider the question of the existence or non-existence of psychical laws. it is of course self-evident that we may consider as laws only such regularities that lie within the process of consciousness, and not such as lie outside of consciousness, e.g. such as belong to physiological processes of the brain. accordingly we may call combinations of sensations or of simple feelings into complex ideas, emotions, &c., psychical laws, if they in any way take place regularly. on the other hand, the fact that, if a bright point appears on a dark field of vision, the lines of vision of the two eyes are at once directed towards this point--this fact is a physiological and not a psychical law. naturally such physical laws, as the one in our example, may have a determining influence upon the operation of certain psychical laws. but this does not hinder us from making a sharp distinction between the two kinds of law. we keep as a principle for a psychical law, that the components as well as the resultants of the effects of such laws are parts of immediate consciousness, i.e. sensations, feelings and their combinations. now if we cast a glance, while keeping firmly to this criterion, over the manifold processes of consciousness, which have been touched upon in this book, we see at once that all these processes bear the character of a stem regularity. not in the sense that these laws are fixed rules without exceptions (such laws as we have seen above do not exist, because of the never-failing interference from other influences), but in the only sense permissible, i.e. that each complex phenomenon can be reduced to a lawful co-operation of elements. if this requirement were not fulfilled, there would be no cohesion in our psychical life. it would break up into a chaos of unconnected elements, and consciousness itself, which is just the opposite of such a chaotic disarrangement, would be impossible. therefore each separate idea is a combination of sensations according to law. a given clang of a definite timbre is put together unchangeably in the same way out of elementary tone-sensations. that certain objective sources of sound, e.g. strings, air spaces, possess physical qualities, by means of which such regular combinations of tone-quality arise, is undoubtedly a very important factor for the psychical law of the blending of tones. but these physical facts have in themselves nothing whatever to do with this law. if our consciousness was not disposed to such regular combinations, those objective factors would remain powerless. and it is exactly the same with the combination of light-sensations into spatial ideas, with the union of the images of an object in the right and left eye into one total image, with the rise of peculiar total feelings out of their partial feelings, as we have observed in the organic feeling and in the elementary æsthetic feelings, and last of all with the composition of the emotions and volitional processes out of their elements. starting from these single more or less complex processes of consciousness, this character of regularity applies above all to the temporal succession of the processes. the generalisations of the old association psychology were absolutely inadequate, and its chief mistake lay, not so much in postulating laws too hastily, as in the fact that it did not attempt to penetrate deeply enough into the laws underlying the association processes by means of an analysis of the same. a last and conclusive testimony for this lawful character of psychical phenomena is given by the apperceptive combinations, whose specific products (of course quite dependent upon the laws of association), are the combinations of the thought-processes, as we have seen above. there can be no more striking proof of the absurdity of the above-mentioned theory of the lawlessness of psychical phenomena as the consequence to which it would lead us. for it would lead to the conclusion that the conception of law itself was contrary to law. this conception is in fact nothing more than one of the results of those psychical thought-combinations, the lawful nature of which is questioned. it would lead us too far here to go into the profusion of psychical laws. the general character of them has been suggested in our chapters on association and apperception. in the natural sciences there are more general fundamental laws that rise above the separate particular laws, and these we may call the principles of investigation, in so far as they are general requirements to which investigation has to conform. in the same way we can set up fundamental laws in psychology which are not included in the separate regularities of phenomena, because they can only be gained from a general view of the whole of such phenomena. in physics, for example, the above-mentioned example of the law of inertia is a universally valid law. the same claim is raised in a wider scope by "the law of the indestructibility of matter," and by the near-related "principle of the conservation of energy." are there, we naturally ask at once, psychological principles of similar universal validity? before we attempt to answer this question we must note one restriction, to which even in the natural sciences the requirement of universal validity for the leading principles is subject, and which, we may be sure, will be even more prominent in mental science, because of the extraordinarily complex nature of the phenomena. this restriction consists in the fact that the validity of each fundamental principle is subject to certain hypotheses, so that, where these are no longer fulfilled, the principles themselves become doubtful or untenable. thus the law of the conservation of energy is only valid as long as the measured units of energy belong to a closed or finite material system. it loses its validity if the system is of infinite extent, or if, though finite, it can be acted upon by any external forces. a restriction analogous to this last one will have to be employed in regard to the psychical laws obtained by generalisation from the individual psychological regularities. of course we must take into account the conditions arising out of the peculiarity of mental phenomena. these psychical laws, by virtue of the subjection of psychical phenomena to the interconnection of consciousness, can only be valid within the limits within which such an interconnection of psychical processes takes place. we shall, for example, try to obtain a fundamental principle which controls the formation of complex psychical processes out of their elements. but it would have no sense to set up such a law for absolutely disparate processes that do not stand in any relation in the single consciousness. it may be that, because of this, the limits of validity for psychological principles are much narrower than those for general natural laws. this is connected with the fact that psychology has to do with inner and not with outer relations. and also we must not forget that this limitation can be compensated for by the character of the psychical laws themselves. and, in fact, the discussion of the first and most general of these laws will show us that this hypothesis proves correct. the first fundamental principle deals with the relation of the parts contained in a complex psychical process to the unified resultants into which they form. this relation can, as regards its qualitative content, be a most extraordinarily varying one, so that, in regard to the quality of the elements and their combinations, the separate psychical processes cannot be compared. thus we cannot compare simple light sensations and qualities of tones, or a spatial visual image with a compound clang, or bring into comparison, according to their qualitative character, the relations of both of these pairs with those of the elements of an æsthetic feeling to that feeling itself, or with those of the separate feelings of an emotion to the total content of the same, or with those of the affective and ideational components of motives to the volitional process in which they take part. nevertheless all these cases are regulated in regard to the formal relation between the components of a process and their resultants by one single principle, which we may call, for the sake of shortness, "the principle of creative resultants." it attempts to state the fact that in all psychical combinations the product is not a mere sum of the separate elements that compose such combinations, but that it represents a new creation. but at the same time, the general disposition of this product is formed by the elements, so that further components are not necessary for its creation, and indeed cannot be considered possible from the standpoint of a psychological interpretation. thus in the light sensations of the retina, combined and fused with the sensations of strain in the eye in its movements and adjustments, are contained the essentials for the production of a given spatial image. at the same time this spatial image itself is something new, which as regards the resulting qualities is not contained in those elements. in the same way an act of volition that takes place under the influence of a number of motives, partly combating and partly aiding each other, is the necessary creation of this motivation, so that any specific process lying outside of these elements is nowhere to be observed. at the same time such an act of volition is no mere sum of motive-elements, but something new, that connects these elements into one united resultant. we see this creative and yet absolutely lawful nature of psychical phenomena best of all in apperceptive combinations, and for a long time it has been silently recognised in their case. every one knows that the result of a chain of reasoning, made up of a row of single acts of thought, may be a product of those single thought-acts, which throws much light on some subject and which was before unknown to us, and yet which conclusively comes from those premises, if we analyse retrogressively its development. upon this creative character of apperceptive combinations, above all, rests the regularity of psychical development, which is shown in the single consciousness during the individual life, and in the total mental development revealed to us by culture and history. the assertion that is occasionally made, based on dogmatic prejudices--namely, that the law of the constancy of matter, that is valid for the forces of nature, must necessarily keep mental life always at the same level in its total value--this assertion is contradicted by the facts of individual and universal development. that does not naturally exclude the possibility of individual interruptions of the course of development, and, because of these, of retrogressive movements arising, in consequence of the above-mentioned conditions, which govern all mental combinations. this combination of creative growth and strict regularity, which marks our mental life, is shown above all in the fact that, especially with the more complicated processes and the more extensive forms of progress of psychical phenomena, the future resultants can never be determined in advance; but that on the other hand it is possible, starting with the given resultants, to achieve, under favourable conditions, an exact deduction into the components. the psychologist, like the psychological historian, is a prophet with his eyes turned towards the past. he ought not only to be able to tell what has happened, but also what necessarily must have happened, according to the position of events. this point of view has in essentials for a long time been held in practice in the historical sciences. it must be of some value that psychology can show the same law of resultants even in the simplest sense-perceptions and affective-processes, where, in consequence of the simplicity of the conditions, very often the retrogressive deduction turns at the same time into a prophecy of events. the law of resultants undergoes an important change in those cases, in which in the course of a psychical process secondary influences arise, which lie outside the region of the immediately produced resultants, and in which these secondary influences become independent conditions of new influences, which combine with those immediate resultants into a complex phenomenon. in such cases it may even happen that the secondary influences obtain the mastery and so degrade the original resultants to mere secondary influences or ultimately obliterate them altogether. such a phenomenon may in longer processes be repeated several times and in this manner produce a chain of processes, the members of which diverge more and more from the starting-point of the row of phenomena. it is most of all processes made up of all other psychical compounds, i.e. volitional processes, in which this modification of the law of resultants may be demonstrated by means of numerous phenomena mostly belonging to racial psychology or the history of civilisation. an action arising from a given motive produces not only the ends latent in the motive, but also other, not directly purposed, influences. when these latter enter into consciousness and stir up feelings and impulses, they themselves become new motives, which either make the original act of volition more complicated, or they change it or substitute some other act for it. we may call this modification of the law of resultants, in accordance with the principal form in which it appears, "the principle of the heterogony of ends." it is of eminent importance for the development of the individual as well as of the general consciousness, and especially because the influences of original motives, that have decayed, are almost always preserved in some few traces alongside of the new ones that have taken their place. such remnants of former purposes continue to exist in forms we do not understand in a great number of our habits, customs, and above all in religious ceremonies handed down to us from the past. not only do these phenomena themselves remain obscure, but also the development of the present aims remains obscure, as long as we cannot account for them by the principle of heterogony that intervenes in all these cases. as a supplement to the law of resultants, and yet at the same time in a certain sense as an expression for the same psychical regularity, we have "the law of conditioning relations." just as the law of resultants joins into one unified expression the forms of psychical synthesis, so we may say that the law of relations is the analytic principle, which arranges under one general rule the relations of the components of one such synthetic whole. this rule consists in the fact that the psychical elements of a product stand in internal relations to each other, out of which the product itself necessarily arises, while at the same time the character of a new creation (a character that belongs to all psychical resultants) is caused by these relations. by inner relations we mean such as depend upon the qualitative constitution of the separate contents, and in so far stand, as a specifically different and at the same time complementary condition, in contradistinction to those external relations, which are determined by their formal arrangement. in this sense this distinction between external and internal relations corresponds to the difference in the ways of viewing the phenomena by the natural sciences and psychology respectively. the processes of nature are absolutely determined by the connection of temporal and spatial relations, in which the elements of the phenomena stand to each other. the mental processes on the other hand cannot, because of their subjection to natural phenomena, dispense with these external relations, but their inmost nature rests on the internal qualitative relations of the elements bound into one whole. the law of relations stands in general reciprocal relationship to the law of resultants. both of these laws apply to all compound unities of psychical phenomena, from the simplest ideational and complex affective processes up to the most complicated individual and general developments in psychical life. thus the combination of a sum of tone elements into a single whole, by means of a specific ideational and affective value resulting from the combination itself, depends absolutely upon the qualitative and quantitative relations in which the tones stand to each other. this clearly arises from the natural dependence of resultants and relations upon each other, since each change of the latter modifies the constitution of the resultants in a corresponding manner. in the same way a spatial visual image is dependent on the relations of the qualitative and quantitative elements of the sensations of the retina and the strain sensations of the eye, and so on. a complex æsthetic feeling is a resultant of the simpler æsthetic feelings bound to the different parts of the perception, in so far as these latter again determine the product by means of their qualitative relations. and lastly all the processes of mental development are founded on the relations of their separate factors, by means of which they are combined into resultants. the interdependence of the laws of resultants and of relations shows us the importance of each of these principles. we cannot explain the psychical value of new creative compounds without considering the internal relations of their components, just as we cannot comprehend the peculiarity of these relations without continually taking into account their resulting influences. again in this case the most striking proof for the close connection between these two principles is given by the apperceptive combinations, especially in the forms of logical processes of thought, as they are expressed in the combination of sentences in speech. the thought-content of a sentence stands first of all, as we saw above, as a whole in our consciousness, but not yet as an ideational compound raised to clear apperception. in this stage it is a resultant from previous separate association and apperception processes. then follows in the second stage of expression in speech, an analysis of that total idea into its parts, in which these parts are always put into close relations with each other. such relations are called by grammarians subject and predicate, noun and adjective, verb and adverb, &c. the grammatical meaning of these categories shows clearly that this analysis consists of a system of primary and secondary relations, which are joined into a unified resultant by this logical arrangement. thus the relation of subject and predicate includes all those further relations of noun and adjective, verb and object or adverb, as its minor terms, which are joined together partly by their own relations and partly by the relations of those most general members of the sentence, i.e. subject and predicate. this explains the psychological fact, that after this process of joining the thought together has passed, the total idea is once again, as at the beginning but this time more clearly, in consciousness. in a similar manner such single thought-compounds are combined into more extensive chains of thought, of which the relatively simplest forms are found in the process of drawing a conclusion. the law of resultants finds a supplement and a specific application in the principle of the heterogony of ends in certain very important cases. in the same way we find, as supplementary to the law of relations, "the principle of intensifying contrasts." it includes those relations of psychical elements and compounds which are connected with certain limiting values of the qualitative and quantitative components of a whole. in the region of ideational combinations we have noted such influences of contrast in associative assimilations and dissimilations. we saw there that at a certain limiting value of the difference between two sensations or ideas, e.g. two spatial or temporal distances, two sound or light sensations, the assimilation present at a small difference may turn suddenly into a dissimilation. the impressions no longer assimilate, but become intensified through contrast. in another especially important form we meet the same principle in the feelings, where it stands in connection with the duality of the feelings that is valid for all affective processes and their combinations. in consequence of this each feeling, as we have seen, possesses its contrast-feeling, e.g. pleasure and displeasure, excitation and quiescence, strain and relaxation. here the principle of relations shows itself in the form of the law of contrast, above all in the fact that the change between contrasting feelings itself intensifies the contrasts. thus a feeling of pleasure is more intense, and its specific quality is more clearly felt, if it has been preceded by a feeling of displeasure. a similar relation exists between excitation and quiescence, strain and relaxation. the law of contrasts is by no means limited to the relation between separate contents of consciousness existing side by side or following each other, but we see its most important influences in those places where it extends over more extensive groups of mental experience. thoughtful historians have long since noted the fact, that in historical development not only do periods of rise and fall follow each other, but also periods of a special direction of mental life. and these periods, both in the impression they make upon us and in the objective relations in which they stand to each other, are so intensified that the following phase is every time increased by means of the contrast with the preceding one. let us take an example from the near past. the german literature of the classicist period received its peculiar stamp of contemplative calm and beauty of form to a great degree from the contrast with the "storm and stress" period that was marked with such strong emotions. in the same way romanticism, which was inclined to the cult of the imagination and of a poetical past, was influenced by contrast with the preceding classical period, that laid most stress upon the understanding, and that regarded the present as the ripest fruit of human development. and lastly this change of contrasts shows itself most clearly and with the shortest oscillations in economic life, where it is in part assisted by the oscillations in the conditions of civilisation. we see this, for example, very well in the fluctuations of our national credit and of stocks and shares. and these sharp contrasts can be ultimately explained by the inner life of man that fluctuates between hope and hesitation, and in this fluctuation intensifies the emotions. let us now consider the connection of the four principles we have discussed. the second and fourth may be looked upon as special applications of the two fundamental principles of creative resultants and conditioning relations. we see also that they are not only joined very closely together, but that they stand, as absolutely disparate incomparable laws, in contradistinction to those general principles to which all natural phenomena are subjected. a contradiction has very often been thought to exist in the relation between the universal mental and natural laws. and since the natural laws are considered to be the more general and more necessary, these psychical principles have been looked upon as inadmissible generalisations, if they have not been absolutely ignored, which has more often been the case. now we have seen in our whole discussion, that in reality we cannot move a step in the interpretation of psychical processes from the simplest sense-perceptions and affective combinations to the most complicated mental processes, as shown in society and history, without meeting with these principles always and everywhere. we must of course keep strictly to the maxim of analysing the psychical processes in their own connections and as processes joined together in themselves, as far as they so appear to us. now the neglect of this maxim has led to the above-mentioned contradiction and to the disregard of these laws. in fact the reverse maxim has been formed, namely, that psychical processes should not be held as decisive for the principles that condition them, but rather that the laws of nature, founded upon external natural phenomena, should also rule our mental life. in this sense the law of the conservation of energy has been considered a fundamental law of all mental development. for this purpose, and also in order to preserve a kind of independence for our mental life, the conception of "psychical energy" has been formed. this, in all the changes it undergoes, is supposed to be subject to the law of the conservation of energy just like mechanical, thermal, electro-magnetic, or any other energy. since we do not possess a definite unit of measurement for this psychical energy, and since it always occurs between two other physical energies, it was taken for granted that it could be indirectly measured. it could be placed in the middle of a series of transformations that took place according to constant equivalents as a value to be measured indirectly by the physical energy equivalent to it. for example, it could be placed between a given quantity of chemical energy, supplied from outside to the organism, and an equivalent quantity of warmth and mechanical work-energy, which the organism produces. if this were the case we could not reconcile with it a principle such as the one of creative resultants. such a principle could not be included among the universal psychical laws; it would have to lie outside the general regularity of our psychical life. we can of course reverse this relation. then we come to the result, that psychical regularity lies outside the law of energy, and in that case it would have no sense to place this psychical energy between two other physical energies and then attempt a measurement. such a measurement is a pure fiction. we might just as well take any other fictitious process, say a miracle, and place it in the series of transformations. these applications of physical laws to psychical phenomena are not based upon empirical facts, but they arise from a metaphysical principle, namely, the demand for a monistic view of life. now this idea certainly has a justification, inasmuch as it rests upon a logical demand which it seeks to satisfy. if the so-called monism does not do this, it changes into a real dualism, as would clearly happen in the above-suggested rationalistic explanation of a miracle. in fact monism is only scientifically justified in its view of the relation between psychical and physical, as long as it emphasises the fact that the human being can just as little be considered a purely physical as a purely psychical being, and that man must be considered a psycho-physical individual, as we in reality experience him. this monism alone corresponds to the facts, a dualistic separation of soul and body, even if it sails under a monistic flag in the form of an atom-soul, or of an anonymous psychical energy, is a hypothesis which cannot be proved and which is useless for the interpretation of mental life. from the standpoint of the scientific and only justifiable monism, the mental processes are considered inseparable components of human and animal life. they must be judged according to the qualities that are immanent in them, and not according to laws which apply to other phenomena, and in the formulation of which no regard was paid to those psychical qualities. there cannot, however, be the least contradiction in the idea that physical and psychical phenomena follow different laws, as long as these laws are not irreconcilable with the actual unity of the psycho-physical individual. in reality we cannot talk of irreconcilability in this case, because firstly, the two series of phenomena are of a disparate nature, and because secondly everywhere, where these two series of phenomena meet together in the unity of the individual, they are really, as far as we know, subject to a principle of regular arrangement. thus, for example, the law of creative resultants is not the least contradiction to the law of the conservation of energy, because the measures by which we determine psychical values cannot be compared with those with which we measure physical values. we judge the psychical according to its qualitative value, and the physical according to its quantitative value. the idea of value is in its origin really psychical, and this points to the fact that in reality physical values have in themselves no real measure, and that they only obtain one, if we make them the object of a comparative judgment, i.e. in a sense translate them into the psychological. disparate values cannot in any way be compared, so long as a transformation of the one into the other is impossible. we can compare warmth and mechanical work, because the one can be transformed into the other according to a strict law of equivalence. but we cannot compare a tone with a sensation of light, or a visual idea with a chord, because a transformation of the one of these practical contents into the other is unthinkable. now physical values are subject to the principle of the conservation of energy because of the unlimited capacity for transformation of physical energies according to equivalent relations. but it has on the other hand no sense to try to apply this same principle to the qualitative psychical values, which do not in any way admit of such a transformation. this of course stands in close relation with the fact that the subject-matter of psychology is the whole manifoldness of qualitative contents directly presented to our experience, each of which would immediately lose its own peculiar quality, if we tried to transform it into any other. thus the physical phenomena investigated by the natural sciences and the laws of these phenomena do not in the least contradict the qualitative content of life dealt with by psychology. they rather supplement each other, inasmuch as we must combine them together into one whole, if we wish to understand the life of the psycho-physical being given to us in its unity. yet this impossibility of comparison of these qualities could not exist along with the unity of their substratum, if the physical and psychical values were not joined together in this substratum. this connection consists herein, that on the one side the physical elements, whether atoms or parts of one continuous matter, must necessarily be thought by us in forms of spatial and temporal ideas arising in accordance with psychical laws, and on the other side the psychical elements, the simple sensations and feelings, are inalienably bound up with definite physical processes. these latter need by no means be of a simple constitution, as has at times been presupposed by reason of metaphysical prejudices. the opposite is rather the case, as experience, which alone in this question can decide, incontestably teaches. for it shows that each simple sensation is joined to a very complicated combination of peripheral and central nerve-processes, and so also with the most elementary feeling, as is shown by the manifold "expression" phenomena which accompany the simplest feeling. the actual correlation then is between simple, i.e. not further analysable, psychical content and complex physical processes. if, however, in contradiction to this, we introduce the metaphysical postulate of a correspondence between the psychically simple and the physically simple, we are inclined to go further and to presuppose a continuous correspondence between the two series of phenomena right up to the highest and most complicated content of consciousness. this regular relation between psychical elements and physical processes then becomes changed into a metaphysical parallelism, in which in content as well as in form the psychical becomes a copy of the physical, and the physical a copy of the psychical phenomenon. this hypothesis finds expression in the words of spinoza, "the order and combination of ideas is the same as the order and combination of things." such an idea was thinkable as long as the physical side of the qualities of living beings was so little known, and as long as there was no explanation of those psychological principles, which control the combination of processes of consciousness from simple sense-perceptions to complex thought-processes. at that lime philosophy could take the liberty of building up reality out of abstract ideas, such as substance and causality. at the present day metaphysics, if it wishes to make any claim to respect, must build upon the real facts and not upon those ideas used from purely logical, dialectical motives. even from this point of view there remains a "principle of psychological parallelism" in the sense that there is no psychical process, from the simplest sensation and affective elements to the most complex thought-processes, which does not run parallel with a physical process. now sensation and affective elements cannot be compared in that way, since a simple process in the one case does not correspond to even a relatively simple one in the other, and this of course is valid for all other contents of consciousness formed from these elements. we meet everywhere physical and psychical as incomparable qualities of the united psycho-physical individual, and each of these must be judged according to the laws of combinations of elements, which are expressed in the combination itself. since these qualities themselves are disparate, it can therefore never happen that the two principles come into antagonism with each other, whereas on the other hand, if we try to transfer the conditions that are only valid for the one side of the phenomena of life to the other side, we will very soon either come into antagonism with facts, or be forced to abandon an interpretation of a part of life placed in this manner under a strange point of view. thus from the present-day psychological standpoint, which must be authoritative for a philosophical consideration, we can only speak of a "parallelism" between psychical and physical in as far as all elements of psychical life are joined to physical processes. the combinations of these elements, however, can never be judged according to the laws that are valid for the combination of the physical processes of life. if we try to do this, we eliminate what is most characteristic and important in our mental life. this reduction of the so-called principle of parallelism is occasionally called inconsequent and unsatisfying. this objection rests upon the interference of _a priori_ metaphysical theories of the past, whose principles have long been thrown aside by science, and also upon ignorance of the real problem which psychology has to solve. this problem can surely never consist in applying, in connection with psychical processes, principles which do not belong to the psychical side of life. it must much rather consist in the attempt to gain principles out of the contents of our psychical life, just as in the reverse case physiological investigation of the change of matter and energy in the organism does not in the least, and rightly so, trouble itself with the psychical qualities of the organism. for the real unity of life will not be understood by subjecting real phenomena to laws with which they have absolutely no inner relationship. no, we must try to explain all sides of life and then the relations of these to each other. from the standpoints which have here been developed as to the relation of psychical to natural laws and as to their combination into one unity, we may now decide a question which is of mythological origin, and which was transferred by mythology to philosophy and ultimately to psychology. this question is the one as to the nature of the soul. for the primitive thinker the soul was a demoniacal being, which had its seat in the whole body, but especially in certain favoured organs, such as the heart, the kidneys, the liver, or the blood. besides this oldest idea of a body-soul, there soon arose a second idea of a soul only externally bound to the parts of the body, and this soul left the body at death in the last breath, and also for a short time during sleep, as noticed in the images of dreams. this was called the breath-soul or the shadow-soul. for a long time, in spite of the self-contradiction, these two conceptions were joined together, although we see in the development of mythological thought that the breath-soul or psyche slowly supersedes the idea of a body-soul. the development of the idea of a soul in philosophy is in essentials a repetition of this mythological development. the ancient philosophy, in whose footsteps mediæval philosophy follows, still holds fast to the idea of a body-soul. the soul is the driving force of all, even physical processes of life, e.g. nutrition and propagation. by the side of this, however, the higher mental activities are bound to a specific being that is separable from the body. this opinion, which gave a concrete, clear form to the mythological ideas, found its most perfect scientific expression in the psychology of aristotle. the psyche that was separable from the body had thus won a victory over the body-soul both in mythology and in the classical work of aristotle. this, of course, led ultimately to the absolute dominion of this independent soul, and its qualities were more and more considered to be absolutely opposite to the qualities of the body, that was ruled by purely material laws. this development culminated in the system of descartes, the last great philosopher of the renaissance. the body is from now on considered to be an expended substance, subject to mechanical laws only; the soul stands, in contradistinction to this, as an unextended, purely thinking substance. the two substances are, however, during life externally joined together. in one single point of the brain the body was supposed to meet in reciprocal action with the soul, which was thought of as something analogous to a material atom. descartes fixed upon the pineal gland, but there were countless other hypotheses as to the position of this point. this is not the place to follow the further changes that these ideas underwent in the history of modern philosophy and psychology. all the later changes of the dualistic hypothesis are not of the first importance. the fundamental principle is, that the soul is a permanent substance, and the psychical processes are looked upon as changing phenomena of this substance, which are, however, different from it. this hypothesis may take the form that spinoza gave it in presupposing the two substances changed into two attributes which run parallel with each other. there is also the materialistic hypothesis that reduces the soul-substance to a quality of the bodily substance, which alone is recognised as real. it becomes clear to us that such further developments of the "substance" hypothesis become more and more contradictory to the laws of psychical life, the more they attempt to explain the self-contradicting conception of two absolutely different substances which must be bound together into one unity. the cartesian soul can no longer exist in face of our present-day physiological knowledge of the physical substratum of our mental life. and metaphysical monism in these two forms, which try to combine soul-and body-substance into one unity, would shut out the possibility of any knowledge of our psychical life. therefore, in contradistinction to this metaphysical concept of a mind-substance, we set up the concept of the actuality of mind. mental processes are not transient appearances to which the soul stands in contradistinction as a permanent, unknowable being unrelated to them, so that any attempt to combine the two must necessarily lead to a tissue of influences and counter-influences, which were at will given the conventional names: "ideas, feeling, striving, &c." a striking example of the futility of such an attempt to make substance the basis of an explanation of mental life is seen in the last and most thorough-going of these theories, i.e. in herbart's so-called mechanism of ideas. certainly all psychical phenomena is a continual coming and going, a producing and being produced. but no supersensuous substance, standing in contradistinction to these phenomena, can help us to understand the latter in their separate parts, or even in the connection of these parts into a whole. sense-perception is a product of elements of pure sensation, an emotion is the course of directly experienced feelings, a thought-process is a combination of its elements established by itself. nowhere do these facts of real mental life need another substratum for their interpretation beyond the one that is given in the facts themselves. and the unity of this life does not gain in the least, if we add to its own real union another substance, which is neither perceived nor really experienced, but which stands as an abstract conception in contradistinction to that mental life established by itself. we only need to cast a glance at the sciences most closely connected with psychology, i.e. the so-called mental sciences, in order to become aware of the emptiness and futility of this psychological conception of "substance." the name "mental science" has only the right to exist, so long as these departments of learning are based upon the facts of psychology--the mental science in the most general sense of the term. now when would a historian, philologist, or jurist make use of any other means to understand some phenomenon or of any other arguments to prove some statement than those which spring from immediate facts of mental life? why then should the standpoint of psychology be in absolute contradiction to the stand-points of its most nearly related sciences? psychology must not only strive to become a useful basis for the other mental sciences, but it must also turn again and again to the historical sciences, in order to obtain an understanding for the more highly developed mental processes. racial psychology is the clearest proof of this latter. it is one of the newest of the mental sciences and depends absolutely on these relations between psychology and the historical sciences. it is the first transition from psychology to the other mental sciences. the metaphysical psychology of the present day, that has developed out of descartes' theory of two substances absolutely different and yet externally joined together, this psychology seems unquestionably to be further away from the reality of the mental life than the theories of the ancient metaphysicians were. the old idea saw in the soul the principle of all life, or, according to aristotle, the energy working towards an end, out of which the whole of the phenomena of life, physical and psychical, sprang. it sought at least to account for that unity of life, which popular dualism must regard as a wonder, if it does not suppose the psychical to be a confused image of the physical, or reversely suppose this latter to be a mere subjective idea without its own reality. and yet this old vitalistic idea of a soul is for us no longer possible. for it tries to explain the unity of life only by postulating an all-embracing idea of purpose or use in place of a causal explanation of phenomena such as is now demanded. this vague notion of purpose does not explain the peculiarity of mental processes, nor does it fulfil the requirements of a natural explanation in regard to the physical side of the phenomena of life. nutrition, propagation, movement, on the one hand, and perception, imagination, understanding, on the other, cannot be combined into one unity, even although the facts which these concepts denote are purposeful from the standpoint of the connection of the phenomena of life. they do not resist such a combination because they are bound up with essentially different substrata, but because they depend upon absolutely different stand-points of the phenomena of life given to us as a unity. nutrition, propagation, movement, are organic processes which belong to objective nature, and for which, because of their own characteristics, the ideas we form of them serve as signs which point to an existence independent of our consciousness. in investigating them, just as in the investigation of natural phenomena outside our own body, we must abstract from the subjective processes of consciousness, to which they are bound, if we wish to understand them in their objective natural connection. on the other hand our ideas, inasmuch as they are subjective, our feelings and our emotions are immediate experiences, which psychology tries to understand exactly in the way in which they arise, continue, and enter into relations with each other in consciousness. therefore it is one and the same psycho-physical individual forming a unity, which physiology and psychology have as subject-matter. each of these, however, views this subject-matter from a different stand-point. physiology regards it as an object of external nature, belonging to the system of physical-chemical processes, of which organic life consists. psychology regards it as the system of our experiences in consciousness. now for every piece of knowledge two factors are necessary--the subject who knows and the object thought about, independent of this subject. the investigation of the subject in his characteristics, as revealed to us in human consciousness, forms therefore not only a necessary supplement to the investigations of natural science, but it also attains to a more universal importance, since all mental values and their development arise from immediately experienced processes of consciousness, and therefore can alone be understood by means of these processes. and this is exactly what we mean by the principle of the actuality of mind. transcriber's note: minor inconsistencies in hyphenated words have been adjusted to correspond with the author's most frequent usage. on page a printer error from the original text was corrected: the word "drawings" has been changed to "drawing" in the phrase, "... drawing has been taught...." how we think by john dewey professor of philosophy in columbia university d. c. heath & co., publishers boston new york chicago copyright, , by d. c. heath & co. f printed in u. s. a. preface our schools are troubled with a multiplication of studies, each in turn having its own multiplication of materials and principles. our teachers find their tasks made heavier in that they have come to deal with pupils individually and not merely in mass. unless these steps in advance are to end in distraction, some clew of unity, some principle that makes for simplification, must be found. this book represents the conviction that the needed steadying and centralizing factor is found in adopting as the end of endeavor that attitude of mind, that habit of thought, which we call scientific. this scientific attitude of mind might, conceivably, be quite irrelevant to teaching children and youth. but this book also represents the conviction that such is not the case; that the native and unspoiled attitude of childhood, marked by ardent curiosity, fertile imagination, and love of experimental inquiry, is near, very near, to the attitude of the scientific mind. if these pages assist any to appreciate this kinship and to consider seriously how its recognition in educational practice would make for individual happiness and the reduction of social waste, the book will amply have served its purpose. it is hardly necessary to enumerate the authors to whom i am indebted. my fundamental indebtedness is to my wife, by whom the ideas of this book were inspired, and through whose work in connection with the laboratory school, existing in chicago between and , the ideas attained such concreteness as comes from embodiment and testing in practice. it is a pleasure, also, to acknowledge indebtedness to the intelligence and sympathy of those who coöperated as teachers and supervisors in the conduct of that school, and especially to mrs. ella flagg young, then a colleague in the university, and now superintendent of the schools of chicago. new york city, december, . contents part i the problem of training thought chapter page i. what is thought? ii. the need for training thought iii. natural resources in the training of thought iv. school conditions and the training of thought v. the means and end of mental training: the psychological and the logical part ii logical considerations vi. the analysis of a complete act of thought vii. systematic inference: induction and deduction viii. judgment: the interpretation of facts ix. meaning: or conceptions and understanding x. concrete and abstract thinking xi. empirical and scientific thinking part iii the training of thought xii. activity and the training of thought xiii. language and the training of thought xiv. observation and information in the training of mind xv. the recitation and the training of thought xvi. some general conclusions how we think part one: the problem of training thought chapter one what is thought? § . _varied senses of the term_ [sidenote: four senses of thought, from the wider to the limited] no words are oftener on our lips than _thinking_ and _thought_. so profuse and varied, indeed, is our use of these words that it is not easy to define just what we mean by them. the aim of this chapter is to find a single consistent meaning. assistance may be had by considering some typical ways in which the terms are employed. in the first place _thought_ is used broadly, not to say loosely. everything that comes to mind, that "goes through our heads," is called a thought. to think of a thing is just to be conscious of it in any way whatsoever. second, the term is restricted by excluding whatever is directly presented; we think (or think of) only such things as we do not directly see, hear, smell, or taste. then, third, the meaning is further limited to beliefs that rest upon some kind of evidence or testimony. of this third type, two kinds--or, rather, two degrees--must be discriminated. in some cases, a belief is accepted with slight or almost no attempt to state the grounds that support it. in other cases, the ground or basis for a belief is deliberately sought and its adequacy to support the belief examined. this process is called reflective thought; it alone is truly educative in value, and it forms, accordingly, the principal subject of this volume. we shall now briefly describe each of the four senses. [sidenote: chance and idle thinking] i. in its loosest sense, thinking signifies everything that, as we say, is "in our heads" or that "goes through our minds." he who offers "a penny for your thoughts" does not expect to drive any great bargain. in calling the objects of his demand _thoughts_, he does not intend to ascribe to them dignity, consecutiveness, or truth. any idle fancy, trivial recollection, or flitting impression will satisfy his demand. daydreaming, building of castles in the air, that loose flux of casual and disconnected material that floats through our minds in relaxed moments are, in this random sense, _thinking_. more of our waking life than we should care to admit, even to ourselves, is likely to be whiled away in this inconsequential trifling with idle fancy and unsubstantial hope. [sidenote: reflective thought is consecutive, not merely a sequence] in this sense, silly folk and dullards _think_. the story is told of a man in slight repute for intelligence, who, desiring to be chosen selectman in his new england town, addressed a knot of neighbors in this wise: "i hear you don't believe i know enough to hold office. i wish you to understand that i am thinking about something or other most of the time." now reflective thought is like this random coursing of things through the mind in that it consists of a succession of things thought of; but it is unlike, in that the mere chance occurrence of any chance "something or other" in an irregular sequence does not suffice. reflection involves not simply a sequence of ideas, but a _con_sequence--a consecutive ordering in such a way that each determines the next as its proper outcome, while each in turn leans back on its predecessors. the successive portions of the reflective thought grow out of one another and support one another; they do not come and go in a medley. each phase is a step from something to something--technically speaking, it is a term of thought. each term leaves a deposit which is utilized in the next term. the stream or flow becomes a train, chain, or thread. [sidenote: the restriction of _thinking_ to what goes beyond direct observation] [sidenote: reflective thought aims, however, at belief] ii. even when thinking is used in a broad sense, it is usually restricted to matters not directly perceived: to what we do not see, smell, hear, or touch. we ask the man telling a story if he saw a certain incident happen, and his reply may be, "no, i only thought of it." a note of invention, as distinct from faithful record of observation, is present. most important in this class are successions of imaginative incidents and episodes which, having a certain coherence, hanging together on a continuous thread, lie between kaleidoscopic flights of fancy and considerations deliberately employed to establish a conclusion. the imaginative stories poured forth by children possess all degrees of internal congruity; some are disjointed, some are articulated. when connected, they simulate reflective thought; indeed, they usually occur in minds of logical capacity. these imaginative enterprises often precede thinking of the close-knit type and prepare the way for it. but _they do not aim at knowledge, at belief about facts or in truths_; and thereby they are marked off from reflective thought even when they most resemble it. those who express such thoughts do not expect credence, but rather credit for a well-constructed plot or a well-arranged climax. they produce good stories, not--unless by chance--knowledge. such thoughts are an efflorescence of feeling; the enhancement of a mood or sentiment is their aim; congruity of emotion, their binding tie. [sidenote: thought induces belief in two ways] iii. in its next sense, thought denotes belief resting upon some basis, that is, real or supposed knowledge going beyond what is directly present. it is marked by _acceptance or rejection of something as reasonably probable or improbable_. this phase of thought, however, includes two such distinct types of belief that, even though their difference is strictly one of degree, not of kind, it becomes practically important to consider them separately. some beliefs are accepted when their grounds have not themselves been considered, others are accepted because their grounds have been examined. when we say, "men used to think the world was flat," or, "i thought you went by the house," we express belief: something is accepted, held to, acquiesced in, or affirmed. but such thoughts may mean a supposition accepted without reference to its real grounds. these may be adequate, they may not; but their value with reference to the support they afford the belief has not been considered. such thoughts grow up unconsciously and without reference to the attainment of correct belief. they are picked up--we know not how. from obscure sources and by unnoticed channels they insinuate themselves into acceptance and become unconsciously a part of our mental furniture. tradition, instruction, imitation--all of which depend upon authority in some form, or appeal to our own advantage, or fall in with a strong passion--are responsible for them. such thoughts are prejudices, that is, prejudgments, not judgments proper that rest upon a survey of evidence.[ ] [ ] this mode of thinking in its contrast with thoughtful inquiry receives special notice in the next chapter. [sidenote: thinking in its best sense is that which considers the basis and consequences of beliefs] iv. thoughts that result in belief have an importance attached to them which leads to reflective thought, to conscious inquiry into the nature, conditions, and bearings of the belief. to _think_ of whales and camels in the clouds is to entertain ourselves with fancies, terminable at our pleasure, which do not lead to any belief in particular. but to think of the world as flat is to ascribe a quality to a real thing as its real property. this conclusion denotes a connection among things and hence is not, like imaginative thought, plastic to our mood. belief in the world's flatness commits him who holds it to thinking in certain specific ways of other objects, such as the heavenly bodies, antipodes, the possibility of navigation. it prescribes to him actions in accordance with his conception of these objects. the consequences of a belief upon other beliefs and upon behavior may be so important, then, that men are forced to consider the grounds or reasons of their belief and its logical consequences. this means reflective thought--thought in its eulogistic and emphatic sense. [sidenote: reflective thought defined] men _thought_ the world was flat until columbus _thought_ it to be round. the earlier thought was a belief held because men had not the energy or the courage to question what those about them accepted and taught, especially as it was suggested and seemingly confirmed by obvious sensible facts. the thought of columbus was a _reasoned conclusion_. it marked the close of study into facts, of scrutiny and revision of evidence, of working out the implications of various hypotheses, and of comparing these theoretical results with one another and with known facts. because columbus did not accept unhesitatingly the current traditional theory, because he doubted and inquired, he arrived at his thought. skeptical of what, from long habit, seemed most certain, and credulous of what seemed impossible, he went on thinking until he could produce evidence for both his confidence and his disbelief. even if his conclusion had finally turned out wrong, it would have been a different sort of belief from those it antagonized, because it was reached by a different method. _active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends_, constitutes reflective thought. any one of the first three kinds of thought may elicit this type; but once begun, it is a conscious and voluntary effort to establish belief upon a firm basis of reasons. § . _the central factor in thinking_ [sidenote: there is a common element in all types of thought:] there are, however, no sharp lines of demarcation between the various operations just outlined. the problem of attaining correct habits of reflection would be much easier than it is, did not the different modes of thinking blend insensibly into one another. so far, we have considered rather extreme instances of each kind in order to get the field clearly before us. let us now reverse this operation; let us consider a rudimentary case of thinking, lying between careful examination of evidence and a mere irresponsible stream of fancies. a man is walking on a warm day. the sky was clear the last time he observed it; but presently he notes, while occupied primarily with other things, that the air is cooler. it occurs to him that it is probably going to rain; looking up, he sees a dark cloud between him and the sun, and he then quickens his steps. what, if anything, in such a situation can be called thought? neither the act of walking nor the noting of the cold is a thought. walking is one direction of activity; looking and noting are other modes of activity. the likelihood that it will rain is, however, something _suggested_. the pedestrian _feels_ the cold; he _thinks of_ clouds and a coming shower. [sidenote: _viz._ suggestion of something not observed] [sidenote: but reflection involves also the relation of _signifying_] so far there is the same sort of situation as when one looking at a cloud is reminded of a human figure and face. thinking in both of these cases (the cases of belief and of fancy) involves a noted or perceived fact, followed by something else which is not observed but which is brought to mind, suggested by the thing seen. one reminds us, as we say, of the other. side by side, however, with this factor of agreement in the two cases of suggestion is a factor of marked disagreement. we do not _believe_ in the face suggested by the cloud; we do not consider at all the probability of its being a fact. there is no _reflective_ thought. the danger of rain, on the contrary, presents itself to us as a genuine possibility--as a possible fact of the same nature as the observed coolness. put differently, we do not regard the cloud as meaning or indicating a face, but merely as suggesting it, while we do consider that the coolness may mean rain. in the first case, seeing an object, we just happen, as we say, to think of something else; in the second, we consider the _possibility and nature of the connection between the object seen and the object suggested_. the seen thing is regarded as in some way _the ground or basis of belief_ in the suggested thing; it possesses the quality of _evidence_. [sidenote: various synonymous expressions for the function of signifying] this function by which one thing signifies or indicates another, and thereby leads us to consider how far one may be regarded as warrant for belief in the other, is, then, the central factor in all reflective or distinctively intellectual thinking. by calling up various situations to which such terms as _signifies_ and _indicates_ apply, the student will best realize for himself the actual facts denoted by the words _reflective thought_. synonyms for these terms are: points to, tells of, betokens, prognosticates, represents, stands for, implies.[ ] we also say one thing portends another; is ominous of another, or a symptom of it, or a key to it, or (if the connection is quite obscure) that it gives a hint, clue, or intimation. [ ] _implies_ is more often used when a principle or general truth brings about belief in some other truth; the other phrases are more frequently used to denote the cases in which one fact or event leads us to believe in something else. [sidenote: reflection and belief on evidence] reflection thus implies that something is believed in (or disbelieved in), not on its own direct account, but through something else which stands as witness, evidence, proof, voucher, warrant; that is, as _ground of belief_. at one time, rain is actually felt or directly experienced; at another time, we infer that it has rained from the looks of the grass and trees, or that it is going to rain because of the condition of the air or the state of the barometer. at one time, we see a man (or suppose we do) without any intermediary fact; at another time, we are not quite sure what we see, and hunt for accompanying facts that will serve as signs, indications, tokens of what is to be believed. thinking, for the purposes of this inquiry, is defined accordingly as _that operation in which present facts suggest other facts (or truths) in such a way as to induce belief in the latter upon the ground or warrant of the former_. we do not put beliefs that rest simply on inference on the surest level of assurance. to say "i think so" implies that i do not as yet _know_ so. the inferential belief may later be confirmed and come to stand as sure, but in itself it always has a certain element of supposition. § . _elements in reflective thinking_ so much for the description of the more external and obvious aspects of the fact called _thinking_. further consideration at once reveals certain subprocesses which are involved in every reflective operation. these are: (_a_) a state of perplexity, hesitation, doubt; and (_b_) an act of search or investigation directed toward bringing to light further facts which serve to corroborate or to nullify the suggested belief. [sidenote: the importance of uncertainty] (_a_) in our illustration, the shock of coolness generated confusion and suspended belief, at least momentarily. because it was unexpected, it was a shock or an interruption needing to be accounted for, identified, or placed. to say that the abrupt occurrence of the change of temperature constitutes a problem may sound forced and artificial; but if we are willing to extend the meaning of the word _problem_ to whatever--no matter how slight and commonplace in character--perplexes and challenges the mind so that it makes belief at all uncertain, there is a genuine problem or question involved in this experience of sudden change. [sidenote: and of inquiry in order to test] (_b_) the turning of the head, the lifting of the eyes, the scanning of the heavens, are activities adapted to bring to recognition facts that will answer the question presented by the sudden coolness. the facts as they first presented themselves were perplexing; they suggested, however, clouds. the act of looking was an act to discover if this suggested explanation held good. it may again seem forced to speak of this looking, almost automatic, as an act of research or inquiry. but once more, if we are willing to generalize our conceptions of our mental operations to include the trivial and ordinary as well as the technical and recondite, there is no good reason for refusing to give such a title to the act of looking. the purport of this act of inquiry is to confirm or to refute the suggested belief. new facts are brought to perception, which either corroborate the idea that a change of weather is imminent, or negate it. [sidenote: finding one's way an illustration of reflection] another instance, commonplace also, yet not quite so trivial, may enforce this lesson. a man traveling in an unfamiliar region comes to a branching of the roads. having no sure knowledge to fall back upon, he is brought to a standstill of hesitation and suspense. which road is right? and how shall perplexity be resolved? there are but two alternatives: he must either blindly and arbitrarily take his course, trusting to luck for the outcome, or he must discover grounds for the conclusion that a given road is right. any attempt to decide the matter by thinking will involve inquiry into other facts, whether brought out by memory or by further observation, or by both. the perplexed wayfarer must carefully scrutinize what is before him and he must cudgel his memory. he looks for evidence that will support belief in favor of either of the roads--for evidence that will weight down one suggestion. he may climb a tree; he may go first in this direction, then in that, looking, in either case, for signs, clues, indications. he wants something in the nature of a signboard or a map, and _his reflection is aimed at the discovery of facts that will serve this purpose_. [sidenote: possible, yet incompatible, suggestions] the above illustration may be generalized. thinking begins in what may fairly enough be called a _forked-road_ situation, a situation which is ambiguous, which presents a dilemma, which proposes alternatives. as long as our activity glides smoothly along from one thing to another, or as long as we permit our imagination to entertain fancies at pleasure, there is no call for reflection. difficulty or obstruction in the way of reaching a belief brings us, however, to a pause. in the suspense of uncertainty, we metaphorically climb a tree; we try to find some standpoint from which we may survey additional facts and, getting a more commanding view of the situation, may decide how the facts stand related to one another. [sidenote: regulation of thinking by its purpose] _demand for the solution of a perplexity is the steadying and guiding factor in the entire process of reflection._ where there is no question of a problem to be solved or a difficulty to be surmounted, the course of suggestions flows on at random; we have the first type of thought described. if the stream of suggestions is controlled simply by their emotional congruity, their fitting agreeably into a single picture or story, we have the second type. but a question to be answered, an ambiguity to be resolved, sets up an end and holds the current of ideas to a definite channel. every suggested conclusion is tested by its reference to this regulating end, by its pertinence to the problem in hand. this need of straightening out a perplexity also controls the kind of inquiry undertaken. a traveler whose end is the most beautiful path will look for other considerations and will test suggestions occurring to him on another principle than if he wishes to discover the way to a given city. _the problem fixes the end of thought_ and _the end controls the process of thinking_. § . _summary_ [sidenote: origin and stimulus] we may recapitulate by saying that the origin of thinking is some perplexity, confusion, or doubt. thinking is not a case of spontaneous combustion; it does not occur just on "general principles." there is something specific which occasions and evokes it. general appeals to a child (or to a grown-up) to think, irrespective of the existence in his own experience of some difficulty that troubles him and disturbs his equilibrium, are as futile as advice to lift himself by his boot-straps. [sidenote: suggestions and past experience] given a difficulty, the next step is suggestion of some way out--the formation of some tentative plan or project, the entertaining of some theory which will account for the peculiarities in question, the consideration of some solution for the problem. the data at hand cannot supply the solution; they can only suggest it. what, then, are the sources of the suggestion? clearly past experience and prior knowledge. if the person has had some acquaintance with similar situations, if he has dealt with material of the same sort before, suggestions more or less apt and helpful are likely to arise. but unless there has been experience in some degree analogous, which may now be represented in imagination, confusion remains mere confusion. there is nothing upon which to draw in order to clarify it. even when a child (or a grown-up) has a problem, to urge him to think when he has no prior experiences involving some of the same conditions, is wholly futile. [sidenote: exploration and testing] if the suggestion that occurs is at once accepted, we have uncritical thinking, the minimum of reflection. to turn the thing over in mind, to reflect, means to hunt for additional evidence, for new data, that will develop the suggestion, and will either, as we say, bear it out or else make obvious its absurdity and irrelevance. given a genuine difficulty and a reasonable amount of analogous experience to draw upon, the difference, _par excellence_, between good and bad thinking is found at this point. the easiest way is to accept any suggestion that seems plausible and thereby bring to an end the condition of mental uneasiness. reflective thinking is always more or less troublesome because it involves overcoming the inertia that inclines one to accept suggestions at their face value; it involves willingness to endure a condition of mental unrest and disturbance. reflective thinking, in short, means judgment suspended during further inquiry; and suspense is likely to be somewhat painful. as we shall see later, the most important factor in the training of good mental habits consists in acquiring the attitude of suspended conclusion, and in mastering the various methods of searching for new materials to corroborate or to refute the first suggestions that occur. to maintain the state of doubt and to carry on systematic and protracted inquiry--these are the essentials of thinking. chapter two the need for training thought [sidenote: man the animal that thinks] to expatiate upon the importance of thought would be absurd. the traditional definition of man as "the thinking animal" fixes thought as the essential difference between man and the brutes,--surely an important matter. more relevant to our purpose is the question how thought is important, for an answer to this question will throw light upon the kind of training thought requires if it is to subserve its end. § . _the values of thought_ [sidenote: the possibility of deliberate and intentional activity] i. thought affords the sole method of escape from purely impulsive or purely routine action. a being without capacity for thought is moved only by instincts and appetites, as these are called forth by outward conditions and by the inner state of the organism. a being thus moved is, as it were, pushed from behind. this is what we mean by the blind nature of brute actions. the agent does not see or foresee the end for which he is acting, nor the results produced by his behaving in one way rather than in another. he does not "know what he is about." where there is thought, things present act as signs or tokens of things not yet experienced. a thinking being can, accordingly, _act on the basis of the absent and the future_. instead of being pushed into a mode of action by the sheer urgency of forces, whether instincts or habits, of which he is not aware, a reflective agent is drawn (to some extent at least) to action by some remoter object of which he is indirectly aware. [sidenote: natural events come to be a language] an animal without thought may go into its hole when rain threatens, because of some immediate stimulus to its organism. a thinking agent will perceive that certain given facts are probable signs of a future rain, and will take steps in the light of this anticipated future. to plant seeds, to cultivate the soil, to harvest grain, are intentional acts, possible only to a being who has learned to subordinate the immediately felt elements of an experience to those values which these hint at and prophesy. philosophers have made much of the phrases "book of nature," "language of nature." well, it is in virtue of the capacity of thought that given things are significant of absent things, and that nature speaks a language which may be interpreted. to a being who thinks, things are records of their past, as fossils tell of the prior history of the earth, and are prophetic of their future, as from the present positions of heavenly bodies remote eclipses are foretold. shakespeare's "tongues in trees, books in the running brooks," expresses literally enough the power superadded to existences when they appeal to a thinking being. upon the function of signification depend all foresight, all intelligent planning, deliberation, and calculation. [sidenote: the possibility of systematized foresight] ii. by thought man also develops and arranges artificial signs to remind him in advance of consequences, and of ways of securing and avoiding them. as the trait just mentioned makes the difference between savage man and brute, so this trait makes the difference between civilized man and savage. a savage who has been shipwrecked in a river may note certain things which serve him as signs of danger in the future. but civilized man deliberately _makes_ such signs; he sets up in advance of wreckage warning buoys, and builds lighthouses where he sees signs that such events may occur. a savage reads weather signs with great expertness; civilized man institutes a weather service by which signs are artificially secured and information is distributed in advance of the appearance of any signs that could be detected without special methods. a savage finds his way skillfully through a wilderness by reading certain obscure indications; civilized man builds a highway which shows the road to all. the savage learns to detect the signs of fire and thereby to invent methods of producing flame; civilized man invents permanent conditions for producing light and heat whenever they are needed. the very essence of civilized culture is that we deliberately erect monuments and memorials, lest we forget; and deliberately institute, in advance of the happening of various contingencies and emergencies of life, devices for detecting their approach and registering their nature, for warding off what is unfavorable, or at least for protecting ourselves from its full impact and for making more secure and extensive what is favorable. all forms of artificial apparatus are intentionally designed modifications of natural things in order that they may serve better than in their natural estate to indicate the hidden, the absent, and the remote. [sidenote: the possibility of objects rich in quality] iii. finally, thought confers upon physical events and objects a very different status and value from that which they possess to a being that does not reflect. these words are mere scratches, curious variations of light and shade, to one to whom they are not linguistic signs. to him for whom they are signs of other things, each has a definite individuality of its own, according to the meaning that it is used to convey. _exactly the same holds of natural objects._ a chair is a different object to a being to whom it consciously suggests an opportunity for sitting down, repose, or sociable converse, from what it is to one to whom it presents itself merely as a thing to be smelled, or gnawed, or jumped over; a stone is different to one who knows something of its past history and its future use from what it is to one who only feels it directly through his senses. it is only by courtesy, indeed, that we can say that an unthinking animal experiences an _object_ at all--so largely is anything that presents itself to us as an object made up by the qualities it possesses as a sign of other things. [sidenote: the nature of the objects an animal perceives] an english logician (mr. venn) has remarked that it may be questioned whether a dog _sees_ a rainbow any more than he apprehends the political constitution of the country in which he lives. the same principle applies to the kennel in which he sleeps and the meat that he eats. when he is sleepy, he goes to the kennel; when he is hungry, he is excited by the smell and color of meat; beyond this, in what sense does he see an _object_? certainly he does not see a house--_i.e._ a thing with all the properties and relations of a permanent residence, _unless_ he is capable of making what is present a uniform sign of what is absent--unless he is capable of thought. nor does he see what he eats _as_ meat unless it suggests the absent properties by virtue of which it is a certain joint of some animal, and is known to afford nourishment. just what is left of an _object_ stripped of all such qualities of meaning, we cannot well say; but we can be sure that the object is then a very different sort of thing from the objects that we perceive. there is moreover no particular limit to the possibilities of growth in the fusion of a thing as it is to sense and as it is to thought, or as a sign of other things. the child today soon regards as constituent parts of objects qualities that once it required the intelligence of a copernicus or a newton to apprehend. [sidenote: mill on the business of life and the occupation of mind] these various values of the power of thought may be summed up in the following quotation from john stuart mill. "to draw inferences," he says, "has been said to be the great business of life. every one has daily, hourly, and momentary need of ascertaining facts which he has not directly observed: not from any general purpose of adding to his stock of knowledge, but because the facts themselves are of importance to his interests or to his occupations. the business of the magistrate, of the military commander, of the navigator, of the physician, of the agriculturist, _is merely to judge of evidence and to act accordingly_.... as they do this well or ill, so they discharge well or ill the duties of their several callings. _it is the only occupation in which the mind never ceases to be engaged._"[ ] [ ] mill, _system of logic_, introduction, § . § . _importance of direction in order to realize these values_ [sidenote: thinking goes astray] what a person has not only daily and hourly, but momentary need of performing, is not a technical and abstruse matter; nor, on the other hand, is it trivial and negligible. such a function must be congenial to the mind, and must be performed, in an unspoiled mind, upon every fitting occasion. just because, however, it is an operation of drawing inferences, of basing conclusions upon evidence, of reaching belief _indirectly_, it is an operation that may go wrong as well as right, and hence is one that needs safeguarding and training. the greater its importance the greater are the evils when it is ill-exercised. [sidenote: ideas are our rulers--for better or for worse] an earlier writer than mill, john locke ( - ), brings out the importance of thought for life and the need of training so that its best and not its worst possibilities will be realized, in the following words: "no man ever sets himself about anything but upon some view or other, which serves him for a reason for what he does; and whatsoever faculties he employs, the understanding with such light as it has, well or ill informed, constantly leads; and by that light, true or false, all his operative powers are directed.... temples have their sacred images, and we see what influence they have always had over a great part of mankind. but in truth the ideas and images in men's minds are the invisible powers that constantly govern them, and to these they all, universally, pay a ready submission. it is therefore of the highest concernment that great care should be taken of the understanding, to conduct it aright in the search of knowledge and in the judgments it makes."[ ] if upon thought hang all deliberate activities and the uses we make of all our other powers, locke's assertion that it is of the highest concernment that care should be taken of its conduct is a moderate statement. while the power of thought frees us from servile subjection to instinct, appetite, and routine, it also brings with it the occasion and possibility of error and mistake. in elevating us above the brute, it opens to us the possibility of failures to which the animal, limited to instinct, cannot sink. [ ] locke, _of the conduct of the understanding_, first paragraph. § . _tendencies needing constant regulation_ [sidenote: physical and social sanctions of correct thinking] up to a certain point, the ordinary conditions of life, natural and social, provide the conditions requisite for regulating the operations of inference. the necessities of life enforce a fundamental and persistent discipline for which the most cunningly devised artifices would be ineffective substitutes. the burnt child dreads the fire; the painful consequence emphasizes the need of correct inference much more than would learned discourse on the properties of heat. social conditions also put a premium on correct inferring in matters where action based on valid thought is socially important. these sanctions of proper thinking may affect life itself, or at least a life reasonably free from perpetual discomfort. the signs of enemies, of shelter, of food, of the main social conditions, have to be correctly apprehended. [sidenote: the serious limitations of such sanctions] but this disciplinary training, efficacious as it is within certain limits, does not carry us beyond a restricted boundary. logical attainment in one direction is no bar to extravagant conclusions in another. a savage expert in judging signs of the movements and location of animals that he hunts, will accept and gravely narrate the most preposterous yarns concerning the origin of their habits and structures. when there is no directly appreciable reaction of the inference upon the security and prosperity of life, there are no natural checks to the acceptance of wrong beliefs. conclusions may be generated by a modicum of fact merely because the suggestions are vivid and interesting; a large accumulation of data may fail to suggest a proper conclusion because existing customs are averse to entertaining it. independent of training, there is a "primitive credulity" which tends to make no distinction between what a trained mind calls fancy and that which it calls a reasonable conclusion. the face in the clouds is believed in as some sort of fact, merely because it is forcibly suggested. natural intelligence is no barrier to the propagation of error, nor large but untrained experience to the accumulation of fixed false beliefs. errors may support one another mutually and weave an ever larger and firmer fabric of misconception. dreams, the positions of stars, the lines of the hand, may be regarded as valuable signs, and the fall of cards as an inevitable omen, while natural events of the most crucial significance go disregarded. beliefs in portents of various kinds, now mere nook and cranny superstitions, were once universal. a long discipline in exact science was required for their conquest. [sidenote: superstition as natural a result as science] in the mere function of suggestion, there is no difference between the power of a column of mercury to portend rain, and that of the entrails of an animal or the flight of birds to foretell the fortunes of war. for all anybody can tell in advance, the spilling of salt is as likely to import bad luck as the bite of a mosquito to import malaria. only systematic regulation of the conditions under which observations are made and severe discipline of the habits of entertaining suggestions can secure a decision that one type of belief is vicious and the other sound. the substitution of scientific for superstitious habits of inference has not been brought about by any improvement in the acuteness of the senses or in the natural workings of the function of suggestion. it is the result of regulation _of the conditions_ under which observation and inference take place. [sidenote: general causes of bad thinking: bacon's "idols"] it is instructive to note some of the attempts that have been made to classify the main sources of error in reaching beliefs. francis bacon, for example, at the beginnings of modern scientific inquiry, enumerated four such classes, under the somewhat fantastic title of "idols" (gr. [greek: eidôla], images), spectral forms that allure the mind into false paths. these he called the idols, or phantoms, of the (_a_) tribe, (_b_) the marketplace, (_c_) the cave or den, and (_d_) the theater; or, less metaphorically, (_a_) standing erroneous methods (or at least temptations to error) that have their roots in human nature generally; (_b_) those that come from intercourse and language; (_c_) those that are due to causes peculiar to a specific individual; and finally, (_d_) those that have their sources in the fashion or general current of a period. classifying these causes of fallacious belief somewhat differently, we may say that two are intrinsic and two are extrinsic. of the intrinsic, one is common to all men alike (such as the universal tendency to notice instances that corroborate a favorite belief more readily than those that contradict it), while the other resides in the specific temperament and habits of the given individual. of the extrinsic, one proceeds from generic social conditions--like the tendency to suppose that there is a fact wherever there is a word, and no fact where there is no linguistic term--while the other proceeds from local and temporary social currents. [sidenote: locke on the influence of] locke's method of dealing with typical forms of wrong belief is less formal and may be more enlightening. we can hardly do better than quote his forcible and quaint language, when, enumerating different classes of men, he shows different ways in which thought goes wrong: [sidenote: (_a_) dependence on others,] . "the first is of those who seldom reason at all, but do and think according to the example of others, whether parents, neighbors, ministers, or who else they are pleased to make choice of to have an implicit faith in, for the saving of themselves the pains and troubles of thinking and examining for themselves." [sidenote: (_b_) self-interest,] . "this kind is of those who put passion in the place of reason, and being resolved that shall govern their actions and arguments, neither use their own, nor hearken to other people's reason, any farther than it suits their humor, interest, or party."[ ] [ ] in another place he says: "men's prejudices and inclinations impose often upon themselves.... inclination suggests and slides into discourse favorable terms, which introduce favorable ideas; till at last by this means that is concluded clear and evident, thus dressed up, which, taken in its native state, by making use of none but precise determined ideas, would find no admittance at all." [sidenote: (_c_) circumscribed experience] . "the third sort is of those who readily and sincerely follow reason, but for want of having that which one may call large, sound, roundabout sense, have not a full view of all that relates to the question.... they converse but with one sort of men, they read but one sort of books, they will not come in the hearing but of one sort of notions.... they have a pretty traffic with known correspondents in some little creek ... but will not venture out into the great ocean of knowledge." men of originally equal natural parts may finally arrive at very different stores of knowledge and truth, "when all the odds between them has been the different scope that has been given to their understandings to range in, for the gathering up of information and furnishing their heads with ideas and notions and observations, whereon to employ their mind."[ ] [ ] _the conduct of the understanding_, § . in another portion of his writings,[ ] locke states the same ideas in slightly different form. [ ] _essay concerning human understanding_, bk. iv, ch. xx, "of wrong assent or error." [sidenote: effect of dogmatic principles,] . "that which is inconsistent with our _principles_ is so far from passing for probable with us that it will not be allowed possible. the reverence borne to these principles is so great, and their authority so paramount to all other, that the testimony, not only of other men, but the evidence of our own senses are often rejected, when they offer to vouch anything contrary to these _established rules_.... there is nothing more ordinary than children's receiving into their minds propositions ... from their parents, nurses, or those about them; which being insinuated in their unwary as well as unbiased understandings, and fastened by degrees, are at last (and this whether true or false) riveted there by long custom and education, beyond all possibility of being pulled out again. for men, when they are grown up, reflecting upon their opinions and finding those of this sort to be as ancient in their minds as their very memories, not having observed their early insinuation, nor by what means they got them, they are apt to reverence them as sacred things, and not to suffer them to be profaned, touched, or questioned." they take them as standards "to be the great and unerring deciders of truth and falsehood, and the judges to which they are to appeal in all manner of controversies." [sidenote: of closed minds,] . "secondly, next to these are men whose understandings are cast into a mold, and fashioned just to the size of a received hypothesis." such men, locke goes on to say, while not denying the existence of facts and evidence, cannot be convinced by the evidence that would decide them if their minds were not so closed by adherence to fixed belief. [sidenote: of strong passion,] . "predominant passions. thirdly, probabilities which cross men's appetites and prevailing passions run the same fate. let ever so much probability hang on one side of a covetous man's reasoning, and money on the other, it is easy to foresee which will outweigh. earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries. [sidenote: of dependence upon authority of others] . "authority. the fourth and last wrong measure of probability i shall take notice of, and which keeps in ignorance or error more people than all the others together, is the giving up our assent to the common received opinions, either of our friends or party, neighborhood or country." [sidenote: causes of bad mental habits are social as well as inborn] both bacon and locke make it evident that over and above the sources of misbelief that reside in the natural tendencies of the individual (like those toward hasty and too far-reaching conclusions), social conditions tend to instigate and confirm wrong habits of thinking by authority, by conscious instruction, and by the even more insidious half-conscious influences of language, imitation, sympathy, and suggestion. education has accordingly not only to safeguard an individual against the besetting erroneous tendencies of his own mind--its rashness, presumption, and preference of what chimes with self-interest to objective evidence--but also to undermine and destroy the accumulated and self-perpetuating prejudices of long ages. when social life in general has become more reasonable, more imbued with rational conviction, and less moved by stiff authority and blind passion, educational agencies may be more positive and constructive than at present, for they will work in harmony with the educative influence exercised willy-nilly by other social surroundings upon an individual's habits of thought and belief. at present, the work of teaching must not only transform natural tendencies into trained habits of thought, but must also fortify the mind against irrational tendencies current in the social environment, and help displace erroneous habits already produced. § . _regulation transforms inference into proof_ [sidenote: a leap is involved in all thinking] thinking is important because, as we have seen, it is that function in which given or ascertained facts stand for or indicate others which are not directly ascertained. but the process of reaching the absent from the present is peculiarly exposed to error; it is liable to be influenced by almost any number of unseen and unconsidered causes,--past experience, received dogmas, the stirring of self-interest, the arousing of passion, sheer mental laziness, a social environment steeped in biased traditions or animated by false expectations, and so on. the exercise of thought is, in the literal sense of that word, _inference_; by it one thing _carries us over_ to the idea of, and belief in, another thing. it involves a jump, a leap, a going beyond what is surely known to something else accepted on its warrant. unless one is an idiot, one simply cannot help having all things and events suggest other things not actually present, nor can one help a tendency to believe in the latter on the basis of the former. the very inevitableness of the jump, the leap, to something unknown, only emphasizes the necessity of attention to the conditions under which it occurs so that the danger of a false step may be lessened and the probability of a right landing increased. [sidenote: hence, the need of regulation which, when adequate, makes proof] such attention consists in regulation ( ) of the conditions under which the function of suggestion takes place, and ( ) of the conditions under which credence is yielded to the suggestions that occur. inference controlled in these two ways (the study of which in detail constitutes one of the chief objects of this book) forms _proof_. to prove a thing means primarily to try, to test it. the guest bidden to the wedding feast excused himself because he had to _prove_ his oxen. exceptions are said to prove a rule; _i.e._ they furnish instances so extreme that they try in the severest fashion its applicability; if the rule will stand such a test, there is no good reason for further doubting it. not until a thing has been tried--"tried out," in colloquial language--do we know its true worth. till then it may be pretense, a bluff. but the thing that has come out victorious in a test or trial of strength carries its credentials with it; it is approved, because it has been proved. its value is clearly evinced, shown, _i.e._ demonstrated. so it is with inferences. the mere fact that inference in general is an invaluable function does not guarantee, nor does it even help out the correctness of any particular inference. any inference may go astray; and as we have seen, there are standing influences ever ready to assist its going wrong. _what is important, is that every inference shall be a tested inference_; _or_ (since often this is not possible) _that we shall discriminate between beliefs that rest upon tested evidence and those that do not, and shall be accordingly on our guard as to the kind and degree of assent yielded_. [sidenote: the office of education in forming skilled] [sidenote: powers of thinking] while it is not the business of education to prove every statement made, any more than to teach every possible item of information, it is its business to cultivate deep-seated and effective habits of discriminating tested beliefs from mere assertions, guesses, and opinions; to develop a lively, sincere, and open-minded preference for conclusions that are properly grounded, and to ingrain into the individual's working habits methods of inquiry and reasoning appropriate to the various problems that present themselves. no matter how much an individual knows as a matter of hearsay and information, if he has not attitudes and habits of this sort, he is not intellectually educated. he lacks the rudiments of mental discipline. and since these habits are not a gift of nature (no matter how strong the aptitude for acquiring them); since, moreover, the casual circumstances of the natural and social environment are not enough to compel their acquisition, the main office of education is to supply conditions that make for their cultivation. the formation of these habits is the training of mind. chapter three natural resources in the training of thought [sidenote: only native powers can be trained.] in the last chapter we considered the need of transforming, through training, the natural capacities of inference into habits of critical examination and inquiry. the very importance of thought for life makes necessary its control by education because of its natural tendency to go astray, and because social influences exist that tend to form habits of thought leading to inadequate and erroneous beliefs. training must, however, be itself based upon the natural tendencies,--that is, it must find its point of departure in them. a being who could not think without training could never be trained to think; one may have to learn to think _well_, but not to _think_. training, in short, must fall back upon the prior and independent existence of natural powers; it is concerned with their proper direction, not with creating them. [sidenote: hence, the one taught must take the initiative] teaching and learning are correlative or corresponding processes, as much so as selling and buying. one might as well say he has sold when no one has bought, as to say that he has taught when no one has learned. and in the educational transaction, the initiative lies with the learner even more than in commerce it lies with the buyer. if an individual can learn to think only in the sense of learning to employ more economically and effectively powers he already possesses, even more truly one can teach others to think only in the sense of appealing to and fostering powers already active in them. effective appeal of this kind is impossible unless the teacher has an insight into existing habits and tendencies, the natural resources with which he has to ally himself. [sidenote: three important natural resources] any inventory of the items of this natural capital is somewhat arbitrary because it must pass over many of the complex details. but a statement of the factors essential to thought will put before us in outline the main elements. thinking involves (as we have seen) the suggestion of a conclusion for acceptance, and also search or inquiry to test the value of the suggestion before finally accepting it. this implies (_a_) a certain fund or store of experiences and facts from which suggestions proceed; (_b_) promptness, flexibility, and fertility of suggestions; and (_c_) orderliness, consecutiveness, appropriateness in what is suggested. clearly, a person may be hampered in any of these three regards: his thinking may be irrelevant, narrow, or crude because he has not enough actual material upon which to base conclusions; or because concrete facts and raw material, even if extensive and bulky, fail to evoke suggestions easily and richly; or finally, because, even when these two conditions are fulfilled, the ideas suggested are incoherent and fantastic, rather than pertinent and consistent. § . _curiosity_ [sidenote: desire for fullness of experience:] the most vital and significant factor in supplying the primary material whence suggestion may issue is, without doubt, curiosity. the wisest of the greeks used to say that wonder is the mother of all science. an inert mind waits, as it were, for experiences to be imperiously forced upon it. the pregnant saying of wordsworth: "the eye--it cannot choose but see; we cannot bid the ear be still; our bodies feel, where'er they be, against or with our will"-- holds good in the degree in which one is naturally possessed by curiosity. the curious mind is constantly alert and exploring, seeking material for thought, as a vigorous and healthy body is on the _qui vive_ for nutriment. eagerness for experience, for new and varied contacts, is found where wonder is found. such curiosity is the only sure guarantee of the acquisition of the primary facts upon which inference must base itself. [sidenote: (_a_) physical] (_a_) in its first manifestations, curiosity is a vital overflow, an expression of an abundant organic energy. a physiological uneasiness leads a child to be "into everything,"--to be reaching, poking, pounding, prying. observers of animals have noted what one author calls "their inveterate tendency to fool." "rats run about, smell, dig, or gnaw, without real reference to the business in hand. in the same way jack [a dog] scrabbles and jumps, the kitten wanders and picks, the otter slips about everywhere like ground lightning, the elephant fumbles ceaselessly, the monkey pulls things about."[ ] the most casual notice of the activities of a young child reveals a ceaseless display of exploring and testing activity. objects are sucked, fingered, and thumped; drawn and pushed, handled and thrown; in short, experimented with, till they cease to yield new qualities. such activities are hardly intellectual, and yet without them intellectual activity would be feeble and intermittent through lack of stuff for its operations. [ ] hobhouse, _mind in evolution_, p. . [sidenote: (_b_) social] (_b_) a higher stage of curiosity develops under the influence of social stimuli. when the child learns that he can appeal to others to eke out his store of experiences, so that, if objects fail to respond interestingly to his experiments, he may call upon persons to provide interesting material, a new epoch sets in. "what is that?" "why?" become the unfailing signs of a child's presence. at first this questioning is hardly more than a projection into social relations of the physical overflow which earlier kept the child pushing and pulling, opening and shutting. he asks in succession what holds up the house, what holds up the soil that holds the house, what holds up the earth that holds the soil; but his questions are not evidence of any genuine consciousness of rational connections. his _why_ is not a demand for scientific explanation; the motive behind it is simply eagerness for a larger acquaintance with the mysterious world in which he is placed. the search is not for a law or principle, but only for a bigger fact. yet there is more than a desire to accumulate just information or heap up disconnected items, although sometimes the interrogating habit threatens to degenerate into a mere disease of language. in the feeling, however dim, that the facts which directly meet the senses are not the whole story, that there is more behind them and more to come from them, lies the germ of _intellectual_ curiosity. [sidenote: (_c_) intellectual] (_c_) curiosity rises above the organic and the social planes and becomes intellectual in the degree in which it is transformed into interest in _problems_ provoked by the observation of things and the accumulation of material. when the question is not discharged by being asked of another, when the child continues to entertain it in his own mind and to be alert for whatever will help answer it, curiosity has become a positive intellectual force. to the open mind, nature and social experience are full of varied and subtle challenges to look further. if germinating powers are not used and cultivated at the right moment, they tend to be transitory, to die out, or to wane in intensity. this general law is peculiarly true of sensitiveness to what is uncertain and questionable; in a few people, intellectual curiosity is so insatiable that nothing will discourage it, but in most its edge is easily dulled and blunted. bacon's saying that we must become as little children in order to enter the kingdom of science is at once a reminder of the open-minded and flexible wonder of childhood and of the ease with which this endowment is lost. some lose it in indifference or carelessness; others in a frivolous flippancy; many escape these evils only to become incased in a hard dogmatism which is equally fatal to the spirit of wonder. some are so taken up with routine as to be inaccessible to new facts and problems. others retain curiosity only with reference to what concerns their personal advantage in their chosen career. with many, curiosity is arrested on the plane of interest in local gossip and in the fortunes of their neighbors; indeed, so usual is this result that very often the first association with the word _curiosity_ is a prying inquisitiveness into other people's business. with respect then to curiosity, the teacher has usually more to learn than to teach. rarely can he aspire to the office of kindling or even increasing it. his task is rather to keep alive the sacred spark of wonder and to fan the flame that already glows. his problem is to protect the spirit of inquiry, to keep it from becoming blasé from overexcitement, wooden from routine, fossilized through dogmatic instruction, or dissipated by random exercise upon trivial things. § . _suggestion_ out of the subject-matter, whether rich or scanty, important or trivial, of present experience issue suggestions, ideas, beliefs as to what is not yet given. the function of suggestion is not one that can be produced by teaching; while it may be modified for better or worse by conditions, it cannot be destroyed. many a child has tried his best to see if he could not "stop thinking," but the flow of suggestions goes on in spite of our will, quite as surely as "our bodies feel, where'er they be, against or with our will." primarily, naturally, it is not we who think, in any actively responsible sense; thinking is rather something that happens in us. only so far as one has acquired control of the method in which the function of suggestion occurs and has accepted responsibility for its consequences, can one truthfully say, "_i_ think so and so." [sidenote: the dimensions of suggestion:] [sidenote: (_a_) ease] the function of suggestion has a variety of aspects (or dimensions as we may term them), varying in different persons, both in themselves and in their mode of combination. these dimensions are ease or promptness, extent or variety, and depth or persistence. (_a_) the common classification of persons into the dull and the bright is made primarily on the basis of the readiness or facility with which suggestions follow upon the presentation of objects and upon the happening of events. as the metaphor of dull and bright implies, some minds are impervious, or else they absorb passively. everything presented is lost in a drab monotony that gives nothing back. but others reflect, or give back in varied lights, all that strikes upon them. the dull make no response; the bright flash back the fact with a changed quality. an inert or stupid mind requires a heavy jolt or an intense shock to move it to suggestion; the bright mind is quick, is alert to react with interpretation and suggestion of consequences to follow. yet the teacher is not entitled to assume stupidity or even dullness merely because of irresponsiveness to school subjects or to a lesson as presented by text-book or teacher. the pupil labeled hopeless may react in quick and lively fashion when the thing-in-hand seems to him worth while, as some out-of-school sport or social affair. indeed, the school subject might move him, were it set in a different context and treated by a different method. a boy dull in geometry may prove quick enough when he takes up the subject in connection with manual training; the girl who seems inaccessible to historical facts may respond promptly when it is a question of judging the character and deeds of people of her acquaintance or of fiction. barring physical defect or disease, slowness and dullness in _all_ directions are comparatively rare. [sidenote: (_b_) range] (_b_) irrespective of the difference in persons as to the ease and promptness with which ideas respond to facts, there is a difference in the number or range of the suggestions that occur. we speak truly, in some cases, of the flood of suggestions; in others, there is but a slender trickle. occasionally, slowness of outward response is due to a great variety of suggestions which check one another and lead to hesitation and suspense; while a lively and prompt suggestion may take such possession of the mind as to preclude the development of others. too few suggestions indicate a dry and meager mental habit; when this is joined to great learning, there results a pedant or a gradgrind. such a person's mind rings hard; he is likely to bore others with mere bulk of information. he contrasts with the person whom we call ripe, juicy, and mellow. a conclusion reached after consideration of a few alternatives may be formally correct, but it will not possess the fullness and richness of meaning of one arrived at after comparison of a greater variety of alternative suggestions. on the other hand, suggestions may be too numerous and too varied for the best interests of mental habit. so many suggestions may rise that the person is at a loss to select among them. he finds it difficult to reach any definite conclusion and wanders more or less helplessly among them. so much suggests itself _pro_ and _con_, one thing leads on to another so naturally, that he finds it difficult to decide in practical affairs or to conclude in matters of theory. there is such a thing as too much thinking, as when action is paralyzed by the multiplicity of views suggested by a situation. or again, the very number of suggestions may be hostile to tracing logical sequences among them, for it may tempt the mind away from the necessary but trying task of search for real connections, into the more congenial occupation of embroidering upon the given facts a tissue of agreeable fancies. the best mental habit involves a balance between paucity and redundancy of suggestions. [sidenote: (_c_) profundity] (_c_) _depth._ we distinguish between people not only upon the basis of their quickness and fertility of intellectual response, but also with respect to the plane upon which it occurs--the intrinsic quality of the response. one man's thought is profound while another's is superficial; one goes to the roots of the matter, and another touches lightly its most external aspects. this phase of thinking is perhaps the most untaught of all, and the least amenable to external influence whether for improvement or harm. nevertheless, the conditions of the pupil's contact with subject-matter may be such that he is compelled to come to quarters with its more significant features, or such that he is encouraged to deal with it upon the basis of what is trivial. the common assumptions that, if the pupil only thinks, one thought is just as good for his mental discipline as another, and that the end of study is the amassing of information, both tend to foster superficial, at the expense of significant, thought. pupils who in matters of ordinary practical experience have a ready and acute perception of the difference between the significant and the meaningless, often reach in school subjects a point where all things seem equally important or equally unimportant; where one thing is just as likely to be true as another, and where intellectual effort is expended not in discriminating between things, but in trying to make verbal connections among words. [sidenote: balance of mind] sometimes slowness and depth of response are intimately connected. time is required in order to digest impressions, and translate them into substantial ideas. "brightness" may be but a flash in the pan. the "slow but sure" person, whether man or child, is one in whom impressions sink and accumulate, so that thinking is done at a deeper level of value than with a slighter load. many a child is rebuked for "slowness," for not "answering promptly," when his forces are taking time to gather themselves together to deal effectively with the problem at hand. in such cases, failure to afford time and leisure conduce to habits of speedy, but snapshot and superficial, judgment. the depth to which a sense of the problem, of the difficulty, sinks, determines the quality of the thinking that follows; and any habit of teaching which encourages the pupil for the sake of a successful recitation or of a display of memorized information to glide over the thin ice of genuine problems reverses the true method of mind training. [sidenote: individual differences] it is profitable to study the lives of men and women who achieve in adult life fine things in their respective callings, but who were called dull in their school days. sometimes the early wrong judgment was due mainly to the fact that the direction in which the child showed his ability was not one recognized by the good old standards in use, as in the case of darwin's interest in beetles, snakes, and frogs. sometimes it was due to the fact that the child dwelling habitually on a deeper plane of reflection than other pupils--or than his teachers--did not show to advantage when prompt answers of the usual sort were expected. sometimes it was due to the fact that the pupil's natural mode of approach clashed habitually with that of the text or teacher, and the method of the latter was assumed as an absolute basis of estimate. [sidenote: any subject may be intellectual] in any event, it is desirable that the teacher should rid himself of the notion that "thinking" is a single, unalterable faculty; that he should recognize that it is a term denoting the various ways in which things acquire significance. it is desirable to expel also the kindred notion that some subjects are inherently "intellectual," and hence possessed of an almost magical power to train the faculty of thought. thinking is specific, not a machine-like, ready-made apparatus to be turned indifferently and at will upon all subjects, as a lantern may throw its light as it happens upon horses, streets, gardens, trees, or river. thinking is specific, in that different things suggest their own appropriate meanings, tell their own unique stories, and in that they do this in very different ways with different persons. as the growth of the body is through the assimilation of food, so the growth of mind is through the logical organization of subject-matter. thinking is not like a sausage machine which reduces all materials indifferently to one marketable commodity, but is a power of following up and linking together the specific suggestions that specific things arouse. accordingly, any subject, from greek to cooking, and from drawing to mathematics, is intellectual, if intellectual at all, not in its fixed inner structure, but in its function--in its power to start and direct significant inquiry and reflection. what geometry does for one, the manipulation of laboratory apparatus, the mastery of a musical composition, or the conduct of a business affair, may do for another. § . _orderliness: its nature_ [sidenote: continuity] facts, whether narrow or extensive, and conclusions suggested by them, whether many or few, do not constitute, even when combined, reflective thought. the suggestions must be _organized_; they must be arranged with reference to one another and with reference to the facts on which they depend for proof. when the factors of facility, of fertility, and of depth are properly balanced or proportioned, we get as the outcome continuity of thought. we desire neither the slow mind nor yet the hasty. we wish neither random diffuseness nor fixed rigidity. consecutiveness means flexibility and variety of materials, conjoined with singleness and definiteness of direction. it is opposed both to a mechanical routine uniformity and to a grasshopper-like movement. of bright children, it is not infrequently said that "they might do anything, if only they settled down," so quick and apt are they in any particular response. but, alas, they rarely settle. on the other hand, it is not enough _not_ to be diverted. a deadly and fanatic consistency is not our goal. concentration does not mean fixity, nor a cramped arrest or paralysis of the flow of suggestion. it means variety and change of ideas combined into a _single steady trend moving toward a unified conclusion_. thoughts are concentrated not by being kept still and quiescent, but by being kept moving toward an object, as a general concentrates his troops for attack or defense. holding the mind to a subject is like holding a ship to its course; it implies constant change of place combined with unity of direction. consistent and orderly thinking is precisely such a change of subject-matter. consistency is no more the mere absence of contradiction than concentration is the mere absence of diversion--which exists in dull routine or in a person "fast asleep." all kinds of varied and incompatible suggestions may sprout and be followed in their growth, and yet thinking be consistent and orderly, provided each one of the suggestions is viewed in relation to the main topic. [sidenote: practical demands enforce some degree of continuity] in the main, for most persons, the primary resource in the development of orderly habits of thought is indirect, not direct. intellectual organization originates and for a time grows as an accompaniment of the organization of the acts required to realize an end, not as the result of a direct appeal to thinking power. the need of thinking to accomplish something beyond thinking is more potent than thinking for its own sake. all people at the outset, and the majority of people probably all their lives, attain ordering of thought through ordering of action. adults normally carry on some occupation, profession, pursuit; and this furnishes the continuous axis about which their knowledge, their beliefs, and their habits of reaching and testing conclusions are organized. observations that have to do with the efficient performance of their calling are extended and rendered precise. information related to it is not merely amassed and then left in a heap; it is classified and subdivided so as to be available as it is needed. inferences are made by most men not from purely speculative motives, but because they are involved in the efficient performance of "the duties involved in their several callings." thus their inferences are constantly tested by results achieved; futile and scattering methods tend to be discounted; orderly arrangements have a premium put upon them. the event, the issue, stands as a constant check on the thinking that has led up to it; and this discipline by efficiency in action is the chief sanction, in practically all who are not scientific specialists, of orderliness of thought. such a resource--the main prop of disciplined thinking in adult life--is not to be despised in training the young in right intellectual habits. there are, however, profound differences between the immature and the adult in the matter of organized activity--differences which must be taken seriously into account in any educational use of activities: (_i_) the external achievement resulting from activity is a more urgent necessity with the adult, and hence is with him a more effective means of discipline of mind than with the child; (_ii_) the ends of adult activity are more specialized than those of child activity. [sidenote: peculiar difficulty with children] (_i_) the selection and arrangement of appropriate lines of action is a much more difficult problem as respects youth than it is in the case of adults. with the latter, the main lines are more or less settled by circumstances. the social status of the adult, the fact that he is a citizen, a householder, a parent, one occupied in some regular industrial or professional calling, prescribes the chief features of the acts to be performed, and secures, somewhat automatically, as it were, appropriate and related modes of thinking. but with the child there is no such fixity of status and pursuit; there is almost nothing to dictate that such and such a consecutive line of action, rather than another, should be followed, while the will of others, his own caprice, and circumstances about him tend to produce an isolated momentary act. the absence of continued motivation coöperates with the inner plasticity of the immature to increase the importance of educational training and the difficulties in the way of finding consecutive modes of activities which may do for child and youth what serious vocations and functions do for the adult. in the case of children, the choice is so peculiarly exposed to arbitrary factors, to mere school traditions, to waves of pedagogical fad and fancy, to fluctuating social cross currents, that sometimes, in sheer disgust at the inadequacy of results, a reaction occurs to the total neglect of overt activity as an educational factor, and a recourse to purely theoretical subjects and methods. [sidenote: peculiar opportunity with children] (_ii_) this very difficulty, however, points to the fact that the _opportunity for selecting truly educative activities_ is indefinitely greater in child life than in adult. the factor of external pressure is so strong with most adults that the educative value of the pursuit--its reflex influence upon intelligence and character--however genuine, is incidental, and frequently almost accidental. the problem and the opportunity with the young is selection of orderly and continuous modes of occupation, which, while they lead up to and prepare for the indispensable activities of adult life, have their own _sufficient justification in their present reflex influence upon the formation of habits of thought_. [sidenote: action and reaction between extremes] educational practice shows a continual tendency to oscillate between two extremes with respect to overt and exertive activities. one extreme is to neglect them almost entirely, on the ground that they are chaotic and fluctuating, mere diversions appealing to the transitory unformed taste and caprice of immature minds; or if they avoid this evil, are objectionable copies of the highly specialized, and more or less commercial, activities of adult life. if activities are admitted at all into the school, the admission is a grudging concession to the necessity of having occasional relief from the strain of constant intellectual work, or to the clamor of outside utilitarian demands upon the school. the other extreme is an enthusiastic belief in the almost magical educative efficacy of any kind of activity, granted it is an activity and not a passive absorption of academic and theoretic material. the conceptions of play, of self-expression, of natural growth, are appealed to almost as if they meant that opportunity for any kind of spontaneous activity inevitably secures the due training of mental power; or a mythological brain physiology is appealed to as proof that any exercise of the muscles trains power of thought. [sidenote: locating the problem of education] while we vibrate from one of these extremes to the other, the most serious of all problems is ignored: the problem, namely, of discovering and arranging the forms of activity (_a_) which are most congenial, best adapted, to the immature stage of development; (_b_) which have the most ulterior promise as preparation for the social responsibilities of adult life; and (_c_) which, _at the same time_, have the maximum of influence in forming habits of acute observation and of consecutive inference. as curiosity is related to the acquisition of material of thought, as suggestion is related to flexibility and force of thought, so the ordering of activities, not themselves primarily intellectual, is related to the forming of intellectual powers of consecutiveness. chapter four school conditions and the training of thought § . _introductory: methods and conditions_ [sidenote: formal discipline] the so-called faculty-psychology went hand in hand with the vogue of the formal-discipline idea in education. if thought is a distinct piece of mental machinery, separate from observation, memory, imagination, and common-sense judgments of persons and things, then thought should be trained by special exercises designed for the purpose, as one might devise special exercises for developing the biceps muscles. certain subjects are then to be regarded as intellectual or logical subjects _par excellence_, possessed of a predestined fitness to exercise the thought-faculty, just as certain machines are better than others for developing arm power. with these three notions goes the fourth, that method consists of a set of operations by which the machinery of thought is set going and kept at work upon any subject-matter. [sidenote: versus real thinking] we have tried to make it clear in the previous chapters that there is no single and uniform power of thought, but a multitude of different ways in which specific things--things observed, remembered, heard of, read about--evoke suggestions or ideas that are pertinent to the occasion and fruitful in the sequel. training is such development of curiosity, suggestion, and habits of exploring and testing, as increases their scope and efficiency. a subject--any subject--is intellectual in the degree in which _with any given person_ it succeeds in effecting this growth. on this view the fourth factor, method, is concerned with providing conditions so adapted to individual needs and powers as to make for the permanent improvement of observation, suggestion, and investigation. [sidenote: true and false meaning of method] the teacher's problem is thus twofold. on the one side, he needs (as we saw in the last chapter) to be a student of individual traits and habits; on the other side, he needs to be a student of the conditions that modify for better or worse the directions in which individual powers habitually express themselves. he needs to recognize that method covers not only what he intentionally devises and employs for the purpose of mental training, but also what he does without any conscious reference to it,--anything in the atmosphere and conduct of the school which reacts in any way upon the curiosity, the responsiveness, and the orderly activity of children. the teacher who is an intelligent student both of individual mental operations and of the effects of school conditions upon those operations, can largely be trusted to develop for himself methods of instruction in their narrower and more technical sense--those best adapted to achieve results in particular subjects, such as reading, geography, or algebra. in the hands of one who is not intelligently aware of individual capacities and of the influence unconsciously exerted upon them by the entire environment, even the best of technical methods are likely to get an immediate result only at the expense of deep-seated and persistent habits. we may group the conditioning influences of the school environment under three heads: ( ) the mental attitudes and habits of the persons with whom the child is in contact; ( ) the subjects studied; ( ) current educational aims and ideals. § . _influence of the habits of others_ bare reference to the imitativeness of human nature is enough to suggest how profoundly the mental habits of others affect the attitude of the one being trained. example is more potent than precept; and a teacher's best conscious efforts may be more than counteracted by the influence of personal traits which he is unaware of or regards as unimportant. methods of instruction and discipline that are technically faulty may be rendered practically innocuous by the inspiration of the personal method that lies back of them. [sidenote: response to environment fundamental in method] to confine, however, the conditioning influence of the educator, whether parent or teacher, to imitation is to get a very superficial view of the intellectual influence of others. imitation is but one case of a deeper principle--that of stimulus and response. _everything the teacher does, as well as the manner in which he does it, incites the child to respond in some way or other, and each response tends to set the child's attitude in some way or other._ even the inattention of the child to the adult is often a mode of response which is the result of unconscious training.[ ] the teacher is rarely (and even then never entirely) a transparent medium of access by another mind to a subject. with the young, the influence of the teacher's personality is intimately fused with that of the subject; the child does not separate nor even distinguish the two. and as the child's response is _toward_ or _away from_ anything presented, he keeps up a running commentary, of which he himself is hardly distinctly aware, of like and dislike, of sympathy and aversion, not merely to the acts of the teacher, but also to the subject with which the teacher is occupied. [ ] a child of four or five who had been repeatedly called to the house by his mother with no apparent response on his own part, was asked if he did not hear her. he replied quite judicially, "oh, yes, but she doesn't call very mad yet." [sidenote: influence of teacher's own habits] [sidenote: judging others by ourselves] the extent and power of this influence upon morals and manners, upon character, upon habits of speech and social bearing, are almost universally recognized. but the tendency to conceive of thought as an isolated faculty has often blinded teachers to the fact that this influence is just as real and pervasive in intellectual concerns. teachers, as well as children, stick more or less to the main points, have more or less wooden and rigid methods of response, and display more or less intellectual curiosity about matters that come up. and every trait of this kind is an inevitable part of the teacher's method of teaching. merely to accept without notice slipshod habits of speech, slovenly inferences, unimaginative and literal response, is to indorse these tendencies, and to ratify them into habits--and so it goes throughout the whole range of contact between teacher and student. in this complex and intricate field, two or three points may well be singled out for special notice. (_a_) most persons are quite unaware of the distinguishing peculiarities of their own mental habit. they take their own mental operations for granted, and unconsciously make them the standard for judging the mental processes of others.[ ] hence there is a tendency to encourage everything in the pupil which agrees with this attitude, and to neglect or fail to understand whatever is incongruous with it. the prevalent overestimation of the value, for mind-training, of _theoretic_ subjects as compared with practical pursuits, is doubtless due partly to the fact that the teacher's calling tends to select those in whom the theoretic interest is specially strong and to repel those in whom executive abilities are marked. teachers sifted out on this basis judge pupils and subjects by a like standard, encouraging an intellectual one-sidedness in those to whom it is naturally congenial, and repelling from study those in whom practical instincts are more urgent. [ ] people who have _number-forms_--_i.e._ project number series into space and see them arranged in certain shapes--when asked why they have not mentioned the fact before, often reply that it never occurred to them; they supposed that everybody had the same power. [sidenote: exaggeration of direct personal influence] (_b_) teachers--and this holds especially of the stronger and better teachers--tend to rely upon their personal strong points to hold a child to his work, and thereby to substitute their personal influence for that of subject-matter as a motive for study. the teacher finds by experience that his own personality is often effective where the power of the subject to command attention is almost nil; then he utilizes the former more and more, until the pupil's relation to the teacher almost takes the place of his relation to the subject. in this way the teacher's personality may become a source of personal dependence and weakness, an influence that renders the pupil indifferent to the value of the subject for its own sake. [sidenote: independent thinking _versus_ "getting the answer"] (_c_) the operation of the teacher's own mental habit tends, unless carefully watched and guided, to make the child a student of the teacher's peculiarities rather than of the subjects that he is supposed to study. his chief concern is to accommodate himself to what the teacher expects of him, rather than to devote himself energetically to the problems of subject-matter. "is this right?" comes to mean "will this answer or this process satisfy the teacher?"--instead of meaning, "does it satisfy the inherent conditions of the problem?" it would be folly to deny the legitimacy or the value of the study of human nature that children carry on in school; but it is obviously undesirable that their chief intellectual problem should be that of producing an answer approved by the teacher, and their standard of success be successful adaptation to the requirements of another. § . _influence of the nature of studies_ [sidenote: types of studies] studies are conventionally and conveniently grouped under these heads: ( ) those especially involving the acquisition of skill in performance--the school arts, such as reading, writing, figuring, and music. ( ) those mainly concerned with acquiring knowledge--"informational" studies, such as geography and history. ( ) those in which skill in doing and bulk of information are relatively less important, and appeal to abstract thinking, to "reasoning," is most marked--"disciplinary" studies, such as arithmetic and formal grammar.[ ] each of these groups of subjects has its own special pitfalls. [ ] of course, any one subject has all three aspects: _e.g._ in arithmetic, counting, writing, and reading numbers, rapid adding, etc., are cases of skill in doing; the tables of weights and measures are a matter of information, etc. [sidenote: the abstract as the isolated] (_a_) in the case of the so-called disciplinary or pre-eminently logical studies, there is danger of the isolation of intellectual activity from the ordinary affairs of life. teacher and student alike tend to set up a chasm between logical thought as something abstract and remote, and the specific and concrete demands of everyday events. the abstract tends to become so aloof, so far away from application, as to be cut loose from practical and moral bearing. the gullibility of specialized scholars when out of their own lines, their extravagant habits of inference and speech, their ineptness in reaching conclusions in practical matters, their egotistical engrossment in their own subjects, are extreme examples of the bad effects of severing studies completely from their ordinary connections in life. [sidenote: overdoing the mechanical and automatic] [sidenote: "drill"] (_b_) the danger in those studies where the main emphasis is upon acquisition of skill is just the reverse. the tendency is to take the shortest cuts possible to gain the required end. this makes the subjects _mechanical_, and thus restrictive of intellectual power. in the mastery of reading, writing, drawing, laboratory technique, etc., the need of economy of time and material, of neatness and accuracy, of promptness and uniformity, is so great that these things tend to become ends in themselves, irrespective of their influence upon general mental attitude. sheer imitation, dictation of steps to be taken, mechanical drill, may give results most quickly and yet strengthen traits likely to be fatal to reflective power. the pupil is enjoined to do this and that specific thing, with no knowledge of any reason except that by so doing he gets his result most speedily; his mistakes are pointed out and corrected for him; he is kept at pure repetition of certain acts till they become automatic. later, teachers wonder why the pupil reads with so little expression, and figures with so little intelligent consideration of the terms of his problem. in some educational dogmas and practices, the very idea of training mind seems to be hopelessly confused with that of a drill which hardly touches _mind_ at all--or touches it for the worse--since it is wholly taken up with training skill in external execution. this method reduces the "training" of human beings to the level of animal training. practical skill, modes of effective technique, can be intelligently, non-mechanically _used_, only when intelligence has played a part in their _acquisition_. [sidenote: wisdom _versus_ information] (_c_) much the same sort of thing is to be said regarding studies where emphasis traditionally falls upon bulk and accuracy of information. the distinction between information and wisdom is old, and yet requires constantly to be redrawn. information is knowledge which is merely acquired and stored up; wisdom is knowledge operating in the direction of powers to the better living of life. information, merely as information, implies no special training of intellectual capacity; wisdom is the finest fruit of that training. in school, amassing information always tends to escape from the ideal of wisdom or good judgment. the aim often seems to be--especially in such a subject as geography--to make the pupil what has been called a "cyclopedia of useless information." "covering the ground" is the primary necessity; the nurture of mind a bad second. thinking cannot, of course, go on in a vacuum; suggestions and inferences can occur only upon a basis of information as to matters of fact. but there is all the difference in the world whether the acquisition of information is treated as an end in itself, or is made an integral portion of the training of thought. the assumption that information which has been accumulated apart from use in the recognition and solution of a problem may later on be freely employed at will by thought is quite false. the skill at the ready command of intelligence is the skill acquired with the aid of intelligence; the only information which, otherwise than by accident, can be put to logical use is that acquired in the course of thinking. because their knowledge has been achieved in connection with the needs of specific situations, men of little book-learning are often able to put to effective use every ounce of knowledge they possess; while men of vast erudition are often swamped by the mere bulk of their learning, because memory, rather than thinking, has been operative in obtaining it. § . _the influence of current aims and ideals_ it is, of course, impossible to separate this somewhat intangible condition from the points just dealt with; for automatic skill and quantity of information are educational ideals which pervade the whole school. we may distinguish, however, certain tendencies, such as that to judge education from the standpoint of external results, instead of from that of the development of personal attitudes and habits. the ideal of the _product_, as against that of the mental _process_ by which the product is attained, shows itself in both instruction and moral discipline. [sidenote: external results _versus_ processes] (_a_) in instruction, the external standard manifests itself in the importance attached to the "correct answer." no one other thing, probably, works so fatally against focussing the attention of teachers upon the training of mind as the domination of _their_ minds by the idea that the chief thing is to get pupils to recite their lessons correctly. as long as this end is uppermost (whether consciously or unconsciously), training of mind remains an incidental and secondary consideration. there is no great difficulty in understanding why this ideal has such vogue. the large number of pupils to be dealt with, and the tendency of parents and school authorities to demand speedy and tangible evidence of progress, conspire to give it currency. knowledge of subject-matter--not of children--is alone exacted of teachers by this aim; and, moreover, knowledge of subject-matter only in portions definitely prescribed and laid out, and hence mastered with comparative ease. education that takes as its standard the improvement of the intellectual attitude and method of students demands more serious preparatory training, for it exacts sympathetic and intelligent insight into the workings of individual minds, and a very wide and flexible command of subject-matter--so as to be able to select and apply just what is needed when it is needed. finally, the securing of external results is an aim that lends itself naturally to the mechanics of school administration--to examinations, marks, gradings, promotions, and so on. [sidenote: reliance upon others] (_b_) with reference to behavior also, the external ideal has a great influence. conformity of acts to precepts and rules is the easiest, because most mechanical, standard to employ. it is no part of our present task to tell just how far dogmatic instruction, or strict adherence to custom, convention, and the commands of a social superior, should extend in moral training; but since problems of conduct are the deepest and most common of all the problems of life, the ways in which they are met have an influence that radiates into every other mental attitude, even those far remote from any direct or conscious moral consideration. indeed, the _deepest plane of the mental attitude of every one is fixed by the way in which problems of behavior are treated_. if the function of thought, of serious inquiry and reflection, is reduced to a minimum in dealing with them, it is not reasonable to expect habits of thought to exercise great influence in less important matters. on the other hand, habits of active inquiry and careful deliberation in the significant and vital problems of conduct afford the best guarantee that the general structure of mind will be reasonable. chapter five the means and end of mental training: the psychological and the logical § . _introductory: the meaning of logical_ [sidenote: special topic of this chapter] in the preceding chapters we have considered (_i_) what thinking is; (_ii_) the importance of its special training; (_iii_) the natural tendencies that lend themselves to its training; and (_iv_) some of the special obstacles in the way of its training under school conditions. we come now to the relation of _logic_ to the purpose of mental training. [sidenote: three senses of term _logical_] [sidenote: the practical is the important meaning of _logical_] in its broadest sense, any thinking that ends in a conclusion is logical--whether the conclusion reached be justified or fallacious; that is, the term _logical_ covers both the logically good and the illogical or the logically bad. in its narrowest sense, the term _logical_ refers only to what is demonstrated to follow necessarily from premises that are definite in meaning and that are either self-evidently true, or that have been previously proved to be true. stringency of proof is here the equivalent of the logical. in this sense mathematics and formal logic (perhaps as a branch of mathematics) alone are strictly logical. logical, however, is used in a third sense, which is at once more vital and more practical; to denote, namely, the systematic care, negative and positive, taken to safeguard reflection so that it may yield the best results under the given conditions. if only the word _artificial_ were associated with the idea of _art_, or expert skill gained through voluntary apprenticeship (instead of suggesting the factitious and unreal), we might say that logical refers to artificial thought. [sidenote: care, thoroughness, and exactness the marks of the logical] in this sense, the word _logical_ is synonymous with wide-awake, thorough, and careful reflection--thought in its best sense (_ante_, p. ). reflection is turning a topic over in various aspects and in various lights so that nothing significant about it shall be overlooked--almost as one might turn a stone over to see what its hidden side is like or what is covered by it. _thoughtfulness_ means, practically, the same thing as careful attention; to give our mind to a subject is to give heed to it, to take pains with it. in speaking of reflection, we naturally use the words _weigh_, _ponder_, _deliberate_--terms implying a certain delicate and scrupulous balancing of things against one another. closely related names are _scrutiny_, _examination_, _consideration_, _inspection_--terms which imply close and careful vision. again, to think is to relate things to one another definitely, to "put two and two together" as we say. analogy with the accuracy and definiteness of mathematical combinations gives us such expressions as _calculate_, _reckon_, _account for_; and even _reason_ itself--_ratio_. caution, carefulness, thoroughness, definiteness, exactness, orderliness, methodic arrangement, are, then, the traits by which we mark off the logical from what is random and casual on one side, and from what is academic and formal on the other. [sidenote: whole object of intellectual education is formation of logical disposition] [sidenote: false opposition of the logical and psychological] no argument is needed to point out that the educator is concerned with the logical in its practical and vital sense. argument is perhaps needed to show that the _intellectual_ (as distinct from the _moral_) _end of education is entirely and only the logical in this sense_; _namely, the formation of careful, alert, and thorough habits of thinking_. the chief difficulty in the way of recognition of this principle is a false conception of the relation between the psychological tendencies of an individual and his logical achievements. if it be assumed--as it is so frequently--that these have, intrinsically, nothing to do with each other, then logical training is inevitably regarded as something foreign and extraneous, something to be ingrafted upon the individual from without, so that it is absurd to identify the object of education with the development of logical power. [sidenote: opposing the _natural_ to the logical] the conception that the psychology of individuals has no intrinsic connections with logical methods and results is held, curiously enough, by two opposing schools of educational theory. to one school, the _natural_[ ] is primary and fundamental; and its tendency is to make little of distinctly intellectual nurture. its mottoes are freedom, self-expression, individuality, spontaneity, play, interest, natural unfolding, and so on. in its emphasis upon individual attitude and activity, it sets slight store upon organized subject-matter, or the material of study, and conceives _method_ to consist of various devices for stimulating and evoking, in their natural order of growth, the native potentialities of individuals. [ ] denoting whatever has to do with the natural constitution and functions of an individual. [sidenote: neglect of the innate logical resources] [sidenote: identification of logical with subject-matter, exclusively] the other school estimates highly the value of the logical, but conceives the natural tendency of individuals to be averse, or at least indifferent, to logical achievement. it relies upon _subject-matter_--upon matter already defined and classified. method, then, has to do with the devices by which these characteristics may be imported into a mind naturally reluctant and rebellious. hence its mottoes are discipline, instruction, restraint, voluntary or conscious effort, the necessity of tasks, and so on. from this point of view studies, rather than attitudes and habits, embody the logical factor in education. the mind becomes logical only by learning to conform to an external subject-matter. to produce this conformity, the study should first be analyzed (by text-book or teacher) into its logical elements; then each of these elements should be defined; finally, all of the elements should be arranged in series or classes according to logical formulæ or general principles. then the pupil learns the definitions one by one; and progressively adding one to another builds up the logical system, and thereby is himself gradually imbued, from without, with logical quality. [sidenote: illustration from geography,] this description will gain meaning through an illustration. suppose the subject is geography. the first thing is to give its definition, marking it off from every other subject. then the various abstract terms upon which depends the scientific development of the science are stated and defined one by one--pole, equator, ecliptic, zone,--from the simpler units to the more complex which are formed out of them; then the more concrete elements are taken in similar series: continent, island, coast, promontory, cape, isthmus, peninsula, ocean, lake, coast, gulf, bay, and so on. in acquiring this material, the mind is supposed not only to gain important information, but, by accommodating itself to ready-made logical definitions, generalizations, and classifications, gradually to acquire logical habits. [sidenote: from drawing] this type of method has been applied to every subject taught in the schools--reading, writing, music, physics, grammar, arithmetic. drawings for example, has been taught on the theory that since all pictorial representation is a matter of combining straight and curved lines, the simplest procedure is to have the pupil acquire the ability first to draw straight lines in various positions (horizontal, perpendicular, diagonals at various angles), then typical curves; and finally, to combine straight and curved lines in various permutations to construct actual pictures. this seemed to give the ideal "logical" method, beginning with analysis into elements, and then proceeding in regular order to more and more complex syntheses, each element being defined when used, and thereby clearly understood. [sidenote: formal method] even when this method in its extreme form is not followed, few schools (especially of the middle or upper elementary grades) are free from an exaggerated attention to forms supposedly employed by the pupil if he gets his result logically. it is thought that there are certain steps arranged in a certain order, which express preëminently an understanding of the subject, and the pupil is made to "analyze" his procedure into these steps, _i.e._ to learn a certain routine formula of statement. while this method is usually at its height in grammar and arithmetic, it invades also history and even literature, which are then reduced, under plea of intellectual training, to "outlines," diagrams, and schemes of division and subdivision. in memorizing this simulated cut and dried copy of the logic of an adult, the child generally is induced to stultify his own subtle and vital logical movement. the adoption by teachers of this misconception of logical method has probably done more than anything else to bring pedagogy into disrepute; for to many persons "pedagogy" means precisely a set of mechanical, self-conscious devices for replacing by some cast-iron external scheme the personal mental movement of the individual. [sidenote: reaction toward lack of form and method] a reaction inevitably occurs from the poor results that accrue from these professedly "logical" methods. lack of interest in study, habits of inattention and procrastination, positive aversion to intellectual application, dependence upon sheer memorizing and mechanical routine with only a modicum of understanding by the pupil of what he is about, show that the theory of logical definition, division, gradation, and system does not work out practically as it is theoretically supposed to work. the consequent disposition--as in every reaction--is to go to the opposite extreme. the "logical" is thought to be wholly artificial and extraneous; teacher and pupil alike are to turn their backs upon it, and to work toward the expression of existing aptitudes and tastes. emphasis upon natural tendencies and powers as the only possible starting-point of development is indeed wholesome. but the reaction is false, and hence misleading, in what it ignores and denies: the presence of genuinely intellectual factors in existing powers and interests. [sidenote: logic of subject-matter is logic of adult or trained mind] what is conventionally termed logical (namely, the logical from the standpoint of subject-matter) represents in truth the logic of the trained adult mind. ability to divide a subject, to define its elements, and to group them into classes according to general principles represents logical capacity at its best point reached _after_ thorough training. the mind that habitually exhibits skill in divisions, definitions, generalizations, and systematic recapitulations no longer needs training in logical methods. but it is absurd to suppose that a mind which needs training because it cannot perform these operations can begin where the expert mind stops. _the logical from the standpoint of subject-matter represents the goal, the last term of training, not the point of departure._ [sidenote: the immature mind has its own logic] [sidenote: hence, the _psychological_ and the _logical_ represent the two ends of the same movement] in truth, the mind at every stage of development has its own logic. the error of the notion that by appeal to spontaneous tendencies and by multiplication of materials we may completely dismiss logical considerations, lies in overlooking how large a part curiosity, inference, experimenting, and testing already play in the pupil's life. therefore it underestimates the _intellectual_ factor in the more spontaneous play and work of individuals--the factor that alone is truly educative. any teacher who is alive to the modes of thought naturally operative in the experience of the normal child will have no difficulty in avoiding the identification of the logical with a ready-made organization of subject-matter, as well as the notion that the only way to escape this error is to pay no attention to logical considerations. such a teacher will have no difficulty in seeing that the real problem of intellectual education is the transformation of natural powers into expert, tested powers: the transformation of more or less casual curiosity and sporadic suggestion into attitudes of alert, cautious, and thorough inquiry. he will see that the _psychological_ and the _logical_, instead of being opposed to each other (or even independent of each other), are connected _as the earlier and the later stages in one continuous process of normal growth_. the natural or psychological activities, even when not consciously controlled by logical considerations, have their own intellectual function and integrity; conscious and deliberate skill in thinking, when it is achieved, makes habitual or second nature. the first is already logical in spirit; the last, in presenting an ingrained disposition and attitude, is then as _psychological_ (as personal) as any caprice or chance impulse could be. § . _discipline and freedom_ [sidenote: true and false notions of discipline] discipline of mind is thus, in truth, a result rather than a cause. any mind is disciplined in a subject in which independent intellectual initiative and control have been achieved. discipline represents original native endowment turned, through gradual exercise, into effective power. so far as a mind is disciplined, control of method in a given subject has been attained so that the mind is able to manage itself independently without external tutelage. the aim of education is precisely to develop intelligence of this independent and effective type--a _disciplined mind_. discipline is positive and constructive. [sidenote: discipline as drill] discipline, however, is frequently regarded as something negative--as a painfully disagreeable forcing of mind away from channels congenial to it into channels of constraint, a process grievous at the time but necessary as preparation for a more or less remote future. discipline is then generally identified with drill; and drill is conceived after the mechanical analogy of driving, by unremitting blows, a foreign substance into a resistant material; or is imaged after the analogy of the mechanical routine by which raw recruits are trained to a soldierly bearing and habits that are naturally wholly foreign to their possessors. training of this latter sort, whether it be called discipline or not, is not mental discipline. its aim and result are not _habits of thinking_, but uniform _external modes of action_. by failing to ask what he means by discipline, many a teacher is misled into supposing that he is developing mental force and efficiency by methods which in fact restrict and deaden intellectual activity, and which tend to create mechanical routine, or mental passivity and servility. [sidenote: as independent power or freedom] [sidenote: freedom and external spontaneity] when discipline is conceived in intellectual terms (as the habitual power of effective mental attack), it is identified with freedom in its true sense. for freedom of mind means mental power capable of independent exercise, emancipated from the leading strings of others, not mere unhindered external operation. when spontaneity or naturalness is identified with more or less casual discharge of transitory impulses, the tendency of the educator is to supply a multitude of stimuli in order that spontaneous activity may be kept up. all sorts of interesting materials, equipments, tools, modes of activity, are provided in order that there may be no flagging of free self-expression. this method overlooks some of the essential conditions of the attainment of genuine freedom. [sidenote: some obstacle necessary for thought] (_a_) direct immediate discharge or expression of an impulsive tendency is fatal to thinking. only when the impulse is to some extent checked and thrown back upon itself does reflection ensue. it is, indeed, a stupid error to suppose that arbitrary tasks must be imposed from without in order to furnish the factor of perplexity and difficulty which is the necessary cue to thought. every vital activity of any depth and range inevitably meets obstacles in the course of its effort to realize itself--a fact that renders the search for artificial or external problems quite superfluous. the difficulties that present themselves within the development of an experience are, however, to be cherished by the educator, not minimized, for they are the natural stimuli to reflective inquiry. freedom does not consist in keeping up uninterrupted and unimpeded external activity, but is something achieved through conquering, by personal reflection, a way out of the difficulties that prevent an immediate overflow and a spontaneous success. [sidenote: intellectual factors are _natural_] (_b_) the method that emphasizes the psychological and natural, but yet fails to see what an important part of the natural tendencies is constituted at every period of growth by curiosity, inference, and the desire to test, cannot secure a _natural development_. in natural growth each successive stage of activity prepares unconsciously, but thoroughly, the conditions for the manifestation of the next stage--as in the cycle of a plant's growth. there is no ground for assuming that "thinking" is a special, isolated natural tendency that will bloom inevitably in due season simply because various sense and motor activities have been freely manifested before; or because observation, memory, imagination, and manual skill have been previously exercised without thought. only when thinking is constantly employed in using the senses and muscles for the guidance and application of observations and movements, is the way prepared for subsequent higher types of thinking. [sidenote: genesis of thought contemporaneous with genesis of any human mental activity] at present, the notion is current that childhood is almost entirely unreflective--a period of mere sensory, motor, and memory development, while adolescence suddenly brings the manifestation of thought and reason. adolescence is not, however, a synonym for magic. doubtless youth should bring with it an enlargement of the horizon of childhood, a susceptibility to larger concerns and issues, a more generous and a more general standpoint toward nature and social life. this development affords an opportunity for thinking of a more comprehensive and abstract type than has previously obtained. but thinking itself remains just what it has been all the time: a matter of following up and testing the conclusions suggested by the facts and events of life. thinking begins as soon as the baby who has lost the ball that he is playing with begins to foresee the possibility of something not yet existing--its recovery; and begins to forecast steps toward the realization of this possibility, and, by experimentation, to guide his acts by his ideas and thereby also test the ideas. only by making the most of the thought-factor, already active in the experiences of childhood, is there any promise or warrant for the emergence of superior reflective power at adolescence, or at any later period. [sidenote: fixation of bad mental habits] (_c_) in any case _positive habits are being formed_: if not habits of careful looking into things, then habits of hasty, heedless, impatient glancing over the surface; if not habits of consecutively following up the suggestions that occur, then habits of haphazard, grasshopper-like guessing; if not habits of suspending judgment till inferences have been tested by the examination of evidence, then habits of credulity alternating with flippant incredulity, belief or unbelief being based, in either case, upon whim, emotion, or accidental circumstances. the only way to achieve traits of carefulness, thoroughness, and continuity (traits that are, as we have seen, the elements of the "logical") is by exercising these traits from the beginning, and by seeing to it that conditions call for their exercise. [sidenote: genuine freedom is intellectual, not external] genuine freedom, in short, is intellectual; it rests in the trained _power of thought_, in ability to "turn things over," to look at matters deliberately, to judge whether the amount and kind of evidence requisite for decision is at hand, and if not, to tell where and how to seek such evidence. if a man's actions are not guided by thoughtful conclusions, then they are guided by inconsiderate impulse, unbalanced appetite, caprice, or the circumstances of the moment. to cultivate unhindered, unreflective external activity is to foster enslavement, for it leaves the person at the mercy of appetite, sense, and circumstance. part two: logical considerations chapter six the analysis of a complete act of thought [sidenote: object of part two] after a brief consideration in the first chapter of the nature of reflective thinking, we turned, in the second, to the need for its training. then we took up the resources, the difficulties, and the aim of its training. the purpose of this discussion was to set before the student the general problem of the training of mind. the purport of the second part, upon which we are now entering, is giving a fuller statement of the nature and normal growth of thinking, preparatory to considering in the concluding part the special problems that arise in connection with its education. in this chapter we shall make an analysis of the process of thinking into its steps or elementary constituents, basing the analysis upon descriptions of a number of extremely simple, but genuine, cases of reflective experience.[ ] [ ] these are taken, almost verbatim, from the class papers of students. [sidenote: a simple case of practical deliberation] . "the other day when i was down town on th street a clock caught my eye. i saw that the hands pointed to . . this suggested that i had an engagement at th street, at one o'clock. i reasoned that as it had taken me an hour to come down on a surface car, i should probably be twenty minutes late if i returned the same way. i might save twenty minutes by a subway express. but was there a station near? if not, i might lose more than twenty minutes in looking for one. then i thought of the elevated, and i saw there was such a line within two blocks. but where was the station? if it were several blocks above or below the street i was on, i should lose time instead of gaining it. my mind went back to the subway express as quicker than the elevated; furthermore, i remembered that it went nearer than the elevated to the part of th street i wished to reach, so that time would be saved at the end of the journey. i concluded in favor of the subway, and reached my destination by one o'clock." [sidenote: a simple case of reflection upon an observation] . "projecting nearly horizontally from the upper deck of the ferryboat on which i daily cross the river, is a long white pole, bearing a gilded ball at its tip. it suggested a flagpole when i first saw it; its color, shape, and gilded ball agreed with this idea, and these reasons seemed to justify me in this belief. but soon difficulties presented themselves. the pole was nearly horizontal, an unusual position for a flagpole; in the next place, there was no pulley, ring, or cord by which to attach a flag; finally, there were elsewhere two vertical staffs from which flags were occasionally flown. it seemed probable that the pole was not there for flag-flying. "i then tried to imagine all possible purposes of such a pole, and to consider for which of these it was best suited: (_a_) possibly it was an ornament. but as all the ferryboats and even the tugboats carried like poles, this hypothesis was rejected. (_b_) possibly it was the terminal of a wireless telegraph. but the same considerations made this improbable. besides, the more natural place for such a terminal would be the highest part of the boat, on top of the pilot house. (_c_) its purpose might be to point out the direction in which the boat is moving. "in support of this conclusion, i discovered that the pole was lower than the pilot house, so that the steersman could easily see it. moreover, the tip was enough higher than the base, so that, from the pilot's position, it must appear to project far out in front of the boat. moreover, the pilot being near the front of the boat, he would need some such guide as to its direction. tugboats would also need poles for such a purpose. this hypothesis was so much more probable than the others that i accepted it. i formed the conclusion that the pole was set up for the purpose of showing the pilot the direction in which the boat pointed, to enable him to steer correctly." [sidenote: a simple case of reflection involving experiment] . "in washing tumblers in hot soapsuds and placing them mouth downward on a plate, bubbles appeared on the outside of the mouth of the tumblers and then went inside. why? the presence of bubbles suggests air, which i note must come from inside the tumbler. i see that the soapy water on the plate prevents escape of the air save as it may be caught in bubbles. but why should air leave the tumbler? there was no substance entering to force it out. it must have expanded. it expands by increase of heat or by decrease of pressure, or by both. could the air have become heated after the tumbler was taken from the hot suds? clearly not the air that was already entangled in the water. if heated air was the cause, cold air must have entered in transferring the tumblers from the suds to the plate. i test to see if this supposition is true by taking several more tumblers out. some i shake so as to make sure of entrapping cold air in them. some i take out holding mouth downward in order to prevent cold air from entering. bubbles appear on the outside of every one of the former and on none of the latter. i must be right in my inference. air from the outside must have been expanded by the heat of the tumbler, which explains the appearance of the bubbles on the outside. "but why do they then go inside? cold contracts. the tumbler cooled and also the air inside it. tension was removed, and hence bubbles appeared inside. to be sure of this, i test by placing a cup of ice on the tumbler while the bubbles are still forming outside. they soon reverse." [sidenote: the three cases form a series] these three cases have been purposely selected so as to form a series from the more rudimentary to more complicated cases of reflection. the first illustrates the kind of thinking done by every one during the day's business, in which neither the data, nor the ways of dealing with them, take one outside the limits of everyday experience. the last furnishes a case in which neither problem nor mode of solution would have been likely to occur except to one with some prior scientific training. the second case forms a natural transition; its materials lie well within the bounds of everyday, unspecialized experience; but the problem, instead of being directly involved in the person's business, arises indirectly out of his activity, and accordingly appeals to a somewhat theoretic and impartial interest. we shall deal, in a later chapter, with the evolution of abstract thinking out of that which is relatively practical and direct; here we are concerned only with the common elements found in all the types. [sidenote: five distinct steps in reflection] upon examination, each instance reveals, more or less clearly, five logically distinct steps: (_i_) a felt difficulty; (_ii_) its location and definition; (_iii_) suggestion of possible solution; (_iv_) development by reasoning of the bearings of the suggestion; (_v_) further observation and experiment leading to its acceptance or rejection; that is, the conclusion of belief or disbelief. [sidenote: . the occurrence of a difficulty] [sidenote: (_a_) in the lack of adaptation of means to end] . the first and second steps frequently fuse into one. the difficulty may be felt with sufficient definiteness as to set the mind at once speculating upon its probable solution, or an undefined uneasiness and shock may come first, leading only later to definite attempt to find out what is the matter. whether the two steps are distinct or blended, there is the factor emphasized in our original account of reflection--_viz._ the perplexity or problem. in the first of the three cases cited, the difficulty resides in the conflict between conditions at hand and a desired and intended result, between an end and the means for reaching it. the purpose of keeping an engagement at a certain time, and the existing hour taken in connection with the location, are not congruous. the object of thinking is to introduce congruity between the two. the given conditions cannot themselves be altered; time will not go backward nor will the distance between th street and th street shorten itself. the problem is _the discovery of intervening terms which when inserted between the remoter end and the given means will harmonize them with each other_. [sidenote: (_b_) in identifying the character of an object] in the second case, the difficulty experienced is the incompatibility of a suggested and (temporarily) accepted belief that the pole is a flagpole, with certain other facts. suppose we symbolize the qualities that suggest _flagpole_ by the letters _a_, _b_, _c_; those that oppose this suggestion by the letters _p_, _q_, _r_. there is, of course, nothing inconsistent in the qualities themselves; but in pulling the mind to different and incongruous conclusions they conflict--hence the problem. here the object is the discovery of some object (_o_), of which _a_, _b_, _c_, and _p_, _q_, _r_, may all be appropriate traits--just as, in our first case, it is to discover a course of action which will combine existing conditions and a remoter result in a single whole. the method of solution is also the same: discovery of intermediate qualities (the position of the pilot house, of the pole, the need of an index to the boat's direction) symbolized by _d_, _g_, _l_, _o_, which bind together otherwise incompatible traits. [sidenote: (_c_) in explaining an unexpected event] in the third case, an observer trained to the idea of natural laws or uniformities finds something odd or exceptional in the behavior of the bubbles. the problem is to reduce the apparent anomalies to instances of well-established laws. here the method of solution is also to seek for intermediary terms which will connect, by regular linkage, the seemingly extraordinary movements of the bubbles with the conditions known to follow from processes supposed to be operative. [sidenote: . definition of the difficulty] . as already noted, the first two steps, the feeling of a discrepancy, or difficulty, and the acts of observation that serve to define the character of the difficulty may, in a given instance, telescope together. in cases of striking novelty or unusual perplexity, the difficulty, however, is likely to present itself at first as a shock, as emotional disturbance, as a more or less vague feeling of the unexpected, of something queer, strange, funny, or disconcerting. in such instances, there are necessary observations deliberately calculated to bring to light just what is the trouble, or to make clear the specific character of the problem. in large measure, the existence or non-existence of this step makes the difference between reflection proper, or safeguarded _critical_ inference and uncontrolled thinking. where sufficient pains to locate the difficulty are not taken, suggestions for its resolution must be more or less random. imagine a doctor called in to prescribe for a patient. the patient tells him some things that are wrong; his experienced eye, at a glance, takes in other signs of a certain disease. but if he permits the suggestion of this special disease to take possession prematurely of his mind, to become an accepted conclusion, his scientific thinking is by that much cut short. a large part of his technique, as a skilled practitioner, is to prevent the acceptance of the first suggestions that arise; even, indeed, to postpone the occurrence of any very definite suggestion till the trouble--the nature of the problem--has been thoroughly explored. in the case of a physician this proceeding is known as diagnosis, but a similar inspection is required in every novel and complicated situation to prevent rushing to a conclusion. the essence of critical thinking is suspended judgment; and the essence of this suspense is inquiry to determine the nature of the problem before proceeding to attempts at its solution. this, more than any other thing, transforms mere inference into tested inference, suggested conclusions into proof. [sidenote: . occurrence of a suggested explanation or possible solution] . the third factor is suggestion. the situation in which the perplexity occurs calls up something not present to the senses: the present location, the thought of subway or elevated train; the stick before the eyes, the idea of a flagpole, an ornament, an apparatus for wireless telegraphy; the soap bubbles, the law of expansion of bodies through heat and of their contraction through cold. (_a_) suggestion is the very heart of inference; it involves going from what is present to something absent. hence, it is more or less speculative, adventurous. since inference goes beyond what is actually present, it involves a leap, a jump, the propriety of which cannot be absolutely warranted in advance, no matter what precautions be taken. its control is indirect, on the one hand, involving the formation of habits of mind which are at once enterprising and cautious; and on the other hand, involving the selection and arrangement of the particular facts upon perception of which suggestion issues. (_b_) the suggested conclusion so far as it is not accepted but only tentatively entertained constitutes an idea. synonyms for this are _supposition_, _conjecture_, _guess_, _hypothesis_, and (in elaborate cases) _theory_. since suspended belief, or the postponement of a final conclusion pending further evidence, depends partly upon the presence of rival conjectures as to the best course to pursue or the probable explanation to favor, _cultivation of a variety of alternative suggestions_ is an important factor in good thinking. [sidenote: . the rational elaboration of an idea] . the process of developing the bearings--or, as they are more technically termed, the _implications_--of any idea with respect to any problem, is termed _reasoning_.[ ] as an idea is inferred from given facts, so reasoning sets out from an idea. the _idea_ of elevated road is developed into the idea of difficulty of locating station, length of time occupied on the journey, distance of station at the other end from place to be reached. in the second case, the implication of a flagpole is seen to be a vertical position; of a wireless apparatus, location on a high part of the ship and, moreover, absence from every casual tugboat; while the idea of index to direction in which the boat moves, when developed, is found to cover all the details of the case. [ ] this term is sometimes extended to denote the entire reflective process--just as _inference_ (which in the sense of _test_ is best reserved for the third step) is sometimes used in the same broad sense. but _reasoning_ (or _ratiocination_) seems to be peculiarly adapted to express what the older writers called the "notional" or "dialectic" process of developing the meaning of a given idea. reasoning has the same effect upon a suggested solution as more intimate and extensive observation has upon the original problem. acceptance of the suggestion in its first form is prevented by looking into it more thoroughly. conjectures that seem plausible at first sight are often found unfit or even absurd when their full consequences are traced out. even when reasoning out the bearings of a supposition does not lead to rejection, it develops the idea into a form in which it is more apposite to the problem. only when, for example, the conjecture that a pole was an index-pole had been thought out into its bearings could its particular applicability to the case in hand be judged. suggestions at first seemingly remote and wild are frequently so transformed by being elaborated into what follows from them as to become apt and fruitful. the development of an idea through reasoning helps at least to supply the intervening or intermediate terms that link together into a consistent whole apparently discrepant extremes (_ante_, p. ). [sidenote: . corroboration of an idea and formation of a concluding belief] . the concluding and conclusive step is some kind of _experimental corroboration_, or verification, of the conjectural idea. reasoning shows that _if_ the idea be adopted, certain consequences follow. so far the conclusion is hypothetical or conditional. if we look and find present all the conditions demanded by the theory, and if we find the characteristic traits called for by rival alternatives to be lacking, the tendency to believe, to accept, is almost irresistible. sometimes direct observation furnishes corroboration, as in the case of the pole on the boat. in other cases, as in that of the bubbles, experiment is required; that is, _conditions are deliberately arranged in accord with the requirements of an idea or hypothesis to see if the results theoretically indicated by the idea actually occur_. if it is found that the experimental results agree with the theoretical, or rationally deduced, results, and if there is reason to believe that _only_ the conditions in question would yield such results, the confirmation is so strong as to induce a conclusion--at least until contrary facts shall indicate the advisability of its revision. [sidenote: thinking comes between observations at the beginning and at the end] observation exists at the beginning and again at the end of the process: at the beginning, to determine more definitely and precisely the nature of the difficulty to be dealt with; at the end, to test the value of some hypothetically entertained conclusion. between those two termini of observation, we find the more distinctively _mental_ aspects of the entire thought-cycle: (_i_) inference, the suggestion of an explanation or solution; and (_ii_) reasoning, the development of the bearings and implications of the suggestion. reasoning requires some experimental observation to confirm it, while experiment can be economically and fruitfully conducted only on the basis of an idea that has been tentatively developed by reasoning. [sidenote: the trained mind one that judges the extent of each step advisable in a given situation] the disciplined, or logically trained, mind--the aim of the educative process--is the mind able to judge how far each of these steps needs to be carried in any particular situation. no cast-iron rules can be laid down. each case has to be dealt with as it arises, on the basis of its importance and of the context in which it occurs. to take too much pains in one case is as foolish--as illogical--as to take too little in another. at one extreme, almost any conclusion that insures prompt and unified action may be better than any long delayed conclusion; while at the other, decision may have to be postponed for a long period--perhaps for a lifetime. the trained mind is the one that best grasps the degree of observation, forming of ideas, reasoning, and experimental testing required in any special case, and that profits the most, in future thinking, by mistakes made in the past. what is important is that the mind should be sensitive to problems and skilled in methods of attack and solution. chapter seven systematic inference: induction and deduction § . _the double movement of reflection_ [sidenote: back and forth between facts and meanings] the characteristic outcome of thinking we saw to be the organization of facts and conditions which, just as they stand, are isolated, fragmentary, and discrepant, the organization being effected through the introduction of connecting links, or middle terms. the facts as they stand are the data, the raw material of reflection; their lack of coherence perplexes and stimulates to reflection. there follows the suggestion of some meaning which, _if_ it can be substantiated, will give a whole in which various fragmentary and seemingly incompatible data find their proper place. the meaning suggested supplies a mental platform, an intellectual point of view, from which to note and define the data more carefully, to seek for additional observations, and to institute, experimentally, changed conditions. [sidenote: inductive and deductive] there is thus a double movement in all reflection: a movement from the given partial and confused data to a suggested comprehensive (or inclusive) entire situation; and back from this suggested whole--which as suggested is a _meaning_, an idea--to the particular facts, so as to connect these with one another and with additional facts to which the suggestion has directed attention. roughly speaking, the first of these movements is inductive; the second deductive. a complete act of thought involves both--it involves, that is, a fruitful interaction of observed (or recollected) particular considerations and of inclusive and far-reaching (general) meanings. [sidenote: hurry _versus_ caution] this double movement _to_ and _from_ a meaning may occur, however, in a casual, uncritical way, or in a cautious and regulated manner. to think means, in any case, to bridge a gap in experience, to bind together facts or deeds otherwise isolated. but we may make only a hurried jump from one consideration to another, allowing our aversion to mental disquietude to override the gaps; or, we may insist upon noting the road traveled in making connections. we may, in short, accept readily any suggestion that seems plausible; or we may hunt out additional factors, new difficulties, to see whether the suggested conclusion really ends the matter. the latter method involves definite formulation of the connecting links; the statement of a principle, or, in logical phrase, the use of a universal. if we thus formulate the whole situation, the original data are transformed into premises of reasoning; the final belief is a logical or _rational_ conclusion, not a mere _de facto_ termination. [sidenote: continuity of relationship the mark of the latter] the importance of _connections binding isolated items into a coherent single whole_ is embodied in all the phrases that denote the relation of premises and conclusions to each other. ( ) the premises are called grounds, foundations, bases, and are said to underlie, uphold, support the conclusion. ( ) we "descend" from the premises to the conclusion, and "ascend" or "mount" in the opposite direction--as a river may be continuously traced from source to sea or vice versa. so the conclusion springs, flows, or is drawn from its premises. ( ) the conclusion--as the word itself implies--closes, shuts in, locks up together the various factors stated in the premises. we say that the premises "contain" the conclusion, and that the conclusion "contains" the premises, thereby marking our sense of the inclusive and comprehensive unity in which the elements of reasoning are bound tightly together.[ ] systematic inference, in short, means the _recognition of definite relations of interdependence between considerations previously unorganized and disconnected, this recognition being brought about by the discovery and insertion of new facts and properties_. [ ] see vailati, _journal of philosophy, psychology, and scientific methods_, vol. v, no. . [sidenote: scientific induction and deduction] this more systematic thinking is, however, like the cruder forms in its double movement, the movement _toward_ the suggestion or hypothesis and the movement _back_ to facts. the difference is in the greater conscious care with which each phase of the process is performed. _the conditions under which suggestions are allowed to spring up and develop are regulated._ hasty acceptance of any idea that is plausible, that seems to solve the difficulty, is changed into a conditional acceptance pending further inquiry. the idea is accepted as a _working hypothesis_, as something to guide investigation and bring to light new facts, not as a final conclusion. when pains are taken to make each aspect of the movement as accurate as possible, the movement toward building up the idea is known as _inductive discovery_ (_induction_, for short); the movement toward developing, applying, and testing, as _deductive proof_ (_deduction_, for short). [sidenote: particular and universal] while induction moves from fragmentary details (or particulars) to a connected view of a situation (universal), deduction begins with the latter and works back again to particulars, connecting them and binding them together. the inductive movement is toward _discovery_ of a binding principle; the deductive toward its _testing_--confirming, refuting, modifying it on the basis of its capacity to interpret isolated details into a unified experience. so far as we conduct each of these processes in the light of the other, we get valid discovery or verified critical thinking. [sidenote: illustration from everyday experience] a commonplace illustration may enforce the points of this formula. a man who has left his rooms in order finds them upon his return in a state of confusion, articles being scattered at random. automatically, the notion comes to his mind that burglary would account for the disorder. he has not seen the burglars; their presence is not a fact of observation, but is a thought, an idea. moreover, the man has no special burglars in mind; it is the _relation_, the meaning of burglary--something general--that comes to mind. the state of his room is perceived and is particular, definite,--exactly as it is; burglars are inferred, and have a general status. the state of the room is a _fact_, certain and speaking for itself; the presence of burglars is a possible _meaning_ which may explain the facts. [sidenote: of induction,] so far there is an inductive tendency, suggested by particular and present facts. in the same inductive way, it occurs to him that his children are mischievous, and that they may have thrown the things about. this rival hypothesis (or conditional principle of explanation) prevents him from dogmatically accepting the first suggestion. judgment is held in suspense and a positive conclusion postponed. [sidenote: of deduction] then deductive movement begins. further observations, recollections, reasonings are conducted on the basis of a development of the ideas suggested: _if_ burglars were responsible, such and such things would have happened; articles of value would be missing. here the man is going from a general principle or relation to special features that accompany it, to particulars,--not back, however, merely to the original particulars (which would be fruitless or take him in a circle), but to new details, the actual discovery or nondiscovery of which will test the principle. the man turns to a box of valuables; some things are gone; some, however, are still there. perhaps he has himself removed the missing articles, but has forgotten it. his experiment is not a decisive test. he thinks of the silver in the sideboard--the children would not have taken that nor would he absent-mindedly have changed its place. he looks; all the solid ware is gone. the conception of burglars is confirmed; examination of windows and doors shows that they have been tampered with. belief culminates; the original isolated facts have been woven into a coherent fabric. the idea first suggested (inductively) has been employed to reason out hypothetically certain additional particulars not yet experienced, that _ought_ to be there, if the suggestion is correct. then new acts of observation have shown that the particulars theoretically called for are present, and by this process the hypothesis is strengthened, corroborated. this moving back and forth between the observed facts and the conditional idea is kept up till a coherent experience of an object is substituted for the experience of conflicting details--or else the whole matter is given up as a bad job. [sidenote: science is the same operations carefully performed] sciences exemplify similar attitudes and operations, but with a higher degree of elaboration of the instruments of caution, exactness and thoroughness. this greater elaboration brings about specialization, an accurate marking off of various types of problems from one another, and a corresponding segregation and classification of the materials of experience associated with each type of problem. we shall devote the remainder of this chapter to a consideration of the devices by which the discovery, the development, and the testing of meanings are scientifically carried on. § . _guidance of the inductive movement_ [sidenote: guidance is indirect] control of the formation of suggestion is necessarily _indirect_, not direct; imperfect, not perfect. just because all discovery, all apprehension involving thought of the new, goes from the known, the present, to the unknown and absent, no rules can be stated that will guarantee correct inference. just what is suggested to a person in a given situation depends upon his native constitution (his originality, his genius), temperament, the prevalent direction of his interests, his early environment, the general tenor of his past experiences, his special training, the things that have recently occupied him continuously or vividly, and so on; to some extent even upon an accidental conjunction of present circumstances. these matters, so far as they lie in the past or in external conditions, clearly escape regulation. a suggestion simply does or does not occur; this or that suggestion just happens, occurs, springs up. if, however, prior experience and training have developed an attitude of patience in a condition of doubt, a capacity for suspended judgment, and a liking for inquiry, _indirect_ control of the course of suggestions is possible. the individual may return upon, revise, restate, enlarge, and analyze _the facts out of which suggestion springs_. inductive methods, in the technical sense, all have to do with regulating the conditions under which _observation, memory, and the acceptance of the testimony of others_ (_the operations supplying the raw data_) proceed. [sidenote: method of indirect regulation] given the facts _a b c d_ on one side and certain individual habits on the other, suggestion occurs automatically. but if the facts _a b c d_ are carefully looked into and thereby resolved into the facts _a´ b´´ r s_, a suggestion will automatically present itself different from that called up by the facts in their first form. to inventory the facts, to describe exactly and minutely their respective traits, to magnify artificially those that are obscure and feeble, to reduce artificially those that are so conspicuous and glaring as to be distracting,--these are ways of modifying the facts that exercise suggestive force, and thereby indirectly guiding the formation of suggested inferences. [sidenote: illustration from diagnosis] consider, for example, how a physician makes his diagnosis--his inductive interpretation. if he is scientifically trained, he suspends--postpones--reaching a conclusion in order that he may not be led by superficial occurrences into a snap judgment. certain conspicuous phenomena may forcibly suggest typhoid, but he avoids a conclusion, or even any strong preference for this or that conclusion until he has greatly (_i_) _enlarged_ the scope of his data, and (_ii_) rendered them more _minute_. he not only questions the patient as to his feelings and as to his acts prior to the disease, but by various manipulations with his hands (and with instruments made for the purpose) brings to light a large number of facts of which the patient is quite unaware. the state of temperature, respiration, and heart-action is accurately noted, and their fluctuations from time to time are exactly recorded. until this examination has worked _out_ toward a wider collection and _in_ toward a minuter scrutiny of details, inference is deferred. [sidenote: summary: definition of scientific induction] scientific induction means, in short, _all the processes by which the observing and amassing of data are regulated with a view to facilitating the formation of explanatory conceptions and theories_. these devices are all directed toward selecting the precise facts to which weight and significance shall attach in forming suggestions or ideas. specifically, this selective determination involves devices of ( ) elimination by analysis of what is likely to be misleading and irrelevant, ( ) emphasis of the important by collection and comparison of cases, ( ) deliberate construction of data by experimental variation. [sidenote: elimination of irrelevant meanings] ( ) it is a common saying that one must learn to discriminate between observed facts and judgments based upon them. taken literally, such advice cannot be carried out; in every observed thing there is--if the thing have any meaning at all--some consolidation of meaning with what is sensibly and physically present, such that, if this were entirely excluded, what is left would have no sense. a says: "i saw my brother." the term _brother_, however, involves a relation that cannot be sensibly or physically observed; it is inferential in status. if a contents himself with saying, "i saw a man," the factor of classification, of intellectual reference, is less complex, but still exists. if, as a last resort, a were to say, "anyway, i saw a colored object," some relationship, though more rudimentary and undefined, still subsists. theoretically, it is possible that no object was there, only an unusual mode of nerve stimulation. none the less, the advice to discriminate what is observed from what is inferred is sound practical advice. its working import is that one should eliminate or exclude _those_ inferences as to which experience has shown that there is greatest liability to error. this, of course, is a relative matter. under ordinary circumstances no reasonable doubt would attach to the observation, "i see my brother"; it would be pedantic and silly to resolve this recognition back into a more elementary form. under other circumstances it might be a perfectly genuine question as to whether a saw even a colored _thing_, or whether the color was due to a stimulation of the sensory optical apparatus (like "seeing stars" upon a blow) or to a disordered circulation. in general, the scientific man is one who knows that he is likely to be hurried to a conclusion, and that part of this precipitancy is due to certain habits which tend to make him "read" certain meanings into the situation that confronts him, so that he must be on the lookout against errors arising from his interests, habits, and current preconceptions. [sidenote: the technique of conclusion] the technique of scientific inquiry thus consists in various processes that tend to exclude over-hasty "reading in" of meanings; devices that aim to give a purely "objective" unbiased rendering of the data to be interpreted. flushed cheeks usually mean heightened temperature; paleness means lowered temperature. the clinical thermometer records automatically the actual temperature and hence checks up the habitual associations that might lead to error in a given case. all the instrumentalities of observation--the various -meters and -graphs and -scopes--fill a part of their scientific rôle in helping to eliminate meanings supplied because of habit, prejudice, the strong momentary preoccupation of excitement and anticipation, and by the vogue of existing theories. photographs, phonographs, kymographs, actinographs, seismographs, plethysmographs, and the like, moreover, give records that are permanent, so that they can be employed by different persons, and by the same person in different states of mind, _i.e._ under the influence of varying expectations and dominant beliefs. thus purely personal prepossessions (due to habit, to desire, to after-effects of recent experience) may be largely eliminated. in ordinary language, the facts are _objectively_, rather than _subjectively_, determined. in this way tendencies to premature interpretation are held in check. [sidenote: collection of instances] ( ) another important method of control consists in the multiplication of cases or instances. if i doubt whether a certain handful gives a fair sample, or representative, for purposes of judging value, of a whole carload of grain, i take a number of handfuls from various parts of the car and compare them. if they agree in quality, well and good; if they disagree, we try to get enough samples so that when they are thoroughly mixed the result will be a fair basis for an evaluation. this illustration represents roughly the value of that aspect of scientific control in induction which insists upon multiplying observations instead of basing the conclusion upon one or a few cases. [sidenote: this method not the whole of induction] so prominent, indeed, is this aspect of inductive method that it is frequently treated as the whole of induction. it is supposed that all inductive inference is based upon collecting and comparing a number of like cases. but in fact such comparison and collection is a secondary development within the process of securing a correct conclusion in some single case. if a man infers from a single sample of grain as to the grade of wheat of the car as a whole, it is induction and, under certain circumstances, a _sound_ induction; other cases are resorted to simply for the sake of rendering that induction more guarded, and more probably correct. in like fashion, the reasoning that led up to the burglary idea in the instance already cited (p. ) was inductive, though there was but one single case examined. the particulars upon which the general meaning (or relation) of burglary was grounded were simply the sum total of the unlike items and qualities that made up the one case examined. had this case presented very great obscurities and difficulties, recourse might _then_ have been had to examination of a number of similar cases. but this comparison would not make inductive a process which was not previously of that character; it would only render induction more wary and adequate. _the object of bringing into consideration a multitude of cases is to facilitate the selection of the evidential or significant features upon which to base inference in some single case._ [sidenote: contrast as important as likeness] accordingly, points of _unlikeness_ are as important as points of _likeness_ among the cases examined. _comparison_, without _contrast_, does not amount to anything logically. in the degree in which other cases observed or remembered merely duplicate the case in question, we are no better off for purposes of inference than if we had permitted our single original fact to dictate a conclusion. in the case of the various samples of grain, it is the fact that the samples are unlike, at least in the part of the carload from which they are taken, that is important. were it not for this unlikeness, their likeness in quality would be of no avail in assisting inference.[ ] if we are endeavoring to get a child to regulate his conclusions about the germination of a seed by taking into account a number of instances, very little is gained if the conditions in all these instances closely approximate one another. but if one seed is placed in pure sand, another in loam, and another on blotting-paper, and if in each case there are two conditions, one with and another without moisture, the unlike factors tend to throw into relief the factors that are significant (or "essential") for reaching a conclusion. unless, in short, the observer takes care to have the differences in the observed cases as extreme as conditions allow, and unless he notes unlikenesses as carefully as likenesses, he has no way of determining the evidential force of the data that confront him. [ ] in terms of the phrases used in logical treatises, the so-called "methods of agreement" (comparison) and "difference" (contrast) must accompany each other or constitute a "joint method" in order to be of logical use. [sidenote: importance of exceptions and contrary cases] another way of bringing out this importance of unlikeness is the emphasis put by the scientist upon _negative_ cases--upon instances which it would seem ought to fall into line but which as matter of fact do not. anomalies, exceptions, things which agree in most respects but disagree in some crucial point, are so important that many of the devices of scientific technique are designed purely to detect, record, and impress upon memory contrasting cases. darwin remarked that so easy is it to pass over cases that oppose a favorite generalization, that he had made it a habit not merely to hunt for contrary instances, but also to write down any exception he noted or thought of--as otherwise it was almost sure to be forgotten. § . _experimental variation of conditions_ [sidenote: experiment the typical method of introducing contrast factors] we have already trenched upon this factor of inductive method, the one that is the most important of all wherever it is feasible. theoretically, one sample case _of the right kind_ will be as good a basis for an inference as a thousand cases; but cases of the "right kind" rarely turn up spontaneously. we have to search for them, and we may have to _make_ them. if we take cases just as we find them--whether one case or many cases--they contain much that is irrelevant to the problem in hand, while much that is relevant is obscure, hidden. the object of experimentation is the _construction, by regular steps taken on the basis of a plan thought out in advance, of a typical, crucial case_, a case formed with express reference to throwing light on the difficulty in question. all inductive methods rest (as already stated, p. ) upon regulation of the conditions of observation and memory; experiment is simply the most adequate regulation possible of these conditions. we try to make the observation such that every factor entering into it, together with the mode and the amount of its operation, may be open to recognition. such making of observations constitutes experiment. [sidenote: three advantages of experiment] such observations have many and obvious advantages over observations--no matter how extensive--with respect to which we simply wait for an event to happen or an object to present itself. experiment overcomes the defects due to (_a_) the _rarity_, (_b_) the _subtlety_ and minuteness (or the violence), and (_c_) the rigid _fixity_ of facts as we ordinarily experience them. the following quotations from jevons's _elementary lessons in logic_ bring out all these points: (_i_) "we might have to wait years or centuries to meet accidentally with facts which we can readily produce at any moment in a laboratory; and it is probable that most of the chemical substances now known, and many excessively useful products would never have been discovered at all by waiting till nature presented them spontaneously to our observation." this quotation refers to the infrequency or rarity of certain facts of nature, even very important ones. the passage then goes on to speak of the minuteness of many phenomena which makes them escape ordinary experience: (_ii_) "electricity doubtless operates in every particle of matter, perhaps at every moment of time; and even the ancients could not but notice its action in the loadstone, in lightning, in the aurora borealis, or in a piece of rubbed amber. but in lightning electricity was too intense and dangerous; in the other cases it was too feeble to be properly understood. the science of electricity and magnetism could only advance by getting regular supplies of electricity from the common electric machine or the galvanic battery and by making powerful electromagnets. most, if not all, the effects which electricity produces must go on in nature, but altogether too obscurely for observation." jevons then deals with the fact that, under ordinary conditions of experience, phenomena which can be understood only by seeing them under varying conditions are presented in a fixed and uniform way. (_iii_) "thus carbonic acid is only met in the form of a gas, proceeding from the combustion of carbon; but when exposed to extreme pressure and cold, it is condensed into a liquid, and may even be converted into a snowlike solid substance. many other gases have in like manner been liquefied or solidified, and there is reason to believe that every substance is capable of taking all three forms of solid, liquid, and gas, if only the conditions of temperature and pressure can be sufficiently varied. mere observation of nature would have led us, on the contrary, to suppose that nearly all substances were fixed in one condition only, and could not be converted from solid into liquid and from liquid into gas." many volumes would be required to describe in detail all the methods that investigators have developed in various subjects for analyzing and restating the facts of ordinary experience so that we may escape from capricious and routine suggestions, and may get the facts in such a form and in such a light (or context) that exact and far-reaching explanations may be suggested in place of vague and limited ones. but these various devices of inductive inquiry all have one goal in view: the indirect regulation of the function of suggestion, or formation of ideas; and, in the main, they will be found to reduce to some combination of the three types of selecting and arranging subject-matter just described. § . _guidance of the deductive movement_ [sidenote: value of deduction for guiding induction] before dealing directly with this topic, we must note that systematic regulation of induction depends upon the possession of a body of general principles that may be applied deductively to the examination or construction of particular cases as they come up. if the physician does not know the general laws of the physiology of the human body, he has little way of telling what is either peculiarly significant or peculiarly exceptional in any particular case that he is called upon to treat. if he knows the laws of circulation, digestion, and respiration, he can deduce the conditions that should normally be found in a given case. these considerations give a base line from which the deviations and abnormalities of a particular case may be measured. in this way, _the nature of the problem at hand is located and defined_. attention is not wasted upon features which though conspicuous have nothing to do with the case; it is concentrated upon just those traits which are out of the way and hence require explanation. a question well put is half answered; _i.e._ a difficulty clearly apprehended is likely to suggest its own solution,--while a vague and miscellaneous perception of the problem leads to groping and fumbling. deductive systems are necessary in order to put the question in a fruitful form. [sidenote: "reasoning a thing out"] the control of the origin and development of hypotheses by deduction does not cease, however, with locating the problem. ideas as they first present themselves are inchoate and incomplete. _deduction is their elaboration into fullness and completeness of meaning_ (see p. ). the phenomena which the physician isolates from the total mass of facts that exist in front of him suggest, we will say, typhoid fever. now this conception of typhoid fever is one that is capable of development. _if_ there is typhoid, _wherever_ there is typhoid, there are certain results, certain characteristic symptoms. by going over mentally the full bearing of the concept of typhoid, the scientist is instructed as to further phenomena to be found. its development gives him an instrument of inquiry, of observation and experimentation. he can go to work deliberately to see whether the case presents those features that it should have if the supposition is valid. the deduced results form a basis for comparison with observed results. except where there is a system of principles capable of being elaborated by theoretical reasoning, the process of testing (or proof) of a hypothesis is incomplete and haphazard. [sidenote: such reasoning implies systematized knowledge,] these considerations indicate the method by which the deductive movement is guided. deduction requires a system of allied ideas which may be translated into one another by regular or graded steps. the question is whether the facts that confront us can be identified as typhoid fever. to all appearances, there is a great gap between them and typhoid. but if we can, by some method of substitutions, go through a series of intermediary terms (see p. ), the gap may, after all, be easily bridged. typhoid may mean _p_ which in turn means _o_, which means _n_ which means _m_, which is very similar to the data selected as the key to the problem. [sidenote: or definition and classification] one of the chief objects of science is to provide for every typical branch of subject-matter a set of meanings and principles so closely interknit that any one implies some other according to definite conditions, which under certain other conditions implies another, and so on. in this way, various substitutions of equivalents are possible, and reasoning can trace out, without having recourse to specific observations, very remote consequences of any suggested principle. definition, general formulæ, and classification are the devices by which the fixation and elaboration of a meaning into its detailed ramifications are carried on. they are not ends in themselves--as they are frequently regarded even in elementary education--but instrumentalities for facilitating the development of a conception into the form where its applicability to given facts may best be tested.[ ] [ ] these processes are further discussed in chapter ix. [sidenote: the final control of deduction] the final test of deduction lies in experimental observation. elaboration by reasoning may make a suggested idea very rich and very plausible, but it will not settle the validity of that idea. only if facts can be observed (by methods either of collection or of experimentation), that agree in detail and without exception with the deduced results, are we justified in accepting the deduction as giving a valid conclusion. thinking, in short, must end as well as begin in the domain of concrete observations, if it is to be complete thinking. and the ultimate educative value of all deductive processes is measured by the degree to which they become working tools in the creation and development of new experiences. § . _some educational bearings of the discussion_ [sidenote: educational counterparts of false logical theories] [sidenote: isolation of "facts"] some of the points of the foregoing logical analysis may be clinched by a consideration of their educational implications, especially with reference to certain practices that grow out of a false separation by which each is thought to be independent of the other and complete in itself. (_i_) in some school subjects, or at all events in some topics or in some lessons, the pupils are immersed in details; their minds are loaded with disconnected items (whether gleaned by observation and memory, or accepted on hearsay and authority). induction is treated as beginning and ending with the amassing of facts, of particular isolated pieces of information. that these items are educative only as suggesting a view of some larger situation in which the particulars are included and thereby accounted for, is ignored. in object lessons in elementary education and in laboratory instruction in higher education, the subject is often so treated that the student fails to "see the forest on account of the trees." things and their qualities are retailed and detailed, without reference to a more general character which they stand for and mean. or, in the laboratory, the student becomes engrossed in the processes of manipulation,--irrespective of the reason for their performance, without recognizing a typical problem for the solution of which they afford the appropriate method. only deduction brings out and emphasizes consecutive relationships, and only when _relationships_ are held in view does learning become more than a miscellaneous scrap-bag. [sidenote: failure to follow up by reasoning] (_ii_) again, the mind is allowed to hurry on to a vague notion of the whole of which the fragmentary facts are portions, without any attempt to become conscious of _how_ they are bound together as parts of this whole. the student feels that "in a general way," as we say, the facts of the history or geography lesson are related thus and so; but "in a general way" here stands only for "in a vague way," somehow or other, with no clear recognition of just how. the pupil is encouraged to form, on the basis of the particular facts, a general notion, a conception of how they stand related; but no pains are taken to make the student follow up the notion, to elaborate it and see just what its bearings are upon the case in hand and upon similar cases. the inductive inference, the guess, is formed by the student; if it happens to be correct, it is at once accepted by the teacher; or if it is false, it is rejected. if any amplification of the idea occurs, it is quite likely carried through by the teacher, who thereby assumes the responsibility for its intellectual development. but a complete, an integral, act of thought requires that the person making the suggestion (the guess) be responsible also for reasoning out its bearings upon the problem in hand; that he develop the suggestion at least enough to indicate the ways in which it applies to and accounts for the specific data of the case. too often when a recitation does not consist in simply testing the ability of the student to display some form of technical skill, or to repeat facts and principles accepted on the authority of text-book or lecturer, the teacher goes to the opposite extreme; and after calling out the spontaneous reflections of the pupils, their guesses or ideas about the matter, merely accepts or rejects them, assuming himself the responsibility for their elaboration. in this way, the function of suggestion and of interpretation is excited, but it is not directed and trained. induction is stimulated but is not carried over into the _reasoning_ phase necessary to complete it. in other subjects and topics, the deductive phase is isolated, and is treated as if it were complete in itself. this false isolation may show itself in either (and both) of two points; namely, at the beginning or at the end of the resort to general intellectual procedure. [sidenote: isolation of deduction by commencing with it] (_iii_) beginning with definitions, rules, general principles, classifications, and the like, is a common form of the first error. this method has been such a uniform object of attack on the part of all educational reformers that it is not necessary to dwell upon it further than to note that the mistake is, logically, due to the attempt to introduce deductive considerations without first making acquaintance with the particular facts that create a need for the generalizing rational devices. unfortunately, the reformer sometimes carries his objection too far, or rather locates it in the wrong place. he is led into a tirade against _all_ definition, all systematization, all use of general principles, instead of confining himself to pointing out their futility and their deadness when not properly motivated by familiarity with concrete experiences. [sidenote: isolation of deduction from direction of new observations] (_iv_) the isolation of deduction is seen, at the other end, wherever there is failure to clinch and test the results of the general reasoning processes by application to new concrete cases. the final point of the deductive devices lies in their use in assimilating and comprehending individual cases. no one understands a general principle fully--no matter how adequately he can demonstrate it, to say nothing of repeating it--till he can employ it in the mastery of new situations, which, if they _are_ new, differ in manifestation from the cases used in reaching the generalization. too often the text-book or teacher is contented with a series of somewhat perfunctory examples and illustrations, and the student is not forced to carry the principle that he has formulated over into further cases of his own experience. in so far, the principle is inert and dead. [sidenote: lack of provision for experimentation] (_v_) it is only a variation upon this same theme to say that every complete act of reflective inquiry makes provision for experimentation--for testing suggested and accepted principles by employing them for the active construction of new cases, in which new qualities emerge. only slowly do our schools accommodate themselves to the general advance of scientific method. from the scientific side, it is demonstrated that effective and integral thinking is possible only where the experimental method in some form is used. some recognition of this principle is evinced in higher institutions of learning, colleges and high schools. but in elementary education, it is still assumed, for the most part, that the pupil's natural range of observations, supplemented by what he accepts on hearsay, is adequate for intellectual growth. of course it is not necessary that laboratories shall be introduced under that name, much less that elaborate apparatus be secured; but the entire scientific history of humanity demonstrates that the conditions for complete mental activity will not be obtained till adequate provision is made for the carrying on of activities that actually modify physical conditions, and that books, pictures, and even objects that are passively observed but not manipulated do not furnish the provision required. chapter eight judgment: the interpretation of facts § . _the three factors of judging_ [sidenote: good judgment] a man of good judgment in a given set of affairs is a man in so far educated, trained, whatever may be his literacy. and if our schools turn out their pupils in that attitude of mind which is conducive to good judgment in any department of affairs in which the pupils are placed, they have done more than if they sent out their pupils merely possessed of vast stores of information, or high degrees of skill in specialized branches. to know what is _good_ judgment we need first to know what judgment is. [sidenote: judgment and inference] that there is an intimate connection between judgment and inference is obvious enough. the aim of inference is to terminate itself in an adequate judgment of a situation, and the course of inference goes on through a series of partial and tentative judgments. what are these units, these terms of inference when we examine them on their own account? their significant traits may be readily gathered from a consideration of the operations to which the word _judgment_ was originally applied: namely, the authoritative decision of matters in legal controversy--the procedure of the _judge on the bench_. there are three such features: ( ) a controversy, consisting of opposite claims regarding the same objective situation; ( ) a process of defining and elaborating these claims and of sifting the facts adduced to support them; ( ) a final decision, or sentence, closing the particular matter in dispute and also serving as a rule or principle for deciding future cases. [sidenote: uncertainty the antecedent of judgment] . unless there is something doubtful, the situation is read off at a glance; it is taken in on sight, _i.e._ there is merely apprehension, perception, recognition, not judgment. if the matter is wholly doubtful, if it is dark and obscure throughout, there is a blind mystery and again no judgment occurs. but if it suggests, however vaguely, different meanings, rival possible interpretations, there is some _point at issue_, some _matter at stake_. doubt takes the form of dispute, controversy; different sides compete for a conclusion in their favor. cases brought to trial before a judge illustrate neatly and unambiguously this strife of alternative interpretations; but any case of trying to clear up intellectually a doubtful situation exemplifies the same traits. a moving blur catches our eye in the distance; we ask ourselves: "what is it? is it a cloud of whirling dust? a tree waving its branches? a man signaling to us?" something in the total situation suggests each of these possible meanings. only one of them can possibly be sound; perhaps none of them is appropriate; yet _some_ meaning the thing in question surely has. which of the alternative suggested meanings has the rightful claim? what does the perception really mean? how is it to be interpreted, estimated, appraised, placed? every judgment proceeds from some such situation. [sidenote: judgment defines the issue,] . the hearing of the controversy, the trial, _i.e._ the weighing of alternative claims, divides into two branches, either of which, in a given case, may be more conspicuous than the other. in the consideration of a legal dispute, these two branches are sifting the evidence and selecting the rules that are applicable; they are "the facts" and "the law" of the case. in judgment they are (_a_) the determination of the data that are important in the given case (compare the inductive movement); and (_b_) the elaboration of the conceptions or meanings suggested by the crude data (compare the deductive movement). (_a_) what portions or aspects of the situation are significant in controlling the formation of the interpretation? (_b_) just what is the full meaning and bearing of the conception that is used as a method of interpretation? these questions are strictly correlative; the answer to each depends upon the answer to the other. we may, however, for convenience, consider them separately. [sidenote: (_a_) by selecting what facts are evidence] (_a_) in every actual occurrence, there are many details which are part of the total occurrence, but which nevertheless are not significant in relation to the point at issue. all parts of an experience are equally present, but they are very far from being of equal value as signs or as evidences. nor is there any tag or label on any trait saying: "this is important," or "this is trivial." nor is intensity, or vividness or conspicuousness, a safe measure of indicative and proving value. the glaring thing may be totally insignificant in this particular situation, and the key to the understanding of the whole matter may be modest or hidden (compare p. ). features that are not significant are distracting; they proffer their claims to be regarded as clues and cues to interpretation, while traits that are significant do not appear on the surface at all. hence, judgment is required _even in reference_ to the situation or event that is present to the senses; elimination or rejection, selection, discovery, or bringing to light must take place. till we have reached a final conclusion, rejection and selection must be tentative or conditional. we select the things that we hope or trust are cues to meaning. but if they do not suggest a situation that accepts and includes them (see p. ), we reconstitute our data, the facts of the case; for we mean, intellectually, by the facts of the case _those traits that are used as evidence in reaching a conclusion or forming a decision_. [sidenote: expertness in selecting evidence] no hard and fast rules for this operation of selecting and rejecting, or fixing upon the facts, can be given. it all comes back, as we say, to the good judgment, the good sense, of the one judging. to be a good judge is to have a sense of the relative indicative or signifying values of the various features of the perplexing situation; to know what to let go as of no account; what to eliminate as irrelevant; what to retain as conducive to outcome; what to emphasize as a clue to the difficulty.[ ] this power in ordinary matters we call _knack_, _tact_, _cleverness_; in more important affairs, _insight_, _discernment_. in part it is instinctive or inborn; but it also represents the funded outcome of long familiarity with like operations in the past. possession of this ability to seize what is evidential or significant and to let the rest go is the mark of the expert, the connoisseur, the _judge_, in any matter. [ ] compare what was said about _analysis_. [sidenote: intuitive judgments] mill cites the following case, which is worth noting as an instance of the extreme delicacy and accuracy to which may be developed this power of sizing up the significant factors of a situation. "a scotch manufacturer procured from england, at a high rate of wages, a working dyer, famous for producing very fine colors, with the view of teaching to his other workmen the same skill. the workman came; but his method of proportioning the ingredients, in which lay the secret of the effects he produced, was by taking them up in handfuls, while the common method was to weigh them. the manufacturer sought to make him turn his handling system into an equivalent weighing system, that the general principles of his peculiar mode of proceeding might be ascertained. this, however, the man found himself quite unable to do, and could therefore impart his own skill to nobody. he had, from individual cases of his own experience, established a connection in his mind between fine effects of color and tactual perceptions in handling his dyeing materials; and from these perceptions he could, in any particular case, _infer the means to be employed_ and the effects which would be produced." long brooding over conditions, intimate contact associated with keen interest, thorough absorption in a multiplicity of allied experiences, tend to bring about those judgments which we then call intuitive; but they are true judgments because they are based on intelligent selection and estimation, with the solution of a problem as the controlling standard. possession of this capacity makes the difference between the artist and the intellectual bungler. such is judging ability, in its completest form, as to the data of the decision to be reached. but in any case there is a certain feeling along for the way to be followed; a constant tentative picking out of certain qualities to see what emphasis upon them would lead to; a willingness to hold final selection in suspense; and to reject the factors entirely or relegate them to a different position in the evidential scheme if other features yield more solvent suggestions. alertness, flexibility, curiosity are the essentials; dogmatism, rigidity, prejudice, caprice, arising from routine, passion, and flippancy are fatal. [sidenote: (_b_) to decide an issue, the appropriate principles must also be selected] (_b_) this selection of data is, of course, for the sake of controlling the _development and elaboration of the suggested meaning in the light of which they are to be interpreted_ (compare p. ). an evolution of conceptions thus goes on simultaneously with the determination of the facts; one possible meaning after another is held before the mind, considered in relation to the data to which it is applied, is developed into its more detailed bearings upon the data, is dropped or tentatively accepted and used. we do not approach any problem with a wholly naïve or virgin mind; we approach it with certain acquired habitual modes of understanding, with a certain store of previously evolved meanings, or at least of experiences from which meanings may be educed. if the circumstances are such that a habitual response is called directly into play, there is an immediate grasp of meaning. if the habit is checked, and inhibited from easy application, a possible meaning for the facts in question presents itself. no hard and fast rules decide whether a meaning suggested is the right and proper meaning to follow up. the individual's own good (or bad) judgment is the guide. there is no label on any given idea or principle which says automatically, "use me in this situation"--as the magic cakes of alice in wonderland were inscribed "eat me." the thinker has to decide, to choose; and there is always a risk, so that the prudent thinker selects warily, subject, that is, to confirmation or frustration by later events. if one is not able to estimate wisely what is relevant to the interpretation of a given perplexing or doubtful issue, it avails little that arduous learning has built up a large stock of concepts. for learning is not wisdom; information does not guarantee good judgment. memory may provide an antiseptic refrigerator in which to store a stock of meanings for future use, but judgment selects and adopts the one used in a given emergency--and without an emergency (some crisis, slight or great) there is no call for judgment. no conception, even if it is carefully and firmly established in the abstract, can at first safely be more than a _candidate_ for the office of interpreter. only greater success than that of its rivals in clarifying dark spots, untying hard knots, reconciling discrepancies, can elect it or prove it a valid idea for the given situation. [sidenote: judging terminates in a _decision_ or statement] . the judgment when formed is a _decision_; it closes (or concludes) the question at issue. this determination not only settles that particular case, but it helps fix a rule or method for deciding similar matters in the future; as the sentence of the judge on the bench both terminates that dispute and also forms a precedent for future decisions. if the interpretation settled upon is not controverted by subsequent events, a presumption is built up in favor of similar interpretation in other cases where the features are not so obviously unlike as to make it inappropriate. in this way, principles of judging are gradually built up; a certain manner of interpretation gets weight, authority. in short, meanings get _standardized_, they become logical concepts (see below, p. ). § . _the origin and nature of ideas_ [sidenote: ideas are conjectures employed in judging] this brings us to the question of _ideas in relation to judgments_.[ ] something in an obscure situation suggests something else as its meaning. if this meaning is at once accepted, there is no reflective thinking, no genuine judging. thought is cut short uncritically; dogmatic belief, with all its attending risks, takes place. but if the meaning suggested is held _in suspense_, pending examination and inquiry, there is true judgment. we stop and think, we _de-fer_ conclusion in order to _in-fer_ more thoroughly. in this process of being only conditionally accepted, accepted only for examination, _meanings become ideas_. _that is to say, an idea is a meaning that is tentatively entertained, formed, and used with reference to its fitness to decide a perplexing situation,--a meaning used as a tool of judgment._ [ ] the term _idea_ is also used popularly to denote (_a_) a mere fancy, (_b_) an accepted belief, and also (_c_) judgment itself. but _logically_ it denotes a certain _factor_ in judgment, as explained in the text. [sidenote: or tools of interpretation] let us recur to our instance of a blur in motion appearing at a distance. we wonder what _the thing is_, _i.e._ what the _blur means_. a man waving his arms, a friend beckoning to us, are suggested as possibilities. to accept at once either alternative is to arrest judgment. but if we treat what is suggested as only a suggestion, a supposition, a possibility, it becomes an idea, having the following traits: (_a_) as merely a suggestion, it is a conjecture, a guess, which in cases of greater dignity we call a hypothesis or a theory. that is to say, it is _a possible but as yet doubtful mode of interpretation_. (_b_) even though doubtful, it has an office to perform; namely, that of directing inquiry and examination. if this blur means a friend beckoning, then careful observation should show certain other traits. if it is a man driving unruly cattle, certain other traits should be found. let us look and see if these traits are found. taken merely as a doubt, an idea would paralyze inquiry. taken merely as a certainty, it would arrest inquiry. taken as a doubtful possibility, it affords a standpoint, a platform, a method of inquiry. [sidenote: pseudo-ideas] ideas are not then genuine ideas unless they are tools in a reflective examination which tends to solve a problem. suppose it is a question of having the pupil grasp _the idea_ of the sphericity of the earth. this is different from teaching him its sphericity _as a fact_. he may be shown (or reminded of) a ball or a globe, and be told that the earth is round like those things; he may then be made to repeat that statement day after day till the shape of the earth and the shape of the ball are welded together in his mind. but he has not thereby acquired any idea of the earth's sphericity; at most, he has had a certain image of a sphere and has finally managed to image the earth after the analogy of his ball image. to grasp sphericity as an idea, the pupil must first have realized certain perplexities or confusing features in observed facts and have had the idea of spherical shape suggested to him as a possible way of accounting for the phenomena in question. only by use as a method of interpreting data so as to give them fuller meaning does sphericity become a genuine idea. there may be a vivid image and no idea; or there may be a fleeting, obscure image and yet an idea, if that image performs the function of instigating and directing the observation and relation of facts. [sidenote: ideas furnish the only alternative to "hit or miss" methods] logical ideas are like keys which are shaping with reference to opening a lock. pike, separated by a glass partition from the fish upon which they ordinarily prey, will--so it is said--butt their heads against the glass until it is literally beaten into them that they cannot get at their food. animals learn (when they learn at all) by a "cut and try" method; by doing at random first one thing and another thing and then preserving the things that happen to succeed. action directed consciously by ideas--by suggested meanings accepted for the sake of experimenting with them--is the sole alternative both to bull-headed stupidity and to learning bought from that dear teacher--chance experience. [sidenote: they are methods of indirect attack] it is significant that many words for intelligence suggest the idea of circuitous, evasive activity--often with a sort of intimation of even moral obliquity. the bluff, hearty man goes straight (and stupidly, it is implied) at some work. the intelligent man is cunning, shrewd (crooked), wily, subtle, crafty, artful, designing--the idea of indirection is involved.[ ] an idea is a method of evading, circumventing, or surmounting through reflection obstacles that otherwise would have to be attacked by brute force. but ideas may lose their intellectual quality as they are habitually used. when a child was first learning to recognize, in some hesitating suspense, cats, dogs, houses, marbles, trees, shoes, and other objects, ideas--conscious and tentative meanings--intervened as methods of identification. now, as a rule, the thing and the meaning are so completely fused that there is no judgment and no idea proper, but only automatic recognition. on the other hand, things that are, as a rule, directly apprehended and familiar become subjects of judgment when they present themselves in unusual contexts: as forms, distances, sizes, positions when we attempt to draw them; triangles, squares, and circles when they turn up, not in connection with familiar toys, implements, and utensils, but as problems in geometry. [ ] see ward, _psychic factors of civilization_, p. . § . _analysis and synthesis_ [sidenote: judging clears up things: analysis] through judging confused data are cleared up, and seemingly incoherent and disconnected facts brought together. things may have a peculiar feeling for us, they may make a certain indescribable impression upon us; the thing may _feel_ round (that is, present a quality which we afterwards define as round), an act may seem rude (or what we afterwards classify as rude), and yet this quality may be lost, absorbed, blended in the total value of the situation. only as we need to use just that aspect of the original situation as a tool of grasping something perplexing or obscure in another situation, do we abstract or detach the quality so that it becomes individualized. only because we need to characterize the shape of some new object or the moral quality of some new act, does the element of roundness or rudeness in the old experience detach itself, and stand out as a distinctive feature. if the element thus selected clears up what is otherwise obscure in the new experience, if it settles what is uncertain, it thereby itself gains in positiveness and definiteness of meaning. this point will meet us again in the following chapter; here we shall speak of the matter only as it bears upon the questions of analysis and synthesis. [sidenote: mental analysis is not like physical division] [sidenote: misapprehension of analysis in education] even when it is definitely stated that intellectual and physical analyses are different sorts of operations, intellectual analysis is often treated after the analogy of physical; as if it were the breaking up of a whole into all its constituent parts in the mind instead of in space. as nobody can possibly tell what breaking a whole into its parts in the mind means, this conception leads to the further notion that logical analysis is a mere enumeration and listing of all conceivable qualities and relations. the influence upon education of this conception has been very great.[ ] every subject in the curriculum has passed through--or still remains in--what may be called the phase of anatomical or morphological method: the stage in which understanding the subject is thought to consist of multiplying distinctions of quality, form, relation, and so on, and attaching some name to each distinguished element. in normal growth, specific properties are emphasized and so individualized only when they serve to clear up a present difficulty. only as they are involved in judging some specific situation is there any motive or use for analyses, _i.e._ for emphasis upon some element or relation as peculiarly significant. [ ] thus arise all those falsely analytic methods in geography, reading, writing, drawing, botany, arithmetic, which we have already considered in another connection. (see p. .) [sidenote: effects of premature formulation] the same putting the cart before the horse, the product before the process, is found in that overconscious formulation of methods of procedure so current in elementary instruction. (see p. .) the method that is employed in discovery, in reflective inquiry, cannot possibly be identified with the method that emerges _after_ the discovery is made. in the genuine operation of inference, the mind is in the attitude of _search_, of _hunting_, of _projection_, of _trying this and that_; when the conclusion is reached, the search is at an end. the greeks used to discuss: "how is learning (or inquiry) possible? for either we know already what we are after, and then we do not learn or inquire; or we do not know, and then we cannot inquire, for we do not know what to look for." the dilemma is at least suggestive, for it points to the true alternative: the use in inquiry of doubt, of tentative suggestion, of experimentation. after we have reached the conclusion, a reconsideration of the steps of the process to see what is helpful, what is harmful, what is merely useless, will assist in dealing more promptly and efficaciously with analogous problems in the future. in this way, more or less explicit method is gradually built up. (compare the earlier discussion on p. of the psychological and the logical.) [sidenote: method comes before its formulation] it is, however, a common assumption that unless the pupil from the outset _consciously recognizes and explicitly states_ the method logically implied in the result he is to reach, he will have _no_ method, and his mind will work confusedly or anarchically; while if he accompanies his performance with conscious statement of some form of procedure (outline, topical analysis, list of headings and subheadings, uniform formula) his mind is safeguarded and strengthened. as a matter of fact, the development of _an unconscious logical attitude and habit_ must come first. a conscious setting forth of the method logically adapted for reaching an end is possible only after the result has first been reached by more unconscious and tentative methods, while it is valuable only when a review of the method that achieved success in a given case will throw light upon a new, similar case. the ability to fasten upon and single out (abstract, analyze) those features of one experience which are logically best is hindered by premature insistence upon their explicit formulation. it is repeated use that gives a _method_ definiteness; and given this definiteness, precipitation into formulated statement should follow naturally. but because teachers find that the things which they themselves best understand are marked off and defined in clear-cut ways, our schoolrooms are pervaded with the superstition that children are to begin with already crystallized formulæ of method. [sidenote: judgment reveals the bearing or significance of facts: synthesis] as analysis is conceived to be a sort of picking to pieces, so synthesis is thought to be a sort of physical piecing together; and so imagined, it also becomes a mystery. in fact, synthesis takes place wherever we grasp the bearing of facts on a conclusion, or of a principle on facts. as analysis is _emphasis_, so synthesis is _placing_; the one causes the emphasized fact or property to stand out as significant; the other gives what is selected its _context_, or its connection with what is signified. every judgment is analytic in so far as it involves discernment, discrimination, marking off the trivial from the important, the irrelevant from what points to a conclusion; and it is synthetic in so far as it leaves the mind with an inclusive situation within which the selected facts are placed. [sidenote: analysis and synthesis are correlative] educational methods that pride themselves on being exclusively analytic or exclusively synthetic are therefore (so far as they carry out their boasts) incompatible with normal operations of judgment. discussions have taken place, for example, as to whether the teaching of geography should be analytic or synthetic. the synthetic method is supposed to begin with the partial, limited portion of the earth's surface already familiar to the pupil, and then gradually piece on adjacent regions (the county, the country, the continent, and so on) till an idea of the entire globe is reached, or of the solar system that includes the globe. the analytic method is supposed to begin with the physical whole, the solar system or globe, and to work down through its constituent portions till the immediate environment is reached. the underlying conceptions are of physical wholes and physical parts. as matter of fact, we cannot assume that the portion of the earth already familiar to the child is such a definite object, mentally, that he can at once begin with it; his knowledge of it is misty and vague as well as incomplete. accordingly, mental progress will involve analysis of it--emphasis of the features that are significant, so that they will stand out clearly. moreover, his own locality is not sharply marked off, neatly bounded, and measured. his experience of it is already an experience that involves sun, moon, and stars as parts of the scene he surveys; it involves a changing horizon line as he moves about; that is, even his more limited and local experience involves far-reaching factors that take his imagination clear beyond his own street and village. connection, relationship with a larger whole, is already involved. but his recognition of these relations is inadequate, vague, incorrect. he needs to utilize the features of the local environment which are understood to help clarify and enlarge his conceptions of the larger geographical scene to which they belong. at the same time, not till he has grasped the larger scene will many of even the commonest features of his environment become intelligible. analysis leads to synthesis; while synthesis perfects analysis. as the pupil grows in comprehension of the vast complicated earth in its setting in space, he also sees more definitely the meaning of the familiar local details. this intimate interaction between selective emphasis and interpretation of what is selected is found wherever reflection proceeds normally. hence the folly of trying to set analysis and synthesis over against each other. chapter nine meaning: or conceptions and understanding § . _the place of meanings in mental life_ [sidenote: meaning is central] as in our discussion of judgment we were making more explicit what is involved in inference, so in the discussion of meaning we are only recurring to the central function of all reflection. for one thing to _mean_, _signify_, _betoken_, _indicate_, or _point to_, another we saw at the outset to be the essential mark of thinking (see p. ). to find out what facts, just as they stand, mean, is the object of all discovery; to find out what facts will carry out, substantiate, support a given meaning, is the object of all testing. when an inference reaches a satisfactory conclusion, we attain a goal of meaning. the act of judging involves both the growth and the application of meanings. in short, in this chapter we are not introducing a new topic; we are only coming to closer quarters with what hitherto has been constantly assumed. in the first section, we shall consider the equivalence of meaning and understanding, and the two types of understanding, direct and indirect. i. meaning and understanding [sidenote: to understand is to grasp meaning] if a person comes suddenly into your room and calls out "paper," various alternatives are possible. if you do not understand the english language, there is simply a noise which may or may not act as a physical stimulus and irritant. but the noise is not an intellectual object; it does not have intellectual value. (compare above, p. .) to say that you do not understand it and that it has no meaning are equivalents. if the cry is the usual accompaniment of the delivery of the morning paper, the sound will have meaning, intellectual content; you will understand it. or if you are eagerly awaiting the receipt of some important document, you may assume that the cry means an announcement of its arrival. if (in the third place) you understand the english language, but no context suggests itself from your habits and expectations, the _word_ has meaning, but not the whole event. you are then perplexed and incited to think out, to hunt for, some explanation of the apparently meaningless occurrence. if you find something that accounts for the performance, it gets meaning; you come to understand it. as intelligent beings, we presume the existence of meaning, and its absence is an anomaly. hence, if it should turn out that the person merely meant to inform you that there was a scrap of paper on the sidewalk, or that paper existed somewhere in the universe, you would think him crazy or yourself the victim of a poor joke. to grasp a meaning, to understand, to identify a thing in a situation in which it is important, are thus equivalent terms; they express the nerves of our intellectual life. without them there is (_a_) lack of intellectual content, or (_b_) intellectual confusion and perplexity, or else (_c_) intellectual perversion--nonsense, insanity. [sidenote: knowledge and meaning] all knowledge, all science, thus aims to grasp the meaning of objects and events, and this process always consists in taking them out of their apparent brute isolation as events, and finding them to be parts of some larger whole _suggested by them_, which, in turn, _accounts for_, _explains_, _interprets them_; _i.e._ renders them significant. (compare above, p. .) suppose that a stone with peculiar markings has been found. what do these scratches mean? so far as the object forces the raising of this question, it is not understood; while so far as the color and form that we see mean to us a stone, the object is understood. it is such peculiar combinations of the understood and the nonunderstood that provoke thought. if at the end of the inquiry, the markings are decided to mean glacial scratches, obscure and perplexing traits have been translated into meanings already understood: namely, the moving and grinding power of large bodies of ice and the friction thus induced of one rock upon another. something already understood in one situation has been transferred and applied to what is strange and perplexing in another, and thereby the latter has become plain and familiar, _i.e._ understood. this summary illustration discloses that our power to think effectively depends upon possession of a capital fund of meanings which may be applied when desired. (compare what was said about deduction, p. .) ii. direct and indirect understanding [sidenote: direct and circuitous understanding] in the above illustrations two types of grasping of meaning are exemplified. when the english language is understood, the person grasps at once the meaning of "paper." he may not, however, see any meaning or sense in the performance as a whole. similarly, the person identifies the object on sight as a stone; there is no secret, no mystery, no perplexity about that. but he does not understand the markings on it. they have some meaning, but what is it? in one case, owing to familiar acquaintance, the thing and its meaning, up to a certain point, are one. in the other, the thing and its meaning are, temporarily at least, sundered, and meaning has to be sought in order to understand the thing. in one case understanding is direct, prompt, immediate; in the other, it is roundabout and delayed. [sidenote: interaction of the two types] most languages have two sets of words to express these two modes of understanding; one for the direct taking in or grasp of meaning, the other for its circuitous apprehension, thus: [greek: gnônai] and [greek: eidenai] in greek; _noscere_ and _scire_ in latin; _kennen_ and _wissen_ in german; _connaître_ and _savoir_ in french; while in english to be _acquainted with_ and to _know of or about_ have been suggested as equivalents.[ ] now our intellectual life consists of a peculiar interaction between these two types of understanding. all judgment, all reflective inference, presupposes some lack of understanding, a partial absence of meaning. we reflect in order that we may get hold of the full and adequate significance of what happens. nevertheless, _something_ must be already understood, the mind must be in possession of some meaning which it has mastered, or else thinking is impossible. we think in order to grasp meaning, but none the less every extension of knowledge makes us aware of blind and opaque spots, where with less knowledge all had seemed obvious and natural. a scientist brought into a new district will find many things that he does not understand, where the native savage or rustic will be wholly oblivious to any meanings beyond those directly apparent. some indians brought to a large city remained stolid at the sight of mechanical wonders of bridge, trolley, and telephone, but were held spellbound by the sight of workmen climbing poles to repair wires. increase of the store of meanings makes us conscious of new problems, while only through translation of the new perplexities into what is already familiar and plain do we understand or solve these problems. this is the constant spiral movement of knowledge. [ ] james, _principles of psychology_, vol. i, p. . to _know_ and to _know that_ are perhaps more precise equivalents; compare "i know him" and "i know that he has gone home." the former expresses a fact simply; for the latter, evidence might be demanded and supplied. [sidenote: intellectual progress a rhythm] our progress in genuine knowledge always consists _in part in the discovery of something not understood in what had previously been taken for granted as plain, obvious, matter-of-course, and in part in the use of meanings that are directly grasped without question, as instruments for getting hold of obscure, doubtful, and perplexing meanings_. no object is so familiar, so obvious, so commonplace that it may not unexpectedly present, in a novel situation, some problem, and thus arouse reflection in order to understand it. no object or principle is so strange, peculiar, or remote that it may not be dwelt upon till its meaning becomes familiar--taken in on sight without reflection. we may come to _see_, _perceive_, _recognize_, _grasp_, _seize_, _lay hold of_ principles, laws, abstract truths--_i.e._ to understand their meaning in very immediate fashion. our intellectual progress consists, as has been said, in a rhythm of direct understanding--technically called _ap_prehension--with indirect, mediated understanding--technically called _com_prehension. § . _the process of acquiring meanings_ [sidenote: familiarity] the first problem that comes up in connection with direct understanding is how a store of directly apprehensible meanings is built up. how do we learn to view things on sight as significant members of a situation, or as having, as a matter of course, specific meanings? our chief difficulty in answering this question lies in the thoroughness with which the lesson of familiar things has been learnt. thought can more easily traverse an unexplored region than it can undo what has been so thoroughly done as to be ingrained in unconscious habit. we apprehend chairs, tables, books, trees, horses, clouds, stars, rain, so promptly and directly that it is hard to realize that as meanings they had once to be acquired,--the meanings are now so much parts of the things themselves. [sidenote: confusion is prior to familiarity] in an often quoted passage, mr. james has said: "the baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion."[ ] mr. james is speaking of a baby's world taken as a whole; the description, however, is equally applicable to the way any new thing strikes an adult, so far as the thing is really new and strange. to the traditional "cat in a strange garret," everything is blurred and confused; the wonted marks that label things so as to separate them from one another are lacking. foreign languages that we do not understand always seem jabberings, babblings, in which it is impossible to fix a definite, clear-cut, individualized group of sounds. the countryman in the crowded city street, the landlubber at sea, the ignoramus in sport at a contest between experts in a complicated game, are further instances. put an unexperienced man in a factory, and at first the work seems to him a meaningless medley. all strangers of another race proverbially look alike to the visiting foreigner. only gross differences of size or color are perceived by an outsider in a flock of sheep, each of which is perfectly individualized to the shepherd. a diffusive blur and an indiscriminately shifting suction characterize what we do not understand. the problem of the acquisition of meaning by things, or (stated in another way) of forming habits of simple apprehension, is thus the problem of introducing (_i_) _definiteness_ and _distinction_ and (_ii_) _consistency_ or _stability_ of meaning into what is otherwise vague and wavering. [ ] _principles of psychology_, vol. i, p. . [sidenote: practical responses clarify confusion] the acquisition of definiteness and of coherency (or constancy) of meanings is derived primarily from practical activities. by rolling an object, the child makes its roundness appreciable; by bouncing it, he singles out its elasticity; by throwing it, he makes weight its conspicuous distinctive factor. not through the senses, but by means of the reaction, the responsive adjustment, is the impression made distinctive, and given a character marked off from other qualities that call out unlike reactions. children, for example, are usually quite slow in apprehending differences of color. differences from the standpoint of the adult so glaring that it is impossible not to note them are recognized and recalled with great difficulty. doubtless they do not all _feel_ alike, but there is no intellectual recognition of what makes the difference. the redness or greenness or blueness of the object does not tend to call out a reaction that is sufficiently peculiar to give prominence or distinction to the color trait. gradually, however, certain characteristic habitual responses associate themselves with certain things; the white becomes the sign, say, of milk and sugar, to which the child reacts favorably; blue becomes the sign of a dress that the child likes to wear, and so on: and the distinctive reactions tend to single out color qualities from other things in which they had been submerged. [sidenote: we identify by use or function] take another example. we have little difficulty in distinguishing from one another rakes, hoes, plows and harrows, shovels and spades. each has its own associated characteristic use and function. we may have, however, great difficulty in recalling the difference between serrate and dentate, ovoid and obovoid, in the shapes and edges of leaves, or between acids in _ic_ and in _ous_. there is some difference; but just what? or, we know what the difference is; but which is which? variations in form, size, color, and arrangement of parts have much less to do, and the uses, purposes, and functions of things and of their parts much more to do, with distinctness of character and meaning than we should be likely to think. what misleads us is the fact that the qualities of form, size, color, and so on, are _now_ so distinct that we fail to see that the problem is precisely to account for the way in which they originally obtained their definiteness and conspicuousness. so far as we sit passive before objects, they are not distinguished out of a vague blur which swallows them all. differences in the pitch and intensity of sounds leave behind a different feeling, but until we assume different attitudes toward them, or _do_ something special in reference to them, their vague difference cannot be _intellectually_ gripped and retained. [sidenote: children's drawings illustrate domination by value] children's drawings afford a further exemplification of the same principle. perspective does not exist, for the child's interest is not in _pictorial representation_, but in the _things_ represented; and while perspective is essential to the former, it is no part of the characteristic uses and values of the things themselves. the house is drawn with transparent walls, because the rooms, chairs, beds, people inside, are the important things in the house-meaning; smoke always comes out of the chimney--otherwise, why have a chimney at all? at christmas time, the stockings may be drawn almost as large as the house or even so large that they have to be put outside of it:--in any case, it is the scale of values in use that furnishes the scale for their qualities, the pictures being diagrammatic reminders of these values, not impartial records of physical and sensory qualities. one of the chief difficulties felt by most persons in learning the art of pictorial representation is that habitual uses and results of use have become so intimately read into the character of things that it is practically impossible to shut them out at will. [sidenote: as do sounds used as language signs] the acquiring of meaning by sounds, in virtue of which they become words, is perhaps the most striking illustration that can be found of the way in which mere sensory stimuli acquire definiteness and constancy of meaning and are thereby themselves defined and interconnected for purposes of recognition. language is a specially good example because there are hundreds or even thousands of words in which meaning is now so thoroughly consolidated with physical qualities as to be directly apprehended, while in the case of words it is easier to recognize that this connection has been gradually and laboriously acquired than in the case of physical objects such as chairs, tables, buttons, trees, stones, hills, flowers, and so on, where it seems as if the union of intellectual character and meaning with the physical fact were aboriginal, and thrust upon us passively rather than acquired through active explorations. and in the case of the meaning of words, we see readily that it is by making sounds and noting the results which follow, by listening to the sounds of others and watching the activities which accompany them, that a given sound finally becomes the stable bearer of a meaning. [sidenote: summary] familiar acquaintance with meanings thus signifies that we have acquired in the presence of objects definite attitudes of response which lead us, without reflection, to anticipate certain possible consequences. the definiteness of the expectation defines the meaning or takes it out of the vague and pulpy; its habitual, recurrent character gives the meaning constancy, stability, consistency, or takes it out of the fluctuating and wavering. § . _conceptions and meaning_ [sidenote: a conception is a definite meaning] the word _meaning_ is a familiar everyday term; the words _conception_, _notion_, are both popular and technical terms. strictly speaking, they involve, however, nothing new; any meaning sufficiently individualized to be directly grasped and readily used, and thus fixed by a word, is a conception or notion. linguistically, every common noun is the carrier of a meaning, while proper nouns and common nouns with the word _this_ or _that_ prefixed, refer to the things in which the meanings are exemplified. that thinking both employs and expands notions, conceptions, is then simply saying that in inference and judgment we use meanings, and that this use also corrects and widens them. [sidenote: which is standardized] various persons talk about an object not physically present, and yet all get the same material of belief. the same person in different moments often refers to the same object or kind of objects. the sense experience, the physical conditions, the psychological conditions, vary, but the same meaning is conserved. if pounds arbitrarily changed their weight, and foot rules their length, while we were using them, obviously we could not weigh nor measure. this would be our intellectual position if meanings could not be maintained with a certain stability and constancy through a variety of physical and personal changes. [sidenote: by it we identify the unknown] [sidenote: and supplement the sensibly present] [sidenote: and also systematize things] to insist upon the fundamental importance of conceptions would, accordingly, only repeat what has been said. we shall merely summarize, saying that conceptions, or standard meanings, are instruments (_i_) of identification, (_ii_) of supplementation, and (_iii_) of placing in a system. suppose a little speck of light hitherto unseen is detected in the heavens. unless there is a store of meanings to fall back upon as tools of inquiry and reasoning, that speck of light will remain just what it is to the senses--a mere speck of light. for all that it leads to, it might as well be a mere irritation of the optic nerve. given the stock of meanings acquired in prior experience, this speck of light is mentally attacked by means of appropriate concepts. does it indicate asteroid, or comet, or a new-forming sun, or a nebula resulting from some cosmic collision or disintegration? each of these conceptions has its own specific and differentiating characters, which are then sought for by minute and persistent inquiry. as a result, then, the speck is identified, we will say, as a comet. through a standard meaning, it gets identity and stability of character. supplementation then takes place. all the known qualities of comets are read into this particular thing, even though they have not been as yet observed. all that the astronomers of the past have learned about the paths and structure of comets becomes available capital with which to interpret the speck of light. finally, this comet-meaning is itself not isolated; it is a related portion of the whole system of astronomic knowledge. suns, planets, satellites, nebulæ, comets, meteors, star dust--all these conceptions have a certain mutuality of reference and interaction, and when the speck of light is identified as meaning a comet, it is at once adopted as a full member in this vast kingdom of beliefs. [sidenote: importance of system to knowledge] darwin, in an autobiographical sketch, says that when a youth he told the geologist, sidgwick, of finding a tropical shell in a certain gravel pit. thereupon sidgwick said it must have been thrown there by some person, adding: "but if it were really embedded there, it would be the greatest misfortune to geology, because it would overthrow all that we know about the superficial deposits of the midland counties"--since they were glacial. and then darwin adds: "i was then utterly astonished at sidgwick not being delighted at so wonderful a fact as a tropical shell being found near the surface in the middle of england. nothing before had made me thoroughly realize _that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them_." this instance (which might, of course, be duplicated from any branch of science) indicates how scientific notions make explicit the systematizing tendency involved in all use of concepts. § . _what conceptions are not_ the idea that a conception is a meaning that supplies a standard rule for the identification and placing of particulars may be contrasted with some current misapprehensions of its nature. [sidenote: a concept is not a bare residue] . conceptions are not derived from a multitude of different definite objects by leaving out the qualities in which they differ and retaining those in which they agree. the origin of concepts is sometimes described to be as if a child began with a lot of different particular things, say particular dogs; his own fido, his neighbor's carlo, his cousin's tray. having all these different objects before him, he analyzes them into a lot of different qualities, say (_a_) color, (_b_) size, (_c_) shape, (_d_) number of legs, (_e_) quantity and quality of hair, (_f_) digestive organs, and so on; and then strikes out all the unlike qualities (such as color, size, shape, hair), retaining traits such as quadruped and domesticated, which they all have in general. [sidenote: but an active attitude] as a matter of fact, the child begins with whatever significance he has got out of the one dog he has seen, heard, and handled. he has found that he can carry over from one experience of this object to subsequent experience certain expectations of certain characteristic modes of behavior--may expect these even before they show themselves. he tends to assume this attitude of anticipation whenever any clue or stimulus presents itself; whenever the object gives him any excuse for it. thus he might call cats little dogs, or horses big dogs. but finding that other expected traits and modes of behavior are not fulfilled, he is forced to throw out certain traits from the dog-meaning, while by contrast (see p. ) certain other traits are selected and emphasized. as he further applies the meaning to other dogs, the dog-meaning gets still further defined and refined. he does not begin with a lot of ready-made objects from which he extracts a common meaning; he tries to apply to every new experience whatever from his old experience will help him understand it, and as this process of constant assumption and experimentation is fulfilled and refuted by results, his conceptions get body and clearness. [sidenote: it is general because of its application] . similarly, conceptions are general because of their use and application, not because of their ingredients. the view of the origin of conception in an impossible sort of analysis has as its counterpart the idea that the conception is made up out of all the like elements that remain after dissection of a number of individuals. not so; the moment a meaning is gained, it is a working tool of further apprehensions, an instrument of understanding other things. thereby the meaning is _extended_ to cover them. generality resides in application to the comprehension of new cases, not in constituent parts. a collection of traits left as the common residuum, the _caput mortuum_, of a million objects, would be merely a collection, an inventory or aggregate, not a _general idea_; a striking trait emphasized in any one experience which then served to help understand some one other experience, would become, in virtue of that service of application, in so far general. synthesis is not a matter of mechanical addition, but of application of something discovered in one case to bring other cases into line. § . _definition and organization of meanings_ [sidenote: definiteness _versus_ vagueness] [sidenote: in the abstract meaning is intension] [sidenote: in its application it is extension] a being that cannot understand at all is at least protected from _mis_-understandings. but beings that get knowledge by means of inferring and interpreting, by judging what things signify in relation to one another, are constantly exposed to the danger of _mis_-apprehension, _mis_-understanding, _mis_-taking--taking a thing amiss. a constant source of misunderstanding and mistake is indefiniteness of meaning. through vagueness of meaning we misunderstand other people, things, and ourselves; through its ambiguity we distort and pervert. conscious distortion of meaning may be enjoyed as nonsense; erroneous meanings, if clear-cut, may be followed up and got rid of. but vague meanings are too gelatinous to offer matter for analysis, and too pulpy to afford support to other beliefs. they evade testing and responsibility. vagueness disguises the unconscious mixing together of different meanings, and facilitates the substitution of one meaning for another, and covers up the failure to have any precise meaning at all. it is the aboriginal logical sin--the source from which flow most bad intellectual consequences. totally to eliminate indefiniteness is impossible; to reduce it in extent and in force requires sincerity and vigor. to be clear or perspicuous a meaning must be detached, single, self-contained, homogeneous as it were, throughout. the technical name for any meaning which is thus individualized is _intension_. the process of arriving at such units of meaning (and of stating them when reached) is _definition_. the intension of the terms _man_, _river_, _seed_, _honesty_, _capital_, _supreme court_, is the meaning that _exclusively_ and _characteristically_ attaches to those terms. this meaning is set forth in the definitions of those words. the test of the distinctness of a meaning is that it shall successfully mark off a group of things that exemplify the meaning from other groups, especially of those objects that convey nearly allied meanings. the river-meaning (or character) must serve to _designate_ the rhone, the rhine, the mississippi, the hudson, the wabash, in spite of their varieties of place, length, quality of water; and must be such as _not_ to suggest ocean currents, ponds, or brooks. this use of a meaning to mark off and group together a variety of distinct existences constitutes its _extension_. [sidenote: definition and division] as definition sets forth intension, so division (or the reverse process, classification) expounds extension. intension and extension, definition and division, are clearly correlative; in language previously used, _intension_ is meaning as a principle of identifying particulars; extension is the group of particulars identified and distinguished. meaning, as extension, would be wholly in the air or unreal, did it not point to some object or group of objects; while objects would be as isolated and independent intellectually as they seem to be spatially, were they not bound into groups or classes on the basis of characteristic meanings which they constantly suggest and exemplify. taken together, definition and division put us in possession of individualized or definite meanings and indicate to what group of objects meanings refer. they typify the fixation and the organization of meanings. in the degree in which the meanings of any set of experiences are so cleared up as to serve as principles for grouping those experiences in relation to one another, that set of particulars becomes a science; _i.e._ definition and classification are the marks of a science, as distinct from both unrelated heaps of miscellaneous information and from the habits that introduce coherence into our experience without our being aware of their operation. definitions are of three types, _denotative_, _expository_, _scientific_. of these, the first and third are logically important, while the expository type is socially and pedagogically important as an intervening step. [sidenote: we define by picking out] i. denotative. a blind man can never have an adequate understanding of the meaning of _color_ and _red_; a seeing person can acquire the knowledge only by having certain things designated in such a way as to fix attention upon some of their qualities. this method of delimiting a meaning by calling out a certain attitude toward objects may be called _denotative_ or _indicative_. it is required for all sense qualities--sounds, tastes, colors--and equally for all emotional and moral qualities. the meanings of _honesty_, _sympathy_, _hatred_, _fear_, must be grasped by having them presented in an individual's first-hand experience. the reaction of educational reformers against linguistic and bookish training has always taken the form of demanding recourse to personal experience. however advanced the person is in knowledge and in scientific training, understanding of a new subject, or a new aspect of an old subject, must always be through these acts of experiencing directly the existence or quality in question. [sidenote: and also by combining what is already more definite,] . expository. given a certain store of meanings which have been directly or denotatively marked out, language becomes a resource by which imaginative combinations and variations may be built up. a color may be defined to one who has not experienced it as lying between green and blue; a tiger may be defined (_i.e._ the idea of it made more definite) by selecting some qualities from known members of the cat tribe and combining them with qualities of size and weight derived from other objects. illustrations are of the nature of expository definitions; so are the accounts of meanings given in a dictionary. by taking better-known meanings and associating them,--the attained store of meanings of the community in which one resides is put at one's disposal. but in themselves these definitions are secondhand and conventional; there is danger that instead of inciting one to effort after personal experiences that will exemplify and verify them, they will be accepted on authority as _substitutes_. [sidenote: and by discovering method of production] . scientific. even popular definitions serve as rules for identifying and classifying individuals, but the purpose of such identifications and classifications is mainly practical and social, not intellectual. to conceive the whale as a fish does not interfere with the success of whalers, nor does it prevent recognition of a whale when seen, while to conceive it not as fish but as mammal serves the practical end equally well, and also furnishes a much more valuable principle for scientific identification and classification. popular definitions select certain fairly obvious traits as keys to classification. scientific definitions select _conditions of causation, production, and generation_ as their characteristic material. the traits used by the popular definition do not help us to understand why an object has its common meanings and qualities; they simply state the fact that it does have them. causal and genetic definitions fix upon the way an object is constructed as the key to its being a certain kind of object, and thereby explain why it has its class or common traits. [sidenote: contrast of causal and descriptive definitions] [sidenote: science is the most perfect type of knowledge because it uses causal definitions] if, for example, a layman of considerable practical experience were asked what he meant or understood by _metal_, he would probably reply in terms of the qualities useful (_i_) in recognizing any given metal and (_ii_) in the arts. smoothness, hardness, glossiness, and brilliancy, heavy weight for its size, would probably be included in his definition, because such traits enable us to identify specific things when we see and touch them; the serviceable properties of capacity for being hammered and pulled without breaking, of being softened by heat and hardened by cold, of retaining the shape and form given, of resistance to pressure and decay, would probably be included--whether or not such terms as _malleable_ or _fusible_ were used. now a scientific conception, instead of using, even with additions, traits of this kind, determines _meaning on a different basis_. the present definition of metal is about like this: metal means any chemical element that enters into combination with oxygen so as to form a base, _i.e._ a compound that combines with an acid to form a salt. this scientific definition is founded, not on directly perceived qualities nor on directly useful properties, but on the _way in which certain things are causally related to other things_; _i.e._ it denotes a relation. as chemical concepts become more and more those of relationships of interaction in constituting other substances, so physical concepts express more and more relations of operation: mathematical, as expressing functions of dependence and order of grouping; biological, relations of differentiation of descent, effected through adjustment of various environments; and so on through the sphere of the sciences. in short, our conceptions attain a maximum of definite individuality and of generality (or applicability) in the degree to which they show how things depend upon one another or influence one another, instead of expressing the qualities that objects possess statically. the ideal of a system of scientific conceptions is to attain continuity, freedom, and flexibility of transition in passing from any fact and meaning to any other; this demand is met in the degree in which we lay hold of the dynamic ties that hold things together in a continuously changing process--a principle that states insight into mode of production or growth. chapter ten concrete and abstract thinking [sidenote: false notions of concrete and abstract] the maxim enjoined upon teachers, "to proceed from the concrete to the abstract," is perhaps familiar rather than comprehended. few who read and hear it gain a clear conception of the starting-point, the concrete; of the nature of the goal, the abstract; and of the exact nature of the path to be traversed in going from one to the other. at times the injunction is positively misunderstood, being taken to mean that education should advance from things to thought--as if any dealing with things in which thinking is not involved could possibly be educative. so understood, the maxim encourages mechanical routine or sensuous excitation at one end of the educational scale--the lower--and academic and unapplied learning at the upper end. actually, all dealing with things, even the child's, is immersed in inferences; things are clothed by the suggestions they arouse, and are significant as challenges to interpretation or as evidences to substantiate a belief. nothing could be more unnatural than instruction in things without thought; in sense-perceptions without judgments based upon them. and if the abstract to which we are to proceed denotes thought apart from things, the goal recommended is formal and empty, for effective thought always refers, more or less directly, to things. [sidenote: direct and indirect understanding again] yet the maxim has a meaning which, understood and supplemented, states the line of development of logical capacity. what is this signification? concrete denotes a meaning definitely marked off from other meanings so that it is readily apprehended by itself. when we hear the words, _table_, _chair_, _stove_, _coat_, we do not have to reflect in order to grasp what is meant. the terms convey meaning so directly that no effort at translating is needed. the meanings of some terms and things, however, are grasped only by first calling to mind more familiar things and then tracing out connections between them and what we do not understand. roughly speaking, the former kind of meanings is concrete; the latter abstract. [sidenote: what is familiar is mentally concrete] to one who is thoroughly at home in physics and chemistry, the notions of _atom_ and _molecule_ are fairly concrete. they are constantly used without involving any labor of thought in apprehending what they mean. but the layman and the beginner in science have first to remind themselves of things with which they already are well acquainted, and go through a process of slow translation; the terms _atom_ and _molecule_ losing, moreover, their hard-won meaning only too easily if familiar things, and the line of transition from them to the strange, drop out of mind. the same difference is illustrated by any technical terms: _coefficient_ and _exponent_ in algebra, _triangle_ and _square_ in their geometric as distinct from their popular meanings; _capital_ and _value_ as used in political economy, and so on. [sidenote: practical things are familiar] the difference as noted is purely relative to the intellectual progress of an individual; what is abstract at one period of growth is concrete at another; or even the contrary, as one finds that things supposed to be thoroughly familiar involve strange factors and unsolved problems. there is, nevertheless, a general line of cleavage which, deciding upon the whole what things fall within the limits of familiar acquaintance and what without, marks off the concrete and the abstract in a more permanent way. _these limits are fixed mainly by the demands of practical life._ things such as sticks and stones, meat and potatoes, houses and trees, are such constant features of the environment of which we have to take account in order to live, that their important meanings are soon learnt, and indissolubly associated with objects. we are acquainted with a thing (or it is familiar to us) when we have so much to do with it that its strange and unexpected corners are rubbed off. the necessities of social intercourse convey to adults a like concreteness upon such terms as _taxes_, _elections_, _wages_, _the law_, and so on. things the meaning of which i personally do not take in directly, appliances of cook, carpenter, or weaver, for example, are nevertheless unhesitatingly classed as concrete, since they are so directly connected with our common social life. [sidenote: the theoretical, or strictly intellectual, is abstract] by contrast, the abstract is the _theoretical_, or that not intimately associated with practical concerns. the abstract thinker (the man of pure science as he is sometimes called) deliberately abstracts from application in life; that is, he leaves practical uses out of account. this, however, is a merely negative statement. what remains when connections with use and application are excluded? _evidently only what has to do with knowing considered as an end in itself._ many notions of science are abstract, not only because they cannot be understood without a long apprenticeship in the science (which is equally true of technical matters in the arts), but also because the whole content of their meaning has been framed for the sole purpose of facilitating further knowledge, inquiry, and speculation. _when thinking is used as a means to some end, good, or value beyond itself, it is concrete; when it is employed simply as a means to more thinking, it is abstract._ to a theorist an idea is adequate and self-contained just because it engages and rewards thought; to a medical practitioner, an engineer, an artist, a merchant, a politician, it is complete only when employed in the furthering of some interest in life--health, wealth, beauty, goodness, success, or what you will. [sidenote: contempt for theory] for the great majority of men under ordinary circumstances, the practical exigencies of life are almost, if not quite, coercive. their main business is the proper conduct of their affairs. whatever is of significance only as affording scope for thinking is pallid and remote--almost artificial. hence the contempt felt by the practical and successful executive for the "mere theorist"; hence his conviction that certain things may be all very well in theory, but that they will not do in practice; in general, the depreciatory way in which he uses the terms _abstract_, _theoretical_, and _intellectual_--as distinct from _intelligent_. [sidenote: but theory is highly practical] this attitude is justified, of course, under certain conditions. but depreciation of theory does not contain the whole truth, as common or practical sense recognizes. there is such a thing, even from the common-sense standpoint, as being "too practical," as being so intent upon the immediately practical as not to see beyond the end of one's nose or as to cut off the limb upon which one is sitting. the question is one of limits, of degrees and adjustments, rather than one of absolute separation. truly practical men give their minds free play about a subject without asking too closely at every point for the advantage to be gained; exclusive preoccupation with matters of use and application so narrows the horizon as in the long run to defeat itself. it does not pay to tether one's thoughts to the post of use with too short a rope. power in action requires some largeness and imaginativeness of vision. men must at least have enough interest in thinking for the sake of thinking to escape the limits of routine and custom. interest in knowledge for the sake of knowledge, in thinking for the sake of the free play of thought, is necessary then to the _emancipation_ of practical life--to make it rich and progressive. we may now recur to the pedagogic maxim of going from the concrete to the abstract. [sidenote: begin with the concrete means begin with practical manipulations] . since the _concrete_ denotes thinking applied to activities for the sake of dealing effectively with the difficulties that present themselves practically, "beginning with the concrete" signifies that we should at the outset make much of _doing_; especially, make much in occupations that are not of a routine and mechanical kind and hence require intelligent selection and adaptation of means and materials. we do not "follow the order of nature" when we multiply mere sensations or accumulate physical objects. instruction in number is not concrete merely because splints or beans or dots are employed, while whenever the use and bearing of number relations are clearly perceived, the number idea is concrete even if figures alone are used. just what sort of symbol it is best to use at a given time--whether blocks, or lines, or figures--is entirely a matter of adjustment to the given case. if physical things used in teaching number or geography or anything else do not leave the mind illuminated with recognition of a _meaning_ beyond themselves, the instruction that uses them is as abstract as that which doles out ready-made definitions and rules; for it distracts attention from ideas to mere physical excitations. [sidenote: confusion of the concrete with the sensibly isolated] the conception that we have only to put before the senses particular physical objects in order to impress certain ideas upon the mind amounts almost to a superstition. the introduction of object lessons and sense-training scored a distinct advance over the prior method of linguistic symbols, and this advance tended to blind educators to the fact that only a halfway step had been taken. things and sensations develop the child, indeed, but only because he _uses_ them in mastering his body and in the scheme of his activities. appropriate continuous occupations or activities involve the use of natural materials, tools, modes of energy, and do it in a way that compels thinking as to what they mean, how they are related to one another and to the realization of ends; while the mere isolated presentation of things remains barren and dead. a few generations ago the great obstacle in the way of reform of primary education was belief in the almost magical efficacy of the symbols of language (including number) to produce mental training; at present, belief in the efficacy of objects just as objects, blocks the way. as frequently happens, the better is an enemy of the best. [sidenote: transfer of interest to intellectual matters] . the interest in results, in the successful carrying on of an activity, should be gradually transferred to study of objects--their properties, consequences, structures, causes, and effects. the adult when at work in his life calling is rarely free to devote time or energy--beyond the necessities of his immediate action--to the study of what he deals with. (_ante_, p. .) the educative activities of childhood should be so arranged that direct interest in the activity and its outcome create a demand for attention to matters that have a more and more _indirect and remote_ connection with the original activity. the direct interest in carpentering or shop work should yield organically and gradually an interest in geometric and mechanical problems. the interest in cooking should grow into an interest in chemical experimentation and in the physiology and hygiene of bodily growth. the making of pictures should pass to an interest in the technique of representation and the æsthetics of appreciation, and so on. this development is what the term _go_ signifies in the maxim "_go_ from the concrete to the abstract"; it represents the dynamic and truly educative factor of the process. [sidenote: development of delight in the activity of thinking] . the outcome, the _abstract_ to which education is to proceed, is an interest in intellectual matters for their own sake, a delight in thinking for the sake of thinking. it is an old story that acts and processes which at the outset are incidental to something else develop and maintain an absorbing value of their own. so it is with thinking and with knowledge; at first incidental to results and adjustments beyond themselves, they attract more and more attention to themselves till they become ends, not means. children engage, unconstrainedly and continually, in reflective inspection and testing for the sake of what they are interested in doing successfully. habits of thinking thus generated may increase in volume and extent till they become of importance on their own account. [sidenote: examples of the transition] the three instances cited in chapter six represented an ascending cycle from the practical to the theoretical. taking thought to keep a personal engagement is obviously of the concrete kind. endeavoring to work out the meaning of a certain part of a boat is an instance of an intermediate kind. the reason for the existence and position of the pole is a practical reason, so that to the architect the problem was purely concrete--the maintenance of a certain system of action. but for the passenger on the boat, the problem was theoretical, more or less speculative. it made no difference to his reaching his destination whether he worked out the meaning of the pole. the third case, that of the appearance and movement of the bubbles, illustrates a strictly theoretical or abstract case. no overcoming of physical obstacles, no adjustment of external means to ends, is at stake. curiosity, intellectual curiosity, is challenged by a seemingly anomalous occurrence; and thinking tries simply to account for an apparent exception in terms of recognized principles. [sidenote: theoretical knowledge never the whole end] (_i_) abstract thinking, it should be noted, represents _an_ end, not _the_ end. the power of sustained thinking on matters remote from direct use is an outgrowth of practical and immediate modes of thought, but not a substitute for them. the educational end is not the destruction of power to think so as to surmount obstacles and adjust means and ends; it is not its replacement by abstract reflection. nor is theoretical thinking a higher type of thinking than practical. a person who has at command both types of thinking is of a higher order than he who possesses only one. methods that in developing abstract intellectual abilities weaken habits of practical or concrete thinking, fall as much short of the educational ideal as do the methods that in cultivating ability to plan, to invent, to arrange, to forecast, fail to secure some delight in thinking irrespective of practical consequences. [sidenote: nor that most congenial to the majority of pupils] (_ii_) educators should also note the very great individual differences that exist; they should not try to force one pattern and model upon all. in many (probably the majority) the executive tendency, the habit of mind that thinks for purposes of conduct and achievement, not for the sake of knowing, remains dominant to the end. engineers, lawyers, doctors, merchants, are much more numerous in adult life than scholars, scientists, and philosophers. while education should strive to make men who, however prominent their professional interests and aims, partake of the spirit of the scholar, philosopher, and scientist, no good reason appears why education should esteem the one mental habit inherently superior to the other, and deliberately try to transform the type from practical to theoretical. have not our schools (as already suggested, p. ) been one-sidedly devoted to the more abstract type of thinking, thus doing injustice to the majority of pupils? has not the idea of a "liberal" and "humane" education tended too often in practice to the production of technical, because overspecialized, thinkers? [sidenote: aim of education is a working balance] the aim of education should be to secure a balanced interaction of the two types of mental attitude, having sufficient regard to the disposition of the individual not to hamper and cripple whatever powers are naturally strong in him. the narrowness of individuals of strong concrete bent needs to be liberalized. every opportunity that occurs within their practical activities for developing curiosity and susceptibility to intellectual problems should be seized. violence is not done to natural disposition, but the latter is broadened. as regards the smaller number of those who have a taste for abstract, purely intellectual topics, pains should be taken to multiply opportunities and demands for the application of ideas; for translating symbolic truths into terms of social life and its ends. every human being has both capabilities, and every individual will be more effective and happier if both powers are developed in easy and close interaction with each other. chapter eleven empirical and scientific thinking § . _empirical thinking_ [sidenote: empirical thinking depends on past habits] apart from the development of scientific method, inferences depend upon habits that have been built up under the influence of a number of particular experiences not themselves arranged for logical purposes. a says, "it will probably rain to-morrow." b asks, "why do you think so?" and a replies, "because the sky was lowering at sunset." when b asks, "what has that to do with it?" a responds, "i do not know, but it generally does rain after such a sunset." he does not perceive any _connection_ between the appearance of the sky and coming rain; he is not aware of any continuity in the facts themselves--any law or principle, as we usually say. he simply, from frequently recurring conjunctions of the events, has associated them so that when he sees one he thinks of the other. one _suggests_ the other, or is _associated_ with it. a man may believe it will rain to-morrow because he has consulted the barometer; but if he has no conception how the height of the mercury column (or the position of an index moved by its rise and fall) is connected with variations of atmospheric pressure, and how these in turn are connected with the amount of moisture in the air, his belief in the likelihood of rain is purely empirical. when men lived in the open and got their living by hunting, fishing, or pasturing flocks, the detection of the signs and indications of weather changes was a matter of great importance. a body of proverbs and maxims, forming an extensive section of traditionary folklore, was developed. but as long as there was no understanding _why_ or _how_ certain events were signs, as long as foresight and weather shrewdness rested simply upon repeated conjunction among facts, beliefs about the weather were thoroughly empirical. [sidenote: it is fairly adequate in some matters,] in similar fashion learned men in the orient learned to predict, with considerable accuracy, the recurrent positions of the planets, the sun and the moon, and to foretell the time of eclipses, without understanding in any degree the laws of the movements of heavenly bodies--that is, without having a notion of the continuities existing among the facts themselves. they had learned from repeated observations that things happened in about such and such a fashion. till a comparatively recent time, the truths of medicine were mainly in the same condition. experience had shown that "upon the whole," "as a rule," "generally or usually speaking," certain results followed certain remedies, when symptoms were given. our beliefs about human nature in individuals (psychology) and in masses (sociology) are still very largely of a purely empirical sort. even the science of geometry, now frequently reckoned a typical rational science, began, among the egyptians, as an accumulation of recorded observations about methods of approximate mensuration of land surfaces; and only gradually assumed, among the greeks, scientific form. the _disadvantages_ of purely empirical thinking are obvious. [sidenote: but is very apt to lead to false beliefs,] . while many empirical conclusions are, roughly speaking, correct; while they are exact enough to be of great help in practical life; while the presages of a weatherwise sailor or hunter may be more accurate, within a certain restricted range, than those of a scientist who relies wholly upon scientific observations and tests; while, indeed, empirical observations and records furnish the raw or crude material of scientific knowledge, yet the empirical method affords no way of discriminating between right and wrong conclusions. hence it is responsible for a multitude of _false_ beliefs. the technical designation for one of the commonest fallacies is _post hoc, ergo propter hoc_; the belief that because one thing comes _after_ another, it comes _because_ of the other. now this fallacy of method is the animating principle of empirical conclusions, even when correct--the correctness being almost as much a matter of good luck as of method. that potatoes should be planted only during the crescent moon, that near the sea people are born at high tide and die at low tide, that a comet is an omen of danger, that bad luck follows the cracking of a mirror, that a patent medicine cures a disease--these and a thousand like notions are asseverated on the basis of empirical coincidence and conjunction. moreover, habits of expectation and belief are formed otherwise than by a number of repeated similar cases. [sidenote: and does not enable us to cope with the novel,] . the more numerous the experienced instances and the closer the watch kept upon them, the greater is the trustworthiness of constant conjunction as evidence of connection among the things themselves. many of our most important beliefs still have only this sort of warrant. no one can yet tell, with certainty, the necessary cause of old age or of death--which are empirically the most certain of all expectations. but even the most reliable beliefs of this type fail when they confront the _novel_. since they rest upon past uniformities, they are useless when further experience departs in any considerable measure from ancient incident and wonted precedent. empirical inference follows the grooves and ruts that custom wears, and has no track to follow when the groove disappears. so important is this aspect of the matter that clifford found the difference between ordinary skill and scientific thought right here. "skill enables a man to deal with the same circumstances that he has met before, scientific thought enables him to deal with different circumstances that he has never met before." and he goes so far as to define scientific thinking as "the application of old experience to new circumstances." [sidenote: and leads to laziness and presumption,] . we have not yet made the acquaintance of the most harmful feature of the empirical method. mental inertia, laziness, unjustifiable conservatism, are its probable accompaniments. its general effect upon mental attitude is more serious than even the specific wrong conclusions in which it has landed. wherever the chief dependence in forming inferences is upon the conjunctions observed in past experience, failures to agree with the usual order are slurred over, cases of successful confirmation are exaggerated. since the mind naturally demands some principle of continuity, some connecting link between separate facts and causes, forces are arbitrarily invented for that purpose. fantastic and mythological explanations are resorted to in order to supply missing links. the pump brings water because nature abhors a vacuum; opium makes men sleep because it has a dormitive potency; we recollect a past event because we have a faculty of memory. in the history of the progress of human knowledge, out and out myths accompany the first stage of empiricism; while "hidden essences" and "occult forces" mark its second stage. by their very nature, these "causes" escape observation, so that their explanatory value can be neither confirmed nor refuted by further observation or experience. hence belief in them becomes purely traditionary. they give rise to doctrines which, inculcated and handed down, become dogmas; subsequent inquiry and reflection are actually stifled. (_ante_, p. .) [sidenote: and to dogmatism] certain men or classes of men come to be the accepted guardians and transmitters--instructors--of established doctrines. to question the beliefs is to question their authority; to accept the beliefs is evidence of loyalty to the powers that be, a proof of good citizenship. passivity, docility, acquiescence, come to be primal intellectual virtues. facts and events presenting novelty and variety are slighted, or are sheared down till they fit into the procrustean bed of habitual belief. inquiry and doubt are silenced by citation of ancient laws or a multitude of miscellaneous and unsifted cases. this attitude of mind generates dislike of change, and the resulting aversion to novelty is fatal to progress. what will not fit into the established canons is outlawed; men who make new discoveries are objects of suspicion and even of persecution. beliefs that perhaps originally were the products of fairly extensive and careful observation are stereotyped into fixed traditions and semi-sacred dogmas accepted simply upon authority, and are mixed with fantastic conceptions that happen to have won the acceptance of authorities. § . _scientific method_ [sidenote: scientific thinking analyzes the present case] in contrast with the empirical method stands the scientific. scientific method replaces the repeated conjunction or coincidence of separate facts by discovery of a single comprehensive fact, effecting this replacement by _breaking up the coarse or gross facts of observation into a number of minuter processes not directly accessible to perception_. [sidenote: illustration from _suction_ of empirical method,] if a layman were asked why water rises from the cistern when an ordinary pump is worked, he would doubtless answer, "by suction." suction is regarded as a force like heat or pressure. if such a person is confronted by the fact that water rises with a suction pump only about thirty-three feet, he easily disposes of the difficulty on the ground that all forces vary in their intensities and finally reach a limit at which they cease to operate. the variation with elevation above the sea level of the height to which water can be pumped is either unnoticed, or, if noted, is dismissed as one of the curious anomalies in which nature abounds. [sidenote: of scientific method] [sidenote: relies on differences,] now the scientist advances by assuming that what seems to observation to be a single total fact is in truth complex. he attempts, therefore, to break up the single fact of water-rising-in-the-pipe into a number of lesser facts. his method of proceeding is by _varying conditions one by one_ so far as possible, and noting just what happens when a given condition is eliminated. there are two methods for varying conditions.[ ] the first is an extension of the empirical method of observation. it consists in comparing very carefully the results of a great number of observations which have occurred under accidentally _different_ conditions. the difference in the rise of the water at different heights above the sea level, and its total cessation when the distance to be lifted is, even at sea level, more than thirty-three feet, are emphasized, instead of being slurred over. the purpose is to find out what _special conditions_ are present when the effect occurs and absent when it fails to occur. these special conditions are then substituted for the gross fact, or regarded as its principle--the key to understanding it. [ ] the next two paragraphs repeat, for purposes of the present discussion, what we have already noted in a different context. see p. and p. . [sidenote: and creates differences] the method of analysis by comparing cases is, however, badly handicapped; it can do nothing until it is presented with a certain number of diversified cases. and even when different cases are at hand, it will be questionable whether they vary in just these respects in which it is important that they should vary in order to throw light upon the question at issue. the method is passive and dependent upon external accidents. hence the superiority of the active or experimental method. even a small number of observations may suggest an explanation--a hypothesis or theory. working upon this suggestion, the scientist may then _intentionally_ vary conditions and note what happens. if the empirical observations have suggested to him the possibility of a connection between air pressure on the water and the rising of the water in the tube where air pressure is absent, he deliberately empties the air out of the vessel in which the water is contained and notes that suction no longer works; or he intentionally increases atmospheric pressure on the water and notes the result. he institutes experiments to calculate the weight of air at the sea level and at various levels above, and compares the results of reasoning based upon the pressure of air of these various weights upon a certain volume of water with the results actually obtained by observation. _observations formed by variation of conditions on the basis of some idea or theory constitute experiment._ experiment is the chief resource in scientific reasoning because it facilitates the picking out of significant elements in a gross, vague whole. [sidenote: analysis and synthesis again] experimental thinking, or scientific reasoning, is thus a conjoint process of _analysis and synthesis_, or, in less technical language, of discrimination and assimilation or identification. the gross fact of water rising when the suction valve is worked is resolved or discriminated into a number of independent variables, some of which had never before been observed or even thought of in connection with the fact. one of these facts, the weight of the atmosphere, is then selectively seized upon as the key to the entire phenomenon. this disentangling constitutes _analysis_. but atmosphere and its pressure or weight is a fact not confined to this single instance. it is a fact familiar or at least discoverable as operative in a great number of other events. in fixing upon this imperceptible and minute fact as the essence or key to the elevation of water by the pump, the pump-fact has thus been assimilated to a whole group of ordinary facts from which it was previously isolated. this assimilation constitutes _synthesis_. moreover, the fact of atmospheric pressure is itself a case of one of the commonest of all facts--weight or gravitational force. conclusions that apply to the common fact of weight are thus transferable to the consideration and interpretation of the _relatively_ rare and exceptional case of the suction of water. the suction pump is seen to be a case of the same kind or sort as the siphon, the barometer, the rising of the balloon, and a multitude of other things with which at first sight it has no connection at all. this is another instance of the synthetic or assimilative phase of scientific thinking. if we revert to the advantages of scientific over empirical thinking, we find that we now have the clue to them. [sidenote: lessened liability to error] (_a_) the increased security, the added factor of certainty or proof, is due to the substitution of the _detailed and specific fact_ of atmospheric pressure for the gross and total and relatively miscellaneous fact of suction. the latter is complex, and its complexity is due to many unknown and unspecified factors; hence, any statement about it is more or less random, and likely to be defeated by any unforeseen variation of circumstances. _comparatively_, at least, the minute and detailed fact of air pressure is a measurable and definite fact--one that can be picked out and managed with assurance. [sidenote: ability to manage the new] (_b_) as analysis accounts for the added certainty, so synthesis accounts for ability to cope with the novel and variable. weight is a much commoner fact than atmospheric weight, and this in turn is a much commoner fact than the workings of the suction pump. to be able to substitute the common and frequent fact for that which is relatively rare and peculiar is to reduce the seemingly novel and exceptional to cases of a general and familiar principle, and thus to bring them under control for interpretation and prediction. as professor james says: "think of heat as motion and whatever is true of motion will be true of heat; but we have a hundred experiences of motion for every one of heat. think of rays passing through this lens as cases of bending toward the perpendicular, and you substitute for the comparatively unfamiliar lens the very familiar notion of a particular change in direction of a line, of which notion every day brings us countless examples."[ ] [ ] _psychology_, vol. ii. p. . [sidenote: interest in the future or in progress] (_c_) the change of attitude from conservative reliance upon the past, upon routine and custom, to faith in progress through the intelligent regulation of existing conditions, is, of course, the reflex of the scientific method of experimentation. the empirical method inevitably magnifies the influences of the past; the experimental method throws into relief the possibilities of the future. the empirical method says, "_wait_ till there is a sufficient number of cases;" the experimental method says, "_produce_ the cases." the former depends upon nature's accidentally happening to present us with certain conjunctions of circumstances; the latter deliberately and intentionally endeavors to bring about the conjunction. by this method the notion of progress secures scientific warrant. [sidenote: physical _versus_ logical force] ordinary experience is controlled largely by the direct strength and intensity of various occurrences. what is bright, sudden, loud, secures notice and is given a conspicuous rating. what is dim, feeble, and continuous gets ignored, or is regarded as of slight importance. customary experience tends to the control of thinking by considerations of _direct and immediate strength_ rather than by those of importance in the long run. animals without the power of forecast and planning must, upon the whole, respond to the stimuli that are most urgent at the moment, or cease to exist. these stimuli lose nothing of their direct urgency and clamorous insistency when the thinking power develops; and yet thinking demands the subordination of the immediate stimulus to the remote and distant. the feeble and the minute may be of much greater importance than the glaring and the big. the latter may be signs of a force that is already exhausting itself; the former may indicate the beginnings of a process in which the whole fortune of the individual is involved. the prime necessity for scientific thought is that the thinker be freed from the tyranny of sense stimuli and habit, and this emancipation is also the necessary condition of progress. [sidenote: illustration from moving water] consider the following quotation: "when it first occurred to a reflecting mind that moving water had a property identical with human or brute force, namely, the property of setting other masses in motion, overcoming inertia and resistance,--when the sight of the stream suggested through this point of likeness the power of the animal,--a new addition was made to the class of prime movers, and when circumstances permitted, this power could become a substitute for the others. it may seem to the modern understanding, familiar with water wheels and drifting rafts, that the similarity here was an extremely obvious one. but if we put ourselves back into an early state of mind, when running water affected the mind _by its brilliancy, its roar and irregular devastation_, we may easily suppose that to identify this with animal muscular energy was by no means an obvious effort."[ ] [ ] bain, _the senses and intellect_, third american ed., , p. (italics not in original). [sidenote: value of abstraction] if we add to these obvious sensory features the various social customs and expectations which fix the attitude of the individual, the evil of the subjection of free and fertile suggestion to empirical considerations becomes clear. a certain power of _abstraction_, of deliberate turning away from the habitual responses to a situation, was required before men could be emancipated to follow up suggestions that in the end are fruitful. [sidenote: experience as inclusive of thought] in short, the term _experience_ may be interpreted either with reference to the _empirical_ or the _experimental_ attitude of mind. experience is not a rigid and closed thing; it is vital, and hence growing. when dominated by the past, by custom and routine, it is often opposed to the reasonable, the thoughtful. but experience also includes the reflection that sets us free from the limiting influence of sense, appetite, and tradition. experience may welcome and assimilate all that the most exact and penetrating thought discovers. indeed, the business of education might be defined as just such an emancipation and enlargement of experience. education takes the individual while he is relatively plastic, before he has become so indurated by isolated experiences as to be rendered hopelessly empirical in his habit of mind. the attitude of childhood is naïve, wondering, experimental; the world of man and nature is new. right methods of education preserve and perfect this attitude, and thereby short-circuit for the individual the slow progress of the race, eliminating the waste that comes from inert routine. part three: the training of thought chapter twelve activity and the training of thought in this chapter we shall gather together and amplify considerations that have already been advanced, in various passages of the preceding pages, concerning the relation of _action to thought_. we shall follow, though not with exactness, the order of development in the unfolding human being. § . _the early stage of activity_ [sidenote: . the baby's problem determines his thinking] the sight of a baby often calls out the question: "what do you suppose he is thinking about?" by the nature of the case, the question is unanswerable in detail; but, also by the nature of the case, we may be sure about a baby's chief interest. his primary problem is mastery of his body as a tool of securing comfortable and effective adjustments to his surroundings, physical and social. the child has to learn to do almost everything: to see, to hear, to reach, to handle, to balance the body, to creep, to walk, and so on. even if it be true that human beings have even more instinctive reactions than lower animals, it is also true that instinctive tendencies are much less perfect in men, and that most of them are of little use till they are intelligently combined and directed. a little chick just out of the shell will after a few trials peck at and grasp grains of food with its beak as well as at any later time. this involves a complicated coördination of the eye and the head. an infant does not even begin to reach definitely for things that the eye sees till he is several months old, and even then several weeks' practice is required before he learns the adjustment so as neither to overreach nor to underreach. it may not be literally true that the child will grasp for the moon, but it is true that he needs much practice before he can tell whether an object is within reach or not. the arm is thrust out instinctively in response to a stimulus from the eye, and this tendency is the origin of the ability to reach and grasp exactly and quickly; but nevertheless final mastery requires observing and selecting the successful movements, and arranging them in view of an end. _these operations of conscious selection and arrangement constitute thinking_, though of a rudimentary type. [sidenote: mastery of the body is an intellectual problem] since mastery of the bodily organs is necessary for all later developments, such problems are both interesting and important, and solving them supplies a very genuine training of thinking power. the joy the child shows in learning to use his limbs, to translate what he sees into what he handles, to connect sounds with sights, sights with taste and touch, and the rapidity with which intelligence grows in the first year and a half of life (the time during which the more fundamental problems of the use of the organism are mastered), are sufficient evidence that the development of physical control is not a physical but an intellectual achievement. [sidenote: . the problem of social adjustment and intercourse] although in the early months the child is mainly occupied in learning to use his body to accommodate himself to physical conditions in a comfortable way and to use things skillfully and effectively, yet social adjustments are very important. in connection with parents, nurse, brother, and sister, the child learns the signs of satisfaction of hunger, of removal of discomfort, of the approach of agreeable light, color, sound, and so on. his contact with physical things is regulated by persons, and he soon distinguishes persons as the most important and interesting of all the objects with which he has to do. speech, the accurate adaptation of sounds heard to the movements of tongue and lips, is, however, the great instrument of social adaptation; and with the development of speech (usually in the second year) adaptation of the baby's activities to and with those of other persons gives the keynote of mental life. his range of possible activities is indefinitely widened as he watches what other persons do, and as he tries to understand and to do what they encourage him to attempt. the outline pattern of mental life is thus set in the first four or five years. years, centuries, generations of invention and planning, may have gone to the development of the performances and occupations of the adults surrounding the child. yet for him their activities are direct stimuli; they are part of his natural environment; they are carried on in physical terms that appeal to his eye, ear, and touch. he cannot, of course, appropriate their meaning directly through his senses; but they furnish stimuli to which he responds, so that his attention is focussed upon a higher order of materials and of problems. were it not for this process by which the achievements of one generation form the stimuli that direct the activities of the next, the story of civilization would be writ in water, and each generation would have laboriously to make for itself, if it could, its way out of savagery. [sidenote: social adjustment results in imitation but is not caused by it] imitation is one (though only one, see p. ) of the means by which the activities of adults supply stimuli which are so interesting, so varied, so complex, and so novel, as to occasion a rapid progress of thought. mere imitation, however, would not give rise to thinking; if we could learn like parrots by simply copying the outward acts of others, we should never have to think; nor should we know, after we had mastered the copied act, what was the meaning of the thing we had done. educators (and psychologists) have often assumed that acts which reproduce the behavior of others are acquired merely by imitation. but a child rarely learns by conscious imitation; and to say that his imitation is unconscious is to say that it is not from his standpoint imitation at all. the word, the gesture, the act, the occupation of another, falls in line with _some impulse already active_ and suggests some satisfactory mode of expression, some end in which it may find fulfillment. having this end of his own, the child then notes other persons, as he notes natural events, to get further suggestions as to means of its realization. he selects some of the means he observes, tries them on, finds them successful or unsuccessful, is confirmed or weakened in his belief in their value, and so continues selecting, arranging, adapting, testing, till he can accomplish what he wishes. the onlooker may then observe the resemblance of this act to some act of an adult, and conclude that it was acquired by imitation, while as a matter of fact it was acquired by attention, observation, selection, experimentation, and confirmation by results. only because this method is employed is there intellectual discipline and an educative result. the presence of adult activities plays an enormous rôle in the intellectual growth of the child because they add to the natural stimuli of the world new stimuli which are more exactly adapted to the needs of a human being, which are richer, better organized, more complex in range, permitting more flexible adaptations, and calling out novel reactions. but in utilizing these stimuli the child follows the same methods that he uses when he is forced to think in order to master his body. § . _play, work, and allied forms of activity_ [sidenote: play indicates the domination of activity by meanings or ideas] [sidenote: organization of ideas involved in play] when things become signs, when they gain a representative capacity as standing for other things, play is transformed from mere physical exuberance into an activity involving a mental factor. a little girl who had broken her doll was seen to perform with the leg of the doll all the operations of washing, putting to bed, and fondling, that she had been accustomed to perform with the entire doll. the part stood for the whole; she reacted not to the stimulus sensibly present, but to the meaning suggested by the sense object. so children use a stone for a table, leaves for plates, acorns for cups. so they use their dolls, their trains, their blocks, their other toys. in manipulating them, they are living not with the physical things, but in the large world of meanings, natural and social, evoked by these things. so when children play horse, play store, play house or making calls, they are subordinating the physically present to the ideally signified. in this way, a world of meanings, a store of concepts (so fundamental to all intellectual achievement), is defined and built up. moreover, not only do meanings thus become familiar acquaintances, but they are organized, arranged in groups, made to cohere in connected ways. a play and a story blend insensibly into each other. the most fanciful plays of children rarely lose all touch with the mutual fitness and pertinency of various meanings to one another; the "freest" plays observe some principles of coherence and unification. they have a beginning, middle, and end. in games, rules of order run through various minor acts and bind them into a connected whole. the rhythm, the competition, and coöperation involved in most plays and games also introduce organization. there is, then, nothing mysterious or mystical in the discovery made by plato and remade by froebel that play is the chief, almost the only, mode of education for the child in the years of later infancy. [sidenote: the playful attitude] _playfulness_ is a more important consideration than play. the former is an attitude of mind; the latter is a passing outward manifestation of this attitude. when things are treated simply as vehicles of suggestion, what is suggested overrides the thing. hence the playful attitude is one of freedom. the person is not bound to the physical traits of things, nor does he care whether a thing really means (as we say) what he takes it to represent. when the child plays horse with a broom and cars with chairs, the fact that the broom does not really represent a horse, or a chair a locomotive, is of no account. in order, then, that playfulness may not terminate in arbitrary fancifulness and in building up an imaginary world alongside the world of actual things, it is necessary that the play attitude should gradually pass into a work attitude. [sidenote: the work attitude is interested in means and ends] what is work--work not as mere external performance, but as attitude of mind? it signifies that the person is not content longer to accept and to act upon the meanings that things suggest, but demands congruity of meaning with the things themselves. in the natural course of growth, children come to find irresponsible make-believe plays inadequate. a fiction is too easy a way out to afford content. there is not enough stimulus to call forth satisfactory mental response. when this point is reached, the ideas that things suggest must be applied to the things with some regard to fitness. a small cart, resembling a "real" cart, with "real" wheels, tongue, and body, meets the mental demand better than merely making believe that anything which comes to hand is a cart. occasionally to take part in setting a "real" table with "real" dishes brings more reward than forever to make believe a flat stone is a table and that leaves are dishes. the interest may still center in the meanings, the things may be of importance only as amplifying a certain meaning. so far the attitude is one of play. but the meaning is now of such a character that it must find appropriate embodiment in actual things. the dictionary does not permit us to call such activities work. nevertheless, they represent a genuine passage of play into work. for work (as a mental attitude, not as mere external performance) _means interest in the adequate embodiment of a meaning_ (a suggestion, purpose, aim) _in objective form through the use of appropriate materials and appliances_. such an attitude takes advantage of the meanings aroused and built up in free play, but _controls their development by seeing to it that they are applied to things in ways consistent with the observable structure of the things themselves_. [sidenote: and in processes on account of their results] the point of this distinction between play and work may be cleared up by comparing it with a more usual way of stating the difference. in play activity, it is said, the interest is in the activity for its own sake; in work, it is in the product or result in which the activity terminates. hence the former is purely free, while the latter is tied down by the end to be achieved. when the difference is stated in this sharp fashion, there is almost always introduced a false, unnatural separation between process and product, between activity and its achieved outcome. the true distinction is not between an interest in activity for its own sake and interest in the external result of that activity, but between an interest in an activity just as it flows on from moment to moment, and an interest in an activity as tending to a culmination, to an outcome, and therefore possessing a thread of continuity binding together its successive stages. both may equally exemplify interest in an activity "for its own sake"; but in one case the activity in which the interest resides is more or less casual, following the accident of circumstance and whim, or of dictation; in the other, the activity is enriched by the sense that it leads somewhere, that it amounts to something. [sidenote: consequences of the sharp separation of play and work] were it not that the false theory of the relation of the play and the work attitudes has been connected with unfortunate modes of school practice, insistence upon a truer view might seem an unnecessary refinement. but the sharp break that unfortunately prevails between the kindergarten and the grades is evidence that the theoretical distinction has practical implications. under the title of play, the former is rendered unduly symbolic, fanciful, sentimental, and arbitrary; while under the antithetical caption of work the latter contains many _tasks externally assigned_. the former has no end and the latter an end so remote that only the educator, not the child, is aware that it is an end. there comes a time when children must extend and make more exact their acquaintance with existing things; must conceive ends and consequences with sufficient definiteness to guide their actions by them, and must acquire some technical skill in selecting and arranging means to realize these ends. unless these factors are gradually introduced in the earlier play period, they must be introduced later abruptly and arbitrarily, to the manifest disadvantage of both the earlier and the later stages. [sidenote: false notions of imagination and utility] the sharp opposition of play and work is usually associated with false notions of utility and imagination. activity that is directed upon matters of home and neighborhood interest is depreciated as merely utilitarian. to let the child wash dishes, set the table, engage in cooking, cut and sew dolls' clothes, make boxes that will hold "real things," and construct his own playthings by using hammer and nails, excludes, so it is said, the æsthetic and appreciative factor, eliminates imagination, and subjects the child's development to material and practical concerns; while (so it is said) to reproduce symbolically the domestic relationships of birds and other animals, of human father and mother and child, of workman and tradesman, of knight, soldier, and magistrate, secures a liberal exercise of mind, of great moral as well as intellectual value. it has been even stated that it is over-physical and utilitarian if a child plants seeds and takes care of growing plants in the kindergarten; while reproducing dramatically operations of planting, cultivating, reaping, and so on, either with no physical materials or with symbolic representatives, is highly educative to the imagination and to spiritual appreciation. toy dolls, trains of cars, boats, and engines are rigidly excluded, and the employ of cubes, balls, and other symbols for representing these social activities is recommended on the same ground. the more unfitted the physical object for its imagined purpose, such as a cube for a boat, the greater is the supposed appeal to the imagination. [sidenote: imagination a medium of realizing the absent and significant] there are several fallacies in this way of thinking. (_a_) the healthy imagination deals not with the unreal, but with the mental realization of what is suggested. its exercise is not a flight into the purely fanciful and ideal, but a method of expanding and filling in what is real. to the child the homely activities going on about him are not utilitarian devices for accomplishing physical ends; they exemplify a wonderful world the depths of which he has not sounded, a world full of the mystery and promise that attend all the doings of the grown-ups whom he admires. however prosaic this world may be to the adults who find its duties routine affairs, to the child it is fraught with social meaning. to engage in it is to exercise the imagination in constructing an experience of wider value than any the child has yet mastered. [sidenote: only the already experienced can be symbolized] (_b_) educators sometimes think children are reacting to a great moral or spiritual truth when the children's reactions are largely physical and sensational. children have great powers of dramatic simulation, and their physical bearing may seem (to adults prepossessed with a philosophic theory) to indicate they have been impressed with some lesson of chivalry, devotion, or nobility, when the children themselves are occupied only with transitory physical excitations. to symbolize great truths far beyond the child's range of actual experience is an impossibility, and to attempt it is to invite love of momentary stimulation. [sidenote: useful work is not necessarily labor] (_c_) just as the opponents of play in education always conceive of play as mere amusement, so the opponents of direct and useful activities confuse occupation with labor. the adult is acquainted with responsible labor upon which serious financial results depend. consequently he seeks relief, relaxation, amusement. unless children have prematurely worked for hire, unless they have come under the blight of child labor, no such division exists for them. whatever appeals to them at all, appeals directly on its own account. there is no contrast between doing things for utility and for fun. their life is more united and more wholesome. to suppose that activities customarily performed by adults only under the pressure of utility may not be done perfectly freely and joyously by children indicates a lack of imagination. not the thing done but the quality of mind that goes into the doing settles what is utilitarian and what is unconstrained and educative. § . _constructive occupations_ [sidenote: the historic growth of sciences out of occupations] the history of culture shows that mankind's scientific knowledge and technical abilities have developed, especially in all their earlier stages, out of the fundamental problems of life. anatomy and physiology grew out of the practical needs of keeping healthy and active; geometry and mechanics out of demands for measuring land, for building, and for making labor-saving machines; astronomy has been closely connected with navigation, keeping record of the passage of time; botany grew out of the requirements of medicine and of agronomy; chemistry has been associated with dyeing, metallurgy, and other industrial pursuits. in turn, modern industry is almost wholly a matter of applied science; year by year the domain of routine and crude empiricism is narrowed by the translation of scientific discovery into industrial invention. the trolley, the telephone, the electric light, the steam engine, with all their revolutionary consequences for social intercourse and control, are the fruits of science. [sidenote: the intellectual possibilities of school occupations] these facts are full of educational significance. most children are preëminently active in their tendencies. the schools have also taken on--largely from utilitarian, rather than from strictly educative reasons--a large number of active pursuits commonly grouped under the head of manual training, including also school gardens, excursions, and various graphic arts. perhaps the most pressing problem of education at the present moment is to organize and relate these subjects so that they will become instruments for forming alert, persistent, and fruitful intellectual habits. that they take hold of the more primary and native equipment of children (appealing to their desire to do) is generally recognized; that they afford great opportunity for training in self-reliant and efficient social service is gaining acknowledgment. but they may also be used for presenting _typical problems to be solved by personal reflection and experimentation, and by acquiring definite bodies of knowledge leading later to more specialized scientific knowledge_. there is indeed no magic by which mere physical activity or deft manipulation will secure intellectual results. (see p. .) manual subjects may be taught by routine, by dictation, or by convention as readily as bookish subjects. but intelligent consecutive work in gardening, cooking, or weaving, or in elementary wood and iron, may be planned which will inevitably result in students not only amassing information of practical and scientific importance in botany, zoölogy, chemistry, physics, and other sciences, but (what is more significant) in their becoming versed in methods of experimental inquiry and proof. [sidenote: reorganization of the course of study] that the elementary curriculum is overloaded is a common complaint. the only alternative to a reactionary return to the educational traditions of the past lies in working out the intellectual possibilities resident in the various arts, crafts, and occupations, and reorganizing the curriculum accordingly. here, more than elsewhere, are found the means by which the blind and routine experience of the race may be transformed into illuminated and emancipated experiment. chapter thirteen language and the training of thought § . _language as the tool of thinking_ [sidenote: ambiguous position of language] speech has such a peculiarly intimate connection with thought as to require special discussion. although the very word logic comes from logos ([greek: logos]), meaning indifferently both word or speech, and thought or reason, yet "words, words, words" denote intellectual barrenness, a sham of thought. although schooling has language as its chief instrument (and often as its chief matter) of study, educational reformers have for centuries brought their severest indictments against the current use of language in the schools. the conviction that language is necessary to thinking (is even identical with it) is met by the contention that language perverts and conceals thought. [sidenote: language a necessary tool of thinking,] [sidenote: for it alone fixes meanings] three typical views have been maintained regarding the relation of thought and language: first, that they are identical; second, that words are the garb or clothing of thought, necessary not for thought but only for conveying it; and third (the view we shall here maintain) that while language is not thought it is necessary for thinking as well as for its communication. when it is said, however, that thinking is impossible without language, we must recall that language includes much more than oral and written speech. gestures, pictures, monuments, visual images, finger movements--anything consciously employed as a _sign_ is, logically, language. to say that language is necessary for thinking is to say that signs are necessary. thought deals not with bare things, but with their _meanings_, their suggestions; and meanings, in order to be apprehended, must be embodied in sensible and particular existences. without meaning, things are nothing but blind stimuli or chance sources of pleasure and pain; and since meanings are not themselves tangible things, they must be anchored by attachment to some physical existence. existences that are especially set aside to fixate and convey meanings are _signs_ or _symbols_. if a man moves toward another to throw him out of the room, his movement is not a sign. if, however, the man points to the door with his hand, or utters the sound _go_, his movement is reduced to a vehicle of meaning: it is a sign or symbol. in the case of signs we care nothing for what they are in themselves, but everything for what they signify and represent. _canis_, _hund_, _chien_, dog--it makes no difference what the outward thing is, so long as the meaning is presented. [sidenote: limitations of natural symbols] natural objects are signs of other things and events. clouds stand for rain; a footprint represents game or an enemy; a projecting rock serves to indicate minerals below the surface. the limitations of natural signs are, however, great. (_i_) the physical or direct sense excitation tends to distract attention from what is meant or indicated.[ ] almost every one will recall pointing out to a kitten or puppy some object of food, only to have the animal devote himself to the hand pointing, not to the thing pointed at. (_ii_) where natural signs alone exist, we are mainly at the mercy of external happenings; we have to wait until the natural event presents itself in order to be warned or advised of the possibility of some other event. (_iii_) natural signs, not being originally intended to be signs, are cumbrous, bulky, inconvenient, unmanageable. [ ] compare the quotation from bain on p. . [sidenote: artificial signs overcome these restrictions.] it is therefore indispensable for any high development of thought that there should be also intentional signs. speech supplies the requirement. gestures, sounds, written or printed forms, are strictly physical existences, but their native value is intentionally subordinated to the value they acquire as representative of meanings. (_i_) the direct and sensible value of faint sounds and minute written or printed marks is very slight. accordingly, attention is not distracted from their _representative_ function. (_ii_) their production is under our direct control so that they may be produced when needed. when we can make the word _rain_, we do not have to wait for some physical forerunner of rain to call our thoughts in that direction. we cannot make the cloud; we can make the sound, and as a token of meaning the sound serves the purpose as well as the cloud. (_iii_) arbitrary linguistic signs are convenient and easy to manage. they are compact, portable, and delicate. as long as we live we breathe; and modifications by the muscles of throat and mouth of the volume and quality of the air are simple, easy, and indefinitely controllable. bodily postures and gestures of the hand and arm are also employed as signs, but they are coarse and unmanageable compared with modifications of breath to produce sounds. no wonder that oral speech has been selected as the main stuff of intentional intellectual signs. sounds, while subtle, refined, and easily modifiable, are transitory. this defect is met by the system of written and printed words, appealing to the eye. _litera scripta manet._ bearing in mind the intimate connection of meanings and signs (or language), we may note in more detail what language does ( ) for specific meanings, and ( ) for the organization of meanings. i. individual meanings. a verbal sign (_a_) selects, detaches, a meaning from what is otherwise a vague flux and blur (see p. ); (_b_) it retains, registers, stores that meaning; and (_c_) applies it, when needed, to the comprehension of other things. combining these various functions in a mixture of metaphors, we may say that a linguistic sign is a fence, a label, and a vehicle--all in one. [sidenote: a sign makes a meaning distinct] (_a_) every one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. some meaning seems almost within reach, but is elusive; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attaching of a word somehow (just how, it is almost impossible to say) puts limits around the meaning, draws it out from the void, makes it stand out as an entity on its own account. when emerson said that he would almost rather know the true name, the poet's name, for a thing, than to know the thing itself, he presumably had this irradiating and illuminating function of language in mind. the delight that children take in demanding and learning the names of everything about them indicates that meanings are becoming concrete individuals to them, so that their commerce with things is passing from the physical to the intellectual plane. it is hardly surprising that savages attach a magic efficacy to words. to name anything is to give it a title; to dignify and honor it by raising it from a mere physical occurrence to a meaning that is distinct and permanent. to know the names of people and things and to be able to manipulate these names is, in savage lore, to be in possession of their dignity and worth, to master them. [sidenote: a sign preserves a meaning] (_b_) things come and go; or we come and go, and either way things escape our notice. our direct sensible relation to things is very limited. the suggestion of meanings by natural signs is limited to occasions of direct contact or vision. but a meaning fixed by a linguistic sign is conserved for future use. even if the thing is not there to represent the meaning, the word may be produced so as to evoke the meaning. since intellectual life depends on possession of a store of meanings, the importance of language as a tool of preserving meanings cannot be overstated. to be sure, the method of storage is not wholly aseptic; words often corrupt and modify the meanings they are supposed to keep intact, but liability to infection is a price paid by every living thing for the privilege of living. [sidenote: a sign transfers a meaning] (_c_) when a meaning is detached and fixed by a sign, it is possible to use that meaning in a new context and situation. this transfer and reapplication is the key to all judgment and inference. it would little profit a man to recognize that a given particular cloud was the premonitor of a given particular rainstorm if his recognition ended there, for he would then have to learn over and over again, since the next cloud and the next rain are different events. no cumulative growth of intelligence would occur; experience might form habits of physical adaptation but it would not teach anything, for we should not be able to use a prior experience consciously to anticipate and regulate a further experience. to be able to use the past to judge and infer the new and unknown implies that, although the past thing has gone, its _meaning_ abides in such a way as to be applicable in determining the character of the new. speech forms are our great carriers: the easy-running vehicles by which meanings are transported from experiences that no longer concern us to those that are as yet dark and dubious. [sidenote: logical organization depends upon signs] ii. organization of meanings. in emphasizing the importance of signs in relation to specific meanings, we have overlooked another aspect, equally valuable. signs not only mark off specific or individual meanings, but they are also instruments of grouping meanings in relation to one another. words are not only names or titles of single meanings; they also form _sentences_ in which meanings are organized in relation to one another. when we say "that book is a dictionary," or "that blur of light in the heavens is halley's comet," we express a _logical_ connection--an act of classifying and defining that goes beyond the physical thing into the logical region of genera and species, things and attributes. propositions, sentences, bear the same relation to judgments that distinct words, built up mainly by analyzing propositions in their various types, bear to meanings or conceptions; and just as words imply a sentence, so a sentence implies a larger whole of consecutive discourse into which it fits. as is often said, grammar expresses the unconscious logic of the popular mind. _the chief intellectual classifications that constitute the working capital of thought have been built up for us by our mother tongue._ our very lack of explicit consciousness in using language that we are employing the intellectual systematizations of the race shows how thoroughly accustomed we have become to its logical distinctions and groupings. § . _the abuse of linguistic methods in education_ [sidenote: teaching merely things, not educative] taken literally, the maxim, "teach things, not words," or "teach things before words," would be the negation of education; it would reduce mental life to mere physical and sensible adjustments. learning, in the proper sense, is not learning things, but the _meanings_ of things, and this process involves the use of signs, or language in its generic sense. in like fashion, the warfare of some educational reformers against symbols, if pushed to extremes, involves the destruction of the intellectual life, since this lives, moves, and has its being in those processes of definition, abstraction, generalization, and classification that are made possible by symbols alone. nevertheless, these contentions of educational reformers have been needed. the liability of a thing to abuse is in proportion to the value of its right use. [sidenote: but words separated from things are not true signs] symbols are themselves, as pointed out above, particular, physical, sensible existences, like any other things. they are symbols only by virtue of what they suggest and represent, _i.e._ meanings. (_i_) they stand for these meanings to any individual only when he has had _experience_ of some situation to which these meanings are actually relevant. words can detach and preserve a meaning only when the meaning has been first involved in our own direct intercourse with things. to attempt to give a meaning through a word alone without any dealings with a thing is to deprive the word of intelligible signification; against this attempt, a tendency only too prevalent in education, reformers have protested. moreover, there is a tendency to assume that whenever there is a definite word or form of speech there is also a definite idea; while, as a matter of fact, adults and children alike are capable of using even precise verbal formulæ with only the vaguest and most confused sense of what they mean. genuine ignorance is more profitable because likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open-mindedness; while ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with a varnish waterproof to new ideas. [sidenote: language tends to arrest personal inquiry and reflection] (_ii_) again, although new combinations of words without the intervention of physical things may supply new ideas, there are limits to this possibility. lazy inertness causes individuals to accept ideas that have currency about them without personal inquiry and testing. a man uses thought, perhaps, to find out what others believe, and then stops. the ideas of others as embodied in language become substitutes for one's own ideas. the use of linguistic studies and methods to halt the human mind on the level of the attainments of the past, to prevent new inquiry and discovery, to put the authority of tradition in place of the authority of natural facts and laws, to reduce the individual to a parasite living on the secondhand experience of others--these things have been the source of the reformers' protest against the preëminence assigned to language in schools. [sidenote: words as mere stimuli] finally, words that originally stood for ideas come, with repeated use, to be mere counters; they become physical things to be manipulated according to certain rules, or reacted to by certain operations without consciousness of their meaning. mr. stout (who has called such terms "substitute signs")remarks that "algebraical and arithmetical signs are to a great extent used as mere substitute signs.... it is possible to use signs of this kind whenever fixed and definite rules of operation can be derived from the nature of the things symbolized, so as to be applied in manipulating the signs, without further reference to their signification. a word is an instrument for thinking about the meaning which it expresses; a substitute sign is a means of _not_ thinking about the meaning which it symbolizes." the principle applies, however, to ordinary words, as well as to algebraic signs; they also enable us to use meanings so as to get results without thinking. in many respects, signs that are means of not thinking are of great advantage; standing for the familiar, they release attention for meanings that, being novel, require conscious interpretation. nevertheless, the premium put in the schoolroom upon attainment of technical facility, upon skill in producing external results (_ante_, p. ), often changes this advantage into a positive detriment. in manipulating symbols so as to recite well, to get and give correct answers, to follow prescribed formulæ of analysis, the pupil's attitude becomes mechanical, rather than thoughtful; verbal memorizing is substituted for inquiry into the meaning of things. this danger is perhaps the one uppermost in mind when verbal methods of education are attacked. § . _the use of language in its educational bearings_ language stands in a twofold relation to the work of education. on the one hand, it is continually used in all studies as well as in all the social discipline of the school; on the other, it is a distinct object of study. we shall consider only the ordinary use of language, since its effects upon habits of thought are much deeper than those of conscious study. [sidenote: language not primarily intellectual in purpose] the common statement that "language is the expression of thought" conveys only a half-truth, and a half-truth that is likely to result in positive error. language does express thought, but not primarily, nor, at first, even consciously. the primary motive for language is to influence (through the expression of desire, emotion, and thought) the activity of others; its secondary use is to enter into more intimate sociable relations with them; its employment as a conscious vehicle of thought and knowledge is a tertiary, and relatively late, formation. the contrast is well brought out by the statement of john locke that words have a double use,--"civil" and "philosophical." "by their civil use, i mean such a communication of thoughts and ideas by words as may serve for the upholding of common conversation and commerce about the ordinary affairs and conveniences of civil life.... by the philosophical use of words, i mean such a use of them as may serve to convey the precise notions of things, and to express in general propositions certain and undoubted truths." [sidenote: hence education has to transform it into an intellectual tool] this distinction of the practical and social from the intellectual use of language throws much light on the problem of the school in respect to speech. that problem is _to direct pupils' oral and written speech, used primarily for practical and social ends, so that gradually it shall become a conscious tool of conveying knowledge and assisting thought_. how without checking the spontaneous, natural motives--motives to which language owes its vitality, force, vividness, and variety--are we to modify speech habits so as to render them accurate and flexible _intellectual_ instruments? it is comparatively easy to encourage the original spontaneous flow and not make language over into a servant of reflective thought; it is comparatively easy to check and almost destroy (so far as the schoolroom is concerned) native aim and interest, and to set up artificial and formal modes of expression in some isolated and technical matters. the difficulty lies in making over habits that have to do with "ordinary affairs and conveniences" into habits concerned with "precise notions." the successful accomplishing of the transformation requires (_i_) enlargement of the pupil's vocabulary; (_ii_) rendering its terms more precise and accurate, and (_iii_) formation of habits of consecutive discourse. [sidenote: to enlarge vocabulary, the fund of concepts should be enlarged] (_i_) enlargement of vocabulary. this takes place, of course, by wider intelligent contact with things and persons, and also vicariously, by gathering the meanings of words from the context in which they are heard or read. to grasp by either method a word in its meaning is to exercise intelligence, to perform an act of intelligent selection or analysis, and it is also to widen the fund of meanings or concepts readily available in further intellectual enterprises (_ante_, p. ). it is usual to distinguish between one's active and one's passive vocabulary, the latter being composed of the words that are understood when they are heard or seen, the former of words that are used intelligently. the fact that the passive vocabulary is ordinarily much larger than the active indicates a certain amount of inert energy, of power not freely controlled by an individual. failure to use meanings that are nevertheless understood reveals dependence upon external stimulus, and lack of intellectual initiative. this mental laziness is to some extent an artificial product of education. small children usually attempt to put to use every new word they get hold of, but when they learn to read they are introduced to a large variety of terms that there is no ordinary opportunity to use. the result is a kind of mental suppression, if not smothering. moreover, the meaning of words not actively used in building up and conveying ideas is never quite clear-cut or complete. [sidenote: looseness of thinking accompanies a limited vocabulary] while a limited vocabulary may be due to a limited range of experience, to a sphere of contact with persons and things so narrow as not to suggest or require a full store of words, it is also due to carelessness and vagueness. a happy-go-lucky frame of mind makes the individual averse to clear discriminations, either in perception or in his own speech. words are used loosely in an indeterminate kind of reference to things, and the mind approaches a condition where practically everything is just a thing-um-bob or a what-do-you-call-it. paucity of vocabulary on the part of those with whom the child associates, triviality and meagerness in the child's reading matter (as frequently even in his school readers and text-books), tend to shut down the area of mental vision. [sidenote: command of language involves command of things] we must note also the great difference between flow of words and command of language. volubility is not necessarily a sign of a large vocabulary; much talking or even ready speech is quite compatible with moving round and round in a circle of moderate radius. most schoolrooms suffer from a lack of materials and appliances save perhaps books--and even these are "written down" to the supposed capacity, or incapacity, of children. occasion and demand for an enriched vocabulary are accordingly restricted. the vocabulary of things studied in the schoolroom is very largely isolated; it does not link itself organically to the range of the ideas and words that are in vogue outside the school. hence the enlargement that takes place is often nominal, adding to the inert, rather than to the active, fund of meanings and terms. (_ii_) accuracy of vocabulary. one way in which the fund of words and concepts is increased is by discovering and naming shades of meaning--that is to say, by making the vocabulary more precise. increase in definiteness is as important relatively as is the enlargement of the capital stock absolutely. [sidenote: the _general_ as the vague and as the distinctly generic] the first meanings of terms, since they are due to superficial acquaintance with things, are general in the sense of being vague. the little child calls all men papa; acquainted with a dog, he may call the first horse he sees a big dog. differences of quantity and intensity are noted, but the fundamental meaning is so vague that it covers things that are far apart. to many persons trees are just trees, being discriminated only into deciduous trees and evergreens, with perhaps recognition of one or two kinds of each. such vagueness tends to persist and to become a barrier to the advance of thinking. terms that are miscellaneous in scope are clumsy tools at best; in addition they are frequently treacherous, for their ambiguous reference causes us to confuse things that should be distinguished. [sidenote: twofold growth of words in sense or signification] the growth of precise terms out of original vagueness takes place normally in two directions: toward words that stand for relationships and words that stand for highly individualized traits (compare what was said about the development of meanings, p. ); the first being associated with abstract, the second with concrete, thinking. some australian tribes are said to have no words for _animal_ or for _plant_, while they have specific names for every variety of plant and animal in their neighborhoods. this minuteness of vocabulary represents progress toward definiteness, but in a one-sided way. specific properties are distinguished, but not relationships.[ ] on the other hand, students of philosophy and of the general aspects of natural and social science are apt to acquire a store of terms that signify relations without balancing them up with terms that designate specific individuals and traits. the ordinary use of such terms as _causation_, _law_, _society_, _individual_, _capital_, illustrates this tendency. [ ] the term _general_ is itself an ambiguous term, meaning (in its best logical sense) the related and also (in its natural usage) the indefinite, the vague. _general_, in the first sense, denotes the discrimination of a principle or generic relation; in the second sense, it denotes the absence of discrimination of specific or individual properties. [sidenote: words alter their meanings so as to change their logical functions] in the history of language we find both aspects of the growth of vocabulary illustrated by changes in the sense of words: some words originally wide in their application are narrowed to denote shades of meaning; others originally specific are widened to express relationships. the term _vernacular_, now meaning mother speech, has been generalized from the word _verna_, meaning a slave born in the master's household. _publication_ has evolved its meaning of communication by means of print, through restricting an earlier meaning of any kind of communication--although the wider meaning is retained in legal procedure, as publishing a libel. the sense of the word _average_ has been generalized from a use connected with dividing loss by shipwreck proportionately among various sharers in an enterprise.[ ] [ ] a large amount of material illustrating the twofold change in the sense of words will be found in jevons, _lessons in logic_. [sidenote: similar changes occur in the vocabulary of every student] these historical changes assist the educator to appreciate the changes that occur with individuals together with advance in intellectual resources. in studying geometry, a pupil must learn both to narrow and to extend the meanings of such familiar words as _line_, _surface_, _angle_, _square_, _circle_; to narrow them to the precise meanings involved in demonstrations; to extend them to cover generic relations not expressed in ordinary usage. qualities of color and size must be excluded; relations of direction, of variation in direction, of limit, must be definitely seized. a like transformation occurs, of course, in every subject of study. just at this point lies the danger, alluded to above, of simply overlaying common meanings with new and isolated meanings instead of effecting a genuine working-over of popular and practical meanings into adequate logical tools. [sidenote: the value of technical terms] terms used with intentional exactness so as to express a meaning, the whole meaning, and only the meaning, are called _technical_. for educational purposes, a technical term indicates something relative, not absolute; for a term is technical not because of its verbal form or its unusualness, but because it is employed to fix a meaning precisely. ordinary words get a technical quality when used intentionally for this end. whenever thought becomes more accurate, a (relatively) technical vocabulary grows up. teachers are apt to oscillate between extremes in regard to technical terms. on the one hand, these are multiplied in every direction, seemingly on the assumption that learning a new piece of terminology, accompanied by verbal description or definition, is equivalent to grasping a new idea. when it is seen how largely the net outcome is the accumulation of an isolated set of words, a jargon or scholastic cant, and to what extent the natural power of judgment is clogged by this accumulation, there is a reaction to the opposite extreme. technical terms are banished: "name words" exist but not nouns; "action words" but not verbs; pupils may "take away," but not subtract; they may tell what four fives are, but not what four times five are, and so on. a sound instinct underlies this reaction--aversion to words that give the pretense, but not the reality, of meaning. yet the fundamental difficulty is not with the word, but with the idea. if the idea is not grasped, nothing is gained by using a more familiar word; if the idea is perceived, the use of the term that exactly names it may assist in fixing the idea. terms denoting highly exact meanings should be introduced only sparingly, that is, a few at a time; they should be led up to gradually, and great pains should be taken to secure the circumstances that render precision of meaning significant. [sidenote: importance of consecutive discourse] (_iii_) consecutive discourse. as we saw, language connects and organizes meanings as well as selects and fixes them. as every meaning is set in the context of some situation, so every word in concrete use belongs to some sentence (it may itself represent a condensed sentence), and the sentence, in turn, belongs to some larger story, description, or reasoning process. it is unnecessary to repeat what has been said about the importance of continuity and ordering of meanings. we may, however, note some ways in which school practices tend to interrupt consecutiveness of language and thereby interfere harmfully with systematic reflection. (_a_) teachers have a habit of monopolizing continued discourse. many, if not most, instructors would be surprised if informed at the end of the day of the amount of time they have talked as compared with any pupil. children's conversation is often confined to answering questions in brief phrases, or in single disconnected sentences. expatiation and explanation are reserved for the teacher, who often admits any hint at an answer on the part of the pupil, and then amplifies what he supposes the child must have meant. the habits of sporadic and fragmentary discourse thus promoted have inevitably a disintegrating intellectual influence. [sidenote: too minute questioning] (_b_) assignment of too short lessons when accompanied (as it usually is in order to pass the time of the recitation period) by minute "analytic" questioning has the same effect. this evil is usually at its height in such subjects as history and literature, where not infrequently the material is so minutely subdivided as to break up the unity of meaning belonging to a given portion of the matter, to destroy perspective, and in effect to reduce the whole topic to an accumulation of disconnected details all upon the same level. more often than the teacher is aware, _his_ mind carries and supplies the background of unity of meaning against which pupils project isolated scraps. [sidenote: making avoidance of error the aim] (_c_) insistence upon avoiding error instead of attaining power tends also to interruption of continuous discourse and thought. children who begin with something to say and with intellectual eagerness to say it are sometimes made so conscious of minor errors in substance and form that the energy that should go into constructive thinking is diverted into anxiety not to make mistakes, and even, in extreme cases, into passive quiescence as the best method of minimizing error. this tendency is especially marked in connection with the writing of compositions, essays, and themes. it has even been gravely recommended that little children should always write on trivial subjects and in short sentences because in that way they are less likely to make mistakes, while the teaching of writing to high school and college students occasionally reduces itself to a technique for detecting and designating mistakes. the resulting self-consciousness and constraint are only part of the evil that comes from a negative ideal. chapter fourteen observation and information in the training of mind [sidenote: no thinking without acquaintance with facts] thinking is an ordering of subject-matter with reference to discovering what it signifies or indicates. thinking no more exists apart from this arranging of subject-matter than digestion occurs apart from the assimilating of food. the way in which the subject-matter is furnished marks, therefore, a fundamental point. if the subject-matter is provided in too scanty or too profuse fashion, if it comes in disordered array or in isolated scraps, the effect upon habits of thought is detrimental. if personal observation and communication of information by others (whether in books or speech) are rightly conducted, half the logical battle is won, for they are the channels of obtaining subject-matter. § . _the nature and value of observation_ [sidenote: fallacy of making "facts" an end in themselves] the protest, mentioned in the last chapter, of educational reformers against the exaggerated and false use of language, insisted upon personal and direct observation as the proper alternative course. the reformers felt that the current emphasis upon the linguistic factor eliminated all opportunity for first-hand acquaintance with real things; hence they appealed to sense-perception to fill the gap. it is not surprising that this enthusiastic zeal failed frequently to ask how and why observation is educative, and hence fell into the error of making observation an end in itself and was satisfied with any kind of material under any kind of conditions. such isolation of observation is still manifested in the statement that this faculty develops first, then that of memory and imagination, and finally the faculty of thought. from this point of view, observation is regarded as furnishing crude masses of raw material, to which, later on, reflective processes may be applied. our previous pages should have made obvious the fallacy of this point of view by bringing out the fact that simple concrete thinking attends all our intercourse with things which is not on a purely physical level. [sidenote: the sympathetic motive in extending acquaintance] i. all persons have a natural desire--akin to curiosity--for a widening of their range of acquaintance with persons and things. the sign in art galleries that forbids the carrying of canes and umbrellas is obvious testimony to the fact that simply to see is not enough for many people; there is a feeling of lack of acquaintance until some direct contact is made. this demand for fuller and closer knowledge is quite different from any conscious interest in observation for its own sake. desire for expansion, for "self-realization," is its motive. the interest is sympathetic, socially and æsthetically sympathetic, rather than cognitive. while the interest is especially keen in children (because their actual experience is so small and their possible experience so large), it still characterizes adults when routine has not blunted its edge. this sympathetic interest provides the medium for carrying and binding together what would otherwise be a multitude of items, diverse, disconnected, and of no intellectual use. these systems are indeed social and æsthetic rather than consciously intellectual; but they provide the natural medium for more conscious intellectual explorations. some educators have recommended that nature study in the elementary schools be conducted with a love of nature and a cultivation of æsthetic appreciation in view rather than in a purely analytic spirit. others have urged making much of the care of animals and plants. both of these important recommendations have grown out of experience, not out of theory, but they afford excellent exemplifications of the theoretic point just made. [sidenote: analytic inspection for the sake of doing] [sidenote: direct and indirect sense training] ii. in normal development, specific analytic observations are originally connected almost exclusively with the imperative need for noting means and ends in carrying on activities. when one is _doing_ something, one is compelled, if the work is to succeed (unless it is purely routine), to use eyes, ears, and sense of touch as guides to action. without a constant and alert exercise of the senses, not even plays and games can go on; in any form of work, materials, obstacles, appliances, failures, and successes, must be intently watched. sense-perception does not occur for its own sake or for purposes of training, but because it is an indispensable factor of success in doing what one is interested in doing. although not designed for sense-training, this method effects sense-training in the most economical and thoroughgoing way. various schemes have been designed by teachers for cultivating sharp and prompt observation of forms, as by writing words,--even in an unknown language,--making arrangements of figures and geometrical forms, and having pupils reproduce them after a momentary glance. children often attain great skill in quick seeing and full reproducing of even complicated meaningless combinations. but such methods of training--however valuable as occasional games and diversions--compare very unfavorably with the training of eye and hand that comes as an incident of work with tools in wood or metals, or of gardening, cooking, or the care of animals. training by isolated exercises leaves no deposit, leads nowhere; and even the technical skill acquired has little radiating power, or transferable value. criticisms made upon the training of observation on the ground that many persons cannot correctly reproduce the forms and arrangement of the figures on the face of their watches misses the point because persons do not look at a watch to find out whether four o'clock is indicated by iiii or by iv, but to find out what time it is, and, if observation decides this matter, noting other details is irrelevant and a waste of time. in the training of observation the question of end and motive is all-important. [sidenote: scientific observations are linked to problems] [sidenote: "object-lessons" rarely supply problems] iii. the further, more intellectual or scientific, development of observation follows the line of the growth of practical into theoretical reflection already traced (_ante_, chapter ten). as problems emerge and are dwelt upon, observation is directed less to the facts that bear upon a practical aim and more upon what bears upon a problem as such. what makes observations in schools often intellectually ineffective is (more than anything else) that they are carried on independently of a sense of a problem that they serve to define or help to solve. the evil of this isolation is seen through the entire educational system, from the kindergarten, through the elementary and high schools, to the college. almost everywhere may be found, at some time, recourse to observations as if they were of complete and final value in themselves, instead of the means of getting material that bears upon some difficulty and its solution. in the kindergarten are heaped up observations regarding geometrical forms, lines, surfaces, cubes, colors, and so on. in the elementary school, under the name of "object-lessons," the form and properties of objects,--apple, orange, chalk,--selected almost at random, are minutely noted, while under the name of "nature study" similar observations are directed upon leaves, stones, insects, selected in almost equally arbitrary fashion. in high school and college, laboratory and microscopic observations are carried on as if the accumulation of observed facts and the acquisition of skill in manipulation were educational ends in themselves. compare with these methods of isolated observations the statement of jevons that observation as conducted by scientific men is effective "only when excited and guided by hope of verifying a theory"; and again, "the number of things which can be observed and experimented upon are infinite, and if we merely set to work to record facts without any distinct purpose, our records will have no value." strictly speaking, the first statement of jevons is too narrow. scientific men institute observations not merely to test an idea (or suggested explanatory meaning), but also to locate the nature of a problem and thereby guide the formation of a hypothesis. but the principle of his remark, namely, that scientific men never make the accumulation of observations an end in itself, but always a means to a general intellectual conclusion, is absolutely sound. until the force of this principle is adequately recognized in education, observation will be largely a matter of uninteresting dead work or of acquiring forms of technical skill that are not available as intellectual resources. § . _methods and materials of observation in the schools_ the best methods in use in our schools furnish many suggestions for giving observation its right place in mental training. [sidenote: observation should involve discovery] i. they rest upon the sound assumption that observation is an _active_ process. observation is exploration, inquiry for the sake of discovering something previously hidden and unknown, this something being needed in order to reach some end, practical or theoretical. observation is to be discriminated from recognition, or perception of what is familiar. the identification of something already understood is, indeed, an indispensable function of further investigation (_ante_, p. ); but it is relatively automatic and passive, while observation proper is searching and deliberate. recognition refers to the already mastered; observation is concerned with mastering the unknown. the common notions that perception is like writing on a blank piece of paper, or like impressing an image on the mind as a seal is imprinted on wax or as a picture is formed on a photographic plate (notions that have played a disastrous rôle in educational methods), arise from a failure to distinguish between automatic recognition and the searching attitude of genuine observation. [sidenote: and suspense during an unfolding change] ii. much assistance in the selection of appropriate material for observation may be derived from considering the eagerness and closeness of observation that attend the following of a story or drama. alertness of observation is at its height wherever there is "plot interest." why? because of the balanced combination of the old and the new, of the familiar and the unexpected. we hang on the lips of the story-teller because of the element of mental suspense. alternatives are suggested, but are left ambiguous, so that our whole being questions: what befell next? which way did things turn out? contrast the ease and fullness with which a child notes all the salient traits of a story, with the labor and inadequacy of his observation of some dead and static thing where nothing raises a question or suggests alternative outcomes. [sidenote: this "plot interest" manifested in activity,] when an individual is engaged in doing or making something (the activity not being of such a mechanical and habitual character that its outcome is assured), there is an analogous situation. something is going to come of what is present to the sense, but just what is doubtful. the plot is unfolding toward success or failure, but just when or how is uncertain. hence the keen and tense observation of conditions and results that attends constructive manual operations. where the subject-matter is of a more impersonal sort, the same principle of movement toward a dénouement may apply. it is a commonplace that what is moving attracts notice when that which is at rest escapes it. yet too often it would almost seem as if pains had been taken to deprive the material of school observations of all life and dramatic quality, to reduce it to a dead and inert form. mere change is not enough, however. vicissitude, alteration, motion, excite observation; but if they merely excite it, there is no thought. the changes must (like the incidents of a well-arranged story or plot) take place in a certain cumulative order; each successive change must at once remind us of its predecessor and arouse interest in its successor if observations of change are to be logically fruitful. [sidenote: and in cycles of growth] living beings, plants, and animals, fulfill the twofold requirement to an extraordinary degree. where there is growth, there is motion, change, process; and there is also arrangement of the changes in a cycle. the first arouses, the second organizes, observation. much of the extraordinary interest that children take in planting seeds and watching the stages of their growth is due to the fact that a drama is enacting before their eyes; there is something doing, each step of which is important in the destiny of the plant. the great practical improvements that have occurred of late years in the teaching of botany and zoölogy will be found, upon inspection, to involve treating plants and animals as beings that act, that do something, instead of as mere inert specimens having static properties to be inventoried, named, and registered. treated in the latter fashion, observation is inevitably reduced to the falsely "analytic" (_ante_, p. ),--to mere dissection and enumeration. [sidenote: observation of structure grows out of noting function] there is, of course, a place, and an important place, for observation of the mere static qualities of objects. when, however, the primary interest is in _function_, in what the object does, there is a motive for more minute analytic study, for the observation of _structure_. interest in noting an activity passes insensibly into noting how the activity is carried on; the interest in what is accomplished passes over into an interest in the organs of its accomplishing. but when the beginning is made with the morphological, the anatomical, the noting of peculiarities of form, size, color, and distribution of parts, the material is so cut off from significance as to be dead and dull. it is as natural for children to look intently for the _stomata_ of a plant after they have become interested in its function of breathing, as it is repulsive to attend minutely to them when they are considered as isolated peculiarities of structure. [sidenote: scientific observation] iii. as the center of interest of observations becomes less personal, less a matter of means for effecting one's own ends, and less æsthetic, less a matter of contribution of parts to a total emotional effect, observation becomes more consciously intellectual in quality. pupils learn to observe for the sake (_i_) of finding out what sort of perplexity confronts them; (_ii_) of inferring hypothetical explanations for the puzzling features that observation reveals; and (_iii_) of testing the ideas thus suggested. [sidenote: should be extensive] [sidenote: and intensive] in short, observation becomes scientific in nature. of such observations it may be said that they should follow a rhythm between the extensive and the intensive. problems become definite, and suggested explanations significant by a certain alternation between a wide and somewhat loose soaking in of relevant facts and a minutely accurate study of a few selected facts. the wider, less exact observation is necessary to give the student a feeling for the reality of the field of inquiry, a sense of its bearings and possibilities, and to store his mind with materials that imagination may transform into suggestions. the intensive study is necessary for limiting the problem, and for securing the conditions of experimental testing. as the latter by itself is too specialized and technical to arouse intellectual growth, the former by itself is too superficial and scattering for control of intellectual development. in the sciences of life, field study, excursions, acquaintance with living things in their natural habitats, may alternate with microscopic and laboratory observation. in the physical sciences, phenomena of light, of heat, of electricity, of moisture, of gravity, in their broad setting in nature--their physiographic setting--should prepare for an exact study of selected facts under conditions of laboratory control. in this way, the student gets the benefit of technical scientific methods of discovery and testing, while he retains his sense of the identity of the laboratory modes of energy with large out-of-door realities, thereby avoiding the impression (that so often accrues) that the facts studied are peculiar to the laboratory. § . _communication of information_ [sidenote: importance of hearsay acquaintance] when all is said and done the field of fact open to any one observer by himself is narrow. into every one of our beliefs, even those that we have worked out under the conditions of utmost personal, first-hand acquaintance, much has insensibly entered from what we have heard or read of the observations and conclusions of others. in spite of the great extension of direct observation in our schools, the vast bulk of educational subject-matter is derived from other sources--from text-book, lecture, and viva-voce interchange. no educational question is of greater import than how to get the most logical good out of learning through transmission from others. [sidenote: logically, this ranks only as evidence or testimony] doubtless the chief meaning associated with the word _instruction_ is this conveying and instilling of the results of the observations and inferences of others. doubtless the undue prominence in education of the ideal of amassing information (_ante_, p. ) has its source in the prominence of the learning of other persons. the problem then is how to convert it into an intellectual asset. in logical terms, the material supplied from the experience of others is _testimony_: that is to say, _evidence_ submitted by others to be employed by one's own judgment in reaching a conclusion. how shall we treat the subject-matter supplied by text-book and teacher so that it shall rank as material for reflective inquiry, not as ready-made intellectual pabulum to be accepted and swallowed just as supplied by the store? [sidenote: communication by others should not encroach on observation,] in reply to this question, we may say (_i_) that the communication of material should be _needed_. that is to say, it should be such as cannot readily be attained by personal observation. for teacher or book to cram pupils with facts which, with little more trouble, they could discover by direct inquiry is to violate their intellectual integrity by cultivating mental servility. this does not mean that the material supplied through communication of others should be meager or scanty. with the utmost range of the senses, the world of nature and history stretches out almost infinitely beyond. but the fields within which direct observation is feasible should be carefully chosen and sacredly protected. [sidenote: should not be dogmatic in tone,] (_ii_) material should be supplied by way of stimulus, not with dogmatic finality and rigidity. when pupils get the notion that any field of study has been definitely surveyed, that knowledge about it is exhaustive and final, they may continue docile pupils, but they cease to be students. all thinking whatsoever--so be it _is_ thinking--contains a phase of originality. this originality does not imply that the student's conclusion varies from the conclusions of others, much less that it is a radically novel conclusion. his originality is not incompatible with large use of materials and suggestions contributed by others. originality means personal interest in the question, personal initiative in turning over the suggestions furnished by others, and sincerity in following them out to a tested conclusion. literally, the phrase "think for yourself" is tautological; any thinking is thinking for one's self. [sidenote: should have relation to a personal problem,] (_iii_) the material furnished by way of information should be relevant to a question that is vital in the student's own experience. what has been said about the evil of observations that begin and end in themselves may be transferred without change to communicated learning. instruction in subject-matter that does not fit into any problem already stirring in the student's own experience, or that is not presented in such a way as to arouse a problem, is worse than useless for intellectual purposes. in that it fails to enter into any process of reflection, it is useless; in that it remains in the mind as so much lumber and débris, it is a barrier, an obstruction in the way of effective thinking when a problem arises. [sidenote: and to prior systems of experience] another way of stating the same principle is that material furnished by communication must be such as to enter into some existing system or organization of experience. all students of psychology are familiar with the principle of apperception--that we assimilate new material with what we have digested and retained from prior experiences. now the "apperceptive basis" of material furnished by teacher and text-book should be found, as far as possible, in what the learner has derived from more direct forms of his own experience. there is a tendency to connect material of the schoolroom simply with the material of prior school lessons, instead of linking it to what the pupil has acquired in his out-of-school experience. the teacher says, "do you not remember what we learned from the book last week?"--instead of saying, "do you not recall such and such a thing that you have seen or heard?" as a result, there are built up detached and independent systems of school knowledge that inertly overlay the ordinary systems of experience instead of reacting to enlarge and refine them. pupils are taught to live in two separate worlds, one the world of out-of-school experience, the other the world of books and lessons. chapter fifteen the recitation and the training of thought [sidenote: importance of the recitation] in the recitation the teacher comes into his closest contact with the pupil. in the recitation focus the possibilities of guiding children's activities, influencing their language habits, and directing their observations. in discussing the significance of the recitation as an instrumentality of education, we are accordingly bringing to a head the points considered in the last three chapters, rather than introducing a new topic. the method in which the recitation is carried on is a crucial test of a teacher's skill in diagnosing the intellectual state of his pupils and in supplying the conditions that will arouse serviceable mental responses: in short, of his art as a teacher. [sidenote: re-citing _versus_ reflecting] the use of the word _recitation_ to designate the period of most intimate intellectual contact of teacher with pupil and pupil with pupil is a fateful fact. to re-cite is to cite again, to repeat, to tell over and over. if we were to call this period _reiteration_, the designation would hardly bring out more clearly than does the word _recitation_, the complete domination of instruction by rehearsing of secondhand information, by memorizing for the sake of producing correct replies at the proper time. everything that is said in this chapter is insignificant in comparison with the primary truth that the recitation is a place and time for stimulating and directing reflection, and that reproducing memorized matter is only an incident--even though an indispensable incident--in the process of cultivating a thoughtful attitude. § . _the formal steps of instruction_ [sidenote: herbart's analysis of method of teaching] but few attempts have been made to formulate a method, resting on general principles, of conducting a recitation. one of these is of great importance and has probably had more and better influence upon the "hearing of lessons" than all others put together; namely, the analysis by herbart of a recitation into five successive steps. the steps are commonly known as "the formal steps of instruction." the underlying notion is that no matter how subjects vary in scope and detail there is one and only one best way of mastering them, since there is a single "general method" uniformly followed by the mind in effective attack upon any subject. whether it be a first-grade child mastering the rudiments of number, a grammar-school pupil studying history, or a college student dealing with philology, in each case the first step is preparation, the second presentation, followed in turn by comparison and generalization, ending in the application of the generalizations to specific and new instances. [sidenote: illustration of method] by preparation is meant asking questions to remind pupils of familiar experiences of their own that will be useful in acquiring the new topic. what one already knows supplies the means with which one apprehends the unknown. hence the process of learning the new will be made easier if related ideas in the pupil's mind are aroused to activity--are brought to the foreground of consciousness. when pupils take up the study of rivers, they are first questioned about streams or brooks with which they are already acquainted; if they have never seen any, they may be asked about water running in gutters. somehow "apperceptive masses" are stirred that will assist in getting hold of the new subject. the step of preparation ends with statement of the aim of the lesson. old knowledge having been made active, new material is then "presented" to the pupils. pictures and relief models of rivers are shown; vivid oral descriptions are given; if possible, the children are taken to see an actual river. these two steps terminate the acquisition of particular facts. the next two steps are directed toward getting a general principle or conception. the local river is compared with, perhaps, the amazon, the st. lawrence, the rhine; by this comparison accidental and unessential features are eliminated and the river _concept_ is formed: the elements involved in the river-meaning are gathered together and formulated. this done, the resulting principle is fixed in mind and is clarified by being applied to other streams, say to the thames, the po, the connecticut. [sidenote: comparison with our prior analysis of reflection] if we compare this account of the methods of instruction with our own analysis of a complete operation of thinking, we are struck by obvious resemblances. in our statement (compare chapter six) the "steps" are the occurrence of a problem or a puzzling phenomenon; then observation, inspection of facts, to locate and clear up the problem; then the formation of a hypothesis or the suggestion of a possible solution together with its elaboration by reasoning; then the testing of the elaborated idea by using it as a guide to new observations and experimentations. in each account, there is the sequence of (_i_) specific facts and events, (_ii_) ideas and reasonings, and (_iii_) application of their result to specific facts. in each case, the movement is inductive-deductive. we are struck also by one difference: the herbartian method makes no reference to a difficulty, a discrepancy requiring explanation, as the origin and stimulus of the whole process. as a consequence, it often seems as if the herbartian method deals with thought simply as an incident in the process of acquiring information, instead of treating the latter as an incident in the process of developing thought. [sidenote: the formal steps concern the teacher's preparation rather than the recitation itself] before following up this comparison in more detail, we may raise the question whether the recitation should, in any case, follow a uniform prescribed series of steps--even if it be admitted that this series expresses the normal logical order. in reply, it may be said that just because the order is logical, it represents the survey of subject-matter made by one who already understands it, not the path of progress followed by a mind that is learning. the former may describe a uniform straight-way course, the latter must be a series of tacks, of zigzag movements back and forth. in short, the formal steps indicate the points that should be covered by the teacher in preparing to conduct a recitation, but should not prescribe the actual course of teaching. [sidenote: the teacher's problem] lack of any preparation on the part of a teacher leads, of course, to a random, haphazard recitation, its success depending on the inspiration of the moment, which may or may not come. preparation in simply the subject-matter conduces to a rigid order, the teacher examining pupils on their exact knowledge of their text. but the teacher's problem--as a teacher--does not reside in mastering a subject-matter, but in adjusting a subject-matter to the nurture of thought. now the formal steps indicate excellently well the questions a teacher should ask in working out the problem of teaching a topic. what preparation have my pupils for attacking this subject? what familiar experiences of theirs are available? what have they already learned that will come to their assistance? how shall i present the matter so as to fit economically and effectively into their present equipment? what pictures shall i show? to what objects shall i call their attention? what incidents shall i relate? what comparisons shall i lead them to draw, what similarities to recognize? what is the general principle toward which the whole discussion should point as its conclusion? by what applications shall i try to fix, to clear up, and to make real their grasp of this general principle? what activities of their own may bring it home to them as a genuinely significant principle? [sidenote: only flexibility of procedure gives a recitation vitality] [sidenote: any step may come first] no teacher can fail to teach better if he has considered such questions somewhat systematically. but the more the teacher has reflected upon pupils' probable intellectual response to a topic from the various stand-points indicated by the five formal steps, the more he will be prepared to conduct the recitation in a flexible and free way, and yet not let the subject go to pieces and the pupils' attention drift in all directions; the less necessary will he find it, in order to preserve a semblance of intellectual order, to follow some one uniform scheme. he will be ready to take advantage of any sign of vital response that shows itself from any direction. one pupil may already have some inkling--probably erroneous--of a general principle. application may then come at the very beginning in order to show that the principle will not work, and thereby induce search for new facts and a new generalization. or the abrupt presentation of some fact or object may so stimulate the minds of pupils as to render quite superfluous any preliminary preparation. if pupils' minds are at work at all, it is quite impossible that they should wait until the teacher has conscientiously taken them through the steps of preparation, presentation, and comparison before they form at least a working hypothesis or generalization. moreover, unless comparison of the familiar and the unfamiliar is introduced at the beginning, both preparation and presentation will be aimless and without logical motive, isolated, and in so far meaningless. the student's mind cannot be prepared at large, but only for something in particular, and presentation is usually the best way of evoking associations. the emphasis may fall now on the familiar concept that will help grasp the new, now on the new facts that frame the problem; but in either case it is comparison and contrast with the other term of the pair which gives either its force. in short, to transfer the logical steps from the points that the teacher needs to consider to uniform successive steps in the conduct of a recitation, is to impose the logical review of a mind that already understands the subject, upon the mind that is struggling to comprehend it, and thereby to obstruct the logic of the student's own mind. § . _the factors in the recitation_ bearing in mind that the formal steps represent intertwined factors of a student's progress and not mileposts on a beaten highway, we may consider each by itself. in so doing, it will be convenient to follow the example of many of the herbartians and reduce the steps to three: first, the apprehension of specific or particular facts; second, rational generalization; third, application and verification. [sidenote: preparation is getting the sense of a problem] i. the processes having to do with particular facts are preparation and presentation. the best, indeed the only preparation is arousal to a perception of something that needs explanation, something unexpected, puzzling, peculiar. when the feeling of a genuine perplexity lays hold of any mind (no matter how the feeling arises), that mind is alert and inquiring, because stimulated from within. the shock, the bite, of a question will force the mind to go wherever it is capable of going, better than will the most ingenious pedagogical devices unaccompanied by this mental ardor. it is the sense of a problem that forces the mind to a survey and recall of the past to discover what the question means and how it may be dealt with. [sidenote: pitfalls in preparation] the teacher in his more deliberate attempts to call into play the familiar elements in a student's experience, must guard against certain dangers. (_i_) the step of preparation must not be too long continued or too exhaustive, or it defeats its own end. the pupil loses interest and is bored, when a plunge _in medias res_ might have braced him to his work. the preparation part of the recitation period of some conscientious teachers reminds one of the boy who takes so long a run in order to gain headway for a jump that when he reaches the line, he is too tired to jump far. (_ii_) the organs by which we apprehend new material are our habits. to insist too minutely upon turning over habitual dispositions into conscious ideas is to interfere with their best workings. some factors of familiar experience must indeed be brought to conscious recognition, just as transplanting is necessary for the best growth of some plants. but it is fatal to be forever digging up either experiences or plants to see how they are getting along. constraint, self-consciousness, embarrassment, are the consequence of too much conscious refurbishing of familiar experiences. [sidenote: statement of aim of lesson] strict herbartians generally lay it down that statement--by the teacher--of the aim of a lesson is an indispensable part of preparation. this preliminary statement of the aim of the lesson hardly seems more intellectual in character, however, than tapping a bell or giving any other signal for attention and transfer of thoughts from diverting subjects. to the teacher the statement of an end is significant, because he has already been at the end; from a pupil's standpoint the statement of what he is _going_ to learn is something of an irish bull. if the statement of the aim is taken too seriously by the instructor, as meaning more than a signal to attention, its probable result is forestalling the pupil's own reaction, relieving him of the responsibility of developing a problem and thus arresting his mental initiative. [sidenote: how much the teacher should tell or show] it is unnecessary to discuss at length presentation as a factor in the recitation, because our last chapter covered the topic under the captions of observation and communication. the function of presentation is to supply materials that force home the nature of a problem and furnish suggestions for dealing with it. the practical problem of the teacher is to preserve a balance between so little showing and telling as to fail to stimulate reflection and so much as to choke thought. provided the student is genuinely engaged upon a topic, and provided the teacher is willing to give the student a good deal of leeway as to what he assimilates and retains (not requiring rigidly that everything be grasped or reproduced), there is comparatively little danger that one who is himself enthusiastic will communicate too much concerning a topic. [sidenote: the pupil's responsibility for making out a reasonable case] ii. the distinctively rational phase of reflective inquiry consists, as we have already seen, in the elaboration of an idea, or working hypothesis, through conjoint comparison and contrast, terminating in definition or formulation. (_i_) so far as the recitation is concerned, the primary requirement is that the student be held responsible for working out mentally every suggested principle so as to show what he means by it, how it bears upon the facts at hand, and how the facts bear upon it. unless the pupil is made responsible for developing on his own account the _reasonableness_ of the guess he puts forth, the recitation counts for practically nothing in the training of reasoning power. a clever teacher easily acquires great skill in dropping out the inept and senseless contributions of pupils, and in selecting and emphasizing those in line with the result he wishes to reach. but this method (sometimes called "suggestive questioning") relieves the pupils of intellectual responsibility, save for acrobatic agility in following the teacher's lead. [sidenote: the necessity for mental leisure] (_ii_) the working over of a vague and more or less casual idea into coherent and definite form is impossible without a pause, without freedom from distraction. we say "stop and think"; well, all reflection involves, at some point, stopping external observations and reactions so that an idea may mature. meditation, withdrawal or abstraction from clamorous assailants of the senses and from demands for overt action, is as necessary at the reasoning stage, as are observation and experiment at other periods. the metaphors of digestion and assimilation, that so readily occur to mind in connection with rational elaboration, are highly instructive. a silent, uninterrupted working-over of considerations by comparing and weighing alternative suggestions, is indispensable for the development of coherent and compact conclusions. reasoning is no more akin to disputing or arguing, or to the abrupt seizing and dropping of suggestions, than digestion is to a noisy champing of the jaws. the teacher must secure opportunity for leisurely mental digestion. [sidenote: a typical central object necessary] (_iii_) in the process of comparison, the teacher must avert the distraction that ensues from putting before the mind a number of facts on the same level of importance. since attention is selective, some one object normally claims thought and furnishes the center of departure and reference. this fact is fatal to the success of the pedagogical methods that endeavor to conduct comparison on the basis of putting before the mind a row of objects of equal importance. in comparing, the mind does not naturally begin with objects _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, and try to find the respect in which they agree. it begins with a single object or situation more or less vague and inchoate in meaning, and makes excursions to other objects in order to render understanding of the central object consistent and clear. the mere multiplication of objects of comparison is adverse to successful reasoning. each fact brought within the field of comparison should clear up some obscure feature or extend some fragmentary trait of the primary object. [sidenote: importance of types] in short, pains should be taken to see that the object on which thought centers is _typical_: material being typical when, although individual or specific, it is such as readily and fruitfully suggests the principles of an entire class of facts. no sane person begins to think about rivers wholesale or at large. he begins with the one river that has presented some puzzling trait. then he studies other rivers to get light upon the baffling features of this one, and at the same time he employs the characteristic traits of his original object to reduce to order the multifarious details that appear in connection with other rivers. this working back and forth preserves unity of meaning, while protecting it from monotony and narrowness. contrast, unlikeness, throws significant features into relief, and these become instruments for binding together into an organized or coherent meaning dissimilar characters. the mind is defended against the deadening influence of many isolated particulars and also against the barrenness of a merely formal principle. particular cases and properties supply emphasis and concreteness; general principles convert the particulars into a single system. [sidenote: all insight into meaning effects generalization] (_iv_) hence generalization is not a separate and single act; it is rather a constant tendency and function of the entire discussion or recitation. every step forward toward an idea that comprehends, that explains, that unites what was isolated and therefore puzzling, generalizes. the little child generalizes as truly as the adolescent or adult, even though he does not arrive at the same generalities. if he is studying a river basin, his knowledge is generalized in so far as the various details that he apprehends are found to be the effects of a single force, as that of water pushing downward from gravity, or are seen to be successive stages of a single history of formation. even if there were acquaintance with only one river, knowledge of it under such conditions would be generalized knowledge. [sidenote: insight into meaning requires formulation] the factor of formulation, of conscious stating, involved in generalization, should also be a constant function, not a single formal act. definition means essentially the growth of a meaning out of vagueness into _definiteness_. such final verbal definition as takes place should be only the culmination of a steady growth in distinctness. in the reaction against ready-made verbal definitions and rules, the pendulum should never swing to the opposite extreme, that of neglecting to summarize the net meaning that emerges from dealing with particular facts. only as general summaries are made from time to time does the mind reach a conclusion or a resting place; and only as conclusions are reached is there an intellectual deposit available in future understanding. [sidenote: generalization means capacity for application to the new] iii. as the last words indicate, application and generalization lie close together. mechanical skill for further use may be achieved without any explicit recognition of a principle; nay, in routine and narrow technical matters, conscious formulation may be a hindrance. but without recognition of a principle, without generalization, the power gained cannot be transferred to new and dissimilar matters. the inherent significance of generalization is that it frees a meaning from local restrictions; rather, generalization _is_ meaning so freed; it is meaning emancipated from accidental features so as to be available in new cases. the surest test for detecting a spurious generalization (a statement general in verbal form but not accompanied by discernment of meaning), is the failure of the so-called principle spontaneously to extend itself. the essence of the general is application. (_ante_, p. .) [sidenote: fossilized _versus_ flexible principles] the true purpose of exercises that apply rules and principles is, then, not so much to drive or drill them in as to give adequate insight into an idea or principle. to treat application as a separate final step is disastrous. in every judgment some meaning is employed as a basis for estimating and interpreting some fact; by this application the meaning is itself enlarged and tested. when the general meaning is regarded as complete in itself, application is treated as an external, non-intellectual use to which, for practical purposes alone, it is advisable to put the meaning. the principle is one self-contained thing; its use is another and independent thing. when this divorce occurs, principles become fossilized and rigid; they lose their inherent vitality, their self-impelling power. [sidenote: self-application a mark of genuine principles] a true conception is a _moving_ idea, and it seeks outlet, or application to the interpretation of particulars and the guidance of action, as naturally as water runs downhill. in fine, just as reflective thought requires particular facts of observation and events of action for its origination, so it also requires particular facts and deeds for its own consummation. "glittering generalities" are inert because they are spurious. application is as much an intrinsic part of genuine reflective inquiry as is alert observation or reasoning itself. truly general principles tend to apply themselves. the teacher needs, indeed, to supply conditions favorable to use and exercise; but something is wrong when artificial tasks have arbitrarily to be invented in order to secure application for principles. chapter sixteen some general conclusions we shall conclude our survey of how we think and how we should think by presenting some factors of thinking which should balance each other, but which constantly tend to become so isolated that they work against each other instead of cooperating to make reflective inquiry efficient. § . _the unconscious and the conscious_ [sidenote: the _understood_ as the unconsciously assumed] it is significant that one meaning of the term _understood_ is something so thoroughly mastered, so completely agreed upon, as to be _assumed_; that is to say, taken as a matter of course without explicit statement. the familiar "goes without saying" means "it is understood." if two persons can converse intelligently with each other, it is because a common experience supplies a background of mutual understanding upon which their respective remarks are projected. to dig up and to formulate this common background would be imbecile; it is "understood"; that is, it is silently supplied and implied as the taken-for-granted medium of intelligent exchange of ideas. [sidenote: inquiry as conscious formulation] if, however, the two persons find themselves at cross-purposes, it is necessary to dig up and compare the presuppositions, the implied context, on the basis of which each is speaking. the implicit is made explicit; what was unconsciously assumed is exposed to the light of conscious day. in this way, the root of the misunderstanding is removed. some such rhythm of the unconscious and the conscious is involved in all fruitful thinking. a person in pursuing a consecutive train of thoughts takes some system of ideas for granted (which accordingly he leaves unexpressed, "unconscious") as surely as he does in conversing with others. some context, some situation, some controlling purpose dominates his explicit ideas so thoroughly that it does not need to be consciously formulated and expounded. explicit thinking goes on within the limits of what is implied or understood. yet the fact that reflection originates in a problem makes it necessary _at some points_ consciously to inspect and examine this familiar background. we have to turn upon some unconscious assumption and make it explicit. [sidenote: rules cannot be given for attaining a balance] no rules can be laid down for attaining the due balance and rhythm of these two phases of mental life. no ordinance can prescribe at just what point the spontaneous working of some unconscious attitude and habit is to be checked till we have made explicit what is implied in it. no one can tell in detail just how far the analytic inspection and formulation are to be carried. we can say that they must be carried far enough so that the individual will know what he is about and be able to guide his thinking; but in a given case just how far is that? we can say that they must be carried far enough to detect and guard against the source of some false perception or reasoning, and to get a leverage on the investigation; but such statements only restate the original difficulty. since our reliance must be upon the disposition and tact of the individual in the particular case, there is no test of the success of an education more important than the extent to which it nurtures a type of mind competent to maintain an economical balance of the unconscious and the conscious. [sidenote: the over-_analytic_ to be avoided] the ways of teaching criticised in the foregoing pages as false "analytic" methods of instruction (_ante_, p. ), all reduce themselves to the mistake of directing explicit attention and formulation to what would work better if left an unconscious attitude and working assumption. to pry into the familiar, the usual, the automatic, simply for the sake of making it conscious, simply for the sake of formulating it, is both an impertinent interference, and a source of boredom. to be forced to dwell consciously upon the accustomed is the essence of ennui; to pursue methods of instruction that have that tendency is deliberately to cultivate lack of interest. [sidenote: the detection of error, the clinching of truth, demand conscious statement] on the other hand, what has been said in criticism of merely routine forms of skill, what has been said about the importance of having a genuine problem, of introducing the novel, and of reaching a deposit of general meaning weighs on the other side of the scales. it is as fatal to good thinking to fail to make conscious the standing source of some error or failure as it is to pry needlessly into what works smoothly. to over-simplify, to exclude the novel for the sake of prompt skill, to avoid obstacles for the sake of averting errors, is as detrimental as to try to get pupils to formulate everything they know and to state every step of the process employed in getting a result. where the shoe pinches, analytic examination is indicated. when a topic is to be clinched so that knowledge of it will carry over into an effective resource in further topics, conscious condensation and summarizing are imperative. in the early stage of acquaintance with a subject, a good deal of unconstrained unconscious mental play about it may be permitted, even at the risk of some random experimenting; in the later stages, conscious formulation and review may be encouraged. projection and reflection, going directly ahead and turning back in scrutiny, should alternate. unconsciousness gives spontaneity and freshness; consciousness, conviction and control. § . _process and product_ [sidenote: play and work again] a like balance in mental life characterizes process and product. we met one important phase of this adjustment in considering play and work. in play, interest centers in activity, without much reference to its outcome. the sequence of deeds, images, emotions, suffices on its own account. in work, the end holds attention and controls the notice given to means. since the difference is one of direction of interest, the contrast is one of emphasis, not of cleavage. when comparative prominence in consciousness of activity or outcome is transformed into isolation of one from the other, play degenerates into fooling, and work into drudgery. [sidenote: play should not be fooling,] by "fooling" we understand a series of disconnected temporary overflows of energy dependent upon whim and accident. when all reference to outcome is eliminated from the sequence of ideas and acts that make play, each member of the sequence is cut loose from every other and becomes fantastic, arbitrary, aimless; mere fooling follows. there is some inveterate tendency to fool in children as well as in animals; nor is the tendency wholly evil, for at least it militates against falling into ruts. but when it is excessive in amount, dissipation and disintegration follow; and the only way of preventing this consequence is to make regard for results enter into even the freest play activity. [sidenote: nor work, drudgery] exclusive interest in the result alters work to drudgery. for by drudgery is meant those activities in which the interest in the outcome does not suffuse the means of getting the result. whenever a piece of work becomes drudgery, the process of doing loses all value for the doer; he cares solely for what is to be had at the end of it. the work itself, the putting forth of energy, is hateful; it is just a necessary evil, since without it some important end would be missed. now it is a commonplace that in the work of the world many things have to be done the doing of which is not intrinsically very interesting. however, the argument that children should be kept doing drudgery-tasks because thereby they acquire power to be faithful to distasteful duties, is wholly fallacious. repulsion, shirking, and evasion are the consequences of having the repulsive imposed--not loyal love of duty. willingness to work for ends by means of acts not naturally attractive is best attained by securing such an appreciation of the value of the end that a sense of its value is transferred to its means of accomplishment. not interesting in themselves, they borrow interest from the result with which they are associated. [sidenote: balance of playfulness and seriousness the intellectual ideal] [sidenote: free play of mind] [sidenote: is normal in childhood] the intellectual harm accruing from divorce of work and play, product and process, is evidenced in the proverb, "all work and no play makes jack a dull boy." that the obverse is true is perhaps sufficiently signalized in the fact that fooling is so near to foolishness. to be playful and serious at the same time is possible, and it defines the ideal mental condition. absence of dogmatism and prejudice, presence of intellectual curiosity and flexibility, are manifest in the free play of the mind upon a topic. to give the mind this free play is not to encourage toying with a subject, but is to be interested in the unfolding of the subject on its own account, apart from its subservience to a preconceived belief or habitual aim. mental play is open-mindedness, faith in the power of thought to preserve its own integrity without external supports and arbitrary restrictions. hence free mental play involves seriousness, the earnest following of the development of subject-matter. it is incompatible with carelessness or flippancy, for it exacts accurate noting of every result reached in order that every conclusion may be put to further use. what is termed the interest in truth for its own sake is certainly a serious matter, yet this pure interest in truth coincides with love of the free play of thought. in spite of many appearances to the contrary--usually due to social conditions of either undue superfluity that induces idle fooling or undue economic pressure that compels drudgery--childhood normally realizes the ideal of conjoint free mental play and thoughtfulness. successful portrayals of children have always made their wistful intentness at least as obvious as their lack of worry for the morrow. to live in the present is compatible with condensation of far-reaching meanings in the present. such enrichment of the present for its own sake is the just heritage of childhood and the best insurer of future growth. the child forced into premature concern with economic remote results may develop a surprising sharpening of wits in a particular direction, but this precocious specialization is always paid for by later apathy and dullness. [sidenote: the attitude of the artist] that art originated in play is a common saying. whether or not the saying is historically correct, it suggests that harmony of mental playfulness and seriousness describes the artistic ideal. when the artist is preoccupied overmuch with means and materials, he may achieve wonderful technique, but not the artistic spirit _par excellence_. when the animating idea is in excess of the command of method, æsthetic feeling may be indicated, but the art of presentation is too defective to express the feeling thoroughly. when the thought of the end becomes so adequate that it compels translation into the means that embody it, or when attention to means is inspired by recognition of the end they serve, we have the attitude typical of the artist, an attitude that may be displayed in all activities, even though not conventionally designated arts. [sidenote: the art of the teacher culminates in nurturing this attitude] that teaching is an art and the true teacher an artist is a familiar saying. now the teacher's own claim to rank as an artist is measured by his ability to foster the attitude of the artist in those who study with him, whether they be youth or little children. some succeed in arousing enthusiasm, in communicating large ideas, in evoking energy. so far, well; but the final test is whether the stimulus thus given to wider aims succeeds in transforming itself into power, that is to say, into the attention to detail that ensures mastery over means of execution. if not, the zeal flags, the interest dies out, the ideal becomes a clouded memory. other teachers succeed in training facility, skill, mastery of the technique of subjects. again it is well--so far. but unless enlargement of mental vision, power of increased discrimination of final values, a sense for ideas--for principles--accompanies this training, forms of skill ready to be put indifferently to any end may be the result. such modes of technical skill may display themselves, according to circumstances, as cleverness in serving self-interest, as docility in carrying out the purposes of others, or as unimaginative plodding in ruts. to nurture inspiring aim and executive means into harmony with each other is at once the difficulty and the reward of the teacher. § . _the far and the near_ [sidenote: "familiarity breeds contempt,"] teachers who have heard that they should avoid matters foreign to pupils' experience, are frequently surprised to find pupils wake up when something beyond their ken is introduced, while they remain apathetic in considering the familiar. in geography, the child upon the plains seems perversely irresponsive to the intellectual charms of his local environment, and fascinated by whatever concerns mountains or the sea. teachers who have struggled with little avail to extract from pupils essays describing the details of things with which they are well acquainted, sometimes find them eager to write on lofty or imaginary themes. a woman of education, who has recorded her experience as a factory worker, tried retelling _little women_ to some factory girls during their working hours. they cared little for it, saying, "those girls had no more interesting experience than we have," and demanded stories of millionaires and society leaders. a man interested in the mental condition of those engaged in routine labor asked a scotch girl in a cotton factory what she thought about all day. she replied that as soon as her mind was free from starting the machinery, she married a duke, and their fortunes occupied her for the remainder of the day. [sidenote: since only the novel demands attention,] naturally, these incidents are not told in order to encourage methods of teaching that appeal to the sensational, the extraordinary, or the incomprehensible. they are told, however, to enforce the point that the familiar and the near do not excite or repay thought on their own account, but only as they are adjusted to mastering the strange and remote. it is a commonplace of psychology that we do not attend to the old, nor consciously mind that to which we are thoroughly accustomed. for this, there is good reason: to devote attention to the old, when new circumstances are constantly arising to which we should adjust ourselves, would be wasteful and dangerous. thought must be reserved for the new, the precarious, the problematic. hence the mental constraint, the sense of being lost, that comes to pupils when they are invited to turn their thoughts upon that with which they are already familiar. the old, the near, the accustomed, is not that _to_ which but that _with_ which we attend; it does not furnish the material of a problem, but of its solution. [sidenote: which, in turn, can be given only through the old] the last sentence has brought us to the balancing of new and old, of the far and that close by, involved in reflection. the more remote supplies the stimulus and the motive; the nearer at hand furnishes the point of approach and the available resources. this principle may also be stated in this form: the best thinking occurs when the easy and the difficult are duly proportioned to each other. the easy and the familiar are equivalents, as are the strange and the difficult. too much that is easy gives no ground for inquiry; too much of the hard renders inquiry hopeless. [sidenote: the given and the suggested] the necessity of the interaction of the near and the far follows directly from the nature of thinking. where there is thought, something present suggests and indicates something absent. accordingly unless the familiar is presented under conditions that are in some respect unusual, it gives no jog to thinking, it makes no demand upon what is not present in order to be understood. and if the subject presented is totally strange, there is no basis upon which it may suggest anything serviceable for its comprehension. when a person first has to do with fractions, for example, they will be wholly baffling so far as they do not signify to him some relation that he has already mastered in dealing with whole numbers. when fractions have become thoroughly familiar, his perception of them acts simply as a signal to do certain things; they are a "substitute sign," to which he can react without thinking. (_ante_, p. .) if, nevertheless, the situation as a whole presents something novel and hence uncertain, the entire response is not mechanical, because this mechanical operation is put to use in solving a problem. there is no end to this spiral process: foreign subject-matter transformed through thinking into a familiar possession becomes a resource for judging and assimilating additional foreign subject-matter. [sidenote: observation supplies the near, imagination the remote] the need for both imagination and observation in every mental enterprise illustrates another aspect of the same principle. teachers who have tried object-lessons of the conventional type have usually found that when the lessons were new, pupils were attracted to them as a diversion, but as soon as they became matters of course they were as dull and wearisome as was ever the most mechanical study of mere symbols. imagination could not play about the objects so as to enrich them. the feeling that instruction in "facts, facts" produces a narrow gradgrind is justified not because facts in themselves are limiting, but because facts are dealt out as such hard and fast ready-made articles as to leave no room to imagination. let the facts be presented so as to stimulate imagination, and culture ensues naturally enough. the converse is equally true. the imaginative is not necessarily the imaginary; that is, the unreal. the proper function of imagination is vision of realities that cannot be exhibited under existing conditions of sense-perception. clear insight into the remote, the absent, the obscure is its aim. history, literature, and geography, the principles of science, nay, even geometry and arithmetic, are full of matters that must be imaginatively realized if they are realized at all. imagination supplements and deepens observation; only when it turns into the fanciful does it become a substitute for observation and lose logical force. [sidenote: experience through communication of others' experience] a final exemplification of the required balance between near and far is found in the relation that obtains between the narrower field of experience realized in an individual's own contact with persons and things, and the wider experience of the race that may become his through communication. instruction always runs the risk of swamping the pupil's own vital, though narrow, experience under masses of communicated material. the instructor ceases and the teacher begins at the point where communicated matter stimulates into fuller and more significant life that which has entered by the strait and narrow gate of sense-perception and motor activity. genuine communication involves contagion; its name should not be taken in vain by terming communication that which produces no community of thought and purpose between the child and the race of which he is the heir. index abstract, - abstraction, f. action, activity, activities, , f., - , f. active attitude and the concept, analysis, - , f.; in education, apperception, ; apperceptive masses, application, f., f. apprehension, f.; _see_ understanding. artist, attitude of, f. articulation, authority, , bacon, , , bain, balance, behavior, , - , f.; _see_ action, occupations belief, , - ; reached indirectly, central factor in thinking, children, f. clifford, coherence, , comparison, f., comprehension, ; _see_ understanding. concentration, concept, conception, , - , ; _see_ meaning. conclusion, , f., , , f.; technique of, f. concrete, - congruity, , connection, ; _see_ relation. consecutive, , , consequence, consequential, ; consequences, consistency, continuity, , , control, - ; of deduction, - ; of induction, - ; of suggestion, f., ; _see_ regulation. corroborate, corroboration, , curiosity, ff., darwin, , , data, f., , f., decision, deduction, , - , ; control of, - definition, f.; definitions, - , development, of ideas, ; _see_ elaboration, ratiocination, reasoning. discipline, , ; formal, , discourse, consecutive, f. discovery, inductive, , division, dogmatism, , doing, , doubt, , , , ; _see_ perplexity, uncertainty. drill, , drudgery, education, intellectual, , ; aim of, f., elaboration, of ideas, f., , f., , , ; _see_ development, ratiocination, reasoning. emerson, emotion, , , emphasis, , f. empirical thinking, - end, f. evidence, , f., , f.; _see_ grounds. experience, , , f., experiment, experimental, f., , f., f., f., extension, f. fact _vs_ idea, ; facts, , faculty psychology, familiar, familiarity, - , f., , f., f. fooling, formalism; _see_ discipline. formal steps of instruction, , formulation, f., , , - freedom, f.; intellectual, function, ; function of signifying, , general , , , f.; _see_ principles, universal. generality, , generalization, f. grounds, , - , ; _see_ evidence. guiding factor in reflection, habits; _see_ action. herbart, herbartian method, - hobhouse, hypothesis, , , , f., f., , idea, , , , - ; _see_ meaning. idle thinking, image, imagination, f., f. imitation, , , implication, , , impulse, induction, - , ; control of, - ; scientific, inference, f., , , ; critical, , ; systematic, information, f., - inquiry, , f. intellect, intellectual activity, , , intension, f. internal congruity, isolation, - , , james, , , f. jevons, f., , judgment, ; factors of, ; good judgment, , , f.; and inference, ff.; intuitive, f.; principles of, f.; suspended, , , , ; tentative, knowledge, f., , ; spiral movement of, , language, - ; and education, - ; and meaning, ; technical, f.; as a tool of thought, ff., leap, in inference, , leisure, f. locke, n., - logical, f.; _vs._ psychological, f. meaning, meanings, , , f., , , - ; capital fund of, store of, , , , , , ; individual, f.; organization of, , ; as tools, keys, instruments, f., , f., ; _see_ concept. memory, method, - , ; analytic and synthetic, ; formal, mill, n. mood, motivation, negative cases, notion. _see_ concept. object lessons, , observation, , , f., f., , , , - , f.; in schools, - ; scientific, occupation, occupations, , , f. openmindedness, order, orderliness, , , , , ; _see_ consecutive. organization, , ; of subject matter, originality, particulars, , ; _cf._ general, universal. passion, , , , perception, , ; _cf._ observation perplexity, , , placing, , play, - , - ; of mind, playfulness, , f. practical deliberation, f. prejudice, principles, f. problem, , , , , , , , , f., , proof, , , pseudo-idea, psychological (_vs._ logical), f. purpose, ratiocination, f., reason, reasoning, - , f., reasons, f. recitation, - ; factors in, - reflection, f., f.; central function of, ; double movement of, - ; five steps in, - , f. regulation, - ; _see_ control. relation, relationship, , ; _see_ connection. scientific thinking, - sense training, - sequence, ; _cf._ consequence. sidgwick, signify, , signs, , - spiral movement, _see_ knowledge. stimulus-response, studies, types of, subject matter, f.; intellectual, f.; logical, f.; practical, ; theoretical, ; and the teacher, f. substitute signs, f., succession, suggestion, , , , f., f.; control of, f., ; dimensions of, - supposition, , suspense of judgment, , , symbols, _see_ signs. synthesis, f. terms, , f., , , testing, , , , , ; of deduction, , theory, theoretical, thinking, complete, , f., ; _see_ reasoning, reflection. thought, f.; educative value of, ; reflective, ; train of, ; types of, truth, truths, uncertainty, _see_ doubt, perplexity. unconscious, ff. uncritical thinking, understanding, - ; direct and indirect, - , universal, vagueness, f., , vailati, n. venn, verification, vocabulary, - ward, n. warrant, wisdom, wonder, , f. wordsworth, work, - , -