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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN STUDIES 
 IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HISTORY 
 
 NUMBER 3 
 
 THE MISINTERPRETATION OF LOCKE AS A 
 
 FORMALIST IN EDUCATIONAL 
 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 % i^ - v ? 6 :%* l 
 
 BY 
 
 VIVIAN TROW THAYER 
 
 INSTRUCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 MADISON 
 1921 
 
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN STUDIES 
 
 NUMBER 18 SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HISTORY NO. 3 
 
 NOVEMBER, 1921 PRICE 50 CENTS 
 
 Published bi-monthly by the University of Wisconsin, at Madison, 
 
 Wisconsin. 
 
 Entered as second class matter August 31, 1919, at the postoffice 
 at Madison, Wisconsin, under the Act of August 24, 1912. Accepted 
 for mailing at special rates of postage provided for in Section 1103, 
 Act of October 3, 1917. Authorized September 17, 1918. 
 
 No. 1. The colonial citizen of New York city, by Robert Francis 
 Seybolt. 40p. Fifty cents. 
 
 No. 2. The restoration of the southern railroads, by Carl Russell 
 Fish. 28p. Fifty cents. 
 
 No. 3. The misinterpretation of Locke as a formalist in educa- 
 tional philosophy, by Vivian Trow Thayer. 24p. Fifty 
 cents. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN STUDIES 
 IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HISTORY 
 
 NUMBER 3 
 
 THE MISINTERPRETATION OF LOCKE AS A 
 
 FORMALIST IN EDUCATIONAL 
 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 BY 
 
 VIVIAN TROW THAYER 
 
 INSTRUCTOR IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 MADISON 
 1921 
 
> 16 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 JAN1 41922 
 
 ^ ... r -_ ^-^iiiii —»"■' ■' 
 
THE MISINTERPRETATION OF LOCKE AS A 
 FORMALIST IN EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 I. 
 
 What constitutes the significance of a thinker? Does it 
 consist alone in the truths which he creates and hands on to 
 posterity as a fixed and unchangeable inheritance? Or, does 
 it rest as well in his capacity to stimulate his followers to 
 advance into promised lands where he himself can plant no 
 seed and consequently reap no harvests? Perhaps as science 
 becomes less static and dogmatic we incline to recognize a 
 man's importance more and more in terms of the problems 
 which he sets for others to solve and less as regards his def- 
 inite and tangible contribution to the fund of human knowl- 
 edge. Hume in metaphysics is, of course, an illustration of 
 this latter type. His destructive analysis of the metaphysical 
 presuppositions of his day forced a right-about-face in the- 
 ories of knowledge and a new attempt to describe the nature 
 of the human understanding. . 
 
 So, too, Herbart in his psychology. Herbart's ideas bear 
 much the same relation to the concept of mind as do Hume's 
 impressions of memory to an external world. Educational 
 theory after the advent of Pestalozzi was synthesizing a mix- 
 ture of philosophical conceptions. The human understanding 
 which Kant reconstructed was a much more formidable and 
 complex affair than that which Hume destroyed. But this 
 in turn became identified with an organizing and self-develop- 
 ing will. This conception of the mind as a self-revealing en- 
 tity harmonized well with Rousseau's doctrine of ripening in- 
 stincts and capacities. And, consequently, in the writings of 
 the Pestalozzians and, later, the Froebelians, we have clearly 
 enunciated theories of inner development, and the business of 
 the educator conceived to be more or less exclusively, as Pesta- 
 lozzi puts it, that of assisting "the child's nature in the effort 
 which it makes for its own development". 
 
 When Herbart and his followers challenged this concep- 
 tion of the mind and its faculties and attempted to substitute 
 for it ideas and apperceptive masses of ideas, we had not so 
 
4 UNIVERSITY OP WISCONSIN STUDIES 
 
 much a concrete and permanent contribution to psychology as 
 a confrontation of views supplying a basis for genuine experi- 
 mental study of the nature of the mind. Such, at least, seems 
 to have been its fruitful results. 
 
 In the 90's the conflict between the Pestalozzians and the 
 Herbartians centered particularly upon the issue of formal 
 discipline. The Herbartians, conscious that right makes might, 
 appealed their case to the people and the controversy spread 
 from technical monograph and books, from classroom and 
 laboratory, from teachers' convention and professional mag- 
 azine, to the great public forum of periodical literature. 
 
 I have made considerable effort to find a discussion of for- 
 mal discipline prior to 1890. Pool's Index from 1887-1891 
 evidently contains nothing bearing upon formal discipline. 
 The general heading, "Education," suffices to group all mag- 
 azine articles from 1891-1900, but in 1902 the Index intro- 
 duces a separate heading, "Discipline," to accommodate the 
 stream of articles which was soon to become a veritable tor- 
 rent. Indeed, if one wishes to inform himself upon the sub- 
 ject of formal discipline he will find even histories of educa- 
 tion published prior to 1895 unable to satisfy his curiosity. He 
 must wait either for histories written by the Herbartians or 
 for histories written in the heat of the controversy over formal 
 discipline. 
 
 When he reads these, however, he learns that John Locke 
 furnished the philosophical basis for formal discipline. Now, 
 the fact that John Locke who died in 1704 should formulate 
 an educational theory which, despite his immediate and power- 
 ful influence upon the thought of his day, becomes articulate 
 only in the nineteenth century, and comes to a focus mainly in 
 the discussion of the last decade of that century, is sufficiently 
 interesting to warrant an investigation. 
 
 II. 
 
 But first, what is the theory of formal discipline ? Monroe's 
 Encyclopedia of Education states the theory as follows : 
 
 This expression has been used to indicate the general reaction 
 upon the abilities of a student that is by many supposed to spring 
 from the method of their study rather than from the content which 
 Is learned. We may distinguish, in the first place, between the 
 Information and the discipline that we may derive from the sub- 
 
THE MISINTERPRETATION OF LOCKE 5 
 
 Ject; and again between the specific discipline, or increased power 
 of dealing with similar material, and the general discipline or in- 
 creased ability to deal with any sort of material, the treatment of 
 which involves somewhat the same general powers of the mind. 
 Although formal discipline, a discipline derived from the form of 
 the study rather than from its content, may be said to include 
 both specific and general results, it is in connection with the latter 
 especially that educational controversy has arisen. 
 
 Undoubtedly the strongest support that the idea of formal dis- 
 cipline has received in the past has come from the practically 
 universal belief in certain abstract mental powers or faculties. 
 .... The belief in these various faculties does not of necessity 
 carry with it the conception that they may be generally improved 
 by exercise in specific directions. However, when emphasis is 
 placed on the form of activity, and when it is assumed that all 
 activities of a certain form depend upon a special inner power 
 that exerts itself equally in connection with whatsoever material, 
 any observed increase in its efficiency in dealing with this or that 
 content will be naturally expected to appear when attention is 
 directed to other content. 1 
 
 Very frequently we find opponents of formal discipline con- 
 demning a formalist because he conceives the mind as a unity. 
 Thus Ruediger complains : 
 
 Roark assumes a mind with a homogeneous unity something 
 like that of a carpenter's tool, say a hatchet. The variety of the uses 
 to which a hatchet can be put corresponds to the variety of the 
 functions of the mind, and as the whole of the hatchet is always 
 acting in any situation, so the whole of the mind is always acting. 
 Improving such a homogeneous object for one function would 
 naturally improve it about equally for all functions. But it is 
 evident to the merest tyro in psychology, that the localization of 
 function in the brain precludes any such unity of the mind. 1 
 
 The literature bearing upon formal discipline reveals in the 
 minds of the .opposition, at least, a progressive clarification 
 of issues. When in 1893 the translators of W. Rein's Out- 
 lines of Pedagogics used the expression "formal education," 
 they believed it necessary to add an explanatory footnote. 
 Rein had said: 
 
 1 Paul Monroe, A Cyclopedia of Education (4 vol.. New York, 1911), 
 II, 642-644. 
 
 3 Win. C. Ruediger, Principles of Education (New York, 1909), 92-93. 
 Recent discussions of the integrated activity of the nervous system 
 would doubtless shake our "tyro's" assurance. Localization of function 
 is by no means as generally accepted as it was ten years ago. The dis- 
 cussion centering about Spearman's two-factor theory indicates that 
 psychologists are about ready to give a rehearing to the whole problem 
 of the relation between the specific and the general functions of the 
 cortex. 
 
6 UNIVERSITY OP WISCONSIN STUDIES 
 
 The fiction of "formal education" must be given up. In general 
 there is no such education at all; there exist simply as many kinds 
 of formal education as there are essentially different spheres of 
 intellectual employment.* 
 
 Thereupon the translators enlighten the reader with a 
 definition of "formal education." 
 
 "Formal education" or "formal culture" signifies about the same 
 as the vague expression "discipline of the mind." Its extreme de- 
 fendants claim that the pursuit of classic studies renders the 
 intellect capable in any sphere whatever, i. e., it develops all the 
 mental faculties. 
 
 The writers who rallied about Hinsdale after his assault 
 upon formal discipline in the N. E. A. convention of 1894 
 very soon defined the term so clearly that benevolent neutrality 
 became impossible. Thorndike, in his first edition of Psy- 
 chology, puts the theory thus : 
 
 The mind is regarded as a machine of which the different fac- 
 ulties are parts. Experiences being thrown in at one end, percep- 
 tion perceives them, discrimination tells them apart, memory re- 
 tains them, and so on. By training, the machine is made to work 
 more quickly, efficiently, and economically with all sorts of 
 experiences.* 
 
 And with the appearance of O'Shea's Education as Adjust- 
 ment, in 1903, further attempts at a definition of formal dis- 
 cipline were superfluous. 
 
 According to this conception mind is so constituted that it can 
 take any item of experience and use it for full value on every 
 occasion without regard to the time, place, circumstances, or con- 
 ditions under which it was gained. Mind receives impressions and 
 makes such use and disposition of them as it may at any time 
 will to do. It is not limited in present or future action to what it 
 has done in the past; special exercise begets general power; good 
 reasoning in cube root will give skill in reasoning in everything. 
 Mind is self-contained, self-regulated, acting according to principles 
 of its own without regard to the environments in which it is born 
 or bred as it were. It can take particular experiences and use 
 them in a general way in all kinds of situations. 5 
 
 An examination of these definitions reveals the fact that 
 formal discipline embodies several distinct conceptions. In 
 the first place it holds to faculties of the mind, — to faculties of 
 
 8 W. Rein, Trans, by C. C. and Ida Van Liew (London, 1893), 42. 
 
 4 E. L. Thorndike, Psychology (New York, 1903). 87. Thorndike 
 quotes from eight or more writers to substantiate his statements, but of 
 these only three at best can be classed as psychologists and it is de- 
 batable to what degree the quotations, when restored to their context, 
 illustrate his definition. In the quotation from Roark, if one emphasizes 
 the word rightly in the statement, "rightly strengthening the memory 
 necessitates the developing and training of the other powers" (and so 
 throughout the quotation), he realizes how essentially ambiguous is the 
 quotation rather than its formal character. 
 
 "M. V. O'Shea, Education as Adjustment (New York, 1903), 72-73. 
 
THE MISINTERPRETATION OF LOCKE 7 
 
 perception, memory, reasoning and the like. In this respect 
 there seem to be two classes of formalists, — if we can trust the 
 statements of their opponents. The one views the faculties of 
 the mind as entities or agents, after the manner of the mediae- 
 val faculty psychology. Thorndike seems to have these in 
 mind in his reference to the faculties as parts of a machine. 
 And again we have the storage battery conception of the 
 mind — a unity which functions in various ways — the whole 
 draining into the parts and the parts into the whole. Ruediger's 
 statement above illustrates this, and it is the conception singled 
 out for attack by Hinsdale in his epoch making article in the 
 Educational Review. 6 Secondly, formal discipline evidently 
 contends that transfer of training is the supreme characteristic 
 in learning. Our critics vary somewhat in their testimony as 
 regards the extent to which formalists believe in transfer. 
 Monroe states that formal disciplinarians unite "on the one 
 point .... that a particular activity or experience especially 
 of an intellectual character, if well selected, produces a power 
 or ability out of all proportion to the expenditure of energy 
 therein." 7 But in the heat of controversy this becomes too 
 conservative a position to oppose, and it is said the formalists 
 advocate complete and equal transfer. 8 Thirdly, the formal 
 disciplinarians are accused of being concerned more with the 
 method of learning than with materials of education ; although 
 at times we hear them severely condemned because they advo- 
 cate some one exclusive material for educational training, such 
 as science, or the classics. 
 
 III. 
 
 Since the appearance of Monroe's Text Book in Education 
 in 1905 the preponderance of opinion holds John Locke respon- 
 sible for a formulation of the theory of formal discipline. 
 Graves, for example, speaks of Locke as "the first writer to 
 advocate the doctrine of 'formal discipline.' " 9 
 
 • B. A. Hinsdale, "The Dogma of Formal Discipline," Educational 
 Review, VIII (1854), 128-142. 
 
 T Paul Monroe, A Brief Course in the History of Education (New 
 York, 1907), 255. 
 
 8 See O'Shea above. Also S. P. Duggan, A Student's Text in the 
 History of Education (New York, 1916), 183-4. 
 
 • F. P. Graves, History of Education During the Middle Ages and 
 Transition, (New York, 1914), 309. 
 
8 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN STUDIES 
 
 Historians point to the formal character of the English pub- 
 lic schools as indicating in part, at least, Locke's influence. 
 Both Graves and Monroe admit that Locke was unsuccessful 
 in his attack upon the public school curriculum but they both 
 insist his influence tended to perpetuate disciplinary methods 
 of teaching, 10 and, writes Monroe, "the subsequent emphasis 
 which these schools laid upon the importance of physical and 
 moral discipline, through games and sports and out-of-door 
 life in general, with all the training which came from the 
 struggle for leadership among boys thrown almost entirely 
 upon their own responsibility for government and the regula- 
 tion of their relations among themselves, was due to a con- 
 siderable extent to the influence of Locke's Thoughts. 11 
 
 Now, if actual training in leadership characterizes the dis- 
 cipline of the English schools whose main business it is to 
 educate future leaders of English society, it would seem that 
 the meaning of the word discipline is decidedly different in 
 this connection from that usually ascribed to it by formal 
 disciplinarians. Moreover, since both Graves and Monroe 
 admit that, long before Locke wrote, the public schools had 
 acquired the characteristics which even today distinguish them, 
 it is at best an arbitrary procedure — out of the many possible 
 factors influencing the situation — to select John Locke as the 
 prime cause in determining either the prevailing mode of 
 physical and moral education or the character of the schools 
 in general. 
 
 How then shall we determine the nature of Locke's influ- 
 ence? One method, obviously, is to examine his writings and 
 seek to reconstruct his philosophy, as free as possible from 
 pre-conceived theories. This I wish to attempt in a subsequent 
 study. A second method is to trace as well as we can the 
 influence of Locke upon educational theory and practice. 
 Educational institutions originating and developing contem- 
 poraneously with Locke and assuming their fundamental struc- 
 ture in the period of his dominance over thought might very 
 well serve this purpose. 
 
 Such are the academies. While the English Academies date 
 from the Protectorate the immediate stimulus for their de- 
 velopment was the persecution of the Non-Conformists in the 
 
 10 Ibid., 172, 259. 
 
 a Paul Monroe, A Text Book in the History of Education (New 
 York, 1905), 523-4. 
 
THE MISINTERPRETATION OF LOCKE 9 
 
 reign of Charles II. With the exclusion of Non-Conformists 
 from the public schools and universities "a high sense of duty 
 to their fellow-sectarians, then, moved these ministers to offer 
 the best substitute they could provide for the instruction of 
 the higher schools." 12 The provisions of the Act of Uniformity 
 and the Five Mile Act, says Brown "were only partially re- 
 laxed by the Toleration Act of 1689, and it was an uncertain, 
 half-outlawed existence which was led by the schools of the 
 ejected ministers." Nevertheless they continued and multiplied. 
 Brown states we have information of more than thirty of these 
 institutions which were opened in England prior to the Amer- 
 ican Revolution. "They are associated with the names of 
 eminent men, some of them the very saints of English non- 
 conformity, and others among the foremost churchmen of the 
 time." From England the academies spread to America and 
 rapidly became a determining influence in shaping the character 
 of both secondary and higher educational institutions in the 
 United States. 
 
 Now Locke seems to have exerted a profound effect upon 
 the Academy. Brown writes : 
 
 Aside from theological doctrine, the real intellectual stimulus of 
 the eighteenth century academies seems to have come largely 
 from John Locke and Sir Isaac Newton; and while the thought 
 of these master minds oftenest reached the schools through the 
 writings of Watts and other popularizers, there are other instances 
 in which we find the original masterpieces freely studied in the 
 academies. The deeply religious character of both Locke and 
 Newton, and the fact that, though churchmen, they were both 
 earnest advocates of toleration, commended them to the men con- 
 cerned with the building up of academies; and the wide intellectual 
 hospitality which they themselves displayed and their success in 
 enlarging the range of human thought and knowledge, appealed 
 to academy men on the side of their intellectual tastes. So the 
 influence of these two friends is found back of the academy move- 
 ment in successive stages of its progress. 13 
 
 In his Sketch of an English School, prepared as a suggestive 
 course of study for the Philadelphia Academy opened in 1751, 
 Benjamin Franklin includes Locke among the authors to be 
 read in the sixth class. Other influences besides that of Locke 
 undoubtedly led to the adoption of a catholic curriculum, but 
 Locke's spirit approved the wide course of study characteristic 
 of the academies. Although they retained Greek, Hebrew, and 
 
 "E. E. Brown, The Making of Our Middle Schools (New York, 1910), 
 162. 
 
 18 Brown, Middle Schools, 166. See Chapters VIII-XI for account of 
 the academies in England and the United States. 
 
10 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN STUDIES 
 
 Latin (which were distinctly professional studies) the acad- 
 emies added natural philosophy, mathematics, geography, anat- 
 omy, shorthand, etc. Today we should condemn the work as 
 superficially broad, but the aim at least was to furnish the 
 understanding with ideas. 
 
 Isaac Watts, who attended Rowe's Academy from 1690 
 to 1694, was the most influential medium through whom 
 Locke's theories were given practical application. Watts' 
 Improvement of the Mind was written to serve much the 
 same function as Locke's Conduct of the Understanding. It 
 was designed to aid one in the management of the mind. We 
 find in it the same practical suggestions as we do in the Conduct 
 but it is better adapted for academy students ; and it was a 
 textbook in the academies for over a century. 14 It makes no 
 claim to originality and it quite frankly popularizes and gives 
 detailed application to the ideas of Locke. Consequently, an 
 examination of the book may shed light upon the question, 
 Was Locke interpreted by his immediate followers as a formal- 
 ist in educational theory and practice? 
 
 Now we do find Watts occasionally referring to faculties 
 and he deals specifically with the training of the powers of 
 Observation, Memory, Attention, etc. It becomes important, 
 therefore, to determine in what sense the term faculty is used. 
 Do Watts and Locke conceive faculty in either of the two 
 senses indicated above? 
 
 We have but to refer to the well-known section six in the 
 chapter on Power in Locke's Essay as proof of the fact that 
 Locke himself expressly warns people not to confuse faculties 
 with the "notion of so many distinct agents within us." 15 And 
 whether Locke and Watts believe in faculties in the second 
 sense depends somewhat upon our interpretation of what is 
 meant by mind as a "unit." Indeed, we cannot read many 
 anti-formalists before we discover what appears to be a con- 
 
 14 The edition used in connection with this paper was that of 1833, 
 edited by "Joseph Emerson, Principal of the Female Seminary, Wethers- 
 field, Conn.," published in Boston by Jenks, Palmer and Co. 
 
 15 The first sentence of the Conduct of Understanding reads : "The 
 last resort a man has recourse to, in the conduct of himself, is his under- 
 standing ; for though we distinguish the faculties of the mind, and give 
 the supreme command to the will, as to an agent, yet the truth is, the 
 man who is the agent, determines himself to this or that voluntary ac- 
 tion, upon some precedent knowledge, or appearance of knowledge in 
 the understanding." 
 
THE MISINTERPRETATION OF LOCKE 11 
 
 fusion as regards this issue. We have already witnessed 
 Ruediger's summary dismissal of unity of mind on the ground 
 that it conflicts with the theory of localization of function. On 
 the other hand, Duggan, whose loyalty to anti-formalism is 
 above suspicion, attacks formal discipline with the weapon of 
 unity of function. 
 
 Psychology no longer holds that the mind Is made up of a 
 number of faculties, but that it functions as a unit, sometimes as 
 thinking, sometimes as feeling, sometimes as doing, and that any 
 mental experience, such as the study of a school subject, develops 
 the whole mind, and not any faculty of it. In fact modern psychol- 
 ogy affirms that there is no such faculty as memory, but the mind 
 has "memories," e. g., of time, place, things; it denies that an 
 ability to remember places is necessarily accompanied by an equal 
 ability to remember faces and dates. 16 
 
 Evidently it is possible for Locke to believe the mind is a 
 unit and still not be a formal disciplinarian. And, if I were 
 to hazard a guess, I should say that Duggan's conception of 
 the mind is not much different from that which Locke affirms. 
 Certain it is that both Watts and Locke believe it is the mind 
 which functions now as memory, now as observation, now as 
 reason, and this function or power so to behave is what they 
 designate as faculty. Watts clearly indicates as regards obser- 
 vation and memory, for example, that he means a method of 
 procedure. 
 
 Observation is the notice that we take of all occurrences In 
 human life, whether they are sensible or intellectual, whether 
 relating to persons or things, to ourselves or others." 
 
 18 Duggan, History of Education, 184. 
 
 "Watts, p. 37. Watts states that he means by observation what 
 Locke does. Section 13 of the Conduct of the Understanding indicates 
 clearly that Locke is not thinking- of Observation in the abstract. Nor 
 does it indicate a belief in transfer. "Particular matters of fact are 
 the undoubted foundations on which our civil and natural knowledge 
 Is built : the benefit the understanding makes of them is to draw from 
 them conclusions which may be as standing rules of knowledge and 
 consequently of practice. The mind often makes not that benefit it 
 should of the information it receives from the accounts of civil or 
 natural historians, by being too forward or too slow in making obser- 
 vations on the particular facts recorded in them 
 
 . . . . Between these, those seem to do best who, taking material and 
 useful hints, sometimes from single matters of fact, carry them in their 
 minds to be judged of by what they shall find in history to confirm or 
 reverse their imperfect observations, which may be established into rules 
 fit to be relied upon when they are justified by a sufficient and wary in- 
 duction of particulars. He that makes no such reflection on what he 
 reads, only loads his mind with a rhapsody of tales, fit in winter nights 
 for the entertainment of others ; and he that will improve every matter 
 of fact into a maxim, will abound in contrary observations that can be 
 of no other use but to perplex and pudder him if he compares them, 
 
12 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN STUDIES 
 
 And, 
 
 We are said to remember anything, when the idea of it arises in 
 the mind with a consciousness at the same time that we had this 
 idea before Our memory is our natural power of retaining what 
 we learn and of recalling it on every occasion. 18 
 
 Unity of mind thus conceived is one thing; it is another to 
 conclude that the mind is a reservoir of energy, and to infer 
 that "Once sharpen the intellectual axe and it is good for 
 cutting any kind of wood; once develop mental muscle and 
 it is good for lifting any kind of burden ; once go through the 
 gymnasium for the mind and you are ready for the tasks of 
 life." 19 To attribute this latter view to Locke or Watts is to 
 ignore completely their constant insistence upon wide and 
 varied experience. Surely, if they believed any sort of material 
 would store up power usable to an equal degree in other fields, 
 they must have realized the absurdity of requiring, as they 
 did, a variety of subject matter. Thus Watts writes in his 
 rules relating to observation: 
 
 In order to furnish the mind with a rich variety of ideas, the 
 laudable curiosity of young people should be indulged and gratified, 
 
 rather than discouraged For this reason also, where time and 
 
 fortune allow it, young people should be led into company at proper 
 seasons, should be carried abroad, to see the fields, the woods, the 
 rivers, the buildings, towers and cities, distant from their own 
 dwellings. They should be entertained with the sight of strange 
 birds, beasts, fishes, insects, vegetables, and productions both of 
 nature and art of every kind, whether they are the products of 
 their own or foreign nations. And, in due time, where Providence 
 gives opportunity, they may travel under a wise inspector or tutor, 
 to different parts of the world, for the same end, that they may 
 bring home treasures of useful knowledge 
 
 Among all these observations write down what is most remark- 
 able and uncommon. Reserve these remarks in store for proper 
 occasions and at proper seasons take a review of them. 20 
 
 One may pick out passages at random from Locke's writ- 
 ings which emphasize two things: first, that subject matter 
 
 or else to misguide him if he gives himself up to the authority of that 
 which for its novelty or for some other fancy best pleases him." And, 
 they who read, "but not reflecting on it, not making to themselves obser- 
 vations from what they read, they are very little improved by all that 
 crowd of particulars that either pass through or lodge themselves in 
 their understandings. They dream on in a constant course of reading 
 and cramming themselves ; but not digesting anything, it produces nothing 
 but a heap of crudities." See also Section 20 on Reading. 
 
 18 Ibid., 163. It is interesting to relate Watts' definition of memory 
 with that of James. James writes on page 287 of the Briefer Course, "It 
 is the knowledge of an event, or fact, of which meantime we have not 
 been thinking, with the additional consciousness that we have thought 
 or experienced it before." 
 
 M H. H. Home, The Psychological Principles of Education (New 
 York, 1908). 
 
 20 Watts, pp. 54-65. 
 
THE MISINTERPRETATION OF LOCKE 13 
 
 counts, and secondly, that subject matter counts only in terms 
 of what one makes of it. I quote from the Conduct of the 
 Understanding because that work supposedly best illustrates 
 Locke's formalism: 
 
 In this we may see the reason why some men of study and 
 thought, that reason right and are lovers of truth, do make no 
 advances in their discoveries of it. Error and truth are uncertainly 
 blended in their minds; their decisions are lame and defective, and 
 they are very often mistaken in their judgments: the reason where- 
 of is, they converse with but one sort of men, they read but one 
 sort of books, they will not come in the hearing of but one sort 
 of notions; the truth is, they canton out to themselves a little 
 Goshen in the intellectual world, where light shines, and as they 
 conclude, day blesses them; but the rest of that vast expansion 
 they give up to night and darkness, and so avoid coming near it. 
 They have a pretty traffic with known correspondents, in some 
 little creek; within that they confine themselves, but will not ven- 
 ture out into the great ocean of knowledge, to survey the riches 
 that nature hath stored other parts with, no less genuine, no less 
 solid, no less useful than what has fallen to their lot, in the 
 admired plenty and sufficiency of their own little spot, which to 
 them contains whatsoever is good in the universe. 21 
 
 Locke's discipline of the faculties is fairly represented in 
 the following: 
 
 I do not say to be a good geographer that a man should visit 
 every mountain, river, promontory, and creek upon the face of the 
 earth, view the buildings and survey the land everywhere, as if he 
 were going to make a purchase; but yet everyone must allow that 
 he shall know a country better that makes often sallies into it 
 and traverses up and down, than he that like a mill-horse goes 
 still round in the same track, or keeps within the narrow bounds 
 of a field or two that delight him. He that will enquire out the 
 best books in every science, and inform himself of the most 
 material authors of the several sects of philosophy and religion, 
 will not find it an infinite work to acquaint himself with the senti- 
 ments of mankind concerning the most weighty and comprehensive 
 subjects. Let him exercise freedom of his reason and understand- 
 ing in such a latitude as this, and his mind will be strengthened, 
 his capacity enlarged, his faculties improved; and the light which 
 the remote and scattered parts of truth will give to one another 
 will so assist his judgment, that he will seldom be widely out, or 
 miss giving proof of a clear head and a comprehensive knowledge. 
 
 In point of fact, a correct interpretation of Locke must 
 leave his conception of mind unclear. Evidently Locke, as 
 Descartes before him, does not realize the ambiguities and 
 difficulties involved in speaking of the mind. And Locke does 
 not realize these difficulties because they develop only after the 
 implications of his philosophy are made more explicit by sub- 
 sequent philosophy. He seems to consider the mind as a unit, 
 but this is not un-ambiguous. Thus, after condemning the 
 conception of the will as a faculty, in the sense of a distinct 
 
 21 This quotation as well as the next one is found In Section 3. 
 
14 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN STUDIES 
 
 agent or power separate from the mind, he says, "It is not one 
 power that operates on another ; but it is the mind that operates, 
 and exerts these powers ; it is the agent that has powers, or 
 is able to do." 22 But if we seek to arrive at a more precise 
 and detailed notion of what Locke means by Mind, or Under- 
 standing, we encounter great difficulty. 23 Strict accuracy prob- 
 ably will require us to say that he leaves the nature of mind 
 as a problem for his successors. Its existence was for him 
 one of those natural assumptions of common discourse which 
 we all make, but of whose vagueness we are not aware. Not 
 until after Hume do we have an articulate expression of the 
 nature of mind. Whatever faults we may find with the dis- 
 ciplinary conception of mind, it is at least definite and formu- 
 lated in such a fashion that in consequence it becomes a subject 
 of investigation and study. 
 
 What is Locke's relation to the second characteristic of 
 formal discipline? Was he interpreted as advocating the doc- 
 trine that training one power leads to a transfer of energy or 
 ability to another power? Do his followers believe that train- 
 ing memory in one respect increases memory ability in other 
 particulars ? 
 
 I think a critical reading of Locke and of Watts will con- 
 vince us that the question of transfer simply does not occur 
 to them. First, as to transfer from one power to another. 
 Watts recognizes and constantly draws attention to the fact 
 that memory and judgment are two quite distinct faculties. 
 Memory is a basis for judgment, but "a person may have a 
 very strong, capacious and retentive memory, where the judg- 
 ment is very weak." 24 "There have been instances of others, 
 who have had a very tolerable power of memory; yet their 
 judgment has been of much superior degree, just and wise, 
 solid and excellent." The cramming of memory with unor- 
 ganized facts does not lead to good judgment. Watts believes 
 the best judgments require a survey and comparison of data 
 and "there can be no such comprehensive survey of many 
 
 22 Essay, Book II, Ch. XXI, Sec. 8. 
 
 23 Compare, for example, in Book II of the Essay, Ch. I, Sec. 23, 
 Ch. VI, Sec. 2, Ch. VIII, Sec. 1, Ch. XXI, Sec. 5, and Ch. XXVII. 
 
 "Watts, 165-6. "It is meditation and studious thought, it is the 
 exercise of your own reason and judgment upon all you read, that gives 
 good sense even to the best genius and affords your understanding the 
 truest improvement. A boy of strong memory may repeat a whole book 
 of Euclid, yet be no geometer ; for he may not be able to demonstrate 
 one single theorem." 
 
THE MISINTERPRETATION OF LOCKE 15 
 
 things without a tolerable degree of memory," but we are no- 
 where given to understand that he believes memory drill, for 
 example, betters judgment, or reason. And, in this respect, he 
 remains true to his master. 25 
 
 It is true that Locke is frequently quoted as believing drill 
 upon mathematics will improve judgment and reason upon all 
 occasions. Thus Graves writes : 26 
 
 Hence to train the mind to make proper discriminations, he de- 
 clares in the Conduct of the Understanding that practice and dis- 
 cipline are necessary. "Would you have a man reason well, you 
 must use him to it betimes, exercise his mind in observing the 
 connection of ideas and following them in train." As to the means 
 of effecting this mental discipline, Locke holds: "Nothing does 
 this better than mathematics, which therefore I think should be 
 taught all those who have the time and opportunity, not so much 
 to make them mathematicians as to make them reasonable crea- 
 tures, that having got the way of reasoning, which that study neces- 
 sarily brings the mind to, they may be able to transfer it to other 
 parts of knowledge as they shall have occasion."" 
 
 Now, in so far as this may mean a method of procedure 
 consciously acquired, it is not formal discipline. I return to 
 this below. The main objection to the use of the quotation 
 from Locke in this connection is the one which may be urged 
 against all selections from Locke used to indicate his formalism. 
 It is the objection that the quotations are taken out of their 
 context. The section from which Graves quotes is Section 
 6 and deals with Principles. Locke has been insisting that un- 
 less we accustom ourselves from youth up to reason strictly 
 and according to sound principles we shall not do so, nor 
 shall we perceive the want of so doing. I wish now to quote 
 from the paragraph preceding the quotation and the im- 
 mediately succeeding paragraph. The man unaccustomed to 
 exercising sound judgment, says Locke, 28 
 
 .... "sees no such defect in himself, but is satisfied that he 
 carries on his designs well enough by his own reasoning, or at 
 least should have done, had it not been for unlucky traverses not 
 in his power. Thus, being content with this short and very im- 
 perfect use of his understanding, he never troubles himself to seek 
 out methods of improving his mind, and lives all his life without 
 
 25 For example, see the Conduct of the Understanding, Section 3 and 
 also Section 20 on Reading. 
 
 M F. P. Graves, A Student's History of Education (New York, 1915), 
 180-1. 
 
 27 Italics are mine. 
 
 28 The quotation begins with paragraph six of Section 6 on Principles. 
 
16 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN STUDIES 
 
 any notion of close reasoning in a continued connection of a long 
 train of consequences from sure foundations, such as is requisite 
 for the making out and clearing most of the speculative truths 
 most men own to believe and are most concerned in. Not to men- 
 tion here what I shall have occasion to insist on by and by more 
 fully, viz., that in many cases it is not one series of consequences 
 will serve the turn, but many different and opposite deductions 
 must be examined and laid together before a man can come to 
 make a right judgment of the point in question. What then can 
 be expected from men that neither see the want of any such kind 
 of reasoning as this; nor, if they do, know how to set about it, or 
 could perform it? You may as well set a countryman, who scarce 
 knows the figures and never cast up a sum of three particulars, to 
 state a merchant's long account, and find the true balance of it. 
 
 "What then should be done in the case? I answer, we should always 
 remember what I said above, that the faculties of our souls are im- 
 proved and made useful to us just after the same manner as our 
 bodies are. Would you have a man write or paint, dance or fence 
 well, or perform any other manual operation dexterously and with 
 ease; let him have ever so much vigour and activity, suppleness and 
 address naturally, yet nobody expects this from him unless he has 
 been used to it, and has employed time and pains in fashioning and 
 forming his hand or outward parts to these motions. Just so is the 
 mind; would you have a man reason well, you must use him to it be- 
 times, exercise his mind in observing the connection of ideas and 
 following them in train. Nothing does this better than mathematics, 
 which therefore I think should be taught to all those who have the 
 time and opportunity, not so much to make them mathematicians 
 as to make them reasonable creatures; for though we all call our- 
 selves so because we are born to it if we please, yet we may truly 
 say, nature gives us but the seeds of it; we are born to be, if we A 
 please, rational creatures, but it is use and exercise only that makes 
 us so, and we are indeed so no further than industry and applica- 
 tion has carried us. And, therefore, in ways of reasoning which men 
 have not been used to, he that will observe the conclusions they take 
 up must be satisfied they are not at all rational. 29 
 
 This has been the less taken notice of because every one in his 
 private affairs uses some sort of reasoning or other enough to 
 denominate him reasonable. But the mistake is that he that is 
 found reasonable in one thing is concluded to be so in all, and to 
 think or say otherwise is thought so unjust an affront and so 
 senseless a censure that nobody ventures to do it. It looks like 
 the degradation of a man below the dignity of his nature. It is true 
 that he that reasons well in any one thing has a mind naturally 
 capable of reasoning well in others, and to the same degree of 
 strength and clearness, and possibly much greater, had his under- 
 standing been employed. But it is as true that he who can reason 
 
 *> Italics are mine. 
 
THE MISINTERPRETATION OF LOCKE 17 
 
 ■well today about one sort of matters, cannot at all reason today 
 about others, though perhaps a year hence he may. But wherever 
 a man's rational faculty fails him, and will not serve him to reason, 
 there we cannot say he is rational, how capable soever he may be 
 by time and exercise to become so. 
 
 A formalist surely can derive little satisfaction from this 
 passage. 
 
 If the reader will compare Graves' quotation with the pas- 
 sage I quote, he will notice that I omit that part of the sen- 
 tence (as given by Graves) which follows the word oppor- 
 tunity and which reads, "not so much to make them mathema- 
 ticians as to make them reasonable creatures, that having got 
 the way of reasoning, which that study necessarily brings the 
 mind to, they may be able to transfer it to other parts of knowl- 
 edge as they shall have occasion." I omit this because Locke 
 did not write it thus. The first part of the sentence is found 
 in Section 6, as I give it, and the second, the part I have just 
 quoted, is the second half of the first sentence of Section 7. 
 The failure to indicate large omissions in Graves' text is not 
 my carelessness. Perhaps a printer's error stands uncorrected. 
 If so, it is very unfortunate, for the result is to give a student 
 a completely false impression of Locke's meaning. I have 
 traced this quotation back to Monroe's Text Book, published 
 in 1905. In most histories (which appear to select their quota- 
 tions from Monroe rather than from Locke) the signs of 
 ellipsis occur, but none indicates that in the first portion of 
 the quotation Locke is talking about faults in reasoning, and, in 
 particular, about "a custom of taking up with principles that 
 are not self-evident, and very often not so much as true," and 
 in the second about mathematics as a general method of reason- 
 ing. Even though we should acquiesce in the questionable 
 assumption that texts for students do not require the scientific 
 care one employs in preparing tracts for members of his pro- 
 fession, an historian can hardly escape the moral obligation he 
 owes both the author he interprets and the student whom 
 he informs, of fairly representing the author's views. 
 
 And in this particular situation the results of misinterpreta- 
 tion are peculiarly significant. If we read the mutilated frag- 
 ment, torn from Section 7, in the context which Graves and 
 others supply, we naturally infer that Locke believes studying 
 mathematics as mathematics gives one a power of reasoning 
 
18 UNIVERSITY OP WISCONSIN STUDIES 
 
 which he can transfer to any concrete case of reasoning ; where- 
 as Locke means in the first place that the mathematical method 
 of procedure is superior to the scholastic method which, in his 
 time, was accepted as a model in the schools, and secondly, he 
 believes that the mathematical method of arranging argument 
 is the most effective arrangement of our ideas when reason- 
 ing. Whatsoever we may say about mathematical procedure 
 as a logical method, to advocate it as a model to follow in 
 reasoning is not the same thing as to maintain that the study 
 of mathematics as mathematics gives us a power of reasoning 
 which we may transfer with advantage to any concrete sit- 
 uation. 
 
 But let us read the sentence in the original paragraph as 
 Locke himself wrote it: 
 
 I have mentioned mathematics as a way to settle in the mind a 
 habit of reasoning closely and in train; not that I think it necessary 
 that all men should be deep mathematicians, but that, having got 
 the way of reasoning which that study necessarily brings the mind 
 to, they might be able to transfer it to other parts of knowledge 
 as they shall have occasion. For in all sorts of reasoning every 
 single argument should be managed as a mathematical demonstra- 
 tion, the connection and dependence of ideas should be followed, 
 till the mind is brought to the source on which it bottoms, and 
 observes the coherence all along, though in proofs of probability 
 one such train is not enough to settle the judgment, as in demon- 
 strative knowledge. 10 
 
 S0 The use which in turn Monroe, Ruediger, and Graves make of 
 these quotations from Locke indicates a striking agreement of inter- 
 pretation ; an agreement not alone of thought, but of procedure as well. 
 On page 519 of his Text Book (1905), Monroe writes: "The entire 
 treatise," referring to the Conduct, "is devoted to a reiteration of the 
 idea that intellectual education is a formation of habit of thought, 
 through exercise and discipline. 
 
 " 'The faculties of our souls are improved and made useful to us 
 just after the same manner as our bodies are. Would you have a man 
 write or paint, dance or fence well, or perform any other manual op- 
 eration dexterously and with ease ; let him have ever so much vigor and 
 activity, suppleness and address naturally, yet nobody expects this from 
 him unless he has been used to it, and has employed time and pains in 
 fashioning and forming his hand or outward parts to these motions. Just 
 so is the mind ; would you have a man reason well, you must use him 
 to it betimes, exercise his mind in observing the connection of ideas and 
 following them in train.' " 
 
 Monroe breaks the quotation at this point to observe, "Respecting 
 the choice of subject matter appropriate to this end, he continues in 
 the manner characteristic of this entire school of educational thought" 
 And then, Monroe joins the two passages as follows : 
 
 " 'Nothing does this better than mathematics, which therefore I 
 think should be taught to all those who have the time and opportunity, 
 not so much to make them mathematicians as to make them reason- 
 able creatures ; for though we all call ourselves so because we are born 
 to it if we please, yet we may truly say, nature gives us but the seeds 
 
THE MISINTERPRETATION OP LOCKE 19 
 
 It seems then, we may conclude that Locke and his disciple, 
 Watts, do not advocate the possibility of transfer from one 
 power to another. What do they maintain as regards transfer 
 within a given function? A careful reading of Watts* rules 
 for improving the memory will reveal no evidence that Watts 
 believes in training memory as such; that is, that memorizing 
 one fact directly increases ability to memorize other facts. In- 
 deed one may raise the question, Does the problem of transfer 
 of training arise until philosophers become conscious that all 
 minds are not alike? It is true that men speak of acquiring 
 mental power by continuous application, but this is not neces- 
 sarily transfer of training. They may mean general mental 
 habits of work, or they may mean increased facility in a given 
 field of work. Neither of these is transfer of training in the 
 formal sense. In his well-known chapter on Imagination, 
 William James 31 states that Fechner in 1860 was the first to 
 
 of it ; we are born to be, if we please, rational creatures, but it is use 
 and exercise only that makes us so, and we are indeed so no further than 
 industry and application has carried us. ... I have mentioned mathe- 
 matics as a way to settle in the mind a habit of reasoning closely and 
 in train ; not that I think it necessary that all men should be deep mathe- 
 maticians, but that, having got the way of reasoning, which that study 
 necessarily brings the mind to, they might be able to transfer it to 
 other parts of knowledge as they shall have occasion.' " 
 
 In 1909 appears Ruediger's Principles of Education with a discussion 
 of formal discipline similar to that of Monroe ; similar to Monroe even 
 in the selection of Fouillee, Huxley, and Locke as a background for 
 his presentation. We are concerned alone with his treatment of Locke. 
 Reudiger, as Monroe, quotes Locke on mathematics, but abbreviates 
 Monroe's selection. Thus, Ruediger unites the two sections as follows : 
 "Would you have a man reason well, you must use him to it betimes, 
 exercise his mind in the connection of ideas and following them in train. 
 Nothing does this better than mathematics which therefore I think 
 should be taught to all those who have the time and opportunity, not 
 so much to make them mathematicians as to make them reasonable 
 creatures. . . . Not that I think it necessary that all men should be 
 deep mathematicians, but that, having got the way of reasoning, which 
 that study necessarily brings the mind to, they might be able to transfer 
 it to other parts of knowledge as they shall have occasion." 
 
 The step which Graves makes is now easily taken. When he pub- 
 lished in 1914 his History of Education During the Middle Ages, he 
 omitted all indications of ellipsis ; referred neither to Monroe nor to 
 Ruediger, and inserted the quotation as I have given it, and attributed 
 it to Locke as though the latter originally wrote it thus in the Conduct. 
 And not only did he commit this error in 1914, but repeated it in his 
 Student's History of Education, published in 1915. 
 
 Had Locke known that such treatment was to be accorded his 
 philosophy, I can imagine him pleading much as does Shakespeare for 
 his body : 
 
 "Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare, 
 To dlgg the dust enclosed heare." 
 
 n Psychology, II, 60. 
 
20 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN STUDIES 
 
 draw attention to the fact that men differ in types of mental 
 imagery. Prior to Fechner philosophers spoke as though there 
 were a typical mind. Subsequent studies of Galton and others 
 drew attention forcefully to the fact that men's minds differ. 
 With this discovery, experimental psychology begins, 32 and 
 then it is that we have speculations as regards transfer of 
 training. 
 
 By this I do not imply that Watts and Locke did not recog- 
 nize the importance of method of procedure. Indeed, perhaps 
 it is a false identification of their emphasis upon acquiring an 
 effective method of procedure with the quite different concep- 
 tion of formal discipline which accounts for a classification of 
 Locke as a formalist. Watts has much to say as to method — 
 but it is method as applied to concrete material. Consequently, 
 to confine ourselves to memory, — Watts emphasizes the im- 
 portance of attention as an aid to memory. "Due attention and 
 diligence to understand things, we would commit to memory, 
 is necessary, in order to make them take more effectual pos- 
 session of the mind." 33 Frequent reviews and careful repeti- 
 tions are important, etc. Watts' discussion, like Locke's chap- 
 ter on Retention in his Essay, surprises one with its modern 
 tone. 
 
 As with memory, so with the other faculties : Locke un- 
 doubtedly intended what Watts continually insists upon — the 
 necessity of developing a method for an economical use of the 
 mind. He assumes that a consciousness of an efficient method 
 of procedure arrived at by analyzing and studying an activity 
 actually engaged in will improve that activity. Locke, as we 
 have seen, believed the mathematical method represents the 
 ideal procedure of the reasoning process, but we have to dis- 
 tinguish between an error in his description of the correct 
 method of thinking — if he was in error — and the validity of 
 his general position. If consciousness of successful method 
 has no effect upon actual practice, a revolution would seem 
 necessary in the courses of study of our educational training 
 
 82 For historical review of studies on mental correlations, see Spear- 
 man's study "General Intelligence," American Journal of Psychology, XV 
 (1904), 206 ff. 
 
 "Watts, pp. 173-176. 
 
 tfH 
 
THE MISINTERPRETATION OP LOCKE 21 
 
 schools. Just as the logician 3i assumes that the scientist, who 
 is conscious of scientific method, will benefit in the concrete 
 application of it to a specific problem, so Watts and Locke 
 believed we can better our procedure of inquiring and learning 
 when we are conscious of the technique or method used in suc- 
 cessful thinking. The logician as well as Locke and Watts 
 may be wrong, but, again, we must not identify this position 
 with the quite different belief in a transfer of power usable 
 in any concrete situation. 35 
 
 The nearest approach to transfer that we find in Watts 
 is the common sense opinion so frequently expressed by Locke 
 that we may work over our experiences and use them to solve 
 varied problems. Thus he insists : 
 
 Every man, who pretends to the character of a scholar should 
 attain some general idea of most or all the sciences; for there is 
 a certain connection among the various parts of human knowledge, 
 so that some notions borrowed from any one science, may assist our 
 acquaintance with any other, either by way of explication, illustra- 
 tion, or proof; though there are some sciences conjoined by a 
 much nearer affinity than others. 38 
 
 And throughout his book Watts insists upon personal medi- 
 tation and organization of the materials secured by reading, 
 lecture, observation or what-not in order to be of value. "It is 
 
 " Thus J. S. Mill writes : "We need not, therefore, seek any further 
 for a solution of the question, so often agitated, respecting the utility 
 of logic. If a. science of logic exists, or is capable of existing, it must 
 be useful. If there be rules to which every mind consciously or uncon- 
 sciously conforms in every instance in which it infers rightly, there 
 seems little necessity for discussing whether a person is more likely to 
 observe those rules, when he knows the rules, than when he is unac- 
 quainted with them." Logic, Intro., Sec. 6. 
 
 86 See John Dewey, "Method as General and as Individual," Democ- 
 racy and Education (New York, 1916), 200. 
 
 "The artist studies the progress of his own attempts to see what 
 succeeds and what fails. The assumption that there are no alternatives 
 between following ready-made rules and trusting to native gifts, the 
 inspiration of the moment and undirected "hard work," is contradicted by 
 the procedure of every art. 
 
 "Such matters as knowledge of the past, of current technique, of 
 materials, of the ways in which one's own best results are assured, sup- 
 ply the material for what may be called general method. There exists a 
 cumulative body of fairly stable methods for reaching results, a body 
 authorized by past experience and by intellectual analysis, which an 
 individual ignores at his peril. As was pointed out in the discussion of 
 habit-forming, there is always a danger that these methods will become 
 mechanized and rigid, mastering an agent instead of being powers at 
 command for his own ends. But it is also true that the innovator who 
 achieves anything enduring, whose work is more than a passing sensa- 
 tion, ut .es classic methods more than may appear to himself or to his 
 critics. He devotes them to new uses, and in so far transforms them." 
 
 "Watts, pp. 211-12. 
 
22 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN STUDIES 
 
 our own meditation and the labor of our own thoughts that 
 must form our judgment of things." Were Watts writing in 
 1903, after a reading of Thorndike's Psychology, he would un- 
 doubtedly have seized upon the suggestive figure, "identical 
 elements," as illustrative of his dominant attitude in learning. 
 His substitute term is meditation. 
 
 It is meditation, that conveys the notions and sentiments of 
 others to ourselves, so as to make them properly our own. It is our 
 own judgment upon them, as well as our memory of them, that 
 makes them become our property. It does, as it were, concoct our 
 intellectual food, and turns it into a part of ourselves; just as a 
 man may call his limbs and his flesh his own, whether he borrowed 
 the materials from the ox or the sheep, from the lark or the lobster; 
 whether he derived it from corn or milk, the fruit of trees, or the 
 herbs of the earth. It has now become one substance with him- 
 self." 
 
 And nowhere can I discover that Watts believes the char- 
 acter of the food matters not, or, that the "one substance with 
 himself" would be the same "substance" regardless of whether 
 he partook of a well-balanced diet of proteids, carbohydrates, 
 etc., or fed energetically, albeit economically, upon an exclusive 
 diet of sawdust. In short, for both Locke and Watts knowledge 
 results from two factors — sensation and reflection. The mind 
 is not a tabula rasa for Locke. He used this expression in 
 refuting innate ideas, but in refuting innate ideas he did not 
 abandon innate powers. 38 Extreme partisans may emphasize 
 exclusively one factor in knowledge to the neglect of the 
 other, and, consequently, insist upon content alone or inner 
 development primarily, but Locke considers one indispensable 
 for the other. 
 
 We may therefore conclude, I think, that Locke's theories, 
 as interpreted and his teachings as applied in the academies 
 were quite the reverse of those associated with the dogma of 
 formal discipline. 
 
 III. 
 
 I have emphasized Locke's relation to the academies be- 
 cause they should reveal his influence upon educational practice 
 and theory in England and America. His influence upon the 
 continent is a separate study. Historians admit he influenced 
 
 87 Ibid., 47. 
 
 " Failure to distinguish between denying innate ideas and innate 
 powers is the point in Thomas Burnet's criticism of Locke which par- 
 ticularly irritated the latter. See the excellent monograph, The Moral 
 and Political Philosophy of John Locke, by S. P. Lamprecht (Columbia 
 Univ. Press, 1919), 72. 
 
THE MISINTERPRETATION OF LOCKE 23 
 
 Rousseau, but not in the way of formal discipline. Through 
 his influence upon Basedow Locke directly affected the de- 
 velopment of secular schools in Germany. Parker says of 
 Locke : 
 
 Locke's influence on German pedagogy was very great. This 
 influence was exerted not only through Rousseau's "Emile", but 
 directly. Basedow (1723-1790), especially, was indebted to Locke 
 and Commenius as two of the chief sources of his theories, and 
 through Basedow many of these ideas found a place in the new 
 schools which grew out of his propaganda in Germany. One of 
 Basedow's co-laborers, Campe, (1746-1818), translated Locke's 
 "Thoughts" into German. . . . The theories of Locke which Basedow 
 and his associates organized most effectively in practice were, (1) 
 those concerning physical health, freedom, exercise, etc., and (2) 
 those which advocate making all instruction pleasant by basing it 
 on children's games." 59 
 
 Admittedly, then, Locke's influence upon European educa- 
 tional development was not of the character of formal dis- 
 cipline. 
 
 There is little value in seeking to determine Locke's influ- 
 ence upon educational theory after the writings of Rousseau 
 and Pestalozzi. With the publication of the Emile in 1762 
 and the establishment of Pestalozzi's school at BurgdorfF 
 (1799), the determining of educational theory passed distinctly 
 into other hands. In America Horace Mann plainly looked to 
 Prussia as a model for the American public school system and 
 Barnard, Woodbridge, Russell, and others used their journals 
 as means of disseminating Pestalozzian ideas. 
 
 And yet it is in this literature that one finds constant refer- 
 ence to the discipline of the faculties. And here too we find 
 a conception of the mind as a unit. Russell develops this view 
 clearly in Barnard's American Pedagogy, which contains, in 
 Part 1, Russell's contribution on Intellectual Education. I 
 do not wish to dwell upon this treatise because it connects with 
 Pestalozzi and not with Locke. I do wish to point out, how- 
 ever, that Russell realized the term faculties was beginning to 
 cause trouble. He writes : 
 
 From the imperfection of our language, in relation to topics 
 strictly mental, or purely philosophical, the word faculties is un- 
 avoidably employed to represent the diversities in modes of action 
 of the mind, which in itself, is, properly speaking, one and indivis- 
 ible. But if we keep fully before us the etymological signification 
 
 *• S. C. Parker, The History of Modern Elementary Education (New 
 York, 1912), 169. 
 
24 UNIVERSITY OF "WISCONSIN STUDIES 
 
 of the term faculties (resources, means, powers) we shall regard 
 it but as a figurative expression, suggestive of the indefinitely 
 diversified states, acts, operations, processes, powers, or modes of 
 action, attributable to the mind — itself a unit. 4 " 
 
 Evidently, Pestalozzi's emphasis upon cultivating the child's 
 instincts and capacities was becoming subject to misinterpreta- 
 tion or abuse, and the unfoldment of one's powers, or the 
 "development of the faculties" was already conceived in a 
 formal manner. This is manifest in the report of the Oswego 
 Board of Education in 1862.* 1 Referring to Pestalozzi, it 
 says, "He sought to develop and strengthen the faculties of the 
 child." And "He wished the art of observing should be 
 acquired. He thought the thing perceived of less importance 
 than the cultivation of the perceptive powers." And, writes 
 Parker, "As a consequence there was established the dreary 
 grind of 'sense training.' " 
 
 It would seem then that it is Pestalozzi and not Locke who 
 must bear responsibility for the theory of formal discipline, as 
 expressed in popular literature. His theory of inner develop- 
 ment and his own lapses into a purely formal procedure are 
 more akin to the theory of formal discipline than anything 
 we find in Locke. 
 
 To be sure, we can show that Pestalozzi drew from Rousseau 
 and Rousseau acknowledged his indebtedness to Locke, but to 
 infer that Locke should consequently assume responsibility for 
 the theory of formal discipline which the Herbartians op- 
 posed, 42 is to argue after the manner of the old exercise in 
 logic textbooks: 
 
 The child of Themistocles governed his mother; she governed 
 her husband; he governed Athens; Athens, Greece; and Greece the 
 world; therefore, the child of Themistocles governed the world. 
 
 If it is granted that Locke is not a formal disciplinarian, the 
 
 question obviously arises, how came historians so to interpret 
 
 him? The answer constitutes an interesting chapter in the 
 
 history of education as yet unwritten. 
 
 40 American Pedagogy, Education, The School and the Teacher in 
 American Literature (Republished from Barnard's American Journal of 
 Education) Edition of 1876. Russell was editor of the first American 
 Journal of Education, (1826-31), taught elocution at Harvard and in 
 other colleges and from 1849-59 conducted a private Pestalozzian "Nor- 
 mal Institute" in New Hampshire. "Intellectual Education" is com- 
 piled from professional lectures delivered at the Normal Institute in 
 New Hampshire and the New England Normal Institute, Lancaster, Mass. 
 
 41 Parker, p. 278. 
 
 43 Ribot writes in his La psychologie allemande contemporaine, p. 4, 
 "J'incline a croire, pourtant, qu'elles avaient 6te suggergs a Herbart 
 molns par ses propres reflexions que par la lecture de Locke," quoted 
 in John Adams' The Herbartian Psychology Applied to Education (Bos- 
 ton, 1899), 88. 
 
nun mi mi nijiii.ii huh iii'Hii I II 
 
 021 347 001 2