LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. L"g ..-,3 Shelf .--Xl^A UNITED STATES OF A^TEKICA. THE SCIENCE OF^ EDUCATION By HENRY N. DAY AUTHOR OF ART OF DISCOURSE, ENGLISH LITEKATURE, ^ESTHETICS, "science of THOUGHT," 'MENTAL SCIENCE," ETC. ■^ IVISON, BLAKEMAN, & COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND CHICAGO \ ^^ h-^ 3^^ COPYRIGHT, 1889. By henry N. day. E. B. Sheldon & Co., Electrotypers and Printers, New Haven, Uonn. PREFACE The teacher certainly should be master of his art. He should know what he is called and undertakes to do, and how he is to do it wisely and well. He should have a full outline in ideal of his work ever present in his mind — an ideal which, however rudimental at the first, is yet a full-membered germ that can be fostered up into a rich and symmetrical maturity. To the thou- sands of earnest and conscientious educators of the day a concise and simple presentation of the true character of educational work may be ser- viceable in forming for themselves such an ideal. The presentation will need of course to be sum- mary in its character — brief while yet comprehen- sive, dealing more with principles and sugges- tions than with detailed applications, but fully covering the field. It should itself exemplify in its form, so far as may be, the work which it expounds, at least in being in the fullest sense iii iv PREFACE. exactly scientific in its method. A governing aim should be to exhibit the entire field of educational work, accurately circumscribed as a whole and distributed into its complementary parts in their due relationship and order. Having devoted a full threescore years of active .service to educational pursuits in divers relations, the author presents these results of his observation and reflection in teaching to those that are following on in this high and arduous calling with the hope that they may be both helpful to the educator himself and also tributary to the advancement of the work in which he is engaged. Henry N. Day. New Haven, May, 1889. CONTENTS, INTRODUCTION. § I. Science of Education, defined. § 2. Three requisites in a scientific exposition ; — apprehension, discrimination, arrangement. § 3. The twofold methods of Scientific Apprehension : — Observation ; Logical Inference. § 4. The threefold methods of scientific thought : — Induction, Gen- eralization, Deduction. § 5. Education defined. § 6. The process of education. § 7. The interaction of three distinct factors : — the active force, the subject, the means. § 8. The method of the Science : — (i) the three factors engaged ; (2) the work effected ; (3) the end or result. BOOK L THE FACTORS IN EDUCATION. Chapter I. The Teaching Factor.— § 9. Self- Teaching. § 10. Nature Teaching. § 11. Parental Teach- ing. § 12. Its leading characteristics: (i) Early begin- ning ; (2) Following nature ; (3) Kindly ; (4) Continuous ; (5) Authoritative; (6) Purposive. § 13. Its method — direct in example and by precept, and indirect in controlling outward condition or environment, companionships, the reading, and outer life. § 14. Technical Teaching.— Per- sonal qualifications of the teacher, (i) sympathetic and com- municative ; (2) earnest ; (3) skillful ; (4) authoritative. § 15. Requisites for effective work. V VI CONTENTS. Chapter II. The Pupil.— § i6. The subject factor in the educational interaction, presenting a complement of capabilities. § 17. Generic capabilities, (i) Intrinsic. § 18. Extrinsic in diverse relationships. § 19. Specially modified capabilities, as in respect of age, of sex, personal idiosyncra- sies, condition. Chapter III. Means and Appliances.— § 20. Edu- cational Means. — Objects in object teaching. § 21. Appli- ances : (i) Provisions in respect of places and of times ; § 22. (2) Class associations. § 23. (3) Rewards and Punishments. § 24. (4) Support— Household Instruction and Select Schools. § 25. Private Endowed Institutions. § 26. State Institutions. BOOK II. EDUCATIONAL WORK.— THE INTERACTION OF THE EDUCATIONAL FACTORS. Chapter I. The Twofold Work of Education. — § 27. Receptive and Reactive — Nurture and Training. § 28. Nurture — preparatory. § 29. Training, (i) In the responsive act, (2) Retention — memory proper. (3) Repro- duction — Imagination. § 30. Exercise. § 31. Exemplified in the development of the Imaginative or Reproductive power. Chapter II. The Conditions of Effective Work in Education.— § 32. (i) Educational work must be sympathetic. § 33. (2) Earnest. § 34. (3) Aiming. § 35. (4) Developing. § 36. (5) Provident. § 37. (6) Watch- ful and Precautionary. § 38. (7) With recreation that is fit- ting, educatory, contrastive, attractive, from work to play. Chapter III. The Special Modifications of Edu- cation. — Physical Education. § 39. Union of Body with Spirit. § 40. Physical Education seeks best ministration to the whole man in subordination to the mental life. § 41. CONTENTS. Vll Recognizes law of habit. § 42. Is guided by nature and condition. § 43. Moital Education. — I. Esthetic — Its province. § 44. The Function of Form. § 45. Its two sides, passive or Sensibility, and active or Imagination. The assimilating stage. § 46. The Retentive stage. § 47. The Reproductive stage. § 48. The Recollecting stage. § 49. The proper Imaginative or Creative stage. § 50. Occasions for training the aesthetic function. § 51. II. Intellectual Education. — Its place. § 52. Analysis and genesis of an intellectual act. § 53. The three great movements of thought. § 54. The Stages of intellectual training. — i the inchoative or perceptive ; 2 the completed or attributive and proper thinking activity. § 55. Culture of the Perceptive faculty. § 56. Of the proper thinking faculty. Educational Aphorisms in Special Rudimen- tary Studies, i. Spelling; 2. Reading; 3. Penman- ship ; 4. Arithmetic. 5. Grammar as '' art of true ana well speaking." § 57. III. Moral Education. § 58. Essential character- istic of the will — directive. § 59. Fundamental principle of morals. § 60. Threefold objects of moral activity— Self, Fellow-beings, God. § 61. Moral Training effected, (i) by exemplification ; (2) formal precepts ; (3) Enforcement of duty. BOOK III. EDUCATIONAL RESULTS. Chapter I. § 62. Educational Limits. Chapter II. § 63. Growth Periods.— Twofold law of educational work from consideration of growth in its subject, (i) It should be previsional : (2) should assure every step. § 64. Regulative principles of a curricidiiin. Chapter III. Education Periods.— § 65. Four periods may be noted : (i) The Kindergarten period ; § 66. (2) The Primary ; § 67. (3) The Liberal ; § 68. (4) The Avocation or Professional Period. INTRODUCTION. § I. A SCIENCE of Education is an orderly exposition of the essential nature of education in its several departments and processes. A science differs from an art in respect to its end or aim : — science has for its end simple knowl- edge ; art seeks practical skill. The facts and the principles are the same ; only the method and the form vary. A science of education thus looks more closely at the result — knowledge or ability to know — as it is to be effected in the learner : an art of education looks more at the result — skill in teaching — as it is to be effected in the teacher. Practically science and art for the most part freely intermingle — the principles of science read- ily, for purposes of convenience, taking on the form of rules of art. Deficiencies in knowledge and de- ficiencies also in language or means of communi- cation impose this necessity of occasional devia- tions from the predominant method and form specially proper to the science or to the art. § 2. Any science worthy of the name involves three requisites : — I 2 INTRODUCTION. First, a clear and distinct apprehension of the object or subject matter to be expounded in re- spect both to its intrinsic character and also to its relation to other kindred subjects: — Secondly, a clear discrimination of all the con- stituent attributes of this object : — and, Thirdly, an orderly arrangement of these attributes in the exposition. We get no proper idea of the clock until not only all the constituent materials are brought together, each part formed and finished in itself; not until also each is fitted into its place in rela- tion to the whole product and to its related parts. Only when the parts are all thus adjusted to one another does the perfect clock appear. So no science appears worthy of the name until all the parts are discriminated and adjusted in due relation, one to another. § 3. The methods of scientific apprehension are twofold : — First, Observation, personal or through others : — Secondly, Logical Inference, or a movement of thought on such observation. § 4. The logical methods are threefold : — First, by Induction, in which the observation of one part leads to another like part so that one feature or element, one fact or experience, or in general terms, one instance, shall answer for many. Secondly, by Generalization, in which process^ INTRODUCTION. 3 a plurality of things, possessing some one char- acteristic in common, are gathered into a class on the basis of that common characteristic ; and, Thirdly, by Dedi(ctio7i, in which movement of thought anything found to be true of a class is accepted to be true of any species or individual of that class. § 5. By Education is signified the development of a Jinnian being into the character determined for him by his nature and capabilities and by the con- dition in zvhich he is placed. The end in all right education is the perfecting of this character. This end is attained in the two comprehensive ways of right NURTURE and right TRAINING. As essentially active, man must be met by some fit objects on which his activity is to be expended and in these supplied objects is found the food or nutriment on which he is to grow. He needs also to be guided towards the right objects and in the way and the degree of exerting his activity on them. Educational science, accordingly, must appre- hend the character which man was designed by his creator to bear, both generically as common to the race, and specifically as belonging to the membership of a nation, a family, a community of whatever kind to which he belongs, and more- over individually as pertaining to the idiosyncra- sies of the person. It prescribes that an ideal of this character be ever present to shape the nurture 4 INTRODUCTION. and the training. It will embrace in this consid- eration of the end to be reached in education the particular calling or pursuit in life for which individuals are respectively to.be educated. §6. The process of education, accordingly, ever respects a growth — an advance in right direction and in fullest degree from an infantile and so characterless potency towards the ideal of a perfect maturity. It seeks a continuous growth, inasmuch as its subject is a life that as a whole suffers no interruption in its onward course, although specific functions are engaged more prominently at one time and less at another in order that all may receive their due development. This growth, moreover, proceeds by stages, in each of which it is carried on with more or less of exclusiveness and of interruption. To each stage a wisely directed education adapts its training; while at the same time it secures that the growth at each particular stage shall be helpful to the growth at each subsequent stage. The growth of man towards the ideal of a perfect character is well typified in that of the vine that by uprooting or injudicious pruning may be bereft of all capability of reaching a fruit- ful maturity whether in itself as a whole or in any particular branch. Its normal condition, the law of its life is that of a growth that is contin- uous but by stages. Its wintry rest even is real progress. Nevertheless the most promising bud or shoot may be stunted or utterly fail through INTR OD UC TIOiV. 5 an untimely check, or by diversion of nurture or by abrupt change of treatment. § 7. The process of education necessarily involves the interaction of three distinct ele- ments or factors. These elements or factors may be more conveniently and, indeed, more cor- rectly regarded as active elements or forces. Even although at times appearing as receptive and so far passive ; since they do not lose their essentially active nature even when receptive, as factors, as interacting, or producing effects, in a word, as real, they must be held to be essentially active, and therefore forces. Their rest or pas- siveness is that of an active nature. These three factors are — First, the Teacher ; — the proper active force in education ; Second, the Learner ; — the proper subject of education ; Third, the Means and Instruments and Condi- tions generally of effective education. § 8. Method. — From this summary view of the essential character of education in respect to its end, means, and process as involving three dis- tinct factors or interacting forces, the proper method of unfolding the science of education may be readily discerned. The general theme being definitely outlined so that it can be intelli- gently apprehended and moreover being exhib- 6 INTRODUCTION. ited as constituted of complementary parts which equally admit of definite apprehension, it shows itself to be a fit subject of exact scientific treat- ment. The science will be methodically and exhaustively expounded in a full and right con- sideration, First, of the three interacting ele- ments engaged in education ; — Secondly, of the work effected by these factors, as shown in its method and in its several depart- ments ; and. Thirdly, of the end in education in its respect- ive modifications by reason of person and of condition. BOOK I. THE FACTORS IN EDUCATION. CHAPTER I. THE TEACHING FACTOR. § 9. Self-Teaching. — A great part of the educational work in human life is done by the soul itself. The process begins by the very ordi- nances of its nature at the earliest period. It enlarges with growth till it becomes well-nigh exclusive : the mature man, becoming his own teacher, both selecting the food that is to nour- ish up his character and also disciplining his fac- ulties under his own guidance and control. The first stage is one of almost absolute dependence. The infant life is receptive, passively subject to whatever influence may come to it from without ; it is purely instinctive and spontaneous. Natural wants are the impelling, the guiding, and the con- trolling forces. The life seems almost all sense, and at first is mainly physical ; only later does it manifest itself as emotional or spiritual. At a sec- 7 8 THE FA C TORS IN ED UCA TION. ond stage the reflex or responsive characteristic in body and spirit manifests itself with the appear- ance of the control of habit. Still later and only by very slow development is it that the infant becomes much of a learner from its own con- scious teaching. More and more, however, ex- perience inculcates its lessons, and at last expert skill and self-confidence draw into its own hands the reins and the spur of training. Infancy, childhood, youth, mature manhood, thus desig- nate stages of self-educational growth, possessing each its own characteristics but passing each into its successor with transitional lines not easily traceable. Only a slight inspection of human life and his- tory thus suffices to show that man is called and destined to be his own teacher. This is his right, his duty • and his too is the responsibility of ex- ercising the high function aright and to its full extent. He is largely charged with forming his own character, both comprehensively as a man in the entireness of his being and also particularly in the specific pursuits and acts of his life. All right education must be conducted under the recognition of this principle of self-training and must ever seek to inculcate it on every learning- soul. But it is equally obvious that the capability of exercising this high prerogative is itself a matter of growth and training. Up to a certain stage, which however it is difficult, if not rather impos- THE TEACHING FACTOR g sible, to define in the life of any one, he is de- pendent for guidance, encouragement, discipline, on forces external to himself ; and he becomes virtually independent only by degrees and in the divers departments of his nature only by succes- sively maturing experiences. Perplexity must often attend the question whether he is capable at any stage of assuming this self-guidance for general culture or for any special training. If weakness and inefficiency wait on the error on one side of too prolonged dependence, a possibly more harmful presumption and audacity may characterize the error on the other side of assum- ing prematurely self-control and independence. Two principles of fundamental significance are applicable here. First, to every rational nature there necessarily appertains an ideal of the best and highest attainable in character and condi- tion. The simple notion of responsibility as attaching to every such nature involves this truth. But this ideal is itself a matter of growth — of guidance and of culture. To unfold and perfect it is indeed a governing object in all true science of education. Nature of itself germi- nates this ideal and provides guards and helps for its development. Experience helps to school and foster it. Example and counsel with self-study and reflection add their perfect- ing work. The essential thing in this ideal of self-training is character — the best and highest attainable — not happiness or pleasure which ever lO THE FACTORS IN EDUCA T/OAT. waits on character and condition, not honor or applause that is equally but a consequent of character. The principle of the best and high- est applies both to the formation of the whole nature — of character in its most comprehensive import — and also to the acquisition of excellence of proper success in any specific pursuit or con- dition. Secondly, the main reliance in self-teaching is to be placed on one's self. The best and the highest is to be achieved by personal endeavor. It is not to be expected to come as a windfall by some chance or turn of fortune, nor as a gift to be bestowed by some friendly agency. So even the aspirant for the best and highest will, while freely accepting or even in emergencies soliciting help and counsel, avail himself of only so much as may be needful and use that as minis- tering, not mastering. Said a sagacious teacher to a lad asking help in solving an arithmetical problem that might easily be deemed to be beyond his years : " Listen : I tell you a story. Two men contracted to dig a well for which they were to receive a certain amount when they should find water. The labor was greater than they had calculated for, and they began to despond, and one proposed to give up. The other urged holding on, till at last the pick which one struck into the rock went through down into a pool of water which then rose upon them so fast that they had need to do their THE TEACHING FACTOR. II utmost to escape. So," she continued, "the light comes in when you try long and patiently." The lesson was accepted and was never forgotten. The whole life was shaped and blessed by that sage counsel confidingly obeyed. § lo. Nature-Teaching.— Self-teaching com- bines all the three factors concerned in teaching — teacher, learner, and medium or instrument. The self-teacher has himself for teacher, learner, and matter of study. All other teaching forces are divisible into two kinds, impersonal and pcr- sonaly of which the former combines in the work of teaching two of the factors ; the latter, for the most part at least engages but one. All the impersonal teaching forces may be comprehen- sively included under the one denomination of nature-teach ing. A great part and a most indispensable part of the work wrought by education in the human soul is wrought by nature. Nature indeed leads in all this work of education ; guides in all ; co- operates in all ; crowns all. She dictates the end and so the ideal of the work to be effected, for this end and ideal are but the development and perfection of capabilities which she has created for the very purpose that they should be so developed and perfected. She incites in the instinct which she has implanted and enforces in the stern retributive laws with which she rules all things subject to her sway. She guides also as well as assists in all the prosecution of the train- 1 2 THE FA C TORS IN ED UCA TION. ing-work which she prescribes. The work of education cannot be safely, wisely, or success- fully prosecuted except as this relation of nature is recognized from beginning to end. The grow- ing and learning spirit needs to be carefully trained from the earliest hour to observe and to obey what nature teaches and inculcates. Her teachings in themselves, rightly understood and rightly applied, never mislead. Her promptings, her instincts, her appetences, her ambitions, may be disproportionately followed, some unduly cul- tivated or heeded, others depressed or neglected ; she is nevertheless a wise, safe, altogether trust- worthy teacher, — a teacher, too, that never tires and never forsakes ; one, moreover, that will surely crown the attentive and docile with her laurels and equally punish with failure and shame the truant and the negligent. Nature teaches both as a model and also by direct inculcation of truth and wisdom ; reveal- ing everywhere principles and rules which are more or less exemplified and illustrated in her arrangements and her processes. The more closely she is studied, the more does she com- mend herself for imitation and the more wisely is she found to counsel. " Study nature as model and counsellor" is a prime maxim for the forma- tion of character. Nature teaches sympathetically as with mater- nal solicitude for her own offspring ; wisely, as knowing her offspring's needs ; safely, as never THE TEACHING FACTOR. 13 erring ; quickly and unobtrusively, her best teachings to a large extent to the unconscious ear ; and authoritatively, promising everything to the considerate learner and threatening all evil to the reckless and the defiant. Nature's lessons are many and diverse. She teaches what man is in himself, and in his rela- tions to the universe of being and of truth ; that he is himself an integral and responsible part of this universe, correlated with it in innumerable ways, bound to it in indissoluble bonds of sym- pathy and reciprocity of influence, subject to its laws and linked in with its destinies. She teaches him not only what he is in his original constitution, but also what he m'ay become and is created and commanded to be, and assures him that the happiness for which he longs but over which he has no direct control, yet waits on his compliance with the promptings and biddings of his true nature. She teaches him the ways and conditions of all healthy growth whether of body or of mind , that it must be continuous both as a whole and in all specific advances and attainments that under the iron rule of habit repetition of act ever strengthens tendency to good or to evil, the seed sown ever yielding its own harvest — a harvest of peace and content in age ever following the virtuous endeavors of growing life in thought, desire, and purpose, and a harvest of bitter regrets in like certainty following indulgence of evil feeling and 1 4 THE FA C TORS IN ED UCA TION. evil conduct in youth ; — with emphatic voice declaring '' the child is father of the man." She teaches him the fundamental lessons of order and regularity to be observed in all the ongoings of life. She enforces the moral lessons of tem- perance and self-control and persevering indus- try ; of rectitude and sympathetic kindness ; of reverence and piety. Truly enviable is the child- hood and youth upon which rest in the fullest degree the sweet, broad and genial influences of nature where freest from the corruptions and narrownesses of artificial life. Education is thus an ordinance of nature. The ignorance and helplessness of infancy, she enjoins in ten thousand ways, must be educated into the vigor and efficiency of full manhood. What this education is she clearly unfolds in experience and to outward observation, affording herself as a model in her manifestations of her- self and in the revelations of truth and wisdom in her habitual ongoings. She is the prompter, the guide, the helper, the rewarder in all sound education. To every youthful aspirant for virtue and excellence, she says, '' Be a diligent student of my ways and of my instructions ; ever on time ; ever in place; ever aiming; ever growing; patiently waiting : confidently hoping ; the bud will at length quietly open into flower, and flower in its time bring in the perfected fruit." f II. Parental Teaching. — The home is preeminently the nursery of character. In- THE TEACHING FACTOR. I 5 fancy is plastic and yields freely to the ear- liest impressions. Between the manifold paths open to its starting career it has no choice of its own and follows any leading. Its pas- sive nature forms itself into the mold that is first presented as its activities go out towards the particular object that first invites them. Whether endowment or culture is the mightier factor of character is for all practical inter- est an idle question. There can be no cul- ture where there is no endowment to be cultivated; and genius without culture is a germ that never yields blossom or fruit. Every child has a nature of its own ; it is human, con- stituted of body and soul, each having its own peculiar constitution and capability. Culture can only develop or stunt this characteristic capability ; cannot make it other than human, although it may be of the lowest grade — cannot dispossess it of brain, and nerve, and muscle, and bone, nor yet of feeling, intellect, and will, how- ever dwarfed ; while on the other hand as every such human capability is the subject of growth, each may by judicious and faithful culture be nourished up to health and vigor, to any inde- terminable degree within the limits of proper human nature. The defective and the mor- bid may indeed in the abundant provisions of nature for her creature, man, be in a measure healed or reinforced, and supplemented. The human spirit, destined to immortality with an 1 6 THE FA CTORS IN ED UCA TION. undying capacity of growth, however feeble or even deficient at its birth, has yet before it the assurance that a character of enviable strength and beauty is possible to it as the distinctive gift and endowment of its creator. If the richest endowment solicits the richest culture, the meanest capacity has a hopeful career before it and only demands a sympathy, patience, judg- ment, and faithfulness adjusted to its special needs. Home culture is, in the general, parental. The parents, of divine right and prescription, rule the household. It is a double sovereignty, of equal rank and honor, of diverse power with their respective opportunity and fitness, but by the appointment of nature herself ever to be har- monious and reciprocally helpful. Discord in parental rule is ever perilous to filial peace and destiny. In the earliest stage, maternal rule and influ- ence undoubtedly must predominate, and so far it must be allowed to exert the most determining influence on character, as the first turn of the springing brook has most to do with the final course of the river. Truly has an old poet said : The mother, in her office, holds the key Of the soul ; and she it is who stamps the coin Of character, and makes the being, who would be a savage But for her gentle cares, a Christian man. Benjamin West is reported to have said : " My THE TEACHING FACTOR. 1 7 mother's kiss made me a painter." He referred to the fact that when at the age of seven, having been left in charge of the cradle of his sister, he sketched the sleeping form, his mother on her return observing the sketch was so pleased with the work that '' she took him in her arms and kissed him fondly." Such little influence, par- ticularly such kindly commxcndation, determines character in this plastic period of life. Parental training embraces both nurture and discipline. It supplies all needful food and nour- ishment to the growing capabilities of right and rich character so as to supply the defects and correct the deformities of nature, so far as may be, whether in body or mind, and so as also to nourish up to an ever advancing condition of health and vigor. It is its function also to awaken and engage aright all native activities in their season, directing them upon their proper objects, repressing all excesses as well as turning back from all wanderings, keeping them ever in the right way and in the right degree of exertion. § 12. The leading particulars of parental duty in training are : — First, that it begin early. It can hardly begin too early ; for earliest impressions are deepest and the most dominant of tendency and of habit. If the opening life is greeted with the glad welcome which its nature solicits, in tem- perature, in nourishment, in bodily contact, in taste, and sound, an sight, from all that meet it 1 8 THE FA CTORS IN ED UCA TION. of person or thing, it gets a setting out in its career that is most promising, for nature and nature's rule are beneficent and wise. On the other hand it maybe assumed with sad assurance that fretting touch, fretting food, fretting dress, fretting noise and fretting glare, and it may be added, fretting mother and fretting nurse, will breed a fretful temper. The sunny character is the child of morally sunny skies, as no plant of worth starts from out of cold and dark and un- genial soils. Education begins when first the young life is deposited in parental care and it is then that it does its best and its most efificient work on character. Secondly, parental training must be natural. It must be suited in kind and degree to native capabilities, and to native needs. It must not supplant nature. There is often excess of train- ing care, which is hurtful, misleading, stifling here and stuffing there, and so deforming and marring. Human life both in soul and body has a power of its own, a trend and set of its own, and a guiding instinct of its own. This is a fact that it is dangerous to overlook. How and how far natural propensities should be interfered with in training is a question that demands con- sideration and sound judgment. Each case must be determined on its own claims and merits. Training skill may mend nature, or even change it ; but it must itself be natural, of nature's de- vising and nature's applying. THE TEACHING FACTOR. 1 9 Thirdly, parental training must be kindly. This rule is indeed little more than an empha- sized particular embraced in the preceding. The training must be sympathetic ; suited to the needs and the occasions ; manifestly beneficial and loving ; as well as judicious and wise, for nature herself is wisdom and order and goodness in her inmost character. A gentle touch, a shaded countenance, a firmer accent, a slight withdrawal of wonted favor that only sufifices to manifest disapproval or restraint, is wiser and better and more efificient than boisterous threat or violent abuse, than rough word or angry blow. Infantile docility far exceeds the general estimate of parents. It was creditably reported to the American Philological Society at one of its annual meetings that the children in a family, the parents of whom were both deaf and dumb, were never known to cry. So quick to observe, to comprehend, to apply, is natural instinct. Particularly may it here be said that to threaten and not to execute the threat is a double curse ; it sanctions untruth and spoils temper. Fourthly, parental training should be continu- ous^ and ever congruous or consistent with itself. Even a certain uniformity in diet is requisite for health and growth of body, for all bodily func- tions by nature's organic law bend themselves to external conditions, and, moreover, are subject to the law of habit, to a degree indeed, it is be- lieved, that is but very inadequately recognized. 20 THE FACTORS IN EDUCATION. Training in the broader sense, comprehending both nurture and discipline and for the whole race, fails if it does not count upon time, dura- tion, continuousness, as an indispensable condi- tion for the successful development of character both in the general and in all particular elements and features. Childhood is indeed characteristic- ally volatile. So nature has wisely ordered in order that the great diversity of capabilities may be symmetrically developed, so that no one shall become overgrown and no one dwarfed. Activ- ity must alternate with rest ; wakefulness with sleep; receptivity with out-putting power. Right training must recognize both of these opposite principles of continuousness and of change in food and exercise. Frequency of change pre- dominates in earlier life ; long continuousness is both more possible and also proportionately more effective in maturing life. Five minutes of uninterrupted strain of attention might be bad for the infant, while five hours might not overtax the adult. The commanding rule here is : time for every training process and singleness of occu- pation in that time,— the interval or duration to be allotted according to age, study, circum- stances generally. A great statesman, being asked how he could accomplish so much, replied : "By doing one thing at a time." This is a fundamental principle of successful life, applicable to every stage from infancy to maturity. While the principle of change has its claims, unwise, THE TEACHING FACTOR. 21 uncalled for change in nurture or in discipline, in teacher or in study, is the bane of all true edu- cation. Fifthly, parental training should be authorita- tive. The will of the parent should be and should ever, in all the intercourse between parent and child, even in the freest and most confiding intercourse, in the hour of sport and play as in the time of serious study or work, be held ready to manifest itself to be, paramount. A timely beginning followed up by consistent and rational rule, will make the duty easy. Not to break a child's will, but to direct and bend it, is the func- tion of wise parental rule. Once more, parental training should be aim- ing, purposive. It should have an aim both in respect to general character and also as to spe- cific features ; it should recognize this aim and steadily pursue it. So far as it lacks this, it lacks rationality itself. Utter negligence and indifference are hardly worse than an aimless, capricious, whimsical, fitful training, if training it can be called. § 13. The method or way of parental training is either direct or indirect. It is direct in exam- ple, in precept and instruction, and all other kinds of personal influence. It is indirect in the selection of associates, of books, of teachers, of surroundings generally. The forming power of parental example ranks high among educational forces. The child has 22 THE FACTORS IN EDUCA T/ON. an imitative nature, and molds itself instinct- ively into the form which the parental relation furnishes to it at its most impressible age, and presses upon it with greatest constancy and force. Temper, manners, opinions, life in all its outspringings, it fashions after the copy which, being ever before it, is watched and studied with incessant attention and keenest discernment ; and its plastic nature takes on the shape which the copy discloses to it. Heredity determines capability : parental example to a large extent directs and fills that capability. What the lov- ing and wise parent would wish his child to be, he must seem to the child to be, and the only way of rightly and successfully seeming is to be what he would seem. Parental training educates also by precept and instruction. Not all parents are educated them- selves, and this mode of training is in a great degree denied to them. Happy is the lot of those children whose mothers in their loving, patient way are capable of instructing in the ele- mentary branches of study. The kindergarten is good, but the nursery during the period of child- hood with equal teaching ability is better. The youth too may still subject himself often to home instruction in this or that department of study or of skill with profit to himself. Only when and where capacity fails is this home train- ing to be abandoned. Parental tralninsf once more is effective in the THE TEACHING FACTOR. 23 work of education in innumerable ways of per- sonal direct influence outside of example and proper precept. Particular acts may be sug- gested and encouraged or be repressed and hin- dered, particular tendencies be corrected or with- stood, particular habits broken up or confirmed. The parental heart should ever beat with affec- tionate solicitude, and the parental eye ever be open to discern opportunity, and parental love ever be quick to move as such opportunity shall arise. Parental training educates indirectly but effect- ively in ordering the environment, the surround- ings of the child. A well ordered family life, in genial homes, and cheerful scenery, tells might- ily on forming character. Regularity, cleanli- ness, temperance ; graceful manners, unselfish ministry, and sympathetic courtesy ; lofty aims and earnest endeavor ; well-nigh the whole catalogue of graces and virtues are inculcated, " line upon line, here a little and there a little " incessantly in the well ordered ongoings of family life. This indirect training is exerted in the parental determination of companionship. A man is formed as well as known by the company he keeps. The company of a refined and gentle mother can only with great danger be exchanged for that of an ignorant, coarse, rough, perhaps reckless hireling. Nurse, maid, governess, tutor, the best substitute possible perhaps in a particu- 24 THE FACTORS IN EDUCA TION. lar case, should be selected with great care and with sound judgment ; and the influence on the character of the child well watched. The Roman rhetorician, prescribing how the future orator should be trained, required that the child should hear conversation only from the lips of the refined mother, lest a fixed habit of vulgar pronunciation should be formed. Not merely vulgarity of speech, but foulness of manners and morals, may be the consequence of early bad association. There is call here as every- where else in education for moderation and a wise discretion. A fond mother entrusted with the undivided charge of a promising child kept him away from all young companionship, till the boy became master of himself ; and he showed himself in mature life one of the roughest and rudest of men. Life's temptations must be encountered ; only so can strong virtues be grown. But the ordinance is imperative : shun the tempter : if to be met, take him at his worst and weakest, and seek to acquire power of resistance under the most favoring circum- stances at command. In an analogous way, parental training is in- directly effective in controlling the reading, the sports, the visits and travels, the entire outer life of the child. These particulars sufificienth' exemplify, the modes of parental influence in the work of education. All that can be done here is in this comprehensive way to note the ways. THE TEACHING FACTOR. 25 the opportunities, and consequently the obliga- tions and privileges of parents in this educating work to which they are called. § 14. Technical Teaching. — Teaching may become an art, a profession, or vocation, general or special, and as such it requires certain qualifi- cations in order to highest efficiency and success. These qualifications are either more personal, attaching to the teacher as a man, or more technical, determined by the nature of his art or calling. First among the more personal qualifications for efficiency in the work of education is that of being syinpatJietic and coininiinicative. It is the teacher's function to impart nutriment to the growing spirit and to call forth and train its diverse activities. In order to this, he must be of a sympathetic nature, one who can put himself readily into communication with his pupil, engage his attention, enlist his confidence, his respect, his affection. It was a just remark of Xenophon of old that " he cannot teach who does not please." He must also be able to im- part to the receptive nature thus enlisted what he has to impart of mental food or mental train- Another requisite in the personal character of the teacher is earnestness. Education is a work demanding energy and seeks an end of highest importance. It is a work that will not prosper where there is indifference, listlessness, aimless- 26 THE FA C TORS IN ED UCA TION. ness. The teacher must ever hold himself forth as a model ; and an earnest activity is an essen- tial in character. He can arouse the interest of his pupil only as he is aroused himself. " Pas- sion is contagious." If his teaching be without interest on his part it will go for nothing worth on his pupil's part. Not only needs he to manifest a genuine and deep interest in the pro- ficiency of his pupil, which is the special object he is expected to accomplish, but in order to this he needs to maintain ever a freshened inter- est in what he teaches. This indeed the teacher will often find to be a difficult thing, especially where only elementary branches of knowledge are to be taught. But this consideration should only inspire a more energetic effort of will that should be sustained by a sense of fidelity to his undertaking and of self-respect, and proper human interest for the highest good of his charge. In some way he may provide that the subject- matter of his lesson be studied afresh in some particular or other, some new truth be attained, some additional knowledge secured ; or the manner of teaching may be studied with a view to improvement in that art ; or the mental con- dition of his pupil be carefully considered. In some way, ever a specially awakened interest should be carried by the teacher into his class- room. It is indispensable to the right discharge of his trust that he show himself in all his work to be earnest. THE TEACHING FACTOR. 2/ Still another requisite in a successful teacher is technical skill ; he must understand his own art and be trained to practice it intelligently and dextrously. Teaching is an art in the highest and best sense of that word. No art or pursuit can be deemed to be more important to the world, than that of nourishing and shaping aright the forming character of the young. Its princi- ples, its ends or aims both in general and for special conditions and idiosyncrasies, its methods, may be known. The facility and dexterity which practice alone can give may be acquired. The teacher is required to know his art both in theory and in practice. Normal schools are properly felt to be necessities in the educational provisions of the state. The teacher must be an expert in his art gen- erally and must also be Vv^ell conversant with the particular department in which he is to teach. The specialist in instruction cannot carry his mastery over his own specialty in knowledge too far, but he needs in order to protect himself and his instructions from a narrow one-sidedness to keep himself ever abreast with the progress in other sciences and arts. He needs thus to un- derstand well his special science or art not only in its own intrinsic characteristics but also in all its relationships toother fields of truth and art. Once more, it is needful to his best success that the teacher be invested with a certain authorita- tivcness. For the special occasion of his teach- 2 8 THE FA C TORS IN ED UCA TION. ing in the special study and the special pupilage, his authority as a teacher should be paramount to that of parents, of faculty, of text-book. Not that he should regard himself or be regarded as infallible in his opinion or his rule ; or that he should use his rightful authority immoderately or unwisely. But in so far as he is teacher, his very office requires that he teach as having authority. In this teaching sphere it is his to direct the time and place and method generally of study; the method of preparation and also the method of instruction, whether catechetically or by lecture ; whether orally or by written exer- cise ; by direct personal address to the individual or representatively and mediately through a desig- nated member of the class, or by concert of reply to his interrogations, or by becoming himself the mterrogated, — in fine as it respects all the details of instruction. From parent or guardian or pupil he may receive wish or suggestion, but not dictation. The responsibility is his ; his should be the corresponding independence of action. He must also in the matter of discipline be sovereign ruler to the full extent at least of his delegated authority. If he be associated with others he must appear before his special charge as clothed with the entire authority of the associated body of instruction in his particular field, and he should feel and act as thus being entrusted with their full right and power of rule. The authority in such association, moreover, must THE TEACHING E AC TOR. 29 be held and exercised as a representative author- ity, not as absolute and undivided, but as dele- gated and so far limited. But the very nature of teaching, the essential character of the relation- ship between teacher and pupil, involves this prerogative of authority. The teacher must feel it to belong to him and to be in him in order that he may teach with the needful confidence ; the pupil must recognize this in order that he may be in the needful spirit of docility for best proficiency. § 15. Of the more properly technical requi- sites for the most efficient work on the part of the teacher the first to be mentioned is that of congruotisness in relation to his special charge. Between jarring natures and jarring moods, the sympathetic work of teaching can hardly be ex- pected to prosper. Idiosyncrasies of character and peculiarities of condition in the case of the pupil demand consideration. The successive stages of his proficiency likewise require corre- sponding adaptations in the teacher. For the earlier and tenderer growths the more delicate touches of a woman's nature must be regarded as preferable, while for the tougher, stiffer qualities of a later age the firmer, sterner treatment of a man will generally be more effectual. Still far- ther the respective relationships of the pupil in innumerable directions will ever suggest adapta- tions both in the character, the training, and the condition generally of the teacher. In the next place are to be mentioned those 30 THE FACTORS IN EDUCATION. requisites in the teacher which are determined by the conditions and instrumentaHties of his work. Place and time make their respective exactions, — a room and an hour given up singly and solely for his work, where and when no interruption can come or be expected to come, and the one thing — teaching and learning — is to engage exclusive attention. Then as to in- strumentalities concerned in his art, suitable objects for object lessons, maps, charts, and blackboards, text-books and books of reference, — the teacher must not only be able to command these for his needs but must also be trained him- self to make a ready and effective use of them. Still again the methods of his work, the partic- ular processes by which he effects his purpose, suggest certain corresponding requisites in the teacher. He must thus ever be able to present in his own personal condition and spirit a model of character generally and also of mental attain- ment and skill. He must also be able to meet whatever demands may be made of him in the diverse processes of teaching, whether in the way of catechetical instruction, drawing out what may be required of his pupil's knowledge and thought, both to show his fidelity in preparation and also fitly to call into active exercise his active powers of imagination and reflection ; or of exposition of obscure or difficult points in study ; or of formal lecture in more or less extended and methodical discourse. CHAPTER II. THE PUPIL. § i6. The pupil or learner is the subject fac- tor in the work of education in whose active nature the interaction of all the factors engaged in the work takes place. This factor unites readily in itself, by virtue of its essential activity, that in which, that with which, and that for which the work is done — subject, medium, object. It is relatively more passive or receptive ; it is yet active in its very receptivity, receiving nourishment and training, not like clay or mar- ble, inert and lifeless, but sympathetic,, respon- sive, reacting in all impression. It is, moreover, itself the aggressive and dominant factor in all proper educational exercises and practice as distin- guished from simple instruction. It may yet in a loose and rather popular way be conveniently characterized as the subject in the work of educa- tion. As such it presents itself to the educator as a complement of capabilities which it is necessary for him distinctly to apprehend and scrutinize. They are comprehensively the general attributes of man considered as subject to growth towards 31 32 THE FACTORS IN EDUCA TIOJV. a certain kind of perfected character — this char- acter being determined by their innate capabiH- ties and to be interpreted out of them. Human nature, as capable of growth into an ideally per- fected manhood, is thus the essential subject of the educational work. The educator needs to know these capabilities in their particular nature and relationships. The pupil or learner — the subject with which the educator has to deal — has then certain nature-given capabilities. They may be stud- ied under two classes, those which are generic and essential in human nature as such ; and those which are specific, appertaining to individuals or to groups distinguished by diverse peculiari- ties. § 17. I. The generic capabilities of the 7tature entrusted to the charge of the educator. In regard to these it is to be observed at the outset that as they are innate, the educator must take them as they are. He cannot re-create, cannot implant new capabilities ; he can neither supplant nor superadd. He must take nature's creature as she gives it to him, asking no ques- tions for his work's sake, for that would be utterly futile, nor even for curiosity's sake, for that would be frivolous and idle. He must take nature as given. The essential endowments of human nature may be real, even although imperfect. There THE PUPIL. 33 may be morbid tendencies, disfigurements, defects. These, however, may be, perhaps, often healed, or reshaped, or supplemented by patient care and skill. A wise beneficence has abundantly shown that the lowest in the scale in respect of proper human endowments, the feeblest in body and in mind, the most deficient in phys- ical organ and mental faculty, the dullest and least impressible, are often susceptible of being elevated and improved. "■ A man is a man for a' that," for all such defector distortion: and therefore capable of being educated. Leaving absolute monstrosity which is simply not-human^ the most lacking in capabilities, if yet human, should be regarded as worthy of education's ten- derest, wisest, most patient care. The weak may by a judicious hygiene be nurtured up to strength ; the deformed in body or mind may by skillful surgery be reduced to fairness and pro- portion ; the absolutely wanting organ be sup- plemented by co-organic helpfulness. It has ceased to be a miracle that the born deaf should be educated to talk and the born blind to read. Even the nerve cells under life's watchful bid- ding replace each other as the needs of life require ; and the morally weak may gain needed strength and help from intellect and feeling, as on the other hand the feeble-minded or the untrained in schools may attain high wisdom by the mere instincts of virtuous and resolute will. 34 THE FACTORS IN EDUCA TION. This fundamental truth is accordingly to be accepted and acted on in all schemes of educa- tion. As /mnian, every child of humanity possesses all the essential endowments of man. He has a true bodily nature, however diseased or de- formed ; and this body of his is a subject of growth and culture which can be fed and trained up to a certain degree, at least, of ideal health and vigor. It is the part of education to pro- vide and make effectual this needful nutriment and discipline to the fullest extent. As human, also, every child of humanity has a mental or spiritual nature, comprehending every essential mental endowment. However weak, or how- ever disproportioned, he possesses sensibility, intellect, will — a true rational nature. Essen- tially active, this spiritual nature is ever at once aesthetic, intellectual, and moral ; and when viewed as the collective complement of these three functions in their harmonious and sym- metrical union and exercise, it is recognized as truly rational. It is the part of education to recognize each of these essential endowments as present in every being regarded as human. They are co-essential and complementary attri- butes. Without an aesthetic nature, that is, with- out a capability of communicating with other organic natures in the world around him— of reciprocating interaction with them — his own essential activity would be objectless and there- fore ever remain a mere zero, a barren potency. THE FUFIL. 35 Without intelligence he could neither direct nor choose, nor achieve, and he must remain but an empty, fruitless endowment, a very nothing to himself and to the intelligences around him. Without will, without a power to direct his senses, his imaginings, his observations and his reflections, or even his executive faculties towards a purposed end, he is but a madly driven float on a havenless sea, feeling, knowing perhaps his sad condition and destiny, but only thereby more pitiable and despicable than the senseless log by his side. Indeed without a directive power, what could any aesthetic or intellectual endowment ever avail or profit ? An utterly undirected sense and imagination and intelligence could never in any proper import of the phrase be said to be either truly apprehen- sive of beauty or of even imperfect form, or productive of it — to be able to feel or to create real form ; or further to observe to any use of knowledge or to produce a proper thought or judgment — educe any truth — from any supposed observation or mental apprehension. These three functions, the function of form both recep- tive as in aesthetic sense, and also productive, as in proper art ; the function of truth, or the apprehensive and the proper thinking intelli- gence ; and the function of will, the self-direc- tive of aesthetic and intellectual activities as well as of subordinate executive determinations, are essential and necessary each to the other and 36 THE FACTORS IN EDUCATION. all to the entire rational nature. Every human being has and must have each and all in larger or smaller degree and have them all in some degree larger or smaller, of co-relationship in reciprocating organic ministry. Every true educator must accordingly meet his charge, however to appearance or by repre- sentation unpromising, with the assured convic- tion in his own mind that as human his pupil is capable of being nourished and trained up to an indeterminable degree of perfection in manhood both as to expansion and to symmetry of form, for the rational nature of man which never>dies is ever growing while it lives. Moreover each ra- tional capability has its corresponding object with which it naturally communicates, reciprocally and responsively acting and being acted upon. It follows that fields of study which are naturally fitted to their respective mental capabilities are, one and all, open and accessible more or less to every subject of education. There is no reason as there is no ground of truth in the excuse for setting aside a particular study that the student has no capacity for it. If there be deficiency in any particular case, the fact is only good and urgent reason for the awakening and developing the faculty in defect by special training in the very field that the deficient capacity demands. More commonly the fact of deficiency is attribu- table to culpable negligence in the previous training which has crowded out the fitting object THE PUPIL. 37 for evoking and exercising the particular capa- bility by other studies more attractive or conven- ient to teacher or pupil. The records of educa- tion abundantly show that the veriest dullard in this or that branch of knowledge or skill at an earlier age has been brought out and up to emi- nence in that very pursuit. For a single in- stance : one who in his college career was styled the mathematician of his State from his seeming incompetency to comprehend the most simple rudimentary mathematical truth, became by his own persistent determination in after years a distinguished professor of mathematics in a prominent college of the country. In his pupil, then, the educator is to find a nature of manifold capabilities, all so far as essen- tial in a truly human being, subject to an indefi- nite degree of growth, of expansion and vigor, and all, the least and feeblest as well as the best endowed, to be nurtured and trained by his patient skill, up to a full symmetrical man- hood, even according to the ideal of life and character prefigured in his creation. More than this indeed : he is to find in every human life an instinct urging it on, as well as guiding it, to a full realization of the design and end of its being as intended by its maker. This instinct is indeed often blunted and cramped and as often perverted or misdirected ; but it is an innate characteristic and undying as the soul itself. The ingenuity of the teacher will be tasked to 3 8 THE FA CTORS IN ED UCA TION. devise means of awakening it when dormant or of strengthening it when in any degree active. His labor will for the most part be well recom- pensed. ^' A free curiosity," said that profound philosopher as well as experienced teacher, St. Augustine, '* has more force in our learning than an enforcement through threats." And what is true in regard to the culture of the intelligence is true also in regard to the improvement of the whole nature. Instinct is stronger than law. It is a mighty helper in the work of teaching. §i8. These manifold capabilities, moreover, are to be educated not only in their intrinsic na- tures and attributes, but also in their manifold relationships. Man is an organic part of an envi- roning universe, with which his life and destiny are in vital, inseparable connection. So close and vital is this connection that ethical science places social duty side by side coordinately with personal duty, and unites condition with charac- ter as constituting the comprehensive object or end in human duty ; — character is involved with condition. It is a half truth that man is the crea- ture of circumstances ; he reacts on circumstances and determines them ; they are alike subject to the principle of organic reciprocation. Educa- tion must train to the fullest freedom and sympa- thy in wide degree and manner between man and his surroundings. His endowment interacts in closest sympathy and interdependence with his environment. This is a principle, a law of broad THE PUPIL. 39 significance and of imperative necessity that the growth of the human spirit involves the vital union of endowment with environment — of char- acter with condition. Not only is it needful that it never be forgotten or overlooked ; it is also of high importance that it be intelligently turned to account in all educational processes. Man is thus the creature of time. His being and life are in time ; begin on time, and flow on with time, subject ever to time, yet disposer of time. Time's fixed and orderly succession, that will not be reversed or checked in its flight and cannot be repaired in its loss, and gives us only instants for our use and profit, is to be made by the earliest and most assiduous care and training the familiar, habitual principle in all life and con- duct. Punctuality, diligence, rest, are imperative conditions of successful growth and life. Effi- ciency, enjoyment, success, depend on an habit- ual, as it were instinctive conformableness to time. A like conformableness is to be cultivated by care so to be thus habitual and instinctive to all the conditions and relationships of space, in orderly disposition of all conduct and of all out- ward things at one's disposal — a place for every- thing and everything in its place. So too the contents of time and space, all real- ities that interact in any way with the nature and life of man, need to be recognized and brought into sympathy and reciprocation of helpful ministry. 40 THE FA C TORS IN ED UCA TION. The nature given to the educator is thus to be trained not only in its proper intrinsic proper- ties but also in its relations to all environing agencies, so that on the one hand stumblings and collisions and consequent failures shall be avoided, and on the other hand sympathetic helps and ministries from without shall be secured. An habitual consonance with all these surround- ing and conditioning forces is to be the fruit of a faithful training. § 19. II. The specially modified capabil- ities to be recog7iized m the work of education. I. First there are to be recognized the capabil- ities specially modified in respect of age. In ear- liest infancy we have the stage characterized by dependence for supply of food and of object on which to act. Life's whole character, for strength and worth, discounting, of course, all heredity as already placed to the account of nature, seems to be staked on the treatment given it here at the start. This has already been suggested, § 12. It is added simply in illustra- tion, that we may well suppose that if the infant ear is first among the senses to be arrested and to be entertained with soft harmonious sounds, prolonged as the sense may be able to bear it and repeated as often as may be allowed, there may be effected the budding of a musical genius that if still nurtured and trained in advancing age may become a master spirit in musical art. Or THE PUPIL. 41 if we suppose a light of softened brilliancy and pleasing tint shall first engage the sense of such a budding nature, and this influence be continued predominant over other influences, a decided tendency to exalt color and form over all other objects of interest and study will be evolved that will determine the taste and calling and distinc- tion of the man. The analogy will hold valid for all of the distinguishable capabilities of man's diversified nature and for all stages of his pupil- age. Aptitudes are in this way generated that shall lead and govern all maturer life. The twig so easily bent becomes the tree inclined, — stiff set upward or downward, to sunshine or to shade, beautiful or ugly, vigorous and fruitful or sickly and barren. The helpless dependency of infancy passes into the budding self-consciousness of childhood, with newly modified capabilities, and then into boy- hood with a show of independence, but flexible and yielding to superiors, and then into youth with its vigorous assertion of independence in limited fields of activity till proper manhood is reached which, as mature, asserts its exclusive right to choose its own helps and guides, its own mental aliment and arena of exertion. To each of these stages, hardly distinguishable in their lines of demarcation, the capabilities of the pupil nature become so far specially modified and require corresponding treatment in all judicious and effective education. 42 THE FACTORS IN EDUCATION. Next are to be recognized the modifications of native capabilities in respect to sex. The na- tures generally of the two sexes being the same, the office of education must so far be the same. Health and vigor, both physical and mental, are to be secured alike for each. The comparatively very limited differences require, however, their due consideration. Nature has ordained for them diverse occupations and offices and imposes a corresponding method of educational treatment. This diversity of method, small at first, widens to the close of the educational age. A stouter frame and firmer muscle with corresponding mental endowment in the one case, and in the other a more delicate sense and a nicer tact indi- cate the diversity of character and life designed by nature. Effeminacy in man and stalwartness in woman are alike vicious. In home training as in schools the slight diversity of treatment is for the most part safely left to instinctive prompt- ings on the part of parent and teacher. Outdoor life in the one case will be set over against more domestic occupations and recreations in the other, while yet the general path of instruction will remain the same. Nothing in human physi- ology or in human biography forbids that the entire field of general education should be open to both. All science and all art invite the pur- suit of both alike, at least in the general, with only specific modifications. In particular branches one may possess a slightly superior apt- THE PUPIL. 43 ness, with yet a balancing of all the respective capabilities taken in the aggregate. Home duty is the proper allotment of one, imposing lighter burdens and tenderer offices; the storm and tempest of public care are obviously assigned to the other. Accordingly a softer tone, a milder rule, a kindlier spirit and more winning manners should characterize the educational work in the one case ; a sterner, firmer, more exacting treatment in the other. As to the coeducation of the sexes in more public institutions, reason and observation con- cur in teaching that while the pupil remains under the watchful guardianship of family and home, it may be encouraged as advantageous in manifold ways. Economy and convenience gen- erally dictate this, and liberality of thought and feeling and general sociability to be cultivated in the pupil, also require it. When mature age is reached, the pupil becomes his own master and the decision as to his companionship in studies is properly left with him. But there is a middle stage of life, the period when feeling and fancy are exuberant and are accompanied by the burst- ing forth of the new sense of freedom and inde- pendence, when accordingly impulse is wild and reason and thoughtfulness have not attained their ascendency, the three years of eighteen to twenty-one with the bordering years before and after that age, in which period coeducation is hardly to be commended. At this stage of life 44 THE FA C TORS IN ED C/CA 77 ON. it is to be considered too that the wider separa- tion in the education of the different sexes finds place. Lighter gymnastics are in preference in the one case, rougher athletics in the other. In mental training too, before ante-professional studies are taken up,> the curriculum must vary so considerably that the regularity of routine necessary in large institutions can with difificulty be maintained. The recent contrivance so called of '* annex " arrangements seems to meet best all exigencies, guarding against dangers and furnish- ing the richest and best appliances for the higher education. Still further are to be recognized the modifica- tions of capabilities appearing in "pro^oiY personal idiosyncrasies. These are abnormal propensities or aptitudes in some particular bodily or mental activity craving or accepting with excessive eager- ness certain pursuits or on the other hand with undue aversion repelling them. The tendencies in such cases are to unsymmetrical and accord- ingly imperfect development. Far from being nature's calls either to forcing processes which shall give still additional opportunity and aid to activities already in excess, or to checking and repressing treatment, they summon rather to a specially careful nursing of the other activities — those which are relatively in defect. Genius demands a correspondingly rich support in the entire nature and life. It will care for itself ; provide its own alitiment ; open up its own THE PUPIL. 45 ways ; descry its own best opportunities. It is the general nature that it demands for its own sake to be specially cared for, so that when pre- eminent ability in any line of life shall be called out in its maturity for its best and highest exer- tions, there shall be no dead weight to carry, but, contrariwise, ready support and ministration from the whole being symmetrically developed and trained. Once more there are to be recognized the modifications of what may be denominated the extrinsic capabilities, resulting from peculiarities of condition, in parentage, in neighborhood, in climate, in command of influence or patronage or means and instrumentalities. Human life is a dependency. In itself it is utterly impotent but as it has that fj-om without on which it may feed, and lean, and act ; and in opposition to its wisest and best exertions there arise obstacles and resistances which are often too mighty for its weakness — neither to be guarded against nor to be overcome. Nature is all-motherly and man is her favorite ; but she herself is subject to man- ifold limitations, and is compelled at times to withhold succor where most urgently craved. The rice-fed cannot compete with the wheat- nourished brain, yet climate distributes peoples and assigns them their food. The diversities of condition bearing on the development of human life and character are too vast and too numerous to admit of estimation or of enumeration. How 46 THE FACTORS IN EDUCATION. to supply what may be wanting in the condition of his pupil, and to remove or help to overcome what may be adverse in it, and how to make available all the attainable helps from the sur- roundings, is the problem ever pressing on the mind of the true and faithful educator. For the most part these diversified conditions must furnish their own suggestions as to the way of meeting them. Books are inadequate to supply them. Experience can but partially avail. Each new case must bring its own interpreter and counselor. CHAPTER III. MEANS AND APPLIANCES. § 20. Besides the two main factors in educa- tion — the relatively more active teacher and the more receptive pupil — there intervenes, as a kind of intermediate, a third kind of agency in the work of education, which may be generally designated as that of '' means and appliances." The teacher must necessarily engage his pupil with some object on which his developing active nature shall exert itself ; such an object is prop- erly tJic means by which he attains his end in educating. But there are besides such means still other factors, more indirectly concerned in his work yet more or less necessary, which demand his careful consideration ; they may be classed under the comprehensive term appli- ances. Educational Means. — While the personal force of the teacher must be recognized as the most important and most potential factor in education, acting in the several ways of stim- ulating, exemplifying, instructing, and guiding beyond any other teaching force, still for its own efficiency it finds other agencies necessary or 47 48 THE FACTORS IN EDUCATION. convenient. Of these some are indispensable in order to any interaction between teacher and pupil, for one mind can reach another only through the bodily sense ; others are needful aids to the pupil's apprehension and use; others still are in different ways more or less convenient and helpful. Of these necessary or convenient intermediate agencies are those numberless real and sensible objects which may be used either for direct study or illustration or stimulation. All educa- tion in the last analysis consists in engag- ing in due degree the learning activity with the object proper for its exercise. Object teaching, teaching through objects, is thus comprehensive. This object may be presented as an actual reality or representatively. Real '' object les- sons " are given in all nature teaching. In countless numbers they throng the path of human experience and growth, unsought for, unknown indeed at the first, of themselves awak- ening the sense and making their impression on the swelling and shaping character. It is the proper function of the teacher whether nurse, governess, parent, or professor, so far as may be to select these objects and to temper their action on the sense. The immediate presentation to the sense is of course as a general truth to be preferred to any representation or mere description or analogical suggestion. Thus in Natural History the teacher MEANS AND APPLIANCES. 49 introduces some particular mineral, or flower, or insect, or as in chemical and mechanical science some force in actual operation. But often this is impracticable ; and recourse is had to repre- sentative agency ; as diagrams and numerical figures and symbols in mathematics ; maps and pictures in the physical sciences ; and in the arts, the respective products of the arts, as paintings and statuary in the plastic arts, read- ings and recitations in literature and oratory; and, last of all, and more than all, proper text- books. The advantages of proper object-teaching are manifold. Real objects presented directly to the senses engage and fix the attention. They fasci- nate and please. They reveal directly and thus fully and completely, not dimly and partially as in abstract representation or description. They economize time and labor ; — one si"fht, one sound, one presentation to the sense, will do more towards awakening and rightly impressing the apprehensive nature tba?n long and repeated exposition, oral or written. The house, the play-room, the school-room, the class-room should be richly furnished with these instru- mentalities. § 21. Under the comprehensive designation of Appliances may be gathered all the manifold factors that come in to facilitate or hinder the work of education which are yet more distant and indirect in their relation to the work than 4 50 THE FA CTORS IN ED UCA TION. proper means or instrumentalities. First among these are those of Place and Time. The govern- ing principle to be regarded in all the regulations of place and time in education is that which pre- scribes that there be a fixed place and a fixed time which shall be exclusively devoted to the work. The teacher should have nothing else to think of but to teach at the time of teaching ; he should put his whole soul into his work that he may be at his best as at once sympathetic stimu- lant, model, and instructor. The pupil still more needs, in order to best proficiency, to be and to feel himself to be, exempt from all interruption and all distraction, both during the time of study and the time of receiving instruction. Mental concentration, the power at will to engage the whole capacity of the mind in study or work of whatever kind, is a leading aim and a chief result of true and effective education. It is just the lack of this power which marks the condition of a tyro or novice, and he needs before almost all other things the help which comes from the feeling that when called to study or to be instructed he has nothing else to think of. Home studies here suffer a great disadvantage ; since if he is not subjected to actual interrup- tions, there must always be the feeling on the part of the student that such interruptions are possible or probable, and his mind is conse- quently on the stretch to observe every move- ment and to conjecture what it may be or what MEANS AND APPLIANCES. 5 I it may signify. Home can hardly be made to be to him the place for the one only possible thing to be done — that of study. A similar considera- tion is to be made of the relation of a fixed time for study and instruction to proficiency in early education when the habits of application are first shaped and determined. '* Any time is no time," is a maxim of most emphatic import in train- ing. The hour fixed should be invariably and punctually observed — not a succeeding hour, not a quarter hour or five minutes, no, not in free allowance a single minute, late. The necessary changes in time and place should accordingly be made in clear reason and with careful regularity. They should be as few as may be consistent with the demands for rest and recreation. " A rolling stone gathers no moss," in learning as in other occupations. Change of time and place, involving change of teacher, change of circumstances, change of study, of text-books, of mode of instruction, is most baneful in education. It is to the growing mind what frequent transplanting or frequent nipping of bud is to a young plant ; one may effectually stop growth by simply nipping bud after bud, enforcing a new germination in some other part, to be nipped in its turn. A lean soil and a weak training are preferable to frequent uprooting and clipping. Continuous- ness is a prime attribute in all effective cul- ture. To the dull and the backward needless 52 THE FACTORS IN EDUCATION. change in teacher, in place, in process is espe- cially harmful; the quick and the apt may pos- sibly be able to turn the untoward to account. The number of studies to be simultaneously pursued with a given charge will be a matter of careful consideration to the educator. The natural volatility of childhood indicates the necessity of short exercises. Five, ten, fifteen minutes are enough for one continued exercise in the kindergarten. By skillful conversion of needful rest into recreation or substitution of fresh powers and organs for those which have been sufificiently in practice for the time, a half dozen studies or even more may be profitably assigned to the young learner. As mental strength increases, the number may be gradually reduced. Only the well-advanced and strong can wisely devote his whole time to a single study or even to but two. In determining the number of studies that may be profitably pursued simultaneously it is obvious that the number and the selection should be such as to prevent confusion between different studies as is likely to be the case in the study of different foreign languages at the same time ; also such as not to hinder the ready connection of one lesson with those which have preceded ; such, moreover, as to secure the benefits of men- tal rest and.recreation, and allow the fresh exer- tion of mental activity in each allotment of study; and, once more, such as follow in the due MEANS AND APPLIANCES. 53 order of dependence of one study upon another either in the mental attainments and condition of the pupil or in the character of the studies themselves in matter or method. Both in the selection of time and of place, regard should be had to the demands of health, and of comfort, as well as of freedom from in- terruption. Well warmed and well ventilated rooms neatly and comfortably furnished, as also the hours of greater mental freshness and vigor, or those of the morning rather than those of the decline of day, should be secured. § 22. In this field of outer agency intervening in the interaction between teacher and learner is embraced still farther the influence of class- association. The advantages of such class-associ- ation in education are many and obvious. It is economical on the side of the teaching force, which can to a large degree impart instruction as well to a number as to an individual. It pro- motes in the learner content and satisfaction with his condition and work, as he finds others sharing with him in all its troubles and hardships and so in sympathy with him. He learns much from his associates which cannot be so effectually imparted by one farther removed from him by age, by mental vigor and possessions, by more advanced methods of holding and presenting truth. The spirit of emulation is stirred and he is stimulated by a desire of excelling or of avoiding discredit or disgrace, by a proper esprit de corps. 54 THE FACTORS IN EDUCATION: Still farther the social nature is cultivated, a most important part of a thorough education. The cases in which private individual training is preferable are accordingly exceptional, and the reasons for resorting to it should be clear and urgent. Still, on the other hand, there is a wise limitation in regard to the numbers to be gath- ered into a class. The number should not be so great as to prevent an immediate personal com- munication between the teacher and each mem- ber of the class, for it is a cardinal principle that the personal factor is the mightiest of educa- tional forces. § 23. In this field of outer but related educa- tional agency, moreover, is to be placed the stim- ulating influence that comes from marks, honors, prizes, rewards of divers kinds. Marking progress or neglect involving consequences of indirect commendation or of direct censure, keeps alive a sense of responsibility which, besides its imme- diate effect of inducing faithfulness, is of itself an important aim in the best education. This method of stimulating may give way as the pupil attains to independence and self-mastery. The objections often urged against this method of stimulation that the duty should be done for its own sake and that jealousy, animosity, pride, are its frequent fruits, may well enforce careful con- sideration as to the details of the method and as to the extent to which it shall be carried. But the principle is abundantly enforced in the order- MEANS AND APPLIANCES. 55 ing of human life and conduct by its ordainer and author and commends itself to the approval of enlightened human reason. If rewards, so for analogous reasons, punish- ments may properly enter into the system of educational agencies. They are requisite for the maintenance of the needful authority of the teacher. They awaken through fear the pupil's respect for this authority. They are directly cor- rective while they serve to sustain a proper sense of responsibility for manners and conduct, and. so are efficient preparations for mature life in society and under government. The modes of punishment are manifold, invit- ing to a judicious selection and adaptation to the special case and condition. They vary in kind and in degree, from censure and rebuke by sim- ple word or frown, to degradation in rank or place, isolation, infliction of bodily pain ; by marks of a culprit condition, withholding priv- ileges, suspension or actual removal attended with more or less of disgrace in manner or in publicity. Sovereignty, as before indicated, belongs to the teaching force immediately and absolutely or representatively and mediately, and the involved right to punish as well as reward in reasonable support of authority belongs there with equal right. The allotment and administration of punish- ment must be in calm and firm conviction of right and duty, in tenderness, with manifest solicitude $6 THE FA CTORS IN EDUCA TION. for the welfare of the offender as well as for the maintenance of the needful order in the institu- tion — in judgment tempered with mercy and with readiness to forgive. The modes must be adapted to age, sex, heinousness of offense, influ- ence upon others, fitness to recover the offender. Happy is that condition in which the simplest expression of disapproval on the part of the teacher shall so touch the offender's sense of wrong, his spirit of honor, of grateful respect for his superior, that contrition, confession, redress, shall quickly bring in response free forgiveness, order being maintained and offender saved. § 24. Still more remote but active in its rela- tion to teaching are the sources of support to educational means and agencies with the involved general superintendence and management. Pro- visions for this support are greatly diversified so that exact classification is impracticable. The leading classes, however, may be thus enu- merated : I. Household instruction; 2. Select schools; 3. Privately endowed Institutions rank- ing from academy up to university, and including the College, the Institute, and the Seminary ; 4. State Institutions, from the Common School up to the University. The founder or founders of course determine the general character and rank of the institution ; whether more or less religious or purely secular ; whether for both sexes or for but one ; whether for special classes in the community or open to MEANS AND APPLIANCES. 57 all ; whether inclusive of board and lodging rooms or for '' day-scholars " or for both without distinction ; whether for higher or lower educa- tion ; whether liberal and classical or for special professions or pursuits. § 25. Privately endowed institutions procure from the State the privileges of legally corporate bodies by which they are enabled to receive and manage and convey any kind of property, real or personal, within designated limits and to trans- mit the trust they thus receive and to perpetuate their existence, with more or less of other priv- ileges and immunities. One of the most impor- tant of these privileges is that of filling any va- cancy occurring in the board of management. Such are called '^ close corporations." To them as such there does not seem to be any reasonable objection. The State will see to it that no ex- cessive power or privilege be extended to them at the start and will reserve to itself the sovereign right to correct abuses. In prevention of two more considerable evils in the creation of such endowed institutions to be managed by boards of trust having educational faculties subject to their general supervision, wise legislation should provide: i, that the board of trust be such in number of members as to prevent any crippling of the institution by divided coun- sels and aims ; and 2, that the foundations be not so narrow in their provisions as to occasion an inability to observe the terms of the founda- 58 THE FACTORS IN EDUCATION. tion in the changes in life and society that a long perpetuated institution may encounter. It is a monstrous wrong and evil to violate the clear prescriptions of a monied trust. To allow it is to defeat the very object of a trust, and so to pre- vent endowments. On the other hand changes too great and too many to be foreseen or calcu- lated for beforehand are well-nigh certain to oc- cur in the progress of society. There may not improbably be such changes that the exact com- pliance with a greatly detailed instrument creat- ing a trust may more seriously defeat the intent of the founder than a clear violation of its pre- scriptions. § 26. State educational institutions are a marked distinction of modern civilization. The origin and progress of these institutions in number and magnitude, and in degree and mode of sup- port have naturally called forth animated investi- gation and discussion. A new conception of the origin, nature, and function of the State and of its relations to the citizen has slowly but steadily grown up in recent history, entering here and there jn specific ways so as entirely to transform civil laws and the administration of government under them. The theory of the nation now spreading and giving signs of predominating throughout civil society is that the government and all official administration is for the peopk — civil rule for the ruled, not for the ruler; that the nation has a true corporate life of which the MEANS AND APPLIANCES. 59 citizens or people are veritable organic parts ; that accordingly the national life as the organic complement of all the individual human lives within its bounds, absorbing all, must live and act in all and for all ; and moreover that it has a character and a destiny ; so that its one compre- hensive function is to perfect the character and condition of all its people, in a just regard to the character and condition of sister nations. But this is nothing else but a true education which seeks nothing beyond or beside the perfection of character and condition in the pupil life entrusted to its charge. This is a grand, noble, altogether rational view of national life. It clearly and in- disputably makes the education of its citizens the grand duty and most sacred function of civil gov- ernment. A vicious misinterpretation of this theory is most carefully to be shunned — that it involves the concentration of all educational support into its own control and direction, dispensing with the agency of the individual or the partic- ular communities embraced within the nation. All life is single, while yet organic ; and each organic part has its own special function in the promotion of the common life. In human society, although organized so as to constitute a veritable organic unity, each organic part must, in order to the highest welfare of the whole and so of itself, fulfill its own duty; and that general life is the richer and healthier in which 6o THE FACTORS IN EDUCATION. the parts do most in their respective limits of function. The just inference from this is that while the Nation or the State leaves to the individual and the local community, all that they will undertake or accomplish, it should yet in generous provi- dent care see to it that all its citizens receive the education which shall best effect the perfection of the character and condition of all. This is at least the ideal result or aim which the nation should endeavor faithfully to realize. The prin- ciple is not violated if, as in the United States, the general care of educational interests should be allotted to the constituent States. This high function of the Nation or of the State in securing the perfecting in the highest degree of the character and condition of all its citizens involves the duty to provide the requisite means of education, — rooms, furniture, appliances, means, and living teacher, — and also the right to compel the citizen to a faithful use of those means. The right and the duty both on the part of the State and on the part of the citizen are reciprocal — the duty to provide and the right to compel on the part of the State ; and on the part of the citizen the right to demand and the duty to use aright the provisions made thus for his individual good and so for the good of the nation. The subordinate questions as to the methods of State interference in education — the extent of MEANS AND APPLIANCES, 6 1 its provisions, the limits as to the stage of pro- ficiency which it shall seek, — resolve themselves with comparatively little difficulty in the light of this theory of the true relationship of the State to its citizens as that of a true organic life which is set to seek its own perfection in character and condition and which it can seek only and must ever seek in the perfection of the character and condition of its individual citizens. The methods of State interference will conform to the established method of State functional administration. The extent of the provisions to be made by the State for the education of its citizens will be determined by the financial resources of the State and its opportunities for action. It may be said generally that the provisions should be adequate to the needs, at least, up to the limitations of State ability. In respect to the stage of educational profi- ciency to which the State should carry its citizens, the general principle is that the State should aim at securing for all its people the highest, largest, best education reasonably possible. It will be found on examination of any particular limiting stage, as for instance, that of mere rudimentary instruction,— as in reading, writing, arithmetic, — or of widier instruction in the general facts and truths of place and time, — geography, history, — or wider still, bringing in the rudiments of astron- omy, and the other physical sciences, or adding 62 THE FACTORS IN EDUCA TIOiV. elementary instruction in the mental sciences of psychology, logic, aesthetics, and ethics, or, still more, initiating into the dexterities of technical art or trade or profession, that the question will turn on the resources and available opportunities of acting on the part of the State or civil com- munity or on the abilities, the conveniences, or the inclinations of the people, and not at all upon the proprieties of State intervention as being supposably confined to some lower stage. The best education possible for all the people, so far as they can or will avail themselves of it, is the one governing principle. The best and highest edu- cation of the individual citizen is the best for the State. With this view observations from particular points of investigation will be found to be in general harmony. The more intelligence and culture in the nation, the better every way it is for the welfare of the people in strength and in happiness, — in general well-being. The principle applies to men of every calling ; the higher cult- ure and training the more useful and the better every way are both the men engaged in the par- ticular calling and also through them the com- munity and the nation. The skilled mechanic earns the larger wages ; his skill makes him an abler man to accomplish valuable results. Intel- ligence and culture are foes to vice and indolence. If grave offenses be sometimes found with them, the fact astounds us by its strangeness. Such MEANS AND APPLIANCES. 63 offending is seldom fascinating, seldom conta- gious. It is in the dens of ignorance where gross vice flourishes and it is this grade of vice which most corrupts, debases, and impoverishes. There cannot be too much intelligence in the national life, if the culture of the aesthetic and moral natures be maintained at a correspondingly ele- vated grade, so that the whole character be rationally rounded out and symmetrical. The pecuniary expenditure for this high end to the best ability of the nation is a wise invest- ment. It will in all probability be reimbursed in full and more by the direct educational contribu- tions from the munificence which the highest and best culture excites and fosters. It cannot work unjustly for the poor who by reason of their ina- bility to bear the heavier part of the cost of edu- cation consisting in the expenditure of time and of money for the support of the pupil outside of the public provision, are consequently disabled from availing themselves of it ; for the cost comes mainly from the taxation of the rich. The poor are not necessarily excluded altogether from the higher culture. Energy and merit will find a way for themselves. The high intelligence of rich neighbors is a blessing to the poor. Such intelligence may be sought in right endeavor, but cannot rightly be made the object of envy and hate. General intelligence, moreover, is the best leveler in society, a foe at once to pride and to envy and a minister to content and to self- 64 THE FACTORS IN EDUCATION. respect. Provision for the highest culture offei'ed to every one even the lowest in worldly condition, although it be but here and there accepted, is the best safeguard against social arrogance and superciliousness, and the surest preventive of permanent class distinctions. The multiplication of pursuits, ever, increasing as intelligent civilization advances, each winning its own honors through its superior skill in its own field, more and more hinders invidious compari- son and consequent discontent. Nor can it be deemed unwise or in any respect impolitic to allure, by generous provisions for the highest and best culture, into the pursuits of science and art or of professional life, the children of afflu- ence and luxury and so redeem them from the tendencies to worthless or even profligate lives which naturally grow up where there is exemp- tion from the necessities of toil and self-denial. So there may be those who will gratefully say with George Herbert — Whereas my birth and spirit rather took The way that takes the town, Thou didst betray me to a lingering book And wrap me in a gown. Free investments on the part of the State in the interest of the highest and best and largest education are thus not only legitimate but abun- dantly reimbursive and most conducive to the best interests of a people. BOOK II. EDUCATIONAL WORK -THE INTER- ACTION OF THE EDUCATIONAL FACTORS. CHAPTER L THE TWOFOLD WORK OF EDUCATION. § 27. All growth involves a twofold proc- ess : a receptive and a reactive process. The receptive process, in the growth which education seeks, is denominated Nurture. The compre- hensive reactive process may be termed Train- ing. Both of these terms are derived from the analogies of physical life and are to be taken rather as suggestive than as exactly significant of what they are used to denote. They indicate rather than define. These two processes are inseparable in all growth. They are, however, readily distin- guished in their proper nature and result. Nur- ture supplies food and so enlarges a capable nature ; training uses this food and so strengthens 5 65 66 EDUCATIONAL WORK, and forms the growing nature. Nurture is rather the conditioning process; training the consummating process. § 28. In its work of nurture, education wisely directs in the selection, the apprehension, and the assimilation of the aliment to be supplied. It prescribes that this supplied aliment be ivJiole- some, such as will promote growth ; that it be suited to the special condition of the pupil in respect to age, sex, environment, stage of profi- ciency ; that it serve to carry on previous alimen- tation and prepare for what is to follow ; that it be in due quantity as of right quality, neither scanty nor excessive ; that time be given for its reception, — in other words and imagery, that the mind of the pupil be engaged sufficiently long to receive a full and definite impression of the object with which it is in interaction. A quick sensi- tiveness to objects and events judiciously selected from the thronging mass around, a sympathetic interest in them, and a readiness to be impressed by them is a needed foundation for large and rapid growth. In apprehending, judicious education aims to secure that the aliment thus selected and sup- plied be taken with a genuine relish, which edu- cating skill should be competent to awaken. Mind and body alike naturally hunger for appro- priate food. To like food is to whet digestion. The hunger for the aliment required for the time may be aroused by divers means which a discreet THE TWOFOLD WORK OF EDUCA T/OJV. 6/ teacher will devise ; and, if needful, recourse may be had even to imposed abstinence or to short allowance. It prescribes, moreover, that this lively apprehension be true and accurate, full and complete ; and also be clear and vivid. Such a habit of apprehending, so easily formed in the early growth of mind, is of inestimable value for the future life. Full nutrition is not effected until the aliment thus judiciously selected and taken with a zest and truly and thoroughly apprehended, is also properly assimilated. This process in nutrition is inexplicable alike in bodily and in mental life. It is an instinctive movement that under the laws of living and growing things takes place of itself when the suitable food is once received in healthy growth. Time only is demanded ; and these demands of time vary indefinitely with age, proficiency, condition. To gorge and to cram are faults to be diligently guarded against as hostile to wholesome digestion ; to a true and healthful assimilation of beauty and truth and goodness as of animal nutriment. So far as may be and for a general plan of procedure, educa- tion prescribes that whatever nutriment be ap- prehended, — whatever form of beauty is contem- plated, whatever truth considered, or whatever purpose intended — it should be allowed and even carefully caused to pass into the very life of the soul and so be incorporated in right organic rela- tionship into the body of its activity and feeling. 6S EDUCATIONAL WORK. Much quiet and patient rumination, or reiterated repetition of the impression made upon the soul by objects of beauty, truth, or goodness, is a necessary condition of mental growth. The receptive process in growth, made up of the sympathetic acceptance, the full and accurate apprehension, and the thorough assimilation of the object of study, is only preparatory. Food is for strength, and strength is for ac- tion. § 29. It is the proper function of the training process to develop still further and specially to guide the activity thus enlarged and strength- ened. The first step in this comprehensive proc- ess is simply responsive to the impression made by the impressing object. This, at least, is the first step as the logically conditioning step in the complex process. It is not to be supposed that any appreciable time always and necessarily inter- venes. On the other hand for the most part the movement from first impression to following apprehension and assimilation, and then to the reactive part comprehending all its progressive forms of response and positive reaction, may be as instantaneous as impression and action in the mind following and going on to perfect itself, can be supposed to be. But the movement may possibly cease with any one of the parts named. Impressions that leave no appreciable result are common with us almost as the minutes of our waking lives. Habits of listless impression are THE TWOFOLD WORK OF EDUCATION. 69 the bane of mental life, easily acquired, most difficult to be eradicated or resisted. So the full assimilating reception of truth may be followed only by the mere impress left on the mind's active being. Its activity is simply shaped or turned ; except, perhaps, as it is quickened or re- pressed. The mind is in such case but as a mass of plastic clay ; it is indented, so far shaped, per- haps lightened or weighted more ; that is all. It simply gravitates in this new shape or form, with no spring of action started. The mind sim- ply takes upon itself what is given it, responsive only as yielding and taking new form. The rich experience of life which is the appointed soil for growing character, becomes thus utterly value- less for all mental quickening, as undigested food only clogs bodily vigor. Still this impression wrought into and upon the mind, has given a form to its active nature, which the eye of con- sciousness, when it is opened, may observe and recognize as the resulting state from such im- pression. It abides ; the mind properly retains it. This is the mental attribute of retentiveness — of memory in its simplest rudimentary condition. It necessarily involves no intelligence, except as the consciousness of the state is regarded as a proper act of the Intelligence, nor does it imply any purpose — any act of the will, except per- haps, as simply permissive and not at all interfer- ing to guide, or to further or hinder. This is the primal element in all mental life, — that which 70 EDUCATIONAL WORK. conditions all subsequent self-study, self-develop- ment ; and on which all education rests so far as prompted by the state of the mind itself. As the bodily life starts from food first received, so the mind starts all its development from this primitive condition determined to it by impres- sion from without or in its interaction with exterior realities. There is a form now presented to it while before all was formless and empty to all observation by itself or others. Henceforth it can never be without such form to invite observation and reaction upon it ; for even if the primitive impression be apparently subverted, this can be done only by the intervention of some new form, and never absolutely and fully. The mind thus ever retains. Retentive- ness, which is simple memory as passive and not reproductive, is a fundamental attribute of men- tal life, and signifies the mere form of the mind — the condition and shape of the mental activity as formed by some previous impression or act. Of the prominence of the form given thus to the mind in simple impression a most instructive exemplification is to be found in the common experience of what is called *' being turned about." No reasoning with one's self is suf^cient often to correct this error of impression which for the most part is unconsciously received. It is just because a permanent form is thus determined to the mind by mere impression that the training of the mind for or under the power of impression THE TWOFOLD WORK OF EDUCATION. yi received so imperiously demands the attention of the educator. The nourishing and strengthening of any form of mental activity thus produced is the effective condition of stability and firmness to the partic- ular trait or to the whole character, as it is the starting point or germ of all following growth. Something now exists to be sprouted and nour- ished and trained. There is a goal to start from and a post to fasten to ; a basis and support for all future motion and progress. Education effects its first work with this as its fundamental ele- ment — a form of mental activity received and retained. The process of reproduction is the natural sequent of this retention in growing life. The impression received may be transient as the im- pressing force for the most part quickly with- draws. But the process thus begun may be taken up and carried on by the mind itself. There is now a positive activity exerted ; and this state of mind is known as the imagination. It is the more active side, as the memory is the more passive side of the mind regarded simply in respect to its form, or that attribute through which it may be recognized by itself in con- sciousness or by other minds in mediate revela- tion as in look or word or bodily act. Such is the simple story of the mind's growth thus far; its sensibility or its capacity of receiving impres- sion — of taking food — becomes actual recipient 72 EDUCATIONAL WORK. and retainer in simple memory, and then repro- duces this received form — this mental image or phantasm, as it has been denominated, when ap- plied to some specific impression. This repro- ductive process, which regarded on the passive side is known as memory and on the active side as imagination, is now food and stimulus to the more complex and diversified forms of the imag- ination, as it varies the simply reproduced form by adding to it or dropping from it more or less or by combining it with other mental forms or by absolutely new production. We have thus the distinguishable stages of imaginative move- ment ; — the simply reproductive ; the partially reproductive ; the productive with combination ; and the positively creative imagination. The second step in training, thus, is the reten- tion and reproduction of the food that has been received and assimilated. It will be observed that the activity of the mind as of the body may be in all this more or less entirely instinctive, — the properly directive power being more or less en- tirely in abeyance ; — the will simply permitting, but neither impelling nor guiding. It may accordingly all take place without being brought out into the distinct notice of consciousness. Body and mind grow, often effect their best growth, when not thus consciously scanned. Still it should never be forgotten that the whole mind is ever present in every possible experience. The learner is never separated from himself, nor THE TIVOJ^OLD WORK OF EDUCATION. 73 is any organic part of his nature separated from another. In his most purely instinctive and most wholly unconscious acts his whole self is present — body and spirit — and in more or less sympathetic co-operation. He cannot remember, retain an impression without intelligence, with- out self-direction. The whole intelligent and purposive soul is present in every feeling and in every act of memory and imagination ; its intelli- gence and will are, in a true sense, active, for their very essence is activity. The whole field of this action is also before the eye of conscious- ness in the same sense in which a natural or ex- ternal field is all before the eye of an observer, whether or not this or that particular object in the field is distinctly noticed ; whether or not in- deed the field itself is actually discerned. An object thus may be truly said to be within the range of consciousness, although the conscious activity does not actually and distinctively exert itself upon it. § 30. The next step in culture, whether of body or of mind, after the conditioning food has been taken and digested in the case of the body, and in the case of the mind in an analogous way inwrought into its activity in the forms of the memory and the Imagination, introduces into one or other of the ten thousand forms of active life. The awakening and exertion of the mem- ory and the imagination have indeed already entered upon this stage. We have indeed here 74 EDUCATIONAL WORK. but an exemplification of what is occurring in all life-processes, one stage passing into another in imperceptible degrees, as bud into flower. The indication of the work of education in training, as applied to the more distinguishable departments of human life and activity, will be given hereafter in the several places prescribed by our method. Here it can only be said that the training should be directed to the selection of the kind of activity proper at the time and in the circumstances to be called forth, and to the prompting and main- tenance of this activity. Strength comes only by exercise. In a low and limited sense there may be power in simple knowing, as there is in simple food. But the condition of effective strength, of physical force and agility, and also of mental vigor and skill, as appointed by our very nature, is exercise. But exercise to be effective in education must be something more than mere wild beating of the air, without aim or significance ; something more than fussy pottering. It must be at least rational ; and consequently must be penetrated and moved by somewhat of sympathetic interest, intelligence, and purposive aim. Mere swinging of the arms and idle twirling of the fingers will not sufifice to form the skilled pugilist or the dexterous juggler ; nor will idle pencilings, or listless figurings, or empty musings make the eminent draughtsman, or mathematician, or thinker, or poet. Effective exercise here must be THE TWOFOLD WORK OF EDUCATION. 75 intelligent and aiming as well as with interest. It must be concentrated on some particular ca- pability, and not loose and scattering. It must ^ be continued for more or less of time — there ) must be repetition. It is this continued action or repetition which makes habit ; and it is under the natural law of habit that action comes to be more or less spontaneous and instinctive, putting itself forward of itself whenever and wherever opportunity offers, thus facilitating exertion. The efficient man, the successful man in all fields of achievement is the man of habit — the man who has trained his powers to be instincts, as it were, self-prompting and self-guiding, and ready to act as need may require, without care or labor or even particular bidding on his part. This part of educational work in training may be well exemplified in its applications to the several stages, already indicated, of the develop- ment of the imagination. First, the impression received and assimilated, gives a certain shaping to the mind — a certain form which more or less abides. As now a part of the mind's own activ- ity, it is technically termed a mental image, a phantasm, or, in looser phrase perhaps, a mental form, an idea. Now a fundamental principle in effective training prescribes that this phantasm or idea, this act of the imagination, be continued till it becomes fixed, incorporated into the mind's body of activity so as to be capable of self-main- tenance and also of ministry to the mental life ^6 EDUCATIONAL WORK, generally as may be needful. This is the first step in training after the impression is received, to make the idea received in its fullest sense the mind's own. This is an indispensable step ; stumbling, disgust, failure, are inevitable conse- quents of neglect or omission here. It requires time, more or less in different cases. The expert teacher is apt to overrate his pupil's capacity in the beginnings of a study or practice, and conse- quently hastens on to advanced steps for which there is not the requisite preparation. The maxim, accordingly, is peremptory : make sure and permanent beyond all doubt or mistake the be- ginnings of study and practice. By continuance of the initial idea or movement, fix it in abiding self-maintenance and capability of spontaneous exertion and ministry, so that it be ready to meet any call for its action and help. In other words, give the learner complete mastery of this idea or movement, so that it shall be as it were an instinct of his nature. At the next stage the exercise in training be- comes the pupil's own origination of idea or movement. Passive, receptive, simply holding what had been given him before, he now gives forth, produces. The law of exercise here is simply : let this productive activity be continued, repeated, kept up, till the capacity of producing is established as a permanent and effective pos- session of the mind. The law of continuance or repetition is the THE TWOFOLD IVOK A' OF EDUCATION. yy same essentially for the succeeding stages in which the original phantasm or idea has lost somewhat of its simple and pure conformity to the original impression, and under the intelligent control of the will has combined with itself other ideas or other movements ; or still farther has been succeeded by actual new creative activity. The law of nature in training is throughout : continue, repeat, till the activity is established and carried so far as may be towards its true perfected con- dition ; till it become in a true sense automatic, self-prompting as occasion may invite or allow. This presentation of the law of exercise in edu- cation runs counter, it is to be acknowledged, to a certain mode of teaching and practice some- what in vogue. It is recommended thus that the pupil instead of being trained along the line of the simplest and most elementary ideas in- volved in a given study, should be introduced at once to the gross whole of the subject matter of the study and in an analogous way in artistic training should be put on copying or construct- ing in large masses or concrete wholes. Thus in learning to read, the teaching recommended, avoiding training in the elements singly, leads at once to the imitation or reproduction of sen- tences, phrases, words in concrete forms and so beginning with the whole and ending with the parts or elements. Thus, it is argued, the child learns language — learns to understand speech and to speak himself ; he does not first hear elemen- yS EDUCATIONAL WORK. tary sounds, then single words, then sentences, then continued discourse. Such, it is maintained, is nature's law in educating. But this view is altogether too hasty and partial. Never since child has come to speak, to put forth thought into language, has it been known that its first effort was a perfect, fully articulated word, expres- sing a definite idea: much less that it first ut- tered a full thought in fitting speech. Just the contrary of all this. Its earliest effort at com- municating, beyond at least a responsive smile or scowl, has ever been a simple effort of breath, — a feeble puff or expiration, repeated over and over, how many times no most watchful nurse has ever been able to count ; then after long interval spent in this initial practice there has followed a feeble vocalization — a cooino; or a mooing, repeated countless times ; then the sim- plest, most rudimentary articulation continued often long before it comes to proper word-forms and still longer before it can put forth speech- forms or full communications of thought. Na- ture's practice in training is thus from the elementary to the concrete. So in practice, as for example in chirography : — penmanship is quickest and best acquired by beginning exer^ cises, continued up to a decided proficiency in each, on the elementary strokes, straight lined and curved, sloped, perpendicular or circular, till each is mastered. The significance and importance of frequent THE TWOFOLD WORK OF EDUCATION. 79 stated reviews of previous lessons are seen in this light of the bearing of exercise on mental devel- opment. Not only does this practice of review- ing nourish up in the mind of the learner a feeling that every acquisition is in some more or less definite way to be made serviceable in the future of study and therefore should be diligently and thoroughly effected, but the repetition of a pre- vious activity involved in the review is an important condition of mental progress. Expe- rience has shown that the labor spent in review effects for mental growth and discipline two or three times as much as that on the advance lessons. Hence the usefulness of the prevalent method of beginning each successive lesson with a review of the preceding lessons whether in study or practice^ and of regular reviews at the end of each week, or month, or term, or year, or course. This is in accordance with the law of all growth that it must be continued and continuous, each new acquisition bound to the old by actual living union — a work of time and reiteration. CHAPTER II. THE CONDITIONS OF EFFECTIVE WORK IN EDUCATION. § 32. Effective work in education involves divers conditions, some of which are intrinsic, being essential constituents or characteristics, and others are extrinsic, being determined by the relationships of the work to its surroundings. The principles here are, first, that the work of education be true to itself, ever bearing its own essential characters or elements along with it ; secondly, that all true work among men is in organic dependence on outer realities and their respective state or condition. The more com- manding and comprehensive of these conditions, which in another form and from another point of view have in part already been presented but which will bear repetition, are as follows : — (i.) Effective work in education must he sf7/i- pathetic. Teacher and pupil must be in sym- pathy with each other and each with the study or medium in which the work takes place. The lowest degree or stage of possible sympathy is that of mere communicability which exists by the very necessities of nature between all rational 80 CONDITIONS OF EFFECTIVE WORK. 8 1 beings. Positive aversion presupposes this degree at least of sympathy, since no aversion can exist where there is no possibility of inter- action. But from this lowest stage sympathy may rise to high degrees of reciprocating affec- tion and interest. The higher and warmer and freer this sympathy becomes, the more effective will be the work of nurturing and training. The teacher is thus bidden to bring to his work a living personal interest in his pupil, in his well- being generally, but especially in his proficiency in the immediate study or course of training at the time. This he can do by reason of their common nature as human beings, however dull or repulsive his charge may be. The sympa- thetic interest with which a teacher approaches a lovable, sympathetic, bright and eager mind or class of minds may differ widely from that in which he drives himself to the loathsome, stupid, and indifferent or even the sulky and mulish pupil. But a true beneficent sympathy may be and ought to be in lively exercise even in the latter case. There must also be as a condition of effective work in teaching a true sympathetic interest in the particular study or exercise in hand. In mere rudimentary instruction involv- ing the unceasing repetition of the same elemen- tary lessons, there is a great liability to fall into a cold unsympathetic condition which is hostile to any worthy result in teaching. It is conse- quently a peremptory duty on the part of the 6 82 EDUCATIONAL WORK, teacher that he diligently train himself to bring to his charge a mind evidently and impressively awake and interested. Such a freshness of inter- est may always be awakened in some of the several obvious ways, as elsewhere already indi- cated, § 14 ; and the teacher is inexcusable who fails to awaken it in himself. He must be in sympathy too with the work itself of teaching ; he must appreciate its dignity and its worth ; he must find satisfaction, as he may indeed find satisfaction of the highest degree, in the prosecu- tion and result of the work. In order to this sympathetic relation between teacher and pupil the instruction must of course be preferably and almost exclusively oral. Voice is the special organ of sympathetic emotion, and word the natural medium of communication between soul and soul. But oral instruction involves the entire personal presence and so ever enlists as its auxiliary the whole power of the living teacher as model and as inspiration. The written word, the proper lecture, must ever be regarded as but a representative and substitute, and so as characteristically the inferior and weaker. In the earlier stages of training, the lecture is entirely out of place, except perhaps in extreme necessity. To the professional student it may be to some extent and in some cases the preferable way, as where the needful text-book is not within reach ; or where the instruction is but incidental or auxiliary, as where light may be CONDITIONS OF EFFECTIVE WORK. 83 shed from the history or the Hterature of the subject-matter of instruction, where guides and helps need to be indicated, methods of study dis- cussed, topics for investigation presented, and the Hke. The lecture addresses itself to the learning mind predominantly as receptive ; it is only through consequence or suggestion that its proper activity is engaged. It is accordingly better suited to the mind already well furnished and trained. The discussion of particular ques- tions of fact or truth, taken up for one cause or another out of the orderly scheme of a science — questions that may call for special investigation or have special applications not easily finding place in the general scheme — may call for the special lecture. In proper object-teaching, more- over, there is occasion and indeed a special de- mand for the viva voce lecture, as in the descrip- tive lessons of Natural History and the experi- mental instruction of Physical Science, as also in studies directed upon diagrams, or maps, or art- products addressed to the eye or ear. The proper written lecture, whether read or pro- nounced from memory, had its origin and its vin- dication in the necessities of a bookless age. In this present age of books, and particularly in this day of a well-nigh superabundant educational lit- erature, the special call for written lectures in edu- cation has ceased. The text-book is everywhere at hand, for all departments of instruction, for all stages and conditions of mental training. Its 84 EDUCATIONAL WORK. recommendations are manifold and decisive. It addresses directly the active, while, as already stated, the lecture engages chiefly the receptive nature, and during the whole period of mental de- velopment up to the time of proper maturity in vigor and discipline, it is the active nature which is the dominant, and the receptive is the subsidiary. The text-book furnishes the conditions for the best employment of all that large part of educa- tional time when the pupil is not in immediate communication with the teacher. It is thus a thing of high economical value, scarcely to be overrated. It calls forth the direct, independent effort of the pupil to interpret out its teaching; to connect the study of to-day with the preced- ing study and so at once serves to strengthen the memory as well as to lead to the discovery of the scientific relationships in the successive parts of the teaching ; and to enable him to understand precisely what stage of the developing science he has reached and in a general way what remains for his attainment. The text-book invites a pre- cision of statement of fact and principle, in defi- nition and in proof, and a clear, excTct method of development which the written lecture can sel- dom attain without detriment to the rhetorical characteristics of proper rational discourse. The lecture is indeed a favorite mode of instruc- tion with the ambitious writer and speaker, seek- ing oratorical effect in novel dogma or original exposition and method ; and under the power of CONDITIONS OF EFFECTIVE WORK. 85 this temptation it is made to serve for the enter- tainment, the stimulation, or the admiration of the student, rather than for his discipline in self- sustained study or for his thorough mastery of science. In fine, it would seem from reason, and the opinion is corroborated in actual experience, that the text-book is the indispensable ally and helper with inconsiderable exceptions in all gen- eral education, from the rudimentary to the proper professional stage, whether the instruction be oral or by proper lecture. It is a great econo- mizer of time and care and labor ; it necessitates mental activity ; and induces accuracy, thorough- ness, system, in acquisition. As such an efficient instrument in all education it needs to be pre- pared with highest skill, accurate and thorough and in exactest logical method ; more to be val- ued indeed as a type-form and mold for the developing thought of the learner than for the quality or quantity of the knowledge which it imparts. The text-book gives full opportunity for oral instruction, and so for all sympathetic communi- cation between teacher and pupil. The regu- larly recurring examination on that portion of the text-book assigned for the particular lesson in the recitation room, the questioning and answering on the part of the teacher and pupil, gives just the occasion and the prompting requi- site for this free intercommunication. Special care will be necessary that this dialectic freedom 86 EDUCATIONAL WORK. be not hampered or prevented by excessive num- bers in class instruction. A reciprocating sympathy, it should be remem- bered, is as necessary on the part of the pupil as of the teacher. It is his duty, as under nurture and training, to carry into his work a lively interest and affection ; to put himself by deter- mined effort in freest communication with his teacher ; to love, as is possible for him always, to be taught and trained. He must overcome aversion, and indifference, and be positively in active sympathy with his task. The teacher himself by his own manifested sympathy and interest may do much to awaken this interest in his pupil; for feeling is contagious. § 33- (2-) A second intrinsic condition of ef- fective work in education is that it be earliest. Dull, prosy, dragging work is as ineffective and so wasteful and vicious in teaching or in learning as everywhere else. It is doubly harmful here indeed because of the contagiousness of feeling already referred to between teacher and pupil. The earnest teacher makes the earaest learner. § 34- (3-) A third condition of effective work in education is that it be aiming. The teacher must have distinctly in his own mind, both the comprehensive result of his teaching work, which of course must be in organic interdependence and subordination to the full result of the entire educational work for his pupil and likewise the best result of his entire life, and also have dis- CONDITIONS OF EFFECTIVE WORK. 8/ tinctly in view the result of the particular study or exercise in hand in its special bearing and rela- tionship to those more comprehensive results. Education is a rational procedure ; and aiming is a first function of reason. Hence thorough edu- cation involves the necessity of determining the result in the several stages of progress, so as to discover how far the governing aim has been reached, how it has been most promoted, how it has been hindered ; how it has furthered or im- peded other departments of training. The pro- ficiency of the pupil needs to be the perpetual study of the faithful and efficient teacher. More- over, by showing to his pupil that he has before him ever an aim in his work towards which he is making his way, he best inculcates by his own effective example this high quality of character in his pupil. § 35. (4.) A fourth condition of effectivework in education is that it ever be developing. Its essential function is to effect a growth ; and every lesson, every study, every exercise should carry on a proper growth, an advance, an enlarge- ment, an increase of thought. In order to the best and highest efficiency here, it should first make sure the attainment already made ; and make a continuous advance from it, connecting the new with the old in a proper vital union. Observation shows a positive waste of a very large proportion of educational time and labor, simply by the failure to connect successive at- SS EDUCATIONAL IVORA^. tainments in knowledge or skill. Every exercise should look back to what has preceded and forward to what is to come. It is not enough simply to acquire, to attain. Accumulation is not accretion and true growth. To cram is indeed often to hinder progress. One of the most important habits to be formed in early training is that of connecting each attainment with what has preceded and with what is to follow. A perpetual mental growth may thus be secured under the law of habit, making the con- necting work spontaneous or instinctive, while fragmentary, disconnected study or practice, fails to improve and commonly enfeebles. The present is pre-eminently a reading age ; but of the multitude of busy readers, few can be found who must not in candor confess that the years of incessant but discontinuous reading have brought them virtually little or nothing of mental riches or strength, and the chief legacy they leave is an incurable or invincible incapacity to promote real growth. Education should see to it that all mental training have the nature and character of a true continuous growth. It should indeed go farther than this even. It should carefully form the habit in the pupil's mind of connecting all new attainments in knowledge or skill with those already made and at the same time of shaping them for a like connection with what are to follow. Three things are necessary here : first, that the past attainment be revived ; sec- CONDITIONS OF EFIECTIVE WORK. 89 ondly, that a positive increase be made to it ; and thirdly, that preparation be made for further advance. Systematic reviewing for this great end of securing a habit of steady growth is thus seen to be indispensable in successful training. In this peremptory requirement of securing a continuous growth is involved the prohibition of changes in studies, in teachers, in schools. Change here in itself is a great evil inasmuch as it necessarily more or less interrupts growth. If change be made, the reasons for it should be clear and imperative. § 3^- (5-) A fifth condition in effective educa- tion is that it be wisely provident of the means, the appliances, and the helps needful, both in a general way of equipment in the way of build- ings, libraries, apparatus, specimens, and also particularly for each particular lesson or study. This is a condition which has a broad sweep, but can be explicated only in the way of exemplifica- tion of a few particulars. They are such as these : place for study and for practice as also for receiving instruction, that shall be attractive, neat and tasteful, quiet and remote from disturb- ance or distraction, furnished with comfortable seats and desks ; well warmed, well lighted, and well ventilated ; provided with reference books, maps, diagrams, specimens and generally objects needed for object lessons, etc. Free expenditure of money, time, labor, is warrantable if not rather obligatory, as estimated in the light of a go EDUCATIONAL WORK. richly endowed and quickened mind. Nowhere is parsimony or niggardliness more baneful than in education. § 17' (^0 ^ sixth condition of effective edu- cation is that it be watcJifiil ajid precautionary. Thrifty farming involves not only generous fertilization but also good fencing. A vigilant and energetic prevention of whatever can obstruct the work of training is imposed as an urgent duty on every educator in whatever department of trust or care. The comprehen- sive principle here is that the mind of the learner be perfectly guarded against all obstructions, all interruptions, all distractions in order that it may be wholly absorbed in the one duty of the time. Noise without and noise within, sights foreign to the present task that dazzle, or amuse, or only entertain and occupy the thought ; out- door occupations, remembered sports, antici- pated pleasures, and the ten thousand other distractions incident to a student's life, are, so far as may be, carefully to be guarded against. A teacher must ever keep an open eye over all surroundings. § 38. (7.) One additional condition in effect- ive educational work needs to be specified : — it is that it associate with itself judicious recreation- Recreation is not absolute rest. Such rest indeed is but another name for death. Even in that chief rest for man — the nightly sleep — there is large activity. The heart beats on, the lungs CONDITIONS OF EFFECTIVE WORK. 9 1 heave, the blood circulates ; and mind as well as body participates in the activity, recalling past acts and affections, shaping new forms of objects and new courses of events, working out intellect- ual problems, and even framing new purposes and new dispositions. Recreation implies only rela- tive rest ; relaxing strain of effort or changing the function at work. It is a law of nature in her kind and wise provision that no department of our beincr be left to inaction. The law aims at the same result as the volatility already noticed in early life — the symmetrical development of the whole being. It is a law that educational systems, all educational work indeed, must in wisdom recognize and enforce. The essential character and design of recrea- tion disclose to our view divers attributes which are to be adopted as principles to regulate it. First, it must obviously be wisely adapted to the age and degree of development, the task in hand, the condition generally. Early age demands, as before noticed, great frequency in the changes of study and practice, as well as of the condition generally of body and mental relationship. Mature life feels the need of fewer changes, if yet more thorough as well in pursuits as in condition. Tasks that are new, little practiced, before the spontaneities of action have become developed, are more fatiguing and hence are more in need of frequent recreation, than the old, the practiced, the familiar. The 92 EDUCATIONAL WORK. kind of change for salutary recreation varies, too, indefinitely with age, sex, study and occu- pation, as well as condition generally ; judicious recreation thus must be adaptive to particular needs and occasions. Secondly, recreation should be preferably ediicatory. It should conspire with the serious work of education and be in harmony with it. As the benefits of recreation result in a large degree from simple change of occupation, this co-operation of recreatory service may for the most part be easily effected. Thirdly, recreation becomes more effective in more contrasted change; as from mind to body; from book-study to oral recitation ; from indi- vidual to concert exercises ; from abstract studies to the more concrete ; from indoor con- finement to outdoor freedom, and the like. Contrast thus enters into the very essence of rec- reation ; and should be intelligently introduced in appointing and regulating it. Fourthly, recreation must be attractive. The change which it proposes should preferably be such as to excite and to gratify. It may often call for stimulations from without itself. There may be mentioned here two elements which are in themselves of a somewhat foreign character to proper recreation, but which may with judicious care be enlisted. One is the element of chance. It is this which gives ^ peculiar charm to hunt- ing fishing, as well as to many kinds of games. CONDITIONS OF EFFECTIVE WORK. 93 The caution to be prescribed here is that the tendency to substitute reHance on luck or good fortune for honest and wisely directed effort, a tendency only too common, should receive no encouragement or strengthening. The other element is that of competition — an element abundantly exemplified and illustrated in all educational life. Fifthly, the most effective recreation must be to a very predominating degree a veritable change from zvork to play. In other words, it must release from the bondage of task-work, from the tension of strained muscle or mental faculty, to the freedom and relaxation of the instinctive, spontaneous, self-prompted and self-supported outgoings natural to life itself. Recreation is thus in its highest form play, in the sense of a free spontaneous outgoing and ongoing of the physical and spiritual nature of man. Its full necessity suggests at once that freedom is the highest condition and ultimate destiny of man. Happy will be that condition of the race in which it shall not be a rare exotic, but verily indigenous in a redeemed and perfected nature. Wise recreation may serve both as encouraging symbol and efficient help in its advance. CHAPTER III. THE SPECIAL MODIFICATIONS OK EDUCATIONAL WORK. — I. PHYSICAL EDUCATION. § 39. The twofold character of educational work and the conditions, intrinsic and extrinsic, of its successful prosecution being determined, the way is prepared for the fuller exposition of its nature as it is effected in the several depart- ments of human life and activity. The two com- prehensive departments are those of the Body, and of the Mind or Spirit — the Physical and the Mental or Spiritual. It is necessary however to bear in mind that the body and the spirit in man compose a single organism, so that the highest health and vigor of no part or member can be secured without a corresponding condi- tion of health and vigor in the other parts and members and in the whole composite organism. Education must accordingly in its direction of its specific work in any part keep in full view the demands of the whole man. Idiosyncrasy of temperament or peculiarity of condition and cir- cumstances may indeed lead to special prepon- derance of this or that kind of culture ; bodily force and agility may in one man eclipse his intel- 94 PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 95 ligence and even his morality while in another spiritual eminence may shine forth from out of a feeble body ; the largest wealth of endowment and culture in human society generally may involve a great diversity of gifts and attainments in its individual members. Still the truth re- mains: the best culture of the particular must be vitally affected by the culture of the whole organism. The principle holds : if one member suffers, the whole body suffers ; and, conversely, the well-being of the whole is conditional to the well-being' of the particular member. Man is a unit ; he has one life, one vital energy, that per- vades both body and spirit and makes them vitally one. § 40. Of the several properties of true educa- tional work in the care of the body accordingly, is to be enumerated, first, that it be such as will best train to the best ministry to the ivJwle man, and also at the same time be in subordination to the mental or spiritual life. The spirit is higher in rank than the body ; mental health and vigor are more than physical well-being. While often the cares of the body must engross attention and the mind be for the time out of thought, still this culture of the physical frame should ever be regarded as helpful condition of the para- mount culture of the spirit. The best condition of the mortal body is that of best ministry to the welfare of the immortal spirit that inhabits it. 96 EDUCATIONAL WORK. § 41. A second property of true educational work of this class is that it recognizes tJie lazv of habit. This great law of life is that a given activity being put forth in any direction, it will continue to move on in that direction till arrested or diverted by some other force and to repeat itself on every recurring occasion. As exercise brings strength, continued activity thus grows in itself more vigorous ; and as the sympa- thetic nature of an organism causes every move- ment to draw along with it all associated activ- ities, it multiplies its allies and aids all along its course. This is the principle of growth. Edu- cation should therefore maintain a continuous culture ; should guard against interruptions other than those of needful rest or higher or more imperious demands. The law of habit has its limitations ; it is limited by the law of satiety in the case of food or alimentation and of fatigue in exercise. But it is of the highest consideration in all nurture and training; and should be turned to the best account. It prescribes regularity and uniformity in food and training, forbidding change except for reason. Such reason there may be from the limitations named of satiety and fatigue ; and still more from the necessity of a development of all the divers faculties of our nature which is incompatible with a too exclusive attention to one. It is still a law which within its own realm must be recognized and obeyed. Under its beneficent working judicious educa- PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 97 tion carefully nourishes up and trains some par- ticular activity until the stage of self-subsistence and guidance is reached when the activity will cease to require further care and will itself lend a fostering and helpful ministry to other activities to be in like manner nurtured up to maturity and self-support. Habit, moreover, becoming a kind of second niture, makes easy and attractive or even well-nigh compulsory or necessary what had been difficult or repulsive. It quickens every sense as well as every active function. Education therefore, we see in a new light, shuns as one of the worst evils change in food or training, till maturity is attained, unless for decisive reason. § 42. A third characteristic of true educa- tional work in its special application to individual subjects is that it suffers itself to be prompted and guided by natural instincts, by actual experi- ences, by social conditions. Nature is a wise leader; and experience is her best interpreter. She demands that she be trusted largely even in healing and restoring, much more in developing a healthy nature. She is true to herself ; and the uniformity of her workings creates and vali- dates experience. She is in sympathy too with all environing influences of every kind. Common sense is her mouth-piece and is to be followed in wise educational work; as it forbids the erratic, the novel, the extravagant. Reason indeed rules common sense and imposes limitations at need. 7 98 EDUCATIONAL WORK. Reason favors progress, improvement ; and pre- scribes such change as true progress requires. Reason too, with the general assent of common sense, also summons medical wisdom and skill to the aid of nature in exceptional, abnormal cases, for which the generality and needful uniformity of natural laws hinder her from making adequate provision. Still farther it is necessary to con- sider the peculiarities of age, sex, family, and social relationships, together with outward cir- cumstances, also, as those of soil, climate, and the like. But inasmuch as it is an integral part of a good and true education to nourish and develop the bodily nature for its own sake as well as still more emphatically for the sake of the mind or spirit that animates and uses it, education will do what lies in its power, to develop into their most perfect condition all the divers functions of the animal system. It will seek to secure for the digestive function wholesome food, at fitting and regular intervals, in ample supply and suitable variety — animal and vegetable, shunning the noxious and harmful intoxicant or stimulant and preventing all excess in indulgence of natural appetite. It will wisely see to it that for the respiratory function there be a full supply of pure air of suitable temperature and neither too moist nor too dry, and that all hindrances to its freest exercise from dress or other cause be re- moved. It will also provide for a generous and PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 99 unobstructed circulation of nourishing blood, pervading all parts of the system, so as to supply needful warmth or heat for all life's movements as well to supply all waste by judicious, systematic exercise. Here it must be borne in mind that even in ease and indolence, nature herself carries on a steady activity as she exercises the various bodily functions. She thus cares for the invalid or the imprisoned ; but she imposes farther duty on the normal condition, as she urges to the vigorous outputting of the bodily forces. These she puts on service in order to meet her full de- mands for a healthy circulation. It is to be added that there is activity which stimulates cir- culation in the brain ; and this, as life advances, replaces the muscular activity which earlier life maintains. Then there are to be enlisted the divers aids of wholesome and invigorating exer- cise which come from companionship, provoking rivalry and animating by sympathetic and rhythmic movements of voice or hands or feet, prompted and regulated by music, as made familiar in the systems of calisthenics, gymnas- tics, and athletics of recent times. Over all wholesome physical exercise the law of recreation presides, forbidding together with all violence and grossness in quality also all excess in con- tinuance. It is in boyhood and youth that physical edu- cation does its best and most necessary work. As Horace taught : the winner of the race of 100 EDUCATIONAL WORK. life is he that endured and worked ; that sweat and shivered, when a boy. Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam Multa tulit fecitque puer ; sudavit et alsit. II. MENTAL EDUCATION.— I. ^ESTHETIC. § 43. The human mind, which is essentially of an active nature, distributes its activity into a threefold functional form. These three func- tions, familiarly known as the Sensibility, the Intelligence, and the Will make up the entire activity of the mind. They each have their proper object in exact natural correspondence each to its respective function. The beautiful or the perfect in form is the one sole object to the sensibility ; the true to the intelligence ; the good, in the broad sense as the perfect in char- acter and condition, is the legitimate object of the will. In other words, the Sensibility, the Intelligence, and the Will constitute the three- fold functional or subjective divisions of mental phenomena, while the beautiful, the true, and the good make up the corresponding threefold objec- tive classification of those phenomena. We have thus given us this fundamental law of mental education that the beautiful, embracing under this broad designation the perfect in form, the imper- fect in form, and the positively ugly, be the one object to which the mind in its function of sensi- bility is to address itself ; that the true, embrac- MENTAL EDUCATION:— I. /ESTHETIC. lOI ing the absolutely true, the imperfectly true, and the positively false, be the one object to which the intelligence is to address its activity ; and, lastly, that the good, in the broad sense of the term, including the perfectly good, the imperfect in character or condition and the positively bad, be the one object to which the will is to address itself. ThQ beautiful, the true, and the good are accordingly the food and means of training for the respective mental functions. Moreover, any object with which the mind may engage itself or of which it can have any idea, may engage either function, not however in equal degree or like facility in all cases. Any object may thus be regarded as true or beautiful or good at the pleasure of the mind itself or under the lead of a teacher. In truth every object thus in- teracting with the mind must engage the mind as a unit ever bearing along with it in every form of its activity, each of its threefold functions, while any one may more prominently and, as we in inexact but approximating phrase say, exclu- sively, command its attention. Consequently the education of one function necessarily affects the others ; and thus taste, knowledge, conduct, must in every form and kind of teaching all engage the notice and care of the teacher. We encounter here a seeming contradiction between two maxims, each of prime importance to the educator ; the first bidding him to '* keep all his eyes about him," to note everything ; the other 102 EDUCATIONAL WORK. to '' do one thing at a time," — concentrate the attention on a single point. Both are as practi- cable as are most maxims, and no more so. The vigilant seaman sweeps with his eye the entire surface of the sea to the limits of his horizon, not a visible thing moving or resting escaping his vision, while yet he watches with the closest attention every movement of a vessel of suspi- cious character. It is as true of the eye of the mind as of the eye of the body that a penumbra surrounds every object however carefully circum- scribed. This very penumbra from extraneous objects is indeed practically, often if not always, a help and support and relief in long concen- trated attention. § 44. The aesthetic nature, as understood in the accurate scientific use of the phrase, includ- ing both the sensibility and the imagination which are respectively the active and passive sides of this function, presents a very broad and a most important field for educational work. The function is properly designated as tJie func- tion of form. It is that attribute of mind by which it communicates with other minds; by which also it communes with itself, reveals itself to itself, and is the primal condition of conscious- ness, of all self-sense, all self-knowledge, all self- direction. It is an inseparable element of mental life. Every specific affection and act of the mind takes on a form, a character ; the mind as a whole has thus a form abiding under an un- MENTAL EDUCATION:— I. ESTHETIC. 103 ceasing change, still with more or less con- stancy. An analysis of form — aesthetic form in its broad scientific sense — gives us at once three elements or constituents : — first, an idea to be revealed or communicated ; secondly, a matter in which and by which it is limited or formed ; and, thirdly, an embodying act putting this idea into this forming or limiting matter. All the laws both of the reception and interpretation and also of the communication and production of beauty or the perfect in form, ground themselves on this analy. sis. The one comprehensive principle or law of this function of form so far as the active side or the production of form — the expression or communication of idea — is that \.\\q fitting idea he fittingly embodied in the fitting matter. The diversities and gradations of special forms are thus determined by the diversity and character (i) of the special ideas expressed ; (2) the matter in which they are expressed ; and (3) the expres- sing act, from the perfect in form — perfect beauty — down through the imperfect to the ugly. § 45. Esthetic education has for its special charge the nurture and development of this function of form in both its passive and active sides — the Sensibility and the Imagination. The leading characteristics of the passive side, the reception of form — have been already given. § 29, They are these : i. Ready sympathy — a hearty and wakeful interest or spirit of commu- I04 EDUCATIONAL WORK. nication — with all surrounding objects offering interaction with the mind. The selection of the most fitting objects, the protection against op- posing forces, and the enlistment of helpful forces, and the like are involved here both on the part of the teacher and also of the pupil, who is to be trained to a right and ready habitual use of these subsidiary operations. 2. An exact and full apprehension of the interacting object. For this there must be allowance of time in order that the impression of the object may be completely effected in all its essential outlines and colorings. All needful correction of impeded or diverted communication is also required. 3. A thorough assimilation of the impression thus made is to finish out the process of a right reception of object. Here is to be found a fundamental, if some- what difficult work for the educator. It is how- ever to be performed mostly in an incidental way when other ends of education, as those of knowl- edge or of practical skill, are predominant and guiding. The educator may thus enforce atten- tion to what is said or shown to his pupil, holding him responsible for what his senses of hear- ing and of sight have done, with the requisite alertness and sympathetic interest and patience, so as to fulfill all the conditions of a full assimila- tion of the impression into the mental life. § 46. After the assimilation there follows ac- cording to the analysis before given, § 29, the MENTAL EDUCATION :— I. ESTHETIC. 10$ stage of mental experience in which the passive or receptive element disappears and the active nature begins to discover itself. The mental food is assimilated ; the mind is correspondingly affected by it ; it is shaped and colored, — is so far formed by it. Its active being is different from what it was and must ever remain so. Its form is changed and, subject to new modifica- tions of this form, there is an abiding character of the mind resulting from the impression, the apprehension, and the assimilation. Here we find the retentive attribute of mind. The mind from every impression, from every act and affec- tion, receives what it in some way and degree retains as a present, living part of its own active being. The power to retain is the condition of all mental growth. Its place and relation in this growth we have now fully determined. It de- pends on the assimilation of the food communi- cated and apprehended. But it is not the orig- inal impression, much less the impressing object, in its identical substance or form, which is re- tained. The body under the digestive process does not retain the original wheaten grits or the muscular chops in their identical substance and form after the digestive work — the insaliva- tion of the one and the gastric decomposition of the other — has done or has even begun its work. No food enters the proper life of body or mind unless digested or assimilated ; and no digested Io6 EDUCATlOxVAL WORK. or assimilated food is identical in substance or form with its original self.^ Its substance has taken in something from that of the body or mind ; and its form has ceased to be food form ; it is now living bodily or mental form. All that re- mains of it at last is in the body or mind so far as formed by it. The education — the develop- ment and training of this important element of mental health and vigor — is a very practicable matter. It may be effected to a certain ex- tent by specific exercises ; but chiefly it ivill be effected in incidental ways, as will be seen hereafter. It must never be forgotten that the entire mental experience, every act and every affection, every feeling, thought, and purpose, come within the scope of this retentive function. We remember our feelings and our determinations as well as our thoughts. The general laws of retentiveness are the same for all those forms of mental experience. The principle underlying all specific rules is this : every act and affection of the mind abides in some form a7id degree. The first of these specific rules prescribes a judicious selection as to the objects which shall be allowed to impress the mind and the allowance of only true thoughts, 'worthy feel- ings, and right purposes, in regard to these objects. A second rule, which aims to preserve the origi- nal impression in exactest form, requires that the impression be as full and distinct as possible ; that it be incorporated at the time into the live- MENTAL EDUCATION.-— I. ESTHETIC. 10^ liest activity of the mind ; and that the impres- sion be strengthened by repetition. § 47. The next stage in the imaginative process according to our analysis is the reproductive stage. The retained experience, whether feeling, thought, or purpose, is revived. It is familiarly but vaguely known as recollection : — it is memory not merely as retentive but as reproductive. This reproduction is of course more or less difTerent from the original act or affection ; — the original experience reappears in a form more or less modi- fied. It may be characterized as spontaneous, under only a permissive interference of the will ; or it may be voluntary, being positively evoked and directed by the will. The development and training of this repro- ductive function of the mind — the memory — have received a very large share of the consideration of educators and philosophers, as well as of spe- cial teachers. We have manifold systems of mnemonics, arts of memory, laws of association. Doubtless from them more or less practical bene- fit has been derived ; and they are entitled to their full commendation. Even charlatanry has its merit : else it could not live. But the simple and plain exposition of the mental phenomenon called " memory," appears in the analysis we have given. The training of this function pos- sesses in it a true scientific guidance. The con- ditions of a good memory are obvious. Vivid impression^ accurate apprehcnsio7i and assimilation, I08 EDUCATIONAL WORK. and firm retention are essential conditions. Con- tinued definite practice under those conditions in modes and ways judiciously selected, is the effi- cient factor in the culture of the reproductive memory whether as spontaneous or voluntary. § 48. The next following stage in the imagi- native process combines with the original experi- ence as reproduced associated mental acts and affections. We seek thus in recollecting to re- vive some particular act or feeling by recalling the scene, the occasion, the outer surroundings and the inner associations. We cannot remem- ber at all without something of this modification of the original impression. But the modification may go so far as to give a distinct character to the memory. This power to reproduce freely and fully the past with the associations as deter- mined by the condition or purpose at the time is an attainment, demanding the careful attention of the educator. But the principles of training are now obvious; the modes of training will pre- sent themselves in connection with the other modes of training the function of form. § 49. The last and highest stage of the imag- inative process is the properly creative stage. At this stage the reproductive movement has sunk the original impression so far below the associated experience, has so absorbed the past element into the present, that we have what may allow- ably be termed a creation. But the creation is a new form only. The imagination in itself is con- MENTAL EDUCATION:— I. .ESTHETIC. IO9 cerned with form and with form alone. In it the mind takes from itself as a body of faculties and mental riches and from those it puts itself forth in some new mode or form. The function has a wide scope and is a vital element in char- acter, in power of achievement in all the depart- ments of human life — in study and intellectual culture and in conduct as well as in proper art. The three constituents of all aesthetic form have been already enumerated; idea to be ex- pressed; matter in which it is to be expressed ; and the expressing act or the embodying of the idea in the matter. The training must accord- ingly be along these lines. The specific ways or modes will be best indicated in a general sum- mary of the modes of educating the aesthetic function of the human mind. The success of the educator will depend on his care to systematize all his work in this field of training, keeping his work ever in mind, pursuing it steadily, making every occasion tributary to a true growth, carry- ing forward in short a constant development towards an ideal of aesthetic excellence both on the receptive and on the productive side. § 50. I. Esthetic education finds a common and ready occasion in the regulation of the pcj^- sonal appearance and carriage. '^ Good form " here, in the larger and better import of the phrase, should ever be enforced, if for no other purpose, simply as a condition and means of aesthetic training. Neatness in person and dress ; no EDUCATIONAL WORK. decency in attitude and posture, courtesy in manners, straightforwardness and freedom in movement of limb*, are the leading parts of aesthetic training here. A principle ever and everywhere to be exemplified and enforced of fullest applicability here is : " Let all things be done decently and in order." II. Other abundant occasions for training in this field are furnished in the exercise of ihe senses. All formWs communicative in its essential nature — receiving and imparting , and the senses are a principal medium for this communicating work. Eyes that shall be open and quick to ob- serve, ears ready to catch all sounds in their diverse character and significance, touch sensitive and heedful, are largely susceptible of training. The home, the walk, the journey, the class room, the school, abound with occasions for educational work here, both in positively developing capa- bility, and also in repressing listlessness, indiffer- ence, aversion. Then on the active side all expression should be in fitting look and voice, in attitude and gesture. In all speech, in interro- gating and in answering, as In all written expres- sions of idea, the aesthetic sense — a quick and accurate taste — and also the aesthetic faculty — a vivid, sympathetic, affective imagination — may receive culture. § 51. III. The reproductive function, proper memory, invites and 'demands a very prominent part in all systematic education. The opportuni- MENTAL EDUCATION:— I. ALSTHETIC I 1 I ties of training are given in manifold ways. In- cidentally while other specific ends are sought, the memory may receive attention, as particularly in the preparation of lessons, in which accuracy and thoroughness in acquiring should be com- bined with a sense of responsibility for the char- acter of the acquisition. A pervasive principle of education has here an important special applica- tion : — that every particular study and exercise be regarded as entering into and determining all suc- ceeding proficiency — nothing now but what will reappear consciously or unconsciously hereafter. The faculty of reproductive memory is incident- ally exercised also in the '' recitation " and exam- ination upon the lesson. Reviewing comes in here as a most effective means of developing memory. Frequent and systematic rehearsals of discourse in prose and more beneficially perhaps in poetry, proper declamations, are familiar helps to memory. We have here indeed a function that admits of a well-nigh indefinite degree of development. A good strong memory is the fruit of training — of determined, earnest, continuous, judicious training. IV. Once more, a thorough education must seek to develop and train a proper creative imag- ination. The active function of form takes on this character when it gives forth a new, original idea of any kind, or puts it into a new body of matter — whether it be physical, as figure and color, or in wood or stone or soil, or in sound. 112 EDUCATIONAL WORK. and the like, as in the plastic arts, in architecture, landscape, music ; or in spiritual matter as in the poetic art ; or still farther evinces a way of em- bodying that is more or less new and original, in respect of grace or fitness, or of vigor. II. INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. §51. The development of the Intellect in man follows naturally that of the Function of Form or the Sensibility and the Imagination. The intellect waits, for the most part at least, on the aesthetic function for the object on which its activity is to be exerted. The impressed objects of the sense and the ideas reproduced in the memory or re-formed in the imagination awaken the intelligence or cognitive function at the first and so condition and shape to a greater or less extent the entire intellectual process that follows. Leaving out of view the intellectual processes that are founded on other preceding intellectual products, there is but one exception to the general statement that the intelligence ever follows a presentation by the function of Form, depending upon it and being conditioned by it. In the interaction between any exterior object and the mental activity, as the mind is in any exercise of any particular function ever present in its entirety of functions, nothing forbids the notion that the intellectual function may in some cases immediately interact ^Yith the MENTAL EDUCATION:— II. INTELLECTUAL. I13 object without any intervention of the sense. In such case we may have an immediate percep- tion of the exterior object — may become cog- nizant of it, — not, however, properly conscious of it, for this involves a contradiction of terms. But in the general the sense or the memory or the imagination, some mode of the function of form, gives to the intelligence its datum. It is the sense receiving the object that first thus awakens the intelligence, which cannot act or reveal itself except on condition of some object being presented to it. § 52. The analysis of any intellectual act gives at once as the two essential factors i, the knozving subject ; 2, the object known., that is, the true in the object. The two factors, as before indicated, are in exact correspondence. Farther, it is immediately discernible that all knowing is a process in time, which admits of being distin- guished into two stages, the one inchoative and incomplete, familiarly designated perception ; the other the matured and complete, technically termed thought or proper knoivledge. Perception ever tends to pass on to a mature knowledge or thought ; it may, however, be arrested, as the tree-life tends to spray and leaf and fruit, but may be arrested in its work ere it reach its natur- ally destined end. Perception more passively apprehends the object as a concrete. Thought actively affirms it to be such or so, in other words to have or not to have such or such attributes. 8 114 EDUCATIONAL WORK. The culture of this function, the supplying of food to it and training it to acquire and to com- municate knowledge or truth, has constituted the chief, often the exclusive, claim to the care of the educator. To educate has generally been deemed to be simply to furnish and train the intelligence or function of knowledge. How- ever crude and faulty this notion may be held to be, nothing can be more unquestionable than that a prime qualification in the educator is a correct understanding of the essential nature of this function and its relationships as well as of its generic forms and laws. Ignorance here would seem the very quintessence of quackery. A summary mention, at least, of the leading facts of the intelligence is requisite in order to a right conception of the work of education in dealing with it. If I should present to any class of pupils of ordinary intelligence in our schools a rose and should put to them the question : What do you perceive, the reply would be prompt and univer- sal. The unhesitating answer would show that everybody knows what perception is. If I should go on to ask : What do you tJiink of it ? The reply might be prompt, but not probably so harmonious. One would say: I think it is beautiful ; another, I think it is red ; a third, it is sweet ; a fourth, it has five petals, etc. The answers however all alike evince that they know what to think is. The answers show that while MENTAL EDUCATION:— 11. INTELLECTUAL. II5 the object remains the same, the mind, the intel- ligence, has passed from one stage to another ; that the one stage — perception — is primary and conditional : that the other stage — thinking — is natural and sure to follow if opportunity be given. It is obvious that the latter stage differs from the former in this one particular: an attribute, as ''beautiful," ''red," "sweet," "five petaled," has been affirmed of the object ; the rose is in one respect " beautiful," in another " red," and so on ; in other words the rose is identified, in the act which is knozvn as tJiinking, with an atti'ibute or property. Such is the simple nature of thought as technically distinguished from perception. It is true that there was in every case of reply a selection of one attribute out of many — a dis- crimination. But if only one attribute were apprehended, there would of course be no dis- crimination, so that this movement of the mind is not essential, but only incidental and subsid- iary to thought. Further, this is all that enters into the nature of thought as a completed act of knowledge — to ascribe or to deny an attribute to the object. Thought thus is simply attribution. It ever takes the form of what is known techni- cally as the judgment, which is properly defined as "knowledge under an attribute." In this transition from the initial and simply inchoative to the final and completed stage of knowledge a noticeable transformation has taken place ; the simplicity of the perception has passed Il6 EDUCATIONAL WORK. into the triplicity of the thought or judgment — one has become three. We have at the end (i) that of which we think, — a subject ; (2) that which we think of it — an attribute ; and (3) the thinking act itself, the affirmation or denial — the attribution — in the technical copula. The two first named constituents of the thought — the so-called terms — are known as concepts. They imply each the other; neither can possibly be without the other. They come into existence together simultaneously with the judgment, as its organic constituents, just as head and limbs begin their life simultaneously with the bodily life. It is a profound mistake to think of a con- cept as existing before the judgment or mature act of knowledge ; and equally a mistake to identify a perception or percept with a concept except simply as being related to the same object. It may not be amiss to call distinct attention here to the ambiguities of language in respect to the use and significance of the terms employed to denote mental phenomena, and to the conse- quent liability to misconception and error in rea- soning. The word rose thus may be used to mean divers things. It may mean simply a word, and either a spoken word or a written word ; it may mean the external object itself ; or the per- ception of it — a proper percept ; or a thought of it as having some attribute — a concept. Now it is very obvious that these different things, all MENTAL EDUCATION:— 11. INTELLECTUAL. I I 7 denoted by the same word — rose — have different attributes, and that to ascribe to one of these ob- jects the attribute proper to another, as to say that " the word rose is fragrant " is to ascribe falsely, to fall into error. Just so, as denoting a percept it allows certain attributes which do not pertain to it when denoting a concept. In other words the percept rose has attributes which do not belong to the concept rose ; and to confound them leads to error. It is true that ordinarily the general intention in the use of the term and the connections will suffice to prevent this confu- sion and error. But in proper psychological dis- cussion and consequently in intellectual training the clear discrimination becomes of commanding importance. A proper percept never of itself recognizes the distinction of subject and attri- bute ; a proper concept always from its very essence implies this distinction. § 53. There are three comprehensive move- ments of the intelligence in its treatment of judg- ments or the matured forms of knowledge which educational work should have under practical con- trol. They are, first, the enlargement — or so- called amplification of the concept — which may respect the subject concept and thus appearing in the familiar and important process of generaliza- tion, or the attribute concept, as in the process of the technical determination. The principle vali- dating the process is that either concept may be amplified if ever the vital organic relation be- Il8 EDUCATIONAL WORK. tween them be observed — we can generalize only where we have the same attribute ; we can deter- mine only where we have the same subject. In other words, in amplifying either one of two con- genital concepts the other must be the base or governing principle. Farther, the intelligence may deduce a con- tained truth or judgment from another which contains it. This is the familiar deductive move- ment of thought. Thirdly, the intelligence may infer — induce — one part from another part of the same whole. This is the familiar inductive movement of thought. It is exemplified abundantly in common life as when the child shuns a flame after having once felt its burning heat, and most conspicuously in science, as when the geologist on finding a fossil bone at once induces from the fact that it is a part of some organic whole that there must have been other parts or organs belonging to the same whole, and so proceeding from part to part and putting together the results he comes to know that a mastodon had once lived and died and left a part of itself in that locality. The deductive and the inductive processes are true complement- aries, as evidently there can be in the generic relation of quantity only the two movements, that between the whole and the parts and that between one part and another part. The work of education has thus set before it the precise nature of the mental activity known MENTAL EDUCATION:— II. INTELLECTUAL. II9 as the intelligence and all its generic forms. It has accordingly two stages in knowledge — first, the inchoative act, perception or the simple appre- hension of the object ; and then, the matured stage, the judgment or the attributive act which after the needful discrimination simply identifies the attribute thus discriminated with the object or differences the attribute from it — affirms or denies the attribute as belonging to the object. The possible derivative processes from the judg- ment are the three ; (i), Amplification of the con- cept — whether subject or attribute — whether generalization or determination ; (2), Deduction, or the movement of thought between the whole and the parts; and (3), Induction, or the move- ment of thought from one part to another part of the same whole. It is the province of Logic to expound the laws and forms of thought. Every- body thinks and thinks serviceably in a degree to his wants although he knows little or nothing of what thought is or what are its laws or forms, just as everybody eats, and eats serviceably in a degree to his health, although not one in ten thousand knows what digestion or distribution or assimilation of food is. But the thinker should understand thoroughly and familiarly the nature and forms of thought ; and the teacher should understand what kind of an activity he professes to train. A very conspicuous importance of this logical knowledge consists in this : that it enables one to knoiv that he knozvs wJiat he knoivs ; that I20 EDUCATIONAL WORK. Study and scientific investigation, consciously fol- lowing the laws and legitimate forms of thought, is on the road to certitude of knowledge : that every step he takes leads to assured success. The inspiration that comes from this confidence is beyond estimation in all intellectual pursuits ; and logic, when it is rescued from the littlenesses and trivialities and the barbarous formulisms of scholastic teaching, and appears in full form and exact method as an unfolding of the simple nature of thought into its laws and forms with their organic relationships in their completest fullness and totality, while the exactest of sci- ences, is also the simplest and most comprehen- sible. How can the effective training of the intelligence proceed in ignorance of the laws and general forms of the intelligence? All educational work consisting of the two parts, nurture and exercise, the development and training of the intelligence, consists of the sup- plying of food — which to the intellect is ever the true — and the prescription of practice. In- tellectual growth comprises increase of knowledge and increase of strength and skill. But food is of value, chiefly at least, for the sustaining and pro- moting of health and vigor. Mere accumulation of knowledge is of little worth ; it may be a cum- brance and a hindrance. We acquire truth for use — for means and help to the advance of intel- lectual strength and efficiency. Moreover, the food of the intelligence is the object for its activ- MENTAL EDUCATION:— 11. INTELLECTUAL. 12 1 ity. It is wise therefore to direct educational work mainly in the line of exercise. He who has the power to know has the key of knowledge ; and it is better to be able at will to unlock the treasury of all knowledge than merely to have one's scanty purse stuffed even to fullness. § 55. I. Culture of the Perceptive Faculty. — Perception we have recognized as the funda- mental and conditional step in the intellectual life. But external perception, exercised upon exterior, physical objects is mainly, if not wholly through the bodily sense. It is in fact, with the exception before maintained, § 51, the immediate reaction of the intellect upon the sensation ; and follows instinctively upon it. A true and full perception, thus presupposes a true and full sensation, which involves, as we have seen, a sympathetic, appre- hensive, and assimilative process that is accurate, vivid, thorough. Internal perception, technically known as intuition, which is exercised on the acts and affections of the mind itself, involves the same qualities as external perception except so far as regards the object. It belongs properly to an advanced stage of intellectual grow^th ; but even the child may be led to observe his feelings, his thoughts, his intentions. Moreover, this funda- mental function is called forth all along in the line of the proper culture of other intellectual powers. Its culture may be best carried forth conse- quently in connection with the practice of those other dependent functions. But opportunities 122 EDUCATIONAL IVOR A'. for putting the perceptive or observational faculty in exercise and so of guiding or training it abound everywhere. Any external object, any internal experience may be employed. The culture will seek everywhere to develop a habit of quick, interested, accurate, thorough ob- servation. The end sought will be such a habit of mind as will not only without special care prompt such observation, but will give one con- fidence that his observations are true and full. To be reasonably sure of having habitually ob- served aright is a most desirable attainment. § 56. Culture of the Thinking Faculty. — As before intimated there may be recognized in an act of thinking an incipient stage — discrimination of attribute — and a matured stage — the actual judging. In all cases knowledge of an object is mediated through some one or more attributes. We know the rose only as it is presented to us as having form, color, fragrance, and the like — as having some attribute. Which of the manifold attributes belonging to an object shall engage our thought may be determined by the object itself obtruding on our notice this or that attri- bute; or by some condition or disposition in our- selves, as the attention of a child might be arrested by the color, or by the fragrance of the rose, while the student in botany might first notice the petals or the stamens. In these two cases the recognition of the attribute would be automatic or spontaneous. It might, however, MENTAL EDUCATION:— 11. INTELLECTUAL. 1 23 be, as it often is in fact, of set purpose or Avill ; the botanist might purposely bend himself solely to the organic characters or attributes of the rose, while the child might seize it for its fragrance. Skill in the discrimination of attributes, as thus presented to the thought, is obviously of the first importance to ready and accurate thinking. It is indispensable to the educator's success and must be a commanding end or object to be secured for his pupil in his work. A familiar acquaintance with the generic classes of attributes thus becomes a matter of leading importance, not to say, of imperative necessity. The science of thought gives us this classifica- tion, in comprehensive terms : — All attributes must be intrinsic or extrinsic to the object to which they belong. Intrinsic attributes or Prop- erties are of two species : attributes of Quality, and attributes of Action. Those of Quality are normally expressed in the Grammatical Adjec- tive, as, the sun is bright ; those of action in the Grammatical Verb — the Intransitive, as, the sun shines, which, as the attribute of quality does not, suggests without designating the object, and the Transitive, that expressly limits the action to its object, as, the sun illuminates the earth. It is the same attribute brightness that is presented in each kind but modified diversely in each. All extrinsic attributes indicate some character of relation pertaining to the object, which of necessity must be either a relation to 124 EDUCATIONAL WORK. the whole to which the object belongs as part, or to some other part of that whole. The science of thought also names to us the few supreme categories of tJioiigJit, that is, the highest and most comprehensive classes of attri- butes that can be ascribed to thought. To the practical thinker this enumeration will be found of eminent service in guiding his discrimination, as it presents to his view the entire field of thinkable attributes in thought and being dis- tributed into a few comprehensive classes. There are three fundamental classes of these categories : — First, the categories of Pure Thought — identity, quantity, modality, which last includes the attributes of necessity and contingency : — Secondly, the categories of Pure Being — Real- ity, Activity : — Thirdly, the categories of Thought-Being — Substance and Cause.''" The work of education is evidently thus the exercise of the pupil in the systematic, con- tinuous, not desultory nor incidental even, dis- crimination of the attributes of objects. The work should of course continue so long or so far as to effect a practical mastery of the work to be done. Not a large number of objects nor a large number of exercises is necessary, just as the student of botany need not examine all the * Day's " Mental Science," § 193. MENTAL ED UCA TION :—II. INTELLECTUAL. 1 2 5 specimens of a given flower in a field, to be able to identify it — to know it wherever he meets with it. The beginning would naturally be with objects of sense ; as first with those that address the sight, beginning say with the color. Objects with divers colors being presented, the pupil would be called to indicate the particular color. He might thus be introduced to all the leading kinds of color. In the same way, the attributes of figure as straight-lined and curved in all their respective varieties, as triangular, square, oblong, circular, oval, etc. Then objects addressing the ear, with the leading varieties of sound, partic- ularly of musical sounds. A like method could be pursued with objects addressing the other senses and also with internal or mental phenom- ena, as the feelings, thoughts, intentions. The consummating stage in the thinking proc- ess, as we have seen, is that of affirming or denying the attribute as belonging to the object; — of identifying the attribute with the object or differencing the attribute from it. The training here will of course be practicable in a thoroughly systematic way only at an advanced stage of education, in connection with studies in logical science. But even in the earlier stages some- thing very effective may be accomplished. If thus the study of one's vernacular language is in hand, the exercises in the construction of sen- tences, which are but judgments expressed in language, will be exercises in proper judging or 120 EDUCATIONAL WORK. thinking. Here will be necessarily involved the receptive or acquisitive function with the repro- ductive. The object must be apprehended as also the attribute discriminated, in order to the completed judgment. The culture of the judgment in its diverse forms leads to the training of the intelligence in the generic derivative processes of thought. The first, as already indicated, is the amplification of the concept with its twofold form of generaliza- tion which deals with the subject term of a judg- ment and of determination which deals with the attribute term. Generalizing or classifying, gathering into classes, in a legitimate way is urged by Lord Bacon as a method of scientific thought that had been to his time '* untried." This, scientific generalization, is the proper new Baconian method of science. He seems to have, known little, if anything beyond the name, of Induction, except that, like generalization, it begins with particulars. The one simple princi- ple ruling over all legitimate generalization is this : any number of objects having any one attribute common to them may be united in a class on the basis of that attribute ; as sun, stars, planets, are all conjoined, on the basis of the one attribute of light-giving, under the name of luminaries. The process of amplifying the attribute concept is under an analogous prin- ciple : any number of attributes may be com- bined into one aggregate or comprehensive MENTAL EDUCATION:— IL INTELLECTUAL. 12/ whole on the basis of being all known to be attributes of some one object. The twofold movements of thought in the relationship of Quantity or that of Whole and Parts, — the Deductive, moving between the whole and the parts, and the Inductive, moving between one part and another part of the same whole, — can properly be taught only in a rudimentary and anticipatory way until the education reaches the advanced stage in which logical science may wisely be studied. It must be apparent that the educator, espe- cially if he pursues his work beyond the rudimen- tary stage, should number among his necessary qualifications a thorough logical training or a training in the science of thought, so as to un- derstand the nature of thought, its fundamental laws, and its generic forms and so to be practi- cally master of the leading modifications of thought. Only in the light of this knowledge and with the help of this skill, can he wisely and successfully train the intelligence committed to his care. It must be borne in mind that all the great forms of thought are more or less called into exercise in a rudimentary way in the earlier stages of education. To develop and train by prescribing exercises, correcting errors, and the like, the faculty of right thinking must be before his mind from the beginning. In truth, a thorough training in logical science and in the art of right thinking, must be accounted as one 128 EDUCATIOyAL WORK. of the most indispensable accomplishments of a liberal education. A great and noble science, the science of all sciences, it is worthy in itself of all honor; and as the nurse and guide of all intelligent and confident work in thinking it is a prime condition and helper to intellectual exertion in every department of study and rational life. Of course by logical science is here meant, as already hinted, the science of thought in its large comprehensive import — the science that, first seizing the essential nature of thought or knowledge, unfolds directly from this its gov- erning characteristics or laws and its possible forms in their true genesis and organic relation- ships. MENTAL EDUCATION. 1 29 Educational Aphorisms for Elemen- tary Studies. There are certain branches of intellectual train- ing of such supreme and universal importance that no scheme of education worthy of the name can fail to notice them with special distinction. They are Spelling, Reading, Writing, Arith- metic, and Grammar as an art "of true and well speaking." *'To read the English language well," says Edward Everett , " to write with dispatch a neat> legible hand, and be master of the first four rules of arithmetic, so as to dispose at once, with accuracy, of every question of figures which comes up in practice — I call, this a good educa- tion. And if you add the ability to write pure, grammatical English, I regard it as an excellent education." It may be expedient, however, for a science of education to treat these branches in a more pop- ular and suggestive way, as the best modes of training will vary greatly in different com- munities varying in size, mental advancement, and other social conditions. These suggestions are here presented under the form of aphorisms in their application to the several studies, separately. 9 I30 EDUCATIONAL WORK. I. Spelling. 1. He who has learned to spell well has laid the best foundation for best proficiency in all studies. 2. Spelling lessons are excellent object lessons, training to accurate observation and careful recollection and also, if properly arranged, to inductive and generalizing habits of thought. 3. Spelling and Reading are correlatives ; the former names separately the written characters, the latter utters the united spoken elements of the word. One is analytic ; the other is synthetic. Each implies the other ; and training which is direct in either one is at the same time real but indirect in the other. 4. The maxim ''one thing at a time" is no- where more imperative than in this first and fun- damental study. Distracted attention is a hin- drance to proficiency everywhere ; it is especially evil when the first habits of study are to be formed. Therefore here pronunciation, deriva- tion, meaning, gramrnar, history, geography, natural science, should be excluded from the thought except as incidental or as subservient and ancillary or as inferential. 5. To spell is to tell the names of the charac- ters which compose the written word. The teacher gives the spoken word ; it is incumbent on him to pronounce accurately and distinctly. MENTA L ED UCA TION. I 3 I It is a good practice to pronounce each word in the lesson distinctly to the learner when the lesson is first assigned. Pronunciation is gener- ally best taught in this way. 6. A good-text book is indispensable, for accu- racy, for thoroughness, for method, for review. The requisites in a good Speller are: — i. that it present in their organic order and relationship all the alphabetic elements of the language in all the diversity of forms in which they respectively appear, 2. that it exemplify each of these phonic elements in a sufificient number of carefully selected words in their diverse combinations, which shall serve as type-words for the entire vocabulary ; 3. that it distribute the entire vocab- ulary into classes with these type-words as models or specimens, as a botanist distributes the entire flora into classes represented by a comparatively few specimens, so that a full knowl- edge of the type-words gives a full knowledge of all the words in the language, making good spell- ing comparatively a simple practicable attainment ; 4. that it be in exact method throughout, pro- ceeding from the simpler to the more com- plex combinations; 5. that it group the selected representative or typical words in lessons con- venient for use ; 6. that the grouping be such as to be a guide to the pronunciation of all the words in the respective groups and also, subordinately, to exhibit in apparent irregulari- ties the source of departure from the normal 132 EDUCATIONAL WORK. form of the word ; 7. that it be so compact, while yet covering the entire vocabulary, that the average mind at the middle of the primary stage of general education may become a profi- cient in the art of spelling. This, it is believed, may be effected in a period of two or three years with two lessons a day of school time, one third of which shall be in review. 7. Oral Spelling needs to be supplemented by abundant, systematic drill in writing lessons. The exercises in English will afford the oppor- tunity requisite for this necessary drill in spell- ing. II. Reading. 1. Reading is an art, and, as such, involves the three essential constituents in all art : — idea to be rendered, matter in which it is to be rendered or vocal sound, and the actual embodiment of the idea in the sound. §§ 44-49. To read well involves, thus, I. knowledge of the thought and experience of the feeling to be rendered ; 2. practical mastery of the voice ; 3. skill in actual embodiment of the idea in the vocal sound. 2. All vocal sound in speech is essentially musical, ever appearing under the relations of pitch. 3. Particularly, the syllable is the primary unit of speech. The fundamental lav/ is : — Every syllable has a dete7'minate movement in pitch. MENTAL EDUCATION. I 33 4. The pitch-intervals in speech are the tone, the semi-tone, the major and minor thirds, the falling fourth, the rising fifth, and the octave. These intervals occur as simple slides or as waves in diverse combinations of slides. The transi- tions in pitch from syllable to syllable, in other words, the skips in speech are also through the intervals enumerated — the semi-tone, the tone, the major and minor thirds, the fifth, and octave. 5. Education in singing is conditional and helpful to the best education in reading. The one should be in closest union with the other. 6. A text-book is alike indispensable for effective training in each. To learn in either case only by rote — by imitation — is a by-gone in edu- cational history. 7. The text-book in reading should present in progressive, orderly methods, i. exercises in vocal culture — Phonics ; 2. exercises in proper orthoepy or the pronunciation of words ; 3. ex- ercises in proper elocution or the actual render- ing of thought in speech. It will need of course to be adapted to the capacity of the learner, rudimentary while methodical and thorough for the beginner, with correspondingly higher grades for the more advanced. Separate text- books may answer best for the several stages mentioned. 8. Vocal culture will seek to develop vocal power or volume and compass of voice together with fitting quality, as purity and mellowness. 134 EDUCATIONAL WORK. 9. Orthoepy or word-pronunciation involves I. Articulation ; 2. Syllabication ; 3. Accentua- tion. It is indirectly taught in spelling lessons, as already indicated. 10. Elocution proper embraces i. the pos- session of the thought to be rendered in its own relationships and its modifications by feeling ; and 2. skill in the divers movements of the voice in rendering thought and feeling according* to these relations and modifications. 11. Rudimentary education necessarily occu- pies itself mainly with the first of these two req- uisites — getting ready and accurate possession of the thought from out of the printed form. 12. The true education, here as everywhere, proceeds from element to element, securing prac- tical mastery of each, in scientific method through the entire science or art. The thorough, scientific way is as a rule the shortest, easiest, only satisfactory way. The well-trained reader, as the well-trained speller, will ever feel assured as to the character of his performance ; — will know when he reads well, that he reads well, and how it is that he reads well. III. Writing. I. Penmanship is an art to be acquired by judicious orderly practice. The text-book or the instructor must furnish the copy ; the practice will be chiefly in imitation. The characters of a MENTAL EDUCATION. 1 35 good style in penmanship are, i. Beauty in the form of the letter, requiring uniformity in the similar parts with contrast in direction and length of line and in shading ; and 2. facility in executing. 2. Training should be by single elements in order: I. Straight lines; 2. curved lines ; 3. con- nections between different letters. 3. Esthetic principles in penmanship require, First, uniformity in all like elements or charac- ters, as in the slope for all the straight lines as also for all the curves and for the loops in the looped letters ; in length of like elements above or below the line ; and the like. Secondly, that the slope of the curved be adapted to the slope of the straight lines and of the looped letters. 4. The slope may vary from the nearly perpen- dicular when the curves must be nearly circular to the nearly horizontal when all the curves will be very flattened ovals. When the general slope is between these extremes, the curves will vary correspondingly from the more circular with nearly perpendicular lines to the oval becoming more flattened with the greater slope. Neither the absolutely perpendicular, nor the absolutely circular, nor the sharply angular is aesthetic. 5. Practice in penmanship may most usefully be made subsidiary to the acquisition of the art of Book-keeping — an art in which all should be trained so far as. to be able to keep fair accounts 136 EDUCATIONAL WORK. of money values received and expended. Its simplest form is that of cash received and ex- pended. When other possessions are added, note of the source from which received and the object on which expended, with simple indexing will be added accordingly. Two books, which may indeed conveniently except in commercial usages be comprised in one, suffice for ordinary purposes: i. the Journal, which contains in sim- plest terms the record of the transaction, giving the source from which the money value con- cerned is received — the credit side of the account, and also the object to which appropriated — the debit account ; 2. the Ledger, which simply indi- cates the page of the journal where the transac- tion is recorded and also tabulates the values on their respective debit and credit sides. IV. Arithmetic. 1. Arithmetic is the doctrine of numerical quantity ; as Geometry is the doctrine of spacial quantity. 2. Arithmetic as a science is studied only by the thinker ; it is as an art that it chiefly, if not wholly, commands the attention of the educator. Its aim or end is intelligent practice rather than increase of knowledge ; skill rather than science. 3. Its characteristic method is continued and abundant practice in orderly progress from the MENTAL EDUCATION. 1 3/ simplest to the most complex with clear under standing of the nature and grounds of every process. 4. The one commanding condition of success- ful study is such familiar understanding of every step from beginning to end, such per- fect practical mastery of each in succession, as will make the mental movement in compli- cated operations, as it were, automatic or in- stinctive. 5. Quantity, as quantity, admits of the single modification by increase or decrease. In the last analysis all arithmetical changes are resolvable into such increase or decrease by a single unit — into adding or subtracting one. The mind that can intelligently add one to a quantity or take one from it has the germ of all arithmetical capacity and skill. 6. The body of arithmetical teaching and training consists in the unfolding in orderly suc- cession of the processes by which numerical com- putation may be abbreviated or simplified ; Digi- tal Notation being a contrivance for com- pendious expression of units in quantity, Multi- plication being only compendious addition, etc. 7. A fundamental principle in all numerical processes requires that the units concerned be regarded as belonging to the same class of objects ; we cannot add two dollars to two bushels of wheat, the sum being neither four dol- 138 EDUCATIONAL WORK. lars nor four bushels. All quantity rests on the fundamental attribute of all thought — Identity — and presupposes it, § 56. 8. As lying thus near the lowest foundations of all thought or knowledge, the science of quan- tity possesses the highest degree of certitude in human thought. It excels accordingly all other sciences in presenting to the forming mind the ideal of exactest and surest knowledge. In this field of human experiences there reigns absolute certainty, so long at least as thought is real and is true to itself. Absolute skepticism, universal doubt, is annihilated in the domain of mathemat- ical truth. 9. The introductory step in the study of mathematics generally and in that of each suc- cessive part of it, is the learning of the notation, including the representatives used of the quanti- ties, as in arithmetic the digital, and in algebra the literal and in the higher branches the func- tional character or signs and the like, and also the indications of the processes and relations as the symbols or signs of phis and inimis, those of division, of fractional expression, involution and evolution, etc. Thoroughness here, that shall amount to the most familiar practical mastery, is imperatively requisite. 10. The progress in the study needs to be characterized throughout by the same thorough work. The study is thus made easy, attractive, successful. MENTAL education: 1 39 V. Grammar. 1. *' Grammar," says Ben Jonson, '' is the art of true and well speaking a language ; the writ- ing is but an accident." 2. A proper science of a language can be advantageously studied only in the most advanced stages of education. The genesis and history of a language in itself and its connections with other languages^ its elements and forms and laws, are beyond the period of ordinary public instruction. 3. Grammar as an art is of a twofold character according as it deals with the interpretation or with the construction of discourse. We have accordingly Interpretative Grammar and Con- structive Grammar. 4. Speech is the verbal expression of thought. Thought is the vital, germinal element ; words or language the embodiment which the thought takes on in its expression in vocal sound. 5. As thought is complete only in the act of intelligence known as the judgment, the primal and elemental speech-form is tJie sentence. 6. But as speech is rational and therefore properly ever involves an end or object, when it is regarded in this light or in this reference to a rational end, it becomes discourse. 7. Speech-forming proceeds by the following distinguishable stages of accretion : — 140 EDUCATIONAL WORK. (i.) It starts from the expiration of the breath ; (2.) The breath vocab'zed becomes vocal sound ; (3.) The vocalized breath being articulated produces the alphabetic element or letter ; (4.) The letter receiving the determinate pitch-movement makes the syllable ; (5.) The syllable, single or combined, receiv- ing significance or idea becomes a ivord ; (6.) The word, single or combined, rational- ized or uttered for an end, becomes rational dis- course. 8. Grammar, in the broadest sense, embraces the two distinguishable parts of (i) the con- struction of the sentence or complete thought- form ; and (2) the construction of rational speech or discourse. The former part of the art is now denoted by the term Grammar, as used in the narrower sense. The latter part, or the construc- tion of proper rational speech or discourse, is denominated Rhetoric. 9. Constructive Grammar, accordingly, in the narrower sense, has for its one subject matter, the construction of the sentence. It is properly applied to one's vernacular tongue. 10. Interpretative Grammar is properly ap- plied to foreign languages ; that is, to other lan- guages than one's vernacular. It has a method throughout peculiar to itself and entirely differ- ent from that of constructive g-rammar. MENTAL EDUCATION. I41 11. The ill-success in teaching Grammar is at- tributable chiefly either to the failure to distin- guish the science from the art, the science being admissible only into advanced education, or the failure to distinguish the Interpretative Gram- mar from the Constructive Grammar. The methods in these arts being just the reverse of each other, to confound them is of course to prevent successful training in either. 12. The grammatical sentence is made up of three essential elements, (i) that of which one thinks or speaks — the subject ; (2) that which he thinks or speaks of it — the attribute ; and (3) the attributing act or the positive affirming or deny- ing of the attribute as belonging to the subject — the copula. §52. These thought-forms appear normally in the noun, the adjective, the verb. 13. Besides these three principal and ever essential elements, there are the subsidiary ele- ments, found to be of convenience for limiting or modifying respectively the several principal elements ; (i) the modifier of the subject, the grammatical adjective being the natural speech- form for this modifier ; (2) the modifier of the attribute or ///t' adverb; (3) the modifier of the copula or proper verb form, called the modal. 14. In addition to these constituents entering into the sentence, there are words expressing relations either between the elements named or between sentences — prepositions and conjunct io7is, sometimes, but inadequately, \.QVVc\Qd form-words. 142 EDUCATIONAL WORK. 15. Still further, besides these normal forms there have crept into speech certain irregularities or anomalies, for the most part through the con- flict of different principles of language — abnormal grammatical forms. 16. It should ever be borne in mind that the vital element in the art of true speaking, is the thought to be expressed. All speech-forms are properly thought-forms put into articulated and musical sound. All training in the art should proceed from the thought ; this is essential. The one dominating question throughout is : Having a thought to express, how am I to ex- press it properly in language ? Education pro- poses no question more inspiring to the ambition of a youthful mind. 17. It is obvious from this synopsis of the sentence, its nature, its constituents, its normal and abnormal forms, that training in " the art of true and well speaking," rightly conducted, is simple and rational ; that it is practicable even in the early stages of primary education, and may be prosecuted with satisfaction to both teacher and pupil ; that every step in the progress ex- plains itself, each grammatical form exhibiting its own nature and use ; that the needful prac- tice, may be made perfectly simple, proceeding element by element to the most complicated expressions of thought. Grammar, as such a constructive art, becomes thus a study both prac- ticable and attractive ; of the highest disciplinary MENTAL EDUCATION. 1 43 character : and the most important for the uses and ends of a true education. 18. Rhetoric is the complementary of Gram- mar as a constructive art and its proper consum- mation. The governing principles of training in it are obvious from the summary exposition just given. (i.) The training should always bring in the rational end or object in speaking or writing — in all rational discourse. The one grand explana- tion of the prevalent repulsiveness of " composi- tion-writing " to the pupil, is this : that it re- quires of him what is most irrational or self-con- tradictory, — to do a rational act without any rational end or aim in it. To write a narrative of some event of interest or a description of a scene or object, or a defense of an avowed opin- ion, or a persuasive request for a favor is easy and attractive, simply because inspired by a rational object. (2.) The thought must be in the possession of the mind before it can be expressed. All rhetorical training should begin with the thought as connected with the object for expressing it — in other words, with the theme considered in reference to the object in presenting it, and should never suffer it to drop out of view or relin- quish its control over the whole process. (3.) The few distinguishable objects of ra- tional discourse and the few distinguishable proc- esses by which these several objects are to be 144 EDUCATIONAL WORK. attained in discourse, permit the general divisions of the art for the study of all rhetorical forms one by one in the concentrated light of the nature and laws of each. Invention, or the supply and specification of the thought to be expressed in reference to the object of the discourse, thus constitutes the primary and governing part of rhetoric. Style becomes subordinate and subservient ; and so criticism becomes intelligible. Earnest purpose to express well defined thought easily satisfies itself whether the verbal expression is or is not exactly what it should be in its highest perfec- tion of form. 19. The exercises in constructive grammar or the art of expressing thought in one's vernacular tongue should begin in the earliest stages of education. They will serve at the same time as exercises in spelling and in writing. They should be frequent and systematically progres- sive. After preparatory practice in writing words more for training in spelling and penmanship, the simple sentence in its simplest form will be undertaken and will be continued through the entire complement of distinct grammatical ele- ments and forms. In this progress, however, the simpler rhetorical forms may be introduced — as the narrative or the descriptive — preceded by the primary forms of punctuation and its rules which should be thoroughly mastered at the start. In all these more rhetorical exercises, even the MENTAL EDUCATION. 1 45 most simple, the pupil should be made aware of the tJiougJit which he is to communicate — the tlieme as, in narrative, the event or the incident. To this he may be guided by some literary extract read to him, or some reference to his own experi- ence or observation, or reading. He should also be made aware that in writing he has an object to accomplish, as in narrative to communicate in the best way he can his knowledge of the theme supposably to some one else. TJicnie and object should thus both be dominant in his mind, guid- ing and inspiring, as in a truly rational pro- cedure. III. MORAL EDUCATION. % 57. The will is the last of the three great functions of the human mind in order of devel- opment. Its action is conditioned both by that of the function of form and of the intelli- gence, as it cannot move until called forth by some object which can reach it only through the sense or function of form, nor move with any assurance of success except in knowledge of its object and of the way of reaching it to attain its end. The function is the finishing element in the constitution of mind and its crowning glory. It is the immediate former of character in man and so the prime determiner of his destiny. It demands accordingly as imperatively as either of the mental functions, the care of the educator. By whatever agency the work is carried on, the 10 146 EDUCATIONAL WORK. science of education has for its proper province to unfold the general principles and methods by which the work must be governed. It must accordingly set forth the essential characteristics and relationships of this function and its generic laws and forms. The training here begins in earliest infancy and continues through life. Soon as the opening life becomes capable of communicating with outer realities, the moral culture may and in all wisdom should begin. The absolute dependence at beginning life involves subjection to the will of others ; and the gentlest touch of constraint as the change of posture or the turning of the finger suffices for the most part to enforce this subjection. Such early lessons followed out con- sistently and perseveringly are the best and most efficient inculcations of morality. Character, good or bad, takes its start in the nursery. Intel- ligent and faithful training here is the best guar- anty that the future life shall be what it ought to be. Dependence is the best school of obedience which is of the very essence of duty and of all morality. This condition, so favorable if not needful for moral training^ continues through the entire period of education. All along the way by example as well as by precept and by enforce- ment of conformity to higher rule, this teaching is given. Education everywhere must of neces- sity influence morals. § 58. The essential characteristic of the will is MENTAL EDUCATION. l^^J that it is directive. It is directive in the largest sense. It directs the entire mental activity, summoning forth its energy and so determining the intensity of its action ; directing this or that function on this way or that, by selecting the object of action. It directs the whole mind in the entireness of its energy ; it also directs each functional department, the sensibility and imag- ination and the intelligence, as also itself in sub- ordinate, executive action. This directing power seems to exhaust its active nature ; if at least we include in it its permissive work. It is here indeed that its presence is to be discovered to a large extent. The human will permits probably far more than it positively orders, idly suffering the spontaneous or habitual flow of feeling and thought and quietly leaving the active nature of the mind to its own trend or appetency. It is a great part of the work of education to train the will to faithfulness in its ofifice-work of actually ruling over the whole man so far as may lie within its nature. § 59. The fundamental and comprehensive law of voluntary or moral action is derived at once from the deepest principle of life — that each member minister beneficially to the perfection of the whole organism and inclusively of every part. To become perfectly what it was designed and fitted to be is the one grand all-inclusive principle or law of all life. So the one all-inclu- sive principle or law of human life is that it be- 148 EDUCATIONAL WORK. come what it was made to be, that is, become what it ought to become. It is the ground and significance of oughtness, of obligation. We have thus the highest, broadest principle of morals, the maxim of universal reach : Be and become your best in actual ministration to the truest good of every object within your reach, which good is simply the highest perfection of^its na- ture ; thereby and thereby only do you effect your own highest good, which is, the perfection of your own nature. The principle of life in- volves a reciprocal inter-dependence between all the members. Each particular member therefore can secure its own highest perfection only through a favoring condition of soundness and organic helpfulness in the other parts of the whole. The maxim may for practical conven- ience receive a broader statement : Be ever at your best in ministering to the good — tJie true per- fection — of your own character and of that of all around you. The generic forms of all voluntary or moral activity are best determined in reference to the respective objects towards which it is exerted. These are for man, self, felloiv-nien, God. Such is the comprehensive classification of all duty — personal, social, religious. The work of education is thus precisely indi- cated. In all fitting ways and at all times it is to seek to nurture up and train to a settled control- ling habit of duty. The modes by which this MENTAL EDUCATION. 149 training is to be effected are summarily threefold. First, by exemplification ; Secondly, by formal precept ; Thirdly, by steadfast enforcement of obedience. § 61. Moral training begins in exemplification of duty. The very idea of duty, of its nature and reality, and its specific forms comes first to the child from others. It is a natural instinct in the new human life to imitate — to do and be what others do and are. Here also is enlisted the immeasurable power of sympathy, that works as silently as resistlessly. All the respective virtues and graces of character are thus best inculcated through sympathetic, judicious, syste- matic exemplification, as courage, patience, gen- tleness, courtesy, fairness, kindness, piety. So those more conditional leadings up to higher duty, its supports and fortresses, the duties of punctuality — of strict observance of all the relationships of time, and of special order — the observance of all the demands of place — require for their inculcation, to be exemplified everywhere. '' A time for everything and every- thing in its time," and '*a place for everything and everything in its place," are most important maxims in moral training. 2. Formal /r^<:r// is more or less needful here as in all training. The indication of the duty to be done, at the time as at all times, and where as well as when, is equally necessary here as in all education and frequent opportunity is furnished 150 EDUCATIONAL WORK. all along the course of mental training for direct precept, more or less specific. The extended study of moral science or ethics will of course be deferred to an advanced stage of education. Still not a little may be accomplished in indoctrinating a younger pupil in the general principles of morality. Reverent devotion to God and sympa- thetic beneficence to men, as the grand compre- hensive law of human duty, and its subordinate principles of moral action, may be inculcated in more or less specific application to every-day conduct and life, in ever recurring opportunity, perhaps more effectively than through extended, systematic and merely doctrinal instruction. Religion, morality, it should be remembered, is a practice or life, not a knowledge. 3. The firm enforcement of duty is the third and a most effective way of moral training. It reveals the fact and nature of authority as reach- ing to all moral beings, and the necessity of ready and faithful obedience. The rewards and punishments that may be brought to its support will exemplify the motives to this obedience. In order that this exercise of authority in the enforcement of duty may be most effective in moral training it is obvious that the authority exercised should be grounded and directed in reason. Only a reasonable authority can avail for its good with a rational nature. The right to exercise it must exist and must be recognized. It must be restricted to its proper sphere. The MENTA L ED UCA TION. I 5 I administration of it must also be in itself a rational procedure. It must accordingly be in sympathy. — in genuine kindly interest, neither in excessive passion nor in selfish indifference and recklessness or as mere matter of form. It must be intelligent of the character and need of the subject, of the fitness of the occasion, of the mode and degree of its exercise. It must more- over be with clear discernment of the end and design and be adapted to accomplish this end. It must in short be sympathetically and intelli- gently purposive or with express aim and intent. Again, the administration of authority in edu- cation must be supreme in its sphere. It is re- ported of an English schoolmaster that when one day his school was visited by King George IV. he received his majesty with just the ordinary courtesy between equals and continued his in- structions as usual. But when the king took his departure the schoolmaster followed him outside of the hall and on his knees begged his majesty's forgiveness, alleging his warmest loyalty and apologizing for his seeming disrespect by saying that unless his scholars believed that he was su- preme master over them in the school-room they would be entirely uncontrollable. There was true philosophy in this. If parents or guardians intervene, the intervention of itself terminates so far the relation between teacher and pupil. The teacher is nothing without the authority pertain- ing to his office, § 14. 152 EDUCATIONAL WORK'. Further, this administration of authority must ever maintain and evince a steadfast confidence in its effectiveness — that it will be obeyed. Such quiet manifestation of confidence on the part of the educator in the dutifuhiess and right behavior of his charge is an indispensable means of effect- ing it. Once more, in order to the full effectiveness of this administration of authority, it must be con- sistent and firm ; vacillation and fickleness are fatal to rational authority. BOOK III. EDUCATIONAL RESULTS CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY — EDUCATIONAL LIMITS. § 62. The work of education, as a rational procedure and as dealing with rational natures, is necessarily shaped and determined by the ends or results that are proposed either generally or specially. The consideration of this teleological characteristic acts back on the factors concerned in the work, determining their character and respective qualifications and on the work itself determining how it must proceed. All growth is towards an end or result ; and it is the compre- hensive function of education to secure this end. Every living thing bears in its own being in ref- erence to its environment the idea of what it was made and fitted to become ; it has its own type- form or norm. The comprehensive law of its life is to attain this type-form in its highest pos- sible perfection. There is such a type-form or 153 154 EDUCATIONAL RESULTS. norm attached to man as a living, growing, but specifically rational being. The highest law of growth and consequently of education to him, thus, is as before indicated, § 59, that he become his best and ever hold himself at his best in sympathetic and intelligent beneficent ministry to himself and his fellow beings ; — in other words, perfect to the utmost of his power his character and condition. The grand importance and broad significance of this law of growth and edu- cation are forcibly presented to us in the follow- ing quotation from Condorcet : — " If," says he, '* the indefinite improvement of our species is a general law of nature, man ought no longer to regard himself as a being lim- ited to a transitory and isolated existence, des- tined to vanish after an alternative of happiness or of misery for himself and of good and evil for those whom chance has placed near him ; but he becomes an active part of the grand whole and a fellow laborer in a work that is eternal. In an existence of a moment and upon a point in space, he can by his works, compass all places, relate himself to all the centuries, and continue to act long centuries after his memory has dis- appeared from the earth." Education in its prosecution of this high aim is, however, like all things human, subject to divers limitations. Growth itself has its own limits ; it proceeds by stages ; it changes with progress both its direction and its processes. With INTRODUCTORY— EDUCATIONAL LIMITS. I 55 right factors doing legitimate work in their inter- action, the consideration of this modifying char- acteristic of growth necessitates a modifying direction in the work of education. It becomes necessary for the science of education to exhibit the character and effect of this modification as supervening the normal procedure. Further, the work of education is subject to a limitation or interruption of its service by reason particularly of inadequate means or of extreme necessities of condition on the part of its pupil. Still again, this work is subject to modifica- tion by reason of the necessity of its fitting for the manifold diversity of callings and occupa- tions in the social life and conditions of men. The respective modifications thus required, in a system of education aiming generally at the per- fection of human character and condition, will be exhibited in the following chapters of this book. CHAPTER II. GROWTH PERIODS. § 63. The fact that in all true growth each step is preparatory to what is to follow suggests a twofold law for regulating all educational work ; — First, it should always be previsio7iaL Nothing should be done at haphazard or at the dictation of mere convenience or of accidental circumstance ; but everything arranged and done for the better promotion of the succeeding growth. Secondly, the work should so perfect and assure every step of progress already made that it shall be in fact a basis of advance and a help to it. Experience abundantly shows that not only is a large portion of precious educa- tional time wasted by negligence here, but that a large portion of the failures in advanced educa- tion are attributable to this neglect. Not infre- quently is the despairing confession thus made in respect to mathematical studies: "I never could understand mathematics : it is utterly use- less to try the study ; I hate it." The trouble arises generally from a failure to master the beginnings of the study ; for nothing can be more certain than that the knowledge of quan- 156 GRO IVTH PERIODS. I 5 7 tity is about the first and easiest attainment, since this category is about the lowest and most comprehensive of all the categories of thought, so that there must be absolute want of intelli- gence or thinking capacity if there be inability to understand its nature and applications. All numerical quantity starts from the simple "one and one " and under the guidance of this princi- ple runs through its grand career. The human mind readily apprehends this principle, and by its own laws of growth can march along step by step with all the progressive developments of the numerical principle. Sir Isaac Newton avows respecting himself that whatever others might think of his labors they were to him but as a child playing along the shore picking up pebble by pebble and shell by shell. Another eminent mathematician, when asked how he won his remarkable skill in these problems modestly replied, *' I do not know how else than by simply mastering each step as I went along." To advance the learner by easy and assured stages must be a leading principle in effective training. The principle is corroborated by a considera- tion of the successive changes in the rational life of man. Childhood is volatile ; it is passively open and receptive to whatever addresses it. Youth is versatile ; it turns with an impulse from within to the objects around it. Mature life is conformative ; it adjusts itself with a will and purpose of its own to circumstances. Old age 158 EDUCATIONAL KESULTS. is obdurate ; it persists in its own way and after its own judgment and inclination, and is slow to learn what is new. The marvelous wisdom of nature is seen in these appoint- ments, which aim at securing breadth and symmetry, agility and circumspectness, firmness in wise compliance with urgent conditions, - and tenacity of acquisition. The great law of habit reveals itself conspicuously in these ordi- nances of nature. If we turn to the medium of interaction between the two prime factors in education — the studies pursued — we find a full measure of adap- tiveness to correspond with these demands of growth and pupilary age. Esthetic and moral training we have regarded more as incidental to intellectual culture in general education ; but in both departments mental growth proceeds step by step in manifold successive stages of instruc- tion adapted to age and capacity. The universe of truth and knowledge, which is the means of intellectual training, readily submits to indefinite partition and reduction down to the most ele- mentary and the most minute. Scientific treatises and educational text-books abound in all grades from the most rudimentary to the highest scien- tific or philosophical and from the most frag- mentary to the most encyclopaedic. The same is true to a large extent of manuals in aesthetic and moral training. The one vast whole of knowledge may be separated into smaller wholes GROWTH PERIODS. I 59 each having a completeness of its own, to an indefinite degree. § 64. In these views we discover at once the practicability and the regulative laws of a cur- riciiliun of instruction. First, it must be care- fully adapted to the ever changing capacity of the learner. To every advance in proficiency there should be elevation and reach in the char- acter of the study. The number of studies, also, must lessen with progress in age ; the volatility of childhood demanding during the same day manifold exercises each of but a few minutes of duration, forbidding all prolonged strain of exer- tion and imposing incessant flutterings of effort in every direction with frequent reliefs of abso- lute rest. It was a very judicious thing to pro- vide in a common school mattresses for the younger scholars to be used as the need of rest should indicate. The number of studies may be lessened gradually with the increase of age and proficiency. Secondly, a wise curriculum must measure itself off into definite stages of study and instruc- tion. The length of those stages must be governed by the stages of educational life. Each stage will of course cover a definite whole of knowledge, circumscribed and defined so far as may be so as to be distinctly grasped by teacher and scholar. The teacher should know definitely at each proposed lesson what he is to teach and both he and the pupil should know at the end l6o EDUCATIONAL RESULTS. of each lesson what and how well the lesson has been taught and learned. The whole portion of study to be compassed in the week, or month, or term, or course, needs to be recognized in like manner ; and at the end both teacher and pupil should know definitely what has been learned and how well. Thirdly, a wise curriculum will be throughout progressive in its character. Each stage will prepare for what follows as well as recognize what has gone before ; every step be an assured step forward. Growth, proficiency, is of the very essence of true education: "first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." Fourthly, a wise curriculum will both prescribe a full complement of study for each stage of its course and also co-ordinate the particular studies which it comprises. For each stage of profi- ciency, it is possible to frame an ideal of com- pleteness or perfection to which it should be the aim of education to carry its pupil. This ideal will embrace not only degree of growth but also symmetry of development in all the activities under training. The whole being is to be sympathetically and proportionably developed. The curriculum should respect this demand. Further the particular studies prescribed at any given stage should be selected and arranged so as to be tributary to the general proficiency and also helpful and not a hindrance to each associ- GRO WTH PERIODS. 1 6 1 ated study. The principle of recreation or rest is applicable here. Three special rules for constructing a curric- ulum of study may be given in exemplification of these principles. 1. Conditional studies should be placed before dependent studies. 2. Elementary studies should precede the more complicated. 3. A suitable diversity of studies will consti- tute the complement of studies, so that all the activities under training shall be engaged by its fitting object in order to secure both the largest amount of active exertion and also a symmet- rical and rounded whole of attainment. CHAPTER III. EDUCATION PERIODS. § 65, There are certain periods determined to education from its various relationships' to the character and condition of its pupils and to society. These periods are characterized by certain predominant features which must shape and color the educational work to be done and indicate the results which should in wisdom be sought in them. They vary in character and do not admit of very exact and fixed lines of demarcation. Four of such periods are of such familiar recognition and exhibit such obvious and important characteristics that they allow and indeed seem to require distinct considera- tion. The first of these periods may be designated the kindergarten period. It is the period of childhood ending at the age of about four years. It is the age, as we have noticed of dependence and of volatility : its home is the nursery. The educational work for this period will characteris- tically be that of full and equal development of all the diverse activities, with the repression or extirpation of all buddings of evil. The future 162 ED UCA TION PERIODS. 1 63 of character will be largely shaped by the train- ing of this period, more largely perhaps than by any hereditary shapings. Art may often super- sede nature while working under nature's laws. Everywdiere in the promiscuous relationships of modern civilization race propensities are over- borne and character although more or less tinged with the hue of descent, takes on a new shape and color from the new associations. Genius, as so reputed, is often more the resultant of nursery care than of ancestral relations. The volatility and pliability of this tender age indi- cating that the leading care of training be- stowed upon it should be to secure the largest and most symmetrical development as its com- manding object and aim, make this educational period characteristically one of play ; its very work will be play. All lessons, all exercises should be made to the pupil to assume the character of sport, amusement, entertainment, only as the period approaches its termina- tion, anticipating as it were somewhat of the tasking characteristics of the period that is to follow. § 66. The second educational period may ex- tend eight or nine years from the end of the first to the age of twelve or thirteen. It may be designated as the PRIMARY period of education. It corresponds with the prevailing compulsory period under the civil laws. Here comes proper tasking, definite assignment of study and prac- 164 EDUCATIONAL RESULTS. tice. Recreation will take the form rather of change of exercise than proper rest ; and play, diversion, will be for the most part or entirely excluded from the school-room. Now the foun- dations begin to be laid for the future. A half or more of the period will be predominantly spent in rudimentary studies. Spelling, reading, writing, the ground rules of arithmetic, absorb the thought and consume the time except as, mainly for recreation and incidentally, exercises are introduced for developing the senses of sight and of sound, and also agility and dexterity in use of hands and feet, as in drawing, rhythmical movements, and the like. The suppleness and pliancy of boyhood may also here be availed of in giving control of fingers and feet, and, more- over, of the vocal organs for future training in elocution and in music. It may be wise here also to introduce to the articulations of such for- eign languages as may need to be acquired in after years. It is also desirable for the future acquisition of the so-called dead languages early to introduce into the mind of the learner the truth that, although now dead, these languages were once the common speech of living peoples. Much of the like anticipatory work may be judiciously introduced, although but incidentally, at this period. The later portions of the period will of course be devoted in part to such studies as those of descriptive geography and map draw- ing and of elementary history. Holiday, leisure, ED UCA TION PERIODS. 1 6 5 t and recreation hours may invite into the fields for the cursory study of scenery, of the rocks, of plants and flowers. Reading in private and of course for entertainment, should be supervised and turned towards such as is refining, elevating, instructing as well as diverting. This period will moreover take on a preparatory character looking forward to the period that may follow. The great mass, however, of the people, it is much to be regretted, are unable from the con- straints of poverty, for education necessarily costs, to pass beyond the bounds of this primary and popular period ; many, alas ! can only hold out through the first half of it. This popular education should therefore be shaped to this end — to give the largest and best results attainable, shoving out and subordinating to this end proper preparatory work. Much will be gained if in this period there can be awakened a desire and purpose for the great work of self-teaching in the hours of release from necessary labor. The dis- tinguished self-made men of the civilized world have taken their start from the primary school- room. But no primary education can be said to have fulfilled its design unless it can send forth its pupils with a ready ability to spell well in the vernacular ; to read intelligently and intelli- gibly and of course with self-gratification ; to write legibly and neatly ; to reckon also so far as the intelligent keeping of accounts, enabling and disposing them to a faithful record of all 7^ l66 EDUCATIONAL RESULTS. moneys received and expended as to their amount and also as to the source whence received and the object to which appropriated. Regular balancings of money accounts are vitally asso- ciated with balancings of gains and losses in knowledge and in morals. § 56. § 67. The third of the great education periods — the period of secondary education extending, say, to the age of twenty-two — may be designated as the LIBERAL. It is the period of the High school and the Classical schools or academies, which cover the first half of the period, and the Collegiate and so-called Scientific which extends over the second half. The training in the first part is largely preparatory for the latter part — the High School and the Classical Academy look largely to the College or the Scientific School. To a considerable extent the courses of training whether thus preparatory or for general culture will be identical. But the fitting for positions and occupations in the higher grades of civilized life, in which refinement and general intelli- gence are dominant, should be a prevalent fea- ture ; and this end must shape the curriculum throughout. The boy rules in the High School and Academy. He requires steady oversight and government, protection from harmful influ- ences, encouragement in all that is worthy and good, while yet still buoyant and hopeful and given to hilarity and good cheer. Games of all kinds are meet for his healthy development physi- ED UCA TION PERIODS, 1 6/ cally, intellectually, morally. He puts on the manners, the deportment, the hopes and aspira- tions of a man as he passes into the college ; and manly diversions now take the place of the puerile. Playful mischief may be condoned in the school boy ; it is intolerable in the collegian. The seriousness and grandeur of human life loom up now before the eye of the latter, dimly yet impressively and instructively. Here as in the High School, studies branch as preparatory for the higher classical or liberal pursuits and for more special purposes. The curriculum can be wisely and economically made to minister to the highest profit of both classes. The mingling of men of various pursuits and conditions is a grand object in education as fitting for the hap- piest social state. The preparatory studies, look- ing to professional or higher literary life, should be preparatory, not finishing in their proper ten- dency and effect. The future is best prepared for by the best use of the means and opportuni- ties of the present. To forecaste in the ignorance and inexperience of pupilary years, as to the particular shaping and character of this future, is pretty certain to insure an imperfect ideal, ever cramping and lowering. § 68. The fourth of the great educational pe- riods, introducing into the higher or professional life, may be designated the AVOCATION period. Its characteristic is that its one great function is to prepare directly for this higher professional 1 68 EDUCATIONAL RESULTS. life. It is a purely avocational period if it border directly on a full completed term of liberal train- ing. The curriculum may be modified either by the omission of such anticipatory studies or prac- tice as have been admitted into the proper secondary or liberal school system, or by the introduction of such training as has been omitted in the earlier periods. Its general char- acter still remains : its aim is purely avoca- tional, fitting for the permanent pursuits of life. The diversity of these avocational systems is as great as the diversity of callings in human life requiring special training or instruction. For the man of leisure, the idler or man of no work, and the man of pleasure too, education makes ito pro- vision, leaving him to '* paddle his own canoe^," or sluggishly float down the stream of life. For the day laborer, the man of all work, the fag and drudge, it only does so much as to make him a man to be valued and respected, a worthy citi- zen, and possibly capable by self-training of rising to high positions of honor and service. The man of skill steps in after this gradation in training, and now begin proper systems of edu- cation. The first to be named is the mechanical school. Hitherto little of formal provision has been effected or devised for this large field of training. The need has been felt and imperfectly shown in the incidental or optional features of the more general curriculum ; somewhat too in ED UCA TION PERIODS. 1 69 the now well-nigh obsolete systems of appren- ticeship [learner-ship]. Recent experience has shown that incipient training in these depart- ments of industry can be successfully introduced into the common schools without serious incon- venience or disadvantage. The felt wants of society press for a steady improvement and enlargement of these educational provisions, which may perhaps lead to independent schools of training. Next to the handicraftsman comes the man of business, the merchant in all the numberless diversities of his service from the huckster up to the great jobber in merchandise, the go-between in all grades between producer and consumer, the man of money and of commerce generally. The Trades-Schools, the Business Colleges, are the sporadic representatives of educational work in this department of human industry. A higher grade of avocation systems of training is found in the Professional Schools properly so called — the schools of the three so-called learned professions — the Clerical or Theological, the Legal, and the Medical. Here are demanded and here accordingly are provided the educators of the highest and broadest intellectual attain- ments as well as of the best professional skill. They are for the most part purely professional, admitting no merely preparator}' training. When such preparatory studies ap- pear, they appear as incidental and exceptional, 170 EDUCATIONAL RESULTS. and are designed to meet special conditions in society. Emphatically special and peculiar are the great national military and naval schools. The needs of the nation require a long, specially arranged system of training, characterized all along by this one pervading peculiarity of fitting for a national use and service. They take up into their own hands large parts of the general systems of edu- cation. They are professional throughout. There remain a large, indefinite diversity of avocations for which education has hitherto made scanty provision, but which are ever more ur- gently pressing their claims for special outfits and special instructors. They are crowding them- selves more and more into the liberal institutions snatching at every opportunity or opening in the curriculum and especially in the optional depart- ment. They embrace the callings of Journalist and Teacher and Author; of Artist and Scientist, or Philosopher; of Statesman and Diplomat. The advance of civilized society multiplies the demand for trained services in all these diverse ways. More servants of the public are required and at the same time higher and more special preparation. The great law of supply and de- mand will doubtless in time introduce special avocational schools or systems of training for each of these departments of service. Already we have, in separate institutions or as integral parts of University organization, Normal Schools ED UCA TION I 'EKIODS, 1 7 1 for the Teacher, Art Schools for the Musician and the Painter, Schools of Philosophy for the Cosmopolite in learning and science : and the end is not yet. The age is one of progress ; nowhere is this characteristic more declared and promi- nent than in the Science and Art of Educa- tion. INDEX Esthetic education, lOO ; in the personal appearance and car- riage, 109; the senses, no; in recollection, no; in the imagination, in. Aim, in education, 86. Aphorisms for elementary stud- ies, 129. Appliances, educational, 49. Arithmetic, aphorisms for teach- ing, 136. Assimilatioti, in nurture, 104. Attributes, training in discrimi- nating, 122; intrinsic or ex- trinsic, 123; categories, 124. Authority in teaching, 27, 150. Beautiful, the, sole object of the function of form, 100; its three constituents, 103, 109. Categories of thought, 124. Character, the ideal in training, 9; involved in education with condition, 38. Class association, 53. Concept, its nature, 116. Curriculum, requisites in, 159. Deduction, 3, 118. Determination, amplification of attribute concept, 117. Earnestness in teacher, 25, 86. Education, defined, 3 ; respects a growth, 4 ; involves the in- teraction of three factors, 5 ; an ordinance of nature, 14 ; its work twofold, 65. Education periods, (i) kinder- garten, 162; (2) primary, 163; (3) liberal, 166; (4) avoca- tional, 167. Educational aphorisms for ele- mentary studies, 129. Educational Institutions, 56 ; private, 57 ; state, 58. Educational results, 155. Effective zvork in education, its conditions, 80; ( i )sympathetic, 80; (2) earnest, 86; (3) aim- ing, 86; (4) developing, 87; (5) provident, 89; (6) precau- tionary, 90; (7) with recrea- tion, 90. Endowment and environment,-^. Exercise, in training, 74. Form, the function of, embrac- ing the sensibility and the imagination, 100, 103. Generalization^ 2, 117, 126. Good^ the, object of the will, 100. Grajumar^ aphorisms for teach- ing, 139- . . Growth, as object in educating work, 88 ; periods in educa- tion, 156; as determining work to be previsional and assuring at every step, 156. Habit, law of, 99. 173 174 INDEX. Imagination, as active side of the function of form, 71, 100; three stages in training indi- cated, 75; its object, the beautiful or perfect in form, 100; its stages of manifesta- tion, 107. Induction, 2, 118. In te/it'ctuat educa.t\on, 112. Intelligence, its one object the true, 100 ; its two stages, per- ceptive and reflective, 113. [udgment, the, as matured form of knowledge, 114 ; its three comprehensive movements, 117, 119. lecture Teachings as compared with oral instruction, 81. Logical, methods threefold, 2 ; science, its importance to the teacher, 127. Means and appliances in educa- tion, 47. Memory, as retentive, 69, 105 ; rules in training, 106 ; as re- productive, 107. Mental education, 100. Mind, its threefold functional activity, 100. Moral activity, its objects, 148. Moral Education, 145; stages threefold, (i) exemplification of duty; (2) formal precept; (3) enforcement of duty, 149. Morality, its fundamental prin- ciple, 148. Nature- Teaching, 1 1. Number of studies, 52. Nurture, as one part of educa- tional work, 65. Oral Teaching, in comparison with the lecture, 82. Parental Teaching, 14 ; em- braces nurture and discipline, 17 J should begin early, 17; be natural, 18; kindly, 19; continuous and congruous, 19; authoritative, 21 ; direct, 21 ; indirect, 23. Perception, its nature, 114. Physical Education, 94 ; in min- istry to whole body, and in subordination to the mental life, 95 ; under law of habit, 96; under natural laws, 97 ; the digestive, respiratory, and circulatory functions, 98. Place and Time, in education, 50. Provisional work in education, 89. Punishments, 54. Pupil, the, as educational factor, -31, 46; generic capabilities, 32 ; in their intrinsic nature, 32 ; in their relationships, 38 ; specially modified capabilities, 40 ; in respect to age, 40 ; sex, 42 ; personal idiosyncra- sies, 44; extrinsic capabili- ties, 45. Reading, aphorisms for teach- ing, 132. Recollection, in memory, 107. Recreation, its necessity, 90 ; should be in adaptation, 91 ; educatory, 92 ; contrastive, 92 ; attractive, 92 ; from work to play, 93. Retentiveness in mental training, 69, 105. Rtvieiv, profitableness of, 79. Rewards avid Punishments, 54. Rhetoric, complementary of grammar, 143. Science, of education, defined, I ; its three requisites, i ; its twofold methods of apprehen- sion, 2 ; method of the sci- ence of education, 3. Self- Teaching, 7 ; the ideal in training, 9 ; self-reliance, 10. Sensibility, the, passive side of the function of form, 100; its characteristics, 103. INDEX, 175 Sex^ in education, 42. Skill in teaching, 27. Spelling, aphorisms for teach- ing, 130. State Institutions of learning, 58. Studies, number of, 52. Sympathy in teacher, 25; as condition of effective work, 80. Teaching Factor, the, 7-30; self- teaching, 7 ; nature-teaching, II; parental teaching, 14; technical teaching, 25 ; its personal characteristics, sym- pathetic and communicative, 25; earnest, 25; technical skill, 27 ; authoritative, 27 ; congruousness, 29. Text-books in teaching, 85. 77//«/&/';/^, its nature, 114; attri- bution, 115. Time and Place, in education, 50- Training as one part of educa- tional work, 68 ; proceeds from the elements, not from complex wholes, 77. True, the object of the intelli- gence, 100. Will, the, as a function of mind, 100; its object, the good, 100; education of, 145; its essen- tial characteristic, 146. Writing, aphorisms for teach- ing, 134-