1 1^ I ^,07 i I !i n-ir I a+ . ,f.5 .-MM, I ' ./' «k'i;.r'#. J Tf *^i^«#u. mmt ^mmll Winivmxijs ^Mm^ BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF 1891 /£.3i..2,.k3.. a:^a/. Cornell University Library arW38174 Institutes of education 3 1924 031 758 547 olin.anx p ^ Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031758547 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION COMPRISING AN INTRODUCTION TO RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY BY S. S. LAURIE, M.A., LL.D. KMERITUS PROFESSOR OF THE INSTITUTES AND HISTORY OF EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH Third Edition "The fouiidafcion of youth well set, as Plato doth say, the whole body of the Commonwealth shall flourish thereafter."— ^scTiaTn,. mew l^orft THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1909 All rights reserved PREFACE Progress in knowledge is a progress in morality, we are sometimes told. This is a vague and general statement which sounds well and suits a scientific epoch. I question its truth. " Knowledge grows but wisdom lingers." It is difficult to see how a knowledge of the chemical or physical processes of nature can promote morality or religion. These things exhaust themselves in the improve- ment of physical conditions — a material civilisation. The knowledge which alone secures progress in morality is moral knowledge, and this means moral training; the knowledge which contributes to progress in religion is a knowledge of God and man's relation to Him, and this means religious training. If, however, the knowledge given in things that concern man's environment be given according to sound method, it, doubtless, will stimulate the mind to observe and discriminate in the ordinary affairs of life ; and this is a clear gain. But the truth is that it is only if the ethical purpose of all instruction of a human being be constantly kept in view, that knowledge can help to moralise men. Mere knowledge of things or of the phenomenal relations of the external world can accomplish less for the elevation of mankind than a single idea thrown broadcast among the people. You cannot instruct in self-control and self-sacrifice by object-lessons ; you cannot instruct in humanity by means of Latin and Greek verbs ; you cannot instruct in reverence for the good and the ideal a 2 vi PREFACE of life by means of the rule of three, a few propositions in Euclid, chemical formulae, or the laws of motion. It is the progress of education, not of knowledge and instruction, that is accompanied by a progress in morality and in all that distinguishes man from a more or less cunning animal. In so far as a non-ethical school instruction has, in the past, promoted morality and good citizenship, it has done so by passing children through an organisation and subjecting them to a discipline enforced by their school instructors. How much more might be accomplished if one could plant in the minds of teachers and parents the thought that the school exists for education, and for instruction only as a means to this ! Instruction and education are not opposed, but their union is possible only in so far as the former subordinates itself to the latter. M. Brunetiere, of the French Academy, has written eloquently on this subject, but he is critical only, and not constructive. He desires to see (if I might express his aim in a single word) public education humanised : that is to say, he urges the introduction of the moral and literary element into all education; and, in the higher education, he desires to see a larger infusion of what he calls '' general ideas," and less exclusive attention to the facts either of science or philology. All educationists who have con- sidered deeply the history and the purpose of the school will concur with him; but the practical question is. How are we to attain this platonic end? Not by moral and civic text-books on which he would justly pour contempt. Not by formulating the " general ideas " to be learned by heart : such a course of procedure would defeat our aim. The only way, manifestly, is by moralising and humanising the ordinary instruction of the school, whether primary, secondary, or academic. It is a question of the subjects PREFACE vii to be taught, but still more is it a question of method ; and method is in the hands of the teacher. It is, in fine, the teacher we have to educate. It is in him as a personality that the moralities and humanities must be found ; and he must be so penetrated with the ethical nature of his task and so governed in all he does by the ethical aim of his vocation as giving life and significance to all he teaches and all he does, that he cannot fail to mould the thoughts of his pupils to those high conceptions of duty, justice, humanity and religion which are the bond of society and the sole guarantee of its stability and progress. He must, in short, himself be dominated by ethical passion ; and both the subjects taught and the methods pursued must be regarded by him as instruments for attaining an ethical result. S. S. L. Note. — This volume contains my Class Lectures after frequent revision and condensations. It is the third edition, but the changes on the second edition are merely verbal. I am indebted to Mr Alexander Robertson, M.A., George Watson's College, Edinburgh, for the revision of the proofs, as I am personally unable to do it owing to the state of my health. S. S. L. Edinburgh, November igo8. CONTENTS. FIRST PART. THE END, PHYSIOLOGICAL CONDITIONS, MATERIALS AND PROCESS OF EDUCATION GENERALLY. PAGE INTRODUCTION— EDUCATIONAL LIMITATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES, 3 LECTURE I. Education and the Ideal in their General and Historical Aspects, ...... 9 II. The end of Education. Philosophy as necessary to the Formation of a Conscious End or Ideal, . . 16 III. Body in Relation to the Education of Mind, . . 20 IV. The Supreme End and its Governing Condition, . 33 V. Justification of the position that the Ethical End is Supreme in Education, . . . .41 VI. The Educative Process generally as determined by the Supreme End, ..... 45 VII. Materials of Education, ..... 49 VIII. On the Definition of the Materials of Education, Real and Formal, in their School Sense, . . .54 IX. The Practicability of the School Curriculum, . . 57 X. Educational Values, ..... 67 XI. The Method of Instruction is also the Method of Discipline, . . . . . .71 XII. Methodology of Instruction and its Scientific Basis, . 77 X CONTENTS SECOND PART. METHOD AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS. I.— INSTRUCTION AND DISCIPLINE OF INTELLIGENCE. LECTDEE PAGE I. The Animal Mind, ..... 83 II. The Man-Mind. i. Will : Percipience. Self-Consciousness, 100 III. Man-Mind — continued. 2. Concipience and the Sense- Concept of the Individual, . . . .112 IV. Man-Mind — continued. 3. Unity and Omnipresence of the Rational Mind in its Educational Reference. Definitions, . . . . . .119 V. Application of the preceding Analysis to Educational Method, ...... 126 VI. Man-Mind — continued. 4. The General Concept (Com- parison), . . . . -143 VII. Man-Mind — continued. 5. Reasoning or Ratiocination — Mediate Affirmation (Inductive and Deductive), . 153 VIII. Man-Mind — continued. 6. Causal Induction, . . 168 IX. Survey of the Processes of Reason in order to show that they are each and all Analytico-Synthetic in their character (see also Note at end of Volume), . .176 X. Unfolding of Rational Intelligence, or Order of Intel- lectual Growth in Time, . . , .177 XI. Mind-Content — The Process of Building up the Real of Mind, ....... 183 XII. Mind-Content — continued, .... 191 XIII. Suggestion ; or Dynamic Recurrence, . . . 193 XIV. The Relational and Comparison Movement in the Growth of Mind, . . . . .198 XV. Pre-Conditions of the Success of the Mind-Process Generally. Memory, . . . . .201 XVI. Pre-Conditions — continued. Imagination, . . 213 CONTENTS xi LXCTUBE PAOB XVII. Pre-Conditions — continued. Attention, . . 216 XVIII. Interest and Attention. Intellectual and Moral, . 221 XIX. Centre-Points of Instruction, .... 230 XX. Auxiliaries in the Building up of Mind ; Real and Formal ....... 235 THIRD PART. METHODOLOGY, i.e. PRINCIPLES AND RULES OF METHOD WITH REFERENCE TO THE GROWTH OF INTELLIGENCE AND KNOWLEDGE, . 237 FOURTH PART. METHOD AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS. II.— ETHICAL INSTRUCTION AND DISCIPLINE. I. Ethical Ideas as the Real, or Substance, of Life, . . 259 II. The Nature of the Ethical Life Generally, . . 263 III. Brief Analysis of Mind as an Ethical Activity. Ideas and Motives in Law and Duty, .... 268 IV. Discipline to Law and Duty, .... 276 V. Parallelism of the Intellectual and Ethical in Education, 278 VI. Method of Ethical Education in the Real : — Instruction, 281 VII. Method of Ethical Education in the Formal : Discipline to Duty, . . . . . -294 VIII. The Relation between Intellectual and Ethical Discipline, 299 IX. Method of Securing Obedience to Authority, . . 303 X. What is Moral Authority ?— Its Characteristics, . . 308 XI. The Function of the Teacher as Authority, . . 316 xii CONTENTS LECTDRE PAGE XII. Characteristics of the Exercise of Authority, . . 325 XIII. The Enforcement and Sanctions of Authority Generally, 335 XIV. Characteristics of the Exercise of Power in Punishing, Rewards, .... XV. Auxiliaries of Authority, .... XVI. Religion, ...... Conclusion, ...... APPENDICES. 35° 357 364 373 I. Notes on Subjects for Consideration and Discussion, . 379 II. Practical Hints on Class-Management, . . 383 Note on Unity of Reason with reference to the process of Intelligence generally, as treated in the text, . . 388 FIRST PART. THE END, PHYSIOLOGICAL CONDITIONS, MATERIALS, AND PROCESS OF ED UCA TION GENERALL Y. The prospect of a Theory of Education is a glorious ideal, and it matters little if we are not able to realise it at once. . . . The greatest and most difficult problem to which man can devote himself, is the problem of education. — Kant tJBER PADAGOGIK. INTRODUCTION. EDUCATIONAL LIMITATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES. Enthusiasts have frequently spoken as if we could manufacture men after a certain pattern, if only we proceeded wisely. Religious and educational reformers have cherished this belief. It is as well to set aside such pious dreams at once. Conditions outside our activity as educators are too potent. We have to reckon with all the forces that make for or against us — instincts, passions, custom, connate predispositions, and racial characteristics. Locke, with all his sobriety of temperament, yet held that the difference between one man and another lay in their education. Even if we take education in its widest sense, as including all the influences at work from infancy upwards, Locke's view would be incorrect ; if we take it in its narrower sense of the coilscious and regulated education of the school and family, it is altogether untenable. If, however, we understand Locke to mean by education the bringing up of a human being so as to fit him for ordinary citizenship, and make him a respectable member of society and a satisfactory representative of the moral standard and social consensus of his time, he is unquestionably right. We can do even more than this ; 4 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION for we can train youth to something higher and better than the " spirit of the age." The question did not escape the attention of the ancients. Horace says — " Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret." He is right, for we cannot overpower entirely the deter- niinations of nature in each man. But he is also right when he says — " Nemo adeo ferus est ut non mitescere possit, Si modo culturae patientem commodet aurem,'' which amounts to this, that however strong the natural disposition to brutality or vulgarity may be, it can be largely modified, if not wholly extirpated, by education. Juvenal, as becomes his role of truculent satirist, takes a gloomy view of human nature and its possibilities. Seneca the Stoic, again, thinks that much may be done if we begin early ; but he has no hope of those who are allowed to reach maturity with their faults and vices uncorrected. It is then too late : " As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined." He also thinks that education never wholly eradicates a vice or failing, but only modifies it. Plato says that man is the most savage of all animals, but that he can be made the gentlest and most godlike by education, if there be a good disposition in him ; meaning by dis- position, I presume, such an inborn tendency of nature as gives a hopeful field for cultivation. Quintilian sub- stantially takes the same view ; but he believes more in the power of education, as such, than Plato does. Plato's hope lay not in the school so much as in the whole social organisation : public opinion as determined by the law and institutions of the State is the great educator. The importance of having good material to work on desiderated by Plato is expressed in the Greek proverb, which in its Latin form seems to be approved by Erasmus, " Non quovis ex ligno fit Mercurius," which may be paralleled by INTRODUCTION 5 the form in which an aged Scottish educationalist used to throw the conclusion to which he had come in dealing with the vigorous, but rough and often coarse-grained, Scottish youth, " You can never put the polish of marble on a bit of sandstone." Cicero perhaps best sums up ancient opinion and the conclusion of common sense : "Quae bona sunt fieri meliora possunt doctrina, et quae non optima aliquo modo acui tamen et corrigi possunt." Modern enthusiasts have, as a rule, been much more sanguine than the ancient critics of humanity. Comenius, for example, had a firm conviction that by education all men might be made almost perfect. We may safely hold that, save in exceptional cases which may be regarded as abnormal products, education wisely directed can form men into good citizens if we begin the process of formation early ; that is to say, it can guarantee in all, that amount of intelligence and virtue and that standard of social intercourse which fit them to discharge well the ordinary duties of men in all their political, industrial, and personal relations. But when we go beyond this and strive to bring all me.n up to an ideal standard, either of intellectual capacity or moral elevation or aesthetic appreciation, we are largely dependent on the original and connate potentialities of each, and we shall fail or succeed according as we have the natural tendency on our side or against us. Even the greatest genius, we may be sure, has defects, both of intelligence and character, which education can do much to remove; but, whatever may be the education, genius will " out " in some form or other. The man of moderate genius, on the other hand, is almost wholly dependent on education for the growth of such powers as he has. Still more is this the case with the " average man." Those again who are by nature distinctly below the average can by education be brought up to the average, and help to swell the social current which already tends, in its main stream, to the 6 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION rational and good. The lowest natures — the residuum — are held in check by those above them, and can and must be disciplined, by the help of the whip, to obey their betters for the sake of the common weal. The truth, probably, is that education can develop but can never create. I am speaking here of education in the large sense, and as comprehending all the influences of a man's environment as he grows from childhood to maturity. The most potent of these is the home ; next in potency comes public life ; and, thereafter, the school, when its function is properly understood as the vehicle of the best influences of the home and the State. As to the School : It is certain that, whatever may be the natural tendencies and capacities of children, all can be made better by education than they would otherwise be ; and further, it is certain that all have, by virtue of their possession of reason, a certain ideal of life growing in them, which can be directed, elevated, and fostered by a teacher who puts before himself an ideal aim. There is, in every age of the world's history, a certain conception of ideal manhood ; and in the light of the highest ideal of our own time we all must work, if we are to work to any good purpose. By striving to reach the top, as Quintilian says, we get higher up than by sitting down despairingly at the bottom of the hill. The aim of education is, in truth, always an ideal aim, for it contemplates the completion of a man — the reahsation in each man of what each has it in him to become. If a teacher has not an ideal aim, he had better take to shopkeeping at once ; he will there, doubtless, find an ideal within his comprehension and capacity. In his necessary ignorance of the possibilities of each individual, the educator is justified in taking up his task on the assumption that every member of the human race INTRODUCTION 7 is, by virtue of his distinctive humanity, endowed with the same general capacities and powers, and has in him the possibility of a complete development. This, indeed, is the postulate of his science and art. He does not recognise a qualitative difference in human beings, but merely a quantitative. No doubt with all men the possible develop- ment is "thus far and no farther." The limitations as determined by physical constitution, by locality, by race, and by heredity, must be theoretically admitted ; but they may be practically ignored. The aim of the educator, in brief, is determined by his conception of the ideal man, towards which all may, more or less, be disciplined and trained. The influences that educate a man are innumerable and subtle — the national tradition, the family life, the unconscious pressure of law and custom, the solicitations of external nature, and all the local circumstances peculiar to his environment. This is fully admitted by the rational educationalist ; but he at the same time claims to supple- ment, to regulate and control, the various and manifold influences at work, so as to harmonise the varied experience of the young into a rational unity of life and character, and thus get them within sight, at least, of the ideal possible for each. The intelligent teacher also recognises that the natural educators are the parents, and that they are always the most potent for good or evil. But, inasmuch as the exigencies of modern society have deputed much of the parental work to a special order in the State, he feels that he, as a member of that order, has great responsibilities, and is under obligation to study education with a view to the proper discharge of these. His function is, probably, the most important of all social functions. The duty of a professor of education is, I think, to give the students of the subject an ideal and also a method ; but, above all, to inspire them with a sense of the infinite importance and delicacy of their task, He has to show 8 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION them that they are not mere exactors of lessons, but trainers of the human spirit ; and also how, animated bf this larger conception, they may, in teaching subjects, educate minds. He will expose the popular fallacy that the schoolmaster's work is a drudgery, and convince his students that it is a privilege. LECTURE I. EDUCATION AND THE IDEAL IN THEIR GENERAL AND HISTORICAL ASPECTS. The word " Education '' does not mean drawing out. This is a modern gloss on the true meaning of the word — a gloss suggested by psychology. It means training up, as vines are trained up poles. The primary signification of a word is not always a safe guide to its present use, though it is always interesting and suggestive. When men first name a thing or process, there often (perhaps generally) precedes the naming, a flash of insight into the essential character of the thing or process named. Naming is a work of genius. The Latin meaning of the word is con- firmed by our own early usage, e.g. " Train up a child in the way he should go," and by the German ersiehen. Train up, draw up, not draw out — is the meaning of the word " educate," and it is a name for the process which we cannot, I think, supersede without loss. Train up to what? Evidently to some end or other. To what end ? Looking at the nature of man, we answer, To some habit of being and doing which the child knows nothing of, but which we, the trainers, are supposed to have as our aim, and of which every child is held to be capable. What, then, is your aim ? You cannot define it closely, nor even describe it, when the question is first put to you ; but, all the same, there is vaguely in your mind some type of manhood or womanhood up to which you yourself are striving to live, and to which, if you are in earnest, you 10 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. desire to train the young. This type you have, more or less consciously, present to your mind, and you call it your " ideal." The mass of men and women, even including parents, may be left to an ideal which is floating and vague ; but it is the business and the duty of all who adopt what is called the "profession" of education, to have some clear con- ception of the ideal up to which they train — a conscious end which they can express in words. It is, when you think of it, a very daring thing in you to profess to educate a human being. Where are your credentials? It seems to me that one who stands before the world and professes to educate is guilty of an impertinence, unless he can produce a commission, not from an university or a college, but from God Himself It is a grave and serious business. In any case, it is surely not too much to demand of you that you have some definite ideal. Why, a cabinetmaker has his ideal of the completed cabinet, as he saws and cuts, planes and joints and polishes. You are engaged in helping to form the finest, most complex, most subtle thing known to man, viz. a mind ; and do you propose to go on from day to day as your fancy prompts, tinkering here and tinkering there, and seeing what comes of it ? Surely not. Now, I wish next to say that the ideal you have for those whom you educate must be the ideal you have for yourself — your own life. You cannot rise above yourself, any more than you can carry your head in your mouth. This is the true meaning of the saying, " As is the teacher, so is the school," to which I beg you to add an even more important truth, " As is the man, so is the teacher." The prime qualification, then, in the teacher who educates, is that he shall have an ideal for his own life, and shall be educating himself up to that : your pupils learn by doing what you do. The educator has first of all to look to himself, and the study of education is also the education of the student : the ideal and method are for him first, and for his pupils next I.] EDUCATION AND THE IDEAL 11 Whatever ideal he may have for himself as a human being, and consequently for his pupils, the teacher may depend on this, that the young cannot form abstract ideals as he does : they look to the parent or teacher as the concrete embodiment of that which they are to strive to be. You may inculcate what you please, but all the time you yourself as a personality are doing more than all your inculcations can do. This is a commonplace. Very few parents and teachers have conscious ideals ; but, as I have indicated, there is an unconscious ideal in every man's bosom which moulds his character and governs his actions, or at least prescribes what ought to govern. Ideals historically viewed. — The early history of educa- tion is, like the history of other subjects, a history, not of conscious and formulated ends, ideals, and processes, but of the unconscious ends pursued by nations as they advanced from barbarism to civilisation and to the fulfil- ment of their destiny in the world-history. These uncon- scious ends are merely vague feelings of a result to be aimed at rather than a distinct knowledge of it ; and yet they are most potent : they make history. As age succeeds age, the ideal becomes gradually more explicit. Society begins to propose to itself specific aims, that is to say, the development of certain definite faculties which it desires to see active in all its citizens. Vigour of body, courage, en- durance, skill in the use of arms, in this or that industry, obedience to civil law, and so forth : all excellent in their way, but, neither singly nor in the aggregate, an ideal of man as a living spirit in a living body — a being of vast and varied capacity, of rich possibilities, and whose life and acts have infinite issues. Such an ideal as this we first have among the Greeks, and, thereafter more fully in Christianity. Man as man, man for the sake of man, not for his skill in doing this or that — this is, since the days of Plato and Christ, the aim of the educator. Not what man is, but what he may be in all his relations, finite and infinite — this is the problem of the educational ideal. 12 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. Do not suppose, however, that education was invented either by the Greek or the Christian. It has always been going on. Every child, always, at all times, and in all places, is being educated — trained up to something or other which constitutes the type for his time, his place, or his class. The reflective movement is subsequent to this unpurposed education of custom. Perhaps we may say that it began with Plato. It rests on a conscious philo- sophy of man, and is to be justified as all philosophy is to be justified. Philosophy in its ultimate meaning is nothing but persistent thought on man, his nature, his capabilities, his purpose, and his destiny. And the philosophy of education is simply the asking and answering of questions as to the ends or ideals which a philosophy of man yields, criticising custom in the light of these, and then studying the processes by which ends can be best reached — i.e. Method. In all ages of the world man has, I repeat, been educated : not only so, but I would say further, that we cannot afford to contemn the education of early races ; at least, when men had reached the stage of settled agri- cultural communities. In those primitive days you can easily see that education would be mainly what is now called technical; that is to say, such instruction as fitted the young as they grew up to supply their daily bodily wants. Difficulties of communication, the rudimentary state of the useful arts, the dangers and uncertainties to which individuals would be exposed in maintaining inter- course with each other, would prevent the division of labour and the growth of that industrial interdependence which is now an universal characteristic of civilised life. This state of things, which gave a narrow horizon to each individual, had large educational compensations ; for each man, with the help of his household, would be himself master of many, if not of all, necessary arts. From childhood upwards he would be in continual training to these. We should accordingly err much were we to despise the I.] EDUCATION AND THE IDEAL 13 education of those primitive times. We still find it in many parts of the world ; and survivals of it even in our own land. The family which not only milked its own cows, made its own butter and cheese, and ground its own corn, but clipped its own sheep, cleaned, combed, dyed, and spun the wool, and then wove it into cloth and made it into clothes ; which prepared its own cow-hides for the feet or the target, which made its own rude articles of furniture and moulded its own pottery, — had no small skill. The faculties were by these occupations trained, and popular instruction might be said to be universal and domestic. There was more than instruction in those prehistoric days : there was " training up " to a certain standard of effective- ness in the work of life ; and there was, besides, provision for a higher life, although the literature might be limited to the chanting of a few rude ballads, indulgence in rustic mimes, and the worship of a god or gods which were merely tribal. Were we now, in these modern times, to educate a man merely with a view to the adaptation of his powers to certain finite uses (industries and the like), we should be recurring to the education of primeval civilisation, but without the advantages of our remote ancestors. For there is now a minute division of labour, and the breadth and variety of primitive technical education is gone for ever. If, as a substitute for breadth, we were to train a man (as in modern times we can do) to a knowledge of those principles which should regulate the application of his powers to the narrow field of his specific industrial work, we, while undoubtedly stimulating his rational powers, would yet be doing so with definite and restricted reference to mere finite and bodily uses. This would be a decided advance on mere training of the practical powers in accordance with custom or " rule of thumb " ; it would not, however, be education, but only what we now under- stand by technical instruction. We should be putting brains into a man's fingers; but this is not, I repeat, U INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. education, though it contributes to it. It falls far short even of the education of the primitive settler ; it gains in rationality, but it loses in variety and breadth, and in its demand on the power of men to meet daily exigencies. When we speak of educating a human being, we think of something more than instructing him how best to satisfy his material wants. We all think of more than this when we think of the subject at all. There is always a pre- supposition underlying our conception of the word education. That presupposition will be found to be this — that in man, unlike the animals, there are the germs of a possible growth to something or other to which we cannot set limits; and this something or other is our ideal. "But certain it is whether it be believed or no," says Lord Bacon,^ " that as the most excellent of metals, gold, is of all others the most pliant and most enduring to be wrought, so of all living and breathing substances, the perfectest [i.e. Man] is the most susceptible of help, improvement, impression, and alteration. And not only in his body, but in his mind and spirit. And there again not only in his appetite and affection, but in his power of wit and reason." So long as we keep this in view we are giving a " liberal," as opposed to a " technical," education. It is the recognition of this potentiality in man which makes us strive to educate youth and to educate ourselves. A man is not a mere intelligent tool ; he is something more. He exists for that something more. He is not a means, but an end in himself A material civilisation is to be called civilisation only in so far as it makes the higher end possible for a community. We begin to see, in fact, that the education of man up to a certain ideal is itself the very purpose of his existence, and that the history of our race is, properly viewed, the history of its education. We are sometimes told that man is infinite. But this only means that man has the fact and possibility of the infinite in him — a fact and possibility which alone explains social 1 Letter to Sir Henry Savile. (Vol. VII., p. 99, Spedding's edition.) I.] EDUCATION AND THE IDEAL 15 progress, and makes education a matter worth thinking about. Now, education in the true and large sense was not in the earhest times possible. For this reason : by education, we mean the training of a man with a view to make him all that he can become. Now you will at once perceive that this very conception was impossible until men had thought about themselves. Philosophy in brief, though not explicitly developed, was the necessary precursor of the idea of education in its fulness ; and philosophy was itself the product of religion, or one with it. The relations of dependence and awe in which a man stood to the mysterious Power by which he and all his works were surrounded and by which his best-laid schemes were so often frustrated, led to thought on this universal Power and on man's relation to it. Life and death and man himself became objects of speculation ; and as soon as men became capable of the thought of man, they were competent to conceive the thought of the growth of man to the full fruition of his nature — in other words, the thought of his education. But not sooner. This thought — the thought of what man truly is in his highest expression, which we may call the notion of man, we owe, I have said, to the Greeks more than to any other race, but I would not forget the Jews. LECTURE II. THE END OF EDUCATION. PHILOSOPHY AS NECESSARY TO THE FORMATION OF A CONSCIOUS END OR IDEAL. The education of a human being, then, has at all times and in all circumstances a more or less conscious ideal in view. The ideal of life which animated various races of mankind is the true measure of their civilisation, and their true history. A conscious ideal is, we have further seen, an ideal based on a study of man — in short, on the philosophy of man. But philosophy is not the subject of this Chair, and you must therefore be often content to rest satisfied with statements which cannot be presented to you in their full reasoned form, but rather wear a dogmatic aspect. To the question what this end or ideal in education may be, various answers have been given. All writers have found it necessary to propound some end or other, for they have felt the truth of what Jean Paul says, " The end desired must be known before the way. All means or art of education will be, in the first instance, determined by the ideal or archetype we entertain of it." Montaigne's aim is summed up in the words Wisdom and Virtue. Comenius gives as his aim, " Knowledge, Virtue, Religion." I think Elyot and Bacon would have summed up their aim in the one word " Character." Milton's aim is Likeness to God, best attained through Virtue and Faith. Locke's aim is Health of Body, Virtue, LECT. II. J THE END OF EDUCATION 17 and Good Manners. The Pietists under Spener (died 1705) had for their aim the building up of the Kingdom of God in the heart of every child. Herbert Spencer's aim is stated to be " complete living." A common German statement is, that the end is the harmonious development of all the powers. I myself would prefer to say that the ideal aim of education is the realisation of the ideal of Man by each individual in and for himself. All these answers, including my own, are so very generalised as to be wholly uninstructive. Nor can we find such instruction as to ends and ideals as shall at the same time be a guide to us in educating, until, among many universally admitted subordinate ends, we can find that supreme end or idea which governs all the subordinate ends. The ideal is also the end or purpose. The ideal end or purpose of education must manifestly be determined by the ideal end or purpose of human life itself This supreme and governing end is the Ethical Life. The supreme end, then, of all education is an ethical end. The determination of this end and of the conditions of its attainment constitute the theory and methodology of education. The standard by which we ultimately judge a man is his worth as a man — the outcome in life and conduct of all his capacities. " By their fruits ye shall know them " ; and the fruit each yields is also the seed he sows. All special knowledges are of value only in so far as they contribute to the supreme ethical result. One man knows more Greek and Mathematics than another : is he therefore better educated? May it not be that just because one man knows so very much more than another he is worse educated, — ethically a poor result? The actual outcome in bearing and conduct, which is life, is alone the test of our having fulfilled life. The ethical enters into everything. This universality would itself suffice to show that it is supreme. Even in B 18 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. the technical education of a carpenter or weaver, I am fitting him to do his work better than he would otherwise do it — that is to say, more effectively, and therefore more honestly. I am qualifying him for industrial citizenship. The most efficient carpenter is, qua carpentering, the most moral carpenter. True, the most moral carpenter, in the larger sense, is not necessarily the most efficient carpenter : but he will desire to be the most efficient, because he has a moral ideal of- manhood and of conduct as one citizen co-operating with other citizens for the industrial purposes of life. I give him technical instruction that he may be enabled to give effect in sound honest workmanship to his ideal of his own manhood and citizenship. Even technical instruction, then, has its moral purpose: it fits a man to be a true man in the social place he occupies. Thus, into everything we do, nay, into everything we think, the ethical element enters for better or worse. But outside the question of man in his specific industrial and other relations to his fellow-men, there is the question of his manhood in its larger sense, his fulfilment of himself simply as man ; for we believe, with the Athenians, that thereby we best fit him for all his duties, whether of citizenship, or carpentering, or anything else. How, then, am I to ascertain wherein man's fulfilment lies — his true life, that which governs all his relations? Evidently only by inquiring into the nature of man — his mental constitution, and his past history of effort and failure. There, if anywhere, we shall find what he is intended to be, and how he is intended to act. But to do this we should have to deal with Ethics in general, and this is not a Chair of Ethics, but of Education. This much, however, we may say bluntly — The education of a child is the bringing of him up in such a way as to secure that when he is a man he will fulfil his true life — not merely his life as an industrial worker, not merely his life, as a citizen, but his own personal life as man through his work and through his citizenship. II.] THE END OF EDUCATION 19 But this is not all ; for we have to consider the condi- tions of the attainment of the ethical end of education from the point of view, not only of the growth of mind, but of the growth of body. " 'Tis not a soul, 'tis not a body we are training only," says Montaigne, " but a man, and we ought not to divide him." But even the bodily conditions, important as they are, are merely the basis of that which is higher. I would ask your attention to these physical conditions of mind, before continuing the exposition of the theory of education. LECTURE III. BODY IN RELATION TO THE EDUCATION OF MIND. Mind, we have said, is involved in matter or body— the " clay cottage," as Locke calls it. There can be no mens Sana without corpus sanum. In discussing the question of the education of mind, it is assumed that healthy bodily conditions are first of all secured. Each day must be so arranged as to provide the necessary time for physical exercise — especially in the form of play. Manual instruc- tion, also, in covered sheds, apart from its other uses, helps to maintain sound physical conditions, and in a climate like ours seems to be almost a necessity. The physical or physiological conditions of mental receptivity and activity have to be studied by the educator in their relation to bodily health, to hygienic environment, to the amount of brain work to be demanded from boys and girls, the length of school lessons, home lessons, differences of power and temperament, and abnormal physical conditions. At the same time, we must admit that the importance of a knowledge of the elements of physiology to the teacher has been ridiculously exaggerated. It is only in its practical applications, and that within a narrow range, that physiology is of use. It cannot affect either the aim or methods of education save in so far as it subjects these to external physical conditions as essential to the healthy and normal activity of mind. The following might well be the heads of a short course of Lectures on Physical Conditions : — (i) The Structure of the Human Body generally. (2) Muscular Motion. LECT. III.] EDUCATION OF MIND 21 (3) The Blood and its Circulation — Purification — Waste — Nutrition. (4) The Nerve-System — Sensory and Motor. The Senses. (5) The Nerve-Apparatus of Receptivity and Activity ; gradual growth of this, and lessons to be drawn from the gradual growth. (6) Waste of Nerve-Substance. Exhaustion of Nerve- Substance. Nutrition of Nerve- Substance. (7) Memory and Habit as determined by physiological conditions. (8) Reflex action : Automatic action ; Secondarily- automatic action, and its educational significance. I content myself with merely indicating the heads of a course of lectures, and I do not propose here to give a mere precis of text-book information on the human body. The books to which I refer in a footnote will easily supply this.^ A few words on the nerve - system are, however, necessary to the proper understanding of the chief lessons which physiology teaches. By what means does the consciousness of man maintain communication with the outer world — giving and taking ? By means of organs called nerves. Impressions frona without, corporeal feelings of pain or pleasure, are conveyed to the centre of the nervous system and there felt, and movements of the subject of these impressions start from these nervous centres and move the muscles by which man acts on the external world. An act of will passes down from the brain through more or less of the spinal cord along certain nerves till it reaches the muscle which we will it to reach. (It is this nervous movement or impulse which causes the muscle to contract.) The nerves that carry affections from the outside of our body — the skin, the surface of the eye, the chamber of the ear, and the inner skin of the nose — to the cerebral seat of ' Huxley's Physiology ; Carpenter's Mental Physiology ; M'Ken- drick's Elements of Physiology ; Professor Foster's Primer; first four chapters of Professor James's Psychology. 22 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. consciousness, are called Sensory and also Afferent nerves, while those nerves that convey unconscious impulses or conscious will-movements (which are to be carefully distinguished) from the cerebral centre to the muscles, are called Motor or Efferent nerves. If you look at any diagram of the spinal column, you will see bundles of nerves running out from the spinal column and branching in every direction. That these contain both efferent and afferent nerves for receiving impressions and nerves for action is proved by the fact that they have double roots, afferent and efferent, whose separate functions have been ascertained.^ The anterior root is Motor, the posterior is Sensory. Observe, now, in the first place that motor nerves have always the same kind of work to do, the exciting of motion, while the sensory nerves have different kinds of work to do. Through some we are brought into that relation to the external which we call touch. The terminations of these nerves are distributed over the whole surface of the body; through others we are brought into a seeing, hearing, smelling relation to the external. (The lecturer should enter into a little detail here.) It is these nervous channels of impression or sensibility and of activity which chiefly concern us, as educationalists, although the con- ditions of effective nervous action (which is simply healthy, nervous action) are of equal importance in another relation. 1st. The nerves branch off from the brain and spinal cord. Masses of nervous substance are called ganglia. 2nd. The masses of nervous substance in the spinal column have a work of their own to do ; but they also communicate with the larger masses in the skull, which masses we call the cerebrum or brain. 3rd. The masses of nerve matter in the skull are divided into two parts : {a) the cerebellum ; and {b) the cerebrum proper, which is a large convoluted mass. The function of the cerebellum is not yet wholly ascertained, but there is every probability that it has to do with the harmonising of our movements and with the co-ordination of the movements of the eyes. The aggregate of those nerve-ganglia in the cerebrum 1 I take it for granted, of course, that a good diagram is suspended before the class. ni.] EDUCATION OF MIND 23 which receive impressions from the outer world through the eyes, the ears, the nose, and the touch, is commonly called the sensorium. The function of the cerebrum is, as far as we can safely yet speak, to serve as the organ of consciousness, will, thought, emotion — of all, in fact, that makes possible the conversion of an animal (speaking physically) into a rational being, a man. It is the grey, dusky-looking or cineritious matter on the surface and lying among the convolutions which is chiefly concerned in this. In all the higher classes of animals you find this cerebrum ; but being smaller, less developed, less con- voluted than that of man, with less of cineritious matter, it is the organ, therefore, of a lower type of intelligence. Reflex Action. — The phenomena of reflex action demand separate mention. Special ganglia of nerve- substance, groups of nerve-cells, have a power of action in response to an external stimulus without the accompani- ment of consciousness. These ganglia may be almost looked upon as rudimentary brains which respond to outer stimuli without consciousness — in other words, automatically. This subject is not only of supreme biological interest in itself, but also in its bearing on education. For if it be true that we may set up what is called secondary automatic action in the brain itself, we feel encouraged to work on, even in the midst of the greatest apparent discouragements. E.g.^~\{ the spinal cord is severed below the base of the brain, and the sole of the foot is tickled, the sensory nerve carries the impression made on it to the ganglion which is situated in the spinal cord, and the result is a motion of the foot. But the man may not be conscious of the tickling. He has no sensation ; the action is purely reflex, and, in so far as there is absence of consciousness, the action is automatic.^ The general result is this, (i) Some muscular actions are voluntary, others involuntary, e.g. heart, swallowing, winking, starting at a sudden sound, etc. (2) Actions originally voluntary may by practice become involuntary, e.g., walking, riding, reading, etc. They are easy and 1 Read, on this point, pp. 66-72 of Dr Carpenter's Mental Physi- ology. 24 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. certain in their operation like the originally involuntary movements. Such is the force of what is to be called PHYSICAL HABIT. My object in these brief notes is to impress on you the leading characteristics of the nervous system, and in particular to emphasise this, that all that man is as spirit, he is in and through a material organisation — a nerve- organisation. Every sensation, every emotion, every thought, every act of will, is accompanied, and, to a certain extent, conditioned by nervous tissue. And this leads me to my next proposition, that all mental acts involve a certain movement or change in that nerve-tissue. Further, notwithstanding the many diffi- culties which yet surround the subject, we may be sure of this, viz., change or movement or energy involves waste in nerve-tissue, just as in muscular tissue. Now, if the ordinary activity of sensation, emotion, and half-thought which belong to all minds, involves waste and consequent exhaustion of substance, how much greater must that waste be when there is continuity of thought in one specific direction, or proposed activity in many directions ? This continuity, this activity, is healthful just as is the exercise of the muscles of our body : you may rely on this, that you will have a better quality of brain by exercising it than by allowing it to lie fallow ; but, on the other hand, we must bear in mind the necessity for renewal of energy and renewal of substance. Consider, in this connection, how the brain is nourished. By the blood. So important is this master-organ of our frame, that one-sixth of the whole blood of the body is constantly there, coursing through it and supplying nutri- ment. But this is not all. For there can be little doubt, according to some physiologists, that just as the origination of the electric current is dependent on a certain chemical reaction between the exciting liquid and the galvanic com- bination of metals, so is it necessary for the production of nerve force (and therefore of all mental activity) that a III.] EDUCATION OF MIND 25 certain reaction should take place between the blood and the nerve-substance. The precise nature of that reaction we do not know, but we may feel assured that it must take place. Prevent the passage of the blood to the brain and there is a complete suspension of activity. Again, lower the quality of the blood by the absence of oxygen and the accumulation of " carbonic acid," and there is a gradually increasing torpor of the mental faculties, ending in com- plete insensibility. " Thus, then," says Dr Carpenter, " the dependence of nervous power and mental activity upon the physical changes kept up by the circulation of oxygenated blood through the brain, can be shown experimentally to be just as direct and immediate as is the dependence of the electric battery upon the analogous changes taking place between its metals and its exciting liquid." Accordingly, not only is the reparation of power, the fresh supply of substance expended in mental activity, dependent on the nutrition, oxygenation, or quality of the blood, but its activity is further dependent (in all prob- ability) on a subtle relation subsisting between the oxygenated blood and the nerve-substance. These are most important facts in education. Waste of substance and exhaustion of power have to be both made good by blood which is both nutrifying and oxygenated. One can, of course, teach these facts in general terms ; but they do not so strongly affect our imagination or take hold of our convictions when generally stated, as when explained and understood in connection with the physical conditions of consciousness. If you really and truly grasp these physical facts, it is quite impossible, it seems to me, that, as instructors or as parents, you can fail to give effect to them in your educational practice. The practical lessons for the teacher are the following : — 1. The close relation which subsists between pure air and the vigour, the activity, nay, the mere life, of the brain and of the mind of which it is the organ, is so obvious as to cause you to use every effort to secure constant supplies of fresh air in every schoolroom and every house. 2. We have found that while the blood is dependent on inhaled oxygen for its purity, it is dependent on the 26 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. food we swallow, or rather digest, for its nutritive powers. The importance of wholesome food and the avoidance of all excesses, either in the way of too much or too little, is thereby taught us, not merely in relation to the tissues of the body generally, but, above all, to the nerve-substance by which we think, and feel, and will. 3. Another lesson in addition to these, the facts of the nerve-system teach us. The fact that certain material changes take place with every feeling, emotion, thought and will, carries with it the conclusion that these changes are numerous when there is any intensity or continuity of application. Thus waste is caused which, if not repaired, would lead to permanent degeneracy of the nerve-tissue. 4. Still further, just as muscular exercise of any kind, such, for example, as walking, swimming, or riding, seems after a little practice to produce a certain aptitude of muscle and nerve in these specific directions, making the swimming or riding daily easier, so that they can be performed with little conscious effort ; in like manner, the sustained and frequent application of the rnind to a subject (the repeating of the act of attention), produces a certain disposure or disposition of the nervous substance itself to a repetition of those acts. This repetition, if continued, sets up in the nerve-tissue a habit of action, that is to say, a tendency in the nerve-substance, apart from the self- conscious mind and the energy of pure Will, to repeat movements to which it has been accustomed. This habit becomes so strong that what at first was possible only through a conscious effort of will becomes easy. The material organism, through which mind feels and acts, comes to the help of mind itself You will see the immense importance of this truth not only in the acquisi- tion of knowledge, but also in the practice of virtue. Intellectual aptitude for this or that study becomes a habit, and even virtue itself becomes a matter of course. The encouragement which the facts of the material organisation thus give to educationalists is of the greatest value, and in.] EDUCATION OF MIND 27 helps to support us through all difficulties. The lesson of warning which it teaches us is equally important. It is a serious matter that with every yielding to looseness of intellect, and with every act of immorality, the tendency to those acts becomes stronger and more irresistible : that a bad habit of intelligence, and a vicious habit of will can be formed, and that the material organisation which might have been on our side is against us for evermore. " During the period of growth and development the formative activity of the brain will be most amenable," as Dr Carpenter says, to those " directing influences " which we call education. It is in childhood that physiological habit is formed, and with it mental habit. The nervous system as organ of mind, " grows to the modes in which it has been exercised." (James.) It is true that in the region of mind and morality, these facts as facts of consciousness are commonplaces ; but so long as they are attributed to mind only, and belong to the region of the impalpable and unseen, they are only half believed by sense-enthralled mortals. When we realise them as also material cerebral facts, they take a hold of our intelligence, and command our obedience to an extent which even the dullest and least susceptible cannot be proof against. 5. Nor is this all, for this disposition to will and act in a certain way and not in another way, becomes so strong that it suggests itself to the mind, and will even seek expression when the will itself (and self-consciousness with it) are suspended. The nerve-tissue seems to set up a life and activity of its own on certain lines. Life is always activity; and that activity will proceed on the line of least resistance, just as water chooses the channel which it has already worn for itself The fact of this reflex action of the cerebrum, which is simply the unconscious and automatic action of the cerebrum without stimulus through sense or will, is beyond doubt. Many phenomena of mind can be explained only by assuming this automatic action. 28 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. And no consideration in connection with our material organisation affects me as an educator so deeply as this ; for it establishes beyond question the capacity of the cerebrum to absorb into itself, as it were, the acts of mind or will, and thereby to acquire a tendency to repeat them on its own account, and spontaneously. Nor, it seems to me, is it reasonable to doubt (as I have already said), that when once a mental habit has passed into a physical habit — mind-habit into a matter- habit — it is transmissible to our progeny. This doctrine of heredity thus gives great significance to the function of the educator, and imposes on us the duty of self- cultivation, accompanied by a new social sanction of the greatest potency.^ As to physical habit, Professor James (Psychology, I., 1 27), says : " The physiological study of mental conditions is 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 realise how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct when 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 little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jeffer- son'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 it and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict literal- ness, 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, ' The Weissman school deny the heredity of acquired habits. in.] EDUCATION OF MIND 29 and experts in the practical and scientific spheres by so many separate acts." 6. The educational value of the discipline of attention and will is recognised by all. I would further impress the lessons taught by the facts of brain-waste and exhaustion in their relation to this very act of attention. We must be careful not to exact either from others (above all, children) or from ourselves, efforts of attention, after nature gives signs of exhaustion. It would be as reasonable to continue raising a weight after clear signs of exhaustion of muscle have shown themselves, as to insist on the application of mind when waste and exhaustion show that power is gone. Nature calls for rest, and just as the depositing of the weight on the level to which we have raised it, and the resumption of our task after a short pause will enable us to accomplish much more than per- sistence in continuity of strain, so with mental attention. Pause a moment and rest the nerve-substance by idleness, or by diversion to some other object, or by sleep, and return again to your task refreshed and recreated. 7. Then as to the demands to be made on the brains of the young. Look at any diagrams of the brain before and after birth, and you cannot fail to note the gradual growth of these convolutions and that grey matter which are chiefly concerned in mental activity. These, if nothing else, will instruct you as to what you can fairly expect of children and what you can healthily demand. There can be no doubt that the tendency of modern education is too intellectual. The strain on the nerve- power of the young — I mean of those who do the work prescribed by their teachers — is too great. Teachers and parents forget that their children are growing, and that surplus energy is better used up for growth than for analytical geometry or Greek iambics. The chief things to keep in mind in educating are the ethical and the physical ; the knowledge of " subjects " is of minor import- ance. The race for scholarships at the age of thirteen or 30 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. fourteen cannot but be hurtful. If given on an estimate of the primary course through which a boy has passed, and on his exhibition of general intelligence and promise, no harm is done ; but if dependent on a premature acquisition of formal subjects, such as Latin and Mathematics, they cannot but be damaging, unless the competitors are few. 8. The importance of play and gymnastic is also impressed on us as essential parts of a school curriculum, if the physical basis of mind is to be healthful and vigorous. It is the "best wits to learning," Roger Ascham says, " who most need recreation, not the dumpish." It is often said that games occupy too prominent a place in our educational arrangements in Great Britain. If it be so, it is an error on the right side. At the same time we must try to take a rational view of the whole question, and it seems to me that the extent to which gymnastic is to enter into schools, whether in the form of a series of bodily exercises under cover, or of organised games in the open air, or of both, is to be determined first of all, not by the necessities of schools which do not know what to do with their boys, nor by any opinion of this or that educationalist; but by physiologists. The primary object is health of body and the harmonious growth of the physical organism. If we can make this object subserve also a moral discipline, as in the British games of cricket, football, etc., we are fortunate. But beyond the limits required for exercise with a view to a healthy physical basis of mind and the encouragement of manliness and the more obvious social virtues, gymnastic must, of course, be assigned a subordinate place in any educational scheme. Boys may be trusted to push this side of education as far as is necessary without the stimulus of school authorities. The business of the authorities is rather to afford reasonable opportunities, and then to regulate and restrain ; and, above all, to see that all get their share. III.] EDUCATION OF MIND 31 Plato has pointed out, once for all, the evils of too close an attention to gymnastic, and we can see in many youths now those very evils rampant which Plato deplored in his own time. Too much of the physical stupefies the intellect and brutalises the moral nature by crushing out all other interests. Every one admits that the body must be so trained that it shall be a fit vehicle for the spirit of man ; and it can be so only if it is a healthy organism : soul and body must draw together like two horses harnessed to the same coach ; but if we carry our gymnastic beyond this point the result is a one-sided development in which the body obscures the spirit, and the things of the spirit. To prosecute games with a view to being an " expert " (which is the practical issue in very many cases), is no part of liberal education ; but rather the reverse. It puts the end of all education in the wrong place. If headmasters will show, by their regulations, that athletics is not an end in itself, but only a means to the building up of a vigorous body and a manly character, the games-superstition would be soon wiped out. That part of gymnastic called drill, whether musical or non-musical, contributes to health of body, and has also a moral effect. Dancing has been too much neglected. It contributes to the joy of life, which the Puritanic mind regards as an evil thing. As Professor James says (p. 122), "the great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy." " Education is an early custom," says Lord Bacon, and this saying is true of the body of mind as well as of mind itself We may now return to the theory of education. Note. — Summary of 'educational lessons to be drawn from a consideration of physical conditions ; (a) Nutrition and Oxygenation of blood in brain: — food and ventilation ; (b) Rest, and variety of brain exercise ; (c) Gradual growth of the intellectual and moral capacity in connection with growth 32 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. hi. of brain ; the consequent limitation of the teacket's demands on pupils (length of lessons, etc) ; (d) Habit of mind in so far as it is merely cerebral habit ; (e) The importance of gymnastic, with drill ; (f) Sanitary conditions generally of intellectual and moral health and activity. LECTURE IV. THE SUPREME END AND ITS GOVERNING CONDITION. Reason : The Good: The Law. Consciousness, generally, is Mind. The conscious subject is a one, self-identical mind- entity^ — a unity and unifying centre of experience. So far as mere consciousness is concerned, man and animals are like one another. But man is more than a conscious animal, because he has reason ; or is a reason. The fundamental form of reason makes its appearance with self-consciousness. Man, accordingly, may be defined as a self-conscious rational mind-entity, involved in body. When the conscious or self-conscious entity has an object present to it, we then call the former " subject," to distinguish it from the " object." Reason. It would appear, then, that the distinctive characteristic — the differentia of man as contrasted with other conscious beings, is Reason. We have already said that the supreme end of human life, which has an inherent title to govern all other minor ends, is ethical ; but if man be specifically a being of Reason, that ethical end itself must be the 1 This lecture is somewhat of the nature of a series of paragraphs to be fully expounded orally by the lecturer. 33 C 34 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [tEfcx. life of reason and in reason. But life is action ; and accordingly, life in accordance with reason may be more fully expressed as a life of activity in the things of reason, and conduct in accordance with reason ; and this, speaking generally, is what we mean by the ethical life. But we must look at these things more concretely. Life in the activity of reason, i.e. pure thought and contemplation, might, for all we know, be with certain created beings, the highest; but for man, since he can live at all only through multiform relations to the non- rational nature within him and to other things and persons, the issue of his life in conduct is the highest : that is to say, life in reason, as determining his relations to things and persons and to his own organism : in brief, a life in relations generally as these are impregnated and moulded by reason. This is the moral life. But man, by virtue of this same reason in him, has relations with the Infinite. Accordingly, when, in the life of thought and contemplation, man rises to the notion of God as Being and Thought-universal, and sees the truth in relations, as in and through God, he then lives and acts in conscious communion with God as in all and through all. He now lives, not only the life of reason and in reason, but with Reason as the universal One in the many. This is the spiritual life. But this spiritual life is, above all, the moral life (that is to say, moral " ideas ") seen in God ; and, as such, it is the completion and fulness of the life of man. The moral life, accordingly, when it has passed into the spiritual life, is the full notion of the Ethical life. Note. — In seeking the end or purpose of a complex organism like man, we have to fix on some thought and phrase which expresses at once the highest outcome and the specific functioning of his nature. He must, of course, first be what he does ; but to stop at being, with a creature whose life consists in his relations to external things, circumstances, and, above all, to himself and other spirits IV.] SUPREME END AND GOVERNING CONDITION 35 like himself, would be to stop short of the completion of life, which does not consist in being and reverie, but in an activity determined by the state of being. We must, therefore, seek for some expression (if we are to have only one expression) which comprehends the essential activity of his nature, and denotes, at the same time, its supreme purpose or end. The expression most comprehensive and least misleading is, I think, " ethical life." Ethical life, then, is the spiritual life as including and completing the prior moral life, and it emanates from ,Reason, the distinctive characteristic of man. The Good. The moral life of which I have spoken is frequently called the virtuous life. For this, there is manifestly necessary a virtuous state of being, and its sequel effective virtue. I may be full of virtuous sentiments and principles, but have very little effective virtue ; I cannot, however, exhibit effective virtue save as the expression of a prior state of being. How now do we attain to the moral ideas which are to motive virtuous conduct ? Man, in so far as he is animal, has sensations and emotions like the animals. These give rise to desires, and impel him to do this or that. He differs from the animals by virtue of the reason in him, which regulates and directs these emotions and desires, and prescribes ends of conduct as motives. The relations which these emotions and desires bear to each other and to our fellow-men, are ascertained by reason interpreting experi- ence; and they get the name of "moral ideas," because they are ideas determining action or conduct. These moral ideas, e.g., justice, benevolence, self-control, integrity, courage, truthfulness, purity, honesty, etc., constitute the motives of a man's conduct, if he be moral. They are sometimes also called "moral sentiments" or "virtues," and the man who acts in accordance with them as law of his nature, is said to be virtuous. The moral idea is at 36 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. once end and motive of activity, and can be fulfilled only through particular acts. Man, evidently, cannot act on these ideas until he possesses them as knowledge (more or less distinct). If he possesses these ideas and lives in the contemplation of them, he may be said to be in a moral or virtuous state of being ; but his life is not fulfilled, nor is he virtuous, till he gives effect to them in his daily conduct : till then, they are only half-born. This is effective virtue — the virtuous or moral life. In education our main object is to train men to a habit of effective virtue ; but we desire also to elevate the virtuous life, if we can, to the spiritual life, so that the ethical life may be fulfilled in its wholeness in each man. Thereby he attains to THE GOOD. Note. — There are many who keep their eyes so steadily fixed on a boy's acts, that they are disposed to look with distrust on the inner growth of feeling and sentiment, or what are commonly called moral ideas (and sometimes "principles") — those inner motives which are a complex of reason and emotion, and precede the possibility of virtue. The giving effect to these in conduct is certainly, as effective virtue, in advance of the mere state of mind which we call " virtuous " ; but as the cause must precede the effect, we cannot afford in education to dispense with the consideration of the best way of creating the virtuous state of mind, simply as a contemplative state, with a view to the ultimate issue in action. We shall find in practice, doubtless, that the wisest way of creating this virtuous state, is not by mere inhibition of certain acts (though this also is necessary), but by getting the young (and ourselves) to act, i.e., to do the right and good act, and in this way evoking the good emotion or sentiment. In other words, the generalised emotion or moral idea and the putting of it in practice, should, in training the young, be inseparably bound together as far as possible. It is by doing benevolent acts that a child becomes a benevolent being, and entertains in conscious- ness and imagination — all ready for use— benevolent emotions and impulses. iv.J SUPREME END AND GOVERNING CONDITION 37 At the Scime time, if we take the whole range of moral ideas, this way of procedure is only partially within our reach, and we therefore try to build up in the child and youth a system of moral ideas which will constitute a per- manent reservoir of motives always ready for use, whether in moral judgment or moral action. Take the various moral ideas which constitute the motives of a good Will, viz., benevolence, justice, self- control, purity, honesty, integrity, truth-speaking, courage, resoluteness, perseverance, and so forth, and you will see how the growth of these in the mind (as furniture of the mind, so to speak) must be premised if we are to secure our result — effective virtue — in all conditions and circumstances. If we cannot create these generalised feelings or ideas, and give them lodgment in the minds of the young by regulating all their petty acts, how are we to supplement our want of opportunity ? We shall get a full answer to this in the sequel ; but meanwhile I would say generally, that we supplement the ordinary experiences of life in three ways : — I. By authority and precept. 2. By our own example. 3. By getting children to contemplate the acts of others, either as they see them going on before their eyes, or, through imagination by the help of narratives and poetry. (But we are here anticipating the discussion on Method.) The moral life and the spiritual life (in brief, the ethical life) must then exist as a system of ideas and motives before it is active, and, consequently, presumes for its existence an antecedent activity of reason in ascertaining, or accepting, ethical ideas and ends. Hence the import- ance in education of so training the intelligence of all that each, though incapable of ascertaining for himself the ideas which nourish the moral and spiritual nature of man, may yet acquiesce in them with intelligence and personal con- viction, make them his own, and not be merely the slave of dogma, misapprehended or not apprehended at all. For man is an ethical being only so far as he is a je^regulated being. Men have, happily, not to depend each on the activity of his own reason for the ascertainment of the truth of life and conduct — the moral ideas which are to constitute his 38 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. ever-present motives. They inherit the fruit of the labours of past generations. As regards its substance generally, indeed, education is Tradition — the handing on of intel- lectual and moral possessions by those competent for the task. We may now conclude that the supreme end of educa- tion is the ethical life, and that the main instrument in training to the substance of this is tradition; and that reason in each has to be so trained that the young may intelligently acquiesce, and so make the transmitted moral and spiritual life their own. The transmitters of this tradition are primarily parents and schoolmasters. The Law. The system of ethical ideas I have called " The Good " ; but the ethical life is not only the Good, but the Law for man, because it comprehends the ideas of his relations to things and persons — the truth for life and conduct. By the fulfilment of this law alone, can a man fulfil or realise himself; and, accordingly, he owes duty to the law that resides, as an " imperative," in the heart of ideas as Truth. ■ The reasoii of man is by its very nature always seeking for Law, and we consequently meet its demands by bring- ing the young under a sense of the law which is inherent in the truth of their relations ; and we accustom them to obey the law, although they cannot yet see the truth of it for themselves. Thus we strengthen the impulse of reason to find law, and habituate each to act in accordance with certain ideas or truths as law, and because of the duty he owes to law. " The perfection of a human being, as a personality," says Kant, " consists precisely in this, that he himself is capable of determining his purposes according to his own notions of duty." When a youth perceives the truth of the moral ideas which ought to determine conduct, and has acquired a habit of duty to them, he is educated morally. The IV.] SUPREME END AND GOVERNING CONDITION 39 spiritual education may accompany or follow this ; and then there is realised the full ethical life in him, i.e., that activity of reason whereby he perceives the truth and obeys the law, and leads the life of law, in God. The ethical life in a man then (to sum up) is a habit of action in accordance with moral ideas as "THE GoOD," under a sense of duty to the Law inherent in the Good as spiritual or Divine law. This may seem all very general ; but, in very truth, the significance of all we teach and of every lesson we give is ethical — always ethical, or it is, in its educational reference, wholly insignificant ; or, rather, non-significant. True, we have to educate experts in the various departments of human activity in order that the torch of learning and of civilisation may be held high and handed on. But the education of a nation does not aim at this, but at some- thing much greater. A school accordingly is not to be judged as an educational institution by the number of its examination successes, but by its ethical results, including, as the precondition of such results, bodily vigour.^ Our constant aim in studying the science of education must be to bring all philosophic discussions and conclusions to a practical issue. We have to deduce rules for our guidance in educating. The supreme end is always, it is presumed, with us, and is daily and hourly influencing us in what we teach or deliberately omit to teach ; but, besides exercising this governing function, the end yields a principle of method which helps us in our teaching. For the end contemplated is a practical end, personal and social, and, for the most part, personal by being altruistic or social ; it is the issue of intellect and of moral and spiritual ideas in a habit of ^ Much of the above is necessarily in anticipation of a fuller development of the argument when we specially treat of ethical education. Our present purpose is to show that all education has for its issue and ultimate justification the Ethical. 40 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. iv. life and action ; it is a turning to use — the use of life, of all the furniture and trained activity of mind. Principle of Method— TVR.^ TO USE. This principle, which is well phrased by Lord Bacon, when he says, " exercises must be framed to the life," should be constantly applied in every subject we teach and in every lesson in every subject. We see the rule illustrated by a teacher of mathematics, who knows that his business is not to make mathematical experts, but to use mathematics in so far as it contributes to the general education of the human mind. Every theorem, if under- stood, is seen to have its consequences. The practical relations of geometry to mensuration and geometrical drawing, and the deduction of riders to be worked out independently by the pupils, are never omitted from his course. He is indifferent to the amount of Euclid " gone over " ; his business is to pause and to make sure by means of deductions and illustrations that the intellectual discipline and the practical application are insured. In brief, at every stage he " turns to use." In this practical application he also connects mathematics with its social uses in industries, etc. It is to this that Montaigne points when he says, " Let the teacher make the pupil put what he hath learned into a hundred several forms and accommo- date it to many subjects, to see if he yet rightly comprehend it and have made it his own." So with the good teacher of language : he turns every- thing to use from the first lesson onwards. The ultimate and sole effective test of all knowledge in every department is — Can the pupil use it ? " The best way to understand a thing," says Kant, " is to do it." The unifying principle throughout all education is Use, i.e., it is ethical — personal ethics and social ethics. The school prepares for the life of organised society, and must be always in touch with the world outside and its requirements, LECTURE V. JUSTIFICATION OF THE POSITION THAT THE ETHICAL END IS SUPREME IN EDUCATION. Some may object that in gathering up the whole educative process under the general ethical conception and inter- preting all parts of it by their contribution to the ethical end, I somewhat strain the facts in the interest of a unity of educational idea and of a systematic view of the whole educational field. The objection is, I think, due to an inadequate conception of the ethical in man as at once source and sum of all his activity. It may be readily admitted, I think, that the value of all knowledge and of all intellectual discipline by means of knowledge is to be estimated chiefly by its contribution to the conduct of life generally, and also that all special knowledges, inasmuch as they have direct reference to a man's specific social function (whether that be industrial or professional), get their whole educational value from the fact that they enable a man to dp his work for his fellow-men more effectively, and are thus closely related to the conduct of life. Our production, our buying and selling, our professional engagements, are to be regarded as merely the occasions and opportunities for ethical conduct. Efficiency is morality. On the other hand, " there is such a thing,'' it may be said, " as the pursuit of knowledge both in the school and by adults which is divorced from all ethical relations or at least seems to ignore them." For example, as regards boys and girls in secondary schools ; 41 42 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. we go on teaching them mathematics and languages and the elements of science far beyond what is needed for the conduct of life. All we aim at is merely to make them " good scholars." My answer is, not " all we aim at," but rather " all we seem to aim at." The purely intellectual aspects of these studies must for the time occupy our chief atten- tion if they are to be successfully pursued. But why are we concerned about such studies at all ? You will answer, for the sake of knowledge and the discipline of intelligence through knowledge. But I rejoin with another question, why more knowledge, why more discipline than our pupils already have, why not leave them all to spend their time in play until the time comes for entering on their various bread-earning pursuits ? For two reasons only : (i) That by an extension of knowledge, they may have wider intellectual interests, larger relations to the world of things and men in which they are placed, and so find themselves standing on a higher rational platform and commanding a wider prospect than would be otherwise possible. This larger interest, this wider vision, this extended horizon raises them in the scale of humanity, and by so doing, elevates as well as broadens their view, so that they become alive to larger life issues, and in- evitably mould their ideals in a larger spirit. This, surely, is a purely ethical end and ethical result. (2) That we may by such teaching prepare our pupils for certain social occupations (commonly called professional) for which this secondary-school knowledge and discipline are essential. Life and use are thus always at the bottom of all our efforts and permeate and inspire them, whether we are conscious of the fact or not. If this be so, it is surely of vital moment that the educator should be explicitly conscious of his ultimate aim, and for this purpose should study the philosophy of his art. Philosophy can alone illumine his path and guide him in the difficulties of daily detail. , Again, it may be asked, is not the pursuit of knowledge v.] ETHICAL END IS SUPREME 43 by adults for its own sake, as when a man devotes his life exclusively to philosophy, or science, or literature, purely an intellectual act and divorced from all ethical considera- tions ? Not so. The persistent occupation of reason in the things of reason is sustained by an ethical motive — the love of truth. Every student of that which seems to be abstract is working for truth and for humanity, and he is supremely ethical. It is an emotional ethical inspiration which alone can sustain such men in their abstract pursuits. It is true that many in every walk of life, even the highest, regard their attainments and activities to be of value only in so far as these advance their material interests. This must always happen ; but the fact that there is a turning aside from an ideal aim, an ethical defection in particular cases, does not affect the main question. Let us not forget that while the ethical end is supreme, that end itself is constituted by reason acting on the feelings and emotions ; accordingly, we have to educate reason by knowledge and discipline, in order that that which distinguishes man from all other creatures may be nourished and strengthened in him for all the functions of life. In truth it is because this knowledge and discipline are so essential to the growth of an intelligent and virile moral and religious habit, that in our pursuit of them, we are apt to lose sight of the end in the means, and know- ledge and discipline come to engage our exclusive attention ; and that to such an extent as to seem to exalt the intellectual over the ethical in our school programmes. Nor can there be any objection to this, so long as there enters into our daily work the regulative and consecrating influence of an ethical purpose as animating our schemes of instruction as well as our methods of instructing. It is surely superfluous to argue that a theory of education which is not based on a philosophy of man, and governed, in all its details, by the meaning and significance of the life of man during his brief and uncertain existence in this little corner of the universe, 44 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. v. can be of little or no value. Mere methods of teaching this or that subject is a weariness to the spirit save in so far as they are seen to promote the supreme purpose which alone makes it worth our while to educate at all. In education, as in everything else, the end gives value to the beginning, and also determines the means. LECTURE VI. THE EDUCATIVE PROCESS GENERALLY AS DETERMINED BY THE SUPREME END. The virtuous life is not (I may repeat), achieved except tiirough the habit of virtuous activity, and, in like manner, the virtuous life cannot be said to be fulfilled until it passes into the spiritual or ethical life. Now, the ethical life is not a state of being solely, but a continued series of ethical acts bound together by an ideal of life ; it always comprehends effective virtue. If this be so, and if the ethical life be the supreme end of education, the analysis of the elements (moments or steps) of an ethical act ought to yield to us J the Educative Process, and give us a systematic view of the problem of education generally.^ It will be found that the ethical act, as a final willing of the good, contains the following elements : — 1. Right judgment as to the facts before us and their relations : a process of reason. (Substance of knowledge and power of discrimination.) 2. A moral idea (at the heart of which there is always an emotion) following on the clear perception of the facts ; which idea incites or attracts us to act in accordance with itself: and this we call our motive of action — at once end and motive. (Substance of morality — THE GOOD.) 3. Willing or action in accordance with the said motive-idea under a sense of duty to it as Law — a sense 1 What we desire to know (putting our question in philosophical language) is what is the content of an act of Will. 45 46 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. of imperative obligation — itself by itself also a motive. (Moral discipline— The Law.) 4. The perception of the idea as in God, and of the law as law of God. (The Spiritual, or Religion.) If I will in accordance with the idea (taking it into myself, and making it part of my character for the occasion), I have a resultant sense of harmony, non- contradiction, or peace, which is always the inner guarantee of the attainment of ethical completeness. The repetition of such acts ends in constituting the idea as a permanent element in my system of motives ; and my system of motives is my character. My action in all similar circumstances becomes quick and almost instinctive (secondarily automatic — habit). J, in short, to use the common expression, am then a man who can be " relied on." Note I. — When I say that the end of the education of the young is effective virtue resting on a virtuous state of iaeing, in other words, the habit of virtue as basis of the ethical life, I do not use these words in a vague sense. The virtuous life is not a life of contemplation, but of action ; it is not an abstract, but a concrete made up of a series of daily and hourly virtuous acts. We do not wish to rear citizens who talk about the virtuous life and walk about displaying moral placards, but citizens who quietly do their duty as a matter of course, and are ever watchful over themselves in all the details of business and of social and family intercourse. A large part of the virtuous life must always consist in the efficient doing of the work for which we get wages, whether that work be carrying bricks or guiding a State. To be always virtuous is so difficult that there is no energy left for ostentatiously talking about it Note 2. — The educator must always keep chiefly in view th.e primary demands that may be legitimately made on all men — a virtuous state of being and effective virtue. The spiritual, i.e. the Divine in the moral law, which is the essence of all religion, will accompany or follow. When we have trained to the ethical life in its complete- VI.] EDUCATIVE PROCESS GENERALLY 47 ness we have built the temple. The activity of reason in things of reason, the enjoyment of the beautiful in nature and art, and the graces and courtesies of manner and intercourse (eukosmia), all go, doubtless, to the ideal fulfilment of a man. But our business is with the temple, before we concern ourselves with its decoration. The claims of knowledge and of the sesthetic for their own sake, i.e., for the mere satisfaction in the one case of Reason and in the other of an Emotion, will always receive the attention of the educator, especially in their ethical relations ; but we cannot afford to think of them save as accessory to the ethical life. The Educational End, as Ethical, might now be stated thus : — Right Judgment and a Habit of Good Action under a sense of duty, accompanied by a comprehension of the spiritual or divine significance of moral law ; and, i may add, OF Nature and Man generally. Having thus more fully defined the end of education, we have now to ask generally by what means we can best attain our end. The Educative Process whereby the Ethical End may be attained. The Educative Process, as that is revealed by the analysis of the ethical act, is, speaking generally, a process of Instruction and of Discipline. A. — Instruction {Knowledge). (i) Instruction in our relations to things and persons, commonly called' intellectual instruction. (2) Instruction in moral ideas (the virtues), commonly called moral instruction. (The Good.) (3) Instruction in the spiritual, i.e. the religious idea. (God.) 48 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. vi. B. — Training and Discipline (Faculty). (i) Training and discipline to the habit of intelligent or rational activity. (2) Training and discipline to the habit of virtuous willing, i.e. good action under a sense of duty. (The Law.) (3) Training to the spiritual habit of mind — the seeing all things in God. The educative process thus set forth gives us a systematic view of the whole field of education, outside the presupposed physical conditions. We have now to consider the materials of instruction and discipline. LECTURE Vn. MATERIALS OF EDUCATION. The Realistic and the Humanistic. To give the materials of right judgment we have to instruct the young. It has been usual to oppose to one another real (realistic) instruction and humanistic — the former being instruction in those things that concern a man's nature-&xiv\.XQXiva&r± ; the latter, instruction in the relations of men to each other, and in the creations of man as a being of reason, i.e., literature, art, and all thought on that which is specifically human. The humanistic has also been identified with Greek and Latin literature, because at the time of the Renaissance the best literature was to be found in those languages. A little thought suffices to show that there is hopeless confusion in such distinctions. Literature and the things of thought are in a much truer sense realities than the things of sense ; and all literature and art, ancient or modern, is equally humanistic. The best division of subjects is into the Real and the Formal or Abstract, corresponding to the two demands of the educative process, viz. instruction and discipline; and these again have each to be divided into Naturalistic and Humanistic ; thus : — I. — The Real {which have in view chiefly the Nutrition of Mind). (a) The Real-Naturalistic : (i) Knowledge of the world of nature by which the pupil is surrounded. (In its initial stages this includes 49 D 50 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. lessons in colour, form, measure, weight, number, sound, and object-lessons generally : in later stages, a knowledge of animals, plants, and manufactured products in so far as time permits.) (2) Knowledge of that part of nature nearest to the pupil himself, viz. his own body, with special relation to the laws of health. (3) Knowledge of the distribution of men and nations, with the physical conditions of their lives and their related industrial and commercial characteristics. This, with topography, constitutes school geography. (4) Physiography or the elements of science as a real study, (Nature-knowledge.) (b) The Real-Humanistic : (i) Language, i.e., (a) The vernacular language as the expression of the thought of others. Literature. (6) The vernacular language as the expression of one's own thought, a synthetic exercise. (Imitative composition, with a view to the correct use of language.) (2) Foreign languages as literature. (3) Economics. (4) History, with civil relations. (5) Moral instruction [including minor morals]. (6) Spiritual ideas, including religious truth, viz., "what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man." ^ Subsidiary Subjects: Art. (a) Music. {b) Apprediation of the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture. ' Shorter Catechism. VII.] MATERIALS OF EDUCATION 51 II. — The Formal or Abstract (which Jtave in view chiefly the Discipline of Mind). (a) Naturalistic. (b) Humanistic. Object-lessons. Grammar. Drawing. Rhetoric.^ Arithmetic. Matliematics. Logic.^ Science as an abstract or formal study. The formal or abstract chiefly discipline the mind and give power ; the real feed the mind and give nutrition. To give adequate instruction in all these studies to all is impossible ; but the instruction of all should be on these lines, carried as far as time permits, and given in such a way as will lead to the further voluntary prosecution of them. Reading and writing, as instruments whereby we receive the thoughts of others and convey our own, are, of course, primary elements in all instruction ; but, were it not that they are necessary as instruments for bringing the mind into contact with the naturalistic, humanistic, and formal in knowledge, we should not think of wasting time over them. The above are our materials of instruction — the food we give ; and they are also the subjects by which we discipline and train the intelligence and moral nature of the young to an ethical result. There are, within the range of school life, up to the end of the secondary period (age of eighteen), no other subjects having equal claims. We have simply taken as materials of instruction the environment of things and persons (including the relations of each individual to Society) by which every child is surrounded, and on which, whether left to himself or brought within a formative system of education, he is bringing to bear the vital force that is in him with a view 1 Rhetoric and Logic are not to be formally taught till the pupil has reached the university stage. 52 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lkct. to the understanding of his position, and discharging his function, in the world. For this and his growth as a human being " Nature and her works and man and his works " are equally necessary ; and, as we shall see when we come to applied method, these are not antagonistic, but mutually helpful. All find a common centre and a unity in the mind which we are educating, and the purpose we have in view in educating. For let us never forget that it is not subjects which we are teaching, but minds which we are educating by means of subjects ; and further, that it is only through minds, and not school machinery, that minds can be educated. Liberal and Technical Education. — All the above studies enter into a "liberal" education. Here again we have to define. A liberal education is the education of a man for the sake of his manhood, and up to an ideal of man- hood, without regard to any specific industrial or professional use to which he may turn his knowledge and powers. Doubtless, all education is for use — the uses of life and living ; but by the " useful " in the sense of utility is usually understood the materially useful, that which enables a man to earn his living. Hence the term to be opposed to " liberal " in education is " technical," that is to say, instruction and training with definite reference to certain industrial uses and material results. " Professional " education is also technical ; and it is to be distinguished from industrial technical education only in so far as it rests on more advanced, and on liberal studies, as " liberal " has been above defined. All thinkers on education of any importance contend for a liberal education — the education of the man ; believing that thereby they best fit all men for the work of the world generally, no less than for the specific function each has to discharge as a member of a co-operative com- munity. The aim of education in so far as it is liberal is to fit a man to turn such ability as he has to any work he may be called on to do, whatever it may be. VII.] MATERIALS OF EDUCATION 53 Whatever we teach for its own sake, with a view to the ideal of man solely, is an element of liberal education. Even manual instruction, not to speak of the elements of science, may fall under this designation. All depends on the purpose we have in view, whether it be general or special — mind itself or utility, life or a living. The Athenians held that the best men — simply as men — made the best citizens ; the Spartans, though Hellenic in their general conceptions of education, had a more restricted view. Their ideal of man was the soldier, and their training was, in truth, technical in the gymnastic and military sense ; and, so far, it was a debased Greek form. Culture is a vague term ; but when we speak of a " man of culture," we certainly mean a man of liberal education. And if our definition of a liberal education be correct, a man may be a man of culture though ignorant of Latin and Greek. On the other hand, inasmuch as a liberal education has regard to the ideal of " man," it follows (and is a fact admitted by all) that the humanistic or man- subjects, including art, promote a liberal education, and consequent " culture," in a sense which realistic studies do not. A man trained solely on the latter cannqt be liberally educated ; a man trained solely on the former can, on the contrary, be liberally educated. In short, what is called " culture " is not within reach of the man trained solely on the real-naturalistic, but it is attainable by the man trained solely on the real-humanistic. At the same time, natural- istic subjects, I admit, might be so taught as to be humanised, and thus brought within the sphere of the humanistic. All depends on the purpose and method of the educator. LECTURE VIII. ON THE DEFINITION OF THE MATERIALS OF EDUCA- TION, REAL AND FORMAL, IN THEIR SCHOOL SENSE. Real subjects of instruction have to do with the nutrition, and, to a large extent, with the training of mind : formal or abstract subjects with the discipline of mind. The former may be distinguished as nutritive subjects; the latter, as disciplinary instruments. The definition of the materials of education, real and formal, is of importance in order that we may know what we are talking about, and that we may gather from the definition, suggestions as to the methods of procedure. We have, accordingly, to consider the real elements of education, naturalistic and humanistic, as above tabulated, one after the other, and ascertain what is the precise significance of each in the school, and in what sense each contributes to the substance, or nutrition, of mind ; and further, to ascertain in what sense and to what extent formal subjects discipline. We limit the range of our argument to the period of primary and secondary educa- tion (terminating at the age of eighteen), and accordingly have to define the subjects of instruction in their school sense. In the discussion as to the materials of school-instruc- tion, primary and secondary, there has always been political and ecclesiastical partizanship. Nor should we complain of this, for it is evidence that the conviction is general that the relation of the school to the well-being of the State is LECT. viii.J MATERIALS OF EDUCATION 55 close and vital. Conservative instinct has, of course, played, and still plays, a strong part in opposition to innovations. This is so natural that we feel that it must have some justification. Into an old traditionary system changes can be admitted only slowly, and after they have been duly tested ; but one would like to see a more open mind among schoolmasters. Philosophy, as well as ecclesi- asticism, has entered the lists, and the Sensationalist, while teaching everybody to read and write, would determine the curriculum of the school by the " utilities " of living (not the uses of life in its large sense), and endeavour to fortify his position by parading a sophistical argument which is intended to show that the most useful, in the sense of utilitarian, is also the most disciplinary and educative. The educationist, if he be of a philosophic temper, will always have his theory. It is vain to expect that he should be free from bias. His philosophy of man must govern his doctrine of the materials whereby the young can best be trained to manhood. What we have all a right to demand, even of the philosophic mind that makes of education a special study, is practical acquaintance with schools, and some experience in the educating of individual minds. Where these quali- fications are found, it is not probable that anything which is impracticable will be proposed. For, a man who, in addition to philosophical qualifications, has school experience, will always, when he writes about education, look at subjects and methods from the schoolroom floor. He may have his ideals, which some may think impossible of realisation, but' he will not talk nonsense. He well knows that in education the practicable is alone the practical. The schoolmaster who obtrudes his "experience" in antagonism to all new suggestions, must remember that, even when he has been trained to his profession, his experience of the practicable and practical is very limited. He knows his own school, and that is, generally, all he 56 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. viii. knows. A man does not acquire experience in any rational meaning of the word, who goes on for forty years daily repeating himself. When he has not been pro- fessionally trained, his opinion is of little value. He is simply a witness in the box who has a few personal experiences, unenlightened and uninterpreted, to lay before the judge and jury. Even when he has been professionally trained, he speaks under limitations. There are, of course, numerous exceptions : for there are masters both trained and untrained who, in devoting themselves to school work, have been animated by the highest aims, and urged on from day to day by an active interest in their own methods: they have, accordingly, much to tell us. These men have a right to speak ; but their range of experience is necessarily restricted, and they will expect more or less from schools than may be fairly demanded. To define the materials of education, in their school sense, is the duty of the lecturer on education ; but to do so here would unduly increase the size of this volume, while being scarcely relevant to the subject of it, which is Theory and Method in its universal relations to all subjects. LECTURE IX. THE PRACTICABILITY OF THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM. I ASSUME in the above scheme of the materials of educa- tion (Lecture VII.) that at least two languages are taught in addition to the vernacular — the vernacular as language and literature being always the centre of all linguistic instruction, as it must also be the vehicle of all instruction whatsoever. We start from the vernacular in teaching foreign tongues, and we return to it and lay our spoils (so to speak) at its feet. If we teach more than one foreign tongue, it is evident that we can do so only if we strictly limit the amount of mathematics taught. If, again, at the age, say, of sixteen, we begin the formal laboratory study of science, we must drop ancient languages altogether and limit ourselves to French and German. Even with this qualification the question may be fairly put, Can all the instruction comprehended in our scheme be given effectively ? The answer is, That in so far as it is necessary to give it with a^view to the ethical end, which includes the putting of a man into an intelligent relation to his environment and to life, it can be given easily, on two conditions : — I. That the teacher marks out limits within which each subject is to be taught. A school without a carefully weighed Instruction-plan may be a school, but it is not an educational institution. It constantly happens that in many subjects far too much is attempted, and, as a consequence, far too little accomplished. Even if we had control of all children to the end of the secondary period, 67 58 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. we could not teach the whole of any one subject : our business is to lay an intelligent basis for the acquisition of subjects in the course of life-experience. We have to start the young on the right road, and then leave them to traverse it by themselves. Any subject will serve to show the importance of limits. For example, in Latin and Greek, or in one or other of them, instruction may be pressed so far in the interests of a few clever boys aiming at scholarships, etc., as to throw the whole educational machine out of gear. Again, if we find boys of sixteen working at the Calculus, we may hold it for certain that these boys are not being educated. They are specialising, and this is fatal to the educational idea.^ If we find boys of seventeen or eighteen writing elegant Latin and Greek verses (unless they be merely a translation of given material), we know that they are not being educated. And if I may, because of my humanistic leanings, be inclined to give such boys the benefit of the doubt, I am quite sure that the average boy is being sacrificed to them. A limitation of the amount to be acquired, accompanied by thoroughness and exactness within these limits, must always be kept in view. And in determining limits, I must always have in view the average boy. Educational institutions, in fact, exist for the average boy : the six or seven per cent, of brilliant boys will take care of themselves. Guidance is what they want more than coaching. Doubtless a school must have an ideal in instruction as well as in other things, but it ought to be an ideal of method and quality, and not of quantity. And even as regards quantity, a widely-distributed good quality within narrow limits gives a larger quantity than advanced instruction in one or two subjects which touch a few only. There is something much higher than advanced Mathematics or Greek ; and that something is education. 1 On the other hand, where boys stay at school to the age of nine- teen and contemplate the university, specialisation for the last year and a half has, for those boys, more advantages than disadvantages. IX.] PRACTICABILITY OF SCHOOL CURRICULUM 59 2. The extensive curriculum through which all should be carried is possible only when the ordo studiorum has been wisely arranged. And by " wisely arranged " I mean that subjects and successive parts of subjects shall be introduced at the proper time — that is to say, at the age at which the mind is most ready to receive them, and after the instruction which ought to precede them has been given. For example, to occupy time with Latin Grammar before English Grammar is fairly well known, is a reversal of the natural order. Why not postpone Latin till the age of thirteen? Again, to occupy time with English Grammar prematurely and at a time when the mind naturally engages itself with the real and concrete as in object-lessons and the elements of geography and in simple imitative composition, etc., is a waste of time and a defiance of the natural order. Even to spring map- drawing or geometry on a class which has not been getting lessons from the first in drawing and been carried through an infant school course in Form, is an ignoring of the natural order and is a waste of time. To give French before Latin is, in my opinion, a mistake ; but this is a debated question and will probably be decided by practical considerations. Again, as regards successive parts of subjects : to give even the most elementary course on the human body before the age of thirteen, is a waste of time. Prior to that age, the body is an object-lesson in the ordinary sense only. And so on. The order of studies has to be arranged and graduated so that every subject and part of a subject shall aptly fill its proper place. 3. Not only must there be gradation and fitness in the order of studies, but every subject — Language, Nature- knowledge, Number, Geometry, Drawing, Music, Morality, Religion, etc., must begin in the Infant School ^ and grow with the growing years of the boy. If this be done, it ^ Comenius first saw this, and the modern Pestalozzian Infant School, as conceived by Frobel, gives effect to it. See Miss Weldon's lucid paper in Barnett's Teaching and Organisation, 1897. 60 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. will be found that the pupil advances by almost insensible gradations — the first step in each subject leading to the second, and so on, and the actual amount to be done in each year being, in truth, small. How long, for example, does it take for a mature mind to acquire all the know- ledge of geography which a boy of seventeen or eighteen (even supposing him to be well taught) knows ? Shall we say six weeks? And yet the boy has twelve years to accomplish the same task. So with other subjects. Begin everything, then, in the beginning of the school life. (Do not imagine that I mean that you are to begin Latin — but you begin language^ If a school parade were held at the end of any year, the eighteen-year-old out-going boys would be exhibiting their comprehension of precisely the same things as the infant school child is dealing with ; but in a more advanced form : that is all. Even in formal science, what is the experimental laboratory instruction in weighing and measuring but the infant school lessons in number and weight and size become scientific ? Every- thing must be found at every stage of school life. If there be due limitation as to the total quantity aimed at, much of the instruction will from year to year be merely a keeping up of knowledge acquired at a previous stage, and only to a very moderate degree an extension of it ; but the quality will be excellent. It is not knowledge but a mental attitude we aim at. 4. Again, if we are to succeed in fulfilling the promise of the Instruction-plan, not only must the idea of method enter into the plan itself and into the ordo studiorum, but method must enter into the way of teaching every subject and every lesson of every subject. Only in and through method is a master free to allow his personality and influence and sympathy to reach his pupils. He is like a traveller in diiificulties as to his course who, being put on the right road, feels confidence that he will reach his goal, and is thus set free to enjoy the air and the scenery — nay, even to deviate at times when a wayside flower attracts him. ix.J PRACTICABILITY OF SCHOOL CURRICULUM 61 Drawing and music, it is to be noted in passing, are not an additional burden on the boy ; they are essentially recreative, just as manual work is recreative. But such a curriculum of instruction, granting that it is practicable and admitting that it iits a youth for the activities of our modern complex life, and, by evoking his ethical consciousness, forms his character, gives him intel- lectual interests, and so truly " makes a man " of him, is, we are told, " encyclopaedic." This is the red rag at which the old classical bull rushes ; but he rushes at it as all bulls (I understand) do — ^with his eyes shut. We have in our proposed curriculum been simply taking up the materials of everyday experience, and pointing out that the function of the school is to classify, extend, and rationalise these by help of the vast and assured results which mankind has now attained, so that the boy may, when released from school, go back into that same experi- ence capable of dealing with it and of controlling it to the ends of life. If we are so placed here on earth as to have to deal with these things in some fashion, whether we will or not, is the teacher to ignore them and leave the pupil to chance, or shall he not rather outwit the devil by anticipation ? The latter, certainly, if his purpose be education ; the former, if he regards himself as merely a teacher of this or that subject in return for so many shillings. What harm will be done to a boy's Latin and Mathematics by his being taught to draw and sing, and to look with the eye of reason on the wonderful world which is his dwelling-place, and which will crush and enslave him if he does not conquer it ? The greatest scholastic humanists in history, let me add, comprehended such instruction within their scheme — Quintilian, Vittorino da Feltre, Vives, Michael Neander, Luther, and so forth. The exaggerations of the Realistic school are doubtless largely responsible for calling forth the antagonism of modern humanists. Let us forget the camp and think only of education — what it means, what is its end, what 62 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. is its method. " Education," says Whewell, " is the process of making individual men participators in the best attainments of the human mind in general ; namely, in that which is most rational, true, beautiful, and good . . . the several steps by which man is admitted, from the sphere of his narrow individuality, into the great sphere of humanity ; by which, from being merely a conscious animal, he becomes conscious of rationality ; by which, from being merely a creature of sense, he becomes a creature of intellect ; by which, from being merely a seeker of pleasurable sensations, he becomes an admirer of what is beautiful ; by which, from being merely a slave of impulse, he becomes a reverencer of what is right and good." That a boy, here and there, trained on Latin and Greek alone, acquires for himself much of the knowledge which has been concealed from him at school, as you might conceal an atheistic book, is true. But how many even of the clever boys do so ? I say with confidence that in conversation with not a few of the select products of our system (Fellows at Oxford and Cambridge), a man of the larger intellectual world, whose reading and thoughts have extended to the philosophy of mind and of national polity, to history in its large sense, religion in its historical aspects, and the great movements of modern science, feels a certain limitation. Again the occupation of the mind with the present, and the living understanding of it, stimulate interest in the past. The past explains the present, it is true ; but it is our present that gives significance to the past. It is also demonstrated by experience that a boy approaches his Latin and Greek with a certain freshness when he has been engaged with other things. A monotonous occupation in one line retards progress. Even in the game of golf a man can play himself stale. What would the Romans and Greeks have thought of the modern spurious Humanist? Do you think Pericles or Plato would have thought it an alarming thing that a IX.] PRACTICABILITY OF SCHOOL CURRICULUM 63 boy should be so educated that he should look abroad on the world of Nature and Art with a fresh and living eye, and feel flowing through his niind the refreshing stream of national history and literature, and be finally conducted to the door of the Temple of Philosophy ? Was not this, in fact, the Hellenic education ? What we have to do is (as I must not get tired of saying) to fix our end, to find a centre for our school- studies which will best lead us to this end, and to gather round this centre all teaching which prepares for social, civic, and individual life — for enjoyment as well as duty, in so far as this is practicable. The extensive, as well as the intensive, elements in the educative process must engage our attention. 5. I would say, finally, that all the legitimate subjects of school instruction, if properly taught, run into each other and help each'other, e.g., History runs into Geography and vice-versd, both into Economics, and Economics into both ; English into Latin and French, and Latin and French into English ; Drawing and Music into everything ; and all subjects into Ethics. It is only by bringing a boy into touch with varied subjects (only in their elements, of course) that you give him wide interests, and the "little knowledge," if it be sound to begin with, gives the desire for more and is always receiving additions from the occasions of life. He is provided with a framework or schema into which to fit all that comes before him, so as to build up in himself, with more or less consciousness, some approximation to an organic whole. The soundness of the basis and of the method prevents the daily accretions from being mere disjointed fragments. Fresh knowledge has something to grow into, and is thus really knowledge and not isolated and unassociated fact — probably misunder- stood. Thus the whole of life will become a natural continuation of school instruction, and the school will thus truly subserve the uses of life in the highest sense of that expression, and not merely in the sense of utilities. 64 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. We must never forget, when speaking of the materials or substance of right judgments, that the child and youth are not left solely to the educator. They are constantly under the education which is given by their inner force of intelligence and the multiform influences of the world outside them, whether these be of nature or proceed from the words or acts of other beings of a like kind with themselves. We cannot manufacture a man : all we can do is to follow the instincts and movements of the growing mind, while taking into our system of education the materials which nature and society have provided without our intervention, our aim being to reduce these to order and to expand and interpret them. Our business is to explain, to formulate, and to guide ; for great as is the power of mind and of outer nature, man is so constituted that he cannot be made the best of, much less perfected, save by the intervention of the formative hand of his fellow-man, carrying in its palm the harmonised experi- ences of the past and the knowledge of present and future needs. Before I leave the subject, I would sum up in a few general propositions the leading purport of our argument : — 1. The materials of instruction in the school must always maintain an intimate relation with life outside the school. This is involved in the ethical purpose of all education. 2. The school must, consequently, take its materials out of life, and recognise the fact that the pupil brings these materials in a raw state along with him into the school from the first, in order that they may be there corrected, elucidated, illustrated, extended, formulated, co-ordinated, before they are carried back into life again for wise guidance. 3. It is the ordinary experience and needs of every human being which point the way to the subjects of instruction to be selected. This has been our guide in the materials summed up in a preceding lecture. IX.] PRACTICABILITY OF SCHOOL CURRICULUM 65 4. Whatever subjects we teach, each should be so taught from the beginning, that at whatever age social necessities may interrupt the course of instruction, the pupil shall have received all the benefit from it which his age admits of. 5. The instruction must be organised; that is to say, we must determine the amount and nature of the instruc- tion in each subject at the different stages of mental growth. Every age has its own leading studies, and every age has its own part of each study. The knowledge of each and every subject taught must grow with the growth of the mind we are educating, and not anticipate it. If it anticipate it, the result of the instruction is not knowledge, but rote-information. Our labour is wasted. 6. Inasmuch as the supreme end is always ethical, instruction in every subject, and at every stage of that subject, should be dominated by this end as regards its quantity, quality, and method. It is this, and this alone, that gives unity. Note. — The organisation of instruction is a difficult task. It is not at all necessary for educational purposes that boys and girls of seventeen or eighteen should know much of anything, but it is essential that they know thoroughly, according to a sound method, what they profess to know, and that, when they leave school, they find themselves, through the skill and devotedness of their teachers, in a rational attitude to all knowledge.^ I shall illustrate the quantity of knowledge to be conveyed, and its gradation, when I speak in detail of applied method.^ The amount, however, is of little value as compared with the result in intellectual exactness, power, and interest. The fewer text-books the better. There is much truth in the saying of more than one educational enthusiast, that everything can be taught out of one book; but I would add, provided that book be the teacher himself 1 I am well enough aware that with some boys and girls such results are unattainable ; none the less do they constitute the teacher's aim and ideal. '^ I have excluded this from the present volume. E 66 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. ix. It will be apparent from all that I have said that I do not believe in the distinction of primary and secondary instruction, although I use the terms. A philosophical writer on the education of the human mind would stultify himself, were he to speak as if there were any distinction so marked as to create a difference. The question of the course to be followed by the primary and (so-called) secondary school alike, with a view to make the education of the boy a one continuous whole, is a practical one for the State ; and, to my thinking, not difficult of solution. The solution, unfortunately, must be such as to recognise the necessity of specialisation. The educational idea in its highest sense is, of course, inipatient of all specialisation up to the age of eighteen ; but the needs of life override theory. The unity of education in a secondary school can, it seems to me, be preserved if Greek is thrown out and reserved for a special few ; ^ and, further, if boys intended for productive industrial work, will kindly leave the secondary school at the age of sixteen and go to a technical college. Up to sixteen, the heresy of " modern sides" should not be recognised. Those who remain beyond this age, on the other hand, must, to a large extent, specialise ; but while some devote two-thirds of their time to Latin and Greek, and others to Mathematics, Science, and Modern Languages, the remaining third of the time should always be utilised in maintaining and slightly extending the training of the general curriculum as far as possible, especially in English and History. It must be remembered that those who stay at school beyond the age of sixteen are, generally speaking, the most capable boys, and can accomplish more than the average pupil. They are well worth teaching : they are to be the guides of the next generation. * It may be objected that this involves the postponement of Greek Grammar till the age of sixteen. Why not ? Many practical questions must vex the headmaster's mind in this age. LECTURE X. EDUCATIONAL VALUES. No one has any right to an opinion on this subject until he has taken a comprehensive view of education in its end and processes. We have been guided in the selection of materials by tradition and the actual present practice of the best schools, but chiefly by regard to the everyday experiences which, as a matter of fact, go to build up every human mind. I am disposed, accordingly, to think that all the subjects included under the heads " naturalistic " and " humanistic," are essential to the best education. Doubtless, a sympathetic appreciation of the iinest and best that has been said on the highest in man is the mark of perfect culture, but of what value is it, if it end in mere literary appreciation and aesthetic self-indulgence? It is the ethical outcome in an elevated and refined habit of life that the educationist thinks of; and, most assuredly, for this the material used must chiefly be the thought of man as expressed in language, literature and art, and his social relations to other men. But his relations to his immediate environment generally are surely also an integral part of a man's education. I cannot see how there should be any conflict here at all. If there is not a consensus on this point, there ought to be, without further discussion. Were there no time for so wide a range of instruction as I have sketched, the question would then 67 68 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. arise, which subject shall we eliminate? But there is, I have tried to show, plenty of time, if we restrict the limits of each subject, and organise our scheme of knowledge and our order of teaching on sound principles. As regards the comparative value of subjects, we have already the criterion for deciding that question, so far at least as the general discussion is concerned. For we have now before us the educational end and the educative process, and by these must all "values" be determined. We may accept the doctrine that in education the " uses of life " must be our end ; but uses are not merely utilities. We may even accept the cant phrase " Man must be adapted to his environment " ; but with this reservation, that the more we know of man, the more are we assured that it is the unseen mental environment and his spiritual inheritance to which he has to be adapted. That man assuredly is not educated whose mind does not rise above the material interests of life, or the science of nature ; however skilfully he may have been taught to deal with these. The question of comparative values is complicated and confused by the failure of writers to be specific. The only true way of putting the question has always close reference to the age of the pupil. Given that a boy is seven or eleven, or fifteen or eighteen, which subject or subjects have most educational value at these stages of mind-growth respectively ? That is the question. Nobodj', I suppose, in these days holds that either History or Euclid or Latin Grammar have any educational "value" at all at the age of seven. There would be a good deal more of agreement among educational writers if they would put the question in this way, and proceed to answer it in view of the educational end, and the educative process, as these have been laid down. Again, the disputants are apt to forget the question of the "how much" of each subject. The inclusion of one subject does not exclude another, if we give each- its due and no more. For example, there is a general agreement X.] EDUCATIONAL VALUES 69 (of opinion though not of practice) as to the curriculum of primary instruction up to the fourteenth year ; but we may differ as to the amount of Arithmetic to be taught as com- pared with English or History, or the amount of Grammar as compared with Geography, and so forth. It is in the sphere of secondary instruction that the question of values chiefly arises ; that is to say, instruction from fourteen to eighteen. At this point, the age of the boy must largely determine our selection. He is now fit for the abstract or formal; and this is an indication of nature that discipline of mind must take precedence, more and more as years go on, of mere nutrition of mind. It is, however, so absurd to exclude the nutritive subjects — naturalistic and humanistic — from the curriculum of the secondary school that the question will not in these days bear discussion. Still, great prominence must at this stage be given to the formal and disciplinary, viz., Languages, Mathematics, and the elements of one or more sciences. These studies must lead. Presuming that all sensible men are agreed thus far, the sole remaining question is as to the languages to be selected, and the proportion of school time to be given to each of the subjects of the curriculum. At this point we shall have differences of opinion, and both " ancients " and "moderns" may be thoroughly trusted to exaggerate ridiculously the supreme educational value of their own favourite studies. Here, too, the question of utility in its banal sense enters ; that is to say, the consideration of the future needs of life: and it must be allowed a certain weight. I do not here enter into the discussion, but merely would beg that those discussing it would do so in view of the educational end and the educative process, as these have been laid down either by me or by themselves. They will then find, I believe, that amid the conflict of subjects that knowledge is " of most worth " which " stands in the closest relation to the highest forms of the activity of that spirit which is created in the image of Him 70 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. x. who holds nature and man alike in the hollow of His hand." i In the case of boys and girls who leave school before fourteen, there is, I have said, substantial agreement as to the subjects of instruction and instruments of discipline,^ and all that is wanted at present (apart from the introduc- tion of manual instruction) is the introduction of nature- knowledge and of graded object-lessons which have close relations to the industries of the district in which the school is planted. As regards secondary instruction, the question of curriculum outside what must be common to all, viz., the vernacular Language and Literature (including History), Physical and Commercial Geography, and Mathematics, must depend on whether we aim at a liberal education with the university as its continuation or at industrial and commercial education with the Technical or Commercial College as its continuation. Both types of secondary school, the professional and the industrial, should be found in all important centres of population ; and they may even co-exist in the same building. We ought now at once to treat of the Method of using the materials of education with a view to the instruction, training, and discipline of mind ; but the way has to be cleared by the consideration of the relations subsisting between instruction and discipline in the sphere of Method. ' Prof. N. Murray Butler in The Meaning of Education, p. 66. ^ See my book Primary Instruction in relation to Education, sixth edition (Thin, Edinburgh). LECTURE XI. THE METHOD OF INSTRUCTION IS ALSO THE METHOD OF DISCIPLINE. We have now enumerated and defined the materials whereby we carry on the educative process with a view to the attainment of an end which in its final expression is best summed up in the word ethical. An obvious distinction has been made between subjects which chiefly feed, and subjects which chiefly discipline, the intelligence. All these subjects have to be taught (less or more), and the next question, and it is an urgent one, is, How are they to be taught ? Is there a way or method of procedure, and, if so. How can we ascertain it ? But before going into this question we are met by a question of great importance. The educational end is attained, we have said, by two processes^-Instruction and Discipline — and this both in the intellectual, and also the specifically moral, sphere. There must, then, be a way or method of discipline as well as of instruction. Do they differ ? To Right Judgment is necessary, as we know, not only knowledge, but an active, vigorous, and discriminating intelligence. The saying, " Knowledge is power," is only a half-truth ; for, without an active and vigorous intellect, acquired knowledge may be a burden and an obstruction. When we consider that the mere experience of life, apart from books and schools, may give man almost all he wants for the moral guidance of his life in all ordinary matters, n 72 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lkct. if only he can bring to bear on that experience a per- spicacious, penetrating, and interpreting intellect, we feel that power alone is power, and that knowledge — the accumulated results of experience — must take a second place in the education of a human being. At the same time, it is scarcely correct to say that training and dis- cipline are of more importance than knowledge. Mathe- matics, for example, disciplines the intelligence; and we can easily conceive a mind admirably disciplined by mathematics, but conspicuously faulty in judgment because of its ignorance of the real and concrete relations of things into which moral and aesthetic elements always largely enter. So with all pure discipline as such. Accordingly, the substance of knowledge acquired — the food or nutrition of mind, is of more importance than some educationalists are disposed to think. Let us say that instruction and discipline are, in fact, of equal moment. Instruction, how- ever, naturally first engages our attention when we have a mind to educate. There is a void before us which we have to fill ; or rather an empty mind which has to fill itself under our guidance. Now we can instruct, in a sense, without giving any appreciable training and discipline to the intelligence. For our instruction may be merely information — facts which the pupil commits to memory ; the reducing of these to rational cohesion being left to the chapter of accidents. This acquiring of information, simply as information and as an exercise of memory, is what is meant by rote- learning. Among other evils attending such a mode of conveying knowledge is this, that it cannot possibly interest and attract either the intellect or the moral and spiritual nature of a human being ; and thus, a distaste for learning and a silent antagonism to the teacher, and also to authority generally, are fostered. Accordingly, it has been found necessary to inflict physical chastisement, and to appeal to fear in various other forms, in order to compel the majority of boys to do the work of rote- xi.J METHOD OF INSTRUCTION AND DISCIPLINE 73 acquisition. In truth, this way of instructing is always necessarily accompanied with severity of discipline; and hence, the teacher or magister has been popularly known through all the ages as pedant, dominie, castigator puerorum, plagosus, and so forth. Again, we may instruct intelligently, but with a view to the formal discipline of intelligence alone. In that case, we equally fail to interest the young mind and so to achieve our ultimate intellectual purpose, which is the placing of the mind in an attitude of rational activity to all knowledge and all experience. Such an attitude can exist only when there is interest as well as discipline. The growing body cannot be fed by a series of difficult exercises in digesting, but only by food which it can readily assimilate and digest. So with the mind : It demands feeding, and the food must be of a kind that it can digest and assimilate if it is to grow either in knowledge or in power, and above all, in width of intel- lectual interest. These considerations place us, as students of the science and art of education, in a critical position. Are the questions of knowledge-assimilation and of discipline to mental power different questions which yield us answers involving mutual contradiction? If so, our case as educationalists would be a bad one ; for we should have to follow two different methods in order to attain the two different ends — nutrition and discipline. Fortunately it is not so ; the best method of instructing with a view to assimilation, is also the best method of training and disciplining with a view to power, as we shall see in the sequel. The educational problem is thus simplified. , I am assuming that there is such a thing as Method : and a method may be good, better, or best. Indeed, the etymology of the word " instruction " would of itself suggest to us that there must be method, for it implies the 74 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. building of one course of masonry on another in a certain order with a view to the completing of a structure. It must be granted, however, that a boy of unusual energy of mind will often supply the right method for himself, however incompetent his teacher may be. All will admit that there must be some method of instructing : and further, that the best method must be that which follows the way in which the fabric of mind builds itself up. This, indeed, is the ultimate form in which the question of educational method must be put. This is also, let it be noted, the ultimate question of all psychology and to a large extent of metaphysics also, so closely are the philosophy of mind and the education of mind connected. The answer to the one question is the answer to the other. But the student of education asks the question always with a practical purpose, and especially with distinct reference to the building up or growing of mind. He does not, in a mere abstract interest, analyse the complex result before him — the adult mind ; but mind in its process of gradual formation : and even this abstract question he investigates with a view to a further question, viz., " What can I wisely do to help mind to grow so that it may reach a certain ideal standard of knowledge and power ? " ^ All the traditionary words that have to do with the bringing up of the young, point etymologically to this, as that which underlies all the particular problems of the family and the school, e.g., " education," " training," " instruction," " discipline," and even the degraded word " information." The best method of instruction, I have said, is also, happily, the best method of disciplining. We may fix our attention, then, on the method of instructing, since we shall find that the method of discipline is therein also ' From my knowledge of the adult completed human being I must interpret child-growth. A great deal of rubbish has been shot into the educational field by the fanatics of " child-study." XI. J METHOD OF INSTRUCTION AND DISCIPLINE 75 contained.^ By a sound method of instruction we shall find that we best train and discipline the mind, and by a sound method of training and discipline we shall find that we best instruct it. This will appear more clearly as we go along. In the meantime, as we have already defined the term "instruct," let us now endeavour, before going further, to find whether there is any distinction between " training " and " disciplining " — two words which I have generally used together, as if in their combination they expressed one notion. " Training " and " disciplining " are essentially the same process; but there is a distinction. To train the intelligence, is to carry it, or lead it, through the various steps which end in the knowledge of anything. E.g., I lead a boy, step by step, through the processes which end in his adequate comprehension of the demonstration of a geometrical theorem, and I thus iram his intpUigence, inasmuch as I guide him through intelligent processes, and accustom him to such processes. He re- constructs in his own mind, by my help and imitatively, the thought of the original mathematician, and the thinking process in him is thereby manifestly trained. Now, to discipline is the same as to train, with this difference, that I call on the boy to initiate for himself, and carry through for himself without my help, the processes which end in the demonstration of a theorem or problem ; as, for example, when I set a rider. To do this a boy has to think more closely, to apply himself more intensely, and, in finding out the steps of proof for himself, he approaches more closely thought in itself, — the processes of reason as such, and the conditions of the satisfaction of reason. Discipline of intelligence, accordingly, is through the self-initiated activity of intelligence with a view to an end. Approximately, it is the abstract exercise of intelligence. ' This is here a dogmatic statement, but its truth will show itself in the sequel. 76 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. xr. Thus it is that formal or abstract studies discipline much more surely and effectively than real studies do: they demand self-sustained and self-directed application. Every mental act which involves self-conscious unaided effort is of the nature of discipline. Training and discipline are thus constantly, in practice, passing into each other. It is manifest that the above view of discipline rests on a philosophy of mind which interprets man as, above all, a Will. That all theory of education must rest on a philosophy of man, is manifest ; for the student of education must settle with himself what he means by Man. What is his nature? what is his governing characteristic? what is his specific function in the universe? There is no escaping this study of Man. If it is too hard for the teaching profession, let them give it up. They can earn their living by teaching without it. "Give him a three- penny bit and bid him go," said Euclid to his slave, when an intrusive pupil asked the "use" of Mathematics. So we may say to those who ask the use of Philosophy. Let it now be admitted that if a master, when in- structing in a subject, does so in such a way as to train and discipline the intelligence by means of the subject, he will thereby not only best accomplish this important part of his educational task, but, at the same time, best give instruction. A "way" is a "method"; and we are now, accordingly, brought face to face with METHODOLOGy — i.e., the way of best instructing, that so we may best train and discipline, the intelligence, or if you choose, the way of best training and disciplining that so we may best instruct. [The question of the Training and Discipline of the moral and spiritual nature is for subsequent consideration.] LECTURE XII. METHODOLOGY OF INSTRUCTION AND ITS SCIENTIFIC BASIS. It now appears that we best instruct if we pursue the method of instruction which best trains and disciplines, and that we best train and discipline if we pursue the best method of instruction. Now, the way or method of instruction is, in brief, the way or method whereby the mind builds itself up — the method, in other words, of knowing, or learning. Hence it is that to teach with perfect success, the teacher must always put himself in the position and attitude of the pupil who, being ignorant, desires to know. Lord Bacon gives the preference to the teacher who "transplants knowledge into the scholar's mind as it grew in his own!' It is beyond all question that we can say nothing rationally of the method of knowing without analysing the process whereby mind as a matter of fact grows into knowing ; that is to say, appropriates and makes use of the raw materials presented to it with a view to the building up of the fabric of knowledge. Doubtless we might collect together the results of such an analysis, as propounded by some well-known writer on philosophy, and present them as a dogmatic system, under the name of "The science of the rules of procedure in teaching." We might then apply these rules, one by one, under the head of " Applied Method," to instruction in this, that, or 77 78 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. the other subject, and show how they worked out. And this would itself be a great gain. These rules, when further extended to moral and religious instruction and training, would constitute the whole art of education — an art based on science, it is true, but not studied as a science by you, the teacher, and, therefore, dead, as mere dogma always must be. In fact, it would not be the Science of method, or the scientific study of method, but only the more or less slavish acquisition of certain dogmatic propositions governing the rules of the art of instructing and disciplining the intelligence. Imagine medical training as resting on a similar basis ! Accordingly, if we are to proceed scientifically and introduce the teacher to the science or philosophy of his art, enable him to see the principles which guarantee and inspire method, and how it is that they contribute effectu- ally, through instruction and discipline, to the supreme ethical end, we must ask him to analyse with us the process of knowing as a formal process and also as assimilation : in other words, we must ask him to study the psychology of intelligence from the point of view of the growth of intelligence. While dwelling for a time in this abstract region, we shall always keep steadily in view our practical aim. For it is not psychology as an abstract study that here concerns us, but psychology in its relations to the education of mind, that is to say, psychology in so far as it yields the Art of education as a system of principles ; or, in one word, as Methodology. There is nothing novel in all this : for Plato clearly saw that a system of education was a system for providing "proper nurture to the growing soul," and that it must be deter- mined by our conception of human nature, its needs and possibilities. I have now, accordingly, to ask you to accompany me into the abstract field of the philosophy of mind in its special reference to education. This study, apart from its professional importance, has to be accepted as part of the xii.] METHODOLOGY OF INSTRUCTION 79 academic discipline of the teacher. For I hold that the study of education is itself an education, and rightly claims a position among university disciplines ; and that, not in the interests of school-teaching alone : for the philosophy of education is, in truth, a philosophy of life, or it is null. Note. — -It will be said that all of us, whether boys or men, learn something somehow, whatever the method of teaching, and that very clever boys lesirn a great deal. If scientific method is of so much importance, how is this to be accounted for? In answer to this question I would submit the following considerations : — i. As a matter of fact, the great majority of boys learn very little, and get no mental discipline worth mentioning. 2. The proportion of those who learn anything is greater in primary schools than in secondary, and this simply because primary teachers are as a rule alive to method (such as it is). 3. All boys learn something, it is said, and some boys learn a good deal spite of bad teaching. True, and the explanation of this is that human reason is in its root a pure activity, and that it either shirks a difficulty and turns to something else, or it seeks of itself to reduce to order and method the confused lessons of the master. The abler minds accomplish this task : the great majority cannot do so, and never do so. 4. It is universally admitted that boys learn more, and get better discipline, from a good teacher than from a bad one, and that many good, and some admirable, teachers have been untrained. But if we look closely we shall find that the " good " teacher is a man who instinctively follows good methods, whether he knows it or not. The philosophy or theory of education includes the questions of end, of the educative process, of the materials of instruction and of method. Now, the earnest teacher has always in his mind some theory more or less vague ; and having end, general process, and materials clearly present to him, he instinctively, if he is as able as he is earnest, finds, ere long, a way or method of instruction which is fairly good. Also, because he is earnest in his work, he relies largely on 80 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. xii. the moral stimulus which his own earnestness owes. This is the sort of man we call a " good " teacher, and whose success we admire. The object of the study of education as a science and an art is simply to bring the end, process, and materials early into clear consciousness in the case of this naturally good teacher, and to show him, before he begins, the best way or method of doing his daily work, and so making it even more effective than it is. As regards all other teachers (the vast majority), the object is to raise them to the level of the " good " teacher — a level which they could never attain but by the help of instruction in their professional work. The study of education, in short, makes the good master better and brings the inferior master up to a fair average, and in very many cases, indeed, makes him a thoroughly good teacher, as the results of our train- ing colleges have amply proved. Then, quite apart from this practical aim, the study of education places the whole profession on a higher intellectual plane. Whatever raises the schoolmaster's conception of his task makes him a better man : whatever instructs him as to his duties, makes him a better teacher. A firm hold, moreover, of end, principles, and method gives him faith in his daily work. " We give scarce a thought to our teachers," says Lord Bacon, " and care little for what they may be ; and yet we are for ever complaining because rulers are rigid in the matter of laws and penalties, but indifferent to the right training of the young." SECOND PART. METHOD AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS. 1.— INSTRUCTION AND DISCIPLINE OF INTELLIGENCE. LECTURE I. THE ANIMAL MIND. Poet and peasant are alike in this, that they are dependent on tradition. Differ as they may in temperament and in the quality of nerve-tissue, their minds would at the beginning of their life-career be empty — that is to say, would be brought face to face with the confused elements of experience and have to begin, each for itself, the whole work which the past ages have been engaged in doing for the race — were it not for the inheritance which their parents and society pass on to them. The form and outer expression of a man's poetic possibilities are as dependent on the imagery of feeling and of thought, and on the store of language to which he succeeds, as on the materials of his present environment. The peasant, again, finds his standard of life, and a way of judging things and of using the instruments of the ever-renewed struggle with nature, ready-made for him. It is not surprising that Lord Bacon should use the word tradition to denote education. For tradition is the handing on of the intellectual and moral achievements of the past, and all are alike dependent on it, and are unable to escape the authority with which it is invested. The schoolmaster plays an important part as one of the chief vehicles of transmission. Whether aptitudes, moral and intellectual, acquired during each generation's life are also handed on, has been doubted by recent biological speculators. If acquired faculty is not handed on, the progress of humanity is less 84 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect, assured than it was thought to be ten or twenty years ago, when the doctrine of heredity was generally accepted. The power of the existing generation in influencing the future of our race is lessened ; the doctrine of the "perfectibility of the species" is gone for ever; but the teacher's responsibilities as the transmitter of the past are not thereby diminished, but rather increased. With animals there is no tradition of recorded victories ; and if the new theory be accepted, no tradition even of acquired aptitudes. They simply inherit a certain con- stitution, and they have to make the best of it in a contest with nature that is always beginning afresh. Animals have mind as we have ; but mind within certain restrictions of faculty. And if we are to under- stand the human mind, we cannot do better than try to understand and to interpret the animal mind in its highest forms, for we shall thereby ascertain in what respects we differ from animals. We, tooj are animals ; but something more. It is because we, as self-conscious subjects, are animal and something more, that we are able, by observing the lower organisms around us, to say something regarding them, and get some light on what man is and can be. If we take the human mind by itself as a formal reason- energy, without regard to other and lower stages of mind that are built into it, we are apt to commingle elements which ought to be kept distinct, and to interpret phenomena in a confused and often self-contradictory way. A. — Instinctive Feeling and Impulse. We certainly share with the higher class of animals, not only the feeling of life-activity and life-impulse generally, but specific forms of these. All our appetites, as determined by our bodily needs, the outgoing feelings and desires which enter into our scheme of moral motives — e.g. the feeling of goodwill or kindness to others, a feeling of the supremacy of certain things over us (in animals I.] THE ANIMAL MIND 85 little more than fear which suggests escape from the presence of that which is felt to be more powerful or resistance to it), and a feeling of satisfaction or complacence in the goodwill or kindness of others towards us. Let me give a simple illustration. Imagine a lion and lioness lying with their cubs at the mouth of a cavern, the lioness licking her young or giving to them of the fruit of her own body, or such fragments of the chase as she may have brought home from her last raid, while the attendant lion growls defiantly on hearing a crackling among the reeds which he associates with some hostile force — a wild elephant or boa-constrictor, and we shall have in one tableau all the primitive feelings which I have above summarised. In addition, we have the feeling of resistance to an external power as threatening the life of the family, Nay, more, we must at once see that the community of tenderness rests on a primary bond between the members of this group, and this bond is Sympathy — that is, the feeling of the feelings of others, and the further presence of a disposition to satisfy the feelings of others in so far as these betoken a need of any kind ; in which event feeling has passed into desire. This is a picture not only of the animal, but of the pre-historic man in his primitive relations; and he can no more help feeling and doing as the animal feels and does than he can help eating when he is hungry or drinking when he is thirsty. But at this point the animal is arrested ; whereas the man, his wife, and children in the stone cave have in them possibilities, which may be said to be infinite, though always restricted by racial characteristics and possibilities, as well as by external nature. Let me repeat, that in addition to the bodily appetites which have to do with self-preservation, propagation, etc., we have in the above lion-group sympathy, kindness towards others, a pleasing sensation in receiving kindness froni others, a feeling of an actual or possible higher 86 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. power, and of resistance to that power as threatening the life or happiness of the lion and his family. We can easily imagine the approach of a force so great as to overpower resistance by anticipation, and cause fear for life and a rapid retreat for safety. What now have we here as instincts ? 1. Bodily appetites concerned in the preservation of life and the continuity of the species. 2. Sympathy. 3. Goodwill to others. 4. Love of the goodwill of others. 5. Feeling of superior power and dependence on it. 6. Fear. 7. Resistance in order to repel danger to life (animal courage). If man were no more than this bundle of needs, in the form of appetitive impulses and desires and emotions which we find in the lion, he would not be man ; he would not be even the king of beasts (save in the range of his sympathy, of which more hereafter), for the lion would soon make short work of him. So much for the feelings and impulses, which we call instincts, because they are connate, and make their appearance in every fresh birth independently of education. Let us consider, next, the phenomena which we call the intelligence of the animal. We have now to go beyond mere feelings and impulses, and their inevitable manifesta- tion in certain circumstances, as, e.g., when the lion roars defiance in the circumstances we have supposed, viz. the approach of an alarming power. This necessity of going beyond mere feeling is forced upon us, if by nothing else than by this, that the feelings of which we have been speaking arise only after something else has happened in the economy of the lion-mind. That something else is seeing, hearing, and tactile- sensation. Make your lion deaf, and blind, and insensible to touch, and nothing happens as we have described it. I.] THE ANIMAL MIND 87 B. — Intelligence as Feeling, Sensation, and Reflex Action {The Attuitional Stage). Certain impressions are made on what we call the lion's " consciousness " because he as an individual, becomes conscious, or aware, of them, through his eyes, his ears, and his skin. He "feels" these impressions in his conscious living subject — the impression of a crackling in the reeds, of the sudden appearance of a wild elephant or boa-constrictor, and of the personal contact of his lioness and her whelps. These impressions are impres- sions of sound, touch, size, shape, motion, colour (in this rudimentary sense at least, that the colour of the elephant is different from the impression made by the surrounding atmosphere and by the forest). The ear and the tactual sensibility furnish materials or facts to the lion's consciousness, but not to the same extent or with the same delicacy or variety as the eyes do ; for these are the chief channels of communication with the outer world. We shall, therefore, drop here all reference (except as it may arise incidentally) to any channel of sense-impression save the eyes. This we do in view of the task before us, and because what is true of the eyes is true, mutatis mutandis, of other organs of communication between the mind or consciousness of the lion and the external world in which he lives, and with which he has the hard work of correlating himself, in the interests of himself and his family, so as to secure a pleasing or instinct-satisfied existence. First Stage. — Sensibility and Externality. — I would at this point emphasise the phenomenon of Feeling in presence of a presentation as the most universal and primary experience of animal being. It is the starting- point of all manifestations of consciousness, and lies at the root of all that animal and man are and can be. 88 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. Feeling cannot in any strict logical sense be defined ; but it can be marked off from other experiences, and in contrast with them. It is a vague and indefinite awareness of a movement within the subject effected by a stimulus within, or from without, the physical organism. Without feeling there could be no beginning of conscious life, and in the highest expressions of even self-conscious reason it is the ultimate guarantee that there is anything present at all. In the most abstract mathematical process a man in the energy of pursuit is not self-conscious of that process, and cannot be so until he makes that process an object to himself; but, all the while, he is supported by the vague and indefinite feeling of conscious activity — a feeling and nothing more. When an animal or an infant-man (passing over the preliminary experiences of life) opens his eyes, his nerve system, and through this his consciousness, becomes aware, through the external stimulus which we may call an "impression," of an universal extensity in which nothing is defined : all is confused and chaotic. Subject and object are, though not identical in fact, yet identical in feeling. There is no separation of feeling-subject from felt-object, still less is there separation of one object from another. We know that there must be a reaction going on in the nerve-cells, but it is not sufficiently energetic to reflect the stimulus as something not the subject feeling, By dint of continuous and oft-repeated impact the reaction becomes gradually more energetic, and the external stimulus B is soon placed outside as not the the feeling-consciousness A. Generally it will be found that in its earliest manifesta- tions this feeling of a not-A is restricted to a single point, and does not embrace the totality of the stimulating or "impressing" B. For example, a snail, instinctively putting out its organ of sensation, touches a rough stone and turns aside, or a leaf and takes possession of it; it does not feel the stone or leaf in their respective totalities I.] THE ANIMAL MIND 89 as stone or leaf, but feels only a certain repulsion or attraction limited to a single point. So, in the vegetable unconscious world we have an anticipation of this conscious action ; as in the fly-catcher. There is more than vague feeling so far as the snail is concerned ; there is a definite feeling of a " single " which is not-A ; and I would call this punctual consciousness " sensation " in its lowest form, and assign to it the name Sensibility. It would require a patient, critical, and sympathetic observation of the infant and animal mind to say at what point a stimulating object is more than this unit of sensa- tion ^ which I have called sensibility. To determine the passage of one stage of consciousness from a lower to a higher is probably impossible, because all things in nature and mind progress by infinitely small steps. None the less is the step taken, as we see from the result. At what fraction of a moment the hour hand on a dial-plate points to twelve, I cannot tell, but at one moment it had not arrived, and at another it had passed it. Totals and the Diverse — Sensation. — The next stage of consciousness of a definite kind worthy of notice here, is the feeling of total objects as totals. But it is manifestly impossible to feel a total save in so far as other totals emerge from the chaotic confusion of the extended manifold and are felt as there, and yet as not the particular total B, which for the moment specifically touches, attracts, and occupies consciousness. The feeling of a total as not-A (A being the subject) but B, is the feeling of B as an object. There is here a distinctly emergent duality, and we have Sensation in full operation. This sensation involves a feeling of diversity (of diverse many totals), and the particular object specifi- cally felt is that object (B) which at the moment most vividly engages the conscious subject ; and B will remain ' It is only relatively to more complex experiences that we talk of " units of sensation." 90 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. as the object in the field of sensation until exhaustion takes place, or until C or D or E has pushed it out and occupied the field of consciousness for itself in turn. How long the object B may hold the conscious subject in its grip, depends on the extent to which it interests the particular consciousness in whose presence it is.^ The point of special significance here is that " sensation " is still " feel- ing " in a higher form of reflex activity, that it is the object which holds the subject, and that it is successive objects which move the subject hither and thither. The Subject is subject (in the popular meaning of the word) to the Object. We may now, but only now, talk of Sensation as a pheno- menon of consciousness, and we may call that which is sensed the " sensate." ^ The sensed total " there-being " (B) is sensed as a total. This is the sensate. Future experience tells us much more about it. We afterwards find that this total is a confused chaos of particulars, which we call its qualities and relations. But in the meantime we have to be content with the total as a total. This, however (as I have already indicated), is not all ; for the animal and the infant man feel also at the same time the diversity of objects outside, and also, in a vague, indefinite way, their localised relations in Space and their successive relations in Time. I sa.y feel, simply to indicate that the consciousness of all the other objects which crowd around B is so incipient in its character as scarcely to deserve the name of sensing or sensation — though it truly belongs to this category. Note. — To say that an animal " perceives " an external object in respect of its size, shape, colour, or relations to 1 What "interest" is at this stage is difficult to say, save the satisfaction of a need. ^ Some psychologists tell us that the total object so impressing sense contains or brings with it all the categories. All I would insist on here is, that the sensing of the object involves externality, viz., B there as extended, and the feeling of being in B, or of B as being. I.J THE ANIMAL MIND 91 other objects in space or in time, is to use a term which, in my opinion, is equivalent to knowing ; and knowing is the distinctive attribute of the man-animal alone, as we shall see in the sequel. True, this mere feeling of external objects, as objects and as external, is of every possible degree, and rises to a point of fineness and activity which approaches the borders of percipience ; but it never crosses into percipience except in a human being. The sensing of external impressions is usually regarded as the basis of such intelligence, intellect, or understanding as each living animal organism may possess. Intelligence in its animal form is simply the reception and arranging of sensates with more or less of reflex co-ordination in consciousness, irrespectively of the feelings or emotions which they excite. The animal feels the diverse and the many, but does not know them or that they are diverse and many. Keeping to intelligence, we find that the animal con- sciousness receives the totalities of objects without distinguishing the parts of these totalities and correlating these parts with the total as inherent in that total. This, I think, is an important point in the natural history of consciousness. It may be said, how can an animal see or " sense " the whole of a thing except through the parts ? The answer simply is, that the parts in their totality as a one extended object — e.g. a stone — make an impression of a certain kind different from that which another object in its totality makes — e.g. a tree. Recognition. — How, then, can an animal possibly, when it sees a stone for the second or third time, sense that object as the same object as it has formerly sensed, if of the numerous qualities of that object it did not sense a single one, but only a whole in which the single " ones " of quality were all interfused ? The answer is to be got from your own experience. You see a man's face as he quickly passes you in the street, and if asked five minutes after- wards, you do not even remember that you saw it ; but to-morrow the face you saw yesterday meets you again. 92 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. and you are at once aware that you saw that same face on a previous occasion, although there was no one part of the face — nose, mouth, eyebrows, eyes, chin — which you could have described even approximately the moment before you saw it the second time and became then aware that you had seen it before — in short, recognised it.^ So, with your eye placed at the hole in the tube, you turn a kaleido- scope and see a certain arrangement of colours and forms in a pattern. You go on turning, and you see the same pattern return within the area of your vision, and you say, " I saw that before." If I ask you which particular thing or things, character or characters, in the coloured pattern are the same as that which you saw before, you probably cannot tell me one ; but you are none the less certain that it is the same pattern or a similar one; that is to say, the totality, or the aggregate of impression, is quite similar to a preceding totality, and different, consequently, from all the other totalities of pattern which have been under your eye during the interval that elapsed between your first seeing B and then seeing the same B return within the area of your vision. Now, an animal can do this. A dog does not con- found the second bone of his experience with a stone. He feels the siniilarity with the first bone, although none of the specific qualities that go to constitute a bone in sense are sensed by him. No doubt he associates with bone No. 2 a lively sense of satisfaction arising out of his pleasing relations of yesterday with bone No. i ; but when I hold out bone No. 2 to him, his recognition of it as a bone is due to the totality of the impression being similar to the totality which constituted bone No. i. Comparison. — There are diverse objects, I have said, within the field of vision besides the object recoghised. > It is difficult to avoid this word "recognised," though it is a bad one, inasmuch as its etymology points to a prior cognition, whereas there has been as yet no cognition at all, but only sensation, " Recon- sensing " would be a better word. I.] THE ANIMAL MIND 93 Consequently, the dog in recognising A has, in the vague way of feeling, y^// it to be not B or C, etc. ; and so may be said to have compared the impression A with these other impressions. This is the comparison of and in sense alone. Time and Space. — The animal is aware of the diverse objects presented to it as in space and time. Memory. — The recognition of A would be impossible had not the impression of A been retained and restored. I selected the above illustration of the bone because it directs us to the next point which I wish to note, which is this : — Salient Qualities and Impressions. — While all the qualities which constitute for the dog the " bone " to sense are intermixed in a confused total, there probably stands out in relief, after some repetition at least, one quality which gives rise to a particularly lively sensation, viz. the smell, as this is dimly associated with the " sweet edible- ness" of the bone. This experience of yesterday with bone No. i stands out prominently as constituting the thing bone more than anything else does, all the other qualities gathering round this in a confused aggregate of sensation. There has been an unpurposed selection of what suits the dog-organism. Plants and animals alike are always instinctively selecting what suits them. The chief, the prominent, the salient quality of the bone is really the bone to the dog, all else being subordinate to the extent of being sub-sensational; by which I mean within Feeling, or lying on the border line of mere Feeling and Sensation-proper. So with other objects. With most objects it is simply the totality B, as not C or D, which has impressed the dog and has clearly crossed the threshold of consciousness, and he senses the totality a second time with a conscious- ness oi general sameness or similarity (as the case may be). But with many objects the case is different : there is, e.g., the bone in respect to which one salient quality (" smell or sweet edibleness ") impresses him most deeply ; again, 94 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. there is water ; again, the specific smell of some other object ; again the particular whistle which, when he hears it, calls up into his consciousness the totality in sense which constitutes his master. Association. — Thus we see that the animal associates one experience with another in a series, so that the one when it recurs, suggests the other. Imitation and Rivalry. — Again you will notice that if a dog runs at an object, taking it for a bone, other dogs will also run and try to be at the object first, although these dogs, or some of them, may have already seen the object and yet had not themselves "sensed" that it was a bone. There is here Imitation. We saw that there was sympathy in the region of the natural feelings; we now, in this incident, see sympathy in the sphere of Intelligence. And this new phenomenon further reveals a feeling in animals not yet adverted to — the feeling or emotion of rivalry — the desire to outstrip each other. Imagination. — One point more : the image of what has frequently been present to -a dog rises up before his consciousness when it is no longer present. There is evidence enough of this when he is awake ; much more when he is asleep and dreams that he is hunting or worrying. A dog, then, has Imagination, in its primary sense. I have led you through the above analysis of pheno- mena familiar to all, in order to establish the following facts regarding the sensational intelligence of an animal of the higher order, viz. : — Passing over the first stage of mere sens.ibility, we say that — I.. The animal senses a totality without being conscious or aware of the separate qualities which together go to the making of that totality, be it a stone, or a bone, or water, or anything else. I.] THE ANIMAL MIND 95 2. The animal may have (probably always after a time has) one quality of that totality so deeply impressed on its sensory because of its prominence, or salience (i.e. some specific relation which that quality bears to its own organic pleasures or pains), that the total object is to it this particular quality //«j a vague and wholly unanalysed agglomeration of qualities which together make a "total single " of impression on his sensorium. 3. The animal instinctively selects the salient quality or qualities of a thing, while all the rest of the object lies in the confusion and mist of the original aggregate in presentation. 4. The animal senses the likeness and unlikeness of these totals or objects, i.e. it compares ; but its comparison is the comparison of sense or sensation, and is accomplished on it by the diversity of objects, not by it ; the activity of the subject and cerebrum being merely dynamical and reflex. 5. The animal is aware of objects as in space and time. 6. The animal remembers : when he sees A for the second or third time he feels the resemblance to the A of the first time ; and, further, the association of A with B tends to call up B out of the storehouse of recorded impressions when A presents itself. 7. The animal associates one experience with another ; e.g., when a dog sees the cook open the kitchen-door, he has a sensational image of bones, or when he hears a whistling, it calls up the sensational image of his master. The animal, then, has association of sensations.^ 8. The animal has imagination : for it not only retains sensates, but these are suggested to his consciousness when the actual object is not present, but merely suggested ' I shall affirm, without further analysis, that the rule or law of this association is fundamentally this, that things felt together (in space or time), or as immediately sequent, tend to arise again together in the consciousness. 96 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. by association. So also when he dreams, the image of a sensate is clearly before him : the dog hunts in his dreams. 9. Two dogs seeing a bone at the same moment, or one seeing it and the other instantaneously interpreting his excitement, run for it. Animals, then, have sympathy of sensational intelligence, which leads to Imitation. 10. Animals in presence of an object of common desire have a feeling of rivalry — a feeling of competition one with the other, which we may call an emotion, as it is distinct from the mere animal desire for the object they pursue. But all these characteristics of intelligence are in sensation alone. The conscious subject is moved hither and thither by the wind of the moment. In short, an animal's intelligence is a reflex intelligence and nothing more. He receives, and, under the stimulus of impression or recipience alone (outer or inner), he reacts. I am aware that the term reflex is generally applied only to unconscious response to stimulus in vegetable and animal. I think, however, we need it to mark also a state of conscious response to stimulus. Animals are conscious automata. Note. — The impressions of single " totals " made on consciousness, whether from within or without, are, as we have seen, registered for future use. This means that they involve some molecular change in the nerve-cells. Consequently, the involuntary or accidental repetition of the process in the cells (however started) will replace the image of the absent object before consciousness. Also, any particular stimulus of the nerve-cells may set a-going a movement in another set of cells in a purely dynamical way, and without any consciousness intervening. This relation of cerebrations, as such, may be heldj and yet we may also hold that the particular " consciousness " set up by stimulus No. I sets up a "consciousness" No. 2, which involves the corresponding nerve change as its consequent. I.] THE ANIMAL MIND 97 Recapitulation and Summing up of Animal Mind which is also the attuitional stage of Man-Mind. By analysing a complex case (the lion-family) we have been enabled to collect together the various inner feeling's in animals ; meaning by feelings those states of the individual which stimulate to activity of some sort, aiTd are complete only in activity. These arose either primarily from within, as, for example the appetites, owing to those necessary workings of the animal economy which we call instinctive or connate (and which we have simply to accept as given potencies within the organism waiting to evolve themselves) ; or they were stimulated into existence from without after a nerve-transmission of impressions through the consciousness-capacity of the animal (which we call its intelligence) — the channel of communication with the outer world. We have now also gathered together the characters of this animal consciousness in its intelligent relation to the external. The quantity and quality of an animal's relations to the external world (which external world is to it, as to us, a various and complex chaos of coexistent and sequent series) depend on the constitution and range of the animal organism. Some animals may touch the world only at one point at a time, as the sea-anemone and the snail seem to do. Its sensations in these cases are units, and very uninstructive to us, though sufficient for the preservation of the animal's own existence. But, as we rise in the scale of animal life, we find a more complex constitution bringing the conscious animal-being into wider relations with the complexity of its surroundings ; and, above all, enabling it to receive and deal with a sense-totality, a single object as distinguished from other objects, and to have {simply, however, as sensation) Com- parison, Association, Memory, etc, G 98 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. To formulate and tabulate : — Animal Mind or Consciousness. I. As regards Intelligence, we have in animals : — 1. Sensation of objects, as wholes. 2. Comparison of the diverse as sensations (likeness , and unlikeness). 3. Sensation of relations of objects in time and space. 4. Association of sensations. 5. Memory. 6. Sympathy of intelligence, and consequent Imitation. 7. Imagination. II. As regards inner Feeling, we have in animals : — 1. The feeling of life-activity. 2. The natural appetites working from within. 3. Sympathy of being, and of natural feelings. 4. The feeling of kindness to others. 5. The feeling of pleasure in kindness received from others. 6. The feeling of a superior power in presence of anything that may hurt. 7. The feeling of resistance (animal courage). 8. The feeling of fear or of evasion of anything that may hurt (animal cowardice). 9; The feeling of rivalry. All these insist on manifesting themselves as occasion arises. We have now before us the mental constitution of the higher animals ; but I should not have thought it necessary to dwell on this so long had it not been that we have here also our own human constitution in so far as we are animals. Further, we have before us our own nature and limitations up to the age of twelve months, less or more. I.] THE ANIMAL MIND 99 The animal is a victim of its own sensations and feelings and associations. It is driven hither and thither by them. It is, both as a creature of inner feeling and outer feeling, merely a bundle of stimuli and reactions or reflex activities. It does not get beyond the reflex action of the cerebrum and of the conscious subject, although the constant repetition on its sensorium of external facts, calling for a constant repetition of responses, enables the more finely organised animals to do things, by virtue of memory and association, that approximate very closely to the actions of a rational being ; especially when they are in constant contact with rational beings and imitate them. Now, the stage of Mind reached by the highest animals, whereby they are able to sense a total object, I call the ATTUITIONAL stage. It is the highest form of sensation (the lowest form of which is merely sensibility to a unit of impression), inasmuch as it is sensation of an aggregate of qualities (impressions) constituting in their aggregate a single object, and sensed by the animal as an externally existent whole. There is, in truth, a sensational reflex synthesis ; for which the proper name is Synopsis. Note. — I would say, finally, that I am endeavouring to give a synthetic view of man in his inner life and purposes as a man. I am unable to decompose him into atoms, and I would not do so if I could. At the same time the synthetic view demands a certain prior discrimination and analysis ; and this I am attempting. LECTURE II. THE MAN-MIND. I. — WILL: PERCIPIENCE. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. When we speak of educating a man, the question, after all has been said, comes to this : How shall we make a man of him ? and, in the case of a girl. How shall we make a woman of her ? We do not propose to make a woman of a boy, nor yet to make a man of a girl. They are different from the beginning, and they are to be as different in the end as they are in the beginning ; neither more nor less. But boy and girl share something in common, and that something is neither the male nor the female element, but the human. Thus far, the aim of education is the same for both ; and when we use the phrase, " the education of a man," we use the word man in a generic sense as signifying humanity. The "worthier" gender stands for both male and female. Now, if I desire to " make a man " of a boy, I do not wish to train him up to be like this man or that man ; but to be a true man. My standard of man is not Jones or Brown or Robinson, but the ideal of man. It is something universal, not particular. And this ideal of man must con- tain the " essence " or " idea " of man — that whereby he is not anything else, but only himself; not a wolf, not a pig, nor a bear, but a man. Herein, and nowhere else, we shall find the governing principle of all education — the central and vital truth of all theory. Clearly, then, if I am to educate a boy, I must have in LECT. 11.] THE MAN-MIND : WILL, ETC. 101 my thought the ideal or complete Notion (to call it so for philosophical consistency) of a man ; not of Jones or Brown or Robinson, as I have said, who are poor specimens enough, but of man universal — of man as not anything else but himself In building up the complete notion of " Man," I have already taken the first step — an important one, too ; for I have begun at the foundations of the fabric, and shown you what man is in so far as he is animal. Even as animal, man is richly endowed by nature, of which he is still a part and with which he lives in the constant interchange of give and take. Simply as an animal, man is the most capable of all animals in the sphere of feeling and sensation. No doubt an animal of one kind develops for his specific needs a keener sense of sight, and an animal of another kind a keener sense of smell, another is fleeter, and so on ; but, take him all round, man is a finer, subtler, more enduring, and altogether more admirable product than any animal you can name — in brief, he is the "paragon of animals." If we stopped short at this point, then, we should have to consider what steps had to be taken to educate him to be a perfect animal of his kind. And, in truth, the earlier races thought of little else, for obvious and suflScient reasons ; and, even in these days, you hear such expres- sions as this coming with a peculiar gusto from those who have not, probably, in their heart of hearts got very much beyond the stage of barbarism, certainly not beyond the Platonic stage of the " spirited," viz., " The English public- schoolboy is a fine animal." To pass from this, however, we must admit that if man were only the finest of animals, our duty as educators would be to have in our heads a standard or type, and to educate him up to that. We should not think of educating a cat into anything but the perfection of its own kind, any more than we should think of educating a rose into a vine or an elm, but simply into being the best possible rose. 102 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. You see the labour and ingenuity spent on an ox or a horse to make them the best of their own kind. In short, we educate a horse or an ox or a rose up to the perfection of itself; that is to say, up to the ideal of an ox or a horse or a rose, which ideal we have present to our consciousness in imagination. All animals and plants have much in common : and if we confine ourselves to animals we see that they have the greater part of their nature in common. But each has something whereby it is itself A horse and an ox have a great deal in common : indeed everything, except that which finally differentiates the one from the other, and makes the ox an ox and not a horse, and the horse a horse, and not an ox. This differentiating "somewhat," which is a secret, but which we infer from outer manifestations in appearance and in function, we call the " idea " of the ox or horse ; and if we are to educate either of these animals truly, we must, while paying due regard to all other facts and conditions of their existence, specially direct our atten- tion to the " idea." To this we must educate them, so that they may be the best of their specific kind respectively. The total conception I have of an animal is to be called its NOTION : the differentiating character or characters are the " idea " within the notion. It is manifest that if there were no governing formative energy in a complex thing, there could be no unity and no organism. Now man is not only the paragon of animals, he is something more and different.'^ If I am to educate him aright, then I must, while paying due attention to all other conditions of his existence — to the total concept of him, the Notion — educate him up to that " something " which differ- entiates him, and lifts him above and distinguishes him ' By " rational psychology " I mean an analytic account of man- mind which takes account of reason as the central and governing fact without which we are landed in hopeless confusion even in the interpretation of purely sensational phenomena, I am not prepared to discuss the precise limits of psychology strictly so-called. 11.] THE MAN-MIND: WILL, ETC. 103 from other animals, if there be any such characteristic. And as this differentiation is a differentiation which .lifts him above animals, it must govern all I do in educating him as a whole, because it is placed there by his Creator to govern all else that goes to constitute him, inasmuch as it constitutes him what he really and truly is. The " idea " in a thing always governs, always must govern and control the parts of an organic whole which is in healthy activity ; otherwise the thing would not be itself— would not be an organism at all, as I have said above. And in the case of man it is the " idea " which differentiates him as a man, and no longer a mere animal, organism. Now, what is that " idea " in the notion man ? Here we have him an attuitional animal of a very fine sort placed in numberless relations to nature and to other animals like and unlike himself, and instinct with all those feelings, and connate impulses, and sensations, and connate capacities, which I have already enumerated. But all these feelings and sensations are on an equal level— in so far as he is an animal. He gratifies first one then another as the fit seizes him or necessity demands, just as an animal does. He is a bundle of particulars ; he is without order in himself; he is an anarchy or chaos. Beasts, however, have instincts to this or that, or away from this or that, so strong that they manage fairly well to adapt themselves to their environment, and live and act in a satisfactory, though beastly, way. The mutual interplay of these instincts thus results in an ordered system, so far as it goes. But man, alas ! has no such certainty of instinct to guide him, but has instead an endowment which specificailly characterises him — " whence all our woe ! " This endowment confounds the natural operation of such instinct as he has. The specific endowment which makes man different from other animals, lifts him above all animals, and 104 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lkct. consequently, above his own animal nature, is essentially and primarily WiLL. If I had asked you for the diiferenti- ating characteristic which constituted the " idea " of man, you would doubtless have at once said Reason ; and you would have been right. But for the sake of simplicity itself, I beg you to go deeper down and see in Will the root, possibility, and essence of this very endowment which in its fulness that is to say, as including the/orw in which it moves to its end, viz. knowing and willing, is called Reason. When some speak of Reason as being the specific endowment of man, they would almost seem to think that a piece of- clockwork had been put inside him, on the top of his animal mind, to regulate that mind ; and then, when you come to the moral sphere — the sphere of conduct, and encounter Will as determining conduct, they quite consistently, but erroneously, speak of Will as if it were a bare force subsisting on its own account, and work- ing in more, or (generally) less, harmony with the clock- work Reason, side by side with which it stands like a sentinel at an " out " barracks' gate. Now, if you desire simplicity — the simplicity of truth — try to get rid of these inadequate conceptions of Reason and Will. If you do, you will attain to a fundamental point of view which will give unity to your whole concep- tion of man as a being to be educated, whether you regard his intellectual or his moral relations. Imagine yourself to be a conscious subject such as an animal is, looking out on the world, receiving impressions from it, and having sensation of them and of the various objects by which you are surrounded and to which you are intimately related. You receive these in sensation simply as they present themselves, and you " sense " and do this or that according as the objects impress you and stimulate to reaction. You appropriate and transform this element in your environment to build up your own II.] THE MAN-MIND: WILL, ETC. 105 organism, and you reject that. Voila tout. This is the attuitional condition. It is summed up in the words " reflex consciousness." Or, throw yourself into a rudimentary state of mind, and feel the dreaminess and confusedness of it — the condition in which you are when the brain, exhausted by illness, takes slight note of things, or when, recovering from a faint, the outer has more power over your mind than any inner energy you can bring to bear on it, when the vital centres fail to react and you cannot distinguish object from subject, and all is dreamily subjective. This would seem to be the condition of a babe in arms. Better still, perhaps, imagine yourself coming from another and wholly different planet, suddenly planted on a clear night on Edinburgh Castle with the stars above you, the brilliantly lighted town spread out beneath you, girded by a moonlit sea and backed by a misty suggestion of the distant northern hills. You have not had time to recover yourself, your consciousness is overpowered, you are aware of a multiplicity and diversity of objects and qualities ; but that is all. Sensation in an elementary chaotic form barely one step beyond Feeling (in which subject and object are inseparable) occupies the field. This gives place quickly to a vivid sensation of this or that particular object, accompanied by sub-sensations (or feelings) of all else. Soon you rouse yourself out of this sensational or attuitional condition, and bring the energy lying within your consciousness to bear on all these sensations. You move out of yourself to seize them one by one, separate one from another, discriminate them as separate totals, and reduce them all to some kind of order — though it be only an order of locality and time. Now, this movement, from within your conscious subject outwards, to seize each separate thing by itself and for itself, is to be called Will. If any weak brother calling himself a " scientist,'' has a superstitious dread of 106 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. the word Will, let him call it Functional Spontaneity, bearing in mind merely that it is more than the spontaneity of a vital impulse or the instinct of desire or aversion. This state of consciousness is no longer the mere reflex action of animal consciousness stimulated by external impressions ; it is that, but it is something more. It is the free out-going of your conscious subject to take possession of these various and varied objects, and make them your own by distinguishing one from the other, and placing them back in your conscious subject as your own, i.e. reducing them to the conscious subject. Along with this act there arises the impulse of naming. This is true doctrine unless you accept the only alternative, viz., that the mind of man is to be explained as a bundle of impressions and reflex actions determined, always and at all times, by something not himself, a[nd that what you imagine to be the purest and loftiest act of Will is merely (as some would call it) the resultant of a "complex of sensations " with which you, as a personality, have nothing to do, but which you merely look at as they perform their acrobatic involutions and evolutions, dragging what you call "yourself" at their heels. It is at this point, and at no other, that the battle of Free Will as a moral question must be fought, and either gained or lost. If Will be not root of pure reason, it is an illusion to imagine it free when directed to moral ends. Now this movement of will, prehending and bringing back, or reducing, to your conscious subject an object which is already in the subject as a sensation (or thing sensed, a sensate), is Perceiving or Elementary Knowing. To " perceive " is then a self-active process whereby a mind seizes what is presented to it and makes it a substantive part of its own entity, and so gradually builds up the fabric of mind as a reality and no longer a mere potentiality.^ ' When we say we know a thing we merely say that we have appropriated it, i.e. made it constituent element in our own identity as a substantial reality. II.] THE MAN-MIND: WILL, ETC. 107 The very word perception— /^r and capio, to take — points to the nature of the act as an act : so does appre- hension — ad-prehendere, to seize to yourself. Through the evolution of this Will in your conscious subject you have emerged out of and beyond animal sensation in its highest form (Attuition), and are now a percipient being, a knowing being, a man-being, a self-determined being, and no longer a mere victim of the dynamical interplay of feelings and sensations. Perception or percipience, then, is the separating from all other objects an object already in sense or feeling (for we perceive inner states), seizing it, and placing it in your own conscious subject as then and thus known, and, in the crisis of being known, affirmed. In the act of affirmation the thing affirmed urgently demands a name. Perception is always of the singular, as the schoolmen said, and is not to be confounded with the issue of the second step or moment of reason — Conception. To ascertain what it is that you first perceive, you must go back to the record of attuitional consciousness, and you will find that you first perceive single totals as totals — total objects, diverse one from the other, e.g. the guns, walls, trees, streets, lights, houses, sky, sea, hills, as you open your eyes on the Edinburgh ramparts. Now, suppose you fall asleep, outworn and overwhelmed by the multitude of objects that oppress you, and awake refreshed, you re-perceive these " totals " and " recognise " them — the guns, the walls, the buildings, and so forth. Remember that merely as an animal you are already endowed with memory, association, a sense of likeness and unlikeness, and so forth : I pass all this as known to you from our previous analysis. Now, if you were asked to specify by what qualities you " recognise " this to be a cannon, that to be a cannon ball, and that a wall, you could not name one. You would simply be able to say, " the total impression made on my sense was that which you call here a cannon, there a ball, 108 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. and there again a wall." You have discriminated and fixed each total. Perception is always of the single (either a single unit or a single total). This distinct differentia- tion of an object is the reduction of the object to conscious- ness, in which act j^^-consciousness is involved, though it does not yet quite emerge. Of this differentiation and reduction, affirmation, viz. ,"that thing is" — is the issue ; and if we go on thinking for ever, our last question will still be our first question, viz. what is the object?^ Along with the affirmation that A is, we have, I have said, an impulse to name A. Without a word to fix the determination of the thing, and externalise our conscious- ness of it, we should probably have to go through a fresh process every time we saw the same object ; and progress would be impossible. The articulated sound fixes and symbolises an accomplished process, which, though it be in a sense repeated every time we subsequently perceive the object, is yet repeated with ease and rapidity by the help of the familiar symbolic utterance.^ [There seems to be a general law in the universe that impression completes itself in expression, and that the former is incomplete without the actuality of the latter.] Conscious subject, as now freely willing, moves about prehending all that comes within the range of the tentacles of sense. Further, the conscious subject, thus spontan- eously moving or willing, has, within this movement (Will), an end towards which it moves, and that end, at first unself-conscious and terminating only in a percept, is ' The " to ti esti" is the first question, and it is the last question. 2 According to this theory, a deaf-mute, before he attains to the use of manual signs, affirms when he perceives. The affirmation is arrested by the inability to articulate ; but there is an accentuation of the affirmation, not only in consciousness, but also physiologically, by an inner movement or outer gesture. The percept is thus in some material way fixed, but always inadequately. ii.J THE MAN-MIND : WILL, ETC. 109 (after a slight experience) knowledge itself as such (a universal). Of this again. The bringing of the sensate a second time into con- sciousness as a discriminated and affirmed object, is called reducing it to the unity of consciousness — to that basis which remains a permanent " one " ^ in the midst of end- less receptivities and activities. Perception, then, may be defined as the seizing of an object {already in sense) as a total and a single and reducing it, as itself and nothing else, to the conscious subject, ^ and this for tlie sake of thus prehending, or knowing, it. We have now evidently passed from passive-activity to active-activity. We have got pure Will as the differentia or idea of man as distinguished from other animals. Let us keep fast hold of it as the clue which can alone guide us through the labyrinth of mental evolution, and, by reducing all to unity, give simplicity of view. The "idea" in a thing, remember, governs, by inherent right, all the elements in that thing. It is supreme in all its relations to the thing, and all the relations of that thing to other things. We have now passed from N ature (with its impressions and reflex activities) to SPIRIT and Freedom. Note now : i. The definition of Percipience ; 2. That percipience is of singles ; 3. That it is an act of discrimination whereby one is separated from all else — all else being meanwhile in attuent sensation alone; 4. That percipience as above defined is of inner sensates as well as of outer sensates ; 5. That the knowledge of all we can finally know begins with percipience ; 6. That this percipience is the first moment of Reason in taking the ^ K formal one it may be, but not on that account less real, but rather more real. 2 There is here manifestly a process which is a dialectic process ; but for this I refer to my book entitled Met. N. et V., merely saying here that this first and elemental process of percipience is the process of Reason generally, or, as we say, its Form, Essence, or Idea. no INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. universal complex we call experience (and, subsequently, each individual complex) to pieces with a view to building up these elementary percepts into a known unity, and so superseding the sensed whole — the mere attuit ; 7. That after the first act of percipience is performed, the total sensate or attuit is converted into a percept ; 8. That an attuit involves consciousness ; a percept, self-consciousness ; 9. That the mere separation of sensates (singles or aggregate wholes) as diverse in attuition, is a separation effected by reflex action in response to an impression or stimulus ; while the discrimination effected in percipience is through an act of Will, and involves affirmation and speech. The animal senses difference, the man affirms the fact of difference and seeks to find and affirm it. Above all, note that the movement in percipience is a free movement of Will — a differentiating, pure, subject-generated act which lifts man out of the animal, and is thus, as idea of man, the key to all intellectual operations {e.g. Concept, General Concept, etc.), the governing principle in Ethics, the guide in the maze of Political Philosophy, finally, the master-conception in the education of a human being.' The educational deduction is this : — The education of mind as reason is the TRAINING AND DISCIPLINE OF WiLL AS A power ; AND secondly, THE TRAINING AND DISCIPLINE OF THE Will-movement as a process whereby the con- scious SUBJECT TAKES THE WORLD TO ITSELF AS KNOWLEDGE. This Will-energy and Will-process can be disciplined by directing itself to fighting, to hunting or carpentering, but the result would be a man whose judgment was of value in ' Not only so ; but in an analysis of the percipient process which lies outside our purpose here, and of the nature of the act as a differentiating, negating, and determining act, lies, in my opinion, the true critique of knowing, and the explanation, though not perhaps always the solution, of many metaphysical questions. II.] THE MAN-MIND: WILL, ETC. Ill these departments of human activity alone. The highest energy, and therefore the highest discipline of the Will- energy and process, is when it is directed to the complex and abstract of thought. But as we live in a real natural world we have first of all to select those materials for education which concern man's immediate needs and duties, while always using these subjects in such a way as to train and discipline the Will-Power and the Will-Process. Note. — I have pointed out that what I first perceive as a one thing is that which is already a sensate. To ascertain, then, what it is I perceive, I must understand what the sensate yields to pre-percipient sense. It yields — («) The consciousness or sensation of a complex extended total ; (b) The consciousness of that total as being; {c) The consciousness of that complex total as localised out there ; (d) A consciousness of the spatial and time relation of that total to other diverse totals. None the less is percipience the percipience of a one total sensate. The sensate itself is a complex, but it is as a fused complex that it is first perceived. LECTURE III. MAN-MIND — continued. 2. — CONCIPIENCE AND THE SENSE-CONCEPT OF THE INDIVIDUAL. The first series of moments in the constitution of the object for knowledge completes itself in the completion of Sensation which we have called Attuition. The next movement is Reason ; but reason also is a series of moments. Percipience, of which we have been speaking, is first : and now reason moves into its second moment, and the percept of the determined total becomes, bit by bit, a perception of the elements in that complex total. When the subject discriminates any separate element in the single total before it (the attuit or sensate), it synthesises that element with the attuit of the total as a one with it. This is the point of transition from Percipience to Con- cipience. The attuited object, we have seen, may have some quality so prominent as to impress sense more vividly than the other elements in it (e.g. to a dog, the smell of the object) ; still, this quality is, as yet, simply a sensation. But if, in ^e percipience of the total, I rapidly distinguish in it a specific character or quality, the percept of the total is then affirmed along with its most prominent mark thus distinguished. And this means that the Percept of the total attuit has suddenly become a Concept of the total attuit. 112 LECT. III.] CONCIPIENCE AND THE SENSE-CONCEPT 113 Why a Concept? Why not still call it a Percept? Because percipience of the singular or individual must precede the consciousness of an object as made up of many singulars. The holding together, as a unity, of differentiated elements in any total object, is Conceiving in its strict signification. The etymology of the term gives its meaning. We have the whole world present to consciousness as a sensational attuit and as innumerable individual attuits. Each object comes to us as a complex and laden with all the categories ; many of which are blazoned on it and simply received by me, such as extensity, quantity, quality, relation ; others are implicit, and await the emergence, in consciousness, of the activity to see and seize them, which activity is a pure activity, viz. Will. It is only then that I make the first step in true knowing ; for I reduce this, that, and the other sensate or attuit to self-consciousness as discriminated, perceived, affirmed. But the pure activity of Will, just because it is pure activity, insists on prosecuting its work of reduction to consciousness, with a view to the ascertainment of the elements, relations, and implications of the thing before me, in order that it may ultimately convert the, as yet, complex chaotic sense-thing into a rational unity — the synopsis into a synthesis. Finally, it strives, under the same imperative stimulus, to convert the whole world presentation into a rational unity or cosmos. In the last word of the Rational alone can Reason ultimately rest. Will, and the process whereby it reduces and harmonises sensation, has its own right to live, as much as a rose or a bird has. It perseveres in its own existence for the fulfilment of its own life. It has a long and difficult task before it ; for it has not only rationally to know things, but to actualise its knowledge in personal conduct in the face of an infinite number of obstacles and antagonisms. This it must do, or it will die overwhelmed by nature and sense. II lU INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. We have reached this point, that from among a multi- tude of objects in sensation we have discriminated, per- ceived, and affirmed a total object as a total, e.g. golf-club : we thereupon discriminate the most salient impressions or qualities ; and so, almost before we are aware of it, pass from percipience to concipience, from self-consciousness of the single or individual to a self-consciousness of that individual as a unity of separate and separable elements. At this point we have a Concept of the individual — a true synthesis of rational activity (not of mere sense), so far as it goes. The attuit is no longer merely a total and single, it is a Unity and a One. Now, still following the same lines, we proceed to discriminate, perceive, and affirm other parts or elements which enter into and constitute the complex golf-club to sense. These we continue to hold together in the subject as they exist outside there together in the object. But the object as sensate always remains as a total ; that is to say, the general total impression of the object on sense is not superseded : it is only, so far, transcended and explicated. What is not perceived and carried into the concept is left in the original fused totality of sensation and sub-affirmed. Let us return now, at the risk of repetition, to the salient feature of the object. In sensation-proper, a dog, when sensing a man or a wheelbarrow, has a sensate of these objects as totals, the particular qualities of these objects being fused and confused in the whole. But after a sufficient number of repetitions, he becomes aware of one or more particulars as associated with the total in sense and distinguishing it from other totals : it may be the general gait or swing of the man, or the revolving wheel of the barrow. These prominent or salient charac- teristics impress him most vividly (make a deeper dint, so to speak, on his sensory), because of their prominence and salience. Different animals will have natural affinities, as determined by their organisms and needs, for different qualities in a total thing present to them. These salient III.] CONCIPIENCE AND THE SENSE-CONCEPT 115 qualities are only associated in sense ; not affirmed in percipient and concipient activity. Now, in percipience it is the same as in attuition ; but with a difference. In actively breaking up and discrimin- ating the qualities fused or aggregated in the total, you will perceive, first, the most vivid impression, that is to say, the most salient quality. The perceived total, the golf- club, is, no doubt, sensed as distinct in number and locality and relation from other objects as a single, but these other objects are as yet in sense alone, and not explicated into perception : for this they are waiting. It is only retro- spectively, and after percipience, that I am able to say that these elements ever were in the primary complex at all. To take our old friend, an orange ; you will probably first of all perceive the roundness, and then the yellowness of the orange, as opposed to other objects which are not round and yellow. You now are conceiving ; that is to say, you are taking together two or more qualities as constituting the orange as a perceived "thing." Your conception is now a "round yellow thing." Observe the word thing — the thing being the total sensate (or attuit), which always persists in your consciousness awaiting further dissection in percipience, with a view to a richer and ever richer concept of itself You are gradually building up the object for knowledge. However many facts I perceive and affirm, then, these have always a sub-self-conscious reference to the total in sensation. This orange which I perceive is not only yellow and round, but smooth, thick-skinned, pulpy, sweet, odorous. All these percepts, taken together, ere long constitute the object in knowledge, and are held together by the force of my Will, aided by an established association. The total single in^sensation has been thus transformed into a unity of percepts. These percepts are taken together — con- cepted by the energy of Will — and the unity of percepts in a total is now the concept of the object. 116 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lkct. To CONCEIVE- ANY OBJECT, THEN, IS TO TAKE TO- GETHER IN A UNITY THE PERCEIVED PROPERTIES OF THAT OBJECT. The Concept is a Many in One. Note. — The above contains the whole philosophy of Object-Lessons at the Infant School stage. So various and multitudinous are the suggestions of the universal outside me, that I, as a mind struggling to know and to use what I know, am driven into a habit of mental shorthand. When I perceive an orange as a total thing presented to my consciousness, I, after the preceding analysis has been effected, also at the same moment, con- ceive it as a unity ; but I do not rehearse in my mind the series a, b, c, d, which make up its concept. I see a house : what goes on in my consciousness ? This : first, having sensed the house as a total, I then first perceive it as a total object, separated from and opposed to other totals in space ; secondly, I perceive a certain quality or property, or qualities or properties, of that house, e.g., its configuration, its colour, its doors, and its windows (one or more of these), and at the same moment I conceive these percepts (take them together), and say " that is a house " ; and not anything else. But there are numerous other formerly perceived qualities of a house quite well known to me which never emerge into clear consciousness at all. They are sub-conscious, and are ready to be brought up to the plane of self-consciousness if I should happen to want them. Once I have so far analysed the total object in per- ception, and affirmed certain percepts as in and of it, I cannot, if I would, now perceive a house except in so far as I conceive it ; for there is now more than one element in my conscious experience of the total. The percepts by which I recognise a house are, doubt- less, those which most vividly presented themselves to me in sensation — the salient and most impressive properties III.] CONCIPIENCE AND THE SENSE-CONCEPT 117 (percepts) which came first in experience, and formed a kind of nucleus round which the others clustered. These not only came first in experience, but, so far as we can see, they come first in every successive experience of the same object. For the mind, advancing by stages to knowledge, not only assumes the prior stages, but repeats them. When I see a house and call it a house, I feel, I sense, I perceive, and I conceive. These are moments in a one and instantaneous act. The ignoring of this fact leads, it seems to me, to not a little confusion in psychology. Order in Concipience. — Observe now the order in the Concipience of a complex object ; (a) The most prominent and salient qualities are first perceived, and (b) these remain with us as a representative notation whereby we recognise an object which has been once conceived by us. As our experience extends, all our percepts of things become concepts of things. As a total single object we perceive the sensate as discriminated from other sensates ; as a many in one, we conceive the object in its parts relatively to itself as a system of parts. It is a unity. After this stage, we never can be said to perceive an old object, whether in presentation or representation, without conceiving it. The parts of an attuit which we first discriminate and perceive are, we have seen, the most prominent and salient ; these being the most impressive of the qualities of the object, they demand the minimum of exertion for Per- cipience. And these salient qualities we hold in our consciousness plus the sub-consciousness of the totality as contained in sensation : together they constitute the object for us. This psychological fact yields us guidance in the Art of teaching, for it tells us this — Principle of Method. — Teach first the most SALIENT QUALITIES OR CHARACTERS OF THINGS, AND THEREAFTER FILL IN, UNTIL THE CONTENT IN CON- 118 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. hi. SCIOUSNESS EQUALS THE CONTENT OF THE THING OR SUBJECT TAUGHT. We have now made some progress in our Psychology, for we have the whole animal intelligence before us, which is also ours ; and, 'further, two movements of mind which are distinctive of man, and which are both dependent on the central energy, Will. LECTURE IV. MAN-MIND — continued. 3.— UNITY AND OMNIPRESENCE OF THE RATIONAL MIND IN ITS EDUCATIONAL REFERENCE. DEFI- NITIONS. Rational intelligence, as we have seen, is the conscious subject freely functioning Will as its instrument in dealing with the multifarious presentations in sensation or attuition. This is what is meant by the activity of Reason as distinguished from the merely reflex activity of sensational consciousness. ^' Mens movetar ipsa per se',' says Cicero. The subject, as functioning Will, seizes and affirms itself as Ego, and this Ego, at whose core is the act of Will, exalts itself above the turmoil of feeling and sensation : like Neptune, it raises its head above the troubled ocean to see what is going on, and to regulate and direct, first to truth and then to action. The conflicting waves have, however, dynamical laws of their own, which they are obeying : the sea-god has to accept these laws or processes, and by his will to control them to certain ends. This energising of Will is at once, accordingly, an intellectual and an ethical movement ; for an ethical act is simply Will effecting a thought-end, which end is conceived, made one's own, and projected by mind, as motive of action. You will observe, then, that this fundamental concep- tion of rational psychology has, because of its ethical bearing, a very great significance in education, 119 120 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. And perhaps its chief significance lies herein : you may partially, but certainly not wholly, build up the mind of an animal by presenting to it certain things in a certain order, and accompanied by certain motives to do them — something good to eat, a pat, or a stroke — all of them external motives ; but it is vain to imagine that you can so build up the mind of a rational being. As a rational being the child is perceiving, conceiving, associating, and combining thousands of experiences without your help, nay, spite of you. The never-ceasing native energy of Will-reason laughs at your effort to treat the mind which it is forming as if it were a house that you were building. It is toppling down your bricks and re-arranging them for itself before your mortar is dry. It is building a room where you intended only a cupboard, a staircase where you are carefully devising a larder. It is this mighty inner force, Will, that is forming the raw materials of experience into an edifice, good or bad, and this, too, under cerebral and mental restrictions which are connate and give at once tendency and capacity. The doctrine of the dynamic assimilation of materials is a true doctrine so far as it goes, but baptising it anew with the name Apperception will not obliterate the fact that it is as old as the hills. Remember, however, that the child is assimilating a hundred things while you are elaborately getting him to assimilate one. It is the training and discipline of the energy of reason as a truth-seeking and ethical force which is the supreme aim of the education of mind, and the doctrine of assimilation can never hold more than a subordinate place. Your business as educator is to encourage, promote, direct, and regulate the energy of reason in a child, and of the feelings and emotions that determine conduct. Freedom for the child and relief from the incubus of too constant manipulation of his mind, are necessary to healthy and vigorous growth. He must be helped, but not helped too much. If you over-elaborate your method, you will find that the child, grown weary of iv.J UNITY OF THE RATIONAL MIND 121 you, has gone ahead and crossed the river, while you are still labouring at the first stepping-stone. If he is to learn not to tumble downstairs, he must be allowed first of all to tumble ; if he is to learn to climb upstairs, he must not be carried. In psychology also as well as in education, the above view of the human mind is pregnant with results. The most important is this, that it gives a clue which guides through the labyrinth of mental phenomena. Fix your attention on this Will, take hold of it, and follow it as it moves step by step in its triumphant progress towards the reduction of all presentations to consciousness from without and from within. In contemplation of this one movement, you see revealed the fact that reason is essentially a one faculty or function, because it is a one movement, and not an aggregate of many faculties. And yet, there are steps to be taken by it which must be taken one after the other, viz., Percipience, Concipience, etc., and these involve comparison, discrimination, analysis and synthesis, all resting on prior attuition, i.e., feeling and sensation, inner and outer. The steps have to be looked at by us in order of time ; but, as a matter of fact, these, and all further steps, are already contained in the mere knowing of any one object. This knowing is, in short, a one complex act ; but in order that we may understand it, the act has, as being a process of Will, to be resolved into its parts — broken up into its elements. When we speak of Percipience, Concipience, and the further steps of Reason yet awaiting our consideration, we are simply analysing the complex unity of the act of knowing any one thing as it may be known. Since these steps are elements in a complex, they are to be called "moments," in the one Will-movement or process. But we separate them logically; and as the first is necessary to the second, so we place them in a time- order. Conceive, then. Reason (as distinguished from and 122 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect, transcending feeling and sensation — the whole sphere of Attuition) as — 1. Will-energy (involving purpose) pure and simple. 2. Will-process, with all that this involves. Do this, I say, and there can be no doubt that this conception, whether true or not, will give simplicity and unity to your grasp of Reason in all its active successive manifestations on the way to its end, which end is knowledge and consequent action. Once grasp the central thought, and your future study is shortened as well as simplified. The theory of the education of man's intelligence is at the same time revealed ; and we must not forget that our business here is to expound the doctrine of rational mind in the definite and restricted field of the education of rational mind. It is evident that if mind grows to maturity after a certain way, the education of mind must follow that way. Method in education means simply a " way " ; and the method of educating niind must be the way of mind itself as it grows from infancy to maturity. Accordingly, the Theory of Education, in so far as it is Methodology, is simply the governing principles of the method of discipline and instruction, as these can be shown to flow from the way the mind grows. And if it grows in bulk by assimilation, it grows in its knowledge of the truth by the energy of Will-reason determining the nature and value of assimilations for knowledge first, and then for conduct. You will find, as you go on, that many of these principles and rules of Method have been empirically ascertained, and have received the support of every writer on education without regard to the question whether they have a scientific basis in the laws of the growth of mind or not. But it is precisely this scientific basis which we have IV.] UNITY OF THE RATIONAL MIND 123 to ascertain ; this is Theory as distinct from Art or Practice. Note. — I have said that the rational process — the formal of mind — is a one or unity of process; but to prevent misunderstanding let me say here that Mind as a whole — I mean as attuitional and rational — is a One Complex, and that to mark off with a deep line of demarcation the attuitional and rational elements in that complex is impossible. The one passes into the other; but yet, both logically and in time, the reason-movement must be posterior to the attuitional movement which gives us the raw real. This attuitional reflex-activity has a process of its own whereby it builds up for conscious mind a world of reality. That process — most important from an educational point of view — will be considered in the sequel : it is briefly the doctrine of assimilation referred to above. Definitions. At this point, it may be well to make clear our terminology, that you may have it for reference ; and the doing of this will give us an opportunity of conversa- tionally revising and supplementing what has been said in past lectures. A. — Mind is Consciousness from the lowest animal, to its highest man, manifestation. The fundamental fact of mind is Feeling, and this is both outer and inner. We can get no better name for the rudimentary fact than Feeling, whether we speak of the intelligence, or of the appetites, or of instincts, impulses, or emotions. [a) Feeling is to be described (it cannot be defined) as an indefinite awareness, in which mind as subject is not yet differentiated from the presentation which is the content of the Feeling, and which may be called the object. There is as yet, however, no Object and 124 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. Subject. Feeling may be of the single or of the multitudinous.^ (J>) Sensation is feeling which at the continued solicita- tion of the presentation has now evolved into a feeling or awareness of the presentation or content as separate, i.e. as not the subject. This stage of feeling is sensation. Sensation, becoming aware of a variety of objects, is the sensation of diversity ; but this is no new phenomenon, but merely a numerical addition to the first sensation, and like it in kind. We now have, as a matter of fact. Subject and Object ; but we do not have a sensation of Subject by the subject. For this we must manifestly first sense subject as an object, which is, at this stage of evolution, impossible. We feel the object as not subject (this is sensation) ; but we do not feel the subject as not object. We simply _/^^/ subject as a vague point of support or foothold for object. To " sense " subject as an object is to be j^^conscious — conscious of one's own being as a being. The sensing of the " object " is not simple. There is contained, in this consciousness, the being of the object and the extensity of the object, and the thereness or out- ness of the object, at least. The organic appetitive feelings we do not at this stage sense, but only feel vaguely. {c) Desire is to be defined as a feeling from within, of an organic kind, so intense as to cause movement and a pressing forward to some object for the filling or satisfac- tion of desire. {d) Emotion may be distinguished as desire to satisfy 1 Some writers seem to have an almost superstitious delight in exaggerating the mystery of certain phenomena, and the impossi- bility of fixing them. Not only can this primal mental state be detected in the young of animals and man, but the most cultivated man, unless he is wholly destitute of the emotional element, and lives an exclusively arithmetical exisfence from which everything is shut out save what can be numbered and measured, constantly experiences Feeling as I have defined it. Indeed, it is pretty certain that even the most rational adult has never a clear perception or conception of anything new, without beginning at this point of vague indefiniteness, where subject and object are undifferentiated. This is Feeling in the generic use of the term : it is also specifically used to denote feelings as coloured by pleasure or pain. From the earliest movement of mind vitfeel Being. iv.J SUMMING UP AND DEFINITIONS (THUS FAR) 125 needs outside and above the merely organic and appetitive ; e.g. the need of satisfying goodwill to others, the need of satisfying the feeling (when " Reason " appears) of the beautiful, of the universal and rational, of the infinite, and of God. All morality and religion are based on primitive needs, and corresponding impulses to satisfy needs through that which is not the subject itself, but something else. {e) Sympathy is a community of feeling of one being with other beings (and with the universal of Being), and is the precondition of all emotion (though best defined after it). (_/) Subject and Object. — By Subject is meant the one permanent conscious entity which receives presentations to sense from whatever source, inner or outer, they come. The object is the presentation to consciousness, and is to be called the presentate. (g) The Representate is the name to be given to all objects in consciousness which have been previously there, but which are not themselves now really present. It is equivalent to image, but ought never to be called idea, which is a word sacred to a specific meaning. (ji) Analysis is the taking of a complex whole to pieces ; and Synthesis is the putting together again of the parts, and so transmuting the " whole " into a " unity." This involves the self-conscious separating of one thing from another and as opposed to that other, i.e. Discrimina- tion; and Discrimination is impossible without an act of will directed against a complex whole. ij) Will is the free self-generated nisus of the conscious subject. (J) Attention is an act of will sustained with a purpose. Attention, like will, is a purely rational act. In attuition an object takes possession of the mind ; in attention the mind takes possession of an object. Education might be said to be the discipline of attention, for this lies at the root of all possible progress. Note. — Every new movement of mind presumes all THE PRIOR MOVEMENTS, AND CARRIES THEM W^ITH IT. The close connection between the philosophy of mind and the education of mind is now sufficiently apparent; but it may be well to dwell on the practical relations of theory in the next lecture. LECTURE V. APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING ANALYSIS TO EDUCATIONAL METHOD. When we spoke of the Human Body as vehicle of sensa- tion and of activity alike, — the physical basis of Mind, — we showed that it was the first thing to attend to in the education of the young. The first, because the necessary condition of the health of mind ; but not the most important. We must eat to live, but eating is not so important as living. We also deduced all the chief lessons which the laws of the body impose on the educator, whether he be a private or public instructor.^ We might postpone a similar deduction from the Doctrine of Mind until we had completed our survey of mind ; but it is, for many reasons, better that you should now at this stage comprehend the educational and concrete significance of the philosophical and abstract, so far as we have gone. There are three great evolutionary stages of Mind, viz.. Feeling, Sensation, Reason. This is the logical as well as the time-order, but the transition from one to the other cannot be clearly demarcated. And let us never for a moment lose sight of the fact that the whole of man-mind is always and from the first present in the infant, waiting for the conditions which make its clear emergence possible. This whole is always more or less operative, as an under- ground influence before it is in full evidence. ^ These were not elaborated, but sufficiently indicated. 126 LECT. V.J APPLICATION OF PRECEDING ANALY S 127 ' Feeling. The Babe in arms is, in quite its earliest stages, a creature mainly of Feeling — that state in which subject and object are practically identified. So far as Feeling, therefore, is concerned, the philosophy of mind teaches us nothing as to the education of mind. All we can say is, that looking to the fact that all is always in and through nerve, it is important to a healthy nerve-tissue that we should protect the child from all painful, discordant, or offensive impressions. Calm and placidity, which indicate a harmonious equilibrium of nerve processes, must, presum- ably, have some effect on the future mind-life of the babe. Were it possible then (we speak of an ideal state of things) to promote this equilibrium by securing perfect health in the organic functions, and by admitting to the avenues of sense nothing but pleasing sounds and smells and sights, and avoiding all that is sudden, harsh, discordant, and offensive, it would be a good thing. When Montaigne's father would not permit him to be suddenly awakened from sleep, but roused him gradually with gentle music, he was not so far wrong. Who knows but that much of Montaigne's sweet reasonableness of nature may have owed something to this delicate solicitude ? Can any one look at the treatment of infants by the majority of well- intentioned mothers without being surprised that they are so quiet as they are ? The mothers seem to imagine that if they are gratifying their own animal affection, the babe should in some way respond. Their general intelligence is too low to understand the dictates of sympathy for their little charge. They think of themselves and their too explosive love, and not of the actual condition and needs of the babe. The instinct of animals teaches us a lesson. They never seem to meddle with their young at this stage, save wisely. Providing for all their wants, the parent seems to leave the rest to nature. Men and women are apt to forget that mere gushing tenderness for helpless babes is a 128 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. very cheap matter, and that true love shows itself, not in ill-regulated fondling and feeding, but in the sympathetic action which understands, anticipates, and satisfies the corporeal needs of the infant. Doubtless, mothers and nurses, more or less consciously, aim at this. Their intentions are good. Let us wish them more success. Sensation. At this stage we have the conscious subject " here '' and objects " there," which objects as sensed we have called sen- sates. It is probable that this sensational life is dominant (though not, of course, excluding Percipient and Concipient activities) from the age of nine months to about six years of 4ge complete — the period (roughly) of the beginning of the second dentition. If this be so, then the educational lesson is that we should not interfere with free sensational life. Sensation-proper is observation of external facts and relations; but this of a purely animal kind. It is not human, i.e. rational, observation. Cultivate the senses, we are told, as if this were the sum of early education. This is one of the results of an inadequate psychology. What we have to cultivate — i.e. train and discipline — is Percipi- ence and Concipience, and so forth. But the universal basis of finite mind is sense (sensations of the outer and sensations of the inner), and a broad and liberal foundation in sense must be laid, if the mental growth is afterwards to be broad and liberal and sound. Some people would make the child exact from the first, and this is one of the dangers of the Kindergarten. The exactness of Percipi- ence and Concipience, is limitation, and the discipline of these activities will come in good time. Meanwhile, let the child alone : let him be the victim of the myriad sensa- tions which pour in on him. The soil may be growing nothing, but it is being fertilised with a view to a future harvest. It is mere pedantry to interfere at this stage, and the product if we interfere will be, or ought to be, narrow v.] APPLICATION OF PRECEDING ANALYSIS 129 and pedantic. By all means provide raw material for the child, but leave him alone to make what he can of it. By all means give him paper, and pencils, and painting brushes, and colours, and bricks, and spades, and perforated cards ; but let him alone. We were not sent into this world to be manufactured by pedants, but to grow from our own roots and soil. Nature in this earliest stage is itself accomplishing the work that is suited to the wants of the individual mind. " Meanwhile," says Carlyle, " the incipient Diogenes, like others, all ignorant of his Why, his How or Whereabout, was opening his eyes to the kind light, sprawling out his ten fingers and toes, listening, tasting, feeling, by all his five senses, still more by his sense of hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, spiritual half-awakened senses, endeavouring daily to acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange universe where he had arrived, be his task therein what it might." — {Sartor Resartus.) But we can do much to help nature here as elsewhere : and by " helping " I simply mean giving nature a chance and removing the impediments which civilisation has put in one child's way, and giving to another child the advantages of civilisation. For example, a city child comes into contact with so many experiences — persons and things, and these for the most part in continual motion, that his senses are stimu- lated to an early, even precocious, activity, beyond the possible attainment of a rustic. On the other hand, the rustic is impressed by the comparative repose of things, with the forms of nature, with animals, and the slow operations of agriculture, and so receives a depth of impression which gives solidity, without alertness, to the future intelligence. A rustic child, then, should visit cities for activity and versatility ; a city child should visit the country for nature and repose. It is not necessary to be always directing the child what to look at. Let hitafeel to repletion, and leave " Eyes and no Eyes " to the copy- books. Let him look at what he likes, but give him I 130 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. opportunities. This is what I mean by cultivating sensa- tion as such. Our modern type of civilisation makes it impossible to cultivate this period of human life as it ought to be cultivated. " From everything they see and hear, loveliness, like a breeze, should pass into the souls of children and teach them, without their knowing it, the truth of which it is a manifestation." The instinctive sense of what- is fair and what is foul which will be the result of such an environment " is a kind of anticipation of a rational understanding of the nature of good and evil." So far Plato. What would he have thought of London, Sheffield, and Glasgow, as nurseries for the young ? During this sensational period Percipience and Con- cipience are, of course, going on in the child, because he can't help it. He is selecting what suits him ; and you may depend on this, it is not what suits you. Sensation, as such, is the basis of the future operations of reason, and should be rich and various that it may be fruitful. Do not, therefore, limit, or in any way restrict, the receptivity and natural free activity of the child under the pretext of turning his knowing powers to account. The Kindergarten system may, as regards the intelligence at least, be abused by the over-direction, with an ulterior purpose, of the free natural activities of the child. The chief gain in the kindergarten system is its full recognition of the activities of the young in the direction of construction. It thus gives a city child of wealthy parents some of the advan- tages of the gutter. It is an extension and an evolution of the nursery practice of playing with bricks, encourage- ment being, however, given to imitate definite forms presented as drawings. The flat brick with toothed ends, admitting of one being fitted into another, is of more value than all the Frobelian "gifts." The moral and physical influences, on the other hand, of a wise Kinder- garten are, considering the barbarism of the lower stratum of our population, wholly good. To let the child learn as v.] APPLICATION OF PRECEDING ANALYSIS 131 much as possible from his own experiences is the sum and substance of Rousseau's' doctrine. By all means, we should say ; but in moral relations at least, he must learn under supervision and control as regulated by an ideal. But control only where necessary. Note in passing, that what is true of the child is also true of us men. We are (if we may so say) too much the victims of regulated and reasoned sensations, and, con- sequently, too much the slaves of a narrow and logical activity. We, too, should remember that it is God Himself who so lavishly offers to each of us the riches of sensation and feeling, and that if we do not keep the sensational door open we are guilty of a " suUenness 'gainst nature" and God, and tend to grow narrower as we grow older. Our little personalities shut out the wealth and glory of the universal. We do not wish to rear poets ; but assuredly, except in so far as a man is a sharer in the inspiration of the poetic temperament, he is only half-born. Philosophy and religion are to him sealed books : in the one department, as in the other, he is fit only jurare in verba magistri. Reason gives interpretation and form, but feeling is the inexhaustible fountain of reality. Men, whose avenues of sensation have been early blocked by the limitations incident to, definite knowledge, have often great force within a narrow sphere of intellectual or moral activity ; but their narrowness interferes with enjoyment of life in any large sense, and may even unfit them for the administration of important affairs. Their sympathy and imagination are cold and barren. True life, as distinguished from departmental knowledge and purposed activity, includes (always along with these, of course) openness to the universal in all its myriad forms, and a ready response to its never-ceasing solicitations. Educa- tion is an extensive as well as an intensive process. The mind that is the slave of knowledge tends to be essentially obscurantist, because it is the slave of traditionary concep- 132 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. tions by which it judges all things. It is this traditionary spirit which is the enemy of Humianism, though, strange to say, it is often most conspicuous in men who have been trained exclusively in the (so-called) Humanities. The historical struggle between Obscurantism and Humanism repeats itself in every age, and, indeed, in the struggles of each individual with himself. In the case of the city child, then, let him have the country as much as possible ; in the case of the rustic, let him have the city : and failing that, markets, fairs, travelling circuses, panoramas (especially geographical), musical entertainments, games, and magic-lantern exhibi- tions. It is true that the life of sensation is never more, intellectually, than the attuition of objects as wholes, and of their relations in locality; but this, after all, is the foundation of the fabric of mind, and has to be respected. But we are not to forestall the next stage of mind- evolution. Sense is the source of all content of mind, save the matter and issue of the Reason-process itself. Take note of this, however : just because a child is a human, and not a mere animal, intelligence, the rudi- mentary acts of Percipience, Concipience, Generalisation, and Reasoning are all going on, in a dim and groping way, during the whole of the sensational period without your interference. For example, the marked and con- spicuous difference of one thing from another — a stone from a piece of wood, grass from trees — is making the percipient act, though it is an act of will, easy. So with concepts of individuals, which to a child consist of the most prominent characters only. So with generalisations, which are rude and inadequate because they deal only with what most vividly impresses sense. But to hasten the ripening of these acts is to barter life for knowledge, and to cheat the child of a multifarious experience which will be afterwards in due time turned to account. It is also to cheat him of much happiness. The interference with natural liberty by prematurely organising a child's V.J APPLICATION OF PRECEDING ANALYSIS 133 intelligence is to be deprecated. It would give us manufactured men, docile and obedient it may be, but arid and wanting in vitality. The general educational principle at this stage is : — Up to the age of six, Whatever else is done, LET there be no INTERFERENCE WITH THE FREEDOM OF SENSATION, BUT RATHER ENCOURAGE CONTACT WITH ALL HEALTHY FORMS OF EXISTENCE, AND PROMOTE THE NATURAL ACTIVITY OF THE CHILD IN EVERY DIRECTION. And when we begin systematic instruction, the principle of method to be deduced from the above considerations, which exhibit sensation (inner and outer) as the basis and as furnishing the raw material, of all subsequent processes of mind, is this familiar proposition : — PRESENT TO SENSE. The visible must be seen, the tangible must be touched, the odorous must be smelt, the audible must be heard, the inner feeling or elementary emotion must be felt. " Never substitute the sign for the thing," says Rousseau, " except when it is impossible to show the thing." Reason. The sensational, even in its highest form of attuition, is on the reflex or passivo-active plane of Consciousness. The animal is moved by the object, tossed hither and thither by impressions as reflected in its own subject, and the dynamic interactions of these. For example, when an animal seems to be occupied with an object, it does not " attend " in any true meaning of that term, any more than it ever " intends " ; ^ it is detained by the object, and what we have before us is a detention of the conscious subject, not attention by it. Again, the animal does not 1 I.e., no thought is interposed between the initiation of its activity and the object of that activity. 134 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. compare or discriminate : objects compare and discriminate themselves on the subject, the subject reflexly responding. The term assigned to the fully realised reflex sensational intelligence of the animal is Attuition, not Perception ; still less Knowing. All the above passive activities of mind are constantly operative in man, and constitute a great part of his daily life, which is largely automatic both in the intellectual and moral sphere ; and they occupy almost the whole field of consciousness in the mind of the infant and child. But, meanwhile, the conscious subject functions a free energy or power to be called WILL, and the result is a movement towards the prehension or apprehension of sensates, and this in successive steps or moments, by which it effects their reduction to consciousness, affirma- tion, and rational knowledge. Hence — 1. Percipience and the Percept. 2. Concipience and the Concept. The characteristic of sensation is, to begin with, multiplicity, disorder, and confusion. I have indicated in the functionings of animal intelligence the extent to which experience is reduced to order, and the animal adapted to its environment. When we come to man, we find that over and above this animal functioning, Will emerges in the form of the rudimentary reason-act of Percipience. The vital fact is that reason is at root Will. I can perceive nothing, conceive nothing, know nothing, save as a self-conscious subject that wills to take hold of or apprehend things in accordance with a certain process. The fact that there is no conscious effort in much of our Knowing, that it is so easy to begin with, and becomes in the course of repetition almost automatic, does not affect the question. Try to perceive and conceive, or in any way know, something new and strange, like that clock on the wall, which you can imagine yourself seeing for the first time when totally ignorant of its purpose and V.J APPLICATION OF PRECEDING ANALYSIS 135 mechanism, and you will realise to yourself what Will is as an initiating energy, and also what it is in its process. The principle of method to be deduced from the fundamental fact of reason is this : — EVOKE THE WILL OF THE PUPIL. This principle lies at the root of all true discipline of the mind of man, intellectual and moral, just as it lies at the root of that mind as rational mind. Sensation furnishes the material and occasion of the new movement, but, at the same time, it blocks the way, and has to be overcome. It is true, as I have said above, that in the case of a child as of a man, the oft-repeated and insistent presenta- tion of an object in sensational attuition makes easy, and almost unconscious, the movement from within whereby that object is perceived. If, however, I present, even to a child, an object which by its novelty stimulates him to interest, he exerts himself to look at it, and to handle it, and so forth, i.e. attends to it, and so perceives it as a total, like or unlike previous experiences ; and he then immedi- ately advances rapidly to the conceiving of that total through the perception of its most conspicuous characters. The continuous application of will to an object of know- ledge with the purpose of knowing, is called Attention. Every teacher fails who cannot in practice solve for himself this problem, " How can I secure the attention of a class ? " The general answer is, "By following the principles of method in teaching " ; but to this has to be added regard for physiological conditions, and the extent to which the teacher's manner, as sympathetic, interested, and vivacious, engages, by a natural reaction, the interest of his pupils. It is by a movement from within that we really grasp anything. This is what Rousseau was point- ing at when he said, "Let not the child know anything because you have told it to him, but because he has com- 136 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. prehended it for himself." " What we learn most thoroughly is what we learn to some extent by ourselves," says Kant. If, however, you " tell " when the spirit of the child is erect and eager to know, the principle is observed. (a) Percipience. In teaching a subject, I must follow the process of knowing, whatever that process may be. I cannot advance by walking backwards. Manifestly, then, in evoking will to enter on the path of knowledge, I must begin with Percipience and go on to Concipience, and so forth. Percipience is first, and lies at the foundation of all accurate knowledge. I find accord- ingly certain principles here awaiting me. All is complex, but perception is of the single. Accordingly we have this principle — In the training of Percipience confine your- self TO WHOLES AS SINGLES, AND TO SINGLES AS WHOLES. Rule. — One thing, or one element of a thing, at a time. Let any rational mind try to realise in itself an adequate knowledge of any new thing whatsoever, and it will fail until it has analysed the complex in consciousness down to its underlying percepts, and distinctly apprehended these. It is no mean element in the work of rational mind, and of education, this accuracy of Percipience. It is the foundation and necessary condition of every subsequent step, if that step is not to be simply a step into confusion. It may be of little moment to perceive distinctly the object " tree " as opposed to " shrub," or any one quality in tree as opposed to any other one quality in tree, so far as mere substance of knowledge is concerned. But the important point in this, as in all other educative processes, is the training and discipline of faculty. This has always to be kept in view as our main end — effectiveness of faculty ; v.] APPLICATION OF PRECEDING ANALYSIS 137 and we can then let knowledge take care of itself. This is education of intelligence. Nothing else can be called education without involving ourselves in a contradiction of terms. One percept at a time, then, and that clearly differentiated. The application of those remarks to object- lessons is obvious. Up to the age of five or six, you may introduce a child to new objects as sensational wholes to be perceived and be recognised in respect of their salient qualities ; but this is all. The bearing of our interpretation of Reason on the whole process of education is obvious, for what an animal accomplishes for itself unself-consciously, man must strive self-consciously to attain. He must educate himself (b) Concipience. The next step in knowing an object, we found, is the raising of the percept of the object as a single whole, to its perception as a unity of parts, which is Conception. Mind has been discriminating diverse objects one from another. It now continues its occupation with each object to see what the object has got to say for itself The various qualities impress themselves on sense, and have now to be discriminated in relation to the total object, and as elements in it ; and those qualities which are not obvious have to be sought for. The mind in knowing will not be hurried. It must take one step after another, and only one at a time. Like all things in nature, it grows by infinitely small steps. In teaching botany to a school I present a bluebell. To the children it is familiar; but it is little more, as yet, than a perceived attuitional total. If they know anything about it beyond what they know about all other plants that are becoming daily familiar to sensation and perception, it is that on the top of a thin greien stalk there is a blue cup. To this extent the bluebell is not only perceived as a whole in sensation and discriminated from 138 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. other things, but is conceived, by virtue of certain qualities and characteristics of its own, relatively to itself. It is manifest that until Will, in the energy of knowing, has reached the point at which it discriminates the various characters which go to constitute the complex individual in sense, it has advanced only one step beyond attuition, and that the second step is the truly instructive one. It is now answering the question, What is that complex object before me? — the first and last question of Reason. The answer is ascertained by an analysis, which gives an adequate, though, of course, superficial, synthesis of the elements in the object; and this synthesis constitutes its (unity in many) concept. Will has here a higher and more difficult task to perform than in Percipience, and greater demands are made on its sheer power of holding things together. The discipline of Will and the training in the process whereby Will reaches knowledge, are here, accordingly, higher than they have yet been. It follows the prior discipline in simple percipience. Consequently we have the principle — In training in Concipience, practise in the synthesis of many in one. This is the object-lesson proper. Remember that you follow the natural order only if you confine your exercises to the breaking up of perceived wholes that are familiar. There is no good to be got from a lesson on copper ore or a megatherium, but rather from a potato and a cat. But remember, meanwhile, the magistral principle of the order in which we build up conceptions, and confine yourself to the obvious qualities for a considerable time. Not only must you confine yourself to the obvious for some time, but in your first exercises you must limit yourself entirely to the most salient characteristics. Why ? Because we discovered in our philosophy of mind that it was the salient characteristics which were first appre- hended by mind in building up a concept of a thing. Thus a second principle (not to be called a rule, because it is not v.] APPLICATION OF PRECEDING ANALYSIS 139 a deduction from a principle, but itself directly deduced from the mind-process) — In training to adequate concepts of objects, TEACH first THE SALIENT AND PROMINENT CHAR- ACTERISTICS BEFORE PROCEEDING TO OTHERS. Anticipate a little, and apply for yourselves this principle of method to geography, history, grammar, language generally, etc., and you will see how sound it is, and how universally it is neglected. No doubt a human being, especially if he has a happy nerve-basis and a suitable environment, will do much of all this for himself; but if he could do it as well as he ought to do it, education, whether by the parent or the teacher, would be superfluous. It is because the human animal cannot educate himself as he ought that we inter- pose and educate him. And, so far as the intellect is concerned, it is only by following the method of mind in its process of knowing, that we can teach any subject effectively, or as Comenius would say, easily, solidly, and surely. And far more important than the teaching of particular subjects is the training and discipline of the knowing function itself. Reason (which is sometimes called divine) is in our hands, to make or mar. Our responsibility is great. For on reason and its sane activity in search of true knowledge, depends ultimately the true ethical life — the life of conduct as well as of contemplation. Far be it from me, however, to say that, without the formal training and discipline of reason, a man cannot be ethical. He may be so constituted as to have a natural affinity for the humane feelings which are the fountain of the ethical, and he may be by nature so open to the spiritual ideas which are presented to him in the example and teaching of others, that he leads a worthy life in all his relations. God has not left the all-important question of conduct in the hands of intellect alone. Even " to the 140 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. poor (in mind) the gospel is preached." But we cannot trust to such casual results. The very purpose of all education is to strengthen the ethical in the individual, for himself and for humanity, by the discipline of reason, as well as by the nutrition of ideas. In this way we secure a more effective discharge of all the duties of life, individual, social, and political. Surely a great work ! An uneducated man, moreover, however finely attuned by nature, neces- sarily has narrow interests : his horizon is limited, and he must always fail to rise to ethical conceptions in any large sense. His village and his home are for him the world and all its interests. It may be said by the hypercritical, that, after all, many of these principles of method, so far as we have yet gone, are already in the market. True ; but they are not bought and paid for by those who most need, and ought, to use them. Experience in the course of the ages forces profound truths on men with the very minimum of think- ing on their part, simply by showing them that certain things won't work and certain others will. Nature, so to speak, takes care of itself; for there is a Reason in the affairs of men. Our business is to explicate that reason, and to find the scientific or rational explanation of good practices, and to show the untruth and ineptness of bad ones. This in education is called theory, and it is this which every man who proposes to educate a mind is asked to study. Order of Growth. If one Rule of Educational Method be more conspicuous than another (so far as we have yet carried our analysis), it is this : — In educating, follow the order of Mind- growth, WHICH IS ALSO, GENERALLY SPEAKING, THE order of Brain-growth. An old and empirical rule this : all we can do is to v.] APPLICATION OF PRECEDING ANALYSIS 141 point to its scientific vindication. Doubtless we all have to recognise this rule, whether we will or not ; and in our attempts (which are constant) to ignore it, we meet with signal failure. But, spite of this, we go on believing that we know better than nature and God, and taking advantage of a child's memory for symbolic sounds we impart knowledge (so-called) prematurely — a practice not only useless, but hurtful and obstructive. Take any subject you please, you must regulate your action by the principle, or fail. Not only has each age its own fitting studies, but it has its own way of comprehending and assimilating the same study. Take, for example, religion and the idea of God. The man-child is essentially a religious being, and you have to help him in the slow evolution of his religious life. What can God be to a child ? He can be some- thing ; but what ? Whatever He can be, He ought to be by your help ; but no more. And so on with morality and with all intellectual teachings. Find out what things can be to a child, and limit yourselves to that, if you wish to succeed. Of this more fully when we speak of applied method, which is the Art of education. I would only make one remark here, that if ever you have the mind of an undeveloped adult to deal with (a Central African, for example, or a British boor), and desire to teach him anything, you must, even with him, start from the simplest child-elements of it. (Let the clergy and missionaries take note of this.) " The learned," says Rousseau, " always look for the man in the child without thinking of what he was before he became a man." We should rather say, of what he must be before he can become a man. [The order of mind-growth in knowing is also the order of the object-growth in completing itself in mind. Not only does the knowing faculty move to its end after a certain manner and by a certain series of steps, but we may say that the object of knowledge itself by a kind of parallel movement builds itself up out of sensation into knowledge. It may be said to separate itself from other 142 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. v. things, assume its own percept and concept, and so forth : A (tree) differences itself as a percept from B (bush) and C (carrot). We may look at the growth of knowledge from the side of the object as well as of the subject.] Consequently, we can deduce from the Principle these Rules : — Rule I. In the teaching of every subject build it up in the mind of the child in accordance with the order of mind- growth. Rule 2. Proceed step by step, and step after step. Let us now add to these principles and rules of educational method, the lesson we were taught when defining the end of education — TURN EVERYTHING TO USE, and we may then say that, even if we went no further, we have already got possession of a sufficient number of principles and rules to guide the teacher. We will now return to the process of mind-activity. LECTURE VI. MAN-MIND — continued. 4, — THE GENERAL CONCEPT (COMPARISON). The process of mind on its way to knowledge has been our theme ; but our work is as yet only half done. The moments of sensation, of perception of sensates, and the conception of the percepts inherent in the complex sensate, take us a considerable step on the reason-road. We can imagine an intelligence so constituted as to stop at this point ; but if so, its reduction of the material in sense to self-consciousness, and consequent knowledge, would be partial and inadequate. The concept, even supposing it to be a complete synthesis of perceived qualities, would give us only the separate parts of a single thing in a unity. These would be discerned as fused, for we cannot locally separate the colour from the form or hardness or odour of the object : they are not separated parts of the thing standing side by side as a collocated aggregate. Still they are collocated parts of an aggregate in the sense of elements in the total thing. We may regard them as the anatomical description of the thing. But we are not content with this as knowledge. We press forward to a higher conception — the concep- tion of the relation of these parts, which relation truly constitutes them into the actual thing before us. This we may call the organic relations of the parts. Passing over many subordinate and preliminary analyses, we ultimately 143 144 INSTITUTES OF EDLfCATlON [lect. desire to see the molecular elements of the thing, and the dynamic force or forces which bring about that specific constitution of molecular elements which we call the " thing." The mere collocation of parts gives us no satis- faction, because the reason-movement in us is not yet satisfied. We desire to detect the precise nature of the energy which determines that these elements shall be here A and there B or C. In short, we seek the causal relations of the elements within the thing and "for itself." For, after all, the question we ask of each thing (and of the whole of experience) is. What are you ? You have qualities which I find everywhere else : your colour I find in other things, your texture and hardness and odour and form I find in other things ; but they are combined in you in such a way as to make you a thing by yourself, and not anything else. And I want to know what you truly are — in short, what is your essence, which is also your idea, and the purpose or reXoy of your existence. Thus the ultimate reciprocal causal relations within a thing are identical with its essence. To face us, we have a quantitative difficulty : Will is a great power ; it can hold present to consciousness several percepts and concepts at once, while, at the same time, more or less vaguely " sensing " a multitude of sub-self- conscious or sensational elements which can be made to emerge when I desire to realise them clearly. But the multitude of individual concepts is so great that Will exhausts itself quickly in their presence, and gladly catches at some way of symbolising many individual concepts as represented by one. Millions of dogs are represented by the one word, " Dog " or " a dog " ; millions of individual men by the one word, " Man " or " a man." We say " a Dog is a quadruped," meaning "all dogs"; Man is rational, meaning "all men." We thus abbreviate the work of Will-reason. This is itself a great gain if it vi.J THE GENERAL CONCEPT 145 were nothing else, because it abbreviates and simplifies thought.^ If we can utter a judgment the predicate of which will cover at once many millions of individuals, it is manifest that we have acquired an intellectual symbolism which facilitates enormously the progress of reason in knowledge. How then do we get for consciousness the word " Dog " as distinguished from this, that, and other individual dogs? Thus : I have already perceived and conceived an individual object, differing from other creatures within the area of conscious experience, and named it "dog." Many other creatures now pass before me which, though differing in certain respects (which are superficial enough), e.g. size and colour, are yet possessed (or seem to be possessed) of those characters which made me origijially call a particular creature a " dog " in order to mark it off from the many other creatures previously seen. Because they possess in common that combination of characteristics which difference a dog from other creatures, I call them all " dogs." While doing so, I am gathering up, by the force of will, into a unity in my consciousness these common (differentiating) characteristics, and so constituting a new reality (for consciousness), viz., the kind, species, genus, or class, Dog. This is the General Concept which manifestly exists as an entity of Reason only ; its actual existence being found only in that series of individuals in which I have noted the common characteristics. " Dog " is all dogs and yet no particular dog. General Propositions. — Now, this General Concept, it seems to me, precedes both logically and chronologically, general propositions. It is the mother of general pro- positions, thus : The common characteristics, above referred to as found together in each of the series of 1 To this aspect of the general concept we here confine ourselves. Its relations to Cause, Essence, Idea, lie within the sphere of meta- physics. K 146 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. individuals, are a, b, c, d. Consequently the general con- cept Dog contains in itself, ready to be explicated when- ever I choose, the general propositions : — All dogs have a. „ have d. „ have c. „ have d. Note next, that the affirmation of the general concept " Dog " presumes that I have seen all individual dogs and recorded their characteristics. But it is in no man's power to do so. There is, then, manifestly lying buried in the general concept " Dog" an assumption or hypothesis, viz. : This dog, that dog, and a multitude of creatures (to which I originally attached the differentiating name of "dog") represent or stand for " all dogs " ; therefore, " Dog," as a general concept, contajns all dogs. So iirm and rigid is the conviction that I have got the true general concept which exhausts individuals and affirms a class or kind, that if any traveller sent me a picture of a strange animal and called it a dog, I should say at once, " It is not a dog, because though it has a and b and also a certain general sensational resemblance to what are commonly called dogs, it has not c and d, and is therefore not a dog, but some new beast not yet classified. [Some may say that the general proposition must precede the general concept. Doubtless it is silently there, but in its explicated form as a proposition it follows (I think) the general concept, and is an explication of it. For educational purposes this matters little.] The formation of the general concept, apart from its value as the shorthand of reason, is of great significance. It implies a power of Will in discriminating and holding discriminations together in a unity, with a sub-reference to innumerable individuals; a power much greater than any yet brought into operation. The abstraction necessary in percipience and concipience is here quite outdone; VI.] THE GENERAL CONCEPT 147 quantitatively outdone, and also outdone because in hold- ing present to consciousness the general concept, we have now no longer the support of the thing as here and now present to consciousness, but, instead of this, only an entity generated by mind-activity. Comparison. — Now, what have we been silently doing in order to reach this general concept? Evidently com- paring one animal with another. That is to say, we have held present to consciousness certain individual sense-concepts, and, looking from one to the other, we have seen likeness or unlikeness, and have gathered under one general symbolic class or kind-name, all the similars. This is Comparison, which is the basis of generalisa- tion. Looking at a great number of individuals (or facts) which are prima facie like each other, we have found a common expression for them ; which common expression we call a general concept. Spite of many differences, each animal has certain qualities conjoined, a, b, c, d ; therefore a, b, c, d are the common characters, and any word may be the symbol of this conjunction. There is a silent but effective purpose of separation and synthesis quite in advance of the sense-comparison of animals. It is a rational process, though not carried out self-consciously to begin with. Rational comparison, then, may be defined as (strictly speaking) the purposed perception of the relations of individuals in respect of time, place, likeness, and unlikeness. This process, however, is always going on in a vague way, without a deliberate purpose of knowledge. Hence its inaccuracy. The significance of the general concept is great because the formation of it carries with it the whole process of 148 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. inductive reasoning, and its existence renders possible deductive reasoning.^ The importance of the general concept in the ordinary life of man is also great ; because the true measure of our power over things lies in the truth of our general concepts in their final completion. On this the accuracy of our judgments in the affairs of life depends. Its ethical importance again is supreme ; because the general concept is the " form " of ethical ideas, and these constitute at once the motive and the end of all conduct. Further, the importance of a proper understanding of the process of formation is also great ; because, if under- stood as it has been explained above, ethical ideas, however exalted, are not in themselves existent (although they may be objects of contemplation), but are existent only in so far as they make manifest their existence in the particulars of conduct — the daily and hourly life of each of us. They live, they can truly live, only in the particular. You can understand, then, how it is of all things most desirable that in the self-education of our own minds, and the education by us of other minds, we should see to it that they are trained and disciplined in the accurate construction of general concepts. On this depend soundness of judgment and the validity of concrete reasoning. A treatise, De Emendatione Intellectus, might well centre round the general concept. Not only for its own sake, but for its implications ; for this stage of the process of Will in knowing rests on the previous stages, without which it could not emerge ; and it contains also implicitly the ratiocinative function. Then, without the 1 Moreover, relatively to the particular individual, the general concept is the essence or idea of the particular, — that whereby a thing is what it is, and not anything else. This platonic question, it is probable, has not yet been fully worked out. To enter into metaphysical questions here would be manifestly irrelevant. vi.J THE GENERAL CONCEPT 149 accurate concept of the individual, which, again, depends on accurate or true percepts, and these on full and true presentation to sense, the general concept would be hopelessly vitiated : and the vitiation may enter at any one or all of these stages of mind-activity. Principle of Method. — Train the YOUNG IN THE FORMATION OF GENERAL CONCEPTS, AND IN THE ANALYSIS OF THOSE THEY HAVE IMMATURELY FORMED. With this object in view, obey the following rule : — Rule. — Teach generalisations as generalisations ; that is to say , proceed from the particular to the general ; from the concrete individual to the abstract. The tradition-bound teacher of language will say that the abstract syntactical rule of grammar can be learned quite easily by boys. Of course it can — as words ; but it can never be anything but a meaningless collocation of words until it is filled with the concrete individual " instances " which the boy is daily encountering in his studies. And inasmuch as the human mind, as a matter of fact, gets its general and abstract proposition (even if it has to do so retrospectively, i.e. by going back) through particulars, our duty is to lead it to its general proposition along the road or way of particulars. The mind will thus make easier and more solid and more rapid progress in the knowledge of a subject, and will also have an intel- lectual "interest" in the subject. But these are not the sole, nor yet the chief, advantages; for it is only by following the way of reason that we can truly train and discipline reason to the sound and effective exercise of its powers on all the affairs of life. Every now and then we have public men deploring the absence of intellectual interests in young men and women. There can be no doubt that men are born with a mental affinity for certain things and thoughts which, when it is intense, is called a genius for this or that. But the possession of intellectual interests in men generally. 150 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. depends on the time and method of teaching the subjects in which we desire to interest them. The same remarks apply to the teacher of elementary science. Even the humblest school-science consists of generalisations, or aims at them. Unless the pupil is led, step by step, to approach these through particular observa- tions, full and exact, the conclusion, be it in the form of a generalisation or a formula, is not knowledge any more than the case which contains a diamond is the diamond. The great facility which most boys have in appropriating the words and propositions that formulate knowledge, deceives the teacher. Real contact with part}culars, so that the boy himself can of himself draw the scientific conclusion, is alone of any value. Even an unintelligent knowledge of a Greek verb is more disciplinary and more instructive than verbal scientific knowledge. Such knowledge is not real ; and it is only in so far as it presents the real relations of things, and in so far as these are clearly perceived and conceived, that science instruction has any rightful place in the school. The Ratichian rule, "per experimentum omnia," is here absolute. And yet words and formulation are necessary. If, without the help of language to fix and symbolise, we could make little progress on the percipient and concipient planes of mind, how hopeless would be the attempt to convey a generalisation and reasoning without it. Until we formulate thought to ourselves in words, we are not, strictly speaking, thinking, but only striving to think, struggling with thought — "licking," as Montaigne says, "the formless embryo." On this parallelism, or rather interpenetration, of thought and language, rests ultimately all argument for language as an educational discipline; apart, that is to say, from the ethical and aesthetic aspects of language as literature.^ 1 Dr Sully (i. p. 420) refers to a deaf-mute who, before learning the manual signs, reached "the highly abstract idea of Maker and Creator, and applied this to the world or totality of objects about VI.] THE GENERAL CONCEPT 151 Note. — Here I may state explicitly what I have else- where indicated, that the child — indeed, we may say more truly, the infant — begins with general concepts. By this I merely mean that the infant, having seen and named an individual (the totality of impression which is the indi- vidual in sense), forthwith uses that individual image and name as a general. It is a "general" of the "first intention," so to speak ; the business of Reason is to transform it into a " general " of Reason. Unquestionably, the child begins by constituting the individual a general, but, I repeat, this is the provisional " general " of attuition, awaiting the analytic differentiations of percipience. Thus, objects all alike at first sight are gradually found to be different, and the construction of the rational generalisation begins. The first object seen is not a general but an individual which is used as a general on the presentation of fresh objects more or less like. Thus the infant, having once seen and named a cow, calls the four-footed animals which thereafter come before him "cows," until he knows better (as we say).i So vague are sensates, and the first percepts of these sensates, that he sees a general likeness before he begins to differentiate in any close analytic sense. Till he gradually, by the concurrent processes of differentiation and likening, builds up for himself the concept of this and that individual, he is constantly wrong, and the resultant in his consciousness is always confused and inadequate. Still more must this be the case with the process of forming the general concept, which demands much more energy of will applied to things than the individual concept does; for he has to compare, analyse, and discriminate with a view to the integration of a new entitative unity in consciousness. Not only is this process him." If my analysis of percipience in A/«/, Nov. et Vet. be correct, this is not impossible. He had the feeling of Being-universal, and the perception and conception of the multiplicity of objects as g^rounded in Being-universal. ' Why does a child see generals vaguely, and only slowly advance to differentiation and true generals ? Because he is in the sensational stage, the victim of impression, whereas the analytic act is an act oir Will directed against the object, and is necessarily of slow and gradual emergence. 152 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. vi. one demanding in itself more energy of will, but it silently involves rational processes. It is evident that the result must be vitiated by all prior errors in percipience and concipience — nay, also, by the inadequateness of the primary sensation. Concepts, both of the individual and of the general, are allowed by the inactive mind to form themselves (so to speak) as vague impressions, and the result is fatal to adequate and accurate thinking. We educate in order to correct all this. We do not, however, wish to interfere too much with the natural flow of mind, but only to regulate and direct it ; and, as the young grow older, we further wish to rouse in them a self-conscious purpose of attaining a knowledge which shall be exact and true. The next movement of Mind in knowing is Reasoning, Inductive and Deductive, already contained in the general concept, but now explicit and self-conscious. Having treated this briefly, we shall then speak of Cause as ground of things, just as reasoning contains the ground of conclusions ; these, too, in their conjoined operation (for they are at bottom the same process), giving unity to knowledge. LECTURE VII. MAN-MIND — continued. 5. — REASONING OR RATIOCINATION — MEDIATE AFFIRMATION. We now have to deal with the final processes of Reason, viz., Reasoning, and the ascertainment of the Grounds or Causes of things. As I am not attempting a systematic treatise on Psychology, but rather exhibiting, in lectures, the critical movements of the self-conscious subject in reducing the world of sensation — all experience, inner and outer — to itself, I shall take the privilege of a lecturer and briefly repeat, though in a slightly different form, what I have already said on general concepts, because a, consideration of these is, it seems to me, the simplest introduction to the reasoning process. Think what an unfortunate gift the power of acquiring percepts and individual concepts would be if we stopped there. The whole complex world would be an infinite series of individuals. If we, as endowed with Will, felt an impulse to go further, memory would break down. You could not speak of " hill," or " dog," or " cow," but only of certain individual objects one after the other, each with its own specific name. As a matter of fact, individual things outside are all in community with other things, and share their properties. The fire is hot, so is the sun ; the grate is black, so is a 154 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. negro's face or a starless night sky. Many animals are so like each other that we popularly say they are the same animal ; not numerically, but yet the same, e.g. one cow is like another. There are slight differences of size and colour, it may be, but they are substantially alike (what- ever " substantially '' may mean ) ; and we apply the same name to all of them, though as individual objects there are hundreds of millions of them. This is, as we have seen, GENERALISING, or the form- ing of GENERAL CONCEPTS ; grouping individuals as kinds or classes. When I speak of a cow, e.g. in this way, "The cow gives milk," " the cow is good eating," and so forth, I do not specify in thought or speech any particular cow more than another, but all cows whatsoever. Thus, under cover of one word used as a symbol, I am able to speak of millions of things. Now, how do I get at this admirable time-saving thought-saving result ? Thus : I have perceived an individual cow : nay more, I have conceived it ; that is to say, I have perceived certain qualities which it possesses, and these qualities — e.g. living, ruminant, four-footed, cloven-hoofed, large-uddered {abed e) — are grasped together as a unity or concept in my mind, which reality I have called a "cow." But numerous animals pass before me, and I perceive such a resemblance of qualities in certain of them that I feel that they are not only similar animals, but substantially the same, though numerically distinct. All these similar individuals I call cows ; and then I find that I can talk of cow, or " the cow," in a general way ; meaning all cows, but yet no one particular cow more than another. This thing of which I speak is the cow as a class or kind. The word cow is now no longer simply an individual sense- concept, but a GENERAL CONCEPT, and the name "cow" is a general or class name. VII.] REASONING OR RATIOCINATION 155 There is, manifestly, in this process a high energy of will as a sheer power holding things together; and that, without the advantage of a sensible support actually present to consciousness, as in the sense-concept. But this general concept " cow," though it is one word denoting a unity of particulars, contains, we said, implicitly the general proposition, "All animals called 'cow' have a, b, c, d, e." The general concept then contains in it and yields general propositions, which have for their sign the word " all." In saying " All cows have cloven feet," we merely say out at large what already had been put by us, as the result of our perceptions, into the general concept " cow." " The cow " = all cows. " Cloven-footed " was one of the qualities or characters which we, on comparison, found always present in a certain number of individual animals, and was one of the grounds for our throwing them all together under the name, class, kind, or general concept, " cow." It is as if I had put ten pebbles into a bag, one of them red, and then said, that bag contains ten pebbles, and one of them is red. I knew what I put in, and so I know what I shall take out. Many difficult and subtle questions arise in common with this generalising operation.^ Enough for our purpose to note that I have reached the general proposition, " All cows are cloven-footed," " All cows are large-uddered," " All cows are ruminant," and so on, by perceiving the several characters in each of the animals presented to me, and which I have classed as cows ; or rather, under a general concept and name " cow." It is thus, as we have seen, through the perception of ' For example, as to the complex of qualities which constitutes the general concept cow. A gentleman arrives from the Antipodes to show me a cow which has solid hoofs like a horse. Another arrives from Spitzbergen to show me one which has a thick coating of fur, and so on, and so on. I shall pass this question as well as others which are rather of metaphysical import. 156 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. the particular or individual that we reach the general proposition, and that the general proposition has meaning to us — is alive to us. If we do not see the general proposition, in and through its particulars, it is simply so many words — voces et prceterea nihil. Of this again in a minute or two, under " Induction." As to Comparison, let me add to what I said in the preceding lecture : — We said in a previous lecture that animals were able to compare ; but it was the comparison of one sensation with another, — a vague indefinite process on the plane of sensation; and also very restricted for want of Will to separate, to perceive, and to hold percepts. They sense likeness and unlikeness of objects. The likeness and unlikeness is imprinted on them. But they make no further progress, because they cannot function free Will : consequently, they do not perceive and conceive objects ; that is to say, know them by separating, seizing, appre- hending, and placing them back in their conscious subject, as a thing taken possession of and labelled. What enables the child to shoot ahead of the animal and perform this process ? Will, and nothing but will ; a free movement issuing from the conscious subject, which spiritual dynamic constitutes his differentia, and enables him to advance and to conquer. By dint of this will he perceives and affirms relations, and also the fact of relation as an abstract. By this he holds each percept or concept close to him and perceives and affirms (not merely feels) the differences. The holding of two or more objects close to consciousness in order to perceive their likeness or unlike- ness is, we have said. Comparison. But it is no longer now the comparison of animal sensation — a mere feeling, a comparison made by the thing (so to speak) on the reacting conscious subject — but the comparison of perception and conception — the comparison in which Will, the conquer- ing energy evolved in the conscious subject, plays from first to last the leading, because the conditioning, part. It seizes the qualities which are the common characteristics VII.] REASONING OR RATIOCINATION 157 of individuals, and holds them apart from the individuals. This is the Abstraction of generalisation.^ Note. — But before going farther, let me point out that while the above is the order of the process whereby general propositions are first reached, it is for the most part an unself-conscious operation. The forming of percepts is unself-conscious, the forming of concepts is unself-conscious, and the forming of general concepts and the general propositions implicit in them is unself- conscious. By this I mean that we go on doing all these things, in the first instance, without any set purpose, but only under the general stimulus of Will-reason. But man being a self-conscious being, can become aware of his acts and propose to himself deliberately to perform these acts, with a view to knowing things. For example, I become through sensation aware of a great many objects, which, though somewhat differing, yet roughly speaking, may all be called " grass " : and I may deliberately proceed to collect all these objects, and endeavour to find out what they have in common. And after careful observation of each of the different, yet similar, grasses, I come to the conclusion, " All grasses are a, b, c, d" etc. One differs from all the rest in respect of f, another in respect of g, another in respect of f, g, and so on, but they all have the qualities a, b, c, d, etc., in common. Thus I reach a general proposition purposely and self-consciously. The object of psychology of the Intelligence (in which are necessarily included the fundamental principles of logic) is to bring into view the various operations which mind carries on in order to reach knowledge or truth. Thereby we extend knowledge itself by a knowledge of that which is the organ of knowledge ; the most interesting, surely, of all objects of inquiry to the being whose differentiation and prerogative it is to know. And besides this ; by ' No dog or horse can speak at all, or name even one quality ; still less can either of them say or think, " All cows have cloven feet." And yet, I think it by no means impossible that certain sounds should emanate from animals as associated with certain individual things, just as they associate a definite meaning (within certain limitations) with words they hear. A terrier has a very lucid comprehension of the word " rats," and so on. He has never yet said " rats," however. 158 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. revealing the process we stimulate to the correct use of that process, and guard ourselves against prevalent and almost inevitable abuses of it ; for the human mind is always packed full of generalisations, a great many received from parents, newspapers, and other sources — all of them provisional, most of them quite wrong and leading to endless errors of opinion and conduct The lesson to be drawn by the teacher, as I have already said, is this, that general concepts and general- isations are mere words or symbols and nothing more, except in so far as the particulars are known : this is essential to , their being distinct and clear. In other words, let general concepts and general propositions be taught in the way in which they are formed. Deductive Reasoning. The transition to the next movement of mind is best made, and its dependence or generalisation is best seen, through a consideration of the act of judging. Judgment and Deductive Reasoning. — From the very first we have been judging — always judging. To judge is to predicate one thing of another. But even in the first percept ever formed by us, we affirmed the identity of a thing with itself. Judgment is also affirmation, which, when put in words, we call a proposi- tion ; e.g. " a horse is a quadruped." The first limb of the proposition we call the Subject, and the second the Predicate. Every successive movement of mind is by way of judgments ; for of everything, whether it be a percept, a concept, or general concept, we say that "it is," or "is not." It is unnecessary for our educational purpose to go into the subject of judgments. Indeed, the subject is introduced here only because it seems to be the most natural and easiest approach' to the apprehension of the vn.] REASONING OR RATIOCINATION 159 process of Reasoning, or the Syllogism. For a large number of our judgments are mediate judgments ; ^ that is to say, they acquire truth and validity, not by the direct or immediate perception of the fact before us, but through other judgments. I am referring to those judgments which involve general concepts. For example, I say, " This tree is an oak," without realising to myself the ground of my affirmation. If I realise that the ground of my judgment has been the observation that it produces gall-nuts, it is at once manifest that my judgment is mediate or syllogistic, and when explicitly stated is this : All trees that bear gall-nuts are oaks. This is a gall-nut bearing tree : Therefore, this tree is an oak. These three affirmations, propositions, or judgments we call the major premiss, the minor premiss or subsumption, and the conclusion. Thus, in a multitude of ordinary colloquial judgments, we are always syllogising without realising that we are doing so. The process which has been illustrated above is mediate judgment, or reasoning, or ratiocination, or the syllogistic process (deductive). If a traveller in Central Africa writes that he met with a strange animal which was yet to all intents and purposes a cow, then I know that that animal must have the qualities a, b, c, d, etc., which he and I, and the rest of us, have agreed to regard as constituting a cow, as distinguished from every other animal. I then proceed thus : All cows have a, b, c, d, etc. This new animal is (I am assured) a cow : Therefore, this new animal has a, b, c, d, etc. Or, you may ask me the question, Has a new animal ' AH judgments are at bottom mediate ; but to show this would lead us aside into metaphysics (^Met. Nov. et Vet.). 160 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. lately found in Central Africa cloven hoofs ? I say, What does the traveller call it? You answer, He says it is a cow. Then I reply. It has cloven hoofs; because cloven- hoofed is one of the qualities which, we have agreed, go to constitute the animal cow. Thus : All cows have cloven hoofs. This new animal is a cow : Therefore, this new animal has cloven hoofs. This is Deductive Reasoning; and its truth depends on the truth of the general proposition under which we conclude as to this or that predicate of the individual which we range or subsume under the general proposition. We are simply taking out of the general concept " oak " or " cow," or the general proposition (in relation to a particular case), what we have already put into it. You see, then, how careful men must be of their general propositions and concepts, which, in truth, are mostly wrong ; and even when they are right enough for colloquial and provisional purposes, they are wrong scientifically. Your syllogism may be in point ol form quite correct; but if your general proposition is defective, to that extent your particular conclusion is defective and really incorrect. How then did we get this general proposition on which so much depends? inductively. Inductive Reasoning. Here let us go back to the general proposition, " All cows are cloven-hoofed," which was extracted out of our general concept "cow," the moment we had made it. There was here a secret process going on which has to be brought to light. We had been gradually noting (as was pointed out) the qualities which we might predicate of an animal called a cow to justify us in calling other animals "cows," and not horses, or anything else. Among other things we VII.] REASONING OR RATIOCINATION 161 noted "cloven-hoofed" in each individual animal that passed before us. Then the general concept cow mani- festly yielded at the very moment of its formation the proposition, "All cows are cloven-hoofed." We might not put it in words, but the proposition was silently there, contained in our act and the conclusion of that act. And it was so contained because we had examined, one after another, a large number of instances. We had virtually said this animal, which impresses us in such or such a way, we call a cow, and it is cloven-hoofed. Animal No. 2, which similarly impresses us, and which we also call a cow, is also cloven-hoofed, and so on. And then we concluded, " All cows are cloven-hoofed." Now, had we seen all cows ? Certainly not. Accord- ingly the process must have been this : This cow, that cow, and the other cows have cloven hoofs. Those cows which we have observed represent all the cows not yet observed : Therefore, all cows are cloven-hoofed. This process is evidently the same as the syllogistic process whereby we affirmed confidently that the cow in the African desert was cloven-hoofed, simply because it was a cow, and because all cows are cloven-hoofed. But it is the reverse process. It is a mediated general judg- ment, mediated through particulars. It is a process whereby we reach the general judgment or proposition through particular propositions or judgments. This is Inductive Reasoning, and is the same process by which we formed the general concept, in the formation of which inductive reasoning was implicit. Thus reasoning (syllogistic) goes inductively from particular to general, and also deductively from generals to particulars ; and the concluding judgment, whethet particular or general, is always mediated. Thus by means of these general propositions as induced L 162 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. from particular propositions, and by means of particular propositions which may be deduced from them, we acquire a kind of mental shorthand which gives us great power over our materials of perception and conception, and enables us to connect things together in a reasoned whole. So strohg is this impulse of rational mind that its ideal aim is always a reasoned system of things — a cosmic connected whole. But we have always to be on our guard, because our general proposition may be on wrong lines. It may be defective in its particulars, to begin with. Such general propositions, in truth, are always provisional in their character, and to that extent have an arbitrary look.^ Now, at this point we might, as finite intelligences, rest satisfied. We can reduce the multitude of objects by which we are surrounded to percepts and concepts: we can determine their relations, and gather these together into general concepts and general propositions ; and further, we can move freely from one thing to another, and arrange all our knowledge in a convenient way, as a connected rational system. But this does not suffice : there still awaits us the final and consummating movement of mind — the mediation, not merely of judgments, but of the real ; or Causal Induction. Before considering this final reason-movement, let me again impress on you the bearing of these discussions on educational method. The proposition, " Grass is a living organism," in so far as it is the conclusion of a deductive syllogism, is entirely dependent on the prior general propositions, " all plants are living organisms," and " grass is a plant." The proposition is manifestly analytic, for it * It is only when we are finally able to name the qualities which a cow musehavt in itself to be a cow, the qualities "essential" to a cow, that we are entitled to say that we have a right to a general proposi- tion which is irrefragable. And this "essence" we can never get hold of. Yet enough is given for the ordinary purposes of life and knowledge. vn.J REASONING OR RATIOCINATION 163 is already contained in the general concept " Plant." If grass be an entirely novel experience to me, all that I have to ascertain is whether it is a plant or not, and then I know the rest. This is, as we have seen, what is called a mediate knowledge or a mediate syllogistic judgment, because it is not direct but mediated through another knowledge, viz., the general proposition. Now, the world and human affairs and relations are excessively complex, and, in order to save ourselves from over-pressure by particulars, we are always taking refuge in general con- cepts and general propositions. It is evident, then, that if we are not excessively careful in forming our general concepts and propositions, we shall fall into endless error, — error, too, of a particularly fatal kind, because, the logical form being correct, we are apt to stand by our erroneous conclusion as also really correct. For, as I have endeavoured to show in the specific educational reference, these general concepts, and the general propositions issuing from them, are, in truth, inductions. That is to say, they are the tying up in a bundle and labelling of a large number of particular percepts and concepts. The general concept and general propositions, as such, thus give us no new knowledge as regards the particulars (though they may seem to do so), for each individual percept and concept is presumed to have been seen by us ; they merely give us this new knowledge, viz., that all the particular things are the same, or similar, in certain respects. Neither the inductive result, accordingly, which is a general, nor the deductive result, which is a particular, proposition, gives us any new knowledge of things beyond the fact that certain things not within our immediate purview are alike in certain respects. The syllogism, in truth, whether inductive or deductive, is simply a way of first formulating and then utilising, knowledge already presumed to be gained by the observation of particular things. Accordingly, the truth, of every judgment and proposition, whether it be 164 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. a general or a particular, depends, ultimately, on the exactness or truth of our individual percepts, concepts, and general concepts; and it is, consequently, difficult to exaggerate the educational importance of exactness in percipience and concipience. There is a mediating process of mind which is universally recognised as adding to our knowledge, — a mediation not through propositions, but through realities, — the mediation of Cause ; but the truth is, that if we trace any proposition whatsoever back to its origin, it too exhibits real relations, and, only in so far as it does so, is it of any value. The formation of the habit of exact perceiving and conceiving is necessary, not only as a foundation for sound reasoning, but also to enable us to detect in a complex presentation or statement the important vital points. Our knowledge is facilitated and advanced by bringing new cases under already known generalisations. Accordingly, in a new case, we have to detect in the object before us those characteristics which, spite of its apparent novelty, bring it under some general concept or proposition through certain attributes of likeness. This demands an active and penetrating observation of its various features. A man who can see his way to an accurate mediate judg- ment, by bringing the new particulars before him under some general head, is said to be a man of sound judgment To judge soundly is one of the highest functions of intellect, because it involves accurate discrimination and perception of the elements in the thing before us, the possession of general concepts which are "in their content clear and distinct, and, thereafter, the power of relating the particular to the general with a true insight into similarity. The man who can do this supremely well in science, philosophy, or politics, is the man of genius. In the ordinary affairs of life, again, the man who can rpadily detect the characters, more or less hidden, of the particular case before him, and bring it under its solving vii.J REASONING OR RATIOCINATION 165 universal, is the prince of practical men. But it is not always an easy task. A man may cultivate a solemn expression, and have always the air of pronouncing sound judgments, and may thus easily acquire a reputation with undiscerning people as a man of sound " common sense." But the reputation is constantly ill-founded. The men who " look wiser than any man ever was," are often to be distrusted. Sometimes they are not truly in earnest in their desire to get the truth, but merely to play the rdle of judicially-minded men, and they will consequently, after due shaking of the head, utter a commonplace which solves nothing. They are ambitious, not of truth, but of a " reputation." Then, again, we have men of honest and truly sound judgment ; but this within a very limited range of principles. Their area of vision is circumscribed, and they unconsciously hasten to reduce the particular question before them to one or other of the few formulas which constitute their stock-in-trade. They are to be respected as the necessary ballast of society. A judge on the bench is thus artificially limited, though, personally, he may see beyond the law-circumscribed horizon. The truly sound judgment on the complex thing before a man will be found to be, for the most part, predictive. It is justified by the sequel. And this remark applies, not only to ordinary affairs, to commerce, to politics, and ethics, but to scientific investigations. For such a judgment there is needed the greatest possible exactness in matters of fact, truthfulness of purpose, and, above all, a regulated imagination. The issues, both in the sphere of pure knowledge and of action, are always present to the supreme judgment. Educationally, then, it is difficult, as I have said, to exaggerate the importance of exactness of mind. It is also clear that a man cannot be called educated in the highest sense, unless his education has been directed to this end of sound judgment. The education must be not only intensive and exact, but extensive in respect of the 166 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. material of knowledge. However effective the formal training and discipline of mind may be, a man is yet paralysed, if he is not familiar with the material on which he works. Says George Eliot in Brother Jacob : " Say what you will about the identity of the reasoning process in all branches of thought, or about the advantage of coming to things with a fresh mind, the adjustment of water to flour and of heat to pastry is not the best preparation for the office of prime minister." But both discipline and knowledge combined will fail to produce the highest result in educated and capable men, if there be not the ethical impulse and the ethical aim ; so closely are the intellectual and the ethical interwoven. There must be a purpose of truth-finding. In teaching, then, the endless affirmations or judgments current in ordinary intercourse and in literature have to be traced to their general ground (or, as it is sometimes called, " principle "), and not accepted simply because they are as propositions clear and intelligible. If a man does not carry on this process while reading or conversing, he is the victim of endless fallacies. Accordingly, we have to call en the mind we are educating to analyse what is before it, to justify it, and to vindicate its truth by making explicit its premisses, and so reconstituting the synthesis for itself Herein lies the training and disciplining of ratiocination ; and, when we do this, we find ourselves thrown back on percepts, and individual concepts, and wholly at the mercy of these primary acts of intelligence which lie at the foundation of the general. Reality is truth, and truth is reality. Thus, let me repeat ad nauseam, there is forced upon us at this stage, as at all stages of education, the supreme value of exercise and discipline in accurate discrimination — not with a view to knowledge, but to a habit of mind. And it is solely because certain studies promote this {e.g. object-lessons VII.] REASONING OR RATIOCINATION 167 and science-lessons), that their place in the school can be justified ; not because of the knowledge they give. Principle of Method. — TEACH REASONINGS AS REASON- INGS, THAT IS TO SAY, ANALYSE THE PROPOSITIONS BEFORE YOU, AND MAKE EXPLICIT THEIR RATIONAL BASIS; ALSO ANALYSE THE TRAIN OF REASONING TO BE FOUND IN A PARAGRAPH OR CHAPTER. It is a process of Analysis and (syllogistic) synthesis ; in other words an Analytico-synthetic process. LECTURE VIII. MAN-MIND — continued. 6. — CAUSAL INDUCTION. The proposition or judgment, " Fire burns wood," is said to be a causal judgment. And so it is in a sense. But as it is a mere observation of the sequence of two events, the former of which controls the appearance of the latter, I would prefer here (in view of educational applications) to call it a dynamical judgment. Now, the whole range of statical and dynamical judg- ments, even were it within our grasp, gives us only a superficial and preliminary knowledge of things. The central impulse of reason is towards the affirmation of the ground or cause of things. The issue of reason is an answer to the question. What is A, or B, or C ? and the " is " involves Cause.^ The dynamical, judgment does not satisfy us ; for it is a mere observation that one appearance always follows another. The true causal knowledge of a thing is the comprehen- sion of the how and why of the sequence; and to this all other knowledge is merely preparatory. This kind of 1 When I see a thing in its identity of cause, process, and end, I know it, and, so far as it is concerned, there is nothing more to be done. I would fain rest : and, in point of fact, I would then lie down and rest, were it not for the infinite relations of the said thing, and the ultimate cosmic question which is always luring on Will-reason in its free and unresting activity in search of an absolute synthesis of experience. 168 LECT. VIII.] CAUSAL INDUCTION 169 knowledge is by way of pre-eminence called Science, Sdentia, or the knowledge. This search for causes of visible existences, results, or effects, is the task of the man of science in all the departments of human experience and endeavour ; and not in physics alone. We feel that we truly know a " thing," only when we know it in its cause or causes. That tree, for example, I perceive, conceive, connect with its general concept " Tree " and its higher concept "Plant," and, through generalised propositions within whose sphere it falls, I can reason to this or that conclusion about it. For example, I do not see its roots ; but I know it has them. Why ? Because it is a tree. I do not see its fruit ; but I know it has, or will have, it. But what I now want to know is, what are the causes which underlie the visible, and bring about stem, branch, leaf, and fruit ? Until I have ascertained this, I do not really know the tree. I am not yet at the end of my quest. Why does that branched object before me bring forth fruit? You answer, " Because it is a tree." I reply, not so ; that is the reason ^Yij you say that it brings forth fruit. It will not do to confound the general concept with cause. Mind might possibly be so constructed as to stop short at general concepts and the ratiocinative process made possible by them. When we speak (Platonically) of the general concept as idea or essence of each of a class of objects, we are silently insinuating the causal notion, whereas the General Concept may be, and generally is, a selection of mere superficial static and dynamic resem- blances. The causal energy which constitutes and differenti- ates a tree is itself a general concept (for it is true of all individual trees), but it is as general logical concept which goes further back and down into the nature of trees than the general concept which is the common possession of all, and the medium of intercourse. We seek now the causal ground of the effect " tree " — a general concept which constitutes Science, The cellular structure, and its active 170 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. relations to its environment, and the reproductive necessity in the plant may, I suppose, be s^id to be the cause of growth, and flower, and fruit. Suppose I could name this cause by the one symbol A. A is the cause of the fruit-bearing; but even of this as the true and necessary cause of the fruit-bearing I cannot speak with confidence until I have further ascertained Aow it does it. It is necessary to see the process at work, and we shall then see what the sequence which we call Cause and Effect must be} How do we proceed ? There are many events that precede what we see. We examine these, separate one from the other, and, carrying our observation through a number of instances, and exclud- ing first this antecedent as the cause, and then that and the other antecedent, we finally isolate the true cause ; and, by further examination and experiment, we confirm what we have detected. This is a process of analysis resulting in the synthesis of cause and effect, which synthesis now constitutes for me the true knowledge of that particular thing. It is an analytico-synthetic process ; but it may be also called a process of induction, because we examine numerous "cases" in order to find the truth, and the result is a generalisation that includes all possible cases. We pile " instance " upon " instance," and we also conclude with a general proposition, saying, " All things which are precisely similar to this experience before me are caused in this particular way (uniformity of nature)." And, at this point, enters my previous generalisation, general concept of objects into trees, or more generally still, plants ; and I say with confidence, " All plants grow thus ; if they do not, they are not plants." , In ascertaining the cause of the visible thing called fruit, you examine many trees which produce fruit, but you do this simply because you thereby see similar objects ^ Must be, for the true causal relation of antecedent and sequent is one of identity with a difference. VIII.] CAUSAL INDUCTION 171 in differing circumstances. You take advantage of the experiments (so to speak) which nature makes ; and, if nature gives you no ready-made experiments, you make them for yourself, as in physics and chemistry : but this, if we had clearer and subtler vision, would probably not be necessary. One " case " would then suffice. As a matter of fact, however, and as a substitute for my limited vision, we go from tree to tree, observing closely and applying our tests, in order to discover the cause ; or to verify what we think we have already discovered. At bottom, however, we have simply been analysing or taking to pieces the complex system of antecedents which have for their invariable sequent, fruit, eliminating what we ascertain not to be the true efficient antecedents ; and this we do until we have isolated the true antecedent or antecedents which being present, the result or effect appears, and which being absent, it does not appear. Having done this, we then (as has been said above) take advantage of our previous operations in generalisation, and say, " All fruit is produced by like causes." Why ? Be- cause " all fruit " is simply a gathering together in thought of a great many individual things which are already known to be repetitions (it may be with , slight differences) of the same thing. I may now put the process in another way : — We generalise the statical and dynamical qualities of things. But when we seek the cause of anything, we look at it not only dynamically, but as grounded in its ante- cedent, and necessarily arising out of that antecedent. We regard B as an event which is brought about by some antecedent event. There is a sequence. The antecedent may be a, b, c, d, e,f, etc. You have the thing or event B before you, and you put it into ever so many different cir- cumstances, and detect that antecedent circumstance or event which never fails to appear, while all the others are sometimes there, sometimes not there. We fasten on this common permanent antecedent among many variables. 172 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. eliminating the variables, and isolating the common ante- cedent as the Cause, which we shall call a. We can then very often test our results by putting a into operation, and seeing whether B follows. But although we may be con- vinced of the necessity of the causal connection, we can never see it, until we see how it is that a must produce B. Our concept or synthesis of B is now a B. There are a great many. false causal connections current in the world. The function of Science is to reveal the true and necessary. In ascertaining the necessary causal antecedent of any thing or event, it would appear at first sight that there is no inductive generalisation, and that the term " induction " is incorrectly applied. And we can easily understand (as I have already said) that, if possessed of greater intellectual power of perceptive discrimination than we actually have, we should be able to separate or isolate the true causal antecedent of any result by merely looking at the single experience before us long enough. But, even then, the. process, however apparently intuitive, would be as follows ; the cause is not d nor e norf, but it is a. It is the function of genius to seize quickly, and almost by a kind of intuition, the true cause. But even genius, and still more manifestly the ordinary investigator, is always generalising. For he looks at a, c, d, e,f, etc., and sees how each behaves. Now, this is equivalent to looking at a series of similar cases, and finding what is, among many variables, the common antecedent fact present always. Isolating that, he calls it « .• a is the cause of B. The investigator has thus generalised from the observation of instances the common invariable antecedent, and causal, event. The process, then, whereby we find the cause of any existence or change may be rightly enough called a process of induction, for even where only one " case " is necessary, it stands for all cases, and the result is a generalisation, for the causal formula covers a mass of VIII.] CAUSAL iNDUCTrON 173 particulars. And yet the fundamental reasonrmovement is one of analysis and synthesis. You will now see that the generalisation which yields a general concept and general propositions, e.g. "All horses neigh," is an induction of statical facts. The induction which yields the causal antecedent of an existence or event is an induction of dynamical facts or sequent movements, which are determining movements, e.g. " Heat consumes wood." We have been seeking for a common cause of a great many like particulars. Whenever there is a conjunc- tion of heat and wood we now know what is to happen. But, further, we have not satisfied the causal impulse of reason until we have ascertained how the antecedent works so as to make necessary the sequent. We thus get the true and final causal synthesis of the two things. Note. — This causal conception completes the knowledge of a thing. In the mind-process, in so far as rational, it is the primary form of knowing the particular in its most elementary stage, and it is also the final and ultimate form in which we grasp the total of things — a One Cause out of which all differences emerge — the unity in all difference. Until the intellect reaches to this conception of universal causal law as explicitly present to consciousness, it has not completed its education, for it does not know God in the world. The religious idea is the final aim of the education of the rational, as well as of the ethical, in man. Principle of Method. — Complete instruction THROUGH CAUSES ; FOR THE KNOWLEDGE OF A THING IS COMPLETE, AND INTELLECT CAN BE SATISFIED ONLY IN THE APPREHENSION OF CAUSE. Remember, however, that all educational method is governed by the principle which requires us to follow the order of the growth of mind (which is also the order of the growth of brain) ; ^ and, consequently that the age at ' See Lecture XI. seq. 174 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. which a boy is to study things in their causes is a question to be anxiously considered. Mere dynamical relations of sequence, however, are among the earliest experiences of mind, and the causal in this superficial sense may be early introduced into educa- tion. Again, one element in the causal conception is purpose — the use which any concrete thing serves ; and this, being always concrete and obvious, may also be early utilised for educational purposes. This rests on a wide and discarded theology ; but by bringing to light relations, it promotes the causal activity of mind. The superficial aspect of cause may be called for educational purposes, the relation of purpose and sequence. For example, in an early object-lesson on tea, we speak of tea and its uses ; but ere long we may extend these sequences backwards to the place which yields tea and the way it comes to us, etc. Even when we have made up our minds as to the age for beginning strictly causal or science studies, we must bear in mind that sense and the concrete, and percipience, and concipience comparison must always have their claims satisfied before we proceed to abstract conceptions. And, accordingly, all science teaching which is not a series of experiments and essentially heuristic, is simply word- teaching and charlatanism. A so-called cause may be to a boy merely one more fact, which is of no more significance for discipline than a second aorist, and of little significance for knowledge, save in so far as it is experimentally ascertained. I should say that (setting aside exceptional boys and exceptional teachers) a boy cannot begin to study scientifically with advantage even the elements of physiography and of plant-knowledge till his sixteenth year. The preparation for this will be found in object- lessons which have to do with percepts and concepts, and relations, of an external and sequential character merely. When he passes beyond the explanation of the facts of everyday experience, he, even at this age, wastes his time. vni.] CAUSAL INDUCTION 175 Note. — It is the causal conception which relates each thing and event to the whole of experience or the universe, just as the syllogism relates particulars to universality. And the final act of knowledge would be a world-view in which all particulars would be seen in a unity of relation and cause. LECTURE IX. 7. — SURVEY OF THE PROCESSES OF REASON IN ORDER TO SHOW THAT THEY ARE EACH AND ALL ANALYTICO-SYNTHETIC IN THEIR CHARACTER. This, as resting on a generalisation of the nature of each successive step in mind activity (the will-process), is a governing principle. Principle of Method. — Teach ANALYTICO - SYN- THETICALLY. See Appendix for the materials of this lecture. To introduce the argument here would weight the text too much, and is also unnecessary for educational purposes, if the teacher will take the statement for true. ne LECTURE X. UNFOLDING OF RATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, OR- ORDER OF INTELLECTUAL GROWTH IN TIME. The successive stages or periods of mental development from infancy to maturity have now to be considered. " n esprit, non plus que le corps, ne parte que ce quHl peut porter" says Rousseau. And again, " Laissez mtlrir I'enfance dans les enfans " ; to which we may add, " Let boyhood ripen in boys, youthhood in youths, and man- hood in men." Doubtless, if you are to educate, you may and must anticipate a little ; but not press. We shall find that the periods of reason-evolution pass into each other, and can only be very roughly marked off. (See note at end, of this Lecture.) Speaking generally, however, the time order is indicated by the logical order of the successive movements of intelligence in knowing, as these have been exhibited in the preceding pages. If we regard the logical movements of intelligence, as also the chronological, we, manifestly, simplify things very much. It is on the formal process of mind that we can alone rest any scheme of the order of growth. Keeping in view the fact that the whole mind is always and at all stages present, zxi^L that it is only the successive dominancy of activities that we profess to indicate, the movements may, then, be roughly arranged thus : — 1. Babehood : The period of Sensation and Attuition (one year). 2. Infancy : («) Perception and Comparison ; {U) Sense- Conception (from the second year, when speech begins, to 177 M 178 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. the eighth year, the period of second dentition) : (c) Relational Conception, i.e., an interest in the superficial relations of things including dynamical sequence, and involving active comparison and judgment. The whole of this period corresponds to the duration of the Infant School. 3. Childhood : The tendency to form General Concepts and to Generalisation and Reasoning is active (from the eighth to the fifteenth year, the age of puberty). This period corresponds to the duration of the Primary School, and is divided into two parts — the Lower Primary, from the eighth to the twelfth year, and the Upper Primary, from the twelfth to the fifteenth year. A great advance is observable in the twelfth year. 4. Boyhood and Girlhood, or the Juvenile Period : Generalising and Reasoning are dominant, and the perception of true Cause and Effect comes into play (from the fifteenth to the eighteenth year). This period corresponds to that of the Secondary or High School. 5. Adolescence : All the functionings of mind in full operation, and with the further tendency to form ideas, and to co-ordinate knowledge into the unity of science (to the twenty-second year). This period corresponds to that of University life. Thereafter Manhood and Womanhood.^ Note I. — Adaptation of Instruction. — The principle has already been laid down that all education and all instruc- tion — intellectual, moral, and religious alike, are, if they are to be effective, to be carefully adapted to the stage of mental development which the pupil may have reached as well as to his already acquired knowledge. But the doctrine of the adaptation of instruction to mental growth generally, extends also to every lesson we give. For the lesson of to-day must be adapted to the growth of the mind in the knowledge of the specific subject we are teaching. In acquiring the knowledge of any one subject ' The physiological relations of this Development of Mind are worthy of consideration. X.J UNFOLDING OF RATIONAL INTELLIGENCE 179 of instruction — nay, of any one lesson in that subject — the mind of the pupil has to grow to a knowledge through a process. It has, so to speak, to grow into the knowledge which you are endeavouring to communicate, and the order of your teaching is dependent on this fact. In the class before a teacher, some are quick and ready ; others slow and backward : but it does not follow that the latter are more stupid than the former. The slowness of some may, doubtless, be due to want of attention; but, even with the best will to attend, some minds are slow partly by nature, partly because you are requiring them to take a step in advance for which they have not been properly prepared by the understanding of previous lessons in the same subject. If you do not meet this difficulty at the time, but insist on going on, the result is that the slow minds (which, after all, may be the best minds) are left behind, and soon form what you regard as the stupid and hopeless half of your class. The teacher is, probably, himself to blame for this. These remarks are naturally suggested by the fact of the gradual growth of mind generally; for there is not only a gradual growth of power generally, but a growth in relation to the particular subject of instruction. And I would say, that neither the growth of mind nor of its knowledge of a subject is a dynamic assimilative growth so much as a rational assimilative growth. Even the child asks the Why and Wherefore, because he is essentially a reason pushing its way through the unmeaning multiplicity of sensation. He is content, however, with the proximate visible and tangible explanation of any fact; but, as he grows older, he is always reasoning and connecting the facts of experience into some sort of a crude relational system. The educator has to guide and satisfy this rational impulse. But, at the same time, he has to beware of leaping over periods of growth. On the other hand, he must not treat the boy as a child. For example, the rationalising period which gives rational or scientific unity to the knowledge of even any one subject is the University stage of the life of mind ; but long before this, rational conceptions of things — partial, it may be, but true so far as they go — can be helped into activity. It is because this is neglected so much, in the secondary period 180 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. especially, that interest flags, and that boys of seventeen and eighteen are often essentially uneducated. I fully grant what is matter of common observation, that a rational comprehension of things cannot be elicited in the school in the departments of the Abstract or Formal (save in special cases) ; but assuredly in the Real, e.g. Geography and Physiography, in History, in Economics, and Morality, general ideas (if I may so call them) — that is to say, generalisations which reveal the connections of things and give a rational and unifying view of human environment and man's duty in the midst of it, can certainly be given. The boy is then, so far, educated. But this cannot be done all at once. The materials of instruction and education must have engaged his attention for years before the boy can be even introduced to general ideas. Education is a process, but it is also a progress, and if you have omitted to lay foundations you cannot erect the building. True growth in the knowledge of subjects of instruction is growth of mind, and true growth of mind is possible only as growth in the knowledge of subjects. Let the teacher keep in mind that he is dealing with a mind that is instinctively pushing its way to the systematisation of its experience and to that ultimate truth which alone is completed knowledge, but which can never be attained. " In Plato's view," says Mr Nettleship {Hellenica, p. 139), "the dominant impulse of the philosophic nature" (and, we may add, of all rational mind) " is the impulse to know the truth, and to know the truth of things is to know the reason of them, and to know their reason completely would be to see them as convergent parts in a Whole governed by a single end, or, in Platonic language, a single ' Good ' ; so that ultimately to know the truth of the world would be to know the ' Good ' of the world or the ' reason why of its existence ' ; and to understand human life thoroughly would be to see the end or purpose which governs it in the light of that larger end or purpose which makes the whole universe luminous and intelligible." This, undoubtedly, is the ultimate aim of all knowledge, and yet unattainable in its completeness. We are all impelled, however, to know things in their causes and reasons and their mutual relations, and, under this impulse, we can X.] UNFOLDING OF RATIONAL INTELLIGENCE 181 know much — a much which is ever-increasing. It is the accomplishment of this end which is the final aim of the education of reason, but that always with a view to life in ideas and the conduct of life as inspired by those ideas. The educational question, then, as Plato might (and substantially does) say, is this : How are we to give that knowledge whereby mind shall be raised to its highest level of contemplation, which is its highest life, and find therein the source and end of its activity ? This is a large question, and concerns the whole period of man's rational activity on earth. All we can do, as schoolmasters, is to prepare for this exalted life in such a way as to make it possible for each. Up to the termina- tion of secondary education, which is the limit of these lectures, we prepare for it by accepting the environment or conditions of all reason-energy just as they are given to us, and interpreting these in the light of man's destiny as a rational ethical activity. The School is only the prelude to Life ; but it is to life, not to examinations, that it is the prelude. Thus we help the young on the way they would traverse ; help them only, for each individual must traverse it by and for himself Consider, in the light of this great end, the supreme absurdity of supposing you can attain it by the science of Nature — the mere physical environ- ment. It is through the thought of men on things pertain- ing to Humanity, as handed down from generation to generation, that each man can alone have the benefit, for his own development, of the moral and aesthetic experience of the Race. Note 2. — Transition from one plane of Mind to another. — As all things in the universe are related and inter-related, and one state of a thing passes into another state by insensible degrees — degrees so infinitely small that they elude us ; so, Mind is a complex One, in which every element and capacity and possibility are present at once, and all our analysis is merely an attempt to dis- criminate activities that shade off into each other, in so far as they can be detected to be distinct and discriminable. But, all the while, the synthesis of the whole is always present in each diverse mental manifestation. We speak 182 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. x. of Feeling, Sensibility, Sensation, Perception, Conception, General Conception, Reasoning, Causal relations ; but at what point and in what circumstances are these not all present, and at what point does the one pass into the other in the synthesis of the whole? No man, it seems to me, can answer this question ; no man can say at what point a mind that already "senses," has entered on percipiende, concipience, etc., any more than he can tell at what point a bud is a flower. [And yet we are not entitled to say, " All is becoming " ; but rather, if we are to be accurate, " All is at once becoming and become."] By extensive observation of minds, animal and rational, and much self-reflective vigilance, a thinker may put his finger on distinctions ; but when it comes to the actual working of mind, we can distinguish only in a very general way. Take, for example, the state of " dispersed atten- tion," as it is called. I should call this state one of sensational or attuitional dreaming, in which / am carried on from image to image by the play of mind and the interactions of nerve-cells. But all the while I am Man, and, consequently. Will is there lying at the heart of the chaotic series, and ever and anon striving to assert its own right to existence, and to mastery over the objects that entrain me. At any moment this Will may press its way through, and my attuitional state become a percipient and rational state. So with an infant. To the age of nine months he may be regarded as an animal pure and simple ; and yet he is something else, for Will lies concealed there seeking its opportunity and gradually forcing its way to the front. The eye and face of an infant already reveal that, while he is a victim to sensation, he is yet gradually bringing a latent force into the field. Then, if Percipience be elemental reasoning, it may be said that he reasons even before he can talk. And so on. All the while, the infant is undergoing the parturient labours of self-delivery. He is bringing forth himself— he is not brought forth. The conscious subject is gathering, in silence and in secret, the energy which will soon proclaim itself as Will, and in full Percipience take the first step in J(?^-consciousness. [This Percipience, as I have said, is the first movement to reduce the sensational world to a cognitive world, and the process is a dialectic process.] LECTURE XI. MIND-CONTENT — THE PROCESS OF BUILDING UP THE REAL OF MIND. (a) On the Plane of Attuition. I ENDEAVOURED to show what the animal or attui- tional mind precisely is as a functioning reflex activity. I then passed to the man-mind as a pure activity — a formal Will-reason emerging out of the attuitional subject (but never escaping from it) ; this formal act bringing with it self-consciousness. Formal reason deals with the data of attuition (inner and outer), and constitutes out of it a reasoned world of purposes. But we have not yet con- sidered by what process the attuitional mind, by reflex activity, transforms what is mere potency of function into the real substance and fabric of mind. This is a subtle question ; but for educational purposes, at least, it is not necessary to exaggerate the difficulties which attend any attempt to follow the thousand and one movements of the dynamics of consciousness. The conscious subject absorbs the material of the inner and outer object presented to it, and thereby builds up itself as a Real. This absorption is commonly called Assimilation, and we cannot get a better word. It would be out of place here to discuss the question of the primordial consciousness of object — the way in which that which is not the individual mind becomes for the mind — is felt (and finally known), in fact, only as mind. 184 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION {lect. We have the mind of a child before us already /full of material got from the inner and outer world of its experi- ence, and we wish to know how it proceeds in adding, from moment to moment, to its stock. And if it be true, as Lord Bacon says, that the best teacher is he who can transplant knowledge into a child's mind as it grew in his own, the manner of growth is an important educational question. Let us then try to follow the dynamic process. Given an existing body or mass of already absorbed experiences^ called abed, and let a new experience e be presented. It is presented as a difference, i.e. a negation of the mass. Several things are now to be noted as necessary to the entering of e into the real fabric of mind, and so adding to its acquisition. (i) The new experience e must be a separate and single. If it present itself ^s e x y z, conscious mind rejects it as an indefinite "somewhat," and it quickly vanishes alto- gether into nonentity. It must be a single, if it is to be granted admission to the existing mass. This single, however, may be, and almost always is, a " single total " or whole, whose elements are as yet undivided. (2) If the new single e (appearing as a difference from and negation of the mass abed) finds in the mass a point of relation and identity, it is at once assimilated into that mass and enters into the organic structure of the mind as a real. It thUs, further, shares the stability and per- manence oi a b c d, and is henceforth remembered along with ab cd&s now constituting a part of it. The difference, e, remains a difference, but in association or community of identity with abed: this is dynamic integration. ^ As regards the primary and rudimentary experience, we may say that object and subject are Icist in the sameness of indifference ; this is the stage of Feeling. The frequent repetition of presenta- tions at last gives rise to the necessary reflex action, and there is a disruption into two, object and subject : experience begins as a negation oi subject. XI.] THE GROWTH OF MIND 185 (3) If the new single e finds no community or identity with a b c d, it stands out in consciousness as a bare negation of the existing matter of mind. It is related only to the universal conditions of sense, viz. being, place and time, but otherwise stands in isolation, awaiting the support of fresh material whereby it may be woven into the organic real of mind. The existing mass of material in mind cannot subsequently suggest this isolated e when it has passed from the field of immediate vision ; and, if the impression be not frequently renewed, e will drop from the memory altogether. It has nothing in the existing mass oi ab c d\.o hold on to. It is cast out as an alien thing. [The result of the assimilation and fusing of particular new experiences into an already existing mass or series might be called a crude sensational general concept, based on likenesses which have not yet been criticised by being subjected to the analytico - synthetic activity of formal Will-reason.] The growth of the content of mind, then, is by an assimilative process and not by mere aggregation of disjointed facts. Consciousness and its content are not even in the animal, much less in the human being, to be likened to a sack full of loose peas. There are loose peas to be found — much unassimilated material (and what is worse, much wrongly assimilated material), mere negations of the existing subjective content and context ; but the actual growth is an organic growth, and is approxi- mately (and sufficiently for animal purposes) a replica of an organised external. Note. — The Herbartian, not content with the more thorough elaboration of the old doctrine of assimilation, will tell us that the training and discipline of the formal activity is of little, if any, value. There can be no doubt that, in the words of Professor De Garmo,^ the teacher ■'must select his material of instruction with respect to ' Herbart and the Herbartians, 1895, p. 33. 186 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. ultimate purposes and the pupil's comprehending power : he must arrange the subject-matter not only with respect to the pupil's acquired experience, but also with respect to that which he is going to acquire ; i.e. the studies must be brought into the best co-ordinate relation with one another, and he must adapt his teaching processes so as to secure the quickest apprehension and longest retention of the matter taught." In other words, he must follow the time- honoured rule of basing new experience on old experience in every successive lesson on any particular subject, and construct his series of lessons on this general principle. But to omit from consideration those characteristics of the human mind which constitute it a human mind — the pure formal activity — is to ignore the whole question of discipline as opposed to mere instruction and training, and would result in giving us men and women of a very flabby texture — both intellectual and moral. Until informed and transformed by reason, " apperception masses or clumps " are merely the raw material of rational thought and rational conduct. To speak of Herbartian psychology as " the concrete psychology of experience " to the exclusion of a rational psychology which exalts, as it ought to exalt, the formal Will-reason, is to mistake the meaning of the word " concrete " in modern philosophy. The concrete in my mind or yours at this moment is the result of experi- ence acted on and formed to an end, which is truth, by the will as reason. And, if we are to give vigour to intellec- tual operations and strength to moral character, it is this Will-reason which we must never lose sight of The whole world of the real, even after the fusion and interaction effected by the involuntary dynamic process, is even then, at best, only a mere pulp which has to be made into paper. And if reason has only partially operated, the result is " opinion," not " knowledge." Educational Reference. — If the above remarks exhibit the natural dynamic of mind as a real, and if it be the fact that the growth of mind in the very young is a dynamic (sensational or attuitional) process much more than it can be a formal reason process, it is evident that we have to trust to the frequent presentation of material to the young XI.] THE GROWTH OF MIND 187 mind more than to spontaneous energy with the purpose of acquisition in it. But, inasmuch as truth, or true know- ledge, is the outcome of the spontaneous energy of will exercised on material, we ought ever to be promoting this activity in every way we can ; for herein lies the specific education of the man-va\a.di, taking care, however, not to expect more than tender years and uncertain growth of brain (and with it, mind), justify us in expecting. Nature has its own purposes to serve in so ordering that there shall be an age during which the mere absorption of the crude material of future knowledge shall be the dominant need. And let us not be disappointed if some children are slow of developing formal self-directing reason. Nay, we may have cause even to regret a premature manifestation of the energy whereby material is co- ordinated. For no high farming can ultimately yield a good harvest in a soil that has not been enriched to begin with. Our experience of different types of men will satisfy us of this. But remember that the child is not dependent on you, the teacher, for the content of his mind. That has been drawn from nuhierous sources, and do not be too much afraid, therefore, of introducing a new fact of experience. It will hook on somewhere and somehow. Can anything be more pedantic than some of the model Herbartian lessons ! They would weary the brain of an imbecile by their condescension, and break the mind of the teacher into such little pieces as to endanger his reason. This is method run to seed. Moreover, it is based on a false psychology. We have to remember that the dynamic assimilative process is not the whole ; but that each child is essentially, and from the beginning, a Will seizing and co-ordinating for itself with a purpose of knowledge, and that this has to be taken account of, if there is to be growth. Assume effort and activity on the pupil's part according to his age. If you do not do so, you weaken both his intellectual and moral fibre. 188 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. Let us note now the principles of method which the dynamic mind-process yields. (1) Present one new thing at a time} The principle is of wide application. For example, do not begin two languages at the same time. Do not teach the history or geography of different countries at the same time. Do not teach two grammatical rules in the same lesson. Do not try to correct two moral defects at the same time : and so on. (2) Connect the new with what is already in the mind as a possession. This principle is also of wide application. For example, Do not teach the geography or history of even your own country save in relation to the geography and life of the parish and home. Do not teach a new letter of the alphabet save by comparison with those already acquired. Do not attempt a foreign language save on the basis of the native language and grammar. Do not teach a new proposition in geometry save in relation to all that has gone before. So with arithmetic, science, etc. The above is unquestionably the right course of procedure ; but do not think it necessary to avoid all new instruction because it is isolated and unrelatable (save negatively) to existing knowledge ; but let this be done sparingly and without insistence. Inasmuch as natural processes will neither be hurried nor defied nor abridged, it is necessary to be patient. Some inadvertently speak of assimilation in its educa- tional reference as if a new experience can become a possession only through likeness or affinity to certain material already existing in the mind. This, however, it would now appear, is not a full account of the event. It is manifest that experience a^, presented to experience 1 Thus the dynamic attuitional process of mind yields the same principle as the Reason-process of percipience. XI.] THE GROWTH OF MIND 189 a, would increase the stock only (quantitatively ; it is through likeness in unlikeness (identity in difference) that experience of the world builds itself up in the animal and infant mind. This is a qualitative increment. It is through b, c, and d, that experience builds itself up on the foundation a. At the same time the facility, rapidity, and certainty of the acquisition of the new presentation is almost immeasurably greater, if there be in the new experience a mere repetition of experiences already deposited — in short, if the new presentation is not b in its isolation, but a b. For example, if a dog or an infant saw a sword for the first time and had never seen even a knife, the sword would be b as an isolated fact, and if it remained in consciousness at all, it would do so as a negation of all previous experience and would have only external associations of space and time to support it. It would have to wait for the gradual growth in the mind of other facts related to it before it could enter into the texture or tissue of consciousness as an organic part of its possessions. But if the dog or infant is already familiar with a carving knife, the sword is then no longer b to them but a b, and it is at once assimilated as unlike- ness in likeness, i.e. built into the organism of mind ; especially if I ask the child the uses of a carving knife, and out of this, and on the basis of this, explain the uses of a sword. For the general rule is that the mind assimilates new material only to the extent that there is already existing material into which it can, through likeness, be absorbed or inwoven. To take another example : If you try to teach the beast hippopotamus to a child who never saw any animal bigger than a cat, you will utterly fail. If you present a graphic picture of a hippopotamus to the same child, the four legs at least will be an element of likeness to a cat, but it will be so inadequate a basis of likeness that your picture of a hippopotamus will virtually be b, not a b, and will stand out in negative isolation in the mind of the 190 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. xi. child waiting for further experiences, e.g. dogs, pigs, oxen, rhinoceroses, elephants, before the hippopotamus fully enters in and remains. If he had had these experiences before you brought the hippopotamus to his attention, he might have assimilated the hippopotamus even without a picture of it, if you had first called on his imagination to describe one or two beasts most like to it. It is at once clear from the above that if we are to engage the attention and " interest " of the young in what we may desire them to know, the following rules must be observed as flowing from our analysis : — Rule i. — Teach nothing as an isolated unit of fact. If you cannot relate it really (i.e. to an object or experience to which it has similitude), relate it externally (i.e. associate it with the same locality or time as something else). Rule 2. — Present new knowledge to a pupil in such a way that it will relate itself, or fit into, knowledge already possessed (i.e. like in its unlikeness), if you wish the new to be accepted and assimilated. Build up knowledge as a real connected whole in each department of study. Corollary. — In giving a new lesson on a subject, always go back on what has been already taught, i.e. prepare the mind of the pupil for the lesson. " A man," says Amiel, " only understands what is akin to something already existing in himself" And again, " All teaching depends on a certain presentiment and preparation in the taught : we can teach others profitably only what they already virtually know : we can only give them what they had already." LECTURE XII. MIND-CONTENT — Continued. (b) Assimilation on the Plane of Reason. I HAVE been speaking of purely dynamic reflex-activity in the building up of the real of mind by the assimilation of experiences, although I may have had occasionally, for the sake of clearness, to anticipate the next and supreme movement which has been already, in past lectures, fully exhibited in its general process. The highest result of the natural dynamic is that relation of mind to object which we call Attuition ; and the resultant possession is a multitude of mutually assimilating and fused attuits — what I have called sensational general concepts. The world of experience is as yet to consciousness a crude (yet connected) mass of individuals and spurious generals. Things are fused, not woven. It is the work of reason to elaborate a true organic context. The formal movement, as essentially a will-movement, contains in it the principle of activity and of search, which, under the stimulus of end or purpose implicit in it, extends the range of receptivity immeasurably. [It does not, however, itself form an addition to the mass of attuitional or recipient material beyond the consciousness of itself, as a fact and process, when man becomes reflective.] It functions itself into the content of mind : and its function, relatively to the content of mind, is to break up the existing aggregates of experience, and, by discrimination 191 192 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. xii. and comparison, to raise them into a new and rational synthesis, without thereby cancelling them. Its method is analytico-synthetic. It ever seeks, and must seek, purified and causally grounded notions of reality. Sense- reality thus becomes rational reality,^ not by having the rational imposed on it, but by having the rational already in it made explicit. We are here evidently outside and above the mere dynamics of mind-growth, and are subject- ing the total of our dynamic or natural experience to the operation of a free reason-movement, which tosses about the real as given in sense, and contains, in its own process, the process already existent in the universe of things, which (under the impulse of search for end) it seeks to make evident. With every step of true advance it com- prehends more of actual reality as regards both the individual and the whole. Two agencies, we thus see, are operative in the build- ing up of man-mind, viz. : (a) The inner organic movement or process of assimilation whereby, like the building up of cells in the plant, there is dynamically built up or absorbed into the conscious subject as recipient, and fused into like masses and series, by the help of reflex-activities, all of non-subject that is within the range of each individual : and (b) The formal will-energy whereby we weave our formal selves or dialectic into what we have thus received and rudely organised, and so construct the temple of knowledge out of the bricks and mortar of associated and assimilated sense-data. The man who could trace, step by step, the dynamic process of assimilation and the subse- quent interweaving of the dialectic, would have a vision which would yield a final criticism of knowing. ' Which may be distinguished as actuality. LECTURE XIII. SUGGESTION ; OR DYNAMIC RECURRENCE. The process of the building up of mind, we now see, has to be considered both as an attuitional or real process and as a rational process. That process we have found to be the presentation of a "difference" (a new thing) as a negation of the existing content of mind and the integra- tion of that with the existing content so as to widen and deepen that content. But we have also found that a new thing, a difference, a negation, may find no community with the existing content and stand outside as an isolated fact, awaiting more material whereby it may be connected with the content of mind and enter finally into its con- texture as a real whole. At the attuitional stage of mind-building, an isolated fact tends to fall out altogether ; but at the rational stage it may be seized upon purposely and affirmed, and so held in retentis till it finds an explanation through the accretion of fresh material. On the other hand, new facts that cohere with the existing content find that they share in the permanence of all the facts already in mind with which they cohere. They all seem to stand or fall together in memory. Hence we say than any one fact or element in a mass or whole of real content tends, when it arises in conscious- ness, to suggest or recall the other facts which go to constitute the whole, and the general law is this : — 193 j^ 194 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. Representates tend to recur in conscious- ness IN THE RELATIONS IN WHICH THEY PRIMARILY OCCURRED AS PRESENTATES. Consequently, if a 6 c occurred together or in relation in consciousness the emergence of a in consciousness will suggest d c, and so forth. A gun fires, and I am told that it is a signal from a ship in the roads which wants a pilot. When a second time I hear a gun firing, there arises the presentation ship and the putting off of a pilot from the end of the pier. The general law may be also put thus : The related elements (or parts) which originally went to constitute a whole in consciousness have a tendency to suggest each the others in representation ; and the whole also suggests the parts. Now, what are these original relations ? They are the relations of likeness which lead to assimilation into con- nected wholes ; T^e rule of similarity, (a) sensational ; (d) rational. They are the relation of negation or contrast ; or Tke rule of contrast?- They are the relations of space and time coincident or sequent ; or The rule of contiguity. E.g. the presentation or re-presentation of a ship tends to stir into consciousness the parts of a ship, and again the sight of a large anchor tends to suggest a ship. Our troops are now on their way to Khartoum. This suggests the desert and all its characteristics, Gordon and modern politics, ancient Egypt and its constant wars of defence in the same unsettled region, and so on indefinitely, until the series is interrupted and diverted either by some external occurrence or an act of will. All these are real, or inner associations. Time is an element in all experience, and space in all sense-experience : consequently, a certain point of time or space will tend to suggest a past experience as having 1 Some psychologists exclude the rule of contrast. XIII.] DYNAMIC RECURRENCE 195 occurred at the same hour, day, week, etc., or in immediate sequence ; or at the same point of space. These temporal and spatial associations are external — speaking generally. I say speaking generally, for the vast majority of time and space suggestions have no real connection with the thing or event, while some of them again are real, e.g. 1688 and the English revolution have a real connection. So with the position of the sun and midday. Further, we may artificially associate things and events which have no possible real connection. This external association is effected purposely, wjth a view to taking advantage of the mental fact that a is by itself and in isolation difficult to remember, but as linked with /, m, or z, it borrows the memory strength of each link. The memory of each member of a series is strengthened by all the other members, and the one link occurring tends to suggest the others. Having spoken thus generally of the subject of sugges- tion we may now summarise the rules. Past experiences suggest each other — (a) On the attuitional or sensational plane : 1. As having been externally related, i.e. through con- tiguity in space and time, coincident or sequent. 2. As being real relations of likeness. 3. As relations of contrast. 4. The whole in synopsis suggests the parts and the parts suggest the whole, e.g. the appearance of the gamekeeper will suggest a whip to the dog. {b) On the reason plane : I. As parts of each other in the unity or synthesis of: {a) An individual concept ; e.g. cow suggests the parts of a cow, and vice versd. (i>) A general concept ; e.g. " cow " suggests the individuals which enter into the concept, and vice versd. 196 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. (c) A syllogistic reasoning, inductive and deduc- tive ; e.£: the premisses suggest the conclusion and the conclusion suggests the premisses. (d) A causal relation ; e.g^. cause suggests effect, and vice versd. A rational being may also, I have said, with the purpose of remembering, constitute an artificial and external association of one thing with another; e.g. the War of the Roses and the Seven Years' War with the joints of the middle finger or anything else, and so facilitate the remembrance of the former by making it a part of an artificial series. Any part of that artificial series may suggest the others. If we keep our eye fixed on the function of assimilation in the building up of our experiences, we shall see that there cannot but be a tendency (given the pre-conditions of memory and imagination ^) to reinstate a whole experi- ence as it originally entered consciousness when a part of it forces itself, from any cause, into consciousness ; and vice versa. We should be surprised if it were otherwise. Suggestion, both on the plane of attuition and of reason, is alike dynamic. That is to say, it is not dependent on the intervention of will-reason but arises of itself. It belongs to the process of reminiscence. We certainly take advantage of this natural and dynamic tendency to recall the past, but this is a free act of recollection and is outside the sphere of the merely dynamic tendency. Now what have we found as a matter of fact? (i) That the real or body of mind is built up by assimilating the new to the already existing content, sensational or rational, so as to make one context or whole ; (2) that, as was to be expected, the new is easily remembered if it enter into the context and is assimilated — in brief, if it is a real or inner association ; (3) that the external associa- ^ Imaging or automatically re-presenting. xiii.J DYNAMIC RECURRENCE 197 tions, whether of space or time, and also the artificial, do not contribute to the real context of mind save in a subordinate sense, and are not so permanent and so readily recalled. They lead nowhere and enter (as such) into no whole. The consideration of the rules of dynamic Suggestion yields no fresh principles or methods, in the educating of mind, which are not already yielded by the principles which flow from the process whereby mind builds itself up. But they reveal the fact that, in the growth of mind, there emerges, along with the activity of reason, a dis- position to extend the knowledge of relations among things. LECTURE XIV. THE RELATIONAL AND COMPARISON MOVEMENT IN THE GROWTH OF MIND. We speak here of relations not in the rudimentary sense of apperceiving a new percept, but in its larger aspects. Inasmuch as it is the relations of things in respect of time, place, likeness and unlikeness, by which the fabric of mind is naturally and dynamically built up, the teacher has, of set purpose, to take advantage of this fact to extend the relations of the lessons which he teaches, in so far as these relations are relevant to the subject. Let me take a simple illustration. In the infant school I give an object- lesson on tea, and content myself with showing tea and relating it to, let us say, China (as yet a mere name), and to its uses, and to its differences or likenesses to other beverages familiar to the children. In the stage above the infant school I relate the tea-leaves to the plant of which they are the leaves, the countries where the plant grows, the climatic conditions, the way in which it is brought to this country, other beverages, etc., in more detail than in the infant school. I thus, by my interven- tion, help the boy to extend the relational system (so to speak) which has tea for its centre, and so I largely increase, in a quite relevant and natural way, the substance of his mind. So with other subjects or objects. Education is an extensive as well as intensive process, and by extend- ing the intellectual horizon I stimulate activity of mind for further acquisition all round, besides adding to the amount LECT. XIV.] RELATIONAL MOVEMENT 199 of assimilated material which will find itself, from day to day, coming into touch with fresh material, and at once absorbing it. The association of ideas is here in full evidence. The disposition to connect things, that do not at first sight have any community with each other, is merely an enlargement of the activity of Comparison, which has been operative from the beginning on a more restricted scale. What was merely dynamical is now active and purposed. It is relation instituted, not, strictly speaking, between individual objects with a view to a general concept, but rather with a view to comprehending the totality of experience in an interdependent community of existence. But on the way to this, we reach general concepts and bring them to our help. It is to be held accordingly that, if we would follow nature, our teaching must be relational, not merely in the way of our presenting a new thing or thought, but so that what is taught should be riiade the starting-point for extending an acquaintance with further relations as yet unknown. We should deliberately foster the natural operation of mind in building itself up, by bringing the absent within its range. If we do not do this, we so far forego our duty as instructors by leaving nature to itself — a pretty notion, doubtless, but suicidal in the case of the school. There is, then, in the growth of mind a Relational stage — that is to say, a period when the mind not only is conscious of relations (which it always is), but is actively looking out for relations with a view to the extension of its material. The illustration of a lesson by things that are parallel or analogous falls under the head of the Relational. Consequently, we have this further principle in education, viz : Relate your various teachings as much as possible, enriching them with relevant associa- TIONS. 200 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. xiv. The lesson in the reading-book is merely a starting- point for an intelligent conversation. It is in this way that you widen the horizon of your pupils. Nothing is so stimulating to the mind as the unexpected. In such unstudied allusions and suggestions, life and reality are given to a lesson and lines of thought started in the minds of the pupils. " A teacher should never forget that he is furnishing the boys for life ; that the time is short and the opportunity precious ; that a seed sown now will do more good than a bushelful ten years hence ; that the soils are various and largely unknown, and that he must sow broadcast in faith and hope. History, nature, art, poetry, literature, archaeology, folk-lore stories of deeds, inventions, exploits, exploration, distinguished names, current events — any and every branch of human interest and activity will supply material ; the wider the teacher's own interest and knowledge, the better for his pupils. Whatever he thinks, reads, or cares for can sooner or later be shared; and he should feel that he is there to share it"^ Teaching of this kind carries home to the pupil the fact that the master is interested in him — no small matter. But the limit must be observed that his remarks are relevant to the lesson in hand. Let us now endeavour to discriminate the general functions of mind which are to be regarded zs pre-conditions of its successful activity, both real and formal ; looking at these first (in accordance with our method) as restricted within the operation of natural dynamics, and then as affected and transformed by the entrance of the formal process whereby the natural is lifted up into the sphere of the rational. ' Mr A. Sidgwick in Mr Barrett's Teaching and Organisation 1897. LECTURE XV. PRE-CONDITIONS OF THE SUCCESS OF THE MIND-PROCESS GENERALLY. Memory. We have spoken, in sufficient detail for the purposes of educational theory, of the formal and real (attuitional) processes whereby mind builds itself up ; and we have now only to deal with certain conditions of the success of the activity of mind in its attempts to fulfil itself, viz. Memory and Imagination. These functionings of mind (in obedience to the present fashion we must, I suppose, avoid the word " faculty ") constitute no part of the process of mind, attuitional (dynamic) or rational ; but without the permanence which these insure for the product of every mental activity, we should have to begin our work de novo every successive moment. Let us first of all, then, take note of the two following propositions : — 1. Memory and imagination do not enter into the dynamic process of mind as such, but are pre-conditions of growth. 2. Memory and imagination are not separate faculties of minds, but functions in all mind functionings. To get a clear notion of these accessory but essential 201 202 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. functions, we must, it seems to me, regard them as operat- ing first of all in the dynamic attuitional plane of mind, and thereafter as affected by the entrance of will-reason, and lifted on to the formal or rational plane. Memory. (a) On ttie Attuitional Plane. {Reminiscence^ Retention. — When conscious mind is aware of any presentation, whether an individual simple or an aggre- gated whole (complex totality), it retains (or rather tends to retain) the experience ; that is to say, the presentation remains somehow in the mind after it has disappeared from present consciousness. This is Retention — basis of all memory. Recognition and . Reminiscence. — Next, when a past experience, i.e. an experience which has passed away from present consciousness but has been retained in the con- scious subject, e.g. a, a particular stone or word, recurs in fact (or in representative imagination, see sequel) the conscious subject " senses " it as a, and further, as the same a which it h^d previously experienced. (The act of consciousness is numerically different, but the object, stone or word, is identical as a consciousness with the stone or word of prior experience.) Note that we are as yet only in the sphere of sensa- tional or attuitional (animal) consciousness, and there is as yet no judgment in as much as judgment involves affirma- tion, and this is possible only when reason emerges. And yet, in a sense, there is a sensational judgment, just as there were several sensational judgments in the primary experiences which constituted a the stone for sense. But all these judgments are implicit and written on the subject, so to speak, not explicit and affirmed by the subject. So regarded, all nature and all its processes are an infinite series of judgments which are ever ready to write them- XV.] PRE-CONDITIONS: MEMORY 203 selves on recipient attuitional consciousness, and there wait for the activity of pure formal reason to be affirmed, and further dialectically dealt with. This re-sensing of a, i.e. the sensing of a with the accompanying inward flash of the present a as being the same as the a previously sensed, is Remembering or Reminiscence ; it is a consciousness of an experience as having been previously experienced, e.g. a dog sees to- day a man he saw yesterday, and recognises^ him or remembers him. Memory, consequently, is a general term embracing retention and recognition. But the conscious subject is, so far as we have gone, a merely passivo-active thing or entity^ responding to the presentations proceeding from external nature (including our inner organic feelings), and recognising these when reproduced. Imagination. — Further, when the representation of a occurs in consciousness as the result of dynamic activities, cerebral or mental, without the presence of a in reality, the re-presentation is a presentation of the likeness or " image " of a. (This image is sometimes called " subject- object," to distinguish it from object actually and truly there by itself) Thus we find that in the conscious subject there is a tendency to reproduce, in and for itself, "images" of experiences past, and not now actually existent in its presence. This we call representative or reproductive imagination. The whole process, however, is as yet dynamical and within the sphere of life-activity and life-process (including, of course, reflex-action). > It is a pity to have to use this word "recognition," because of its association with cognition, of which there is as yet none ; but its con- notations are such as to make its appHcation clear. The more exact word would be reconsensing. 2 I am intellectually incapable of following the gentlemen who can dispense with an entity. 204 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. The re-presentation a is "recognised" as identical with the previous presentation of a. It is remembered.^ Memory, then, may be defined (generally) as the identifying of a present consciousness with a consciousness formerly experienced. The full and easy recognition of a depends not merely on the unitary re-presentation of a, but also on the re-presentation of all that primarily accom- panied a. Presentations and re-presentations (images of presentations) are felt to be similar to prior presentations and re-presentations. This we see in animals. They have, however, to wait for the action of their environment on them, or the dynamical movements in their cerebrum or in sensational mind generally, for recurrences of experi- ences. This passivo-active memory, which we share with animals, we call Reminiscence. (b) On the Plane of Reason. {Recollection^ Will-energy, with form of end implicit, now enters and isolates and affirms by a judgment the presentate or recept. The recept is now thereby raised to a percept. Further, the same will-reason can now seek purposely to recover and reinstate past experiences with a view to knowledge. This activo-active memory is to be called Recollection, and is, of course, peculiar to the man, or rational, mind alone. It is manifest that in reminiscence we are wholly in the hands of the dynamic processes of conscious mind and of cerebrum, while in recollection we, self-consciously and of our own motion, follow the track of past associations in order to recover the past. An animal cannot " recollect." Conditions of Remembering. — If we recall the process ' The "image" so-called is not necessarily visual. The perfect memory of a contains all that a was in the primary sensation of it. (It is not association that facilitates the retention and restitution of a presentation, but rather singleness as associated with the total then content of mind.) XV.] PRE-CONDITIONS : MEMORY 205 of assimilation and bear in mind the above facts regarding memory, we may ascertain the conditions of remembering. These are : — 1. On the attuitional plane : (a) The presentation of one new thing at a time — or the singleness of the impression ; but this so as to be assimilated with the existing content of mind and enter into a group or a series. {i>) Vividness and lucidness of the presentation and impression. (c) Repetition of the impression.^ (d) Duration of the impression (within the limits of fatigue). (e) Association of the new impression with time or locality. (/) Artificial association of the new fact with anything we please.^ 2. On the Reason plane : (a) The emphasising and accentuation of the thing to be remembered by raising recipience to percipience, and thereby affirming the thing. The intensity of the presentation is thereby deepened. Note. — The mental affirmation is further emphasised by being expressed in words ; and, further, an association of the thing to be remembered with certain words is thereby established. A boy should always be required to speak out and write out what you wish him to remember. We leave the young to draw their experience from every casual source ; but, when we give them instruction, ' If after a certain duration the presentation is not assimilated, interest flags, and our labour is wasted. ^ In education this device should be sparingly used, because it discourages the effort to find real associations, which alone are the sure foundation of thinking. 206 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. we intend that they shall remember certain cohering groups of fact and reasoning. Accordingly we tell them, or (what is better) help them to find out, new facts or reasonings, and we demand the reproduction of these from time to time. These groups of things taught in school should be representative of experience generally. (See Materials of Instruction.) But whether the groups of facts be geographical, linguistic, literary, scientific, moral, or religious, we have to insist on the pupil remembering them, keeping always in view the con- ditions of remembering. The practical problem is this : How shall I secure that my pupils will remember what I am about to teach them ? The answer simply is — I must observe the conditions of remembering, but, above all, the first condition, i.e. I must adapt myself to the natural process of mind in building itself up ; in other words, I must present a single thing, and this of such a kind and presented in such a way as will secure its fitting into the already existing content of mind. I must also associate isolated words or things in a series, so as to constitute a group ; e.g. in teaching the vocables of a foreign tongue, while these must be mainly learned by reading, we are justified in giving lists of words that have real connections, such as the parts of the body or the furniture in a room, etc. We here have the association of place as well as the real association. It is hard and stupid work to learn lists of unconnected vocables ; and even when learned, they are quickly forgotten. The third condition is the second in order of importance. I must repeat and repeat, and the younger the child is the more of repetition is needed. Repetitio mater studiorum. Some have written against the memory-work of schools. What they assailed, however, was not memory work (this would be absurd), but rote-memory. That is to say, the memory of words and things without under- standing them. The principles and rules of method yielded by the process of mind could not, however care- xv.J PRE-CONDITIONS: MEMORY 207 fully followed, result in knowledge were there no memory ; and it is not worth while to teach anything unless it is to be remembered. Memory, consequently, is vital in educa- tion, and it is even desirable that many things should be learned " by heart." There is no hardship in this : on the contrary, the young rather like it, if it is not overdone. We cannot wholly omit the mechanical from our methods of instruction. The learning by heart of the inflexion-forms of a language until these tend to arise in the mind automati- cally, is of great value. The boy is here committing to memory what is understood. Nay, more, committing to memory is, so far, an exercise of reason, because it is an exercise of will with a purpose. Indirectly, also, it is of moral effect, inasmuch as it forms the habit of directing the will to ends, an exercise which, as opposed to the casual and drifting life of the attuitional " natural man," is moral in its essential character. But to ask boys to learn by heart what they do not understand, while it is doubtless a discipline, is yet a wholly artificial discipline, and can have no good result. The overloading of the memory of the young with the unintelligible, tends to destroy spontaneity of mind. Men so educated have no initiative energy in them. Witness the Chinese ! Can we by exercise strengthen memory ? That is to say, can we increase the power of remembering things generally ? I doubt if we can increase the abstract power of remembering at the attuitional stage of mind; but by exercising memory in this or that direction we can, as will-reason asserts itself, give a habit of purposed remember- ing. The boy has a new thing properly presented to him and wills to remember it. With young children we manifestly cannot rely on this, but only on the conditions of remembering as given above. It is true that in a certain definite line of mental acquisition (geographical, historical, linguistic, etc.), or in adding to a specific group of facts, the connecting of a new fact with what is already 208 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [tEct. known becomes always more easy and rapid from day to day ; but this is not to strengthen memory but rather to facilitate memorising. It also may be urged that a boy of seven takes much longer to learn by heart his first ballad than his second ; but this is because the learning of his first ballad has given him easy command of a stock of words and phrases and measures, which recur in his second exercise of committing to memory. The power of memorising the second ballad is thus facilitated but not strengthened (strictly speaking). So with a youth who is studying chemistry. A new chemical fact is at once put in its proper context, and, as coherently associated with the already existing mental stock and assimilated, it is easily remembered; but it does not follow that the youth is thereby fitted to remember more easily a new fact in biology — a subject which he has not been studying. When, however, we look at the question from the point of view of the rational stage of mind, we can, I think, strengthen the memory; because we are then exercising the pupil in the purpose of remem- bering. We must cultivate memory, then, in the young (always observing the conditions of memory); {a) In order that knowledge, may be acquired and retained ; [p) in order that memory of new facts in certain selected departments of knowledge may be facilitated ; {c) in order that the purpose of willing to remember may be exercised, and so strengthened. To write, in aid of memory, summaries of what has been learned is, for obvious reasons, useful : but these summaries and epitomes must be the work of the pupil himself. If done for him, they lose their value, nay, are positively hurtful. And this partly because the teacher relies on passive receptivity more than on active reproduc- tion. "Evoke the will," is a master-principle in the education of the human animal. We have then this principle in education : — XV.] PRE-CONDITIONS: MEMORY 209 Cultivate memory in accordance with the conditions of remembering.^ Spite of all that can be done, the young will, in the course of a few years, forget more than they remember. This distresses many a schoolmaster, but it need not do so. He attaches too much importance to the amount a youth knows. It is the training and discipline he has gone through, not the knowledge he has acquired, which is chiefly of value. Hence the importance of organisation of studies and of method. If boys have been well taught, they may be said to remember everything. A boy may have forgotten, for example, all the geometry and algebra which he once knew; but definitions and reasonings, geometrical and algebraic, have so entered into his mind as a possession that he applies himself to a question involving mathematics with a certain, facility more or less, and is thus actually using what he has forgotten. This is true of all other subjects of instruction. Disciplinary sub- jects especially, such as language and mathematics, leave, when forgotten, a power behind them ; and they also leave a certain resultant of knowledge which can not be recalled in detail, but which yet facilitates any new knowledge which the youth may have to acquire, or any new judg- ment in the affairs of life which he is called upon to form. We must not, then, be discouraged because a boy, and still more a man, forgets most of what he learned at school. For just as the discipline given by, let us say, Latin and mathematics, or by instruction in the method of science, leaves an energy and power behind when the Latin, etc., are quite forgotten, so the memory of things moral, religious, geographical, historical, etc., leaves a deposit of tendency to appreciate knowledge on those lines, when the facts and doctrines are no longer producible by us in their didactic form. The large and complex back- ground of the unconscious, let us remember, is constantly ' We thus also cultivate representative imagination. O 210 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. determining both our intellectual and moral activity from day to day. We think the right and do the good without waiting to make clear our motives ; and, in the majority of cases, without the capacity to do so under any pressure that might be put on us. Thus it is that an instructor who teaches according to the principles of method (in other words, enlightened common sense) has the consolation of knowing that his labour is never lost, cannot be lost. The tendency and facility of mind which instruction gives, and the formal power which discipline gives, always remain, both in the intellectual and moral sphere, and the seeds of knowledge and of aptitude which the instructor has sown always produce fruit. If what we have said be true, it is as much the direction of memory as the mere cultivation of it that is our duty; or rather, let us say, the cultivation of memory in certain specific directions is imposed on all teachers. What Plato calls " the eye of the mind " must be fixed on the proper objects. The memories of things and acts abound in every one, and go to form both the intellectual and moral character (habit of mind) without our intervention. But all training at the hands of another is intervention with a view to a certain end, idea or ideal, viz. such knowledge and such habit of mind, intellectual and moral, as promote the ethical purpose of all education. As an educator, accordingly, I intervene in the natural process that is going on, for the purpose of concentrating memory on experiences which ought to be remembered. For example, by clear presentation and repetition, I give truth to the vague and casual experiences of the child, and, by thus raising recipient attuitions to clear percepts and concepts, I insure an exact basis for knowledge. I insure, by repetition, the memory of number and form and colour ; of printed and written words ; and so on through all the subjects of school instruction. I preoccupy the memory, so to speak, with the essential. Still more important, owing to the fact that the child is more than XV.] PRE-CONDITIONS: MEMORY 211 anything else a creature of moral feeling and emotion, is the preoccupation of the mind with good feelings and emotions, so as to give a certain set or habit to the motive-forces of conduct. It is the ethical material, or "moral real," of the mind that primarily furnishes motives. Again, it is the exercise of the formal energy of reason that gives discipline and strengthens the will to act ; and this process of discipline rests on memory, no less than the acquisition of knowledge, for it is simply the repetition of difficult acts till an intellectual and moral aptitude or habit has been formed. So with religious conceptions. I can give with effect only as much of as the child can take ; but I give the best, in order that the religious conceptions and future motives and ideals of the boy and man may become a habit of mind. We have rested what may be called the method of memory, which includes its conditions, mainly on the dynamic process whereby the mind builds itself up as a real, but we have not ignored the fact of the will-energy, out of which comes a purpose of remembering. The following practical rule will be now obvious : — Rule. — In teaching, repeat and re-repeat, revise and re-revise ; and be always falling back on the elementary facts and principles of the subject of instruction, so as to maintain a coherent series of associations, real and logical} ' Memory, in the sense of retention, originally involves a certain affection of the nerve-tissue (molecular change) when I first become aware of a ; and also the said awareness or consciousness. Thus, retention, like sensation and perception, must be a dual act, or, as I prefer to put it, one act in two moments (mind and matter). If either of these fail, the sensation will not be retained, and cannot, conse- quently, be reproduced. In the same way either of the moments may set in motion the other. An excitement of the nerve disposition which was the condition of my original consciousness of a, will set up the consciousness de novo. So an excitement in the conscious 212 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. xv. mind-moment (caused by association or otherwise) may set up the nerve disposition and the reconsciousness be thereby affected. It is quite possible to conceive that the one " moment " may be active and the other dead or asleep or half awake only, and then the conscious- ness would not be affected at all. The original experience would be unrecallable, not because both moments were inoperative, but only because one of them was dead. The experience is simply lost and goes for nothing. We know, as a matter of fact, that the nerve disposition, like any other physical impression, may be wiped out. It is within the region of hypothesis at least that the mind disposition, or affection, or what not, may, notwithstanding, remain. LECTURE XVI. PRE-CONDITIONS — continued. Imagination. (a) On the Plane of Attuition. We found, in following the track of conscious mind in building itself up by help of the materials of recipience, that the recepts of objects tend to reproduce themselves for mind when the object itself has been removed. This is called imaging or imagination ; and as the primary experience (sensate, percept, thought) arises out of an actual presentation to consciousness of a past experience, we call this imaging Re-presentative, or Re-productive, imagination. Without this connate tendency of mind and brain we could make little progress in knowledge, for we should be entirely dependent on the actual presence of everything we thought about. There would be no memory save in the sense of recognition of actual pre- sentations as being also former presentations. Imagina- tion, then, is simply the reproduction in sensation of the impression made by an object which is now no longer present — the re-presentation of a presentation. We thus repeat and revise our sensations and all mental experi- ences, and are not left entirely at the mercy of objects in actual presentation at the moment. On the plane of attui- tion we have merely Representative imagination. 213 214 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. (b) On the Plane of Reason. On the plane of reason we have Productive or Con- structive imagination. Here the will, of set purpose, seizes representates or images that dynamically arise, re-perceives them, searches for images with a productive purpose, and constructs imaginary wholes. What the mind retains is thus moulded into fresh relations and ideal products ; and this activity is in a high degree educative. In a large proportion of the lessons we give to children we have to speak of things which have never been directly experi- enced, and we are, consequently, calling into activity the constructive imagination. It is manifestly absurd to do this, unless we can rely on the previous experiences of the child for the construction in imagination of the new thing. The principle of education which the above facts yield is : — Cultivate the Imagination. And this we do : — (i) By allowing free play to the representative imagination (a child educates himself even by day- dreaming). (2) By calling for the reproduction of past experiences, whether of things seen, or of narratives, events, or reasonings. (3) By evoking the productive imagination. This we do by introducing the child to productive work, such as fairy tales, narratives of imaginary events, simple poetry, and so forth. All this is necessary to the rich growth of mind as a substantive reality ; and this quite apart from the aesthetic and ethical importance of such instruction — ethical as well as aesthetic, I say, because all such activity involves the construction of ideals. XVI.] PRE-CONDITIONS: IMAGINATION 215 The delight children take in imaginative tales is due largely to the free play it gives to mind — this freedom being closely allied to the freedom of reason ; and, in truth, involving it. There is freedom in the construction of an imaginary series of events. Imaginative literature is thus in every sense educative, provided it be truly literature. LECTURE XVII. PRE-CONDITIONS — continued. Attention. (a) On the Plane of Attuition. Animal attention, as it is called, is not "attention" at all : it is rather (as I have formerly said) the detention of the animal-mind by something that attracts, or, it may be, overpowers it. We have the same in children and in men, and we call it involuntary attention ; that is to say, an arrestment of the mind by an object which attracts — a merely dynamic phenomenon. Detention, reflex-activity, reminiscence, and re-presentative imagination, sum up the animal stage of attuition. (b) On the Plane of Reason. But man is man as well as an animal, and he applies his Will, directs himself to an object with the purpose of discovering, understanding, and knowing it. In the rudimentary act of percipience this is already evident; and it is willing, i.e. a pure activity. A child is arrested by an object just like an animal, and "detained" by its novelty or colour or some other characteristic, but it passes away and another object more impressive takes its place. If the child applies himself to discriminate and affirm (mentally) what is before him as distinguished from other 216 LECT. XVII.] PRE-CONDITIONS : ATTENTION 217 objects, he "perceives." The concealed purpose of the mind-movement here is simply knowing for the sake of knowing. Still more is this true of higher acts of mind up to the point at which we find concentration of purpose, with a view to some great result, as in the case of Newton, Shakspere, etc. This is alone " attention " — Will-activity sustained by a purpose : and the chief discipline of the uneducated is the habituating them to sustain attention with the purpose of knowing ; or, when this fail§, for the secondary purpose of pleasing their teacher. The master disciplines by skilfully recalling their attention to the subject in hand from time to time. This mental activity becomes constantly easier the more it is practised (irrespec- tively of subject) ; so easy in connection with the subject to which the mind has been most habituated that the Will-effort is slight, and, indeed, almost imperceptible. It, in fact, becomes secondarily-automatic, which simply means that the attractiveness of the subject and its easy flow in the mind causes it to detain the mind without a corresponding conscious effort on the part of the mind itself to attain. Animal consciousness is a case of Detention and Retention ; man-consciousness is Deten- tion, Retention, Intention, Attention, Protension, and Pertension. The disorderly, and yet in a sense ordered,^ series of involuntary attentions is common to animal and man. The energy of volitional attention peculiar to man is of infinite degrees, the lowest degree differing very little from the involuntary. Waves of ideas and clumps of ideas are constantly passing through our minds, even when we dream. We perhaps can find those which have engaged attention-proper by asking at the end of half an hour how many we remember. As regards the connection of muscular motion with attention, this is a sub-question of the larger question ; the 1 Through association. 218 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. connection, namely, of the physical expression with the mental condition. These are doubtless always interwoven ; but to suppose that the muscular in the ordinary case, logic- ally or in time, precedes the mental is surely absurd. A little girl picks up her doll and its head falls off: she gazes blankly for a moment under the shock. I presume the blank gaze follows not merely the falling off of the head, but the consciousness of it She then weeps, and I humbly submit that rapid as the phenomenon is, she has first felt sad. A hound plunges after the hare only after he is aware of the existence of the hare, i.e. is conscious of it. At the same time, we whom "experience has taught to know" are alive to the fact of the connection of the physical expression with the mental state, and every actor v/ho desires to conjure up a woe-begoneness of feeling does wisely to call in the aid of woe-begoneness of physical expression, and every teacher who wishes to evoke the Will of his pupils in attention will not let them lounge on their benches with their hands in their pockets. And why does the physical attitude of attention in a class help mind-attention? Because the former also is an act of Will with a purpose. All attention to a is, of course, an inhibition of b, c, d, etc., just as the perception of « is a negation of all else {pmnis determinatio est negatio), The inhibition is either coincident with, or prior to, the adhibition. Attention is relieved of much of its strain and is easier where there is interest, that is to say, an element of attractiveness. But this interest may be of various kinds. I have a geometrical rider to solve, and I may be so mathematically disposed by nature, or so habituated by previous activities in the same line, as to apply my Will willingly and with a sense of pleasure. This is honest and genuine interest ; but again, I may work at the problem (nay, work much harder) though I hate it — my interest being love of successful effort, or a desire to XVII.] PRE-CONDITIONS: ATTENTION 219 beat other boys, or sheer vanity, or a wish {mirabile dictu) to please my teacher. That attention will naturally follow interest does not require to be stated ; but that interest = attention is a very different proposition. The question is now suggested to us, What is Interest, and how can we arouse and direct it? — assuredly an important one for the schoolmaster. Wherever interest in the substance of things to be done can be aroused, it is the function of the schoolmaster to arouse it. But to supersede Duty — obedience to Law as Law — by installing interest in its place is as impossible as it is undesirable, if we look to the larger conditions and constant strain of man's life on earth. The categorical imperative must dominate the school as it must dominate life. To the soft-headed among Herbartians this may sound a hard saying ; but even the most recent Herbartian spokesman, Mr Adams, in a brightly written book, tells us that the iViJo-Herbartian holds that " Interest must be acknow- ledged as subordinate to the higher question of the choice of a course of study that will correlate the child with the civilisation into which he is born." That is to say, that a purpose of education must be formed which may, perchance, develop each man as man ; but always, of course, in relation to his environment. This is to be the educationist's duty, all ''interest" notwithstanding. Suppose we add, when we think of Papuans, et hoc genus omne, that the purpose must be to educate man so as to rise above his environment, we can then accept the above proposition; for it is to accept an ideal standard which ideal standard is "all that a man ought to be." Without such a theory of the educator's duty how can we reconcile with our British most Christian conscience the "ensphering," not to speak of the "protecting," or " annexing " of lower races of mankind ? We must close our Colonial office after one big day of national humiliation. Finally, while my own principles compel me to grant 220 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. xvii. that the fixing of an infant's Will on a Catherine wheel on fire is attention in its rudimentary form, because it is percipience ; yet attention is more than this, and is to be defined, as I have frequently said, as Will sustained with a purpose (more or less self-conscious). LECTURE XVIII. INTEREST AND ATTENTION : INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL. Attention, we have seen, belongs to the formal process of mind. It is a continuous sustaining of Will-energy directed to an end — the end being (in the intellectual sphere) the acquisition of knowledge. It is manifest, accordingly, that if we can insure attention in a pupil, the problem of instruction is for us solved. To insure attention, there must be " interest " in the line of activity which we wish the pupil to follow. And this again means that there must be an intellectual desire to know the thing to be known for its own sake. Every- where in mental operations there is feeling ; when there is desire, feeling is ipso facto and therein, conspicuous and pronounced. The interest in a subject, then, which is a desire to know that subject for its own sake, must be a feeling of pleasure in knowing, and in sustaining activity with a view to the end, knowledge. There is, however, a kind of interest in a subject presented for knowledge (as I have already indicated) which may be called indirect interest, viz. {a) interest in knowing for the purpose of excelling others ; {b) for the purpose of receiving a reward ; {c) interest in knowing in order to please the teacher, who desires that the pupil should know ; {d) interest because of a sense of duty to the teacher and the pervading law of the school. It is absurd to carry the educational doctrine of interest so 222 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. far as not to admit that much may be acquired or known under the impulse of these extraneous motives or desires. This would be to deny the patent facts of every school- room, which cannot be ignored for the sake of rounding off some psychological theory. But these indirect interests are, as I have said, extraneous, and consequently do not originate in the heart of the act of knowing itself It is not a living desire to know, but only a living desire for something else which cannot be got without knowing. The pain of self-application to a subject is overpowered by the associated pleasure of the extrinsic motive. The fear of pain also (personal castigation or withdrawal of pleasures) may induce self-application, if the pain to be dreaded is greater than the pain of acquisition. In none of these cases is the desire to know a living desire to know for the sake of knowing ; and, consequently, " interest,'' strictly speaking, does not exist. Knowledge acquired under extraneous motives is of a formal, memorial, and rote character. But it must be admitted that this kind of knowledge — which is not knowledge properly so-called, because it is not assimi- lated to the living organism of mind — may yet pass at some future time into knowledge, that is to say, may find its true connections and relations, and be finally assimilated. A teacher cannot afford to dispense with the ex- traneous motives ; but of course he will use them only to induce interest in the true sense of the word ; because this is the sum of his intellectual work, viz. to create or evoke in the young a living interest in knowing. He cannot hope (even if it were desirable) to evoke an " interest " in everything he teaches ; but when he has selected his materials of instruction as these are deter- mined by the educational end he has in view, his duty and his personal gain lie in evoking genuine interest in these subjects — a pleasure in the exercise of faculty in XVIII.] INTEREST AND ATTENTION 223 acquiring them — a pleasure which gives rise to a desire to know. He must be content, however, if he can rouse and maintain a mild satisfaction in acquisition as each lesson comes round. One thing is certain, that if he fails to do this much, he must rely on the extraneous motives entirely. He will not succeed in so training the minds before him as to secure their possession of intellectual and moral interests when they pass from under his authority; but he will accomplish some good. How then is this interest which secures willing atten- tion to be aroused ? Before answering this question, it is necessary to advert to the native predispositions of different boys. Formal studies such as Language, Mathematics, Philosophy, attract and therefore "interest" some. This is because the mind, to begin with (I do not ignore the character and tendency of early instruction), is so constituted that it has an inborn aptitude for dealing with such subjects, and has consequently an intense pleasure in the exercise of rational power in the specific direction of its connate aptitude. Reason, being at root Will, has for its aim an end of its willing, which end is an idea or ideal — (Truth) — and it enjoys its own activity in the pursuit of truth.^ When a boy is born with the formal reason-energy strong in him (however this may be conditioned) he will exhibit interest both receptive and active, spite of all that bad teaching can do to disgust him. The motive force is a powerful one, for it is itself the irresistible energising of reason. But as there are various degrees of this native energy, those who have a moderate amount of it (that is to say, all save- one in five hundred thousand) are largely dependent on a right method of instruction, even in a ^ Even pure reason acts under motive, but the motive is ^t fulfil- ment of itself with the accompanying feeling of joy in reason — the highest of all motives. 224 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. subject for which they may have fair aptitude. Given this, a boy's interest and the corresponding activity are secured. The energy of Will-reason is not met by obstructions which are for it unsurmountable ; these have by good teaching been removed, and he will do the rest for himself He has intellectual pleasure in doing so. Those, however, who have an innate pleasure in the self-activity of formal reason in the sphere of the abstract and formal, or even a fair aptitude for abstract studies, constitute a very small minority of the human species; but all, without exception, are interested or can easily be made to interest themselves in the Real ; that is to say, to find pleasure in intellectual activity on real lines. An object which satisfies the appetites and natural desires (for example) always " interests." This means that it of itself draws the mind and will of a boy to itself by the pleasure it affords. The motive of activity is in all such cases, not the satisfaction of reason, but a thing. The self-initiating energy of Will is present, but it is in such cases at a minimum of strain. The interest which calls forth the activity of men in the business and ambitions of life is often merely this kind of interest — the interest of the appetites and natural desires disguised. So with an interest in athletics and sport. Now, to some extent, what is true of natural desires that have to do with the body is true also of the Real of knowledge as compared with the formal or abstract. It attracts or draws the mind to itself. Nature and our environment generally, which in its various forms is the food of mind and builds it up into a reality, solicits us all. There is in all men an affinity between mind and the concrete real of life. Here, also, it is only the minimum of self-initiating Will-energy that is needed. The intelligence is drawn into union with the object, as an object of sense, without conscious effort. But the result of such naive intercourse with nature lifts the mind little above the attuitional plane. It is when we call on the Will-reason to energise with a view XVIII.] INTEREST AND ATTENTION 225 to discriminating the truth o/the real and in the real that we encounter difficulties in teaching. And as the formal Will-reason grows with the growing brain, the younger our pupils are the greater is our difficulty in inducing them to put a pressure on themselves to go beyond their first superficial impressions of things. Spite of all our efforts, the real, it may be, does not interest them ; but, if so, our failure to sustain interest is, I believe, due simply to errors in method, presuming the physical conditions to be what they ought to be. What we ask them to attend to is probably too remote from their present inner world. It does not catch on to anything already there : Or, we do not leave them to find out, but rather impose our teaching on them in the form of dogmatic propositions : Or, it may be, our manner is bad and repellent. Accordingly, I am disposed to assert confidently that the Real, whether it concern persons or things, will always interest the young (and old too) if our method is good ; given the proper physical conditions. The more we can interest the young in real subjects, the more do we call forth the rational process without much effort on their part. Some seem to imagine that there is little education of mind in this ; but I have shown, in a previous chapter, that the teaching of real subjects is not merely the instruc- tion, but also the training, of Mind as distinguished from that discipline of Mind which formal or abstract studies give by demanding self-initiated and sustained purpose of activity in the face of difficulties. We all know that when children are listless and in- attentive, the presentation of an attractive novelty will at once arrest their " attention," as it is called. It certainly arrests their mental activities by diverting these to the novelty. But this kind of so-called attention is almost animal or attuitional in its character and, as I have previously indicated, is to be called detention rather than attention. Attention is the free energy of Will self- directed to an object with the purpose of knowledge, or, it P 226 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. may be, of duty to Law or of pleasing others ; and, even where there are the best intentions, this power is weak in the immature, and the teacher must be content if he stimulate it to very partial and irregular activity, relying on frequent presentation of the object or lesson much more than on the Will of the pupil, which, yet, it is always his aim to evoke and strengthen. On the whole we may say that the fundamental secret of sustaining an interest that has been once awakened is simply (as I have already said) teaching according to sound method. For, without professing to exhaust the subject, we may say with some confidence that the welcome which the mind gives to an extension of its knowledge — a welcome which secures its ready assimilation into its already acquired possessions — is due to one or both of two things : («) the intellectual need which an existing group or series of facts or reasonings has for completion — a hunger of the intellect ; {b') the extent to which the exten- sion of knowledge appeals to the feelings, desires, and emotions already in activity and seeking further satisfac- tion — a hunger of the aesthetic or moral nature. This appetitive attitude of mind is interest ; and it can be evoked and sustained only by a sound method of instruction, In short, " Interest will be excited if the lesson is appro- priate to the age and understanding of the scholars ; if it is arranged in natural order ; if it fits in with, and is related to, their present attainments ; if the new ideas can be rationally explained by reference to the knowledge which the pupils already possess; and if the effort to grasp what is novel is sufficiently great to give the pleasurable feeling that comes from intellectual activity and successful acquisition." ^ But, does it follow that if a teacher thus instructs in accordance with sound Method, the pupil will of necessity be interested ? Not always. Save in exceptional cases, the essential condition of interesting the pupil depends on ' Mr Buckle in Mr Barnett's Teaching and Organisation. 1897. XVIII.] INTEREST AND ATTENTION 227 the teacher being himself interested. It may be difficult for a man to maintain interest for forty years in teaching the familiar Latin verbs or the geography of France ; but if he cannot assume an interest dramatically, he may be, at least, interested in interesting his pupils in what he teaches. If he does not possess this interest, he is in the wrong profession ; and that is all that can be said about it. Sympathetic imitation of older people by the young is the main auxiliary of all education, and they can be interested only in so far as the teacher is interested ; they take fire from him. No piling up of fuel on the hearthstone will give heat and light. Fire must be applied. Let this, however, be noted ; boys and girls are by nature disposed to meet the teacher half way, provided his interest be a genuine, quiet interest, and not exagger- ated or sensational. " Look how beautiful this is ! how fine that is ! " and so forth, will not avail to hold the child for more than a passing moment The art of examining with a view to instruction is best exemplified in a quiet familiar conversation between teacher and taught on the lesson of the hour ; and this is the highest characteristic of all teaching whatever. By being himself interested in the minds before him, and finding out what they have and what food they want, the teacher will generally secure interest. This may be even said to be the sum of Method in educating an individual or handling a class. In con- versational examining (far removed from the crude "questioning" of the pupil teacher), you lead the class forward to ever higher intellectual perceptions, and if you end the lesson by presenting to them a difficulty which neither you nor they can solve, you do them a world of good. A .pleasant manner iri teaching also helps to rousq interest, and so helps to secure attentioa But the pleasant manner will have no effect if it is artificial. The pupil is not so easily cheated. The pleasant manner 228 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. which alone avails comes from pleasure in the act of teaching ; and if a man has not this, why does he teach ? Let him sell groceries. " Interest " is an important question for the school, because openness and elasticity of mind do not last long, and grown men and women will, with few exceptions, be permanently interested in those subjects only in which they have been interested as boys and girls. Intellectual and moral interests are, as we all know, not too common among mankind ; a man soon hardens down to exclusive- ness of intellect : he almost enjoys a restricted mental horizon, and will even hug himself in his own narrow- ness. As I have already said, a factitious interest may be awakened and sustained indirectly by means of extran- eous motives, e.g. attaching sweetmeats with the acquisition of "knowledge in the case of little children ; gaudily decorated books, etc., in the case of boys and girls ; honours and money and fellowships in the case of young men and women. But this is essentially a spurious interest, and is apt to vanish when there are no more good things to be had ; and yet it cannot be denied that it may result in an amount of acquired memory possessions, which, though for the most part unas- similated, will, in some cases at least, be at a later period incorporated with the organism of the mind as a living mind. There are the other indirect motives to which I have referred — the desire of pleasing others or the sense of bare duty. The teacher, when he has done his best, must rely on this, and insist on work being done in obedience to law and in face of difficulties. It is thus that the instruction of the school subserves moral discipline. We have to rear men and women who can set aside the solicitations of immediate desire in obedience to law. To the extent to which youth are thus taught to obey, will XVIII.] INTEREST AND ATTENTION 229 they be fitted to command others and themselves when they reach adolescence. There can be no doubt that, by such indirect motives, we may so sustain attention from day to day as to create a habit of intelligising, as well as to secure a certain sum of knowledge. LECTURE XIX. CENTRE-POINTS OF INSTRUCTION. When discussing the materials of instruction and instru- ments of discipline whereby we give effect to the educative process, we rested our enumeration of the subjects of the school curriculum on a principle which saved us the trouble of selection in so far as these subjects could be said to be an essential element in all education. That principle was, " Educate by means of the ordinary experience of every child." It is by the gradual assimilation of this ordinary experience that the human mind grows, and all we, as educators, do is to analyse general experience into different classes of experiences and call these "subjects." We select what is most conducive to the attainment of our ideal aim. It is manifest, accordingly, that, just as in ordinary life these experiences correlate themselves with one another and unify themselves into a mind which is a one mind, so in school instruction we must aim at connecting and correlating subjects so as to make one help another, and promote the building up of a one whole which is an organised whole. They are organised by the method of the teacher, and the result is a rational unity which could not be attained without his intervening hand. In things ethical as well as intellectual, this rationalising of experience is our aim, and the moral and intellectual are not separate, but constitute together an interacting whole. LECT. XIX.] CENTRE-POINTS OF INSTRUCTION 231 So related, indeed, is all the knowledge we acquire, that it may almost without exaggeration be said that in every act, at least every important act, of daily life, each man is, there and then, focusing on a particular judgment and the consequent act, all his accumulated knowledge and experience. The knowledge and experience are not all consciously present, but they are all there; and, in like manner, the intellectual and moral discipline he has received is all there at that one point of judgment and action. It may with justice be objected that the wide area embraced by the materials of instruction, as advocated in an early portion of this treatise, combined with the cultivation of the relational or associative in all that is taught, would give us an aggravated encyclopaedism. I shall have to refer to this objection under the head of Applied Method ; ^ but I would here point out that, as regards materials, what we aim at is simply to transplant all the elements of the ordinary life of a child and a man into the school that they may be there dealt with, and then returned, along with the child, to the place from which they came, viz., the home and the street — a very practical end certainly ; and the practical and theoretical are one. This necessitates a certain encyclopaedism — the extensive treatment of many things rather than the intensive treatment of one or two things — especially in the earlier half of school life : and this, I hold, is according to nature ; and right. But observe that such relational teaching, while it seems to exaggerate encyclopaedism, really tends, if properly understood, to unity, if we look at it from the point of view of the growing mind. It is the growing mind and its needs that constitute the only true centre of instruction. At the same time we may deduce from the relational community of all subjects a maxim which countervails the ^ Not in this volume. 232 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. evil effects of that uneducative kind of encyclopasdism which consists of an aggregate of diverse and disjointed facts. It even suggests a practical rule in the instruction- plan of a school, which simplifies the teacher's work, by giving him what may be called external centres. He has to settle with himself what subjects he considers to be most conducive to the one supreme ethical end of all education, and make these subjects subordinate centres, or rather circles within the all-comprehending circle of the supreme end. In the department of the Humanistic (for example) the central subject is manifestly Language, i.e., the vernacular as grammar and as literature, including historical literature ; and this both in the primary and secondary school. Everything must play up to this. Within the large all-embracing circle lies also the smaller circle of the naturalistic ; and here the one subject into which all object-lessons and nature-teaching may run is Geography in its large sense. The formal elements of education (humanistic and naturalistic) are, of course, necessary, with a view to discipline as well as to utility ; and these centre in Arithmetic and Language at the primary stage, and Language and Mathematics at the secondary stage.^ Thus Language, Geography, and Mathematics (including Arithmetic), properly understood, sum up the materials of education to which all else is subsidiary, and round which all else gathers ; and the greatest of these is Language. And this for the reason that Language, properly taught, contributes most to the ethical end, while alone ensuring that general development of mind which we call Culture ; and also because, just as it can be shown that Language, as a real study, takes precedence of all other studies, so it can be demonstrated that Language, as a formal study, takes precedence of all other formal studies, if taught at the right time and in the right way. ' See Language and Linguistic Method in the School (Third Edition). XIX.] CENTRE-POINTS OF INSTRUCTION 233 Music and Drawing are recreative, if properly taught. They do not add to the burden of the school curriculum, but rather lighten the burden. It will be generally admitted that the number of separate subjects that now clamour for admission into schools makes it necessary that the master should select his course so as to give as much unity as possible to the instruction - plan which he ultimately resolves upon as best for his educational purpose. But any attempt to achieve this unity in an artificial or mechanical fashion will certainly fail in its practical working. It is enough, I think, that the master himself should have a governing educational idea, and along with this certain central points of instruction. This will give unity and correlation to his teaching. All successful grouping of instruction depends on the teacher himself, and the width of his culture. If he has himself a well-stored mind, he cannot fail to see how a lesson in Geography suggests relations to History and Economics and Nature-knowledge — relations which should be elicited from his class, in so far as relevant to the lesson of the day. In a Language lesson, whether it be real or formal, he will seize the endless opportunities, which such lessons give him, to extend and deepen the knowledge of the pupil, and to build up moral and literary culture. In Arithmetic even, he will, by the concrete character of his teaching, establish relations between almost every subject in his curriculum and arithmetic ; for the questions which he propounds for solution will be geographical, historical, and economic. There is thus in the hands of a capable master, a constant concentration going on which counteracts encyclopaedic particularism. All the subjects in his instruction-plan, if properly taught, are woven into the rational and ethical substance of the one mind, as it grows from day to day. The young are thus trained to understand their environ- ment, and fitted for the conduct of life generally. In brief, wherever the teacher is at a loss, the ethical 234 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. xix. purpose of all education will always give him a centre of instruction. The specifically technical and professional lie outside education up to the end of the secondary period, but the foundations are laid in liberal studies : — for the one, in nature-knowledge, elementary science, arithmetic, and drawing; for the other, in language and literature. LECTURE XX. AUXILIARIES IN THE BUILDING UP OF MIND : REAL AND FORMAL. Sympathy and Imitation. Were not sympathy of intelligence and the sympathy of like natures with each other (of which I have spoken when dealing with animal mind) connate and ever operative, thus giving rise to the impulse of Imitation, the mental progress of a child would be slow, and indeed virtually arrested. The feelings and sensations, and still more the sayings and doings of other beings of a like kind with ourselves, reproduce themselves in us and powerfully contribute to the forming of mind as a real, and also as an active, rationalising energy. The mind is not left to its natural environment and its own unaided associative rational movements in building itself up. We have the example of our equals, and, above all, of our elders, of those who are ahead of us and hand down to us what they have acquired, and thus facilitate our progress. When we realise this fact of sympathy and the consequent irresistible impulse of imitation, we have forced on us an important educational principle. Present a good model. This principle is very far-reaching as regards all we teach, but especially in the sphere of religion, morals, and manners. 2B5 236 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. xx. In instruction, you present a good model when initiat- ing pupils into a knowledge of objects and into nature- knowledge. (Good diagrams, maps, etc.) In Writing and Drawing, a good model must be set before the young, just as in all hand work, such as sewing, carpentering, etc. In Language, a good model of speech must be found in the teacher himself. A good model of reading must be put before the children by him. A good model of com- position-exercise and a good model of a translation from or into a foreign tongue should be given in the case of every lesson. And so on. But, above all, the teacher himself should in the sphere of the moral and religious, of manners and the standard of social intercourse (so very defective in Scotland), be himself a model. If this be not attended to, all instruction in these subjects will be futile. The eyes teach more than the ears. Thus it is that sympathetic imitation is the most potent auxiliary of Method ; and thus it is also that, where this fact is forgotten, the teacher may, by his own speech and action, be every instant "obstructing his own work, or even wholly undoing it. I shall speak of Sympathy and sympathetic Imitation again under Applied Method,^ because it has a bearing on the whole educational work of the school and the family. As regards the growth of mind, it is enough here merely to indicate its importance. ^ University lectures, not contained in this volume. THIRD PART. METHODOLOGY, i.e. PRINCIPLES AND RULES OF METHOD WITH REFERENCE TO THE GROWTH OF INTELLIGENCE AND KNOW- LEDGE. METHODOLOGY. Methodology, or the summarised and formulated doctrine of Method, is the last chapter in the theory or science of the education of mind, and the first chapter of the Art or practice of education. It stands by itself, and consists simply of a gathering together of the principles which the discussion of mind as a growing or evolving organism has yielded. What follows, accord- ingly, merely brings together results already ascertained and recorded in their proper place in the past lectures. In so far as the theoretical argument is unsound, the principles of education deduced from it are, of course, unsound. It is true that the human race, by the combined operation of spontaneous unself-conscious intelligence and of reaction against environment, has somehow educated itself without the knowledge of these principles ; also that successive generations of teachers have applied many of the principles, in the form of empirical rules, with more or less of mental clearness and more or less of success. The same remark, however, is applicable to political economy, political philosophy, and, indeed, to all science. None the less do we study the science of all subjects ; and this both for the sake of knowledge in itself and for the improvement of practice and the good of mankind. If we can, by any possibility, attain to a wise practice in the education of the human mind, we cannot doubt that it will be of vital importance to future generations. 240 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION A. — Deductions from the Analysis of the Sensa- tion Stage of Mind-growth. Mind ultimately depends for the material of its living activity on Feeling, viz., Outer Sense and Inner Sense. Accordingly : In Educating : — I. Encourage contact with all forms of EXISTENCE, AND PROMOTE ALL KINDS OF UNRE- STRICTED NATURAL ACTIVITY (subject, of course, to moral law). II. Present to sense, i.e. to all the senses. Rule : — Never teach anything that can be seen, touched, heard, etc., without the presence of the object; or, failing that, a vivid represen- tation of it : and appeal, wherever practicable, to every sense in the teaching of every subject. B. — Deductions from the Dynamics of Mind- growth AS AN Assimilative Activity. I. Present such new experiences to a child as fit into the experience he has already acquired, and so as to form A' series of real relation's. Rules : — («) Teach nothing as an isolated unit. Link together things that are like in their unlikeness. For example — Geography and History must rest on the geography and the human relations of the parish and home. A Foreign tongue must rest on the ver- nacular. Geometry rests on the initiatory lessons on Form. So with Arithmetic, Science, etc. METHODOLOGY 241 (b) In giving new lessons on the same subject, always go back on what has been already taught : i.e., by questioning and revision, prepare the mind of the pupil for the lesson, and then present the lesson with due regard to this preparation. This is one condition of securing interest ; the mind recoils from abrupt transitions. Mind grows by the extension of the known into new experiences which can be associated with the already known and assimilated to it. Note. — If it be occasionally impossible to connect things really, take advantage of the associations of Time and Place so as to facilitate the retention of new facts. Accordingly : II. Relate your teachings to things which THEY NATURALLY SUGGEST. Rule: — Regard every lesson in the text-books as merely the central point of the true lesson, which ought to be a conversation starting from the lesson and extending in every direction ; but always under the restriction of relevancy and intelligibility. C— Deductions from the Capacities which make possible the growth of mind. [memory, Imagination.] I. Exercise and strengthen the memory. Note. — Memory is the condition of all possible pro- gress. Repetitio mater studiorum. Q 242 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION Rules : — {a) Attend to the conditions of remembering. {b) Repeat and revise — not only facts and propositions and processes ; but fall back, from time to time, on the elementary explanations and foundations of the sub- ject you are teaching, especially where the subject involves generalisation, e.g. in Grammar or Science. Thereby the memory of a subject is not the memory of mere words — rote-memory ; but the memory of real relations, whether of facts or reason- ings. In the earlier stages, rely on repetition rather than on the conscious self-activity of the child. {c) Repeat the same intellectual operations or processes in connection with a continuous subject of instruction (going on from month to month and year to year), with a view to discipline, i.e. the formation of a good intellectual habit. Note. — Our brief reference to physiology taught us the great fact of physiological memory and also of " habit " of mind in relation to this or that specific line of intellectual or moral activity ; habit is the result of repetition. All functions of mind, intellectual and ethical, could, we saw, be so strengthened by use as to become approximately automatic. " Use," says Shakspere, " can almost change the stamp of nature." To cultivate Memory for the sake of Memory is useless, if not indeed hurtful. Our object is to get the pupil to remember certain things and acts which he wholly or approximately understands and is thus able to take an interest in. In the higher education, the overloading of Memory is apt to produce the kind of men whom Kant calls " pack-horses of Parnassus." METHODOLOGY 243 II. Cultivate the imagination, representative AND CONSTRUCTIVE. Note. — You thereby revive past experiences and con- firm them. By reading constructive works of imagination you evoke the ideal tendency of mind as a rational mind. Rules : — (a) Allow free play to the representative imagina- tion. A child educates himself even by day- dreaming. ib) Call for the reproduction of past experiences, orally or in writing, whether of things seen, or events, or reasonings. (c) Evoke the productive or constructive imagina- tion by furnishing the child with constructive mental occupation, such as fairy tales, narra- tives of events, simple poetry, and so forth. Z>.-^DEDUCTI0NS FROM THE FORMAL MOVEMENT OF Will as Reason. I. Follow the order of the growth of Reason (which, speaking generally, is also the order of brain- growth). Rules : — («) In teaching every subject, and every succes- sive lesson in the same subject, build it up in the mind of the pupil on the basis of exact percipience, concipience, generalisation and reasoning, and in this order. (To secure clearness and connectedness, the several steps must be in logical sequence.) {b) Proceed step by step, and step after step. 244 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION II. Evoke the will of the pupil in learning. Note. — It is only in so far as mind applies itself that it knows anything and rises above the plane of passivo- active (or animal) sensation. The child attains to know- ledge, not by receiving what is presented to him, but by taking it. He instructs himself ' The teacher is merely guide, co-operator, and remover of obstructions. This mode of teaching, moreover, by throwing the work on the pupil, gives him a pleasing sense of power and self-achievement, which are in the highest degree stimulating. Rule : — Do nothing for the child which he can do for himself Encourage free self-activity. III. Teach analytico-synthetically, i.e., reduce things to their elements and then build them up again. Note. — Knowledge begins with individual things as totals : but these individual totals are themselves complexes. Whether things themselves are presented to mind, or by means of the words which are their symbols, they are complexes ; and the function of Intelligence is to dissolve them and reconstruct them as rational syntheses. Rule : — The complexes presented to us are totalities in sensation ; concepts (sense or other) ; general concepts and generalisations ; reasonings, induc- tive and deductive ; causal relations. Elevate, then, totalities into concepts through the analytic percipient act ; take concepts to pieces ; construct, or reconstruct, generals, through and by means of the particular and concrete individuals which rule the generalisation ; analyse reasonings and causal relations : in brief, always make explicit what is implicitly contained in the complex. IV. Percipience of the single, with a view to its integration with already-existing experience, being the METHODOLOGY 245 basis of all rational knowledge, yields the principle : — Teach one thing at a time. Rules : — (a) E.g., in object-lessons do not proceed to the elements or properties of a thing until the pupil has learned to discriminate and name things as wholes. Then take one quality at a time. So with all other subjects. {b') Dwell long over the simple elements of all subjects. Confusion in the beginning vitiates the whole after-process. (f) Do not begin two languages or sciences or teach two grammar rules at the same time ; and do not attempt to correct various faults at the same time. V. Teach first the prominent or salient char- acters OF A thing or object; AND THEREAFTER the rest. Rule : — Confine yourself, for a time, to the broad characters and leading outlines of a subject {e.g., Grammar, Geography, History), and then fill in gradually. ^.—Deduction from the Auxiliaries in the Building up of Mind. [Sympathy and Imi- tation.] Present a good model of what you wish the PUPIL TO KNOW or TO DO. Note. — This applies to Reading, Writing, Drawing, Composition, Carpentering, etc. But it is of pre-eminent value in the Ethical sphere. 246 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION F. — Deduction from the Practical End of all Education. Turn all you teach to use. Rules : — (a) Relate all that you teach with the ordinary and everyday life of the pupils. The exhibition of the practical relations of much that is taught is in fact technical instruction in the only sense in which it can find a place in the school.^ (3) Call, wherever possible, for the application of what you teach. The ultimate test of the exactness of knowledge is the power of applying general notions and laws to parti- cular cases. Thus, by connecting the know- ing with the doing, you give final reality to knowledge and make it truly a possession. {c) Call for the reproduction in the pupil's own words of what he has learned ; and use this for yielding new knowledge. ((/) Teach nothing that is useless. Finally — Associate all teaching with pleasant physical conditions, an agreeable environ- ment generally, and, above all, a pleasant manner. The above scheme of Method is a summarised state- ment of the Art of education, in so far as intelligence is concerned, and it is applicable to all possible subjects of instruction (including even the ethical mutatis mutandis, as we shall see). ' Except in so far as manual instruction is given. METHODOLOGY 247 To instruct well is to instruct (consciously or uncon- sciously) in accordance with these principles and rules, i.e. in accordance with Method. It is necessary to instruct according to Method, if our instruction is to be sound and sure ; and, above all, if we are to interest, train, and discipline mind. And this is the point to emphasise, that training and discipline are greater than knowledge, and that only by sound method can we train and discipline faculty. Method derives its chief importance from this fact.i What we have chiefly to note in connection with these rules of the Art is that they are ascertained, not empirically (though many of them had been found out long before psychology was applied to education), but scientifically. That is to say, they flow, by necessary deduction, from the science of Mind as a growing organism. Thus it is that we vindicate for the art of education a prior and governing science. Take any of these rules you choose, and go back on our statement of the processes of intelligence, and you will see for yourselves its scientific basis. If we can ascertain (as we can approximately, at least) how it is that mind knows and grows, how it is that intelligence intelligises, it is clear as noonday that we have also got the how of teaching, because teaching is simply helping the mind to perform its function of know- ing and growing. Rosmini, in his Method of Education, aims at finding out " the ruling principle " of Method, whence all else is derived. As he truly says, " the mind in possession of a comprehensive scientific principle can grasp the multitude of ever new conclusions which flow from it, develop and arrange them in due order, and, by bringing them into comparison, assign to each its place and value in relation to the rest." I do not think, however, that it is possible ' Strange that classical teachers, who are most of all identified with the theory that discipline is all in all, have been most active in the defence of " No method." 248 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION to find a single principle which shall be so fruitful. But from the fact that the mind is a gradual growth, and, as a growing organism — growing by its own inner vitality, exhibits a Real and also a Formal Process, we may signalise three principles of all Method as supreme, and as being so vital and fruitful that, if wisely followed, they may also supersede all others. These are : — I. Follow the order of mind-growth in educating. II. Extend knowledge on the basis of the already known. [The process of building up the Real of Mind.] III. Evoke the will of the pupil in acquisition and action. [The root of the Formal.] These three leading principles are equally valid in the intellectual and the moral sphere. All subsequent chapters of the Art of Education are merely the application of this present chapter to the various subjects which we wish boys and girls to learn, and to their moral and spiritual upbringing. We have nothing to add to them except this, that their practical application from day to day is modified by two con- siderations, viz.. First, the circumstances (by which I mean mental rather than physical circumstances, but these also) of the pupil. Secondly, the subject we are teaching. Not that the principles do not apply to all subjects, but that each subject will further suggest its own expedients ; if not also rules. I shall explain these two points : — As regards the first : if the pupils to whom I am giving object-lessons or any other lessons, are of the more educated classes of society, it is absurd to make oneself a slave to the rule of " little by little " and '" step by step" to the extent to which we subject ourselves to it when dealing with poor children whose minds receive METHODOLOGY 249 no home cultivation. In the case of the former, we can take much for granted and advance more rapidly than with the latter. This consideration is of greater weight in some subjects than in others, e.g. in examining on the reading -lesson. You can yourselves, after a little reflection, supply all that I omit saying in this connection. Then, again, I must have regard in choosing subjects and giving the technical application of lessons to the industrial environment of the pupils. Further, the age of the pupils is one of the most important of the conditions under which we teach. Setting aside the question of the age at which a natural science can be taught scientifically, all will at once see that with boys of fourteen we must proceed much more slowly than with boys of sixteen or seventeen. The lecture on the periods or stages of mental growth will suggest to the reader all that has to be said on the question of rapidity of progress. As regards the second point : additions to the rules, or modifications of them, are naturally suggested to anybody's common sense by the nature of the subject he happens to be teaching. For example, the mode of procedure in teaching the English language is funda- mentally the same as that to be followed in teaching French or Latin. But the fact that English is the native tongue suggests a mode of procedure which is impossible in the case of a foreign tongue. The most important difference of procedure is suggested by the fact that English grammar is already implicit in the mind of the child. We, as teachers, are merely making explicit, and reducing to order and rule, what is already there. It is plain that we cannot do this in the case of French or Latin. On the other hand, presuming that all will agree with me in thinking that the native grammar must be the basis of foreign grammars (in order that the new maj' grow out of the old and knowledge be an organic growth), then it is absurd not to take advantage of English grammar in teaching French or Latin, and not to assume that a 250 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION good deal of the grammatical work is already done to our hand. And so on, as when we pass from Latin to Greek. Here common sense comes in ; and though it be " the rarest gift of Heaven," we must take it for certain that all teachers are endowed with it. And this allusion to common sense suggests that I must still make one remark before I conclude this part of my subject. It is possible to overdo method. You may be giving a lesson quite in accordance with sound method, but you may be pedantically taking step after step with too exclusive an eye on some prescribed method of procedure, and too little regard to the subject you are teaching, the mental condition of the pupil you are teaching, and the proposed end of your teaching. You may forget entirely that the prime condition of all successful method is the sympathetic movement of the mind of the pupil with your mind, and your mind with his. Indeed, without this sympathy, subtle and delicate in its nature, your method becomes wooden and lifeless. This, now, is to be a slave to method, whereas method ought to be your servant, not your master. Sympathy cannot be taught by any professor of Education. It is a thing of native growth, but its germs, when they exist, may be cultivated. The greatest stimulus to a young mind, you may be sure,. is your sympathy with it, for this is always accompanied with a genuine desire to lead the pupil into the subject from the pupil's point of view ; and that desire will in all, save a few cases, be reciprocated by the pupil. There is no device for commanding attention and no methodology which can be a substitute for interest in your subject and sympathy with the mind before you. In fact, one might almost supersede all study of method if one could only secure this, that the teacher was able sympathetically to place himself in the mental attitude of the pupil towards every lesson, and advance along with him step by step to the full comprehension of METHODOLOGY 251 it. Education is a training of mind by mind, the materials of instruction being merely the vehicle of communication. It has also, I think, to be noted that it is above all that philosophy of mind which regards mind as being, under more or less disguise, a process of sense-agglutination, which tends to generate a method in the forming of mind which is as pedantic in practice as it is unsound in theory. The growth of a mind, even if we regard it as a mere fabric of bricks and mortar, is not dependent on the educator. Rational, as opposed to dynamic psychology, teaches us this most emphatically. The growing mind fulfils its own life in its own way. We educators merely fix the end, give direction, supply defects, remove obstruc- tions, and, generally, lend a hand. Some would try to manufacture mind as if they were laying a tessellated pavement or erecting an Eiffel Tower. Method which does not confine itself to the order of studies and the discipline and development of faculty generally, but condescends to the minutest details of the order of questions to be put even in a simple narrative lesson, is method run to seed. To give children minced meat, once they have got teeth, is bad enough : to give them pap is to promote a flabby development. The human mind, as a living and formative energy, is always arranging its own material for itself, and children are not so dull and helpless as some method-mongers seem to imagine. " The ultimate subject of all education," says Mr Nettleship in expounding Plato,^ " is a living organism whose vital power, though divisible in thought, is really one and undivided." The moment we recognise reason as at root a will-energy, ever seeking, by the necessity of its own nature, to correlate presentations and representa- tions with a view to intellectual truth and moral law, under the stimulus of the innate form of End, we see the fallacy of the pedantic extremist. To stimulate and ^ Hellenica, p. 73. 252 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION direct this innate nisus of reason, taking care to keep to the highway of mind-process, is more than half our task. This highway of mind-process, however, we cannot ever depart from without failing to instruct, unless we call the memorial acquisition of mere words and formulas instructing. At the same time, if you, while, in the main, right in your method, make slips, you may constantly rely on the native activity of the child's mind to make good your defections. In short, one great advantage accruing to the study of the science of education, as distinguished from the art as a dogmatic system, is, that it makes the student- teacher master of method, and prevents method, in .the sense of pedantic rules, being master of him. He sees the ultimate ground and significance of the rules — the true essentials of a method-process — and feels free and unencumbered in his use of them. His obedience is the obedience of a freeman, not of a slave. He is the subject of a constitutional monarch, not of a despot. We rightly despise "rule of thumb"; but let us remember that there is such a thing as a rigorous system of rules — a detailed technique, which becomes a kind of organ- ised " rule of thumb " — perhaps a more dangerous enemy of true method than the traditionary practices which make no pretensions. " The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." This is true : that a training in the principles, history, and methods of education will secure the lowest stratum of the profession from failure and enable them to make the best use of such powers as they have, that it will raise the average teacher much above his own natural level, and that it will give the "heaven-born" a freedom and elevation of idea that will give him command of all the means whereby a human being is educated. But while this is all, to my mind, beyond question, it has never to be forgotten that, both in teacher and taught, education is METHODOLOGY 253 a living dynamic process, that it is the quickening of mind by mind in friendly and rational intercourse, and that all the method-study in the world, if method be converted into mere technique and. the teacher into a mechanical expert, will fail to educate. It will be impossible for a cultivated man of the world to contemplate such a pedantic method-monger without the veiled contempt with which teachers have been too often regarded in the past. A philosophy of the growing mind, which in its essential groundwork demonstrates the dynamic vitality of the mind-process in both man and boy, can alone give the liberty with which philosophy makes us free, and preserve the schoolmaster from degenerating into a pedant. Note. — The business of a Lecturer on Education ought now to be to apply the principles and rules of Method to each subject of instruction. This would necessitate the inclusion of lectures on " The School-definition of the Materials of Education." I am concerned here chiefly with Principles, and I shall accordingly now take up Ethics in its Educative reference. Concluding Note summarising the Theory of the Educa- tion on Mind as Intelligence. The Real of Mind, prior to the advent and operation of reason (Will in the form of the Dialectic), is a mere series of aggregates more or less correctly associated, and, as so associated, these are a true account of the world of experience in so far as they correctly reflect that world. When reason enters into the mass of mind-stuff it does so as Will with Form of End implicit, and it seeks to reduce the sensational resultant in consciousness (assimilated and crudely correlated apperception masses) to a rationalised unity— a system of things. Prior to this all has been sensational : but now we not only sense an 254 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION object, but perceive \t} i.e. reduce the sensate to conscious- ness as discriminated from all else, and as affirmed and named. On this basis of clear Percipience, the whole fabric of exact knowledge rests. I have already spoken at length of the process of reason as it rests on and rises above percipience in order to construct a synthesis, or rationalised unity of experience. This end of all its activity is truth; and truth alone satisfies the restless reason of man, and alone forms the basis of right conduct. Our theory of Education must be determined by the end we propose to ourselves ; and that is always (however it may sometimes conceal itself) ethical. But inasmuch as it is Will-reason that ascertains truth and propounds and determines ends of activity, our main purpose in educa- tion must be to train and discipline reason, because this is also to train and discipline the ethical activity of self- directing Will. At the same time it has to be admitted that in the interests of this formal training and discipline, the real and the process of assimilation have been in the past too much neglected. Without the real, the pure formal activity beats the air. And yet, I repeat, that it is precisely the cultiva- tion of this formal activity that must dominate the education of the young, if we are to justify Herbart's opinion — (Par. 129), "the boy . . . can be elevated through education without undue haste to a significant degree of true insight and self-control." To accomplish this is our aim. Will, whether it be directed to knowledge or to conduct, can be strengthened by exercise till a habit of will-domination in obedience to recognised ends is formed. The real of mind or "concept masses" (as Herbart calls them), whether formed prior or posterior to the activity of reason, cannot, I hold, themselves act as intel- ligence and will, but merely (at best) give rise to tendencies. 1 Herbart says that perception, as distinguished from sensation, presupposes the consciousness of "an object opposed to other objects and the subject." But this is sensation. Is an animal not conscious of an object opposed to other objects and the subject ? (Par. 75 of Miss Smith's trans, of the Psychology.) He also talks of "concept masses " acting as if they were understanding, failing to make a clear distinction between Sensation and Reason. In fact, such a distinction is impossible on Herbartian principles. METHODOLOGY 255 The energy of concept masses has to be regulated by Will as propounding ends. A concept mass may yield Desire, and, under excitement. Passion ; but Will is outside, and above, the range of their mechanical activity. As regards Method : it follows from this brief retro- spective survey, that while the rules suggested by the process of assimilation must be observed in a large spirit, we must always bear in mind that the distinctive character of the mind of the child is that it is a Will or Will-reason, itself seeking, by virtue of its form of activity — truth of fact and law of conduct. Consequently, much is being accomplished by the child in dealing with his own daily material of experience, both intellectual and moral — a •' much " which it is impossible for us to estimate. Accord- ingly, while it is incumbent on us in our teaching to observe generally the rules yielded by the process of the assimilation of the Real, we must not so exaggerate Method- procedure as to lose sight of the fact that the child, under the inner stimulus of Will seeking end, is constantly running ahead of us. The vital principle in all education is the evoking of the Will (for knowledge and conduct) ; for Will in its reason-form, constitutes the distinctive humanity of the child. This is to promote the activity of assimilation on the rational plane. We do not stuff a child with material in the form of pap ; we get him to take his own raw material and chew it and re-chew it. The constitution of mind determines the institution of mind. Assimilation on the sensational or attuitional plane will, to a large extent, take care of itself; the essential thing is so to intervene in the natural building up of mind as to present, both in the field of knowledge and morality, those things, sentiments, motives, acts, which the child ought to build up into his rationally assimilated material, if the growth of mind is to be sane and rational, and if it is finally to fulfil itself zs an ethical personality. FOURTH PART. METHOD AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS. II.— ETHICAL INSTRUCTION AND DISCIPLINE. LECTURE I. ETHICAL IDEAS AS THE REAL, OR SUBSTANCE, OF LIFE, Knowledge of these got chiefly by Doing. {Discipline.) The problem of Education generally may be summarised under the three heads of the end, the means (which com- prehend both materials and method), and the agency that sets the whole in motion and carries it out to its completion. The agency is the teacher, who passes into the higher category of "educator" only when he works under the inspiration of an ethical purpose. On his personality so much depends, that the determination of ends and the discussion of materials and processes seem to sink into comparative insignificance. But were we to consider this personality itself (which lies outside our plan in this book), we should find that in the teacher, as in education gener- ally, it is the ethical quality which is of supreme moment. No system of training can guarantee this ethical fitness ; but it can shape to an excellent issue a good ethical predisposition, constraining men and women of merely average ethical endowment seriously to ponder the best ways of fulfilling their obligations to their own educational ideal and to the national life. The teacher who is ethically endowed will at once see that the materials which he uses for knowledge, and the discipline which he gives by means of these materials, have for their ultimate object the fitting of the young to interpret their daily experience, while subduing all to the service of the ethical life. But knowledge and intellectual 260 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. discipline alone, he is well aware, even when given with an ethical purpose, will not of themselves suffice; positive instruction must be given in ethical ideas themselves as the true and ultimate realities of life, and direct discipline must also be given in ethical acts. The former is the "nurture" of mind to which Plato attaches so much importance. It has been frequently said, and truly, that the chief object of education is the formation of character. What do we mean by a good character ? We mean a mind so instructed and trained that there, is in it an almost automatic tendency to propose to itself for the general conduct of life the highest and best ideas as motives : and further, a Will so disciplined that, as master of every situation, it gives practical effect to those ideas. Good character, accordingly, is a good habit of mind. The possession of moral and spiritual ideas is the pre- condition of a good moral and religious habit. Whence these ideas? In a civilised community each generation finds them ready made. This is ethical tradition. Ethical education, then, consists in instructing and training the young so as to put them in possession of these ideas as motives of conduct, and as necessary to their own ethical completeness. Thus we build up "conscience" in them. Left to his own individual experience a man's knowledge would be small, his conception of human relations restricted, and his interpretation of them false or inadequate. The moral "ideas" are high generalisations, and (as we now know) we can introduce children effectively to generalisations only through particulars. We build up the idea through particular thoughts and acts. Children are our modern instances of primitive man. Their minds have to repeat the mental history of the past, in their concep- tions of duty as well as in their knowledge of things. How do we proceed with a view to put the young in possession of their inheritance ? I.] ETHICAL IDEAS AS THE REAL OF LIFE 261 First. We take care to instruct them in so much of the accumulated materials of knowledge — knowledge of things — as will enable them to form right judgments, and give fulness to life by multiplying interests. The subjects we select, and the method of giving instruction in them with a view to the attainment of our ultimate ethical purpose, constitute that part of educational theory and method which has to do with the intellect primarily ; that is to say, the mere understanding of things and their relations. All this we have considered in the previous lectures ; and as we enter on the consideration of the specifically ethical, we at once see that a liberal and generous course of general instruction is necessary if the circle of thought and interests is to be so widened as to give materials for sound ethical conclusions, and lift a man on to a high plane of life. The width, no less than the intensity, of a man's intellectual and ethical endowment, is the measure of his education. Secondly. We instruct the young in moral ideas them- selves, and in their spiritual significance and divine sanction (Morality and Religion). Thirdly. We regulate the conduct of the young ; that is to say, we cause them to will in accordance with moral ideas under the sentiment of duty (discipline). {Vide Part I., Lect. VI.) Our object in all this is one and the same^to produce in each human being an ethical state of mind ; and this solely with a view to expression and action, which alone give value to the ethical state : in other words, we aim at producing not merely a certain state of being, but effective virtue, or ethical habit, which is the sole guarantee of the reality of the contemplative ethical state. Now, as to the second step, it has to be noted generally that no one can get a knowledge of moral or spiritual ideas by merely acquiescing in propositions regarding them. All moral ideas which can constitute motives of action arise primarily out of feelings — " inner sense " ; and, con- 262 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. i. sequently, we get possession of them only by feeling them — feeling, and so seeing, their truth, and the law that is inherent in them. In the same way we do not get an adequate knowledge of anything of external sense by reading statements about it, but only by " feeling " it, that is to say, having it present to the senses. There is this difference, however, between the intellectual and the ethical, that knowledge of subjects completes itself simply as knowledge (although, until we can use it, it is not wholly ours), whereas ethical ideas do not truly live at all, save in action. We never, consequently, can be said even to know them (feel them), until we have carried them into action ; or, at least, realised them imaginatively, if not in our own activity, then in the activity of another. Hence the importance of the third step or ethical discipline, which, as distinct from ethical instruction, is the requiring from the young right doing in obedience to Law. LECTURE II. THE NATURE OF THE ETHICAL LIFE GENERALLY. The term "life" may be extended so as to embrace everything. This quite legitimately. Its essential characteristic — that, without which it is not life, though it may be the potency of life, is activity. In the in- organic world, this activity is seen in the dynamical constitution of things ; in the plant world, the activities are more complex, and result in, or are the result of, what is called vitality in a specific sense : in the animal these activities appear in a still more complex form, and, over and above, a wholly new element emerges, viz. — conscious activity (reflex or passivo-active). In man, finally, the whole antecedent history of world-activities is summed up ; and, over and above, we have self-conscious- ness and pure self-generated energy. It is as a self-conscious energy that man, as man, truly lives ; that is to say, as an activity, or rather complex of activities, governed by freely affirmed self-conscious ends. This it is that makes him an ethical being. The activity of each "thing" has for its end the ful- filment of its own specific function as a thing — in other words, the fulfilment of the law of its being, in fulfilling which, it fulfils itself and the world-purpose in it. As with all things, so with man. But man as a free, self- conscious, self-regulating being has to find the law of his activities for himself ; and in fulfilling that law, he fulfils himself and the world-purpose in him. 264 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. Each thing that fulfils the law of its being may be almost said to discharge an ethical function, and to be striving after its ethical completeness — the "Good" for it. But it is usual to confine the term "ethical" to the behaviour ,of man as a being of self-conscious rational ends which constitute law for him. We may so far carry human feeling into nature as to say that the fulfilment of the function of each "thing" is necessarily accompanied by a sense of the fruition of lifej which is the result of activities harmonised within that thing to a specific end. But this attained fulness of life that yields a feeling which, in the case of conscious beings, we call Happiness or Felicity, is not itself the end of any one " thing " in the universe ; still less can it be the self-conscious purposed end of man. The "end" of each thing is the " Good," i.e. the fulfilment of the law of the thing in the thing. What man seeks as supreme end, or " the Good," is the determination of the ends and law of his own being; and what he strives after, as a being of self-consciousness and will (which is involved in self-consciousness), is the fulfilment of this law, that is to say, of the idea as law. These ends or ideas are the motives of highest action. The perfectly good will is that which wills " the Good " (the idea) for its own sake, and for the sake of the law inherent in it. When a man wills the good for ulterior purposes, e.g., material benefits, or reputation, or pleasure, he truly wills these material benefits or that reputation, or that pleasure, merely using " the good " as an instru- ment or tool for these purposes.^ But a perfectly good will is unattainable by any man, and still more by children. Accordingly, we may be well content if we get children to will the good for the sake of the approba- 1 But so long as a motive, in itself defensible and stronger than the seduction of evil, causes a man to will the good, that man is so far moral though on a low ethical plane. The motive, in so far as it dominates, is Law, u.] NATURE OF ETHICAL LIFE GENERALLY 265 tion of their elders, and adults to will it for the sake of the approbation of their fellow-men. To will the good as idea and law is possible only where there is sufficient maturity of mind to entertain an abstract idea and abstract law. Man has a dual nature : he is specifically a self-conscious and so self-regulating reason, but he is also the attuitional or " natural man " ; i.e. he is involved in the system of nature. In attaining to the fulfilment of self-conscious rational ends {i.e. law), he does not attain to happiness, because happiness is a rounded complacency which is possible only through the abolition of reason, and reason, by its ver}'' nature, must posit ever higher ideals to which he can only approximate ; and that through effort and pain. He, however, attains to a supreme sense of Joy in law fulfilled spite of the contingent pain, and this is Joy in reason as supreme ; for it is Reason which has dis- covered and constituted the end (or idea) and the imperative law in it. When Man further feels and sees God in ethical ideas and in duty, the moral law is then apprehended as at the heart of the whole system of things, and as clothed with a divine and eternal sanction. The achievement of this Law is, I say, the " Good " for man. To will good " for the sake of God " is, accordingly, to will good for the sake of good and for the sake of law. To will it for Tear of divine vengeance is not to will the good, but to will personal and material security. The source and root of reason and self-consciousness is, as we have seen in the analysis of Intelligence, Will — a free energy in man which, by its very nature, must seek ends or ideas and ideals, and further seek to externalise these in conduct. The actualising of the harmonised sum of ends which we also call ideas or ideals, i.e. the Good, is the ethical life. This Good is at the same time the Law. For the truth of things is at once the Good and the Law. Thus Will, root of reason and moving in the 266 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. form of reason, just as it is the source of knowledge generally, so is it the source of the ethical in man. It generates ethical ideas or ends, which are simply the truth of his nature, and the Good. Unless we adopt this theory of mind, we break up human consciousness into parts, and make it impossible to conceive it as, from first to last, an organic unity. I say the actualising of ideas or ideals as ends (which constitute the law for man) is the "ethical life." The ethical life is more than the moral life : it contains the religious or spiritual life, for God is now apprehended as source and end of all ideas and ideals — as sum of per- fection ; and thus it is that God may be said to constitute the supreme end of human activity and the ultimate sanction of the Good and the Law. Union with this all- embracing object as containing the supreme end of Man and as sum of all minor ends, is thus the attaining of the Good and the fulfilling of the law. Nay, the supreme joy of reason in a fulfilled end, which end is the good and the law, is itself the joy of the individual reason in its union with the universal reason. " Man's chief end is to glorify God." Now, it is manifest that a man cannot actualise ideas or ends until he possesses them. They must first of all be in the form of judgments — "counsels of perfection." Note. — In the earlier chapters of this book I may seem to have narrowed man's function too much when I sum up the end of life (and therefore the end of education) under the one word, ethical. The fact is as I have stated it, however. Multitudes of what seem to be merely dry intellectual judgments intervene between man as a self- conscious person and the actualising of himself But these very intellectual judgments are merely the final word in a search for the truth of things, with a view either to the contemplation of them or to their translation into conduct ; they are thus only steps in the ethical process. Even when a man lives for knowledge as knowledge, truth II.] NATURE OF ETHICAL LIFE GENERALLY 267 as truth, he is under the influence of an ethical emotion. He is in search of the idea under the stimulus of a conception of the ideal ; and the pursuit of the idea for itself excites in consciousness an emotion of the intensest kind, and is at the root of his whole activity. Even in the making of a table which shall be according to a model, a carpenter is sustained by an emotion ; not to speak of the further sense of obligation to another under which he does his work. From first to last it seems to me man is always an ethical being in so far as he seeks to fulfil his functions — it matters not whether it be sweeping the streets or ruling a kingdom. LECTURE III. BRIEF ANALYSIS OF MIND AS AN ETHICAL ACTIVITY. IDEAS AND MOTIVES IN LAW AND DUTY. When dealing with the philosophy of mind as an intel- lectual or reason-activity, we first exhibited the charac- teristics of the attuitional intelligence of the animal ; and we thus gained a clearer comprehension of the distinctive characteristics of the intelligence of man, who alone is a reason. The same mode of procedure will be followed now in the ethical sphere ; for the ethical is simply, as we now may see, the organising of feeling and emotion with a view to ends as governed by the supreme end — "The Good," which is also " The Law." Animal and Infant Ethics. The result of our analysis (Part II., Lect. I.) was that the simple feelings which are inherent in a fully developed animal organism are the following : — 1. The feeling of /?/"^- activity. 2. The natural appetites (impulses, instincts), working from within, and in close connection with specific physical organs. 3. Sympathy of being, and of natural feelings, with living creatures. 4. The feeling of kindness to other living creatures, especially to those of a like kind (goodwill). 5. The feeling of pleasure in kindness received from others (love of approbation). LECT. III.] ANALYSIS OF THE ETHICAL IN MIND 269 6. The feeling of a superior power (with the consequent feeling of dependence). Note. — We may distinguish 4, 5, and 6 from in- stinctive appetite and desire by assigning to them the name "emotion" 7. The feeling of resistance to anything which may hurt (animal courage). 8. The feeling of fear, or of evasion, of anything that may hurt (animal cowardice). 9. The feeling of rivalry. All these insist on manifesting themselves as occasion arises. They are all connate, or implicit, or inherent, in the conscious organism, and only await occasion to become explicit. Now, man shares all these characteristics — instincts, feelings, desires, and impulses, with animals ; and they form the basis of his ethical nature. As basis of his nature, they are in evidence from the first ; indeed, they constitute the whole ethical apparatus of the infant. There is no harm in them ; but, on the contrary, good : and the young must be allowed to pursue their desires and exercise their activities in every direction within the limits of Moral Law. Children gradually mould feeling and motive into a system of law with our help ; but we must not be in too great haste. I do not mean to say, with Rousseau, that there is no original perversity in the human heart, although this position was perhaps justifiable as a reaction against the extreme theological position. What I mean is that every desire and feeling has good in it, and that evil arises through the opposition between these desires and the ideal of life as a life of Reason and of Law. Ethical Ideas. In man, reason (as Will) enters for the purpose of rationalising all the impulses and desires and emotions, and directing them to ends, which ends are, in their 270 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. ultimate form, ethical ideas ; and these, taken together, constitute the ideal of conduct for each man — the Good. The business of the teacher and parent is to build up this Ideal, and to train and discipline the Will to elect and act freely in accordance with it.^ The animal is a mere victim of the dynamic of feeling. It yields to that which is strongest or uppermost at the moment. Man, on the contrary, directs feeling and emotion in certain special lines of activity, i.e. towards certain specific ends, by virtue of the reason in him. These ends are, as I have said, ethical ideas, and they constitute motives of action. Note, further, that when this Will-reason enters into the sphere of feeling, it brings with it new material or content to consciousness, (i) A consciousness of Will as a determining power, energy, or force. (2) A conscious- ness of personality or self (3) A consciousness of duty to moral law as inherent in the ideas and the ideal constituted by Will-reason. (4) Emotions of reason as such, which are supremely ethical. With education, these reason- sprung elements of man's distinctive ethical nature grow in strength ; but we must not expect too much from children in whom will and reason are, as yet, weak. The sum of the ethical ideas of conduct in a man, taken along with the perception of law in these ideas, and of consequent duty to that law as supreme, constitute, taken together, what we call Conscience. The function of the educator, accordingly, may be said to be to build up Conscience in the young ; and Conscience, I repeat, may be succinctly defined as the ideal system of motives, along with the sentiment of law and duty to law, as inherent irt that ideal system. ' We do not discuss the question of Free Will here, but assume that Will is free. This is the postulate of every civil community and of all education. We will just say, generally, that a being is free which can refer its act to itself as source and end of the act. m.] ANALYSIS OF THE ETHICAL IN MIND 271 As to these ideas themselves, they are ascertained thus : Will-reason dealing with the feelings and emotions which we have in common with animals (though in more ample measure and in subtler manifestations) determines the true relations of a person to himself, that is, to the feelings, instincts, and emotions which constitute the real of his conscious organism, and also his relations to other persons ; it thus rationally constitutes the moral ideas (ends and motives). Note. — Will as root of Reason ever seeking End or Truth, and the Law in the Truth, governs all. The universal basis of all mind-life is Feeling. In the natural instincts and appetites, all connected with the bodily organism, there is feeling which, when it becomes intense, passes into what we call Desire — a desire for expression, and, through expression, satisfaction. This action of desire is animal volition. Will, however, which is the essential note of the man-animal, may subsume this desire into itself and lend it all the force that the lower can get from the higher ; on the other hand, the subject, as Will always seeking for idea and law through its formal rational movement, may present to itself the idea which ought to determine action, and thus inhibit desire, through that which, as higher than it, is Law. This is pure Will and Morality. Again, the Feelings of Sympathy and the consequential altruistic feelings and the feeling of a greater and higher outside the limitations of the conscious subject are primarily psychical, and these also may become so intense as to rise into what is best called "Emotion" (to dis- tinguish it from animal desire), and insist on discharging themselves. Will may subsume emotion as it may subsume desire, and lend it the strength which belongs to Will. But even this higher psychical kind of activity, though it may be accidentally moral in its effects, is not pure morality. In emotion as in desire. Will is at the root of the specifically man-nature, always seeking the idea or truth of action which is the law, and so controlling and directing the activity of emotion, as well as of desire, to the true end or idea of human activity. It is this alone 272 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. which is Morality ; for in this alone resides the Law. The categorical imperative which as law calls for the response of duty is alone the moral ; and the categorical imperative resides in the idea, or true truth, of our being as a self- conscious being ; and further, that idea or truth is the issue of Will seeking truth and law under the impulse of end. Unceasing search is of its essence, and it is for ever and incessantly energising. The moral accordingly, and the ethical generally (which is the moral apprehended in its divine source and end), is not to be perfunctorily disposed of as a " categorical imperative," or as an intuitive feeling of good and evil (sesthetic), or as a cold injunction of reason, still less as subjective feeling of quality ; but as all of these. Will, in its necessary form of reason-seeking end, seeks it in the complex of Feeling ; and that end or idea, when found, is the Truth of Feeling and brings with it the Law, which is always in the True. Man is a dual being — natural and spiritual in one person ; and the ascertainment of end and law is con- sequently a slow process. Nay, more, as a social being, the emotions may mislead a man no less than the desires, until he has been taught by experience how they work out and has seen the fruit of their activity in their consequences. Even pure benevolence may defeat its own purpose, and in its results even horrify the well-intentioned agent. The final truth is harmony of feeling (or justice), as determined by Reason ; not this or that man's subjective feeling, but feeling as ascertained by an analysis of man the universal, and all his relations to persons and things ; therefore, objective. That there arises an emotion in the perception and willing of the idea is true ; but it is the emotion of and in Reason as now dominant and directive. The moral ideas are all complex ; the most common of them are : — Humanity (which is good- Courage. will to others, and love of Integrity. the goodwill of others). Resoluteness and Persever- Justice. ance (Industry). Truthfulness. Purity. III.] ANALYSIS OF THE ETHICAL IN MIND 273 Honesty. Reverence (for that which is Honour. greater than ourselves) ; Fidelity. and Self-control. Self-respect, or self-worth.^ Finally, there is the idea of God in which the spiritual significance of all knowledge and all life is seen. (All these characteristics are alien to the animal ; and to man in so far as he is an animal.) To hold present to himself all the ideas which it is his duty to foster in the minds of the young, is for the teacher a difificult task. But he will never go far wrong if he steadily keeps in mind as dominating aim, five virtues, viz.: — (i) Self-control; (2) Self-respect (self-worth); (3) Truthfulness ; (4) The idea of Humanity, which expands and enriches the soul while at the same time determining conduct ; and, finally, (5) The spiritual idea of God as universal Father, which at once humbles and exalts the personality, and the best service of whom is the service of Mankind. The two latter take a man out of himself. The boy should, further, early be made alive to the fact that a continuous struggle is appointed for man, not only with his animal nature and material interests, but with the very self-conscious Ego itself, which, just because it lifts him above nature, is too apt to rest content with self- worship. This self-idolatry may shut him off from the world of men and things through which alone he can fulfil himself I emphasise the spiritual idea, because where there is a breach between moral and religious teaching, we have neither the one nor the other in its fulness of significance. Without religious teaching, the education of a human being is (on purely psychological grounds) demonstrably incomplete. And to begin such teaching late, and as if it ^ The analysis of these complex ideas into their elements of emotion and reason would, doubtless, throw light on the method of so educat- ing the young that the ideas shall be to them a permanent possession as motives lying in reserve awaiting occasion. S 274 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. were a separate "subject," is to misapprehend both religion and education, for it is to conceive religion as a thing of the abstract understanding divorced from emotion, aspira- tion, and ethical ideals — something which may be super- added to the general course of instruction; whereas it must permeate and sustain it, and reveal the true signifi- cance of all that is taught.^ I use the word Humanity, above, as the most general- ised term for the social and altruistic estimate of our own interests as compared with those of other men, and the community of which we form a part. It embraces loving- kindness and charity (in the large Christian sense), and is the mother of many virtues, which involve each other. For example (to use the words of Dr W. F. Harris) : It embraces "humility, considerateness, heroism, gratitude, friendliness, and various shades of love in the family, pity, benevolence, kindness, toleration, patriotism, generosity, public spirit, philanthropy, beneficence, concord, harmony, peaceableness, tenderness, mercy, grace, long-suffering, etc." Now, I ask to what extent have the masters of schools (and I would specially name secondary schools) had deliber- ately in view the cultivation of this all-embracing virtue in their pupils. If they ignore such things — the real or sub- stance of ethics — do they educate at all? We are told that school must prepare for social and political life. It is by the anxious cultivation of this virtue that it can alone accomplish the task. That the aim of education is the education of the individual man, not of the citizen, has been held by some. The answer to this proposition is that the individual man can attain his fulness of stature only in and through the State — an organisation of men under Law. The man who keeps before himself the ideal of the State as the end of his activity, realises there-through the ideal of himself ' Consequently, so-called "secular" schools can never educate a man save in a very partial sense. The most complete illustration of secular education that history affords is that of China. III.] ANALYSIS OF THE ETHICAL IN MIND 275 as a person. Beyond question, the chief education in social and altruistic sentiments is, so far as the young are concerned, to be found in the family and not in the school. There it is that self-control, mutual consideration, self- sacrifice for the common good, etc., can best be taught. Unhappily, it is because the family is so little to be trusted, that we have to call on the school to complement and supplement its function. I cannot analyse the virtues in this brief treatise ; but having adverted to the virtues of Humanity and Religion, let me say one word as to self-respect or the consciousness of self-worth. This is very far removed from conceit or egoism in any form. In true j^^respect, it is man- universal as he ought to be that you respect in your own individual manhood. It is the dignity of Man in you, a man that is conceived. It is this self-respect that chiefly supports Truthfulness. The liar has no character at all ; he is a nonentity in the moral world. To expect to find these virtues in a child or boy would be absurd, but we sow the seeds of them by wise guidance. If we have instructed the young in moral ideas, we have done much to secure sound moral judgments; but this is not enough, as we now go on to show. " Character building," says the Herbartian, " is Will-training " ; this is true : " Will-training is the apperception of ideas " ; this is false. LECTURE IV. DISCIPLINE TO LAW AND DUTY. Man has not only to be instructed in ideas, but disciplined to obey. While feeling and emotion must have free play in the child and man, an ethics of mere ideas or moral sentiments is as unstable as water. A sense of absolute law in these ideas can alone give stability to character. Character is crystallised habit of action. It is of Duty that Wordsworth finely says : " Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, And the most ancient heavens through Thee are fresh and strong." I speak of law and duty as residing in ethical ideas. We may put it otherwise, thus : the abstract sentiment of law and duty inherent in the reason of man is a mere empty form, and has to be filled with the substance or real of ethical ideas which are to regulate life and conduct: on the other hand, ideas will not serve if not reverenced as law-giving. This sentiment of law, and of duty to law, must accompany all our training and instruction, and be taken for granted as an ever-present inner fact of con- sciousness, distinguishing the man-child from the animal. Through this sense or sentiment of law and duty, in truth, we must mainly work ; although we do not, of course, make our procedure apparent- to the child. As Mr Nettleship says, in expounding Plato (see Hellenica, p. 1 24) — " As the spirit of lawlessness beginning at the trifles of education ends by overthrowing law itself, so the law-loving temper, fostered from childhood, is the 276 LECT. IV.] DISCIPLINE TO LAW AND DUTY 277 pregnant germ of the full insight of the legislator and statesman. If it be only started well, it will assimilate nourishment and grow by its own inherent vitality." The educator may be assured that the child as a reason is ever in search of law. The discipline of duty to law, as distinguished from instruction in ideas, is, essentially, a calling forth of effort to will the good and right in the face of difficulties, and for the sake of law. In this connection the recognition of God as source of law, and of the world as a moral order, is to be con- tinually fostered (by being assumed rather than incul- cated), until it reaches that clearness of vision, possible only to the maturing or matured mind, which contemplates God as not only the true and ever-abiding life of the spirit of man, but the ever-enduring law of that spirit. The educational problem, then, is this : — 1. How shall I cause to grow in the mind ethical ideas so that they shall be a perpetual and permanent possession and a storehouse of ethical motives which shall govern doing ? This is the Real in ethical education. 2. How shall I train and discipline the mind so that it shall ever revere and obey the law that resides in those ideas, and have an ever-present sense of the eternal obligation of the Ought? This is the Formal in ethical education. While emphasising discipline and law we must not, however, forget that humanity (and consequently every boy and girl) progresses by means of ethical ideas more than by mere discipline. The essential difference between a citizen of ancient Athens and of Great Britain is probably to be found in the ideas which animate and control conduct, not in their ready response to public obligation. LECTURE V. PARALLELISM OF THE INTELLECTUAL AND ETHICAL IN EDUCATION. We now see what is meant by the Real and Formal in Ethics — the nutritive and the disciplinary. Will, engaging itself with abstract duty to law, and acting for the sake of duty to law as such, is the Formal: the ethical ideal, on the other hand, which is "constituted law" for us, is the substance or matter, in other words, the Real in the ethical act. The latter is a matter of Instruction, the former of Discipline. In the purely intellectual sphere, it will be remembered, we distinguished between the Real and the Formal or Abstract in instruction. So now, in the distinctively ethical sphere — the ethical side of reason — there is a real and a formal or abstract. Accordingly, just as we found Will in the conscious subject to be root and nerve of reason in man, we now find the same Will to be root and nerve of all ethical life and activity. The ethical end — always an idea of reason — which is affirmed as right and law, is carried, by the sustained energy of the same Will that affirmed it, into action ; and thus we become ethical beings, and not knowing beings only. It must be apparent that our analysis of the essential nature of mind gives to us, as students of philosophy, a unity of view, and as students of education a unity of theory and system. For in the education of both the 278 LECT. V.J THE INTELLECTUAL AND ETHICAL 279 rational and ethical nature, Will is the distinguishing characteristic of man — that whereby he is man ; and it is this, consequently, that we have specially to train and discipline, viz., Will as at once a rational and an ethical energy. But, inasmuch as rational mind, as pure Will and its reason-process (or, as I prefer to call it. Will-reason), is merely formal, we have to provide food, reality, nutrition, for the moral, just as we do for the intellectual, nature. This material is, we now know, ethical ideas. We must never, however, lose sight of the fact that it is the command which Will has over its materials, and the ends for which it uses them, that are alone of value in life. A purpose of Duty is demanded of us. This, indeed, is what we mean when we say that the end of education, as of life, is ethical. Intellectual discipline, we found, involves a self-initiated energy of Will in the face of difficulties under a sense of law — that is to say, the fulfilment of law, as imposed by another or by oneself, with a view to the fulfilment of a purpose : ethical discipline also may be defined in the same terms. Thus, intellectual discipline is, in truth, also a moral discipline. The above remark justifies the traditionary attitude of the classical humanists to discipline of intellect as of supreme importance; but it also shows that they have erred in making it all-important. The intellect must be fed, and the ethical nature must be fed. So essential is this, that we might also, if we chose, justify the realistic attitude of mind to education as of supreme importance. The true conclusion is that to which we formerly came. Will-reason can be trained and disciplined only in and through the real of nature and human nature : but the real can be effectively taught only when it is so taught as to be a training and discipline of the formal in mind. How? To this, scientific methodology is the answer; and 280 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. v. as regards intellect we have nothing more to say. But methodology is equally illuminative and potent in the strictly ethical sphere. Ethical Education, let me repeat, comprises (like intel- lectual education) two elements, the Real and the Formal, nutrition, and training with discipline. I pointed out (Part I., Lect. XI.) the distinction be- tween the "training" and "discipline" of the intelligence. Discipline, we found, could not be distinguished from training except in this, that it consisted in unaided, self- initiatfed, and self-directed effort on the part of the pupil with a view to the effecting of a self-conscious purpose ; while training was the carrying of the pupil through certain intellectual processes by a stronger will, viz., his master's. Hence we found that formal or abstract studies were in themselves more disciplinary, if rightly taught, than. realistic studies, because they involved greater initial energy and more sustained application of that Will which, as a power and process, is the distinguishing differentia of man. The same distinction is apparent in ethical education. In the case of very young children we train to right action,. ?>., we guide, lead, and help them to do the right, in obedience to their teacher as a moral guide ; we do not appeal to abstract law, or lay a burden on their wills. We rely, on imitation and on their affection for us. This is training. As they grow older, however, we call upon them to do the right of themselves in the face of temptation, in obedience to the moral law in them, and as an act of self-directing will in the service of bare duty : this is discipline. And we prepare for this, by encourag- ing free activity in the earlier stages. Thus far, the method of intellectual and the method of moral education run on parallel lines. In both alike, training is the guidance and helping of the unformed will in the fulfilment of ends, and discipline is the spontaneous, free ienergising of that will in the fulfilment of self- conscious ends, to which, as law, it owes duty. LECTURE VI. METHOD OF ETHICAL EDUCATION IN THE REAL — INSTRUCTION. Ethical Instruction is chiefly by Training. By intellectual instruction we mean the building up of the fabric of knowledge, in so far as objects of experience are merely perceived and understood as matters of fact and in their mutual relations. By the ethical we mean the purposes and moral laws that determine willing ; and the material of perception and understanding are now seen to be merely raw materials for ethical and aesthetic appreciation and for the regulation of Will in its move- ment towards ends ; which ends are laws of universal validity. In other words, the world of nature and of men is the material in which each Will works towards the fulfilment of an ethical function. The ethical differs from the intellectual as regards the method of instruction only in so far as we are now instructing in the emotions and ideas which constitute the inner substance or matter of our ethical life. The difference is caused by this : in the sphere of intellectual education we have to do with presentation and acquisition, whereas in the sphere of ethical education, as I have already pointed out, we have directly to do with action or conduct ; for an emotion is not ours till it is felt as prompting to action, and an ethical idea is not truly ours till it is used and passes into conduct. An ethical emotion 282 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. or idea, in short, truly lives only in action ; and, accord- ingly, can be realised as a fact of consciousness by the child, and so truly known, only as an act} Consequently, we instruct in the Real of ethics chiefly by training. That is to say, — («) we do not bring the ethical before the child's mind as a series of preceptive facts or reasoned conclusions, but let the child experience ethical emotions and ideas in action — the action of themselves or of others (either actually or in narratives). Perception is here perception of a feeling in activity. Through sympathetic imagination, the child makes the action of another his own. (b) Above all, we lead the child to do the good instead of the bad by letting him feel its inherent attrac- tiveness, which he does readily ; and, further, by associating the good with his regard for us. Abstract instruction in emotions or in moral ideas or precepts is to the young nothing but words — verba sine rebus. The res in this sphere are actions resting on emotions or prompted by ideas. The process of acquisi- tion is the imitative adoption of what the child approves as done by others, especially by his teacher. Only then does he truly know the ethical emotion — i.e., by himself imitatively doing it. Logically, it is true, the virtuous state of being must always precede " effective virtue," and, in this sense, virtue can be taught ; but, as a matter of fact, the two are so indissolubly united in the life of mind, that we would seem to bring about the virtuous state of being by first securing in the young the doing of the right ; and so we work backwards. It is because of this necessity for seeing others do rightly and doing rightly oneself, that it must always, it seems to me, be difficult to cultivate the domestic affections and the finer emotions outside the family. The English Public School boy, for ' The distinction is, fundamentally, the distinction between outer sense and inner feeling respectively, as yielding materials for know- ledge. VI.] ETHICAL EDUCATION IN THE REAL 283 example, has certainly a tendency to hardness and self- assertion ; while, it is true, tolerant of the self-assertion of others. These remarks apply also to religious instruction. We build up the reverential frame of mind, for example, by means of the habitual act of prayer and by the exhibition in our own conduct of a consciousness of the Divine presence. This is sympathetically imitated by the child, and he knows the reverential frame of mind only in the moment of manifesting it or of seeing us manifest it. The feelings, again, which lie at the root of minor morals (which Locke calls good breeding) are all taught by imitation and a training in the acts. Far too little importance, I would here point out, is attached by teachers to minor morals in their reactive influence on character in its deeper sense. No verbal instruction is here of much avail. Good breeding, acquired after a youth is grown up, is always alien to him. His manners and " form " are self-conscious. He is wearing somebody else's clothes, and they never quite fit. Everything that a child is to be as a man he must first be as a child. The general conclusion is that ethical instruction is chiefly through training, i.e., evoking in the child the sympathetic approval and imitation of good acts. Coercion would defeat our purpose. The child has to adopt our point of view through imitation, and imitation rests, as we have seen, psychologically on sympathy : how can there be sympathy with that which a child fears? It would be a contradiction in terms. Hard precept is out of place with the very young ; but, on the other hand, the rhythmical, and still more the poetic, expression of moral sentiment is never out of place. On the contrary, so long as a poem or eloquent prose expresses ethical sentiments or ideas which are fairly well understood, they are powerful agents in building up the ethical ideal at every stage of education ; 284 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect, especially when, as in the case of verse, the words are allied with music. All that has to do with the expression of the ideal, in words or in beautiful forms, is in its effect moralising, simply because it is ideal. Precepts and dogmatic propositions are uninspiring generalisations, and no generalisation, as I have so often said, has any meaning except in so far as it sums up particular experiences. In the intellectual sphere, the particular experiences are percepts and concepts and relations of things ; in the ethical sphere they are the acts of the learner himself, or of his teacher and companions, or the imaginative realising of the acts of others as narrated in prose or poetry. There are those who "want to hear of people unlike themselves, more noble and able and just and sweet and pure; who long to hear of heroism and to converse with heroes ; and who, if by chance they meet with an heroic act, bathe their spirits in that, as in May-dew, and feel themselves thereby, if but for an hour, more fair." ^ Thus it is that we instruct in ethical ideas by gradually evoking in the pupil, through doing or through sympathy with the doing of others, the ideas which sum up a virtuous ideal of conduct ; in the hope that these ideas may be a permanent possession : and we help this process by the poetical utterance of ethical ideas. Indeed, the sole place for what may be called direct moral instruction, as distinguished from training, is in the expression of the simpler emotions in verse and song, of which I have been speaking. The child being already presumed to know {i.e. to have experienced) the emotions and yielded to their right direction by his teacher, has a distinct pleasure in the rhythmical rendering of them. In simple verses we have what is to the child the ideal expression of the ethical ; and this instructs where bare precept would fail. There is an intimate connection between the ethical and aesthetic ideal. It is this, in fact, that lies at the ' Kingsley's Health and Education. vi.J ETHICAL EDUCATION IN THE REAL 285 basis of the public worship of praise in so far as it is enjoyed. It would appear, then, that instruction in the ethical generally is the evoking of sentiments into activity — the activity of the child himself or his sympathetic activity with anotlier, as in social intercourse, or as encountered in a fable, a tale, or narrative. I am aware that many look with a dubious eye on education in moral ideas, and would trust entirely to the family and school discipline of authority and duty. It is apparent enough from the preceding lectures, that the latter is not only essential but also more continuously operative than instruction in moral ideas, and may accom- plish much, provided always that the master has these moral ideas ever present to him as the guide of his own life and as his ultimate aim in guiding his pupils. At the same time, there is a tendency in the moral instruction con- veyed by the mere discipline of authority and law, as we all know, to become merely negative. That is to say, its formula is, " Do this, or suffer." It is apt to assume a harsh exterior. Positive morality — a disposition to love the good and to strive after virtue for its own sake, as constituting the harmony of the inner life, cannot be generated in this way. On the contrary, the tendency of discipline, taken by itself, is to starve the real element in the ethical altogether and to substitute mere mechanical obedience for morality, and the motive of escape from the consequences of vicious acts for true virtue. We may also say that if a youth holds by an ethical system simply as law and duty, this dry formulation of life is divorced from what we may call ethical joy, and the result is a narrow, arid, and unattractive character. The law in the ethical idea governs him, and we rejoice to see this ; but the real element, joy in the idea itself, is absent. That ethical ideas should be conveyed, and so conveyed 2S6 Institutes oP education [lect. as to live in the minds of men as supreme realities, all will admit ; but it cannot be the case that the haphazard method of the past, if we can call it method at all, is the best method of accomplishing this. The daily experience of personal relations in school, in the street, and in the home, the observation of the acts, the failures and successes, the sufferings and rejoicings of our fellows, and the general atmosphere of tradition, will not of themselves suffice, unless these experiences are of set purpose used as materials for training and instruction. Have they sufficed? "Learning," says Ascham, "teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty ; and learning teacheth safely, when experience maketh more miserable than wise. He hazardeth some that waxeth wise by experience. An unhappy master he is that is made cunning by many shipwrecks." What is it we have to do? It is no common task; but we are not without help, for we may be assured that every child is prepared to meet us at least half way, because he is by nature a child of God — a spirit seeking the law of his being not only as an abstract or external law, but as living ideas, ethical food, in which the law resides; and in and through which alone he can fulfil himself as a being of reason, and attain to that harmony of nature in which is the fruition of life. " To know," says Browning in his " Paracelsus," " Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed to be without." These living ideas have been summed up in a rough way in a previous lecture ; and it must be our anxious care to put each human being in possession of them as intrinsically to be desired, and as constituting the substance and law of the life of man. In the department of general knowledge, there is vi.J ETHICAL EDUCATION IN THE HEAL 28? much discussion of subjects and of the educational values of subjects. In the ethical sphere, happily, there is no such discussion : we are agreed : there is a consensus. The only question here is, "How shall we give ethical nutriment?" It is a question of Method. And surely this is a vital question if we are in earnest about attaining our end as educators. Unquestionably we owe a good deal to Herbart, as well as to Locke, for emphasising the substance or real of ethical instruction. Herbart's conception of the process, however, is inadequate. That there is a certain dynamical interweaving of conscious experiences and a sort of un- purposed (so far as the child is concerned) organisation of these into masses such that, when the occasion of action presents itself, the dominant mass tends to deter- mine action, is true. But the theory of mind-growth and conscience-growth is false as a system. It takes account of the sensational or attuitional elements only and leaves out the Will-energy, which drives through these masses of tendency as it pleases, in pursuit of the end it prescribes to itself; which end is the right in judgment, the good in feeling, the law in the motive of willing. It, accord- ingly, is a dynamical system, and contains the elements of mechanical or molecular fatalism : " There is a soul — a nature which contains The power of sense within a greater power Which doth employ and use the sense's pains. But sits and rules within her private bower." ' The general method of ethical instruction has been laid down ; and I would only now briefly direct attention to the fact that the principles and rules of method applicable to intellectual instruction are also operative in sound ethical instruction ; I shall confine myself to a few illustrations only. Present to Sense. — This we do when we lead the child ' Sir John Davies. 288 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. to feel what is the right thing to do in particular cases as they arise. Follow the order of mind-growth ; and Teach generalisa- tions as generalisations. — One would not think of talking to the young about the " idea " of justice, of purity, or of integrity : one goes wrong even when putting before them the judgments or precepts of morality ; e.g., " Stealing is wrong," " Lying is wrong," and so forth. Teach generalisations as generalisations, means here that the requirements of sound method are met only if we rely on particular instances as they arise in the conduct of the child or his companions ; I regulate that conduct so as necessarily to bring into consciousness the relative feeling or emotion. Children then see what it is they are not to do, and what they are to do. This particularisation in moral training is constantly ignored, and little children addressed in general language (on the subject of religion as well as morals) suitable only to grown people, and expected to understand the futile talk, and to regulate their conduct by it. This is to " offend these little ones." As time goes on, the children, with the teacher's help, and by being occasionally asked for their opinion of acts which they read about, quickly form generalisations for themselves which take the shape of judgments and pre- cepts ; and then, if growth is not arrested, ultimately pass into ethical ideas and become a personal possession and a storehouse of motive. Thus it is that we "teach generalisations as generalisations." By the time a fairly well-educated boy is thirteen or fourteen, justice, truthful- ness, etc., exist for him as absolute law and unquestioned precept, so far as mere knowledge is concerned. But ethical " ideas " — i.e., the moral ideas of justice, integrity, goodwill, and so forth — that is to say, the moral judgment conceived in its absoluteness and as emanating from God, and as that up to which and in which the youth is to live if he is to fulfil his manhood, belong to the age of sixteen or seventeen at the earliest, save in an external VI.] ETHICAL EDUCATION IN THE REAL 289 and rote sense ; and, in many minds they never arise at all — ^partly because their education has stopped short at a certain point, partly because they are meagrely endowed by nature. To get this final result, however, it is necessary to begin early with the simplest elements. If a boy has not learned at the infant stage that twice two are four, he is not likely to be able to understand the calculus at eighteen. Present a good model. — The child not only learns moral facts from his own regulated acts, but, as I have said, through sympathy with the acts of others. We tell the children stories, or recite narrative verses, which convey, without obtruding, moral teaching ; and as they grow older, they themselves read similar narratives ; the teacher conversing with them about the development and signifi- cance of the story. Thus a good model is presented. But it is the teacher himself on whom the child chiefly fixes his eye. He is the model up to which the child has to grow. If you exhibit passion, or irritation, or disregard of the feelings of others, you are assuredly training up your pupils in these vices, whatever your direct teaching may be. It is the general atmosphere a child breathes that educates, and the teacher creates it. Children are never too young for this kind of influence, be it a good or an evil one. " I verily do suppose," says Sir George Elyot, in his Governour, "that in the brains and hearts of children which be members spiritual, while they be tender and the little steps of reason begin in them to sprout, there may happen by evil custom some pestiferous deed of vice to pierce the said members and to infect and corrupt the soft and tender buds, whereby the fruit may grow wild and sometimes contain in it fervent and mortal poison to the utter destruction of a realm." Turn to use. — This you do by guiding the child and helping him to do rightly what he knows to be right. Without supervision, moral training is impossible ; but the T 290 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. supervision must be sympathetic and easy. You must not be too urgent. Time is with you. Let your teaching be analytico-synthetic. — That is to say, in historical and biographical readings, and in the reading of poetry, as your pupils advance in years, the complex of conduct or of ethical thought has to be taken to pieces, and its elements, moral and immoral, brought to light with a view to a moral synthesis of the whole. Only so is the lesson of any use at all. Rut do not overdo this. If you are to produce a flame easily with Bryant & May's matches, you must obey the directions on the box, " Rub lightly." Over-insistence in ethical matters is as super- fluous and hurtful as over-explanation in intellectual matters. Have some faith in the innate activity of the human intellect and also in the innate moral aspiration for The Good. Believe that the child must himself do the work of his own moral education under your guidance, just as he does the work of intellectual instruction for himself under your guidance. Assume that the young mind is ready for moral teachings, nay, eager for them ; and while you, of course, handle moral and spiritual things gravely, let all that austerity be absent which seems to take for granted the inherent wickedness of the young. They are certainly by no means so wicked as you are : their few years make it impossible that they should be. The child quickly recognises the good ; but he wants your help to do it : it is thus you train. " I suppose," said a little girl of four, " it is no use my saying I am sorry, I must do it " {j,.e. the being sorry). Associate your teachings. — The great lever in the hands of the educator is the association of the good conduct of the young with his approbation. And I may add that the association of moral teaching with pleasing surroundings generally, eg., good temper, cheerfulness, ease of body and mind, music, etc., is of great effect. Exercise the memory. — This rule is of obvious import- ance. You do so by repetition of good and heroic VI.] ETHICAL EDUCATION IN THE REAL 291 examples, or by incidental references to them, while the recitation of noble and inspiring words is required from the pupils at all fitting seasons. Thus, you will find that, speaking generally, the principles and rules of intellectual instruction are valid also for ethical instruction. Even the evoking of the Will, though it more strictly belongs to Discipline, is necessary for the full comprehension of instruction, whose end is Doing. Never moralise : moralising is always abstract. In truth, you can well afford to repress your desire to moralise, for the occasions of moral instruction are endless, inasmuch as it is necessarily given chiefly through training, direct and indirect. Opportunities never fail. Moreover, the relations of teacher and pupils to each other and of all to the work, organisation, rules, and moral aim of the school, all involve moral instruction. Kindness, con- siderateness, generosity, justice, self-control, truthfulness, honour, integrity — in fact, all moral ideas — are constantly entering as motive and end of conduct into the thousand particular acts that constitute the family and school life of each day. Life is woven out of these threads. Notwithstanding my insistence on Duty in the sequel, I am disposed to think that it is by the substance of the moral and spiritual life, however it may be acquired, more than by formal discipline that the ethical life of boys and men, and of society at large, progresses. The habit of duty is a great thing ; but there is no growth in it, save in so far as there is growth in the ideas that constitute law. As an abstract categorical imperative it must always be present, but it can only strengthen and give backbone to what is already there as ethical substance. It is the emotions which take possession of our consciousness when we are young which gradually go to constitute ethical ideas and the ideal of' life for each of us, and sustain the sense of duty by allying it with a conscious feeling of The 292 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. True and The Good. It is on the building-up of this ideal in the young that we must mainly rely for the mainten- ance of an ever higher and progressive standard of life in the community of adults ; and one of the chief results of discipline in bare duty to law is its contribution to this ideal by the indirect instruction which it gives. It is only with the young that we have any chance of succeeding in this great moral and spiritual work, for among adults all true moral advance is unquestionably determined by the moral attitude and aims which were gradually and in- sensibly created in childhood and boyhood. " Only by education," says Jean Paul, " can we sow upon a pure, soft soil the seeds of poison or of honey-bearing flowers, and, as the gods to the first men, so do we, physical and spiritual giants to children, descend to these little ones and form them to be great or small." The Real, accord- ingly, seems, in the ethical sphere, to have claims prior to the Formal. " The Good " has to be insinuated and made attractive, so that child, boy, and man will find it to be impossible to attain to his own highest satisfaction — the harmony and peace of ethical completeness — except by a continual striving after the realisation in his own life of those ethical ideas which are not himself, but something greater than himself, and yet his true and larger self.^ It is the general moral atmosphere of idea and law which we habitually breathe that determines our conduct. This is the " conscience of each of us " to which the words of Milton apply — " I will place within them as a guide My umpire conscience, whom if they will hear, Light after light well used they shall attain, And, to the end persisting, safe arrive." 1 It is scarcely necessary, after all I have said, to guard against the conclusion that the child or boy is to be self-conscious of this process. This would be the way to manufacture a prig and a moral pedant. The child and boy, more or less, clearly /^e/ all this, and a self-conscious system of ethics is gradually built up out of it when the proper time comes. vi.J ETHICAL EDUCATION IN THE REAL 293 At the same time, it is not enough that the young should be trained to recognise and do what is right because of its intrinsic attractiveness : they must be required to do the right in obedience to law, to obey the dictates of authority as such. Indeed, it is largely through authority that they imbibe the substance of morality. The iron hand is only concealed by the velvet glove of love and persuasion. We shall now proceed to deal with this large and complex subject. The habituating to obedience to law as law — to duty as such — is of more immediate consequence to the State, though not for personal culture and growth, than instruction by training, direct or indirect. Note. — I have said that Will is root and thread of the process of reason and also of the ethical function of reason. The parallel of the growth of the ethical, which is a growth through acts (of our own or of others sympathetically shared), and of the growth of reason, is noteworthy. As knowledge grows by an infinite number of step-by-step particular knowledge-experiences, so the ethical grows by an infinite number of particular act-experiences. Still further, as in the heart of reason there is self- initiating movement in a desire to know truth, so in the heart of the ethical movement there is a self-initiating movement which seeks law of life as completed system. While, then, we must in the ethical, as in the rational, present things step by step and in a certain order of complexity and difficulty, we are not to suppose that everything depends on us, and so worry either the advanc- ing intelligence or the growing moral nature, with petty and peddling trifles, but rather have a large trust in the self-activity of the child. Ignore the insignificant and rest with faith on that which is broadly right ; a child sees and does a thousand things for one you teach it to say and do. Do not manipulate mind too much, or be always pulling up the flowers by the roots to see if they are growing. LECTURE VII. METHOD OF ETHICAL EDUCATION IN THE FORMAL: DISCIPLINE TO DUTY. Authority. By the formal or abstract in ethics we mean Law, and Duty to Law as such. It is assumed that the process of instruction in the Real of morality — the Good, is going on from day to day. The ethical ideas which constitute the real or substance of morality cannot be trusted to determine a man's conduct, still less a boy's, save in ordinary cases. Outside the ordinary and usual, the sense of duty to abstract Law, and that as Law of God, is indispensable. It is the Law in ethical ideas, consequently, and obedience to that Law, which we must constantly keep before the young, if we are to educate them so as to give them power over their own actions — capacity for free self-regulation as they grow in years. This evoking of moral energy in the face of difficulties is moral discipline. Our aim is a " Habit of good action under a sense of Duty to Law as such." (Part I., Lect. VI.). In moral educa- tion the great principle of Method, " Evoke the Will," is conspicuously operative. It constitutes moral discipline. Thus only can we produce strong and manly characters instead of weak sentimentalists whom no man trusts. Will, as reason, knows and realises in consciousness the ethical idea as fact ; and it is the same Will which carries the knowledge into action. The rational move- 294 LECT. vii.J ETHICAL EDUCATION IN THE FORMAL 295 ment of Will completes and consummates itself in its ethical function. The continued supremacy of the Will in identification with Moral Law, is Virtue. The discipline of the Will to exert itself to fulfil duty has for its purpose the formation of a habit of willing rightly in difficult circumstances. It is by instruction in moral ideas and discipline in doing that we produce in a human being that unpurposed tendency to will and act in a certain way which we call Habit. By cultivating moral doing we moralise the young, not by merely building up " apperception masses." All virtue demands an effort of Will, an eifort varying according to the difficulties of the situation. The con- tinual practice of willing in accordance with moral law or maxim makes the effort gradually less, so that, in all ordinary circumstances, an educated man wills the right and good almost unconsciously. Virtue becomes to a large extent automatic. This result is the outcome of a long series of past efforts ; but however easy the virtuous volition may ultimately be, there is always in it some effort (even if it be only a memory of effort), and, always also, the recognition of duty to moral law as determining that effort. Since everything evidently depends on the habitual exercising of Will, the question at once suggests itself, How shall the schoolmaster or parent find occasions for this discipline of Will ? The answer is, that the occasions are never-ceasing. They are constantly occurring : in fact it may be said that human life itself is largely a series of moral occasions, and that life is truly life only in so far as it is the occasion of battle and the opportunity of victory. The underlying fact of man's conscious life as an ethical being is always struggle. The whole path of life runs uphill. But all acts do not furnish occasion. Numerous acts which a child or a man may do are indifferent; and perfect freedom must be allowed until some act, or pro- 296 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. posed act,, conflicts with moral law. This is important in the education of the young. Let them alone as much as possible. With the Young, Law is a Person. In the earlier years of life, the only form which the moral law can take is the Will of the elder, the will, above all, of parent or teacher. Moral discipline of the Will, then, is, in the first instance, training in obedience to the will of the parent and the teacher ; not as their personal will, but as representing society and the sum and consensus of ethical convictions. Obedience to external authority is the best guarantee that the boy will, as he grows older, obey the authority of his own higher self As the child increases in years, the moral law is itself gradually recognised by him, and the vindication of the soundness of our training is shown in the fact that he, when adolescent, can walk alone ; that he can be trusted to will in accordance with the moral law, when parent and teacher are no longer present to guide and support him. The quality of our education is further justified by the fact that the youth now sees for himself that our regulative training was identical with the inner demands of the moral law, and was not simply our individual opinion. If we have not this fruit, we certainly have failed in our attempts to educate. Instead of saying, then, that a child is to be habituated to the exercise of his Will in accordance with the moral law or with moral ideas (which are abstract), we should rather say that he is to be habituated to the exercise of his Will in obedience to the command and authority of his parents and teachers as vicegerents of law and ideas. Accordingly, obedience to the elder, as embodiment of pure law, has to be secured ; and this is a highly disciplinary process. It is a process of continual self- sacrifice to duty ; for the teacher and his Will represent law to which duty is due by the pupil. VII.] ETHICAL EDUCATION IN THE FORMAL 297 The child knows nothing of inner law, and the boy knows little. They are feeling their way to it. Law is abstract, and in germ only as yet. The young are concrete beings of sense and feeling. The educator (parent, teacher, the State) is to them law — law in its concrete and visible form. This is their Conscience, as yet external to them, and preceding, evoking, and guiding the natural growth of inner law in them. For the securing of the habitual recognition of law as law, and as an end in itself for the free energy of Will (the essential characteristic of man as a good citizen and as a person), almost everything depends on the character and behaviour of this external Conscience, viz.. Authority or Law as embodied in the parent, the State, and the teacher. The method of moral discipline, accordingly, is through authority on the one side, and responsive effort on the other. It might be asked at this point, What right has a schoolmaster thus to impose himself, as law, on the young? The answer is, The right of the mature mind to direct the immature mind, the right conferred by a man's being the holder of the tradition of law, which is accumulated wisdom, and the right inherent in the parent and the State ; all which are transferred to the teacher for the time being. This is the teacher's right. Right may ultimately have to be supported by m.ight. But might, in so far as it is not used in the service of right, forgoes its right, and.is immoral ; consequently, ineffective and demoralising. Nay, even in the service of right, might is ineffective and demoralising when employed without absolute necessity. For might as such (mere physical force) can never truly moralise. Th'rough sympathy alone the child imitatively adopts the law in you and from you. You leave him as free as possible in his acts ; but when he acts in accordance with law of his own motion apparently, he is in truth 298 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. vii. merely obeying law as affirmed by you, and confirmed by the promptings of his own emotional and rational nature. In the course of time, the latter alone governs. Doubtless, might can deter children from certain external acts, just as it protects law-abiding citizens from criminals : it is indispensable as a protective police. In the school also, might can deter ; but inasmuch as the purpose of the school is education, it is an ethical purpose — ^that is to say, the attainment of certain positive ethical results in the pupils as self-directing wills, and the merely deterrent cannot educate to this. In truth, we might almost go so far as to say that, except in so far as the young acquiesce in the law of their elders, the effect of law is demoralising. You cannot form character outside the will and tacit consent of the child. It is a miserable result of education, which can be identified with the merely negative result of a State Police. We conclude, then, that the Method of discipline to Duty is through Authority : and, further, that the authority which demands and commands obedience to law, in the family and school, is MORAL AUTHORITY, not Coercive Might. The whole subject of discipline to law and duty, then, centres round this question of moral authority. But before proceeding to this question, let me interpose a few words on the ethical discipline involved in the purely intellectual work of schools, a question closely relevant to moral discipline. These remarks are in supplement to Lecture VI. I am induced to return to the subject because of its importance in determining the character of secondary school and university studies. LECTURE VIII. THE RELATION BETWEEN INTELLECTUAL AND ETHICAL DISCIPLINE. When discussing the question of intellectual training and discipline, I pointed out that training is the leading and helping the mind to achieve its end (which is knowledge), and that discipline involves no fresh intellectual process, but is to be distinguished from training only in so far as it calls either for self-initiation of Will, or for a more sustained and difficult energising of Will. Hence we found that formal or abstract subjects necessarily discipline in a sense which real subjects can never do.^ The distinction applies with equal truth to Will in the ethical sphere, that is to say, in the regulation and direction of feeling and emotion. When I help a child by direction, sympathy, and encouragement to do what is right and good, I train his Will to the habit of virtuous willing. When I leave him to initiate action for himself, or when I call on him to sustain moral activity in difficult circumstances because it is his duty to do so, although the moral idea which is to govern his conduct is not at the time attractive, but, on the contrary, repellent: I say, ' At the same time I have more than once indicated that we have been in the habit of attaching too little importance to training as dis- tinguished from discipline. 300 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. when I do the one or the other, I discipline the Will in its ethical relations. It is manifest, then, that the distinction between training and discipline is valid for intellectual and moral education alike. It is also obvious that the younger the pupil, the more must I rely on training, so that the Will habit may be formed, and so strengthened by use as to enable a boy, as he grows in years, to encounter moral difficulties and overcome them. You will, no doubt, have seen it often remarked that intellectual work has a moral effect. What I have just said is the explanation, or philosophy, of the empirical observation. The same formal power of Will is operative in the intellectual and in the moral sphere. The simplest act of knowing, as distinguished from vague animal attuition, involves the energy of Will, and the study of anything that involves difficulty involves sustained energy or effort. In the moral sphere, also, what is required of us, if we would be effectively virtuous, is the steady maintenance of the supremacy of Will over our feelings and emotions; in other words. Self-control or self-direc- tion. The same sustained Will-potency is, in relation to knowledge, Attention ; or self- application. Whether, then, I exercise the pupil in the sustained application of Will in relation to knowing, which is attention, or in the sustained supremacy of Will, which is self-direction, I train in willing in the face of difficulty. Thus, exercise in one gives exercise in the other. This consideration is of no small weight in education. Professor Bain says (p. 402), " Whoever is able to maintain the order and discipline necessary to merely intellectual or knowledge teaching, will leave on the minds of his pupils genuine moral impressions without proposing that as an end." I would only add, " if he maintains that order and discipline as a true Authority, and not as a mere brute force." It is clear, then, that as teachers we are always viii.J DISCIPLINE— INTELLECTUAL, ETHICAL 301 engaged in ethical work : we are either giving materials for right judgment, or by our method of giving them, we are training and disciplining Will. We give such subjects of instruction as call for the prolonged exercise of Atten- tion, so that thereby we may discipline to the sustaining of Will ; and we so teach each subject as to make this effort and exercise of attention by the pupils necessary to the acquisition of it. But inasmuch as the power of Will is weak in childhood, we are careful to regulate our demands on attention according to the age of the pupil. We help the Will by rousing interest in the subject taught, or by our method or manner of teaching it ; but while thus moderate in our demands, we take care that attention is close and sustained while it lasts. If we do not do this, the exercise is of little value either for instruction or discipline. At the same time, we do not ignore the fact that the Will is always struggling with an infinity of feelings, and of internal images and associations and external distractions, and that the act of Will in atten- tion is never truly unbroken : it is rather a continual, and practically continuous, renewal of effort, and in the momentary interval between the efforts, there may be the intrusion of alien elements into consciousness. We allow for this ; and, as reasonable men, we are content with attention in the sense that the Will of the pupil is set in the right direction, and is continually recovering itself with a view to the accomplishing of some imposed task. In view of the same psychological fact, also, we prefer those subjects of instruction, as the pupil advances in years, which demand continuous effort ; that is to say, which are simply not done at all if there be no continuous effort {e.g. the formal subjects, viz., Geometry, Arithmetic, Language). Thus the wise conduct of ordinary instruction contri- butes to ethical discipline, while, at the same time, furnishing knowledge or materials for guidance. It is of importance, I think, that we should fully 302 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. viir. realise that the moral element enters into the work of mere instruction and acquisition : on the other hand, training and discipline in virtuous willing for specifically moral ends, repay the debt due to the intellect when acquiring knowledge, by contributing to the general power of self-direction and of sustained purpose. LECTURE IX. METHOD OF SECURING OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY. The Short Way. Its Necessary Failure. Assuming that the Method of discipline to duty is through Authority, the next question is, How shall I induce a child to respond to my authority, so that thereby he may be disciplined? or, to put it otherwise. How am I to get a child to perform repeated acts of will in conformity with moral law as represented by me, and in the teeth of his natural desires and impulses ? The answer which lies on the surface is what Locke calls the "Short Method." Tell the child to do or not to do certain things, and if he disobey, subject him to immediate physical pain introduced by a reproof, that is to say, a preliminary growl accompanied with an aspect of severity. The child will thus feel that, if he proposes to himself to disobey in future, he will have to balance the pleasure of disobedience against the certainty of bodily pain. A primeval savage would as a matter of course resort to this method, because he is a savage and is primeval. A method is a way, and a way is not a way at all, if it does not lead to the goal you have in view. And the question here is. Can we reach the goal in this way — the goal being a youth whose will is freely guided solely by reverence for the moral law and duty to it. To use a Kantian distinction — the " short way " is breaking-in 304 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. children as we break a horse ; and is not discipline in the true sense. First of all, it is evident that authority so exercised is the authority of coercive might, which we set aside as not moral authority at all. In the second place, if the above mode of procedure were the right mode, it would be impossible to carry it out consistently. It would demand of us constant vigilance, so that the child should always find his punishment for omission or commission awaiting him. If the punishment be not always there, he will calculate his chances of escape andi behave accordingly. This has been found to be a serious diiificulty : so serious that our forefathers had to call in the all-seeing eye of God to help them, and tell children that if they escaped us, they could not escape the eye which is everywhere, and that if we are not on the spot to punish them, God is there and will supply our place and inflict chastisement ; if not here, then hereafter. Now this " short way," if thoroughly and consistently carried out (and if you are not prepared thoroughly to carry it out, you confess that there is something wrong in it), must result in one of two things, a slave or a rebel. It cannot moralise a human being whose essence is Freedom. For you will either crush the free spirit and produce a cowardly and craven submission to external law, because of the terrors that surround disobedience : or, you will produce the reaction of reckless resistance, and make of your pupil a rebel against God and man — either an active, daring rebel or a dull, dour one. The result may be a mixture of the two, as in the street gamin. Man, however, has too much human nature in him to permit this system ever to be thoroughly carried out. A boy may be gradually hardening down into wickedness, or sinking down into inanity under the terror of father or teacher, when some happy accidental obliviousness in the parental or pedagogic tyrant, or, it may be, some tender consideration or friendly word from a stranger, may give IX.] METHOD OF SECURING OBEDIENCE 305 the poor boy a glimpse of better things, and sow the seed of a higher and better life than that to which he is being trained. To poor and neglected children, then, let us always be ready with a kind word : we never know what great results may flow from a little friendliness that costs us nothing. Let me repeat : — Man is a moral and spiritual being only in so far as he strives, freely and spontaneously, after an ideal of life through the moral law. This life alone is a life of effective virtue. That a man trained in the way I have described (by the short way) does not do wickedness is, so far as it goes, a desirable result ; but it is at best negative virtue, which is in truth the negation of virtue. The man avoids doing wrong merely because of fear of certain painful conse- quences, which lie outside the moral and spiritual life altogether. Consistent treatment of this kind, if it succeed at all, succeeds only in this negative sense, and tends to produce, as I have said, a craven or a rebel. It matters not how bravely or proudly the man so educated may subsequently bear himself on 'Change or in Church, he is a miserable craven at bottom. The seed of the spiritual life has not even been sown in his heart. I do not say that there should never be physical coercion of some kind : we shall speak of this again ; but it is clear that the " short way " cannot possibly succeed in forming the true ethical habit, and we must give it up. If I could be convinced there was no other way but this short way of making a boy into a virtuous man, I would certainly follow it.^ ' A somewhat heavy indictment has been drawn up against Greek schoolmasters on the ground of their severity. At the same time, all Greek writers admit the necessity of corporal punishment ; they give caution, however, against overdoing it, and against using upon free boys punishment suitable only for slaves. Nowadays people are inclined to stigmatise as cruelty, punishment that, in the olden time, would have been regarded as very trivial indeed, and it may be well to give some notion of what was meant long ago by severe U 306 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. You may think that the picture I have painted of the " short-way " is crude and blotchy in its colouring ; but how am I to unveil the true principle in a method except by exhibiting it in its consistent execution? If some think that I exaggerate, little do they know the past family history of a logical and consistent Calvinistic Puritanism. Crede experto. To fear the moral law is not to be afraid of it, but to reverence it : to fear God is not to be afraid of the Father of our spirits, but to reverence His Holy name : to be afraid of Him is to insult Him. Nay, were I as a teacher conscious that my pupils were afraid of me, I, even though a mere mortal man, would feel deeply grieved ; and if I felt that I had not merited such treatment, I would feel deeply insulted. " Moral training," says Kant, " is that which teaches a man to live as a. free being." discipline. I shall give, therefore, the catalogue of that old villain, Hauberle. After fifty-one years and seven months of schoolmaster- ing, he thus sums up with some complacency his manifestations of authority : — Strokes of the cane, ..... 911,527 Strokes of the rod, ..... 124,000 Blows with the ruler, ..... 20,989 Boxes on the ear, ...... 10,235 Tugs at the ear, ...... 7,905 Blows on the head with his knuckles, . . . 1,115,800 Impositions, ...... 22,763 Children threatened with the rod, but not struck, . 1,707 Children made to kneel on round hard peas, . . 777 Children made to kneel on a sharp-edged piece of wood, 631 Children put on the wooden horse, . . . 5,001 Professor Mahaflfy is inclined to think that the charges of cruelty brought against the Greek schoolmaster are not well founded, but there is a very suspicious passage in the second book of Xenophon's Anabasis, where, speaking of the stern and rigid Clearchus, Xenophon says : — " So his soldiers felt towards him as boys towards their schoolmaster." One would naturally infer from such language that the average schoolmaster used harsh discipline. The Roman schoolmaster certainly did. IX.] METHOD OF SECURING OBEDIENCE 307 But this short way you may say is given up ; it is a thing of the past. Not wholly. The devil is always among us. Every teacher whose moral discipline may be summed up in these words, " Do, or suffer," still follows it. Every teacher who thinks to train to effective virtue negatively and fails to rely on positive teaching, whether it be at Eton or the humblest Infant School, follows it. Every teacher who, when teaching, carries a cane or a pointer in his hand, as symbol of law, follows it. Every teacher who fails to cultivate a sympathetic, friendly, and humane relation with his pupils, follows it. Every teacher who feels his work a drudgery, follows it, — must follow it, whether he thinks he does or not. Every Inspector who plays the part of the pedagogic beadle in the presence of little children sanctions it. The trail of the serpent is everywhere. What, then, are we to do? How are we to get children to exercise their wills, so as to habituate them to good action under a sense of duty to moral law? This surely is a vital matter for the nation and for humanity. Authority is the engine of Discipline. What, then, is Authority ? LECTURE X. WHAT IS MORAL AUTHORITY? — ITS CHARACTERISTICS. When we ask the question, " What is the Teacher as Law or Authority ? " we ask this : What is the precise nature of the influences which compel, and which are justiiied by their nature in compelling, men or boys to act rightly. Authority, we have seen, is not to be identified with coercive might, the formula of which is, " Do this, or suffer physical pain ; or it may be death." Even in an army, a commander who relies on this alone for getting men to do what he considers necessary for the attainment of a military purpose, will not accomplish the greatest things. There must be an intelligent acquiescence in arbitrary command, if a response is to be more than mechanical. This is what is meant by troops having absolute confidence in their general. The history of great campaigns illus- trates this. God Himself, too, demands of His children a free and willing service. The only circumstances in which pure coercive might operates is in the case of civil penalties, and these operate only among those who (whatever their rank in society) are themselves essentially non-moral, and belong in truth to the criminal classes which are kept, and rightly kept, within the line of nega- tive morality by fear of the physical consequences. Education, so far from aiming at a result like this, aims at superseding such motives of action altogether by moral motives. The compulsion to act thus or thus is to LECT. X.] WHAT IS MORAL AUTHORITY ? 309 be an inner compulsion, ethical, not physical ; the ethical, as we have seen, comprehending the rational as ground of the law inherent in those ideas to which we desire the young to give effect. The "moral imperative is within us ; and the object of education is to evoke this moral imperative in the personality of each, so that all may act freely and willingly in accordance with its dictates. But the " moral imperative " is generally identified with moral command or law, and duty to law as such, and is, after all, only one, though it may be the central, element in the complex of motives that compel us to right action in the service of the Good. If this be so, then pure law does not wholly explain moral authority. We require a larger interpretation. For, I mean by moral authority all the motives which induce me — an adult — to do the right and good, and which must operate still more potently in the young. Moral Authority is, in truth, a complex of compelling inner moral forces which result in our doing the right and good instead of the wrong and evil. We shall best ascertain the complex of forces which constitute authority only by reflecting on the motive-forces which result in the moral act in ourselves and others. My analysis of. this complex may be inadequate ; but some analysis must be attempted. Accordingly, I ask the question. What is it that compels you and me to do the right, when it is difficult and demands an effort and may be even painful, rather than the wrong, which is seductive and easy, because it is the satisfaction of nature in me and not of reason ? You will say that the answer is. Conscience. In one sense this is an adequate answer ; but it gives no informa- tion. Conscience itself is a complex thing, and it is precisely this which I desire to analyse in order to ascertain those elements of moral authority which con- strain me to will in a certain direction, it being assumed 310 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. that I have already affirmed the right and good as a rational judgment. It seems to me that the following elements enter into and constitute the complex notion of Moral Authority or Conscience in its practical working : — 1. I recognise the moral idea which I have subsumed, in my judgment of reason, to be law for me, and to which, accordingly, I owe the duty of obedience. I feel its potency and its inherent right to command me simply as law. This is the Categorical Imperative : if I further recognise this law as law of God, it has an infinite sanction. 2. I, as a rational being, have gradually, under the multitudinous influences which I call my education, constituted for myself, an ideal of conduct up to which I strive to live as the true fulfilment of my being,, and in ilnion with which alone I can be conscious of free and full life. If, in addition, I identify this ideal with God as sum of perfection, the ideal has, then, for me, infinite relations and attractions. With a man of stoic mind, these two motives ought to suffice ; but, as a matter of fact, they require support. 3. Accordingly, I, as the average man, find myself inwardly constrained to the right and good because of my sympathy with the society of which I form a part, and which has sanctioned certain lines of conduct as alone virtuous. This sympathy reflects into me the strength of the social organism in general, and sustains, by a common guarantee, what would be otherwise only a subjective ideal. 4. I am conscious that, by acting in a certain way, I shall command the approving sympathy of my fellow-men, and by acting in another way, I shall incur their dis- approbation and condemnation. 5. I am, further, alive to the consequences of that disapprobation as possibly resulting in harm to my material interests. X.] WHAT IS MORAL AUTHORITY? 311 All these elements enter into and constitute the con- straining force (the ethical dynamic) which determines me to will the right and good — the authority to which I yield obedience. The process of ethical discipline, accordingly, is the bringing of all these into activity, so that when the boy stands alone, he can be trusted to act as he ought to act. Each will thus become himself a fresh centre of ethical life, and contribute, by his own action, to the binding of society together by the bonds of the ethical ideal and law. To attain this end is by no means easy. Even the best fall short or in some way go wrong, so that there is in every man a discordant note. Society does not press hard, however, on the man who truly endeavours. We forgive, for we ourselves need forgiveness — from our fellow-men often, from God always. It is manifest that all these elements which go to constitute moral authority are general and abstract in their character, and, as general and abstract, are outside the capacity of the child-mind. On the other hand, to begin with, every child of man is, as a being of reason, necessarily in search of the ideal and the law of his being, and is, moreover, endowed by nature with that sympathy which, taking the form of Goodwill to others and the love of the Goodwill of others, makes possible the social bond and all the social virtues. On this assumption, we endeavour to educate children up to the full stature of self-directing manhood. Now the position of the child is this, that while he is endowed with the sympathetic feelings and has the germ of law and of the ideal in him, he is incapable of recognising authority as a complex of inner facts and forces. Only what is concrete and visible can touch him. He is as yet tender and unformed, and only feeling his way to an ideal and to law. He is dependent on authority, as external, visible, and concrete, for the 312 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. guidance of his conduct and the inner growth of authority in all its fulness. The visible and concrete embodiment of authority is the parent or teacher. What, then, is your position as Educator, as Moral Authority ? It follows from what we have said that your position is this : — 1. You are the visible and concrete embodiment of the majesty of the Moral Law as Law. The child has growing in him, from day to day, a reverence for law in itself through his reverence for law as revealed in you his educator. 2. You are the visible and concrete embodiment of the ideal of life, and the child gradually forms and com- pletes his ideal as that is revealed in you his educator. You are the standard. It is you on whom he forms himself. 3. You are the visible and concrete embodiment of the social consensus as to the conduct of life. The child's range of vision is very limited, his horizon is restricted, and you, the parent or teacher, are to him society. 4. To you, as visible and concrete embodiment of society, the child looks for that approbation or dis- approbation which, when an adult, he desires or dreads from society at large. 5. To you alone, as visible and concrete embodiment of society, the child looks for those consequences of approbation or disapprobation which make his life, materially, happy or unhappy. We have been in search of the meaning of Moral Authority on which all true discipline of the young hangs, and I do not think that we go far wrong in trying to find it in the complex of motives that compels us adults to do the right. And, if the above analysis of our motives as adults, when we act virtuously, be correct, authority is not merely the right to command, inherent in moral law and in you as representing moral law, but it is a complex notion, and contains every element which X.] WHAT JS MORAL AUTHORITY ? 313 commands, prompts, stimulates, induces, a human being to act virtuously. Authority, then, is, in education at least, a word which sums up all the influences that can lead a child to exert himself to obey law in the face of difficulties ; and you the teacher and parent embody this authority : you are authority in the flesh. And precisely to the extent that you embody and show forth all the elements of the complex notion, to that extent will you meet with a response in children and be training up young human spirits in the way they should go. The whole question, accordingly, of training and disciplining to effective virtue manifestly resolves itself into the question of the personal authority of the teacher, and his mode of exercising it. And if the above be a correct analysis of authority, it places the educator in a very grave position indeed. The Church addresses adults whose characters are already formed for good or evil. All the Church can do, as a teacher of the people, is to supply such nutriment and discipline as will keep the moral and spiritual nature alive, and, perchance, cause it to grow and strengthen. The already-formed material is handed over to the Church and Society, as the school and the family have moulded it. The educator of the young is thus (when rightly regarded) perhaps the most important of all social functionaries. His work is fraught with the deepest issues to the individual and to the State. I say the educator, because I include the family as well as the school. But inasmuch as modern necessities have placed the professional teacher in an exalted position of moral authority for the most active hours of the day, and constituted him the delegate of parents and of society during these hours, it is difficult to set limits to his possible influence. There is, of course, always working, for him or against him, the connate predispositions and temperaments of his pupils, and the influence of their homes and of the streets. Still, in schools for children 314 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. removed from parental influence, in public institutions, and also in the great majority of day schools, the teacher is probably the chief moral force. He too often fails to realise this, and is content to teach and not to educate. So with society generally : it does not fully realise the power of education and the influence of a sound moral training on the future of the nation, and constantly con- founds education with instruction in certain speciiied subjects. But those who follow the profession of teacher, and would fain be also educators, ought to be in advance of common opinion in a matter so closely affecting their own social function. The authority of the educator, then, is all in all ; — everything resolves itself into this so far as the discipline of the Will of the young and their whole moral education to duty is concerned ; and, without it, intellectual instruc- tion in morality and religion will have little effect in moulding character. Ethical Function of the Teacher. — In relation to the young, then, we see what authority means ; let us sum it up as a concrete reality. Authority is z. person who is (i) The fountain and giver of law of conduct — the moral law ; and the exactor of duty to law. (2) The standard of life to the child which he is to imitate — the moral ideal. (3) The representative of the social consensus as to the standard of life and intercourse, which supports each individual in his ethical endeavours. (4) The source of approbation for law obeyed : and conversely, of disapprobation. (5) The dispenser of the consequences of obedience, and disobedience, to law. The primary condition of all effective Authority is Sympathy. X. WHAT IS MORAL AUTHORITY? 315 If in all the above respects a man is a true authority, and as such discharges his duty wisely, he is a supreme educator so far as the training and discipline of the Will of the pupils are concerned, and, consequently, so far as the formation of moral ideals and the virtuous habit of mind are concerned. If he fall short of being this impersonation of true authority, and in so far as he falls short, he must fail to train and discipline to a habit of virtue — nay, he may, so to speak, disorganise the wills of the young and demoralise them. We are not here, let me remind you, speaking of moral and religious instruction — the substance of the ethical state of mind ; — but only of the discipline of the Will on the assumption that direct moral instruction is at the same time given, and that it is largely given through daily activities. Let us now consider the Educator as a true authority in more detail and see all that it implies. LECTURE XL THE FUNCTION OF THE TEACHER AS AUTHORITY. As Authority ; — I. The Teacher is the fountain and giver of law ; and exactor of duty to law. As fountain and giver of law the Teacher has to guide the child in knowing what constitutes right willing in all the daily relations of life. "This thou oughtest to do" has its source in him. He is not, however, to formulate duty and duties to his pupils, or in any abstract or general way, to talk about them. He disciplines by exacting particular acts ; the pupil learns by doing. The young have to reach all general and abstract knowledge and all principles or ideas of conduct through the particular and concrete. Accordingly, you teach the law of duty by teaching duties ; that is to say, by requiring certain particular things to be done at certain times and in certain ways prescribed by you. It is only so that you can evoke the activity of Will, and, by numerous successive acts prescribed by you, convey the idea of law, and, at the same time, lead the child to form a habit of willing rightly in the face of temptations to indolence or wrong. Remember our great encouragement here : each act deposits the tendency to repeat itself. (Part I., Lect. HI.) Further, every moral act has its motive or determining moral idea: consequently by discipline in moral doing you are also instructing in moral ideas — the reality and truth of which consist in action. To do them is to see LECT. XI.] THE TEACHER AS AUTHORITY 317 them. In the doing of a moral act lies the presentation to inner sense in its most vivid form. As Authority : — 2. The Teacher is the standard and ideal of life for the child ; and the object of imitation. It is by sympathetic imitation that the young chiefly learn what they have to do. They form themselves on the character and manners of others. If, then, you, a teacher, wish children to be always ready at the call of duty and law to turn their will away from that which seduces into easier and, for the time, pleasanter paths, you yourself must be an example to them. You must never allow indolence and desire for ease to drsiwyou away from the school-duty of the moment. If you are not ever ready to do, and do effectively, what the day and the hour demand of you, it is vain to expect that you can form the habit of effective virtue in your pupils. To ask the young to do what you do not do yourself, is an insult which they are not slow to resent. If, on the other hand, you are always visibly taking the line of duty, you will do more to induce the young to respond to every call than by all the talking and preaching of years. So strong and instinctive is the disposition to imitate that it is not in important matters alone that it shows itself, but also in the most trivial, even the tricks of voice and gesture. It is j/our virtues that train your pupils to virtue. Now, we are not to speak of this disposition to imitate as if it were somehow a reflection on the independence and self-sufficingness of the human personality. We adults are always imitating more or less. There is a sense in which it is a kind of virtue ; for what is it at bottom? It is, it seems to me, merely the sincere and instinctive expression of our sympathy of nature, and of community of life, with other beings like ourselves. As children grow older, it is true, they have to find a centre of life and law for themselves as independent self- conscious personalities ; but even then, they can never 318 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. throw off the common human bond which keeps them moored, so to speak, in the current of life to the past and present of their race, and makes them heirs of the past as well as children of the present and makers of the future. As Authority : — 3. The Teacher represents the moral consensus of society. The children feel this, and are impressed by it : the teacher has simply to remember the fact, and draw strength and dignity from it. As Authority : — 4. The Teacher is the source of approbation and dis- approbation. It is to him, not to the community, that the pupil looks for the recognition of well-doing or the censure of ill-doing. By acting wisely in the discharge of this function, the teacher is really communicating to the child the sympathetic support of all his fellow-men in his strivings to act up to a standard of life. As Authority ,■ — 5. The Teacher dispenses the consequences of appro- bation or disapprobation. These consequences are not necessarily of a material or physical kind, though it is only in so far as they are visible and concrete that they can affect the pupil. The chief "consequence" is a pleased countenance and a diffusion of peacefulness and harmony in the relations of the teacher with his pupils, and of the pupils with one another ; in short, a fresh, wholesome, calm school atmos- phere in which the flowers of virtue may blossom. There is exhibited a confiding trustfulness on his part that all is right, that all will be right (the too common assumption being that all is wrong, or about to go wrong) ; and that if anything should go wrong, it will be merely a venial lapse, such as grown men and women themselves are sub- ject to, and which, by common consent, will be overlooked. This is the moral consequence of approbation which thus extends itself beyond the mere moment of approval. XI.] THE TEACHER AS AUTHORITY 319 The material consequence is the disposition to grant favours ; for example, to relieve from some specified work, to grant a partial holiday, to spend an hour in reading or songs instead of (say) decimal fractions, and, generally to err on the side of kindness, and so forth. The above is a picture of ideal family relations, and the school is simply a public family. The teacher who realises his function as above exhibited, possesses the method of evoking the Will to obedience ; in other words, the method of moral discipline in general. So it is that he habituates the child to activity of Will in the willing service of duty, and makes effort (in which lies the secret of virtue) a matter of course. Let us now look at the question from the pupil's point of view. Authority is there on one side, and on the other a number of children. Why, now, should a child accept this authority and the moral discipline and instruction which acceptance yields ? 1. The child yields because he cannot help it. Simply because of his conscious weakness and dependence, he is ready to lean on what he can trust and revere as law: and, moreover, at heart he desires law and loves law. 2. The child yields because he cannot resist the instinct of imitation, so strong are his sympathetic relations to his fellow-creatures. 3. The child yields because he cannot, by his very nature, be happy save under approbation proceeding from that which he reveres or loves, and on which he is dependent. 4. The child yields because every child feels that he truly lives only in the happy atmosphere consequent on approbation ; for in this atmosphere alone can his nature expand itself freely and harmoniously. Consequently he desires its continuance as he would desire the continuance of the mild air of a summer's day. 320 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. Now if this be so, it is manifest that these responses on the part of the child all assume that the teacher is a true and not a sham authority, viz., that he so imperson- ates law as to call forth reverence : that he is so strong an example of law as to satisfy the need of dependence and trust : that he satisfies the stirrings of idealisation in the child ; and that his approbation and its consequences are things, therefore, to be desired. Having thus considered the motive forces of moral education in the teacher and in the pupil, and seen that the characteristics of the one meet a need and natural disposition on the other, let us now ask this further and final question. What is the nature of the fundamental bond between the two, which is a pre-condition of the emergence of these characteristics in the teacher and of these motive-forces in the pupil? I have already said that it is Sympathy. It is not possible that a teacher can have these characteristics or that a child can have any, still less all, of the feelings that generate a happy obedience where there is not the mutual bond of affection and trust. I say it is not, psychologically speaking, possible. Where these do not exist, you have in their place open or latent antagonism, perhaps even fear. But how can the pupil have affection and trust if he does not see affection and trust in the eyes, words, bearing, and acts of his master ? The thing is impossible. There must be a sympathetic feeling of community between the younger and elder ; but the elder must be the first to love. We love God because Hejirsi loved us. The proper moral attitude, in brief, of the elder towards the younger is that of a man taking a child by the hand and leading him over rough places, not allowing him to shirk or evade them, but helping him onwards with kindly firmness and purpose, while the child responds with absolute faith and trust and a dim perception of some ideal of life towards which he is being conducted. These last remarks all point to the XI.] THE TEACHER AS AUTHORITY 321 grand pre-requisite in the teacher to which I have often adverted elsewhere — the pre-requisite of a genuine human and humane interest in the young and their mental growth. Without this, no man should be a teacher ; with this, all things are possible for him. Note. — The past history of the teaching profession certainly justifies our dwelling a little on authority, even at the risk of repetition. The immature mind, I have said, is not capable of apprehending the conception of abstract law and duty. This conception is there in germ and becomes explicit gradually, through the continuous discipline of young minds, which, by virtue of their rational nature, are seeking for law and going out to meet it. The ends of discipline, it might be said, are attained when we have formed the habit of obedience to the external law — the moral authority of the teacher. Not so : the habit must be so formed as to be a habit of free obedience to inner law, and a perpetual recognition of its majesty. This is a slow process, and the teacher must pursue his aim deliberately, calmly, and persistently. The abstract has here, as everywhere, to be learned through the concrete : and the teacher is the concrete. Now, since the teacher embodies moral authority for the purpose of regulating the acts of the pupil and thereby disciplining him in duty to law, he himself must make sure that he is a true and worthy moral authority. So far as he is this, he will succeed : so far as he is not this, he will fail. What, now, is the true meaning of discipline as centred in the teacher and proceeding from him? I should say — discipline is simply authority in action. What is its aim ? 1 answer — the moralising of human beings — the so training and disciplining the young that we shall present them to the State as citizens with a habitual self-determination towards virtuous conduct. What is its Method? Habituation of the Will of the young to right conduct under a sense of duty to authority. The vulgar meaning of the word discipline, as identical with coercion, we discard. As with the word discipline, so with authority ; we have been in the habit of associating it, especially in the X 3S2 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. case of the schoolmaster, with crude force — physical might exercised with a view to secure obedience to commands. But this is not the true notion of authority — indeed, it is altogether a barbarous conception of the relation sub- sisting between the man who governs and the child who is governed. Nay, it is not true even of the authority of the State over its citizens. Like many words, it is used with various implications of meaning; and, perhaps, in our army and navy the vulgar conception of the meaning and content of the word may be correct. But in the family and the school, this is not the meaning of authority ; and in the State it is not an exhaustive meaning, though partially correct. The schoolmaster's authority is not based on his being bigger and stronger than his pupils and having a prescriptive right of inflicting corporal pain on them when he chooses. Authority is not mere might : it is essentially a moral conception. The difference between might and right is perhaps this : might denotes mere force exerted to carry out the Will of a man, as opposed to force instinct with moral purpose and moral law. The arbitrary will and self- assertion of the strong man has sometimes done good work in the world, when the man who exercised it had moral law at his back. When men see this, their own spirits bear witness that the might of a sovereign is based on right. True, we always find a certain proportion of men, in even well-ordered communities, who do not recognise the right in might, even when put in force as moral, as well as civil, law. These we make short work of: we coerce them. There is a certain waste inevitable in all human affairs. How many bits of pure marble have been sacrificed to the statue of a Greek god ; how many pigments have been lost in making the Sistine Madonna ? So in civil society, there is always a waste of human material. The organisation of society involves the relent- less crushing out, in the name of right and law, of many human beings who will not recognise the right in the might of sovereign authority. Those who see the right in might, and try to live in accordance with the law, are freemen ; those who resist and wilfully resent law, are in so far as they obey, slaves : the latter obey an external ;ci.] THE TEACHER AS AUTHORITY 323 and alien power, the former obey the law in their own breasts as bearing witness to the public law. Now, the chief difference between the sovereign authority of the State and the sovereign authority of the parent or schoolmaster, arises out of the fact that the latter are educating the young and unformed up to a certain ideal of citizenship, whereas the former assumes that it has citizens full-grown to deal with. In so far as the authority of the State is not a might which is based on right, it is not a moral authority at all, and our right is to alter it ; while those in a state of pupilage to parent or master have no right or power to question authority. But all the same, they have an inalienable human right, as beings of reason, to be governed in accordance with right ; that is to say, to be morally governed and not as slaves of arbitrary will and mere force. Force is an external thing and cannot moralise ; though it certainly may keep the peace. In short, the young have a right to be governed by authority, and not by might. If the government of a state by mere might is barbarous, doubly barbarous is the government of a school of young children by the same agency. And yet it must be admitted that, in State and school alike, mere brute might has to be sometimes exercised when all else fails. The sovereign and the educator alike have to operate on mere animal fear of pain when they cannot, by the exercise of authority as that has been defined, evoke reverence for law. But they do not moralise the individual operated on by this means ; they merely prevent the outward exhibition of immorality, and deter others from following illegal courses. Meanwhile let the teacher remember that his authority over his pupils is not might, force, superior power, but finds its source ih right, in other words, in the Moral Law. Authority, accordingly, in the schoolmaster is the exercise of power as resting on and making manifest the Moral Law as that exists within the breast of man and child, teacher and pupil. It is this moral element in authority that is the basis of the teacher's whole function ; it enters into every part of his work — the teaching of intellectual subjects, the arrangements, details, and regulations of the school ; above all, and conspicuously, in purposed moral 324 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. xi. and religious training, towards which, indeed, it is always pointing. It is always in all circumstances a relation not of persons to things, but of persons to persons. For the whole of education is to be described as mind matured fashioning mind still immature, fashioning it to a standard or ideal of motive and conduct — to a habit of virtue. Nothing that we can possibly teach under the head of " subjects " is of any value at all to man as man, save in so far as it aims at and secures this ethical result. This is a liberal education. A little more or less of Grammar or Languages or Mathematics is of little account for the man, except in so far as it subserves this end : and everything we do as teachers either subserves it or it does not. The way, then, in which the teacher makes manifest authority is vital ; in fact on this depends his being a true authority at all, and consequently his being a true educator. Let us consider, then, the characteristics of the "exercise of authority." LECTURE XII. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EXERCISE OF AUTHORITY. Authority in all its majesty and humanity is, as we now see, vested in the teacher. The question is, How shall he exercise it so as to attain the ends of moral discipline ? The general answer is. By constantly keeping present to his mind the characteristics of true authority as these have been expounded. In seeking for a more detailed and helpful answer, we seek for the characteristics of the exercise of authority. These characteristics of the exercise of authority are in evidence from day to day and hour to hour. It is assumed that the master always maintains the aspect and bearing of authority. This is quite compatible with kindliness and sympathy, and is always self- controlled.^ Characteristics of Authority as Moral Law. I. The commands of the master are always in accordance with right reason. They are rational. This does not mean that he is to convince, or try to convince, his pupils that his commands are rational ; but only that, in quiet moments, he should be able to justify his commands to himself (or to other adults) on rational grounds. His commands must thus never be arbitrary, if they are to exhibit true authority. In other words, they 1 For an Essay on Authority in the Schoolmaster, see also my book, The Training of Teachers, and other Educational Papers. 325 326 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. must never be an utterance of his own wilful will, but have a rational justification. 2. The same commands are given in all similar circum- stances. They are sure, steady, and consistent with themselves. The pupil always knows where to find the master, so to speak. The master must not, therefore, allow his commands to be influenced — («) By regard for personal ease, or by indolence. {b) By variations of moods or temper (caprice). (c) By personal likes or dislikes (passion). {d) By indifference or frivolity — showing that he himself does not, at the bottom of his heart, much respect the law. (e) By self-esteem or pride — showing that he places himself and his own personality above the law as more worthy than it. (/) By love of popularity. 3. The master's commands are always instinct with a moral purpose. This means that they would be found, if examined, to have a moral aim. 4. Great liberty of thought and action is consistent with the observance of the moral law ; and all things are permissible which do not conflict with the law. Therefore — The master's commands do not hover round every part of the boy's life ; they do not harass him ; they are few but strong, strong but few. Liberty of action and freedom of thought and life are carefully protected, within certain easily understood and well-marked limits. 5. The master's commands and requirements are clear and unmistakable. 6. The moral law does not require of us the impossible. The master who is a true moral authority gives no commands and imposes no tasks which cannot, with a moderate effort, be fulfilled. XII.] THE EXERCISE OF AUTHORITY 327 By excessive exactions you justify disobedience. " Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.'' 7. The moral law is not equally imperative in respect of all rules of conduct. The master, therefore, lets it appear that there is a distinction, and a difference of degree, in his commands ; that some are truly laws of imperative force, others mere rules or orders of expe- diency. These are the "bye-laws," so to speak, of the family or school. It is well sometimes even to suspend (by way of reward) rules of expediency, when they restrict the freedom of the pupil. The very suspension enforces the distinction between the good and the merely expedient ; and so far from weakening the sense of law in the boy and the school, tends to strengthen it. 8. The commands and demands of the master are just. The young are exceedingly sensitive on the subject of justice. If you are just, you strengthen the inner law in the pupil by the outward manifestation of its own all- pervading characteristic. There is much that might be said on this question of justice, but I shall make only three remarks — («) The teacher's commands must apply to all equally. This does not preclude relaxations in the case of children of native weakness or sensitive- ness, provided that the other pupils recognise the existence of the reasons for exemption, which they are sure to do. {b) Make very sure of your facts before you approve or disapprove. If there be any doubt, always give the pupil the benefit of it. (c) Never remember a fault against a boy when it has been atoned for. Start afresh every morning with a clean sheet. A new day, a new life. Let each day be a day of regeneration. 9. The master makes use of the feeling of awe and reverence which is native to every human soul, and which 328 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. finds its supreme object in the absolute all-pervading thought of God, to strengthen the authority of moral law ; but only in grave cases. It is only when moral law thus clothes itself that it wears the purple, and, as over all supreme, commands the reverence of a rational being. If the teacher consistently exhibit the above character- istics of moral authority, his own personal authority, as the external conscience of the pupil, is then justified in him : and it will be found that the pupil will gain such trust and confidence that, should the teacher at any time demand or command the apparently capricious or unreasonable, the pupil will accept the command without question, as capable of explanation and as right, simply because the teacher requires it. As the boy grows in years, you relax the pressure of authority as an external agency. You take him into moral partnership, so to speak. Characteristic of Authority as Moral Standard. What shall we say of authority as a person who is the standard of the conduct of the young ? What is there to say save this, " Strive to be and to do what you desire your pupils to be and to do." If you contradict by act what you say in words, you not only fail to moralise, you necessarily demoralise. Characteristics of Authority as source of Approbation and Disapprobation. The teacher as authority is not only embodied moral law, and the impersonated standard of life, but also, as appointed delegate, he is vehicle of the approving and disapproving voice of society : and we have accordingly now to consider the characteristics of the exercise of authority in this connection. To begin with, I am certain that to the approbation or disapprobation of the Master ^ child will be utterly XII.] THE EXERCISE OF AUTHORITY 329 indifferent, if the Master is not first recognised by him as truly impersonating the first two constituents of authority, viz. Moral Law and the Standard of life. True, also, it is, that the great pre-requisite of any moral bond whatsoever is Sympathy. The teacher must have a sympathetic interest in the life and growth of the pupil. This sympathetic interest must be so strong as to pass into a kind of affection. Without this, there is no bridge of communication between the child's mind and the teacher's. It is the teacher who must first exhibit this, in response to the unspoken appeal which a child's weakness and dependence make to him. On this basis, authority, as an operative influence on the child's character, stands. Without this, the child will be in- different whether we approve or disapprove. But, while fully recognising this, let us remember that this sympathy is only the starting-point and no more. Our influence over the child can be sustained only by our exhibiting to him the characteristics of law and of the standard of life, and so securing his reverence as well as his responsive affection. The teacher so equipped for his ethical task is a great power, and the lever of his power is approbation and dis- approbation. There can be no doubt that even for the vast majority of adult men, the most potent of all induce- ments to virtuous conduct is the approbation of their fellow-men, and the most potent of all deterrents is their disapprobation. This is not surprising : for we are each of us mere units in a whole of Humanity, and the appro- bation of our fellow-men is the voice of universal humanity crying aloud " Well done," and its disapprobation is the condemnation of that whole of humanity of which we are but individual parts. The consequences of appro- bation and disapprobation 1 are moral and material — the ' (Othello, II. 3) — "I have lost my reputation ! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, lago, my reputation ' " 330 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. moral being the blessed sense of peace and harmony with our fellow-men, the material being the consequential results of their goodwill or ill-will. Now it is the teacher and parent that represent all humanity to the child, and their chief hold over him is the approving or disapproving word. Given the conditions of mutual relationship, which I have assumed above, and which evoke reverence and trust, the power thus placed in the hands of authority is immeasurable. Approbation. — I do not propose to speak exhaustively of the characteristics of approbation ; I could not do so. In the course of training others, many characteristics will occur to yourselves. I would only say : — 1. Let your approval of acts of duty done be ready, prompt, and obvious. 2. Do not let your approbation be too diffuse or lavish, and pass into laudation. This leads a child to suppose that he has done something very wonderful, and not simply his duty. 3. If it be a question of approval or disapproval, give the child the benefit of the doubt. 4. Do not let the voice of approval come from you as if from the stern chamber of law, for it is the voice of humanity in you, and you are human. Let it be the pleased recognition of one human being by another — a friendly recognition. The converse of these characteristics belongs to dis- approval. I may say that I do not agree with those who would have disapproval uttered as if the master were a mere channel-pipe for law broken. Your humanity must appear here as it does in approval, and you are quite right, except, of course, in trivial cases, to show yourself personally regretful or aggrieved. There are aggravated cases, even, which should be dealt with in a severe tone, and even with anger and indignation, so long as these are measured and controlled. Anger is a virtue, not a vice, so long as it is justified by the occasion and is XII.] THE EXERCISE OF AUTHORITY 331 purposed anger : it is a vice only when it escapes the control of the will and becomes passion. Disapprobation. — As regards disapprobation, which is punishment in the purely moral sense, I would give the following further rules : — 1. Take care that you have removed all obstructions to the doing of the right act before you disapprove. We pray not to be led into temptation : let the path of duty be not too difficult for the child to traverse. 2. Do not set up too many rules and regulations, and so give too many occasions of stumbling. 3. Distinguish between offences : — («) Faults of omission are to be distinguished from faults of commission. Forgetfulness, thoughtlessness, want pf steadiness of purpose, may lead to faults of omission : these are weaknesses, not vices, and are to be lightly dealt with. {V) Faults of commission which are deliberate are to be distinguished from faults non-deliberate. In the former case there is a purpose of evil, a vice ; in the latter there is only a yielding to temptation, which is weakness. The weakness may be due to idleness, frivolousness, playfulness, etc. (c) Faults which affect only a boy's self are to be distinguished from those which involve others. Injustice, bullying, cruelty, lying, stealing, unforgivingness, malice, involve others : want of industry, self-control, concern a boy himself in the first instance, and only indirectly, others. {d) Never censure, as Herbart says, so as to make a boy lose all self-respect. If self-respect is gone, blame will no longer be felt, and the moral engine of education is lost. In raising the fallen and degraded, the Christian minister is trying, first of all, to restore self-respect. Authority, as approval and disapproval, if properly exercised, will bring inevitably in its train what I have called strictly moral consequences of a pleasing or dis- 332 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. pleasing kind, i.e. the harmonious and peaceful atmosphere, and the discordant and disturbed atmosphere. From the peaceful atmosphere and the harmony of relations which accompany approval, flow relaxations, holidays, recreations in school hours ; from the discordant atmosphere generated by disapproval, flow the opposite, and a strict insistence on every detail of duty. Now, given good organisation, good methods of instruction, and just demands on the powers of the pupils ; given, too, that all the pupils entrusted to the teacher's care are fairly well-disposed, I am certain that, if the teacher is a true authority and exhibits consistently in himself the genuine characteristics of true authority, moral education is thereby secured ; and, further, that the whole subordinate question of obedience, and of school discipline in the ordinary crude sense, is solved. We do not need to go one step further in considering the question of discipline in the vulgar sense. It would be a waste of time. We have human beings to deal with, not little demons ; and I shall believe in the difficulty of maintain- ing discipline under the conditions as to authority and organisation and method which I have laid down, only when I see it ; which, in the course of a long experience, I never yet have done. It so happens, however, that a few baser spirits exist in every generation of boys, and that there is a still larger proportion who, without being very wicked are, yet, non-morally disposed, sometimes by nature, more frequently because of unwise home treatment. These, unfortunately, quickly communicate their disease to others, and may even infect a whole class. They seem to exhale immoral germs. Hence we are compelled to consider in our next lecture the question of the natural and artificial adjuncts and support of approbation and disapprobation. These are the external physical sanctions of the moral law. They are not in themselves moral : they belong to the XII.] THE EXERCISE OF AUTHORITY 333 question of the enforcement of obedience where all moral means fail. I may seem to have been attaching an exaggerated importance to authority in the parent and schoolmaster ; but this is not so if it is only by and through authority, as I have endeavoured to define it, that the young can be trained and disciplined to the inner habit of virtue. The training of the teacher, in my opinion, in so far as it is a professional training to his ethical function, begins and ends with a proper understanding of authority. There are, of course, other elements in the moral education of a boy or girl than their education in the acceptance of authority — most important elements : for example, direct instruction in moral ideas, of which we have spoken in a previous lecture ; but this and all other means will fail of effect unless dominated and regulated by the moral spirit of the master as the spirit of authority in all its reach of meaning. Only so can we use our schools to rear a virtuous population. And if our schools fail to accomplish this, of what use are they ? Not only our social life, our standard of intercourse, and all civic and family amenities, but trade, commerce, art, religion, — all rest on a moral foundation, and without it the whole fabric is baseless and will assuredly fall to pieces. The surest thing in the universe is the unswerving operation of the Moral Law. Now what is the result of Authority so exhibited and regulated ? As regards the pupil : — He will respond : he will not only be in the general case obedient, but there will be slowly growing up in him from day to day the inner authority of which the outer is the symbol and ectype. A boy who willingly obeys such a Master as we have depicted will, as a man, be a willing servant of the inner moral law. He will go forth from school a self-directing moral being with a personal sense 334 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. xii. of law and duty, and disciplined to effective virtue. In his relation to the State he will see there a larger and more visible exhibition of the moral law which he was taught to see in the school, and be ready to respond to the requirements which the State makes of every citizen. " Train up a child in the way he should go," seems to be often falsified in our experience. But we are mistaken : save in exceptional cases, men, " go in the way " in which they were trained. As regards the Master : — What is the result ? By exhibiting the characteristics of true authority in himself he morally compels the obedience of the boy. And if there be any Master who fails to maintain discipline, let him examine himself: let him test himself by the above characteristics of authority, and he will find the cause of his failure. If he succeeds, he educates himself as well as his pupil. Our children educate us. What says Plutarch ? " People do not obey, unless rulers know how to command ; obedience is a lesson taught by commanders. A true leader himself creates the obedience of his own followers ; as it is the last attainment in the art of riding to make a horse gentle and tractable, so is it of the science of government to inspire men with a willingness to obey." Having dealt with the characteristics of authority and of the exercise of authority, let us now turn our attention to the enforcement of authority. LECTURE XIII. THE ENFORCEMENT AND SANCTIONS OF AUTHORITY GENERALLY. Coercion, i.e. Discipline in the Vulgar Sense. The enforcement of authority by penalty is discipline as vulgarly understood. But the preceding discussion shows that discipline in its true sense is a moralising of the boy by and through authority; and that punishment can be resorted to only when authority has confessed its failure. External punishments can have, one would say, no moral result of an inner kind, but only an external result, viz. formal or technical obedience sustained so long as the punisher's eye is on the pupil. This question, however — a psychological one — perhaps demands more consideration. For the present, I hold by the opinion indicated. Montaigne says : " If you do not allure the appetite and affection, you make nothing but asses laden with books, and, by virtue of the lash, give them their pockets full of learning to keep (if they learn at all) ; whereas, to do well, you should not merely lodge it with them, but make them to espouse it." The same remark applies to ethical education. Two Kinds of Punishment. An important distinction has to be made as regards kinds of punishment. (a) There are mild external punishments which are S35 336 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. merely the outward and visible sign of the disapproba- tion of the master ; they emphasise his disapprobation ; and that is all. These are constantly necessary in training the young. As merely indicating disapprobation in some concrete form, they are moralising in their effect. They do not involve corporal chastisement. Anything a teacher chooses to select will be effective for his purpose. With young children, for example, ordering a boy to stand in the corner of the room, making him sit without a book, and passing him by when his turn comes to read, a slight tap on the palm of the hand, etc., will suffice. This class of punishment does not destroy the|sympathetic and moral relation of teacher and taught. {b) The second class of punishments is designed to cause physical pain of some sort, and that of such a kind as to make a boy afraid of offending because of the actual bodily suffering which the offence brings with it. No doubt the master means such punishments to be regarded as a disgrace and indignity ; but, whether they are so regarded or not, depends on the extent to which they are used and the extent also to which the master, by being a true authority, has compelled the boys to regard punish- ment by him as something they ought to be ashamed of If he has succeeded in establishing his position as a true authority, he does not need such crude manifestations of it ; if he has not succeeded, the alternative presented to the boy is not a moral alternative, but the alternative of physical pain or right doing. It seems to me that this class of coercive punishments — those, namely, which propose to themselves the deterring from wrong and coercing to right by physical pain or dis- comfort, are, when rarely used — that is to say, only in very extreme cases — ^justifiable. They are, however, the resort of despair. It is doubtful whether physical castigation can moralise a boy in any positive sense. They certainly can deter. I think that, if rarely used, they can also moralise the boy and benefit the school as a whole. It is xm.] ENFORCEMENT OF AUTHORITY 337 not at all doubtful, on the other hand, that physical pains habitually inflicted cannot possibly moralise a boy or a school. They are purely coercive and external, and can produce only external results — outer, not inner, obedience ; and the former even, only when detection is certain. True, boys subjected to such a discipline do frequently grow up moralised ; but they have derived their stimulus to the moral life from some source other than physical pain, and from some influence outside the sphere of the schoolmaster. The punishments which are designed to deter from evil by the pain they cause are— (i) Bodily castigation, (2) Impositions, (3) Confinement; and deprivation of pleasures generally. (a) Physical Castigation. If when all other means have failed, and the master has deliberately come to the conclusion that he must forsake the attempt to educate the boy by moral motives, as he seems to have no moral sense to appeal to, and that he must resort to material pains of some sort, I doubt if there be any safer or more effective way than flogging with birch, cane, or taws. I would remind the teacher, however, that what Professor Bain says of authority is true of punishing ; punishing is " not a perquisite " of the teaching profession, but is brought into operation solely for the benefit of the punished and his schoolfellows. There are many things to be considered under the head of corporal castigation. For example, while in expressing your moral disapproval of a boy's conduct, you may show vexation, anger, and indignation, according to the circumstances, you are not entitled, when you pass from the moral to the physical, to let your feelings appear in the act of flogging. The flogging is a magisterial act. It is better, therefore, that it be administered at a short interval after the offence ; and, if not by some one else than the master immediately affected by the transgression Y 338 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. of the boy, at least in the presence of another master. The cane or birch represents the offended law of the school, the authority residing in its head, not offended persons. When there is only one master in a school, he can prevent the personal element from entering by post- poning the chastisement till after school hours. It should be inflicted without the presence of schoolfellows, their presence making the culprit ambitious to seem a hero, and, like the highwayman on the gallows, to " die game." Two or three senior boys, however, should be present for the master's protection ; and it should be set about with great gravity and formality. At best, however, it njust be admitted that flogging is a gross punishment. It is resorting to the motives which we apply to cattle, and therefore presents itself to us in a doubtful aspect from the first ; and the more we, as moralists, look at it the less we like it. It is a painful thing for those who recognise deep down in a boy's nature, however they may be obscured, potential goodness, capacity for law, and love of law, to resort to physical coercion. It is not, of course, because the physical punishment is painful that I object to it ; boys should learn to endure pain. I object to it because it accustoms boys to connect duty and obedience with material associations, inasmuch as the former are the alternative of mere bodily suffering. The same principle underlies this as underlay the old asceticism which thought it condoned for moral offences by self-flagellation. It supersedes the ideas of duty and obedience by putting the motive in the wrong place. The boy does what he ought to do henceforth (if indeed he does do it) on the same instigation that an unwilling horse leaps a fence or an ox draws a plough. Is this moral training ? Is this the education (not of the ox or the horse, but) of a rational being? It seems super- fluous to argue the point. But we are considering an extreme case, and we are supposed to be driven to it as a last resort, and to accept it as a necessity. XIII.] ENFORCEMENT OF AUTHORITY 339 There are still many, however, who defend, or at least practise, corporal chastisement as the ordinary, and if not constantly occurring, yet the recognised, means of discipline in a school or family. These men, however, are victims of the vulgar conception of discipline. The question we have to ask ourselves is this : — Admitting that strict and consistent bodily punishment produces external order and external conformity, they are survivals (which it certainly can do), does it produce in a rational soul internal order and internal conformity ? Is the moral effect of punish- ment really attained ? Does this discipline in the vulgar sense attain the objects of discipline in the true sense? It relies on a prohibitive pain. Can, in the nature of things, a prohibitive pain give rise to a positive moral feeling or a desire to do right for its own sake ? Can it cause boys " to find pain in doing ill " ? to use Ascham's words. It can, I admit, influence a boy to consider his attitude to these things, if corporal punishment is a rare school event ; and it thus may prepare the way for positive morality. The most it can certainly accomplish apart from this, is external conformity, not inner conversion. The result is a negative result. The teacher, remember, is engaged in a spiritual work. Whipping into churches on Sundays used to be practised in some places. Did it work for the spiritualising of the people ? Then it is so easy to resort to this engine of discipline, and, once it is a recognised part of the school machinery, it tends to repeat itself and to drive philosophic method and ethical aims out of the teacher's head altogether. The moral value of mere external obedience under fear of the moral disappro- bation or censure of the master or parent cannot, on the other hand, be over-rated, for they lead to inner obedience ; they promote the growth of the moral law in the young mind. But if mere external obedience be secured under fear of physical pain solely, it is always a sad spectacle ; to my thinking, worse than anarchy, and beyond all question non-moral, if not also demoralising. 340 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. It will be said, it is said, by many — " Boys don't like it, but they do not feel degraded by it. That is sentimental nonsense." But I take a different view from this, and hold that when boys do not feel degraded by it, the most melancholy results of the practice are exemplified in that very fact. When flogging is resorted to only in rare and exceptional cases, the boy, spite of bravado, does certainly feeLthe indignity and degradation of it, if he be human at all ; and this is precisely what we want him to feel. He deserves to feel this degradation keenly ; and if he feels it, the physical chastisement is thus far moral in its effects. And this is the true justification of flogging in extreme cases, quite apart from the necessity of securing external conformity to rule. In short, rare flogging may have a moral effect on the culprit, and still more on the whole school, because of the disgrace it carries with it ; habitual flogging cannot possibly moralise, because there is no sense of disgrace. In fact, it may be argued that it is only so long as boys feel the degradation of corporal punishment, that it is right to retain it as a disciplinary agency when all else fails. I do not deny, remember, that a system of persistent and consistent physical coercion will train to negative morality, to external order (what masters of the vulgar sort call discipline), and that this is a result not to be despised, if we can't get a better ; I merely affirm that this is not the aim of moral education. We do not require educators in order to accomplish this ; a policeman would be far more effective and less costly. Of course it is just possible that flogging for offences, if consistently and persistently maintained, may gradually cause the boy to stop offending in order to avoid pain, and, with penalty constantly hanging over him to keep him straight, his mind may become so habituated to negative morality, as to clear the way for the emergence of positive morality, that is to say, the recognition of inner moral motives as law; and thus the boy may be finally moralised. But XIII.] ENFORCEMENT OF AUTHORITY 341 such a result must be rare ; negative morality tends to remain to the end negative morality. It has no principle of growth in it ; no ideal is possible for it ; the sole motive, however veiled it may be, is always fear of physical consequences, and the boy, and afterwards the man, is a slave to external coercion, and has been educated to be a slave. There is little hope for the progressiveness of a nation where that is the general result. We have been speaking of coercion in its specific moral relations. What is its effect in respect of intel- lectual activity ? A boy is flogged because he won't learn his grammar or mathematics. We cannot possibly make him love either by this plan ; that surely is certain. Now this means that we cannot, by castigation, induce him to feel an interest in the spontaneous and free exercise of his intelligence in the understanding of his lessons. But to do this is precisely the educator's aim, is it not ? Conse- quently he has failed in his main purpose. On the other hand, it is true that we may thus compel him to try to "get up" his work by putting stress on himself, and he may get it up after a fashion — a rote fashion. This is of some use to his intellect, and also gives a certain spurious discipline of will. Consequently, it is probable that more may be accomplished in respect of intellectual work by flogging than in respect of moral growth. But what I would urge is, that the result attained, though not to be despised any more than negative morality is to be despised, is not the aim of the educator, but something much higher than this, and which this method of procedure defeats. Free activity of intellect is choked, and the boy will never know much grammar or mathematics, and certainly never develop intellectual activity on those lines. He may have learned " to turn hiniself on " to a subject under strong external pressure, but this is not the free energy of mind ; and knowledge so acquired is rote-knowledge, residing in the memory only, not operative in the living mind. It has been complained that the boys who leave our 342 INSTITUTE? OF EDUCATION [lect. English Public Schools have no "intellectual interests." How should they have, if all intellectual activity has, during their boyhood, been distasteful in itself, and also as being associated with coercion ? It is highly probable that a very large number of boys, if they had never been to school at all, but simply allowed the free run of libraries and museums, and permitted to associate with their elders, would have developed intellectual interests, who, under present conditions, wholly lack them. If, convinced by these considerations, you wish to get rid of flogging in a school, interpose many barriers between the mere verbal expression of disapprobation and the final resort to brute motives. For example, introduce the system of bad marks in a conduct register. A boy who had earned three bad marks might then be degraded to the "brute-motive" class, and for his next offence be flogged. But take care that you give the boy the privilege of working off the record of bad marks by extra exertion, and so redeeming himself. He must be free to cancel the entry. In the English Public Schools, boys who are found to deserve a flogging are " sent up " to the Headmaster. There is very much to be said for this plan. Let there only be one mastigophorus. The boys " sent up " have, in these humaner days, no occasion to dread laceration, and I am told and can well believe, do not dread the flogging as a pain. Why, then, do it ? Would it not be very much more effectual simply to send them up, and to mark down in a book that they have been " sent up." This would be too severe a punishment, some might say. I answer, it is a deserved punishment, and it is a moral and justifiable punishment. The boy should, of course, be told that if there are no more complaints before the end of the term, he will be " sent up " again to have his name deleted. The system, as I understand it, which now exists at Eton and other public schools, has many recommendations. xm.] ENFORCEMENT OF AUTHORITY 343 There is nothing of personal feeling in the flogger. The Headmaster simply administers a well-understood school law, and, in doing so, is supposed not only to vindicate the law of the school, but to re-establish the moral equilibrium of the school life ; and, though it is now generally held that public punishments by the State should have no regard to the broken law of society and the need for public expiation, I do not think this applies to the school. Society, probably, is too large to admit of a punishment having an expiatory significance, even if it were designed to have it ; but in a school, the corporate body is smaller and each part of it can be made to feel an infliction on any other part. But to secure this expiation the crude act of flogging with a birch is not needed. The formal touching a boy with the birch, as a symbol of the register against him, would suiifice and be at the same time an interesting survival of the " good old times." Should Assistants be allowed to flog ? My answer is, that if flogging is habitual in a school, Assistants must not be allowed to flog ; but if it is a rare punishment, they should be allowed to do so in the presence of the Head- master. It would be well, also, that where there is flogging, both Assistants and Headmaster should enter in a log- book the name of the boy, his offence and his punishment — it always being understood that the name may be deleted on good cause shown. A master who was fruitful in entries as compared with others would ere long be dismissed. Where all were fruitful — the Governors would of course clear the school of all the Masters and start afresh.i 1 It may seem inconsistent to hold that there is not so much to be said against a parent flogging as against a schoolmaster. The reason is, that when a parent does it justly, he knows the nature and character of his boy as no master can, and will, consequently, have good reasons. The other is, that by flogging (when other means have failed) the parent does not weaken his "true authority." His opportunities for the display of kindness and affection are innumer- able ; and no flogging, if the boy feels it to be reasonable, can 344 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. What then? Is flogging to be prohibited as it is in some countries ? I have not said so, although I might maintain that its abolition in the school might well follow its abolition in the army and navy. Still, I am persuaded that the master and parent must be allowed to wield the birch in the last resort : but that the birch should be under lock and key. Happy the master who loses the key.^ " The schoolhouse," says Ascham," should be counted a sanctuary against fear." obliterate the feeling the boy has that his father loves him. On the contrary, he may deeply feel the moral disgrace and strive to make amends. The flogging, if just, may thus, in the hands of a loving father, be moral in its effects. I admit that even when a father has to flog he is probably to blame, because in the lavishness of his affection, he has probably relaxed the gravity of true authority and given occasion for license in his children. But it is difficult, in all the familiarity of the family intercourse of a humane household, always to maintain the aspect of authority. Persistent efforts to ensure obedience in small things when the children are still in the nursery will save many a future struggle. While saying so much, with hesitation, in condonation of a father or mother, I would still point out to them that the recalcitrant child may belong to one of two classes: he may belong to the malevolent, selflsh, lying, and altogether hard class, and that the parent may flog such a boy as far and as often as the law will allow, and yet con- spicuously fail to affect the boy's nature. He must seek, with pain and humiliation, a better way, and hope the best. Or, he may belong to the turbulent class — sensitive and susceptible as a girl, and turbulent and passionate as a boy of high possibilities often (not always) is. I ask him, should he flog this boy ? Will he do any good in this case either? Kindness, consistency, infinite patience, encouragement, and he will have such a youth at nineteen as he will be proud of, and as all men (and women too) will admire. As a rule, a schoolmaster when punishing must do so without per- sonal feeling, as an instrument of the Law simply ; but a parent may always, I think, show feeling. He is entitled to resent the breach of the most sacred relations of affection, and to show that he resents it. ' Cardinal Wolsey, in his instructions to the master of Ipswich School, says, " Imprimis hoc unum admonendum censuerimus ut neque plagis severioribus neque vultuosis minis aut uUa tyrannidis specie tenera pubes afficiatur : hac enim injuria, ingenii alacritas aut extingui aut magna ex parte obtundi solet." XIII.] ENFORCEMENT OF AUTHORITY 345 (b) Imposition of Tasks. It used to be the fashion at Oxford and Cambridge, I am told, to order extra chapel for misconduct. There is something comic in this. Religion is an appeal to all that is highest and noblest in man, and its services were used as a punishment. Thus, the undergraduate formed associations of vexation, disgrace, and disgust with the worship of God ! Now, you may doubtless agree with me in my estimate of such a punishment, without any argumentation about it. You see at once the absurdity of the proceed- ing from an educational point of view. But, I ask, does not the very same idea of penalty connect itself with what are called poenas or impositions? When I make a boy read Virgil as part of his course of education, why do I do it ? I presume it is done to discipline his intelligence by the study of language, and to cultivate his imagination and his whole humanity by the study of noble verse. In so far as the studies of boyhood demand persistent work, steady and constantly renewed effort at the same thing, they will be, to this extent, distasteful. And if I made him study language, merely that I might exercise him in working without regard to the educative effects, I might be justified in imposing two hundred lines or more to be written out. The more he is disgusted with his studies, the more surely (it might be maintained), do they serve the end of causing him to exert himself if he is to get through them. If I have higher objects, however, I ought not to associate punishment, and loss of play, and all that a boy loves, with his Virgil or his Shakespeare. The physical pain caused by enforced confinement in doing poenas is bad enough. I can surely secure this in some other way than by associating it with the noblest utterances of genius. This imposition of poenas, which takes the form of an extension of the ordinary work of the boy is, in fact, 346 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect, based on a false conception of the whole aim of education. How can a master resume Virgil with a boy who has spent the whole of his playtime in an enforced transcrip- tion of the lines of the poet in the true spirit of a teacher, desiring to interest the mind of the boy in the nice dis- crimination of words and the imaginative expression of fine thoughts ? To secure consistency in his conduct, he must lower his whole conception of the educative pur- poses of the school. It is true that I cannot ever expect so to attract the average boy to his work as to make it more delightful than cricket or boating ; but I can, at least, make him feel, while he is at it, that there is some- thing attractive in it. I can interest him intellectually ; for the intellect, too, as well as the muscles, desires exer- cise and loves to encounter and overcome. I can interest him also morally and aesthetically. I should like any one who is disposed to deny this, to try to work out a con- sistent theory of education on his own principles. He would quickly land himself and the whole subject in a reductio ad absurdum. The master who finds that the majority of boys cannot be interested in intellectual exercise, and in the aesthetic and moral substance of literature, whether ancient or modern, has himself, or the general spirit of the school in which he works, to blame. If the fault be in himself, he wants, not merely good methods, but he lacks the inspiration of the true teacher ; he is a mere hodman in the profession, fit only to carry the bricks and mortar with which better men may build. I do not speak from the theoretical point of view merely. What is sometimes affirmed of boys at school used to be said of little children at school. And yet, what a change ! We can now go from school to school in which you will find in the face of every child, from four to eleven years of age, expressions of activity, of intelligence, and of enjoyment in their work ; where all is order and animation and happiness. A few laggards and dullards do not afiFect the general character and tone. Go to the XIII.] ENFORCEMENT OF AUTHORITY 347 other end of the school scale, and take a class of young men of eighteen beginning their university life. If these young men have so used their earlier years as to be com- petent to enter on the studies of the university, and if they are not perversely disposed, is there any difficulty in giving intellectual and moral interest to the studies they are pursuing, be it philology, philosophy, or science ? Is it, then, impossible to accomplish the same ends with boys from eleven to seventeen, the period of upper primary and secondary instruction ? It is absurd to argue the question ; especially in face of the fact that the thing is in some places done. In some places only, it will be said ; but I have yet to learn that good teaching is a matter of locality. You, as future schoolmasters, must try to conceive the best as that which is practicable ; you must see the best that can be seen, and go to your work with a consciousness that you can accomplish what others have accomplished. If you fail, the fault is prob- ably, nay, certainly, yours. If it be as I say, then the imposition of parts of the school work as a punishment is as alien to the idea of sound education as the sending of youths to the service of the Most High as a correction for having overstepped a college rule. The cases are parallel. In a ladies' boarding-school (perhaps I should say seminary) a verse of the New Testament had to be learnt for every article left about. The divine words of Jesus were to be for ever associated with a mislaid toothbrush ! Impositions may be given ; but they should not have to do with the ordinary lessons. The French system of confining boys, and giving them exercises in dictation is, within due bounds, a good one. But the exercise should be the writing out of something that is not a lesson, or better still, an exercise in penmanship, which is mechanical ; or, if you like, writing the alphabet backwards. Such things, instead of engendering a disgust of ordinary work, may perchance lead to the boy's enjoyment of his lessons 348 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. as exercising his intelligence and engaging his imagination. The imposition should, I think, always partake of the punishment of the treadmill. The master who finds the diiificulty of managing boys without the help of birch,, and is allowed only a modified system of poenas, etc., may turn upon us now and say, "Am I to be left with no punishment at all? What means do you provide for coercing boys and causing them to obey rules, and (as part of rule) to do their school work ? " Now, before proceeding to answer this, may I venture to hope that I have convinced you that all punishment is effectual for moral education only when the penalties are the visible sign of disapprobation proceeding from a true and recognised authority, and are restricted to emphasising this. If you possess this authority, all else will follow; if you possess it not, no scheme of physical chastisement or impositions will do more than preserve the external face of order ; and even that it will preserve badly. This, then, is my general answer to the question : " What punishment do you leave me wherewith I may secure order, obedience, and industry?" I leave every- thing or anything which denotes and emphasises in a simple and direct way your disapprobation, and is felt by the pupils as the pain of your disapprobation. Anything the teacher pleases may be made into a punishment. The essential point is that it shall be .certain. And this brings me to that class of punishments which I think the safest and also the most effectual. (c) Confinement and Privative Punishments. It is not idleness that boys love, as is too commonly supposed, but freedom from restriction, and play. As a punishment, deprive them by confinement of what they like best. The impositions to which I have referred above are, in fact, efficacious chiefly because they involve a sacrifice of freedom. XIII.] ENFORCEMENT OF AUTHORITY 349 I shall not enter into details in this matter of privative penalties. So much depends on the habits and practises and organisation of the school and family, that the details must be left to teachers themselves. Such punishments can be safely inflicted, if they are just, without affecting moral growth. Both in the school and family we should, I think, mainly rely on privative punishments. In conclusion : It would argue a total ignorance of the history of education not to recognise the truth of Professor Bain's remark : " There has undoubtedly, in former times, been very great mismanagement in almost every one of the regions of repressive authority — in the State, the family, and the school — in all of which an excess of human misery has been habitually engendered by badness in the manner of exercising control" (p. loi). And not only misery in the case of the young, we may add, but demoralisation of the young citizen and consequent injury to the State. There are certain general characteristics of punish- ing which apply both to the moralising punishments — those which simply emphasise disapprobation by some external sign, and the non-moralising punishments — those which seek to compel to duty by coercive physical pains. Of these we shall now speak. LECTURE XIV. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EXERCISE OF POWER IN PUNISHING. REWARDS. If I agreed with Professor Bain in holding that the " teacher's authority ... is subsidiary to the single object of teaching a definite amount of knowledge," I should certainly feel that I had been treating the whole subject of authority in too elaborate a way. But you will have seen, I hope, that the centre and source of all moral education is precisely this authority ; and that if the ultimate end of all education be ethical, the teaching of mere subjects must be subsidiary to the ethical aim. What I have to say on the conditions of the just exercise of punitive powers has reference to every kind of punishment beyond the mere expression of disapproba- tion by look or word. Those who have given due consideration to the characteristics of the exercise of true authority may themselves deduce from them the characteristics of the exercise of power in punishing, many of which, indeed, are identical. They run on all fours. 1. The object of punishment is simply punishment — a paying of a price for an offence committed,^ but it is to be regulated entirely by two considerations, viz., the reforma- tion of the offender and the deterring of others from a like fault. 2. Punishments are to be made as much as possible ' Some Moralists do not hold this view. LECT. XIV.] PUNISHING— REWARDS 351 the natural consequences of the offence, e.g., a boy who comes late to school should stay late ; a boy who is unpre- pared should be kept in school till he has prepared his work; a boy who tells a lie or evades, should be dis- believed, or at least doubted, until you see that the proper time has come for giving him a fresh start. Mr Herbert Spencer has made a good deal out of this one rule of Rosseau's, which, after all, has a very limited range. But its best and most general expression was given by Bentham, who advocated the " characteristicalness" of punishments — something which fits the character of the offence. 3. No fault is to be punished at all, save by disapproba- tion and some mild external sign of disapprobation, until it is so often repeated that it is clearly deliberate in its character. 4. Let it be apparent that all punishments are inflicted only because of breach of school law, and not because of the feeling of the teacher that he personally has been offended. There should be no sign of anger, though indignation may be occasionally exhibited. 5. The nature and the amount of the punishment should always be such as to carry the school conscience with you. 6. Make sure that the offence you are going to punish by reproof or otherwise has been committed, e.g. — A boy sitting on a bench suddenly strikes out at a boy behind him, but you do not even reprove him, much less punish him, until you have ascertained the facts. Perchance the boy at whom he strikes has just pushed a pin into him. To sit calmly under this would be too much for human nature. 7. Let your punishments be fixed, not variable. Do not on one day make a boy lose places in his class or incur the punishment of a bad mark for a fault which you punish some other day with an imposition, or a harsh or contemptuous word. You represent authority, not your own self-will or passing mood. 8. Let your punishments always have in view moral ends. 9. Let your punishments be such as to make allowance for the weakness of boys' will and their frivolous disposi- 352 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. tions. Accordingly, do not exaggerate small offences which may be due, not to any serious purpose of disobedience, but to mere forgetfulness or playfulness. Start from the desirableness of free activity in boys, and do not conclude that whatever is troublesome to you is a mark of some moral defection in them. 10. Let your punishments be sure and inevitable. They should be as mechanical in their operation as possible : but they are to be mechanically imposed only in the case of petty breaches of school-order and rule. In the case of grave moral offences they should be gravely and seriously imposed. 1 1. Graduate your punishments : otherwise you confound the moral perceptions of boys. 12. Give the minimum punishment which will tend to prevent the repetition of the offence. Let your punish- ments always lean to mercy's side. -Anything else than this rouses antagonism and saps your authority. 1 3. Never punish, as Bentham says, when the punish- ment is needless, i.e. when the end can be attained without punishment. 14. Punish and have done with it : do not seem to bear a grudge against a boy. Remember how frail you yourself are : " Every long winter of after-wrath is poisonous," says Jean Paul. 15. Be content with substantial acceptance of punish- ment. If a boy ordered out of the room goes with dragging step and an air of defiance, ignore this conduct — as being merely silly. > 16. Do not speak to a boy about a serious fault while he is undergoing punishment, but only after he has quite cooled down. 17. Be self-controlled. On this point I would again quote Professor Bain (p. 1 1 5). " Strong terms of reproof should be sparing in order to be more effective ; still more sparing should be tones of anger. Loss of temper, however excusable, is really a victory to wrongdoers, although for the moment it may strike terror. Unless a man is of a fiendish nature throughout, he cannot maintain a consistent course if he give way to temper. Indignation under control is a mighty weapon." This is true of mere reproof — how' much more of actual punishment ? XIV.] PUNISHING— REWARDS 353 These directions, now, are all very well in their way ; but, after all, v/e must admit that rules for securing obedience to authority will be useless if the central authority is itself non-existent. And if it exists in all its fulness, and exhibits itself in the characteristics of the exercise of authority, as these have been in a previous lecture laid down, rules are little needed. The following may be accepted as a graduated list of punishments : — List and scale of Punishments consequent on Disapprobation. Authority in the strictest sense exhausts itself with disapprobation conveyed by a look or word, a movement of the eyelid or the head, or by the uplifted finger. Beyond a look or a word or an uplifted finger, how- ever, you may certainly go, without leaving the moral sphere ; but, this only by carrying the look and word a little further — that is to say — by I. Private reproof If this fails, then: 2. Public reproof " A child," says Ascham, " will take more profit of two faults gently warned of than of four things rightly hit." We may further legitimately pass beyond the limits of authority as a moral force and make patent our disapprobation by punishments of an external kind. But we are guided here by the consideration that we are merely emphasising disapprobation and nothing more, after private reproof, and, thereafter, public reproof have failed. These punishments, accordingly, are not intended to act as deterrents by the infliction of bodily pain or discomfort ; they are too slight to rouse rebellious feelings. They are, in fact, provided the general principles of all punishment are observed, moral in their effects. For example, private and public reproof having both failed, we can next 3. Make a boy stand during a lesson with his back to the class. 4. Make him sit in the class with his book shut ; or if open, pass him over when his turn comes to read. 5. Give a bad mark in the school register. 354 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. 6. When three bad marks stand against the boy, order him out of the room and let him return only on promise that he will do better. 7. Invent other punishments of a similar kind — they are legion. 8. Detain after the others have gone. 9. Deprive the boy of some pleasure or advantage conceded to others. 10. Give slight impositions of a mechanical kind. All these and many others that will occur to every teacher and be suggested by circumstances or the nature of the offence, are, I think, moral in their effect, and promote the education of the boy, provided, of course, they are wisely used. Next come the coercive external punishments, which we could fain dispense with. 1. Impositions of some length which are of a stupid and mechanical kind, to be done in the master's room while the other boys are at their lessons, and to be promptly exacted. If not accurately done, to be done a second time. 2. Similar impositions to occupy the boy during the play-hour. 3. Threats of the extreme punishment — and at the same time communication with the boy's parents. 4. If these fail, a solemn, grave, and severe flogging magisterially inflicted. There exist natures (but they are rare, if the master is competent) which do not believe in the seriousness of your disapproval or in the gravity of their offence until they feel bodily pain as its consequence, just as savage races do not believe in words and threats, but only in acts. 5. If this also fails — suspension from attendance at school. 6. Expulsion. It has happened that a boy of a peculiar and resentful and obstinate nature has refused to submit to his punish- ment, whether slight or grave. Where the punishments are reasonable and just, this will very rarely happen. When it does, you must not contend against the boy, and pit your own obstinacy against his ; but get out of the difficulty by offering an alternative, " Do this, or accept detention after school or the withdrawal of some privilege xiv.J PUNISHING— REWARDS 355 or pleasure." Treat the obstinacy with a quiet and even careless manner ; otherwise, the boy is flattered and his obstinacy confirmed. He plays to the gallery. Most assuredly " Authority must be maintained " in the moral education of the young, as in the government of the adult, and consequently, coercive punishments are justifiable for the sake of the school, if not of the boy himself The perverse boy has to learn that his capricious and arbitrary will must sooner or later yield to the forces of society. This he can best learn by submission to parent and teacher. I cannot believe in the stability of any State whose children do not reverence and obey their parents. Plato put this virtue almost side by side with reverence for God. Rewards Consequent on Approbation. Rewards. — The subject of Punishments naturally suggests that of Rewards. My opinion is that personal rewards for good conduct, either in the family or the school, are not only unnecessary, but hurtful. Remember that the essence of all justifiable or effectual moral punishment is that it is merely an external device for conveying to the pupil the fact of your disapprobation ; and, further, of the pupil's disapprobation of himself, which you must, if at all possible, carry with you. In the case of a boy doing his duty, on the other hand, he has already, in the act, his own approbation, and is quite content with your approving word or smile. To give rewards, in the form of presents or prizes, to children or boys for doing their duty is to cultivate an expectation that material benefits follow on moral acts, which is by no means the case in life. It also unmoralises the act. In the bottom of his heart the boy resents, or ought to resent, your reward. You do him injury. Nay, he resents, or ought to resent, even your approval, if it be too strongly expressed. A sufficient reward to a good class is its own pleasant and easy relations with authority and the atmosphere of peace thence arising. But we may go further than this, if the reward is general and not particular in its incidence. 356 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. xiv. It may then be given not only without harm, but with positive benefit, as when a master tells his class that they have been doing so well of late that he will let them go for a half-holiday. An individual boy, on the other hand, who seeks for more than simple recognition of a good deed, is not worthy even of recognition. At the same time, while sparing in your censure, be not niggardly in your approval on great occasions. It follows from the above that all school-prizes should be abolished. Let me conclude with the well-known lines from Coleridge :— LOVE, HOPE, AND PATIENCE. " O'er wayward Childhood wouldst thou hold firm rule And sun thee in the light of happy faces. Love, Hope, and Patience, these must be thy graces. And in thine own heart let these first keep school. For as old Atlas on his broad neck places Heaven's starry globe, and there sustains it : — so Do these upbear the little world below. Of Education — Patience, Love, and Hope. Methinks I see them grouped in seemly show. The straightened arms upraised — the palms aslope. And robes that, touching as they downward flow. Distinctly blend, like snow embossed in snow. Oh, part them never ! If Hope prostrate lie Love too will sink and die. Yet, haply, there will come a weary day, When overtasked at length Both Love and Hope beneath the load give way ; Then with a statue's smile, a statue's strength. Stands the mute sister Patience, nothing loth. And both supporting, does the work of both." I would now call attention to certain auxiliaries of authority furnished by the pupils themselves, making the master's task easier if he will skilfully take advantage of them. LECTURE XV. AUXILIARIES OF AUTHORITY. These are : — I. Sympathy and consequent Imitation. — Men are not merely gregarious and sympathetic like animals ; they are intelligently sympathetic. It is an interesting fact in psychology that, while a sentiment, or precept, or exhor- tation addressed to one individual may have small effect, the force of it increases in a geometrical ratio as the number of those addressed increases. Hence it is that while any one accustomed to the management of one child or two will contemplate with alarm the management of a numerous class, he finds himself, after a little experience, quite relieved of his fears. As a matter of fact, a class of 25 is more easily managed and taught (by one who has been trained in class-manipulation) than a class of one or two. No task in the teacher's profession is so hard as that of the private tutor or governess. Were there not this sympathy of nature, imitation would be impossible. It is no new discovery that the intellectual as well as the moral education of children is largely a process of imitation, first unself-conscious and then self-conscious and purposed. We are concerned with it here only as an aid to discipline. Children have great influence over each other, and the power of elder children among younger is almost omni- potent. You see this carried almost to absurdity in Public Schools. Two or three big boys can set the 357 358 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. fashion for the whole of their fellows. Why is this? The explanation lies in sympathy and the imitative impulse. The sympathy one with another draws each, spite of himself This element gets curiously mixed with the awe with which the older and bigger boys are naturally regarded. The master is a distant influence : he has ways and thoughts of his own : the very fact that he is there to discharge the function of a master tends to establish a kind of latent antagonism between him and his pupils, until they find him to be a true, and not a spurious, authority. The bond is, to begin with at least, one of power on the one side and submission on the other only. It will become one of affection only in so far as the master possesses the grand pre-requisite of which I have more than once spoken, and is sympathetic. The mutual relation of boys is different. One boy feels that another understands him : the natural instinct of social feeling leads each to participate gladly, and as a matter of course, in the life of the other. There is, in this exhibition of boyish mutual dependence, the germ of the higher doctrine that man is not an individual so much as part of a whole ; that he finds his own true personality in the larger idea of humanity. Add to this sympathy, caused by proximity of age and interests, the authority which is inherent in the fact of superior age and size, and we have a combination which the younger boys find it impossible to resist. I think masters may take a lesson from this (especially let parents take the lesson) and realise the fact that the authority of the adult is strengthened by every approach which it makes on one side to the authority of the big boy. I am far from wishing to weaken those characteristics of authority on which I have dwelt so strongly : these must remain in order that the child and boy may be gradually drawn up to a higher level of life ; but in so far as they are consistent with sympathy, sympathy should be cultivated. Like authority itself, this sympathetic XV.] AUXILIARIES OF AUTHORITY 359 disposition is in many men natural. Some have too much of it. In the master, the idea and exhibition of authority must ever be paramount ; but he who can retain this, while giving expression to natural sympathy, will find boys devoted to him without being familiar. On the other hand, be it noted that when there is a predominance of sympathy; when the master is little more than a big boy, such a one, while he may preserve order and get his boys to work very fairly, will sacrifice much of the educa- tion which is inherent in authority. He will gain a certain popularity with his boys ; but he will not lift them up, nor will he secure a stable attachment. It is the recognition of the fact of the power to control that dwells in sympathy which lies at the root of the Monitorial or Prepostor system in English Public Schools — an excellent system, I think, if ptoperly regulated. The big boys understand both their masters and their playfellows, and are a medium of connection between them. Force cannot act from a distance. 2. Esprit de corps and Public Opinion. — On the basis of sympathy also rests esprit de corps and the public ideal. These two phrases taken together may be expressed in one, viz. " the common spirit of a school." We call it the " tone " of a school. It is the unwritten, moral standard, the unconscious ideal by which everything is measured. If this common spirit — this oversoul, as it may be called — is high, the master's moral work is virtually accomplished. The boys do the rest under his kindly, and not too curious, supervision. We might say that his intellectual work, too, is virtually accomplished; for a high tone is always accompanied by a desire to fulfil all reasonable obligations towards superiors. Now, this common spirit may be either for or against the master and his theory of school life ; but if the current sets in the right direction, the victory is won. And there is, I hold, always to begin with, a tendency in the right direc- tion, except, perhaps, in reformatories; and if, as on a 360 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. watershed, the stream should hesitate as to the direction in which it is to flow, the will and purpose of the master may easily determine its final course. By his own character, by his own conduct, his own earnestness, and his own example, he will always point the way. The boys will learn that it is " good form " to be good. It has been objected to the English Public School system that, owing to the absence of the continual and wholesome presence of the family affections, the " tone " is apt to be unsatisfactory. That it was so in the past, who can doubt ? That it need necessarily be so is far from the truth, and we are glad to think so; for the Public School is, for various reasons, a social necessity. At the same time the constant tendency towards degeneration in boys, when left too much to themselves has to be kept in mind with a view to its counteraction. In this connection, I may quote from Herbart's third letter, where he directs attention " to the mischief which is caused by the rough psychical mechanism in a great crowd of boys and men, who without, the gentle influence of the family spirit, measure their strength one against another, till some are subdued, others take the lead, and the greater number adapt themselves to their surround- ings. Such a struggle does not carry with it the slightest security, that the best will conquer. Amongst lively boys, crowded together and shut off from other people, all evil and barbaric tendencies must always arise ; and even after the application of the greatest severities on the part of adults, the tendencies would be only concealed without being remedied." I must say that I am always sensible of a certain hardness and vain-gloriousness in the pure product of an English Public School. 3. Love of Order and Organisation. — There is in boys, as in men, a love of order and organisation. This has its root in the desire for law and love of law which is in every reason. Liberty of action, it is true, is dear to the young XV.] AUXILIARIES OF AUTHORITY 361 as to the old ; and we have already shown that one of the characteristics of true authority is that it permits liberty of action. This, indeed, is essential to its successful exercise. Inner law is not always harassing us ; it imposes certain well-defined limits, and, within these, leaves us free. But with all this love of freedom in human nature, there is also a love of limits ; with all the tendency to disorder and license, there is a positive enjoyment of order and organisation. Boys are not animals ; they are so constituted as rational beings that they love freedom because there is order in it. License is painful. They are happiest under a system of rules if these are not too stringent, and are felt by them to be reasonable. This love of order is also strongly supported by that pleasure in community of life and action which is grounded in the sympathy and imitation of which we have already spoken. But I am convinced that you can- not look to the love of order and organisation to help you, unless your system recognises the free play of life in the boys, even to the sanctioning of disorder where the work of the school admits of it ; so long as it does not run into the excesses of license. Even in school-work there must be times when the command is "stand at ease." Such are some of the auxiliaries which have their origin in pupils themselves, and which may always be calculated on by the master. 4. Emulation. — Emulation in the acquisition of knowledge and the display of intellectual powers, in the wholesome sense of a love of excellence for itself, not in the vulgar sense of a desire to beat others, is a potent aid to discipline in the true moral sense of discipline. If encouraged in the vulgar sense, it has a demoralising effect, and gives rise to envy and uncharitableness. It demoralises the two or three out of forty or fifty who contend with each other for the first place ; it demoralises the mass, who find that they have no motive for work so far as the master's approval is concerned. Their work is 362 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. not fully recognised, and they become indifferent ; and, consequently, troublesome to the class and school, I am surprised they are so good as they generally are. The organisation of the school must be such that every boy's work and conduct get due recognition, and place-taking and prizes ought, consequently, to be abolighed. This so clearly follows from the elements of authority and the characteristics of its exercise, already amply treated of, that it would be a waste of time to argue it. Place-taking and prizes, especially the latter, are unquestionably non-educational, if not demoralising. To see little children fighting with each other for class places and prizes, is indeed an offensive spectacle. It is possible, however, that place-taking might be so managed as to be an amusement and give vivacity to class lessons ; but the quarterly estimate of a boy's school-work should not be dependent on his success in " trapping " his schoolfellows, as the Scots well call it. Every boy should get fair play in the estimation of his work ; and this is possible only on Quintilian's plan of periodical written exercises on the work of each successive fortnight. " I am strongly of opinion," says Mr A. Sidgwick of Oxford, "that place- taking is a bad system. It wastes time; it impedes teaching ; it unduly accentuates competition, and it is often, if not always, exceedingly unfair. A lesson should be quiet; the constant movement and noise of place- taking are unsettling to all. The teacher should be drawing out knowledge, correcting errors, leading young minds to find the truth, and exciting their interest; all this is obstructed and hampered by the race for places. There is much, no doubt, to be said for competition, with the British boy, as needful to evoke his energies ; but in any case, it should be remembered that competition is not learning, and though the habit of learning may be acquired partly by its aid, to the love of learning it is necessarily alien, and may easily be hostile or even fatal : and we should not forget that the primary schools do excellent XV.] AUXILIARIES OF AUTHORITY 363 work without it.'^ It should therefore be always kept rather in the background, while the place-taking system makes it crudely obtrusive. And, lastly, this system is unfair. The full proof of this would take too long, but the main point is that the results are decided by chance (and, I would add, by a kind of mental elbowing) to an extent which I am sure is often overlooked by teachers, and even by the boys who suffer." ^ A good general statement is this : the moment emulation passes into personal competition it verges on the immoral. To give a special prize for a special piece of work is not, however (for obvious reasons), hurtful. E.g. .• In a classical school, special mention, or a medal, for the best composition, etc. ; in a technical school, for the best piece of machinery, can do no harm. ' This is not universally true. ^ Essay on "Form Management" in Mr Barnett's excellent book entitled Teaching and Organisation, 1897. LECTURE XVI. RELIGION. The crown of the edifice of human thought, human life, and therefore of human education, is religion. But it is not a "subject" to be superadded to a curriculum, but must permeate school life from infancy to the end of the secondary school period. Religion is essentially the comprehension of the spiritual and Divine significance of all things — both nature and the life of man. Every subject of instruction can be humanised and moralised, and have for its issue the ethical in the sense of a spiritual morality. The educated man does not contemplate God as an external immeasurable Being, but as the eternal spirit that animates all, and from Whom and to Whom are all things. Nature gets a new meaning, a glow of emotion is diffused over human life, and morality, as a system of ideas and ideals, is inspired by the great thought. The truly educated man sees all things in the unity of God, and does all things in and for God. " A touch Divine, And the sealed eyeball owns the mystic rod. Visible, through His garden walketh God." — Browning. The religious idea is a large intellectual and moral conception ; it is the supreme act of finite mind ; and it is hopeless to expect to see it realised in the majority of mankind. At the same time it may be possessed by 364 LECT. xvi.J RELIGION 365 every human being in a certain form, more or less crude — a form sufficiently definite to sustain, confirm, and elevate his daily life as a moral or striving life. God may be discerned by all as a Law-giver whose activity is determined by love ; and the awe and reverence which a man feels in presence of the sublime thought of universal all-embracing Spirit may be transferred to His Law, which is merely His way of working. All surely may attain to this, and so realise for themselves the idea of God as supreme sanction of morality and the most potent motive in determining the Will. " The most sovereign of all medicines " [for the will of man], says Lord Bacon in his letter to Sir Henry Savile, " is Religion, which is able to change it and transform it in the deepest and most inward inclinations and motions." But do not for a moment suppose that having ignored the religious idea up to the age of sixteen or seventeen, you can then lay it on like a varnish. Like all else that truly enters into the life of a man, it must have made an early start in the impressionable days of infancy and childhood. It must be present at every stage of education, and associated, aiove all, with the joy of living. Thus only can the great conception, which makes man only a little lower than the angels, grow. The seed has to be sown, and it must be tended from year to year, if it is ever to become a healthy and vigorous plant. Children, in the freshness of their sensibility, are singularly open to the religious idea, in its simple elements ; and this is evidence that we must use the opportunity which nature thus calls on us to use. " God," says Herbart in his Aistheiic Revelation, " the real centre of all moral ideas and of their limitless efficacy, the Father of man and Lord of the World, should fill the background of memory as the oldest, the first, percept, to which all recollection, returning out of the confusion of life, must invariably come at last that it may rest, as in its very self, in the repose of faith." Let a master himself be possessed by the religious 366 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. idea, and in earnest in his work of educating human souls, and it will be constantly in evidencfe, unobtrusively but silently present, influencing the lives of his pupils as it has moulded his own. The pragmatic teaching of dogmas before the mind of the child is ready to receive them will alienate the child from the truth. Religion, literature, and history, are, I think, the subjects which most easily admit of being worst taught. By acts of reverence, reverence is taught ; and reverence lies at the basis of the religious idea. Children are very susceptible on this side of the emotions. Take full advantage of this. It is a gentle mother's teaching that must be the teacher's model. Children, I have said, are by nature religious ; but we do not expect a boy, even of special spiritual endowment, to rise to such religious aspirations as are contained in the 40th Psalm : " I waited patiently for the Lord ; and He inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings." And then the fresh burst of gratitude in the words which follow : — " He hath put a new song into my mouth." Vain, too, to expect the full- blooded boy of sixteen to rise to the height of such utterances as those of the 42nd Psalm : " As the hart panteth for the water-brooks, even so panteth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul panteth for God, yea, even for the living God ! " All this belongs to a much more advanced period of development. But surely I could stir an emotion of reverence and awe that would never pass away, if after speaking to a class on the products of the earth, the industrial interdependence of nations, and the community of bodily needs which bind together the human race, I gave simple and natural utterance to such words as these, " The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the round world, and they that dwell therein. For He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods." Or if, when I have been speaking to a xvi.j RELIGION 367 class of the heavens and the seasons, I sum up with the words : " The heavens declare the glory of God ; and the firmament sheweth His handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge." If I am to teach God to children, it must be the God of children ; if I am to teach Christ, it must be the Christ of children, i.e. of the Gospel story. If I am to teach God, it must be through the idea of Fatherhood and the emotion of Reverence. In the midst of simple reverence and devotion the child feels himself at home. " He feels himself," says Madame Necker de Saussure, "in a holy place : the idea of something sacred gradually dawns upon his mind; and when he hears God named as the invisible object of our eternal adoration, the conception of a hidden power is not a strange wonder to him : he believes himself to have felt the solemn influence of its presence." (B. II. c. 4.) Gradually, as the child grows, we have to speak to him of divine things, and this is direct instruction. It is a delicate matter and demands all our consideration, if we are not to send out of school into citizenship, either the hard prosaic secular mind or the rebellious and perverse spirit. When it becomes necessary to teach a catechism (and the later this is done the better), explanation should always precede each successive statement, and lead up to the " form of words " as the summary of what has been conversationally impressed by the previous analysis of what the boy, more or less vaguely, apprehends. During the Upper Primary School period, boys become more at home with generalisation, and dogmatic statement is not irksome to them, if there be a fair understanding of its meaning. But beware of confounding catechetical formulary with religion, and so substituting a mechanical belief for a living faith. Passages of Scripture, prayers, and hymns should be committed to memory at all stages. All this can be easily 368 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. and pleasantly done. It is not difficult to build up religion in the child or even the boy ; but it must be done after the manner I have indicated ; not by severe lessons prescribed, nor by abstract statements, nor under penalties, but sympathetically, as the natural outburst of emotion, the expression of man's need and dependence, and the recognition of Divine law and wisdom in the making of the world. I should like to know why Christianity is not to be taught as literature, why I may not call on boys of fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen years of age to sit down and read straight through with me, at two or three sittings, the whole of a Gospel, and feel the story and the moral and spiritual teaching it conveys, leaving dogma to grow out of that common perusal of the sacred text ? Why should the average boy regard this as an anomalous and absurd procedure? That they should do so is a terrible criticism on us, their pastors and masters. Is not a story the form in which the Christian Religion was given to man ? Can we improve on the Divine method ? Religion is too much pressed, as if boys and man by nature rejected it : as if it were a kind of hateful medicine rather than the spiritual food which the soul needs, and indeed rejoices to receive except when it is made at once distasteful and indigestible by the blundering hand of man presenting it as an abstract system divorced from the immediate uses of life and the emotions of the heart. Plutarch tells us that the soul is not a vessel to fill, but a hearth on which to kindle a fire ; and if this be true of education generally, it is supremely true of religious education. It is especially at the beginning of the secondary stage that a boy needs the power of religion in his soul most, and, in the general case, has it least. The simplicity and candour and ready responses of infancy and of the earlier portion of the juvenile period, and the toleration of precept and rule and authority (if not overdone) which is characteristic of the latter half of the juvenile period, are XVI. RELIGION 369 both alike now gone, and the only hope of truly governing and guiding the minds of boys between their fifteenth and eighteenth years lies in the unquestionable moral superior- ity of their master, and in sustaining those ideas of religion which rest on the recognition of a Divine Power and a Divine Law, Still, even at this unhappy time, let us not be too urgent. Nature in the, often perverse, mental movement of this period has its own ends to serve. Have patience and bear with the conceit of ignorance, the swelling defiance of all law. You are quite entitled to meet this with your authority; but do not urge this too far. You must let the boy feel at this stage that it is not authority but reason that he is kicking against, that you are only the delegated minister of wisdom and experience, and that you do not ask for more respect than your credentials entitle you to. A strong man can always do this, and can afford to shut his eyes at certain times that he may look the more keenly at other times. Respice finem is here, as always, the motto in education — have regard to the end. You wish to send forth a reasonable, a moral and religious youth : sacrifice, then, the present to the future. Nature is only temporarily against you. Give her a little head now — let the bit lie loose in the mouth, but hold the reins tight. Your whip must be thrown away. Nature will soon fight for you and not against you, if the earliest years have been well employed. Man is by nature religious. I need scarcely say that if the foundation of all religious life be reverence for the Unseen, it is indispens- able that the manner of the teacher when he gives religious instruction, or even when he makes a religious allusion, should itself be full of reverence. The religious lesson should be approached, conducted, and concluded with a certain solemnity. Irritability, impatience, harshness, hardness, are always far removed from the true teacher ; but from religious instruction, above all, they must be 2 A 370 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. absent : they introduce an element of discord, strife, and anger, where all should be harmony, and peace, and love. So vital is the manner in which religious instruction is given, that it is even better that no instruction should be given at all, than that it should be given in a spirit alien to the aim of giving it. It is in the religious and moral instruction of the school that associations pleasing or unpleasing are most of all potent. "One word or act of irreverence will nullify the most careful teaching." It is said of Newton that he always paused before pronounc- ing the name of God. With these general remarks I would now refer the studerit to two addresses ^ on this subject which contain all I have to say. They were written on different occasions, but doubtless will be found to run on similar lines with the remarks just made. But note this : in so far as religion fails to support morality it is superstition only. " Right conduct " (not right dogmas) says Kant, " is the apple of God's eye on earth." Morality is first, religion second. "God's judgment seat is within us," says Kant again. Note. — I would rather avoid the political question ; but it may reasonably be expected that one who professionally writes on Education, should here interpose a word on religion in the schools as a practical question for the State. It is clear enough from the past pages that no education of a human being can be complete which does not comprehend in its scope and purpose the religious idea, and is permeated by it from first to last. Nor can any one who surveys the numerous sects, Roman Catholic, Catholic and Protestant, which must ever co-exist in a State where there is freedom, doubt that it is impossible to impose by State authority any one religious doctrinal system in schools which exist for all the people. It is 1 In " Occasional Addresses " and " Teachers' Guild Addresses." XVI.] RELIGION 371 futile to discuss that question after the experiences through which Europe, America, and our own Colonies have passed. On the other hand, what do we mean by religious sects? Simply different schools of Christianity. On a common foundation all stand ; but they assume different attitudes to the common creed, historical, dogmatic, or both. If all religion is to be extruded from the schools of the people because these different schools of Christianity insist that their formulated dogma shall be taught or nothing, it is time for those who believe that, by excluding religion, you exclude the most potent formative force for both the intellectual and ethical growth of man, to protest against this new form of human sacrifice — the sacrifice of innocent children on the altar of "gods many." They must be saved, even though systems should fall. Religion must not be sacrificed in order to provide and emphasise the points of difference among those who hold a common faith. There is a common ground on which the schools of a Christian State should be founded — the fact of God and His continual relation to man, God's view of human life and its great purpose and destiny as revealed by Christ, the certainty of Divine love and judgment and the sure and certain hope of the Immortality of the human spirit. All Christians believe this, notwithstanding their differences historical and metaphysical, while non- Christians are willing at least to acquiesce in religious teaching thus far. Every system of Christian dogma is built on this foundation. This is universal Christianity. Why, then, not let children, all in common, share what is common to all, and let the various schools add to this, when children reach a fitting age, their own private interpretations. This amount of Christian teaching might well be established by the State in every school. Those who might oppose this on the ground of its inadequacy could not oppose it on the ground of its falsity, because all alike go thus far in these primary propositions. As to the few who (like the Jew) see in them an essential error, they should be treated more mildly than the conscientious objector to a country's civil laws and allowed to have schools of their own, so long as they satisfied the State 372 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION [lect. xvi. that the children were properly instructed, and that nothing was taught in them disloyal to the Government which gave them protection. When the high ethical function of teachers is fully recognised and liberty given to the teacher to found his edifice on the ethical, including the spiritual, as that is embodied in the primary Christian ideas, I should not be surprised to find the profession sought after by the finest minds in the nation, especially among women. If Christians cannot agree on a common basis, then assuredly we are within sight of a secular system. It will then be the duty of the educationist to see that it is an ethical secular system into which the spiritual substance of Christianity enters as "natural" religion. If God, and the ideal in the heart of God, be not the foundation and end of our education, civilisation will be arrested ; or, to speak Hebraically, the wrath of God will descend on the nations which acknowledge Him not. CONCLUSION There has now been laid before you in the course of these Lectures what I conceive to be the Theory and Art of Education. I have spent so much of my time in schools of various kinds that I have felt the necessity of treating every question of theory and art from the standpoint of the school-room floor : in other words, I have set down nothing which is not, in my opinion, practicable. The supreme end of all education, the materials of instruction, the method of instruction, training, and discipline as determined by the way in which the human mind grows, the practical relations of theory to method, have all occupied our attention. The supreme ethical end as determined by the very nature and function of human reason has for its condition, as you must have seen, the j^^-activity of Will-reason in knowing and the j^^direction of the same Will-reason in conduct, with a view to the fulfilment of an ideal under a sense of law. Reason-activity, and its result, knowledge, is of value only as the pre-condition of the ethical life. That a man may lead a worthy, nay, a noble life, both as the member of a family and as a citizen, with a limited range of knowledge, is beyond question, if that knowledge has been rightly directed. But the ethical has a larger meaning than this. All that extends our rational comprehension of the world and of man lifts us to a higher plane of humanity, elevates the inner life and gives a deeper meaning to the most ordinary duties, because we then see them in the light of 373 374 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION ideas and of their relations to a larger whole. This life is life in God — Himself the source and process and end of all life. The method of instruction, you will have seen, is essentially the same in all subjects ; and this, because method is based on the necessary process of human reason in dealing with its experience as yielded to it by inner and outer sense. And the main consideration is this, that the method whereby man is to be educated to the highest possible for him, rests ultimately on the fact of Will as that which is root and possibility of reason — of which, indeed, reason is but the formal movement. This Will, by virtue of the end, idea, and ideal of which it is the promise and possibility, and which ideal lies hidden in its ever-aspiring movement, is one and identical in the reason-energy and in the ethical issue. Such a concep- tion manifestly gives unity to educational theory. For the self-activity of Will is at once the prime condition of all true appropriation of knowledge and also of all ethical activity that is truly the expression of ourselves. The training and discipline of Will, accordingly, is the prime function of the man who would educate himself or another. But just as God Himself can give utterance to His infinite Will only through the Real of nature and man, so man can ethically express himself only through the real of his relations to nature, to man, and to God. He has to make realities his own if he would appropriate the riches of the Divine manifestation. It is in the apprehension of the truth of relations that he fulfils the Divine reason in him ; and it is that truth which makes him free by revealing the law of his activity. In this, as his end, he finds the only possible answer to the Why and Wherefore of his mysterious existence ; and what is this end save God Himself, in Whom we live and move and have our being? Method is of value because it enables us to train in the real elements of our earthly life in accordance with the Divine law of growth, in such a way as to make the CONCLUSION 375 attainment of the end possible for all normal human beings. This is the only " liberal " education. What is conventionally called " culture " is dust and ashes in the teeth except in so far as it leads to this. The " enthusi- asm of humanity," of which this century has heard so much, will not neglect the material and political conditions which are essential to the growth of every citizen up to his fulness of stature as a man ; but it will find the main channel for its energies in education. Education is the chief aim of all polities, as we do not doubt it has been the Divine purpose in the past perplexed and distressing history of mankind. To the teacher, more than to any other, accordingly, the future belongs. Postscript — I have spoken pretty fully of ethical education as Art, but have excluded the detailed application of Method to intellectual instruction. My book on Language and Linguistic Method in the School, however, deals with the most important element in intellectual education — the Humanistic. APPENDICES APPENDIX I. NOTES ON SUBJECTS FOR CONSIDERATION AND DISCUSSION. I. School Management and Organisation. We have throughout assumed, in the preceding Course, that we have been speaking of the education of the human mind in general. But the advantages and disadvantages of congregating boys and girls for purposes of instruction and education are worthy of special consideration. The questions to be considered are — 1. To what extent are the ends, subjects, and methods of education modified when there are large numbers to deal with ? 2. What is the maximum number which should be placed under one Headmaster ? 3. How many can be taught together in one class by one teacher ? 4. How is the difficulty of large numbers to be over- come when the pupils are of different ages and various stages of progress. The general answer, of course, is — By Organisation. What do we mean by this? We mean — (i.) The Organisation of the Instruction. The instruction-scheme is presumed to have fixed regard to the educational aim of the school. It must be devised with a view to the work, not only of successive years, but of successive terms, and even of successive weeks. Length and difficulty of daily lessons have to receive careful attention : they must be adapted to the average pupil. The curriculum of instruction to be laid down for 379 380 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION different kinds of schools has to be discussed with refer- ence to the general scope and purpose of all education. It may appear impossible to give such instruction in all the subjects enumerated under the head of Materials (Pt. I., Lect. VII.) as to give an exact basis for further progress, and, above all, intellectual interest in making further progress. But it is quite possible to do so, if we begin betimes and build up gradually from the foundation, falling back at every stage on previous stages and connecting the earlier with the later. We have always to think of quality rather than quantity. The actual amount to be acquired is, in truth, not great. The difficulty which meets us in carrying out an ideal instruction-plan is the Time-table. The instruction-plan compels us to consider the respective claims of the real-naturalistic and real-human- istic in a school curriculum. The latter is the centre rovind which all education must revolve. This does not to any extent affect the position taken up in dealing with the materials of education — viz., that the real-naturalistic should run through the whole curriculum of instruction from infancy to manhood, being especially prominent up to the fifteenth year. As a guide in the arrangement of the succession of lessons daily, Bacon's words may be adapted to the school, viz. : " Interchange of contraries, with a tendency to the more benign extreme." Formal and Real subjects should be interchanged, with a tendency towards the "more benign" Real. Encyclopaedism in the instruction-plan has to be con- sidered in view of the fact that education is an extensive as well as intensive process. Breadth of basis. Specialisation in Schools : is this permissible ? or, is it a characteristic of the University stage alone ? (2.) The Organisation of the Pupils, i.e. the fitting them into the instruction-scheme ; in other words. Classification. In connection with Organisation of pupils, Examinations, written and oral. Removes, Leaving Certificates, etc. etc., have to be discussed. In this connection, too. Class Manipulation, Place- taking, Prizes, Expedients and Devices in Teaching as distinguished from Methods, demand attention. APPENDICES 381 Thereafter, School-Rooms, School Furniture, Light and Ventilation,^ Apparatus for teaching, Text-Books, Manual Work in schools, are all subjects for discussion. Also the comfort and the decoration of school-rooms. In every question the Ethical End must always be present to us, as governing all practical questions of detail, and throwing light on difficult points. 2. Organisation of a State School System. ; and Relation of the State to the School. The different grades of schools are to be determined by the periods of mental development. They are — From 3rd till 6th year, Kindergarten Schools, or Infant Asylums. „ 6th „ 8th „ Infant Schools. „ 8th „ isth „ Primary Schools (Lower-Primary to 1 2th, Upper-primary to 1 5th year \ From ijth to end of l8th Secondary or High Schools, with year, a view to Professional Training. 9) 9) n 3} Technical Schools, with a view to Industrial Training. Above 18 years Universities. Note. — These might be all under one roof; but in that case the line of demarcation between each would have to be strongly drawn, because each has its own idea by which its work must be governed. In addition, a State must provide Technical Colleges, which are to be defined as higher schools intended to prepare for some specific industrial function, as opposed to schools whose aim is purely the liberal education of the man, or future professional work. The place of these Technical Colleges in an industrial nation, and, to what extent they can be so moulded as to give education as well as instruction, are questions to be considered. Girls' Schools. — The question, " To what extent difference of sex affects the education of Girls," has to be discussed. Mixed Schools. Teaching by Women, etc. ' It is in vain to contend against the passion of schoolmasters for a vitiated atmosphere. Should the medical officers of the country not see to this.? "' The Upper-Primary may belong to the secondary schools, and usually does so. 382 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION Continuation and Evening Schools. — These must be part of a State-system, and should be specially directed to literary, civic, and musical training. But technical instruction should also be provided in them for apprentices. 3. The Teacher. Is he a retailer of so much knowledge for so much money? Or, Is he an Educator? His true position in the State and his precise social significance as an ethical agent. Intellectual and moral qualifications. Professional training. The general education of the Teacher should, like that of other professions, be in the line of the higher education of the country, but it demands more breadth. His pro/essiomai tra,mmg is a matter to be determined in its details by time, place, and circumstance. (Training Colleges and Normal Schools. The Universi- ties as Schools of Education.) The Headmaster's relation to his Assistants, Powers, and position of Assistants, etc. etc. Relation of Head- masters to Governing Bodies. The constitution of Governing Bodies. APPENDIX II. PRACTICAL HINTS ON CLASS-MANAGEMENT. Presuming that a master is familiar with his subject and with methods, the next consideration is, How can he best learn to teach and control a class? The answer is the same as we should give if asked, How is a carpenter to learn to make a cart? By seeing it well done, and then by doing it himself. Agenda agendo. He must practise — at first under superintendence and then by himself Some men will feel that they hold the reins firmly after a few days' experience : others take longer : others again will always have a dim feeling of incapacity when they enter their class-rooms. To these last I say, leave the profession at once. You can do little good, and you will lead a miserable life. This does not apply to mere nervous hesitancy, if the boys do not see it. And yet, just as directions how to proceed in a surgical operation will very much help a young surgeon not only in his first, but in all future, attempts, I shall set down here certain notes made from time to time by myself when visit- ing schools, as they may be of value to young teachers. I presume, of course, that you have a class before you — not a mob. The class is a unity ; but do not forget that it is made up of many though it be a unity, and that a teacher succeeds with it only in so far as each boy takes part in every act and thought of every other. This is the primary consideration in class management. The sympathy and co-operation of each with all are essential. 384 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION To help the attainment of this result, a few expedients or devices suggest themselves : — 1. I think on the whole that the best form of a class is that of a horse-shoe. 2. The master should stand still, and in the same place during a lesson, drawing to himself the eyes of all members of the class. He should not move about, but stand erect, or sit in a raised chair. 3. His mind and manner should be concentrated on the lesson, and on securing the greatest amount of thought and work from each member of the class. This concentra- tion will act electrically on the class, and make the spirits of each " attentive." 4. If you find yourself falling into the habit of speaking much in a class, be assured you are prelecting, not teaching. The boys have to teach themselves under your guidance. It is not you who have to do the work of learning, but they. Your expenditure of energy should be mental, not physical. Examination. Note. — Examination should be conversational both in its tone and characteristics. {a) In putting questions be select in the use of words, concise and brief 1 (J}) Do not question straight " down the class " ; but always put the question first, and then name the boy who is to answer, without repeating it, (c) Take only such answers as all may hear. This secures articulateness of utterance in the pupils. Call for the repetition of answers from the more backward boys. (d) Take only complete sentences in reply to your questions. {e) Speak in a calm, clear, moderated tone, as nearly as possible approaching to the conversational. Loudness and quickness drive thought, of which the essence is deliberation and calm, out of boys. {f) x^void fussiness, relying on purpose and method, and not on personal activity either of mind or body. ig) If a class fail to answer any question and you have to tell them, make the class repeat the answer APPENDICES 385 simultaneously before you pass on ; and also ask several individually. Then write it on the blackboard. {k) In putting questions demanding some thought to answer, give time. Rapidity in question and answer is applicable only to memory questions. In these you may be as rapid as you please. («') Always prepare your lessons, to the extent at least of determining your method and aim in examination and of limiting the amount you mean to teach in any one lesson. (J) In examining, do not mix up things that are different, e.g. spelling with etymologies, meaning of words, and meaning of sentences. Do one thing at a time. iji) Remember you are not so much teaching a lesson as teaching your pupils, or, rather, helping them to teach themselves, and direct your special attention, consequently, to the worse half of your class. (/) Sum up every step in a lesson on the blackboard, and then use the board for a rapid revision of the lesson before dismissing the class. {m) In examination, be earnest ; and your boys will feel that you are earnest, if the earnestness is real, and not merely an earnest desire for vain display, or the earnestness of the street-preacher. Think of the pupils, not of yourself : in short, attend to the class and the class will attend to you. («) The great art of all teaching and all examining, depends on the power the teacher has of assuming in imagination the attitude of ignorance towards the subject that is to be learned, and thereupon advancing to the knowledge of it in company with the pupil. Reading.^ {a) Let each pupil finish his sentence before you allow any corrections. (^) Never allow your pupils to read " straight down " the class. Name the reader. (<:) Let the upper class pupils always read more than one sentence. (aQ When your class is reading, do not use a book yourself. Listen simply. In this way you compel clear enunciation. 1 I mean reading in any language ; not merely English. 2 B 386 institutes of education Dictation and Composition. (a) In dictation make your pupils write three times correctly on a slate the words they misspell. {b) Illustrate common errors in spelling by means of the blackboard. (c) In like manner with common errors in composition. Id) In teaching elementary narrative composition, make the pupils write each complete sentence as a separate paragraph. Grammar. {a) In parsing, make each pupil complete the parsing of a clause, and not parse simply one word. {p) Fall back on reasons and rules when parsing, in the case of every mistake that is made. (c) In the parsing of any language, after the oral lesson has been given, send the boys to their seats to write out the parsing (or a portion of it) in tabular form. General. Have half-a-day a week set free for revisal of whatever is taught ; and the more that revisal is done on paper the better. The evening previous to the revisal should be set free for preparation. Husband your powers at the beginning of the school- day. The rod and all physical penalties exist because of four things, — want of self-control in the schoolmaster; want of ethical purpose in the schoolmaster ; want of method in teaching ; want of good organisation and classification. Where all these things are present instead of absent, the rod will be very rarely, if ever, resorted to. In any case, never punish except for deliberate wrong-doing. Blame privately, praise publicly. Place-taking has been invented by masters for the purpose of securing the attention and stimulating the boys to work. It is a bad substitute for good teaching. At the same time, place-taking may be practised because it gives vivacity to APPENDICES 387 a class ; but the merit list of the term or year should be determined only to the extent of ten per cent, of the marks as ascertained by the class-places held from day to day. This merit list should depend almost wholly on the results of fortnightly examinations. Prizes are hurtful : a certificate of having attained first, second, or third class in the year's work is all that is needed, except in the schools which wish to advertise themselves by sending their pupils home with gaudy books.^ ' In this case a little sagacity will enable you to devise measures which will ensure every boy carrying home a gilt advertisement of his merits on some pretext or other. Note on Unity of Reason with reference to the Process of Intelligence generally as treated in the Text. When the conscious subject functions Will for purposes of knowledge and consequent conduct, it asks of the thing before it, and of all things in their relations, what they precisely are. The answer must ultimately be the purified record of the sensate plus the satisfaction of the dialectic form of the reason-movement in its specific reference to that sensate. It is this end towards which Will-reason is always striving ; and to accomplish it, it has to take successive steps. It stands face to face with a synthesis given, and it has to understand that synthesis, and to categorise it : and then only does it fulfil its purpose, which is knowledge. The rudimentary act of Percipience contains in itself the mode of procedure, for it is a separating of a one total complex from other complexes, and synthesising it with the conscious subject. This process of taking things, and then the elements of things apart, and then synthesising them, thereby converting sense-synthesis or synopsis into rational synthesis, is always going on. We can imagine a rational being so endowed as to analyse and synthesise in a single flash of intuition ; but if it did so, it would still have to go through the necessary steps (with whatever celerity) whereby the rational synthesis was attained. These steps are all contained in the final complex act, which alone is true knowing ; but when we separate this final complex act into its constituents, the logical order of these steps APPENDICES 389 becomes also a time-order ; because all is in Time. As separated we call them Attuition, Discrimination, Percep- tion, Com.parison, Conception of the individual. General Conception, Reasoned or Causal ground ; and these move- ments, with their auxiliary conditions in sense, e.g. Imagination, Memory, and Association, constitute the substance of Rational Psychology. But the various steps are all elements in or moments of the final complex act of reason in knowing : Reason or the rational act is to be regarded as a One in many moments. For purposes of clearness we have to separate the functionings of mind in so far as they are discriminable. Not only is the unity of Reason, as a one Will-move- ment in many moments towards an end, thus exhibited, but it is seen that the idea and the ideal themselves emerge out of reason as so conceived. What we have to render an account of are complexes, and finally the one total complex, the universe of things. Will, being, by virtue of its essential nature, a free activity, is for ever restless and for ever pushing on, even to the transcending of the limits of Time and Space. It is the total individual thing which it has to explain in its whole notion, and also in the idea within the notion, this idea being the true differentiation of the thing — at once its essence, cause, and Tekoi relatively to itself. It thus insists on pushing on till it grasps this true isness of the thing, to which, however, it can never attain even in a physical sense ; and which, if attained, would still leave for our solution the true " isness " of that ultimate physical " isness." This true "isness" is the idea and the "one" which explains the parts. The ideal, again, as distinguished from the idea, is of the concrete ; it is the perfected complex : and it is will, as a necessary pursuer of ends, which makes the ideal (no less than the idea) a possible fact of consciousness, both in the sphere of knowledge, of ethics, of aesthetics, and of education. It would be out of place to prosecute this subject further here. All I wish to do is to emphasise the unity of Reason and the Reason-movement as that is brought to light by regarding Will as root of reason and nerve of reason from first to last ; the various steps in the process which psychology lays bare being only logical moments of 390 INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION a one act, though presenting themselves to us in a time- order, because we exist in Time. The process of knowing is analytico-synthetic. Further, the reason act is not only a one act in several moments according to a certain logical order, but in each separate moment the whole reason-/or»2 is present, and is repeating itself. In Percipience I discriminate and isolate a, and synthesise it with itself in consciousness (analytico- synthetic) ; in Concipience I isolate the parts in the conceived thing, and synthesise them as a one thing (in many) (analytico-synthetic) ; in the general concept I isolate like characters in a plurality of objects, and synthesise them in a one rational thing or entity (analytico- synthetic) ; and this process is also the process of inductive reasoning (many in one). In deductive reasoning, again, as when I say, " That beast is ferocious ; because it is a tiger; and all tigers are ferocious," I have isolated the beast before me from other objects, and synthesised it with the general concept " tiger," and all that is implicit in "tiger" (analytico-synthetic). In affirming the cause of an effect, I isolate particular antecedent and sequent, and synthesise them in a causal unity : the one always contains the other (analytico-synthetic). The simple act of percipience of the single, with which we began, becomes, it is true, more complex as experience presses plurality more and more upon us and demands rationalisation ; but that is all. Thus the central Will, whose "end" is the causal rationalisation of all experience as an ultimate one in many and many in one, behaves itself always in the same way. Each step is rationally grounded, from the dialectic process in simple percipience upwards ; and each step is also a synthesis or judgment. [Judgment and thought-affirmation are the same : the judgment- form exists only when articulated into subject and predicate : when expressed in words it is a proposition.] Nay, even the attuit in the animal mind is, as being a resultant synopsis, an anticipation of judgment (difference and integration) — a judgment within the domain of Sensation pure and simple, which, with the advent of Reason, is transformed into a synthesis. If, then, we wish to generalise, in one word, the way APPENDICES 391 or form of the reason-movement, it is to be called the Analytico-synthetic way — the search for identity in difference. The ultimate result is that Will-reason, in its necessary dialectic, insists on grasping the cosmic whole of identity in difference as a synthesis of Phenomenon and primal perduring One Reason. As a system of Reason, however, the world is outside, and remote from, mere feeling in the individual subject, even in its highest attuitional form. It is only when the conscious or feeling subject evolves itself as Will moving as a dialectic process, that it becomes aware of the universe as a reasoned system. That reasoned system, or system of reason, is outside there all the while ; but until / have reason, how can I see the reason in it ? It is not my reason that reveals the reason of the universe to that universe ; the function of my reason is to make explicit the reason in the universe of sensation to me, a self- conscious subject. Prior to the emergence of reason in man, the universal Reason is there in things and in man's sensation of things. The man born blind cannot see light ; the conscious subject cannot see Reason-universal until it grows within itself the eye of reason. And when it grows, it does not say, " Light is there because I have an eye," but rather, " I, having an eye, can now see the light which all the while was there." I cannot, as a matter of fact, know the universe except as a reasoned system ; the seeming chaos of sensation, from the initial to the final act of the self-conscious subject, is necessarily gripped as a reasoned world. This is intellectual Religion. Finite reason itself might be briefly defined as a conscious being freely moving to the reduction of all to itself in the form of Causality ; which is the form of the initial act of Percipience as well as of the last act of completed know- ledge. Printed by Oliver and Boyd Edinburgh VV^ORKS BY PROFESSOR S. S. LAURIE METAPHYSICA NOVA ET.VETUSTA A RETURN TO DUALISM BY "SCOTUS NOVANTICUS" (Professor S. S. Laurie) Second Edition. 200 pp. 8vo. Clotli. 6s. NOTICES OF FIRST EDITION " I congratulate you very sincerely on the production of this remarkable little book. Its results are among the best in philosphy ; at the same time that your deduction of them from the simple act of percipience is at once original and happy." — From Dr HUTCHISON STIRLING. " The book is an analysis of Perception independently undertaken, but with full knowledge of, and reference to, the Kantian investigation. . . . The whole is worked out with much sureness of touch and with real philosophical insight. The author's knowledge and use of German thought is flavoured by a certain sturdy Scotch independence as well as by an infusion of Scotch caution. . . . The book makes the impression of having been written by one who has held himself at some distance from the philosophical schools, and who has embodied in his work the results of his mature thought. . . . Relativity (with the author) is something quite different from Relatedness. . . . What is said by the author is said with admirable clearness." — From Mind, October 1884. NOTICES OF THE PRESS "... As a connected reasoned body of doctrines, the explanation offered by ' Scotus Novanticus ' constitutes a new philosophical theory. ... By the help of this versatile will-force, the writer endeavours to solve the great problems of philosophy. ... If the reasonings and conclusions are not always satisfactory, the book will still be interesting to the readers of philosophy on account of the light it throws on several important points of speculative inquiry, and also for the thoroughness with which the doctrines are developed and carried out." — From The Scotsman. " The anonymous work Metaphysica Nova et Veiusia, by ' Scotus Novanticus,' well deserves the careful attention of all who can appreciate a sustained piece of reasoning. . . . The book displays much maturity of thought throughout, and the author, whoever he is, possesses a complete grasp of philosophical distinctions. . . . Though he works out his theory forcibly in his own way, he has evidently been largely influenced by Kant and the post-Kantian Idealists, particularly, perhaps, by Fichte. ... It may be described as a succinct but comprehensive sketch of a metaphysical psychology." — From The Contemporary Review. "... In the instance before us, while the subject handled is a large one, the treatment it receives (notwithstanding the brevity of the book) is wonder- fully full. ' Scotus Novanticus ' wastes none of his space in rhetorical verbiage nor in wordy excursions into the picturesque fields adjoining his subject proper, but confines himself strictly to the province within which it lies. His style is terse yet lucid, and his book, though hard reading, as it is almost bound to be from its nature as from its succinctness, never fails to be interesting. ... In this little work the anonymous author attempts nothing less than to trace the genesis and history of our knowledge — our knowledge of the outer world as well as of the workings of mind itself. ... It would be impossible for us here to give anything like a full and explicit account of the contribution which is here offered. ' Scotus Novanticus wastes no words, and his treatise reads like a mathematical demonstration. . . . The work will well repay a careful study, and is a valuable contribution to the subject with which it deals. We heartily commend it to students of philosophy, whether they be materialists or not."^— From The Scottish (^Quarterly") Review. " While, as we shall afterwards point out, we consider this work a failure as an argument for Dualism, we cannot help congratulating the author on the production of a work so distinguished by subtle analysis and philosophic power. . . . We say his Dualism is illogical, because in no work have we seen the activities of the mind more clearly exhibited or their necessity for the constitution of knowledge more convincingly argued. More than this, he has freed himself from the paralogisms which strangled Kant when dealing with such notions as Being, Causality, and the Absolute. ... It only remains to add that the style is clear, terse, and vigorous." — From The Glasgow Herald. " This is the work of a powerful and original thinker."^From The Modern Review, October 1884. NOTICES OF THE PRESS " . . Professor Laurie's ingenious and original little book. . . . Compre- hensive treatise ... it abounds in admirable expositions and acute criticisms : and especially indicates a clear insight, founded upon accurate knowledge, into the insufficiency of the empirical psychology as a base of a metaphysical philosophy."— From A Study of Religion, by Dr jAMES Martineau, 1888. "Elie [la M^taphysique] a attire I'attention speciale des critiques par la finesse des analyses, la profondeur des deductions et la rigueur, un peu tendue, de la m^thode dialectique." — From La Revue Philosofihique, Feb. l8go. NOTICE OF SECOND EDITION "... The categories, or ' dialectic percepts,' which Professor Laurie brings forward, stand very well upon their own basis ; they are shown in a powerful argument to be the underl3ring presupposition of our ordinary perception of phenomena. The world of nature, it is argued, is the phenomenalising or par- ticularising of ' Absoluto-infinite Causal Being,' and in individual thinkers or wills this Being has passed to a knowledge of itself. It will be seen from this that the ' Dualism ' of which ' Scotus Novanticus ' speaks in his title-page is something considerably different from the traditional Dualism of the Scottish philosophy. It is much nearer what is vaguely spoken of as Hegelianism. While strongly emphasising the fact of ' a veritable dualism,' and one which is irreducible for human knowledge, he expressly warns us that 'the outer is not merely an x negativing my self-consciousness, but, on the contrary, it is reason externalised.' Hence the fundamental categories mentioned above are not as it were extraneously superadded by the mind in the process of knowing things. The mind ' merely rediscovers them, so to speak,' and transmutes them out of the sensible into the rational. Professor Laurie admits, for example, that a feeling of Being is given to the attuitive consciousness. We do not merely have successive impressions, as Hume said ; we feel them as real, as being. This feeling it is which is afterwards taken up by the Reason or Will and constituted the fundamental category of knowledge. What is thus admitted of Being, the author seems disposed in his instructive chapter on the ' Parallelism of Sense and Reason ' to extend to all the a priori categories. But enough has been said to indicate the suggestive character of this searching and original analysis. Even those who fail to see eye to eye with the author in his main thesis, will find much to reward them in the incidental psychology and metaphysics of which his book is full." — From The National Observer. NOTICES OF THE PRESS SECOND EDITION ETHICA; OR, THE ETHICS OF REASON BY "SCOTUS NOVANTICUS" Author of " Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta" NOTICES OF FIRST EDITION " About twelve months ago the author of this volume published a work entitled Meiaphysica Nova et Vetusta : u Return to Dualism, in which he advanced a notable theory regarding the origin and nature of human know- ledge. . . . "In the Ethics of Reason the direct influence of Kant and Hegel is especially evident ; still these old elements of doctrine, as well as the terminology, are here used in an independent way by a writer who elaborates a theory marked by distinctive features, . . . " To understand fully the doctrines thus propounded by ' Scotus Novanticus,' his reasonings must be studied in his own expositions, and as he has reasoned them out and connected the different parts into a system, all that we can say is, that the various branches of the subject are unfolded with ability and ample- knowledge of existing moral theories. . , . " The work is the production of an original and profound thinker who is well aware of the difficulties of his thesis. The argument is managed with skill and dialectic power. The treatise is well entitled to the attention of students of philosophy." — From The Scotsman. ' ' The Ethica repeats the characteristics of the Metaphysica, and is an equally noteworthy contribution to the determination of ultimate philosophical positions. The book is not controversial in character, and is as sparing as its predecessor in the specific allusions to other writers ; but we are able to feel that the abstention is advised, and that the author's theory has been elaborated in full view of modern discussions. As he proceeds on his own way, doctrines receive their correction, amplication, or guietus, though their authors are not referred to. . . . " Enough has perhaps been said to prove that the argument deserves to be studied by all who aim at clear thinking on ethical questions." — From Mind, October 1885. "As we expected, the acute and logical author of Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta has followed up that work with another, in which his leading principles are applied in the field of ethics. Here, as in his former work, he is very close and cogent, scorning to allow himself any of the easy and rhetorical illustrations with which some writers in philosophy are prone to make up their chapters. Whatever may be said of his ideas, his style, it will be admitted, is one that is to be commended, alike for its directness, simplicity, and serviceableness. We have read the book with an increasing conviction of the author's originality and NOTICES OF THE PRESS 5 power, and of the benefit that his books may confer, even in this regard, on philosophical students. So carefully is his main argument drawn out, that we cannot find space to outline it here, but must content ourselves with indicating one or two of his salient positions. . . . " The author's application of his principles to the development of the Altruistic Emotions, to Law and Justice, is admirably consistent and suggestive : though, of course, in the process he has to deal somewhat severely with the definitions of the moral sense, the moral faculty, and conscience, which have been given by not a few writers on philosophy, ethics, and theology. Many of Kant's positions are incisively criticised, and lacunas, as the author conceives, supplied. As a criticism of ethical systems, no less than as a piece of dialectic, and a. positive contribution of ethical science, it is suggestive and thorough. We can cordially commend the book. It will raise questions, no doubt, and answers will be forthcoming on various points ; but the questioners would do well to take a hint from the author in the style of answering them." — From The British Quarterly Review, " Instead of the psychological method of inquiry formerly so much in fashion in the treatment of ethics, we have here a method which is transcendental in character. . . . " Here, as indeed, throughout the volume, ' Scotus Novanticus ' shows how ably he can conduct a process of reasoning throughout its various stages, avoid- ing every temptation to depart from the definite line of argument which he has marked out for himself. . . . " This is an exceedingly able work. It contains much forcible writing, and shows the author to possess a singular power of sustained thought. We admire the way in which he keeps himself free from entanglement in view of side issues, and at the same time is able to indicate their bearings on the main theme. For the expression of abstract thinking the style could hardly be better. It is direct and hence forcible, and, though using the language of philosophy, is free from unnecessary technicalities." — From The Glasgow Herald, April 10, 1885. " The author's mode of working out his thought may seem to symbolise his ethical theory itself. The sense of effort that is a part of all moral action ends, as he shows, in a sense of harmony. Now ' Scotus Novanticus ' requires from his readers a distinct intellectual effort in order to grasp his thought ; but if they are willing to make this effort, they are really rewarded by having in their minds an idea of a coherent system which has many features of originality, and which, regarded as a whole, produces (whether we agree with it or not) that sense of power to contemplate the world and action from a general point of view which is characteristic of the philosophic attitude as distinguished from the attitude of science and common sense." — From The Westminster Review. " This volume is characterised, we need hardly say, by all the excellent qualities that distinguished our author's previous work. . . . ' Scotus Novanticus ' is a skilful and patient analyst of the phenomena of mind, and writes in a style that conveys very clearly what he wishes to express. It is a case of clear thought mirroring itself in clear language. . . . We remarked in regard to his Metaphysica that it read Uke a mathematical demonstration : we NOTICES OF THE, PRESS hive the same to say of this. ' Scotus Novanticus ' has evidently a wholesome horror of ' padding," His argument is about as condensed as it could well be. Then he is so careful in the use of his terms that we run a risk of misleading our readers by employing them without also giving his precise definitions of them. We refer our readers, therefore, to the work itself. It will amply repay careful study, and only by careful study can the argument be fully appreciated. . . . Ethica is a careful study, and a valuable contribution to ethical science." — From The Scottish (^Quarterly) Review. " The present treatise contains a very close discussion of the chief points in debate between the different schools of moralists ; and the author seems, in my judgment, to be remarkably successful in harmonising the elements of truth in each. ... It is not possible here to do more than single out a few points from a book which rewards a careful study." — From The Contemporary Review, SECOND EDITION OF ''ETHICA" " This work, published anonymously in 1885, like its predecessor, the Meta- physica Nova et Vestusta, at once attracted, in an unusual degree, the attention of the philosophical world, and won for its author, who has since acknowledged his identity as Professor Laurie of Edinburgh, a leading place among living philosophical thinkers. The Ethica now follows the Metaphysica into a second edition, and advantage has been taken of the opportunity thus afibrded to ' elaborate the argument more fully, and correlate it more frequently ' with the earlier work. The book, as now reissued, contains several new chapters, dealing especially with the altruistic virtues and with the ideas and functions of the State. The general argument has gained perceptibly in value and impressive- ness through the present revision ; and while the book has been enlarged, the statement is even moie succinct than in the original edition. So condensed is the argument, and so severely scientific is the entire treatment, that the work is now, as formerly, suited rather to the capacity of experts than of the ' general reader,' or even of the college student. Yet the style is, for the purpose, often strikingly effective ; one feels that such earnest and rigorous thinking is appropriately clothed in such language. And to those who can read between the lines of the scientific exposition, the work breathes an ethical fervour which is none the less impressive because it is carefully restrained. The practical interest which, according to Aristotle, an ethical treatise ought to possess, is not absent ; the book abounds in acute moral judgments, and gives evidence of an ethical temper which is at once genial and severe." — From The Philosophical Review. " This new edition of Professor Laurie's work on ethics will be heartily welcomed by all students of philosophical science. It has already secured a recognised position as a contribution to the discussion of the fundamental problems of ethics, and no student of ethical philosophy can dispense with a careful study of it. The new edition is specially interesting to students of jurisprudence and politics, owing to its revised and extended discussion of the fundamental principles of these sciences from the author's ethical standpoint. NOTICES OF THE PRESS The subtle and peaetrating analysis, the acute and lucid faculty of distinction, the firm grasp, trenchant reasoning, and clear exposition that characterise all Professor Laurie's philosophical work, are here brought to bear in an independent and vigorous way upon this discussion. . . . "The treatise, as a whole, no longer needs reviewing or commendation. It is, by universal acknowledgment, a most important and original contribution to ethical science and to the literature of Scottish philosophy." — From The Juridical Review. ON THE " METPHYSICA" AND " ETHIC A" TOGETHER " There is nothing absolutely new in [Dr Martineau's] doctrine [as to necessity of conflict, etc.]. ... It has been admirably expounded in a recent volume of great force of thought and scientific precision of analysis, under the title of Eihica, or the Ethics of Reason, This volume bears to be by ' Scotus Novanticus,' author of a preceding volume entitled Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta. Both volumes are marked by much vigour and lucidity, grasp of philosophic distinctions, and capacity of following and combining threads of thought to their end. . . . We have pleasure in recommending them to the attention of all students of philosophy." — From The Edinburgh Review. "Das erste dieser beiden eng zusammengehSrigen Bucher Desselben ungenannten Verf. (des Prof. S. S. Laurie) lasst sich als eine Phenomenologie des Geistes behufs der Constituirung einer erkenntnisstheoretischen Metaphysik bezeichnen, die von Kantischen, streng rationalistischen Gesichtspunkten ausgehend, sich von da mit Hulfe weiterer an Fichte und Hegel erinnernden Elemente zu einer voUstandigen, eigenthiimlichen Ansicht der Sache erhebt." " In der Behauptung der Idee der PersBnlichkeit steht der Verf. durchaus auf Kantischem Boden ; sein Streben ist aber die theoretische und praktische Seite der Vernunft einander mSglichst zu nahern, um eben aus ihr als einem einheitlichen Prindp eine voUstandige systematische Erkennrnisseinheit zu deduciren, wobei er sich dera absoluten Idealismus der nachkantischen deutschen Philosophic annahert. Das Unternehmen des ' Scotus Novanticus ' kann als einer der achtbarsten Versuche unserer Zeit, in Ankniipfung an die durch Kant begonnene philosophische Bewegung zu einer, mehr als bisher geschehen ist, abschliessenden Form eines speculativen Systems zu gelangen, betrachtet werden." 0. S. (PROFESSOR SCHAARSCHMIDT).— From Die philoso- phische Monatshefte, xxii. 6, 7. "... deux &rits recents tort remarquables signes du pseudonyme de ' Scotus Novanticus.' Ce sont des essais fort ingenieux de conciliation entre les m^thodes objective et subjective appliquees a la recherche des origines de la connaissance et de la loi morale." M. G. RoLlN-jACgUEMYNS. — From La Revue de Droit international. WILLIAMS & NORGATE : London and Edinburgh BY THE SAME AUTHOR LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTIC METHOD IN THE SCHOOL Third Edition. Revised. Crown 8vo, Cloth. 4s. Edinburgh : Oliver & Boyd. OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES ON EDUCATIONAL SUBJECTS " Professor Laurie is our greatest living writer on education. . . . Even in popular addresses he never loses sight of his philosophic principles." — Journal of Education, London. " This volume contains ten addresses by a writer of world-wide reputation on educational topics."— Journal of Education, Boston, U.S.A. " This admirable book. ... a thoroughly practical book in the best sense. . . . The work of a real expert." — The Academy. Cambridge University Press. THE LIFE AND EDUCATIONAL WRITINGS OF JOHN AMOS COMENIUS Sixth Edition. Cambridge University Press. HISTORICAL SURVEY OF PRE-CHRISTIAN EDUCATION London : LONGMANS & Co. THE RISE AND EARLY CONSTITUTION OF UNIVERSITIES, WITH SURVEY OF MEDI/tVAL EDUCATION.— LECTURES London : C. Kegan Paul & Co. PRIMARY INSTRUCTION IN RELATION TO EDUCATION sixth Edition. Crown 8vo, Cloth. 4s, Edinburgh; James Thin. TEACHER'S GUILD ADDRESSES London: Percival & Co.